The fallacies of soccer pay equality

An overview:

Additional reading:

Forbes: Revenue Disparity Explains Pay Disparity Between Soccer World Cup's Men And Women

The Federalist: Yes, There Is A Soccer Pay Gap: The Women Make More Than The Men Do

Commentary: Women’s Soccer and the Equal Pay Canard

And the hits just keep on coming -- Babylon Bee: Women's Soccer Team Sues To Overturn Unjust Law Of Supply And Demand

The deliberate destruction of women's sports

This track meet was in Connecticut in February:

>

The story:

Two male runners from Connecticut continue to dominate the field in high school girls’ track competition.

Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood are juniors in high school. Both are biological males who identify as transgender females. And, according to a report by the Associated Press, they took first and second place in the recent Connecticut open indoor track girl’s championships held on February 16.

One of their fellow athletes, high school junior Selina Soule, told the AP it isn’t fair that female runners have to compete against male runners. Soule missed qualifying for the New England regionals by just two spots.

“We all know the outcome of the race before it even starts; it’s demoralizing,” said Soule. “I fully support and am happy for these athletes for being true to themselves. They should have the right to express themselves in school, but athletics have always had extra rules to keep the competition fair.”

As someone remarked elsewhere, "Men - better at being women than women!"

It also needs to be noted that neither of these transgender runners' times would distinguish them at all compared to the times of other male runners. They would be decidedly middle of the pack.

If the door is opened full-wide to boys in public schools declaring themselves female and entering girls' sports events, then it will mean the end of women's sports. Instead, there will simply be two categories of men's sports.

And that is exactly what seems to be the goal of some House Democrats:

Understand that "allow" is the wrong word here. Schools across the country will not have the option to "allow." They will be compelled to admit. The photo here, btw, shows a high school girl "transitioning" to male by taking high doses of testosterone. But she still competes on in the girls' events, where she has never lost. So it works only one way, really: boys who want to compete against only girls can do so, but girls taking male-strength drugs still get to compete against girls.

As for girls who want to remain girls and compete against only girls? Sorry, no can do. Because equality and fairness, comrades!

A large number of Democrat politicians in Congress want to take away the power of local schools to make their own rules, regarding gender and sports. House Democrats overwhelmingly voted for a bill on Wednesday, that would force all schools to allow boys who claim to be transgender, to compete against natural-born female competitors.

All but one of the 235 members of the Democrat caucus along with two left-wing Republicans are co-sponsoring a bill they are calling the “Equality Act.” The bill would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to force schools to allow transgenders to play on school sports teams that correspond to their “chosen” gender.

 Once again, we will learn that everything that Leftism touches, it destroys. On purpose.

Update: PJ Media, "Transgender Privilege: Why Must We All Be Forced to Bow to It?"

Update: "Trans 'Woman' Demolishes World Records; Olympian Decries 'Pointless, Unfair Playing Field' "

Update: And now it has come to this: "BIOLOGICAL MALE IS TOP-RANKED NCAA WOMEN’S TRACK STAR"

At Dodger Stadium, the ball game takes you out

Coroner: Fan struck in head by foul ball during Dodgers game died of blunt force injury

A California woman died in August as a result of being hit in the head by a batted ball at Dodger Stadium, according to a Los Angeles County coroner's report obtained by ESPN's Outside the Lines and details her daughter reve aled to OTL in December. 

Linda Goldbloom, a mother of three and grandmother of seven, died on Aug. 29. The coroner's report states the cause as "acute intracranial hemorrhage due to history of blunt force trauma" and states that the injury occurred when she was struck in the head with a baseball during the Aug. 25 game at Dodger Stadium.

It happened last August but the report was released only recently. A freak, tragic accident but not the first one. Fortunately, deaths from being struck by a baseball at a MLB game are very, very rare.

Sports: how to pay full costs of college

Would love to see a chart like this with the percentages of HS athletes who participate in NCAA athletics on a scholarship. Then let parents see it who are spending a fortune on putting their kids on every league sport they can under the delusion that it will pay their way through college.

I swear I could write a book about it. Our son did receive a scholarship for track and field when he started at Wake Forest in 2006. He was a thrower (discus, shot put, hammer, etc.). It was not until after he was awarded the scholarship that my wife and I learned how incredibly difficult they are to get. In fact, it was not offered at all until (a) he had been accepted to WFU on academic merit, and (b) he finished his senior HS year ranked second in the state in both shot put and discus.

And the first year his amount was 17 percent of Wake's $46,500 cost. He did not receive 100 percent until his senior year, and that was after he had been ranked as one of the top 15 javelin throwers in the NCAA. (Soph and junior years were much higher, but still less than100 percent.)

A coach told me that colleges do not award athletic scholarships for experience, that is, just because a kid showed up for practices and games for 10-12 years before college. If a boy or girl has played that long and is not ranked, then from a college coach's perspective, it means one or all of the following: S/he is not motivated, so no money for them. S/he is not talented, so no money for them. S/he has had bad coaching that the college coach now has to overcome, so no money for them.

Most parents do not know that the NCAA allocates scholarships to schools per sport. So there is a ceiling on how many full scholarships each head coach can award (which explains why they fractionalize them). As the coach told us, the way to get more money is to perform at a high level. It is literally pay for play.

However, academic awards have no such ceiling. Colleges can award as much money for academics as they can raise and get endowed. From parents' perspective, this can be very, very lucrative. I know a certain young lady whose academic awards and scholarships came to 125 percent of her annual costs. Yes, the extra 25 percent was hers to keep. She literally made a profit going to college.

Truly gifted child athletes can have a future in scholarship athletics, but they are a tiny number. For the other kids, athletics should be just for fun and fitness. Parent, spend that "would have spent" money for tutors in math and science.

There's this, too:

Want a janitor's job? Get a degree.

Olympic Committee's new tie breaker for flag carrying

Reuters: "Denied U.S. flag with coin toss, Davis snubs ceremony"

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea (Reuters) - American speed skater Shani Davis will not march at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics opening ceremony after losing out on a coin toss to carry his country’s flag, a U.S. spokesman said on Friday. ...

The flag-bearer is chosen by a vote of the eight U.S. winter sports federations but the vote was tied 4-4 between Hamlin and Davis, and a coin was used to break the tie, in keeping with USOC rules.

In his tweet, Davis added the hashtag “BlackHistoryMonth2018”, suggesting racial bias was involved.

Today, the US Olympic Committee, in a desperate bid to ensure continued support for the Olympic teams by American Social Justice Warriors, announced that henceforth all ties to carry the flag or any other honor would be broken by awarding the honor to the athlete who could answer three questions without being cast bodily into a chasm of eternal flame.

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The NFL and the Wizard of Oz humbug

This was the NFL until last Sunday:

I got to thinking along these lines reading a comment on Glenn Reynold's site left by Thomas Wren in which he, having read my post on the suicide of the NFL, responded,

All Mr. Sensing writes is true but peripheral to the main problem. The NFL is in trouble because its product stinks. Its boring, predictable, violent, almost unwatchable.

To which I replied, "Yeah, you're right, and I kind of added that as an update."  Thomas is right - the games are just boring. In fact, pro football has always been boring - actual playing time barely reaches double-digit minutes, according to the Wall Street Journal.

There are 60 minutes of game clock, split into two section of 30 minutes with about 15 minutes in between. A typical football game lasts, however, about 180 minutes from kickoff to final whistle. And in all that time, we get a mere 11 minutes of actual play.

Buddy, that defines boring.

Even so, Americans in their millions have thought that the NFL was the Wizard of Oz, Great and Powerful! Why? How did the NFL come to be so dominant in both our devotion and our money for half of the year? Why did we think that watching a game in which significant moments last fewer than 10 seconds each, with an average of 16 minutes in between, was exciting?

They were exciting because we looked at them through blinkered eyes. They were exciting because we wanted them to be, and so they were.

It was the mythos. Our imagination was fostered and carefully nurtured by the league and the networks to believe with near-religious fervor that something serious was at stake, that the players were larger than life, different from the rest of us, admirable and good - and most importantly, that the team was actually representing us, the residents of the city the team called home (this was explicitly an appeal made by Tennessee's governor to bring the then-Oilers to Nashville, my hometown).

Now all of that has gone a-glimmering. We now know that the Great and Powerful Oz is a fake, a phony, and behind the curtain is only a curmudgeon kicking dirt onto what we hold dear while demanding that we like it.

The NFL (and most pro sports) have always made money by relying on our willing suspension of disbelief, essential to any fictional story. But we are not willing anymore because last Sunday, they themselves pulled back the curtain. Now you and I can't see them as Oz again because now we know there is no there there. The whole enterprise is just a humbug.


Fans are reconsidering facts they ignored before: they are paying enormous sums to be mocked and scorned - at least $40 for a cheap ticket plus costs of parking and time spent in traffic jams, plus $12 beers, $6 hamburgers and $4 or $5 for a scoop or two of ice cream. And for what? They never really asked that question before very seriously, but now they are.

Television viewers see the games now as played under giant shadow that wasn't there before. The games are now political, amplified by willing accomplices at ESPN and to a lesser but still significant degree, the other networks. That receiver who just made the amazing catch and ran through four defenders into the end zone? While he celebrates like he just found a cure for cancer viewers know that he refused even to take the field to pay respect to the police/military/VFW/first responders honor guard presenting the colors. And I am supposed to cheer him and be happy because hey, he runs fast?

A member of a current-events FB group I read posted this today:

This does it for me. I'm totally through with the NFL. An Army vet who served 3 tours in Afghanistan should not be apologizing for having honored his country, his flag, and the memories of his fallen comrades all to appease his idiotic coach and his teammates who have never sacrificed a thing. I can't take this crap any longer. I've loved my Bears since 1974 and they haven't taken a knee (yet, but it's only a matter of time) but I have to put my country above these ungrateful multimillionaire athletes and coaches, and now ungrateful billionaire owners who are spitting in the faces of their customers. So long, NFL. I wish I could say I'll miss you but I really won't.

So now the games are boring and repulsive. And for enormous numbers of us, that's all they'll ever be.

Endnote: This is an interesting perspective.

The NFL lies down on its deathbed and forbids itself rise

It has been going around the internet that pp. A62-A63 of the NFL's rule book states this:

The problem is that the "league rulebook" (note the imprecision of the term) has zero to say about the anthem - if you are referring to the rule book governing game play. That rule book, available online, never mentions the national anthem and does not have any such pages as A62 or A63.

However, there is another NFL book called the Game Operations Manual, not available to the public, that does have those pages. And according to none other than The Washington Post (!), there is indeed such a rule:

Under the league rule, the failure to be on the field for the anthem may result in discipline such as a fine, suspension or loss of a draft pick. But a league official said the key phrase is “may” result, adding he won’t speculate on whether the Steelers would be disciplined.

The specific rule pertaining to the national anthem is found on pages A62-63 of the league’s game operations manual, according to a league source. 

The WaPo is firewalled (it's owned by Bezos after all), but Time magazine confirms it. At this point, though, I would say that the rule of the Game Operations Manual no longer matters.

Three teams on Sunday stayed inside their locker rooms rather than take the field sidelines for the anthem, the Steelers in Chicago, the Seahawks and Titans both playing in Nashville. Attendance at the Titan's home game yesterday was 69,127, only 16 short of every seat. I'll try to remember to post the next home game's attendance here, too. (I have abandoned the NFL so I do not even know when their next home game is.)

In Chicago, a lone Steeler, former US Army officer and Ranger Alejandro Villanueva, left the locker room and saluted the flag while the anthem was played. His reward was two-fold:

First, he was excoriated by that empty suit of freedom respectfulness, his own head coach, Mike Tomlin.

But the second reward is, well, a reward: Sales Of Alejandro Villanueva Jerseys Skyrocket After Being Only Steeler To Stand For National Anthem

I posted 23 days ago that The NFL continues its slow suicide, with both attendance and TV viewership having declined for a few years in  row now. With this weekend's demonstrations, the NFL has made full transition from an athletic organization to a political one. So what will attendance and viewership do now? Well, Sunday night's game  - after the full afternoon of televised abstentions and kneeling - was down eight percent from just last week and was the worst this year.

LA Times reporter Lindsey Thiry tweeted this shot of last Thursday night's game stadium at kickoff time - this was before the Trump-storm and fury:

Also, remember that the stock market is a futures market: "NFL Broadcasting Stocks Slump As Protests Rise And TV Ratings Fall."

During the past month the overall stock market is up more than 2% but shares of companies that broadcast NFL games--Comcast, Walt Disney, Fox, CBS--are all down between 1% to 8%. ...

Towards the end of last season some felt the NFL's ratings dip would be temporary and therefore would not ultimately hurt the networks by forcing them to reimburse advertisers. Instead, the opposite has happened.

Ratings for the the NFL have been worse this season and attendance for some games has also been disappointing. The networks will pay over $5 billion this season to televise the NFL and were already facing unflattering margins on advertising profits. An article in The Hollywood Reporter reckons the drop in NFL ratings could trim the broadcaster's earnings by $200 million. Disney's ESPN, meanwhile, also continues to get hammered by cord-cutting.

I commented elsewhere that one thing the protesting players have done is lead viewers to look at the game and the league with new eyes and a new perspective. Even before this season, millions of them already concluded that they don't miss watching the games after all. Now with political conventions by disgruntled multi-millionaires being held every Sunday when there used to be football games, how many more millions will decide to use that time for other things?

It might be worth pondering some demographics here. One is that Millennials are not watching the games in anywhere near the same numbers as their parents.

Some observers believe that American football is dying a slow and painful death. ...

The threat to American football is no illusion. In a recent study, four out of five millennials stated that they were less trusting of the NFL than basketball, baseball, hockey or NASCAR. Out of those surveyed in the study, 61% identified the NFL as a “sleazy” Organisation, while 54% saw it as being anti-gay.

In another study, teenage interest in the NFL was found to have fallen from 26% to 19% over the last two decades.

And that was written in February of last year. Another demographic supports the case that the NFL laid down on its death bed long before the kneelers started kneeling.

“Just four years ago, we had so many boys signing up for football, we had five teams at this fourth-grade level,” says John Herrera, a dad, software engineer and football coach of the Wheaton Rams in the Bill George Youth Football League in the western suburbs of Chicago.

“And from five teams of fourth-graders four years ago, what do we have now? One team. Just one.”

Out on the field, the Wheaton Rams and the Lyons Tigers were going at it, having fun. Parents and grandparents watching, sipping lattes, a few dads nervously pacing the sidelines as dads always do, willing prowess on their sons.

But what do the numbers from the hometown of the “Wheaton Ice Man,” the great Red Grange, tell us about football in America?

“If dropping from five teams of fourth-graders to one doesn’t tell you what’s happening, nothing will,” Herrera said. “Football is such a great game, it teaches great lessons to young men. But I’ve got a sense of dread for this game of football that I love.”

But take heart! There is hope that the NFL season may end well after all! Doomsday Rescheduled: ‘Researcher’ Moves End Of The World To October.

And not a moment too soon.

Update:

I do not listen to Rush Limbaugh but I think he nailed it here:

I did not watch the National Football League yesterday, and it was the first time in 45 years that I made an active decision not to watch, including my team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. It was not a decision made in anger. It was genuine sadness. I realized that I can no longer look at this game and watch this game and study this game and pretend, you know, fantasize, everything a fan does. This whole thing has removed for me the ingredients that are in the recipe that make up a fan.

The mystique is gone. That actually started vanishing a while ago. The larger-than-life aspect of it is gone. The belief, the wish, the desire that the people in the game were the best and brightest and special, and that’s why they were there, that’s gone.

Also Law Prof. William A. Jacobson: Dear NFL: I’m not “boycotting” you. I just don’t care anymore, about you.

I’m officially over the Cowboys, the Patriots and the NFL. You were once one of the loves of my life. But now we’re breaking up, and it’s you, not me.

I’m not “boycotting” you. I just don’t care anymore.

You tried to make me care, but now I don’t care at all, about you.

Pretty much, yeah.

Update: Thanks to Donald M. who emailed me to point out that the Steelers played at Chicago's Soldier Field, not Pittsburgh (correction made above). He added, "So effectively, on Gold Star Mother Sunday - a day set aside to honor the families of soldiers who died in battle - at Soldier Field - named such to honor soldiers who died in the field - the Steelers refused to honor the flag and the National Anthem."

Update: My followup is here: "The NFL and the Wizard of Oz humbug"

Update: Well, I have to admit that this never occurred to me:

Peak professional football was probably a dozen years ago. It was around then that white mothers, especially divorced middle-class mothers, started turning against youth football. They did not want their little baby being run over by black kids. That’s why the concussion hysteria gained traction. It’s a ready made excuse for pulling the white kids out of football, that lets white women pretend it is not racism driving their decision. After all, they loved Will Smith in the concussion movie!

It’s why the NFL’s decision to let their blacks kneel during the anthem is going to be a disaster for them. The owners signed off on it thinking it added drama and would therefore draw in girls, because girls and girly-men like drama. Instead, those kneeling black players are a stark reminder to white women that the sport of football is for violent black men, not nice suburban white boys. Youth participation in football is collapsing and this will only serve to accelerate it. The NFL has now made football anti-white and un-American.

Hmm.

"You can pick your friends ...

"... and you can pick your nose ..."

"... but you can't pick your friend's nose!" Well, it seems you can.

The NFL continues its slow suicide

Cleveland police, EMS unions refuse to hold flag at game after Browns players kneel

Cleveland safety forces have backed out of a plan to hold a large flag on the field for the opening game.
A dozen Browns players created a firestorm during a recent preseason game by not standing during the anthem. ...

We tracked down police union president Steve Loomis out of state at a police convention.

"I’m here at a national police convention, and soon as they hear that I'm from Cleveland, the first question is ‘What about those stinking Browns?'" Loomis said. "So if the ownership of the Browns and the league are going to allow that type of stuff to happen, and then come to us and say,  ‘We want you to help us with the flag,’ that's hypocritical. We're not gonna participate.”

What does Browns, Inc, have to say?

Earlier during the debate over the demonstration, the Browns issued this statement:

“As an organization, we have a profound respect for our country’s National Anthem, flag and the servicemen and servicewomen in the United States and abroad. We feel it's important for our team to join in this great tradition and special moment of recognition, at the same time we also respect the great liberties afforded by our country, including the freedom of personal expression.”

Which translates, "To heck with our city and our fans. Stuff it." And so the multi-millionaires of the NFL continue to commit professional suicide.

NFL Viewership Per Game (millions) For Regular Season

Season	Viewers
2014	19.2
2015	19.6
2016	17.6

Viewership dropped by about two million per game versus 2015 and about 1.6 million versus 2014. 

Wingsuiter Crashes Through Sign In Midair At 120 mph

Brass:

Wingsuiter Crashes Through Sign In Midair At 120 m.p.h.:

A FEARLESS daredevil flies through the air like a human missile and smashes through a target which is only two metres wide. Wing-suiter Sebastian Alvarez, 29, heroically jumped from a helicopter above the sprawling metropolis of his hometown, Santiago, Chile, in March this year. And despite travelling at around 124 mph, Alvarez hit the foam target – which was painted with the colours of the Chilean flag – with pinpoint accuracy.

Absolutely zero room for inaccuracy. I was free-fall parachute qualified as a young man, but this is waaaay beyond that. I would love to do this (but not this stunt!) but alas, I am both too old now and don't have the money anyway.

More videos of this guy here.

I went to a prizefight that was so violent . . .

... that a hockey game broke out. So goes the old joke. But bubba, those ice skaters ain't got nothin' on MLB's Brewers and Mariners.

From 1990, one of the all-time great baseball brawls:



From The Sporting News:

The setup: Brewers pitcher Bob Sebra nails Mariners hitter Tracy Jones, tempers flare and folks let their emotions get the best of them. Big time.

Why it makes the list: The main brawl leads to a couple of mini-brawls before order is restored — and then unrestored. Then order is restored again — and then it’s unrestored again. Finally, cooler heads prevail — until they don’t. The tension lingers and eventually someone slams Brewers manager Tom Trebelhorn to the ground, which sets everything off again. In the end, six players are ejected. This fight also features a slightly battered but stone-faced Randy Johnson, who looks not at all intimidated by the goings-on and ready to lend his towering frame to the festivities. 

More at the link.

My favorite April photograph

As Gerard says, "Life imitates Norman Rockwell." And annual posting there and always worth another look.

The aliens have landed and they run track in Texas

From the Vintages blog.

How Loss Aversion makes you lose

What can the economics of professional sports teach you? I do not mean the money flow of the tournaments, but to consider the club and shot decisions of the players as economic events taking place in an economic universe of the scorecard.

That was the tack of a Wake Forest University sports economist who found that even pro players typically took riskier shots to try to recover a disadvantage of an earlier poor shot.

That tee shot lost in the rough or hit in the water at Augusta is likely to be followed by a risky, aggressive second shot — a decision you might expect from a recreational golfer, not a pro.

Research by Wake Forest University sports economist Todd McFall suggests that a faction of players beginning holes with penalty strokes will regularly take greater risks in their subsequent shots to avoid any additional strokes—a decision predicted by behavioral economics that can lead to disastrous consequences for golfers’ performances.

“Loss aversion leads penalized golfers to violate not only basic economic principles regarding efficient decision making, but also golf orthodoxy, which is to play one shot at a time regardless of previous outcomes.” McFall says. “The cost they suffer for this is inefficient performance and ultimately, higher scores”.

That this finding has applicability in the way we conduct our routine affairs seems hardly worth stating. This research is a good call for self examination!

But it's also golf, and that calls for a golf joke.

A golfer badly sliced his tee shot off hole 4. The ball went deep into a dense woods. When the golfer got there he learned that there was a deep ravine, heavily overgrown. Wanting to avoid a penalty stroke, he plunged down into the ravine carrying his trusty 8-iron.

At the bottom he clubbed at the overgrowth to find his ball. Shortly he heard a sharp crack from the club head. Bending down he was shocked to discover that his club had cracked the side of a human skull! He recoiled upward and then bent down again. Moving the underbrush, he saw the skeleton was complete. Moreover, it was clad in the course's logo jacket and t-shirt and wore trousers much like his own. In its left hand was a slightly rusted 8-iron.

Immediately, the golfer clambered up the slope a few feet and yelled loudly for his buddy. "Jim! Jim! Come quick! Hurry! Come quick!"

Jim's face appeared many feet above. "What's the emergency?"

"Throw me my six iron! I've just learned that you can't get out of here with an eight!"

Loss aversion:

MLB screws up baseball again

You have got to be kidding me!

I'm running out of clouds to yell at (and I'm not that old) when it comes to Major League Baseball. The commissioner and the players association keep changing rules, and the changes aren't for the better.

The announcement Tuesday that intentional walks will no longer require actual pitches being thrown is the latest miscue.

Beginning this season, hitters will be told to "Take your base" or something to that effect when they get near the batter's box. Just like that, they'll make their way to first base. It's all in the name of shaving seconds off the times of games, you know. And yes, we are talking seconds.

Some quick math shows the folly of this decision.

Last season, major league teams issued 932 intentional walks. At four pitches per walk, that's 3,728 pitches. Granted, not every intentional walk included four intentional balls: Some were thrown after the count went to, say, 2-0, 3-0 or 3-1 as teams pitched around batters. But for the sake of this argument, let's say all the wide ones were intentional, with the catcher holding out his arm and all that.

That's 3,728 pitches spread out over the 2,428 regular-season games played in 2016. That is, on average ... 1.54 pitches per game.

So they will save about 15 seconds per game. One of the reasons I am much more a baseball fan than football or basketball is precisely because there is no clock. And by no means do intentional pitch-outs always succeed:



Just play ball, people, just play ball.

Cubs Headline gets it wrong

ABC News headline this morning:

Actually, there have been 107 other World Series since 1908.

I'll lighten up, though. Having been in the journalism business I know that headline writers are only given so much space per story to use, so they have to abbreviate and sometimes assume the reader knows some context.

But that's for paper news. Why take such shortcuts on an internet story? Yes, it's a small thing, but it caught my eye, that's all.

"Take Me Out to the Ballgame" is actually about a girl

There is probably no song in America that is known by heart by more people than the perennial baseball favorite of the 7th-inning stretch, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," written in 1908. Probably a near-majority of American baseball fans who sing it know that writer Jack Norworth and composer Albert Von Tilze had never gone to a baseball game and did not actually much like the sport at all. But they did like making money and boy, did this tune ever do that for them.

The first recording of “Ball Game,” by Edward Meeker, was a huge success. Sheet music and piano rolls of the song flew out of music stores. While there had been other baseball songs - “The Baseball Polka,” “It’s Great at a Baseball Game” and the similarly titled “Take Your Girl To The Ball Game” – they were only bloop singles. “Take Me Out” was a home run.

Despite this huge success, Norworth did not attend his first baseball game until the late 1930s.

What we sing in stadiums is only the refrain (which made Crackerjack popcorn confection into a huge business). The verses are virtually unknown. And what the song was about was a girl named Kate.

“Katie Casey was baseball mad,
Had the fever and had it bad.
Just to root for the home town crew,
Ev'ry sou [common slang at the time for low-denomination coin] Katie blew. . .”

It’s interesting that the songwriters chose a woman as the subject of the verse, as baseball was traditionally a man’s sport. But as the verse progresses, the set-up unfolds with the gal telling her fella to forget the movie show because she wants to go to a ball game.

"On a Saturday her young beau
Called to see if she'd like to go
To see a show, but Miss Kate said "No,
I'll tell you what you can do."

In time, fans would forget the verses in favor of the catchy refrain. That didn’t stop Norworth from writing new verses in 1927, trading Katie Casey for another Irish girl named Nelly Kelly, and plugging the popular beach resort Coney Island. Again, those words sat on the bench at games.

What made the song really take off in MLB games, though, was the late Haray Caray, who in 1971, "lent his boundless enthusiasm and marginal musical talent to the song, establishing a sing-a-long tradition at both White Sox and Cubs games" ever since. That the song had been in the public domain by then and so could be sung royalty-free was a big help.



Caray died in 1998 and so today the song-leader baton is held by others.

Here is TMOTTB sung by Edward Meeker, recorded in September 1908 by Edison Record. These are the original 1908 lyrics.



The refrain still reverbs through Wrigley Field even to this very day as the Cubs, sadly down 3-1 in their quest for their first World Series championship since TMOTTB was written, still hope for the magic the song evokes to propel them onward.

The reason is simple - Peyton Manning is not playing anymore

Professional football viewership ratings are plummeting. Everyone wants to know why.

200 mph coming this Sunday

Last year my eldest gave me a gift certificate to the Mario Andretti Experience racing school. I am scheduled to drive this Sunday at the Kentucky Speedway. You can drive either NASCAR race cars or Indy cars. I opted for Indy since NASCAR is boring now.

After classroom instruction, you get in the cockpit of a real Indy car, and off you go. Like this:



I did throw the extra money for the video.This driver said he got to 165; I was told by a customer-service rep that I should be able to get to 200 mph on the track. At the Indianapolis speedway, Indy cars typically get to 220-225 on the back straightaway, which is very long -- 3,300 feet.

As I posted in 2010, the fastest I have driven ever until now is 150 mph:

When I was stationed in Germany, I drove 125 with my wife and parents in the back seat of my Mercedes S-Class sedan. That was my usual cruising speed on the autobahnen, although most of the time the autobahn was so crowded that such speeds were practical for not very long. Early one Sunday morning though, I drove to the Frankfurt international airport to pick up my brother, who was coming to visit. Germans sleep in on Sundays so the A5 Autobahn was practically empty. Sure made the drive quick!

But that's not the fastest I have driven. One night, heading to Frankfurt, I turned onto A5 heading to Hanau by mistake. Once on the on-ramp, you are committed because backing up on the entrance or exit ramps can land you in prison there, not just jail. Knowing that the next exit was 20 kilometers away, I had no choice but to floor it.

I made it to my appointment in Frankfurt with five minutes to spare. En route, my Benz's speedometer read 240 kph, or 149.1 miles per hour. I am sure that I pushed to 150 at least a couple of times, so that's the fastest I have ever driven.

Don't care to again, though. It was night and at that speed headlights are a mere formality.

A few years later I had the chance to get a driving lesson from Darrell Waltrip. I mentioned that I had driven 150 on the autobahn. "Ah," he thoughtfully replied. "Third gear."

I'll post my video when I get it. Here is another video taken at the Kentucky Speedway. The poster says he only got to 150, though.



Here is a Google Earth shot of the speedway.

From its web site:

Facts about our unique, rough 1.5-mile tri-oval and facility which opened for racing in 2000.

• 1.5-mile asphalt racing surface
• Racing surface is 72 feet wide
• Racing Surface is 56 feet wide in Turn 1 and 2
• 17-degree banking in Turn 1 and 2
• 14-degree banking in Turn 3 and 4
• 1,600-foot backstretch [less than half the length of the Indianapolis back stretch]
• Descending banking from the entry to exit of Turn 4

It shall be fun. I would like to beat my previous record by at least 50 mph but with such a short back stretch it might be tough.

The coming end of the Olympics?

Rio 2016: Athletes warned to keep mouths closed while in faeces-infested water
All efforts by the government to clean the Rio waters seem to have failed

Athletes competing in the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil have been warned by doctors, engineers, and scientists to keep their mouths shut while participating in activities in the water.

Researchers found that many of the beaches in Rio de Janeiro have been long contaminated with raw sewage, household garbage, and even dead bodies, creating hazardous swimming conditions for the 500,000 people expected to descend on the city in August.

“Foreign athletes will literally be swimming in human crap, and they risk getting sick from all those microorganisms,” Rio paediatrician Dr Daniel Becker told the New York Times. “It’s sad but also worrisome.”

The Brazilian government had promised to clean the pathogen-infested Guanabara Bay in 2014, but those efforts failed.

The swimmers gotta breathe, yes? Two of my kids were competition swimmers and IIRC, the only way to get enough air in the very limited time they had to breathe per stroke cycle was through the mouth.

With all the scandals already in play for Rio, such as the potential total disqualification of the entire Russian team, this Olympics may herald the end of the Summer Olympics as we know it.