Two Prodigies at a Crossroads

In the dog days of summer, two prodigies have arrived at a decisive moment in their careers. Stephen Strasburg debuted for the Washington Nationals, and LeBron James entered NBA free agency. Both have had an unusual role, as highly regarded first-round picks, on their teams. And, now, they might be the most important players in their respective sports in the second decade of the 21^st century.

The Cleveland Cavaliers have hitched the franchise’s hopes to James, and the Washington Nationals will depend on Strasburg to overcome the youth and lack of talent around him. Each franchise has weak leadership. If James leaves Cleveland or Strasburg is a bust, either team could leave their respective cities in the next half-decade.

ESPN has made each athlete, the 22-year-old Strasburg and the 25-year old James, a news category. Watch the ticker at the bottom of the monolithic network’s broadcast to get the latest in tea leaves, innuendos, and rumors on either athlete. In fact, the 24-hour sports channel has made a cottage industry of hyping these prospects.

The Hall of Fame chatter, led by ESPN talking heads, has already started for each of them. Despite the talk, neither Strasburg nor James is the most talented prospects at their respective stages of development. They’re just the most talented in an era of media saturation and hype-as-product sensationalism.

The appeal of both athletes stems from their status as brilliant prodigies. Oddly enough, Strasburg’s debut against the last-place Pirates drew viewer interest on the same night of game three of the NBA Finals, which boasted as many as six Hall of Famers.

Even better than acknowledging when a player achieves something special is acknowledging that he could do something special, five or ten years from now. I’ve decided to reserve my astonishment for the day when commentators predict Hall of Fame greatness from sonograms or forecast future drafts based on Little League highlights.

Unfortunately, the hype seems to have been mostly destructive for James. Almost everyone agrees that he has refused to be coached by the Cavaliers staff, and the franchise’s ownership has mostly allowed James and his entourage to have their run of the facilities. Though a force of nature sprinting toward the basket, he’s content to become an average jump-shooter.

James is a highlight-reel talent and rises to almost every challenge. He’s already one of the five best players in the league and an annual MVP finalist. But even his greatest admirers have to wonder if he’ll ever be historically great, in the rarefied category of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, or Bill Russell. Nevertheless, I suspect that his flight in free agency probably won’t bring a title to whoever wins the sweepstakes.

James’s real long-term legacy might be in marketing, where his charisma is on full display. The basketball wunderkind took the Michael Jordan book on corporate sponsorship and added a few chapters. Jordan was basically a well-paid employee of Nike and Hanes. Unlike Jordan, James is basically an investor in the brands he endorses. And he embodies 21^st century “cool” in a way that Dwayne Wade, Dwight Howard, or Kobe Bryant will never be able to.

Strasburg, on the other hand, is an unusual pheonom. That is, the marketing potential is not really there. Strasburg will get the endorsements if he performs well, but I doubt he will ever become the face of an advertising campaign or his sport.

In his first start, on June 8, Strasburg pitched seven innings and struck out 14. It’s already one of the finest outings in the Nationals brief history. The demure Californian displayed a fastball upwards of 100 mph, with great placement. He attracts attention from baseball fans and outsiders. Even if you’re not interested, you’re likely to be bombarded with his stats until you are.

But Strasburg’s arrival alone brings very little other than hope to the Nationals. Over eighty-three years ago, Washington’s greatest baseball player ever retired. Walter Johnson was a reserved, lanky, and blue-eyed right-hander, just like Strasburg, who suffered years of losing on the Nationals (in their first iteration), before winning a World Series in his 17^th season. In very different eras, both Johnson and Strasburg have inspired curiosity and fear from colleagues and viewers from day one.

Will it take that many years for the contemporary pheonom’s Nationals to be within reach of a championship? Will James seriously compete for an NBA championship in Cleveland, Chicago, or Los Angeles? Most importantly, will either of them come close to fulfilling the hype that Strasburg’s debut and James’s flirtation with free agency inspired?

Taking into consideration the historical trends and my instincts, my answers would be probably, maybe, and no. But perhaps not in that order.

Should Pitchers Call Their Own Pitches?

Recently, I've been reading a lot of Malcolm Gladwell of The New Yorker. One of his books, Blink, argues that the preconscious responses of specialists can be pretty good. One marriage counselor can predict whether your marriage will work from a 5-minute conversation (to 95% accuracy), but his accuracy slides lower as he talks to the couple more. Gladwell is not arguing for the validity of rash and wild predictions but finds authority in the instincts of well-trained individuals.

Amind the Cole Hamels fiasco, I began to consider one of the strategies in baseball, with Gladwell's observations in mind. Traditionally, the pitcher (picture the grizzled veteran, played by Kevin Costner) controls the pace and structure of a game by "calling" the throws made by the pitcher (picture the impetuous youth, played by Tim Robbins). It is suggested that the catcher has a better sense of the larger chess moves in the game (base runners, placement of fielders, etc.) and a less involved perspective (the pitcher is distracted by pitch counts, the mental game with the batters, etc.). The catcher can survey the entire playing field, which is also considered an advantage. But perhaps Gladwell's observations might construe it as the opposite? Could the catcher's elevated responsibilites actually obstruct the success of the team's defense by making the game less instinctive and more cerebral?

I would welcome any feedback, examples, or anything else on this. I'm still pitching the prospective idea around.

Baseball Olympic No More: Why the American Pastime was Left Stranded

This year, the media watched for news emerging from the 2009 International Olympic Committee as if Mayan prophecies and Dan Brown-like revelations would be stashed in its decisions. Disappointingly, Chicago lost its bid to become a host city in 2016. And golf and rugby would replace baseball and softball as Olympic competition sports (which will not be one in 2012, either). Several (more or less coherent) explanations have arisen. In this entry of The Irregular Season, I’ll be addressing a few of them. I’ll start with the most absurd and try to move toward the most convincing.

3. The IOC has an anti-American bias

Conservative columnist George Will is one person among many that has made the claim that the structure and style of baseball itself reflects American ideology. Since each player has an equal opportunity to effect the game’s outcome (as batters), so the argument goes, it profoundly echoes the egalitarian ethos of American culture. Famously, at the first introduction of baseball to an Olympic audience (at the 1936 “Jesse Owens” Olympics in Berlin), several German generals demanded that the American batters not swing for right field, where Hitler was sitting. Dow Jones, a 19-year-old outfielder from Iowa, recounts that the players bristled at the order and began targeting, with some mix of moral or nationalist indignation and professional pride, the Führer specifically.

Personally, I’m fascinated by these sorts of questions—“Does the game distill Americanness” and so forth—but find most of the answers limited or weak. (Which ideological echoes resonate for Japan [which has won the last several gold medals] might be the more compelling question right now.) “Anti-American” sentiment is really a catch-all for the various competing values that the U.S. has come to represent and embody: capitalism, globalism, corporate culture, representative democracies, secularism, anti-secularism, militarism, etc. The IOC and its member countries is so specifically committed to those same values, that only a vague and bitter prejudice would actually work systematically against the U.S.’s bid for the Games and other interests.

Reasonability: C

2. Baseball poses extensive logistical problems that make it unappealing.

Since baseball poses unique challenges (games run over, games occur during the traditional MLB season), there are very good reasons that they shouldn’t be forced into the tight, mechanized schedule of the Games. In fact, baseball often reminds me of the variability of athletic endeavor more than other sports: batting (and pitching and winning and losing) streaks, home-field advantage, and on and on. How do those factors curb international interest by unnaturally constraining that variability?

I find the argument faulty for one big reason: these are all problems that could be addressed by simple rule changes that would chafe the traditionalists. Among them: an upper limit on extra innings, the cooperation of MLB. Perhaps best of all and least possible? Replacing the dead-dull All-Star game with some sort of Olympic play-in series.


Reasonability: B-

1. No one has really made the great case for Olympic baseball.

Choosing Olympic baseball over other sports results in lower revenue and TV ratings, globally. The case that the IOC should sacrifice either in order to give exposure and opportunity to professional ballplayers and the sport seems kind of absurd given the atmosphere of current geo-politics. But there is no doubt that eliminating the sport from competition personally offends many sports fans stateside. Even though many elite American players don’t compete. Even though international team sports competitions (except Olympic basketball) don’t seem to interest U.S. fans particularly: Cubans were in greater uproar over the decision than Americans. In 2004, the U.S. team did not even qualify, as the only North or South American team to qualify was Cuba. Bud Seelig and MLB, in a short-sighted way, have spotlighted the World Classic to the disadvantage of any other competition.

None of the Olympic sports carry the kind of nationalist charge that they did in the 1930s and 1980s, and profit is now the greatest virtue of the games. Winning or losing the game, and especially not playing a specific game, does not energize the fan base. Consider it a natural result of globalization.

Reasonability: B +


Overtime: Or, The Best Reason For the Olympic Baseball

The excitement of watching clashing international styles (small ball vs. power, etc.). Seemingly, there has been little drama recently in Olympic sports: much of the pleasure in following the 1992 Dream Team or Michael Phelps was watching them crush opponents. The Olympics really are great comparative studies in opposing styles and their merits on a scale that most national leagues are not capable or willing to explore.

One example of this: it’s often proposed that MLB baseball has boiled down a team sport into an individual sport, and the pressure of the Games forces baseball back into a true team dynamic. Every four years, we see a subtle shift in American basketball strategy when the U.S. team faces off against the world’s best. And, ironically, that renews the sport’s commitment to foundational values.