From THE VN/VO:
Baseball analogies are almost always worthless. They foolishly assume that factors such as "wanting it more than the next guy" and "being due" for a home run are somehow mathematically relevant to a game at any given moment on the field. But this doesn't mean that what happens in baseball is never analogous to our lives. Something has been brewing in the evolution of America's pastime in recent years that tells us a lot about the state of our entire culture.
Losers are now winners.
Through the manipulation of schedules and the architecture of the playoffs, plus the creation of six small divisions and a wild card, Major League Baseball has engineered a system where nearly every team- even the losing ones- is still in the playoff race in the final weeks of the season. This year we came close to having the first team with a losing record make it to the playoffs. The San Diego Padres staved off that fate at the last hour. The last three "World Champions" have been teams that were not even the best in their divisions.
Baseball is allowing this for obvious reasons. As in other sports, the owners realized that expanding the playoffs to include more teams brings more people to the games. Fans don't seem to care much if the best teams don't always make it to the finals, as long as the team they root for has a shot at the championship.
This is not baseball's- or any sports league's- fault. Sports is a business. And fans seem content that the system is fair. The worst of the worst teams never reach the playoffs. There are losers in life, and they still get their just deserts.
However, when we start talking about the "average Joes" of the league, it gets touchier. Most average teams have excuses as to why they're merely average: injuries, bad management, not enough revenue generation, and so on. They feel that they deserve a shot at greatness. That's understandable. But why is it OK with fans?
This is a case where sports mirrors our culture as a whole. We've developed into a society that believes that "good enough" has the potential to be great, and that all past transgressions are forever forgivable, as long as we "do better next time."
Don't get me wrong- we're not heading toward a socialist culture, where everything and everyone is considered inherently and eternally equal, no matter what they do. We understand the nonproductivity of that. Ours is a more complex cultural condition.
We're trying to build some bizarre hybrid of fairness and greatness, where winners and losers still exist, but the titles are handed out a little more equitably. We're attempting to one-up Darwin. We loathe that, in reality, innate characteristics such as intelligence and physical ability actually trump things like "trying real hard," and "being your best."
While we can certainly change the rules of baseball along these lines, changing the rules of life is a little more of a precarious undertaking. But that's not stopping us from trying.
Just look at how we raise our children. So often the reward system is based on the concept that everyone can be a champion in his or her own way. They just need to do their best. Every kid gets the proverbial trophy for merely participating- for contributing to the group. Individual achievement- winning- frequently is considered less important. After all, not every competitor is born into equal circumstances.
There is a growing trend in the universe of parenting toward harvesting groupthink over individual accomplishment. Parents choose group activities, such as "play dates," over giving their kid a few hours alone to explore the world according to his or her own imagination. Parents choose soccer for their child- one of the ultimate team sports where individual players are practically anonymous- over a sport like baseball or basketball, where a player's individual success (and failure) is more exposed.
There is certainly no argument that teamwork and adapting to society are important lessons for a child. But when it comes to real-life success and failure, those things are secondary to the characteristics that make up one's individuality. But then, fostering a successful individual is difficult. Fostering an individual who can contribute and blend into a team is simpler; everyone can do it. And its consequences are not exactly negative. The team we get in the end is still "good enough."
This cultural condition is evident even when we elect people to office- once something that required (at least the appearance of) true greatness. We now value that "I-make-mistakes-just-like-you" everyman characteristic above nearly all else.
George W. Bush has made a career out of it- the allegation of a less-than-responsible youth, and a presumed simpleton approach to the presidency endears him to the populace much more than it ever could have for past presidents. Before Bush, Bill Clinton- though he suffered partisan wrath because of it- actually gained popularity, and even respect, for admitting things about his personal life that the Kennedys and Roosevelts of the past needed to hide.
My point is not to condemn or applaud any of these specific actions and characteristics. Public perception is what is important. We're evolving into a culture where averageness is the most desired quality.
Take a simpler example. Most people follow the ups and downs of their local lottery jackpots with much greater interest than they follow stocks and other free-market investments, which contain a lot less forced equitability. When it comes to succeeding in the stock market, the effects of pure luck can be tempered by an individual's intelligence and abilities to analyze trends and the emotion of the marketplace.
Then why does every seven-figure lottery jackpot make the first story on the local news, while a story of an individual doing just as well in the free market almost never does? Bizarre astrological methods aside, the lottery strips out any need for innate or learned individual skill. It is not as if our culture thinks of such individual intelligence and ability as negative things, but, at the same time, we'd love to think that the big wins in life don't require it.
We are walking on a risky path. The continued success of a society has always depended on finding a balance between being evenhanded toward all citizens and still honoring and exploiting the natural differences that make some people more talented than others.
In the last century, the great competition to the United States came from communism and fascism. These systems didn't lose out to America merely because the nations that adopted them had weaker militaries, or less money. Rather, over time, the culture that valued competition, winners, and greatness- ours- competed better in all facets of life.
Today, we're facing competition from cultures whose values are not so wildly different from our own. Emerging nations, such as China and India, have adopted much of our own model for past success, which values individual achievement, responsibility and greatness. They have begun playing ball in the same economic arena against us.
How will our culture- which increasingly idealizes averageness, along with escalating randomness and a level playing field built into its structure for success- fare against competing cultures, which use the struggle for individual achievement in their determination of winners and losers?
I guess we'll just have to play ball and find out.
View story at THE VN/VO:
Baseball Playoffs and the Peril of an Average Culture
Article comments
1 - Yashin
While I generally agree with the sentiment of your article, I have to take exception to your claim that 'soccer' is "one of the ultimate team sports where individual players are practically anonymous".
Football (what you would call soccer) has produced countless individuals of renowned skill over the last two centuries. Boys from Glasgow tenaments, Manchester terraces, London estates, Paris backstreets, Sao Paolo slums have all become legends of the game.
Dismissing the game of football as such a simplistic, anonymos pursuit is to diminish the moments of great individual play which millions of fans remember.
Watch Maradonna in the 1986 World Cup and tell me that he was 'practically anonymous'.
2 - Mark Edward Manning
I'm sorry, but the entire vein of this piece rubbed off as "The Yankees should be entitled to a WS trophy year after year after year."
The '80s and early '90s were awesome because every year, there was a new champion. The turnover was anything but predictable. Now we've reached back to that era somewhat, and if the wild card helped that process along, then all for the best. I'm no fan of Bud Selig, but his wild-card idea was wonderful. For a runner-up like the Florida Marlins or the Red Sox to be able to win it all has made baseball a lot more interesting: Which it never was for three years, '98-'00.
3 - Yashin
I read Christopher's article as a 'may the best team win' argument, but that team hasn't always been the Yankees. On paper they might have the best team of the last 20 years, but there have been several teams in recent years who have out-performed them over the regular season.
Besides, baseball isn't soccer, playing well over the regular season will only get you to the play-offs, after that a team has to prove itself over series and this can't be done by playing sub-.500 ball with a few solid hitters and a couple of good pitchers. How often does a good regular season team limp into the playoffs and a mediocre team peak for them?
My biggest complaint is that the divisional series are simply too much of a lottery, the best of 5 format can be won by teams with little or no pitching depth.