The Green Fields of Chicago

Last week, the Chicago Bears announced that Soldier Field had been certified as LEED Platinum. At the beginning of the baseball season, the Miami Marlins announced that their new Stadium, Marlins Park, had been certified Gold. And the University of North Texas' new stadium was the first newly built stadium to achieve LEED Platinum Certification. So that's three examples, and we've officially got a trend! WAHOO!

That sports organizations are paying any attention to the environment is purely good news, but I'll admit, my first thought when I read these stories was, "Yeah, well, what does that do for me?" LEED certification is, on some level, just a label, and I was afraid this was a marketing ploy, and little more.

And of course, any standard of environmental consciousness in a sports stadium is only going to do so much. Any time you put tens of thousands of people together just to watch something- okay, maybe to watch something and eat some food that you can't find within miles of nature- there's going to be a lot of waste. Indeed, it sometimes startles me to consider all of the resources used just to keep a baseball stadium open for one single game. Given that this is all only for recreation, it's really hard to see how stadiums could ever really be "sustainable".

So, I looked up what LEED certification actually means. (JOURNALISM!) LEED stands for "Leadership in Environmental and Energy Development". There's different levels of certification: Platinum, Gold, Silver, and simple baseline "Certification". The certificates are based on points awarded for a wide variety of different criteria, including sustainable sites, indoor environmental quality, and Energy and Atmosphere. Each of these categories takes in a lot of information, from where the building is situated to the plumbing to the architecture. It even contemplates buying renewable energy certificates to make up for the energy used during a game.

There's a lot of info there, and I encourage you to read through some of it yourself. For my part, I'm satisfied that LEED certification is legitimate, that when a team brags that it's stadium has been so certified, it's justified in doing so. It really has met some quantifiable benchmark, and that benchmark is reasonably environmentally conscious. If you're a green-minded sports fan, LEED certification is at least a good starting point for you. And as such, the Bears, the Marlins, the Mean Green...they done good.

And while sports stadiums may not be fundamentally sustainable...I don't care entirely. At some point, every human activity consumes something, and sports are as good as any other human activity. Hell, better than a lot of 'em. They're worth spending some resources on, though it's great that teams are working to limit the resources needed.

Mission Statement

The last post generated a little maxim that's worth remembering on this blog:

Sports Are Good (or, at least, they can be).

Something to keep in mind going forward.

Please Stop Telling David Haugh How to Raise His Kids

Last week, David Haugh of the Chicago Tribune continued the debate over injuries in football in the wake of Junior Seau's death. You can read Haugh's column here. It's mostly just an ode to all of the good football does for kids, borne out of Haugh's own experience playing the game in school. And that's fine; we here at The Left Field Line unequivocally believe that Sports Are Good (or at least can be). I'm suspicious that football provides Haugh's stated benefits in a way that other team sports (or hell, other group activities) do not, and Haugh is WAY too blase about balancing those benefits against the risks, but still: football does some good things. So stated, so resolved.

Here's the problem: "I won't tell you how to raise your kid if you won't tell me how to raise mine." We've touched on this before, but that's a rhetorical dodge so big and obvious that anytime you see someone use it, you should immediately question everything else they've said on the subject.

Kurt Warner, Troy Aikman, Bart Scott, Drew Brees- they were all only talking about how they were going to raise their kids. None of them said that anyone else was wrong for coming to a different conclusion. None of them said kids shouldn't be allowed to play football, or that parents should be condemned for letting them do so. They were speaking only of choices they would make in their own life, for their own family. David Haugh's parental authority is perfectly intact.

In a previous post, I explained why guys like Haugh are feeling nonetheless threatened. But that doesn't make Haugh's argument any stronger. The issue here is: what should we do about injuries in football? And Haugh's just plain not addressing that. That's becoming a pattern in this debate; there's a sizeable group of people who don't really want to talk about injuries or figure out anyway of handling the injuries, they just want to shout, "Stop telling me what to do!"

(Haugh, at least, also spends some time talking about the benefits of football, but that's not any more on point. We all agree that football has its rewards, we're just trying to figure out the risks.)

That's a problem, because this is an important issue. The way that the football community addresses it is going to decide the future of the sport. The last thing we need is the distraction of hollow, quasi-libertarian catcalls.

UNION FOREVER!

This is an interesting little bit of symmetry: The NFL referees' union has been locked out by the owners, and I'm writing it up on the night that the odious Scott Walker faces a recall from Wisconsin voters.

Walker kinda handily symbolizes the declining fortunes of unions and collective bargaining across the U.S. I'm sure you've heard it all before- union membership has been on a decades long decline in this country, and the unions that are left are generally weaker. Fewer and fewer people even have the opportunity to join a union.

And that sucks; we all have the right to bargain for the best deal possible for our labor, and that often means banding together. We're stronger together than we are apart, and we should have the opportunity to use that strength. Anyone who disagrees isn't just wrong and a reactionary; they're actually anti-capitalist.

But what's really amazing is that major U.S. sports seem to have avoided this decline. Obviously, every player in the team sports belongs to a union; the biggest sport without a union appears to be golf (and it's even thought about it). Much of the support staff is unionized, too- the refs, as we said. Even the hot dog venders, for crying out loud.

Granted, these unions don't always win every fight they get into (although the MLBPA has been stunningly successful over the years, especially when Marvin Miller was in charge), but just the fact that they still command a seat at every table displays a strength most unions have lost in this country.

I'd love to know why that is. My best guess is that the major sports naturally encourage teamwork in a way that makes union appeals particularly strong, and that players are, as a whole, much harder to replace that workers- in some ways, the players are the product (i.e.- you go to a sporting event to see the players, but you buy a car just to have a car). This is all only a guess, though. If anyone has any stronger data, I'd love to take a look at it.

Whatever the reason, it's actually another thing I love about sports. Right now, the exit polls indicate that Walker is going to pull out this election, and continue to be an abysmal failure until 2014. It's nice to have a little island of organized hope.

Class in Sports: A Lesson from Scotland

So, I was in Scotland last week. I'm not going to get a whole lot of posts out of that because it wasn't really a sports vacation, but there was one little situation that interested me. When we got in, a taxi took us from the airport to our apartment. Naturally, we got to chatting with the cabbie, who pointed out a few cites to us. He was sure to point out this:

Which happens to be Edinburgh's rugby stadium. He explained that rugby is pretty big in Scotland, but was quick to note, "Of course, rugby is the rich man's game."

I nodded and asked him what was more popular.

"Well, football, of course," he said, then spent an interminable five minutes explaining that what he called "football" we would call "soccer". My friends in Europe, please note that WE REALLY DO GET THIS, YOU DON'T NEED TO KEEP EXPLAINING IT.

Anyway, I said, "I see, so football's a little more for everyone."

But that wasn't quite right, and the cabbie corrected me. "No, not for everyone. It's just more the working man's sport."

It's dangerous to draw too much from one man's opinions, but this kind of stark class dichotomy in sports fascinated me. Here in the U.S., we note some slight demographic differences between the sports, but even those seem to be based off of stereotypes as much as anything measurable. We just don't have stark class dichotomies in our sports like that. Of course, we don't have quite as rigid of a class system in our history, either, so thereyago, really.

For the most part, that's a good thing, of course. Sports should be a place where everyone comes together. Not everything needs to be run through the meat grinder of partisan politics, and I'm kinda happy that few of us choose our favorite sports based on socio-political tribalism. But at the same time, well, sports are a multibillion dollar industry- it's really hard for me to believe that they have no economic or class implications. And if there are such implications, we probably need to pay attention to them.

Come to think of it, that's pretty much why I started this blog.

WIND SPRINTS 5/20

Here's a bunch of fun sports bullshit that I found.

1) Must be nice to just fire any adjudicator who gives you decisions you don't like. Tell us, Major League Baseball, is it nice?

2) Bryan Curtis over at Grantland gives us an examination of our two most conspicuous Sports-Fans-In-Chief. For whatever this is worth, I'm sure that both men were/are sincere in their love of sports, but pay attention to Curtis' notes on how this helps them politically, too.

3) I kinda love stories of emerging sports, so check out this tale of Organized (I hesitate to call it "professional") Quidditch. There's a lot to unpack here, so it may generate some more posts later.

4) Soccer is fascinatingly filthy. We need to talk about that a lot more. '

5) MLB is thinking about getting rid of the third-to-first pick-off move. That's small potatoes, but it's really incredibly hard to make any rule change in baseball, so it's going to be interesting to see this develop.

6) Cubs' reliever Kerry Wood has retired. What fascinates me here is how little of his career really ended up being under his control. Think about it- if Dusty Baker hadn't relentlessly overworked him, Wood could be wrapping up a Hall of Fame career. But one nagging injury, incurred as the result of a poor- but by no means insane- team strategy, and here we are.

Finally, a programming note- I'm going on vacation, assholes! I'll be gone two weeks, and will not be posting during that time (Will Mecha-Mothra Mike fill in? WHO KNOWS!?!) But I'll be back at the start of June, where we'll be thinking about a site redesign, as well as filling in some blanks on Junior Seau, corruption in global soccer, that Quidditch league listed above, the NHL's R&D department, and some thoughts on who, exactly, has the right to control fandom (hint: it's just you and me, baby). Oh, and I guess we can talk about the NBA playoffs and NHL Stanley Cup Final, if you want (Go Pacers, Go Kings).

Until then, adios!

The Junior Seau Fallout

I haven't had much to say about Junior Seau, yet. When it happened, my first reaction was that we didn't know anything, so I shouldn't say anything- and it'd be really weird to put together a blog post saying that I shouldn't say anything.

And frankly, we're about two weeks later, and we don't really know that much more. But, the rest of the NFL community is reacting. And I have the funny feeling that this is going to be a long, continuing debate as we discover what, if anything, actually happened here, and start to come to terms with it. This is an important debate. So it sucks that it's already playing out on some pretty fucked up terms.

Specifically, I'm thinking of Kurt Warner. As you probably heard, Warner had this to say in response to Seau's death:

"And when you hear things like the bounties, when you know certain things having played the game, and then obviously when you understand the size, the speed, the violence of the game, and then you couple that with situations like Junior Seau — was that a ramification of all the years playing? And things that go with that. It scares me as a dad. I just wonder — I wonder what the league's going to be like. I love that the commissioner is doing a lot of things to try to clean up the game from that standpoint and improve player safety, which helps, in my mind, a lot. But it's a scary thing for me."

Note carefully that Warner wasn't even committed to keeping his sons out of football, let alone saying what anyone else should do. He just voiced some honest concerns about the game.

ESPN commentator and former player Merrill Hoge had this to say in response:

"I think it's irresponsible and unacceptable. He has thrown the game that has been so good to him under the bus. He sounds extremely uneducated ... Head trauma is not the issue here — it's how head trauma is treated. The game is safer than it has ever been because we're being proactive with head trauma. That is the biggest issue."

There's a lot of dumb packed in there. I see no way that voicing concern about the safety of football is "irresponsible"- quite the opposite, in fact. Nor do I see the need for the completely overused "under the bus" metaphor- c'mon, it's not like the NFL was a charity keeping Warner afloat. He earned his spot on NFL rosters, and made a lot of money for the NFL while doing it. He doesn't owe it anything, let alone his silence. And of course, Hoge is the one who comes off as "uneducated"- head trauma is most certainly one of the issues, otherwise the NFL wouldn't be trying to get it out of the game. And anyway, I don't see where Warner was talking about head trauma as the exclusive issue here, so Hoge is missing the point a little.


But, disagree though I do with Hoge, I'm glad he spoke up. This is, as I said, an important debate, and we need to get as many views as possible. I'm fine with Hoge disagreeing with me- though I'll admit, it helps that his points are so easy to pick apart- I just want to make sure all the views are represented.


Which brings us to Amani Toomer, who said: 

"I'd definitely have my son to play football. That's what the Toomer family does. We all play football. But what this reminds me of is the guy at the basketball court, who once he gets done playing takes the ball and ruins the game for everybody else. I think Kurt Warner needs to keep his opinions to himself when it comes to this. Everything that he's gotten in his life has come from playing football. He works at the NFL Network right now. For him to try and trash the game, it seems to me that it's just a little disingenuous to me."

And that's just not helping anyone. Toomer is taking it a step beyond disagreeing with Warner and flat out saying that Warner's opinion should not have been voiced.  Maybe Warner's right, maybe he's wrong, but we'll never find out if Toomer had his way. And I think figuring out who's right and wrong- and who's opinion doesn't even fall into the categories of "right" and "wrong"- is the only way football's going to move forward. But we can't do that when one "side" in this debate is saying that another "side" shouldn't even speak up.


But then, Toomer actually reveals why his reaction- and Hoge's, and a lot of other people's- is so over-the-top. "That's what the Toomer family does," he said. And that's the key here. For Toomer and the people like him, football isn't just a game. It isn't just business or an industry or even a lifestyle- it's part of their heritage. It's something that was passed down to them, that they want to pass down to their children.


This isn't that strange. We've all got stories of our dad taking us to our first baseball game, or of teaching our kids to shoot hoops. Sports are part of our heritage, for all of us (or at least, everyone reading this blog). Hell, that's why this blog takes sports so seriously (when you get passed the made-up curse words and dick jokes) When you get that, you can see why some people take attacks on sports very personally.


What is strange is that Warner wasn't telling anyone it shouldn't be part of their heritage. He wasn't even certain that he won't pass it down to his own children (Troy Aikman seemed a lot more resolute, in fact). Warner wasn't calling Toomer or Hoge or anyone else bad parents; he was just trying to explain his thought process on a very difficult decision.


I'm sure I can't read minds (believe me, I've done the necessary testing), but I think Hoge and Toomer's overly-defensive response reveals quite a bit about the strength of their arguments- and their own doubts about football.

When You'd Rather Give Up Than Play a Girl

A conservative Catholic high school in Arizona (of course it's in Arizona) has forfeited a championship baseball game rather than play against a co-ed team that included exactly one girl. Read about it here, laugh about it below, and we'll move on with our lives pretty quickly.

Okay, one more thing- while it is pretty easy to mock the school's decision- fun, too, and highly encouraged on this blog- it's interesting to note that the school is literally only hurting itself with this move. The school is forfeiting. It will be on record as losing this game. The school's baseball team's ultimate goal- the ultimate goal of every team in every sport- is to win the championship, and this team is not even going to be allowed to try. Moreover, all the side benefits of sports- the character building exercises that are supposed to be the real reason schools invest so heavily in athletics- are going to be wiped out by this bizarre temper tantrum. Meanwhile, the girl and her team? They're great! Maybe it would have been nicer if they actually played and won, but it's not like the trophy's going to be any less shiny.

Let this be a lesson: if you're just going to keep on being a reactionary asshole in the face of an ever-more-inclusive sports world, you're going to lose. A lot. Hope the players on the team are okay with that.

Come to think of it- no, I don't. I hope they're pissed- and I hope they do something about it.

Joe Cowley: A Prime Example of Sports Media Fail

We're kinda coming in late to the Joe Cowley thing, but hey, his "jokes" are about 30 years late, too, so all's fair.

To catch you up, Joe Cowley, sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, has been reprimanded by his bosses for a series of disrespectful and misogynist tweets last weekend. He's had a history of pulling some bullshit before, and it appears that he's on his final warning with the paper.

Cowley's misogyny- that's really the only word for it- is certainly disturbing. It even stands out in the insular world of sports writing. Yes, sports writing was, for far too long, the exclusive purview of men. And yes, too many people still feel or act like it should be; they're hostile to women interviewing athletes, they expect women to put their sexuality first, and they're dismissive of women's ability to write. Cowley was certainly empowered and influenced by all of that. But Cowley is also a step beyond all of that, if only because he was so explicit- and so committed!- about it. He really wants you to know that he thinks women can't fly planes!

Of course, the line on Cowley is that he's intentionally "provocative" and "edgy", so I guess it's no surprise that he crosses the line every once in a while. He's the sports equivalent of a shock jock. But that's one of those defenses that actually just causes more harm, because sports doesn't need shock jocks.

Yes, sports need to be entertaining- but they are all on their own. Football, baseball- these things are not so boring that they can only be appreciated with a sports writer inserting unrelated one-liners, MST3K-style, into his coverage of them. They stand just fine on their own, and when we need a little extra entertainment from them, I'd prefer to go to straight-up humor sites like Down Goes Brown or NBA Memes.

Sports writers, broadcasters, reporters- these guys are supposed to be informing us about the game. When they don't do that, when they use their positions as just another venue for their stand up act, they're cheating us. Guys like Cowley are trying to market a persona, and we don't give a shit about his persona, we just want to know about the games.

(This is one of those "General Principle" things. ESPN could learn that fact, if it weren't so busy printing Chris Berman posters.)

Joe Cowley deserves every bit of scorn coming his way for his nasty comments. But the fact is, even if he never says another unkind word about women again, he's still useless to us. Because we want to watch sports, not the Joe Cowley Show.

Women Scouts in the NFL

Over at ESPN, Jeff Davis makes the case for more women in the NFL scouting corps. Hard to argue with him. As I've said before, every institution benefits from diversity. More points of view are better for everyone, and while different genders don't guarantee meaningfully different points of view, it's a decent proxy. So, at the very least, any kind of formal or informal bar on women in any role in the NFL (outside of maybe playing, given the physical demands of the game) is indefensible and, ultimately, counter-productive for the NFL.

In fact, I'd say that the scouting corps has a uniquely pressing need for diversity. Scouting corps are, by and large, the exact sort of conventional-wisdom-spouting old-boys-clubs that resist every kind of major change in the game, whether it be broad scale reform or just hiring an athlete from a slightly different background. All too often, scouts are former players (of dubious skill or prestige) or long-time hangers-on. Generally speaking, they're way too focused on their subjective assessments of a players' "mental make up" or their narrow definition of "proper form" to understand the things that actually lead to success.

After all, the current NFL scouting corps says ridiculous things like this:

"I just don't know if football is that important to him. He was raised by women, which bothers me. I mean, how tough can he be? It's not his fault, but it's still reality."

On the micro-level, I'm confident that any woman working as a scout would dispel that bullshit right away. More importantly, at the macro-level, if scouts come from different backgrounds, it's a lot less likely that they will, as a group, be as beholden to the same outdated thoughts and resistant to new ideas. Which is not to say that any random woman is naturally more progressively-minded than the current NFL scouts. Just that different kinds of people are far less likely to think similarly.

Of course, there are many fine, open-minded NFL scouts out there already. They're willing to re-examine their own assumptions, and know that the game is changing- as is our understanding of it. They're not all in the smoke-filled backroom. But the good ones need their numbers bolstered. Greater diversity, and specifically, more woman is no guarantee of doing that- but it's a good place to start.