Understanding Sports Archives - Page 39 of 43

Why is Soccer a Summer Sport in the United States?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why is soccer a summer sports in the United States, but an autumn/winter sport in most of the rest of the soccer-playing world (i.e., the rest of the world)? I’ve long associated soccer with drizzle and mud and it’s bizarre to see it played in the hot sun on a dry pitch. There’s no overlap with players as far as I know–the big stars play in Europe exclusively.

Thanks,
Guy

Dear Guy

When I was a kid, I played on a “traveling” soccer team and I seem to remember that soccer season was fall and spring… although we also played indoor soccer in the winter… and went to soccer camps in the Summer. So I guess I do remember growing up playing soccer year round although when it comes to scholastic sports in America, soccer is a fall sport ending in early winter.

The most popular soccer league in the world, the English Premier League runs from August to May so you’re right, that’s mostly Fall/Winter with a little bit of Summer and Spring peeking out the sides. Major League Soccer (MLS is America’s attempt at professional soccer,) which is not as popular as other soccer leagues around the world – does have a summer-heavy schedule (March to December,) though the playoffs extend well into the fall and winter.

The reason for that is simple: competition. Not athletic competition, mind you – but TV competition. The summer is traditionally a TV sports dead zone, when baseball is in full swing but only truly captivating to a subset of the population, basketball and hockey are ending and, every two years, the Olympics may capture the nation’s attention for a couple of weeks, depending on the charisma of that year’s girl’s gymnastics team. Most importantly, American football – the dominant sports TV franchise in America, even though soccer (or football, as the rest of the world calls it) is the most popular sport in the world – is completely off the air.

So it makes sense that, in trying to make professional soccer a competitive economic enterprise in America – where TV viewership is the key – the powers that be focused on that dead zone and scheduled the bulk of the season for the summer.

Hope this answers your question – certainly I think it’s a more responsive answer than my gut reaction, which was to say that you associate soccer with cold and rainy weather because you’re used to watching soccer in England where – to indulge an ignorant American stereotype – everything from warm beer to Marmite is associated with cold and rainy weather.

Thanks,
Dean Russell Bell

What Does it Mean to Strike Out Looking?

Dear Sports Fan,

I’m curious about baseball slang. What does it mean to strike out “looking?”

Thanks,
Pat

Dear Pat,

I’m curious about baseball slang too! I think there are a lot of compelling elements of it — many of them [ahem] colorful! What I think you’ve got here though, with the phrase “to strike out looking,” is somewhere between slang and straight terminology. We should be able to unpack it fairly easily from a technical angle and maybe even add a little extra how-to-use-this-in-a-non-sports-setting as well.

Baseball is made up of a series of one on one contests between a pitcher and a hitter. Each pitch has a result — a ball, a strike, a home run, a foul ball, a fly out, a ground out, etc. I’m going to assume that most of you know what a ball and a strike are. If not, we’d be happy to write another post about them! The contest is over when the batter hits the ball, when the ball count reaches four (a walk), or when the strike count reaches three (a strikeout). A strikeout is the worst thing that can happen to a batter because they lose the chance to hit the ball. It is true that if they hit the ball and someone catches it they are equally out but at least in that case they’ve forced the other team to make a play (that they could theoretically mess up) to get them out.

Assuming that a batter is going to strike out, there are two ways for them to get that third and final strike: they can swing and miss the ball or they can not swing and the pitch can be called a strike^[1] by the umpire. When a batter gets that last strike on a pitch that the batter chooses not to swing at it is said that they “struck out looking.” To strike out swinging is to get that third strike by swinging at the ball and missing. I’ve looked around a bunch and despite the enormous amount of statistical analysis that has been done on baseball in the past twenty years or so, I can’t find anything that says whether it is actually better for a batter to strikeout swinging or looking.

What is clear is how the phrases have entered the vernacular. In common usage, to strike out looking is to fail without even trying. For instance, assuming it’s girls you’re after, say one night you see a cute girl at a bar and talk to her for a while. When it’s time to go, you have two options: you can ask for her number or say goodbye and walk off. If you would like to call and “striking out” would be to not get her number, what you don’t want to hear from your buddies later is that you “struck out looking” by not even asking!

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

The difference between a strike and a ball is highly subjective but basically if a pitch is between the right and left edges of home plate and the batter’s knees and the midpoint between his or her shoulders and waist, it’s a strike.↵

Why Do People Like Baseball?

Dear Sports Fan,

Could you please explain to me the appeal of baseball? Cricket is obviously a superior sport yet somehow has not caught on in the USA. Baseball being the slightly developmentally challenged cousin of cricket, do you think the game is simply too cerebral for American audiences (which i would disagree with since NFL football to me is one of the most cerebral sports and you concussively need to use your brain a lot). Did we just hate it because it was a British Sport and too much of an upper class Gentleman’s Game?

Thanks,
Jango

Dear Jango,

The attraction of baseball for the casual or non-fan is easy enough to explain: you could be at a baseball game, or watching a baseball game on TV, and never once feel like you’re actually at a sporting event. It’s essentially a four hour outdoor picnic with overpriced beer. Among the major sports, it is the one where fans are least engaged on a minute to minute basis. You could do anything while watching a baseball game – knit, iron, write the great American novel. It’s the most easily-casually watched sport there is.

For the die hard fans, the attractions are different. Some fans really do hang on every pitch, for the simple reason that something incredible could happen – though, to the casual fan, or non-fan, those things may not seem so incredible. Also, because the baseball season is so long (162) games, there’s essentially a 50 percent chance your team is playing on a given day. It gives you a long time to get to know the players – their quirks, their weaknesses, their interminable at-bat routines – and you’re therefore more invested in them each year, even if they’re not any good.

There is strategy in baseball, from the macro level down to every pitch. But its enduring popularity is based more on tradition and the special place the sport has in our (and other) countries’ sporting histories.

Finally, to fans there’s real beauty in a ball game – there’s nothing like the sound of a ball hit solidly by a wooden bat; or watching the mechanics of a smoothly turned double play, and the way incredibly skilled players make it look so effortless; or the one on one duel between pitcher and batter, or the sheer improbability of a human hitting a tiny orb moving at 95 miles an hour – let alone hitting it hundreds of feet.

So I know it seems slow, and games are too long, and it seems like nothing happens- but it’s a sport that can be seen and understood At many levels. Or – at worst – it can be an opportunity to drink overpriced beers outside for four hours. Is that really the worst thing?

Thanks for the question,
Dean Russell Bell

Hockey Culture and Ken Dryden's 'After the Hit'

On May 8 we answered a question about the rules of lacrosse from Alana. In it the subject of how different sports deal with players who put themselves in dangerous situations came up. In women’s lacrosse there are rules against endangering oneself. In ice hockey, we noted, the rules and the ethos of the sport are the opposite. If you put yourself in a dangerous position in hockey you are likely to get hurt by a player acting within the rules and hockey culture will tell you that you have no one to blame but yourself.

On the same day Grantland.com published an article by Ken Dryden about the same topic. The first sentence of Dryden’s Wikipedia page describes him as “a Canadian politician, lawyer, businessman, author, and former NHL goaltender.” He was a Stanley cup winning goaltender for the Montreal Canadians in the 1970s and later wrote a book about his experiences called The Game which is widely thought of as one of the best books about hockey ever written. He’s definitely got the credentials to be well respected and closely listened to about hockey.

In the article, “After the Hit,” Dryden comments on a violent collision and the resulting injury and suspension from a recent game between the Ottawa Senators and the Montreal Canadians^[1] and he wonders if hockey’s ethic on responsibility as it pertains to endangering oneself has gone too far:

It’s this aftermath to the hit that I’ve found most remarkable. There is an ethic in sports that wasn’t always there. It goes, As a player, I can do what I want to do. I will do what I must do. I will face the consequences of my actions and of the rules. Other players will and must do the same. It is my responsibility to protect myself; it is no one else’s. It is their responsibility to protect themselves; it is not mine. If, out of this, things happen, they happen. I may feel sadness as a human being toward another human being, but sadness is not the point. I will feel no regret. I expect none from others. That’s hockey. That’s life.

There is another ethic in sports that has also always been there, and still is. It is worn as a badge of honor, particularly by the “tough guys.” It goes: I will not hit someone when he is down. I will not hit someone when he is defenseless. There is no courage in that. There is dishonor in the doing. The question in this case: What makes a Gryba hit clean and good on a defenseless Eller when a punch to the face of someone lying on the ice, equally defenseless, is not?

I encourage you to spend a few minutes with his article!

Ezra Fischer

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

There are some graphically violent videos in the post so watch out — but you don’t need to click on them if you don’t want.↵

How Do the Shooting Space and Checking Rules Work in Girls Lacrosse?

Dear Sports Fan,

I’ve played on a U-14 girls lacrosse team for 2 years, but I’ve never really understood rules on shooting space, and checking (un-modified), mind helping me out?

Thanks,
Alana

Dear Alana,

Great questions! It’s kind of thrilling to know that the feeling, familiar to many viewers, of watching a sport and being unclear about the rules is even a feeling some of the players have! There’s nothing to be ashamed of — even professional athletes are sometimes confused about the rules, like Donovan McNabb, a quarterback in the NFL who famously did not try very hard at the end of overtime because he thought that if the game was tied at the end of one overtime, they would just play another instead of the game ending in a tie… which it does.

Anyway, I did some research on the two rules you asked about and there is a theme that runs through both rules. Both rules are about keeping players safe. The shooting space rule is an attempt to avoid having players put themselves in danger and the checking rule is put in place to keep players from endangering each other. Let’s dig into them.

A shooting space foul according to westportpal.org is called when “a defender moves in at a bad angle on the offender while shooting in the 8 meter arc. This is a dangerous play by the defender.” Well okay, what is a bad angle? Let’s go to Wikipedia which clears it up a bit. Wikipedia explains that this bad angle is one that “makes the defender at risk of being hit by the ball if the offender were to shoot.” Basically, it is illegal for a player to put themselves in a situation that makes them very likely to be hurt. Other sports have similar “dangerous play” rules. In most soccer leagues, there is a rule against any play that endangers the person doing it or anyone else on the field. This is most often applied when a player lies on top of the ball which prevents an opponent from “playing the ball [for] fear of injuring the player lying on top of the ball.” Ice hockey seems to be governed by the exact opposite spirit. Players who endanger themselves or their teammates are open to being hit with pucks, sticks, shoulders, fists, etc. in all sorts of completely legal ways. Hockey players who are hurt in these situations are often also subjected to fierce criticism in the media for not protecting themselves.

If lacrosse goes to such a length to prevent players putting themselves at risk for injury, you would imagine they are at least as concerned with players endangering each other. They are! There are a set of rules that control how a player is allowed to check (try to get the ball from) another player. A player can only use the side of their stick, not the flat part of the head. Players can not wind up to check another player, instead checking should be done with “controlled, short, quick taps.” The last bit, and this is probably the hardest to judge and control is that a player “may only check if the check is directed away from the ball carrier’s head.” This all makes sense if the goal is to avoid injury. Allowing players to wind up would surely lead to sticks being swung much harder at one another. Mandating that checks only be directed away from the body of the person being checked means that even if someone were to really swing their stick with a lot of force, that force would carry their stick, their opponents stick, and the ball safely away from the person being checked as opposed to right into them.

Modified checking which you mention in your question, is a rule used usually with younger kids that makes it illegal to attempt a check at head level. This seems moderately wise if you’re going to give 12 year-olds weapons. The advantage that this creates for the offensive player is offset by requiring them to pass or shoot the ball within three seconds if a defender is covering them closely enough that they could check them if it weren’t for the modified checking rule.

Good luck playing! Remember to check with the side of your stick away from your opponent’s head. And don’t try to block a shot within 8 meters of the goal!

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

What Does "And One" Mean in Basketball?

Dear Sports Fan,

What does the phrase “and one” mean? I hear it a lot during basketball games but I don’t know what it means.

Thanks,
Susan

Dear Susan,

“And one” is a phrase that’s used when someone is fouled while taking a shot in basketball – either a jump-shot (farther away from the basket) or a layup or dunk (right at the basket). If the player makes the basket and the ref calls a foul on the defender who’s guarding them as the shot is being taken, the basket counts AND the player gets to take a single free throw. Hence the and one.Frequently you hear players yell out “and one” when they make a shot and feel that they did so despite being fouled, even if the ref didn’t call the foul – this is the player’s not-so-subtle way of chastising the ref for missing the call. Sometimes a the shooter will even shout “and one” before they know that their shot has gone in. Regardless of whether the foul is called, there won’t be an “and one” foul shot if they don’t make the basket. So shouting “and one” before a shot goes in is a complex emotional feat — being cocky and aggrieved at the same time!Everyone should be able to understand that aggrieved “and one” feeling – just think about being at work and being given a difficult task, and then accomplishing that task even in the face of someone or something unfairly inhibiting you. Say, for example, you’ve been teamed with the office dud – a real nothing burger of a co-worker – and tasked with pitching a prospective client. And say you get the account despite your colleague’s general uselessness – and your boss comes in and congratulates you both on a job well done without mentioning that you succeeded in spite of your dead weight colleague, not because of them – well, then, you too know what it is to shout “AND ONE” plaintively and futilely at the gods.

Word to the wise though — do not actually shout “and one” in a board meeting. That won’t go over well.

Thanks for reading,
Dean Russell Bell

How Long is an NBA Basketball Game?

Dear Sports Fan,

How long is an NBA basketball game? I thought it was an hour long — made up of four fifteen minute quarters — and that I just kept missing the start of the quarter. Now someone tells me it’s four twelve minute quarters. Is that true? Why would a game be forty eight minutes. Seems arbitrary!

Thanks,
Sandra

Dear Sandra,

Rest easy, you were not missing the game! An NBA basketball game is forty eight minutes long and made up of four twelve minute quarters. I suppose you’re right that this seems a little arbitrary because the duration of most of the other big sporting events in the country do seem to end on a “ten.” Football is sixty minutes, made up of four fifteen minute quarters. Hockey is also sixty minutes, although it is divided into three twenty minute periods. Soccer is ninety minutes long, divided into two forty five minute halves. Baseball is essentially timeless — no clock is used to determine when the game ends. NBA basketball seems to be an outlier. Basketball is also the only main sport that differs in how long it is between college and professional games. A college basketball game is forty minutes, divided not into quarters but into two twenty minute halves.

So what gives? According to the original rules of basketball written by James Naismuth, “The time shall be two fifteen-minute halves, with five minutes rest between.” Not to get too far off topic, but the invention of basketball is pretty funny. Naismuth became a phys-ed teacher at a YMCA in Springfield Mass in 1891 and soon after invented basketball. Here is the Wikipedia explanation of why:

At Springfield YMCA, Naismith struggled with a rowdy class which was confined to indoor games throughout the harsh New England winter and thus was perpetually short-tempered. Under orders from Dr. Luther Gulick, head of Springfield YMCA Physical Education, Naismith was given 14 days to create an indoor game that would provide an “athletic distraction”: Gulick demanded that it would not take up much room, could help its track athletes to keep in shapeand explicitly emphasized to “make it fair for all players and not too rough.”

By the time the NBA (then the Basketball Association of America) came into being, the college game with its twenty minute halves was well established. The first franchise owners decided to lengthen the game for their league from forty minutes “so as to bring an evening’s entertainment up to the two-hour period owners felt the ticket buyers expected.” Today, the average “real-time” length of an NBA game has crept up to right under two hours and twenty minutes according to the blog Weak Side Awareness.

As for whether or not all this is arbitrary, I can’t say, but in thinking about this, I did notice that the NBA shot clock — a team must shoot the ball and at least hit the rim before this time expires or else the ball is given to the other team — is 24 seconds; another product of twelve!

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

What Does it Mean to Have a Foul to Give?

Dear Sports Fan,

I’ve been watching some basketball and towards the end of games the announcer will sometimes say that a team has a “foul to give.” What does that mean?

Thanks,
Doug

Dear Doug,

In the NBA each player can commit five fouls before getting kicked out of the game for good on the sixth. A team cannot get kicked out of a gave for fouling too many times (although Chuck Klosterman wrote a great story about a team winning with only three players left at the end of the game) but there are consequences for fouling a lot. We’ll get to what these consequences are in a second, but first we have to quickly define a few different types of fouls.

An offensive foul is when someone whose team has the ball does something against the rules to a player whose team does not have the ball.
A defensive foul is when someone whose team doesn’t have the ball does something illegal to someone whose team does have the ball.
A shooting foul is a type of defensive foul that happens when someone does something illegal to a player who is in the act of shooting the basketball.
A non-shooting foul is… well, you know, all the other defensive fouls that aren’t shooting ones.

Only defensive fouls count towards the team total. The count of team fouls resets to zero at the start of each quarter. On fouls one through five the player who is fouled will shoot two free-throws only if the foul was a shooting foul. After the fifth foul, from foul six until the end of the quarter, the player who is fouled shoots two free-throws for any defensive foul — no matter if they were shooting or not when fouled. This state of being for a team is called “the bonus.”

Okay — we finally have enough background to answer your question. Having a foul to give means that a team has not yet reached the fifth foul of the quarter. In other words — they can still foul the other team at least once before the other team is in the bonus and will shoot free throws when fouled. At the end of a game or quarter, having a foul to give is particularly useful because a defensive team can use it to disrupt the other team’s plans. If the offensive team has fifteen seconds left, they can set up a nice play to run but the team with a foul to give can wait until there are about three or four seconds left and then give that foul (i.e. foul the player with the ball.) Because the other team is not in the bonus, they will not shoot free-throws, they will just get the ball back and have to pass it in from out of bounds and try to run another play but this time with only a few seconds.

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

What is a Sweep?

Dear Sports Fan,

I’ve been following the NBA playoffs and have heard announcers talking about one team sweeping another. What does that mean?

Thanks,
Don

Dear Don,

When one team wins all of its games against another team in a particular set of games, it is said to have swept the other team. The reason you’re hearing it so much now is that the NBA playoffs are organized into best four out of seven series. For a team to move on to the next round of the playoffs, it must beat its opponent four times within those seven games. If it were a set of three games instead of seven, a team would have to win a majority of two out of the three to win the series. If a team gets to having won a majority of the games in a series by winning consecutive games, they have swept the series.

You’ll hear talk about sweeps most often in sports that organize their games like basketball does. The NHL and MLB playoffs also are organized around seven game series. In the NFL, where the playoffs are single elimination, you may still hear someone talk about a team sweeping a “season series ” against another team. This means the team won all (usually it is just two) games against a particular opponent even if the games were not consecutive.

Being swept is seen as humiliating in professional sports and players are determined not to let it happen to them. It’s actually fairly common though — as of 2009, 18% of NHL playoff series ended in a sweep. In this NBA playoffs so far, there are four teams at risk for being swept: the Celtics by the Knicks,^[1] the Bucks by the Heat, the Lakers by the Spurs, and the Rockets by the Thunder.

If you’re having trouble remembering what a sweep is, here are two possible derivations that might help. One possibility is that the usage comes from the image of using a broom to sweep your opponent out of the way — that opponent put up so little fight that you could use the broom instead of having to pull a mop out or get on your hands and knees to scrub. Another possibility is that this usage shares a derivation with the word sweepstakes — a contest where one party sweeps all of the possible winnings into their lap — the image of one of those miniature shuffleboard sticks that roulette dealers use comes to mind.

Enjoy the playoffs!
Ezra Fischer

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

Not anymore, since I started writing this, the Celtics won in overtime to avoid being swept 4-0.↵

What Makes College Basketball Different?

Dear Sports Fan,

I’ve been watching March Madness and College Basketball looks really different from the NBA Basketball that my sister usually watches. Can you tell me what some of the differences are?

Thanks,
Patricia

Dear Patricia,

One of the reasons why people love college basketball is exactly what you’ve identified — that it is very different from the NBA. The NBA for the most part, is dominated by a single strategy, the pick-and-roll. Critics of the professional game will say that teams just run eighteen variations on the pick and roll from different spots on the floor. I love the college offensive schemes:

Dribble drive – a really quick guy beats his guy off the dribble, but he’s not talented enough to finish, so he kicks it out to someone whose defender is collapsing to contain the drive, except HE’S a 17 percent three point shooter, so he drives, draws more defense, kicks out, etc etc – until the whole offensive side of the court collapses in on itself like a dying star and it’s a mad scrum around the offensive glass (Memphis, Kentucky, kind of Syracuse and Michigan)
Motion – pass around the perimeter, set half-ass, off-ball screens and hope that a defender gets confused, goes the wrong way and leaves someone open for a three-pointer or a back-cut; if the defense is disciplined enough not to make a mistake, wait til 5 seconds are left and pass to your one on one offensive threat and let him take a bad shot (Pitt)
“I have an athletic big guy” – a team lucks into a really really tall/wide guy who’s athletic and can therefore dominate since that’s so rare in college ball, so they just give him the fucking ball (Kind of Miami/Indiana)
Tom Izzo – run, throw the ball up on the glass, go get it and mug anyone who gets in your way (Michigan State)
Wisconsin – motion + tall white coaches sons who can shoot with improbable range (Wisconsin)
Flex – the only offense where success is measured not by the number of points scored but by the number of picks set in a given possession (Gonzaga)
Coach K – one of the few offenses based solely on moral superiority/smugness (Duke)
Zone attack – when facing the 2-3 zone, pass the ball around the perimeter repeatedly and have one player flash into the the “soft spot” (essentially at the foul line, behind the 2 and in front of the 3) – get him the ball, then watch him panic as the entire zone collapses on him and hope he makes the right pass (anyone playing Syracuse)
Transition – RUN!!!!!!! (VCU)
Three point – Whatever happens, shoot three pointers. Miss them, get long rebounds, shoot more three pointers. Pull up in transition, shoot them contested, shoot on the move…just keep shooting. Defender in your face? No worries – step back as far as you need to.

Enjoy the Final Four games tonight,
Dean Russell Bell