Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Two interesting notions about sport gleaned from my reading the past couple of days. First, from the New York Observer, on why the Yankees and the Mets struggle with high-priced talent. It's funny to think about, but both teams have had their greatest success when their teams are composed of home-grown and developed players, supplemented with a few veterans in key positions. Josh Curtis notes that, "buying talent at market rates all but forecloses the possibility of creating value because the team has to pay top dollar for whatever it gets. In the best circumstance, the high-priced acquisitions will play up to their salary, thereby producing “even” value. But because free agents are usually older and signing at the peak of their ability, their new contracts often prove to be a negative long-term value. And as value turns negative, teams find themselves having to spend exponentially more raw dollars just to maintain the same level of performance from season to season." What he doesn't say, is that these same economic forces operate to help make teams like last year's Colorado Rockies competitive. By necessity they must find younger talent, and if they do this well, what you see is a young, exciting team. Teams like that are more fun for fans, too, which means that in theory it is possible to build on success.
I also enjoyed Dan Lyke's thoughts on of the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling that Oscar Pistorius, the double amputee, should be allowed to compete for a spot on his country's Olympic team. The controversy was that Pistorius's prosthesis arguably produced an mechanical advantage. The panel said no, but what Lyke says is, "I think this really shows up the silliness of sport as anything other than a training mechanism: At some point it's just an arbitrary optimization of a rule set, and though it's great to cheer that on, why are we cheering on people who optimize that rule set and not other ones, like, say, stock markets?" It's funny that track and field, which looks like the simplest, most basic form of sport is instead as complicated as anything else. "Arbitrary optimization of a rule set" is what I'm going to think about out on the course Sunday.
I also enjoyed Dan Lyke's thoughts on of the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling that Oscar Pistorius, the double amputee, should be allowed to compete for a spot on his country's Olympic team. The controversy was that Pistorius's prosthesis arguably produced an mechanical advantage. The panel said no, but what Lyke says is, "I think this really shows up the silliness of sport as anything other than a training mechanism: At some point it's just an arbitrary optimization of a rule set, and though it's great to cheer that on, why are we cheering on people who optimize that rule set and not other ones, like, say, stock markets?" It's funny that track and field, which looks like the simplest, most basic form of sport is instead as complicated as anything else. "Arbitrary optimization of a rule set" is what I'm going to think about out on the course Sunday.
