Something losing its innocence is a cliche. America apparently lost its innocence. Twice. First in Vietnam and then on 9/11. It's like saying a girl lost her virginity twice.
Music not having the 'same soul' of an era long gone as Bob Seger once sang, deals with this too. Sports also are filled with cliches. So much so, I think it may as well be a statistic.
Mentioned this piece in The American Scholar titled Baseball's Loss of Innocence in my last post about baseball and how different eras have sometimes left fans and writers disillusioned. Serves us right for romanticizing professional sports. Sheesh. What did we expect? Sports is filled with moments that spat in the faces of fans. Baseball lost many innocents. The Black Sox, the strike, steroids - to name a few.
Appropriate time to put this up with opening day under way.
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Are we born innocent? If we can lose innocence, does it exist in the first place?
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Liked this bit:
"...Witness the August 2010 Associated Press report that the Pittsburgh Pirates, who had just clinched their 18th-straight losing season, are doing surprisingly well financially. A “small market” team that benefits from the league’s revenue-sharing policy aimed at maintaining competitive balance, the Pirates used $69.3 million in revenue-sharing proceeds to book a profit of $29.4 million over a recent two-year stretch. The Los Angeles Angels, a competitive, “big market” team, profited only $17.8 million over the same period, while paying out $31 million in revenue sharing."
At first, I was surprised when I heard this. Then, upon further reflection, it made perfect sense. Some teams are bad because they manage money badly. The Pirates are bad on the field in order to keep profits up. They actually know what they're doing. The irony of course is they play in a division where perhaps as little as 88 wins (at least in the last few years anyway) fetches you a post season ticket.
"Obviously the Pirates haven’t used their revenue-sharing money to improve their team. They have the lowest payroll in baseball, don’t offer salaries that attract free agents, and don’t offer contracts to their players once they become stars. In 1992 they won their third straight division title with a trio dubbed the “outfield of dreams”—Barry Bonds, Bobby Bonilla, and Andy Van Slyke. All were soon released to free agency while still in their prime, and the Pirates haven’t had a winning season since. In 2010, Pittsburgh’s opening-day payroll was just $2 million more than in 1992."
If you're going to use other people's money may as well make good use of it, right? So much for The Extra 2% rule in Pittsburgh.
The Pirates, managed by Jim Leyland, of the early 90s were solid.
"What emerges from the AP story is that a team considered to be poorly run was, from a business standpoint, very effectively run. Their profit margin of 8 percent matches the average profit margin for S&P 500 corporations over the last 30 years. Roger Noll, a Stanford economist, is quoted saying, “Probably the Pirates would be less profitable if they tried to improve the team substantially.”
So the Pirates’ owners attend to the bottom line while the players use the ball club as a glorified farm team. Once they develop their talent they’re happy to go where the money is, and ownership is content to trade them away or let them walk. Of course, by not intending to field a competitive team, they run the risk of alienating their fans—which is why the Pirates are furious about the AP report, which is based on leaked documents of “a private company that has no obligation to publicly report its financial results.” But loyalty to the Pirates—one of baseball’s oldest teams, the team of Honus Wagner, Hank Greenberg, Ralph Kiner, Bill Mazeroski, Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell—runs irrationally deep. “The day I abandon my Pirate fanhood is the day [Pirates owner] Nutting refuses to pony up the extra cash needed to put together a contender,” said 20-year-old Jack Seiner in a 2010 ESPN interview—17 years into his team’s record-breaking streak of losing seasons."
Growing up an Expos fan I despised the Pittsburgh Pirates. They were that good.
Now they suck - with apparently a talented group of up and coming pitchers.
A comment is arriving. It has a link. Hope it won't go to the spam queue. MoR
ReplyDeleteDear Commentatorio (I loved that). You say:
ReplyDeleteAre we born innocent? If we can lose innocence, does it exist in the first place?
I'll speak only generally, don't know if it can help.
As far as I see it, and with a bit of research, historically (ie in the concrete life of billions of people in the course of the centuries) being innocent here in the West was considered as the state:
1) of not being tainted by sin or any by any fault or resulting guilt (the word comes from Latin (Indo-European) 'in' (=no) + nec (kill: Latin necare = kill): so innocent is 'he /she who has not killed' (Italian nocenza is 'to harm', in-nocenza, the contrary
2) of being naïve or ignorant (seen positively or negatively: Italians for example sometimes may be cynical because 'they have known or experienced before' etc. and they see New World people – the average and low layers of society – as naïve in the good or bad sense
3) of the whole of humankind, that is guilty before God because of the original sin, but also in this case, humans were innocent 'before' eating the fruit of knowledge in Eden.
4) related to our being a species of predators (evolution) that hence needs to kill to survive, so let's face it, how can be in-nocenti? We are nocenti, ie killers, and have the instinct of it. So even if babies to me are totally innocent we then see that as soon as they can they beat each other and can be very cruel. Sadism can be a part of this predator species instinct. Tigers for example are known to kill also for the hell of it even when not hungry. Humans, well, we better draw a veil on it.
Just a few (stuffy?) notes, da amico a amico. And as usual, it is history of ideas as *Magister* taught me, without marrying this or that theory (well, num 4 I like: I find science more ... decisive than philosophy or religion most of the time. But that is me).
Man of Roma
http://manofroma.wordpress.com/
Ah, very interesting! So we're bad with some good intentions?
ReplyDeleteSiamo cativo comme humani!