Good work by Justice Stevens

who wrote the opinion for the Supreme Court's unanimous decision in American Needle v. NFL. It was an interesting case, turning on the question of whether the NFL is a single corporate entity or a collection of competing corporations, and one with potentially huge ramifications. Had the Court upheld the NFL's claim and allowed them to act as a single corporation, it would have been an immense transfer of power to the NFL which probably would have drastically weakened the players' union; but in denying that claim (as they did, and rightly) there was the potential to significantly weaken the league. Justice Stevens' ruling, from what I can see, did an excellent job of maintaining the necessary balance, laying a clear legal foundation for the NFL as a collection of competing corporations which must by the very nature of their business act cooperatively and collectively in much of what they do. As Doug Farrar sums it up,

Stevens basically said that the Supreme Court, and any other Court, would test function rather than form and avoid absolute impingement of any collective activity taken on by the teams,. But any act in concert with an eye on the evasion of antitrust law would not be allowed or exempted. In effect, as Berthelsen intimated in his statement, the NFL must operate under the same constraints as almost any other business. It was a sound and reasoned ruling that penalized neither side.

Nice job of threading the needle, that.

All the news that's fit to—wait, what?

Gregg Easterbrook, in his latest Tuesday Morning Quarterback column on ESPN.com (which includes, by the way, the best analysis I've seen of why New Orleans won the Super Bowl and Indianapolis lost), has this entertaining collection of corrections from the New York Times:

In the past six months, the Times has, according to its own corrections page, said Arizona borders Wisconsin; confused 12.7-millimeter rifle ammunition with 12.7 caliber (the latter would be a sizeable naval cannon); said a pot of ratatouille should contain 25 cloves of garlic (two tablespoons will do nicely); on at least five occasions, confused a million with a billion (note to the reporters responsible—there are jobs waiting for you at the House Ways and Means Committee); understated the national debt by $4.2 trillion (note to the reporter responsible—there's a job waiting for you at the Office of Management and Budget); confused $1 billion with $1 trillion (note to the reporter responsible—would you like to be CEO of AIG?); admitted numerical flaws in a story "about the ability of nonsense to sharpen the mind;" used "idiomatic deficiency" as an engineering term (correct was "adiabatic efficiency"); said Paul Revere's Midnight Ride occurred in 1776 (it was in 1775—by 1776, everybody knew the British were coming); "misstated the status of the United States in 1783—it was a country, not a collection of colonies" (dear Times, please Google "Declaration of Independence").

The Times also "misidentified the song Pink was singing while suspended on a sling-like trapeze;" confused the past 130 years with the entire 4.5 billion-year history of Earth (see appended correction here); misused statistics in the course of an article complaining that public school standards aren't high enough (see appended correction here); said Citigroup handed its executives $11 million in taxpayer-funded bonuses, when the actual amount was $1.1 billion (in the Citigroup executive suite, being off by a mere two zeroes would be considered incredible financial acumen); said a column lauding actress Terri White "overstated her professional achievements, based on information provided by Ms. White;" identified a woman as a man (it's so hard to tell these days); reported men landed on Mars in the 1970s ("there was in fact no Mars mission," the Times primly corrected).

The Times also gave compass coordinates that placed Manhattan in the South Pacific Ocean near the coastline of Chile (see appended correction here); said you need eight ladies dancing to enact the famous Christmas song when nine are needed; said Iraq is majority Sunni, though the majority there is Shiite (hey, we invaded Iraq without the CIA knowing this kind of thing); got the wrong name for a dog that lives near President Obama's house ("An article about the sale of a house next door to President Obama's home in Chicago misstated the name of a dog that lives there. She is Rosie, not Roxy"—did Rosie's agent complain?); elaborately apologized in an "editor's note," a higher-level confession than a standard correction, for printing "outdated" information about the health of a wealthy woman's Lhasa apso; incorrectly described an intelligence report about whether the North Korean military is using Twitter; called Tandil, Argentina, home of Juan Martín del Potro, a "tiny village" (its population is 110,000); inflicted upon unsuspecting readers a web of imprecision about the Frisians, the Hapsburg Empire, the geographic extent of terps, and whether Friesland was "autonomous and proud" throughout the Middle Ages or merely until 1500; inexactly characterized a nuance of a position taken by the French Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (philosophy majors must have marched in the streets of Paris over this); confused coal with methane (don't make that mistake in a mine shaft!); on at least three occasions, published a correction of a correction; "misstated the year of the Plymouth Barracuda on which a model dressed as a mermaid was posed;" "mischaracterized the date when New York City first hired a bicycle consultant" and "misidentified the location of a pile of slush in the Bronx."

Here, TMQ's pal Michael Kinsley duns the fastidiousness of Times corrections. Kinsley's column complaining about facts contains—you knew this was coming!—a factual error. Mike says the really big hunk of rock in southern Alaska is Mount McKinley on U.S. government maps, though commonly referred to by Alaskans as "Mount Denali." Actually, it is commonly referred to by Alaskans as Denali, which means "Great Mountain" in Athabaskan. "Mount Denali" would mean "Mount Great Mountain."

Granted, everyone makes mistakes, this is over a period of six months, and many of them are trivial (though some are ludicrously huge); still, I'm amused.

Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints

Living in Indiana, surrounded by fans of a truly classy franchise, I couldn't and didn't root against the Colts; but I couldn't bring myself to root against the Saints, either, and I'm very happy for their fans. They really had this one coming; if there's any fanbase that's had to put up with more garbage than Seattle fans, it's New Orleans fans.

This all brings to mind Daniel Henninger's recent column in the Wall Street Journal on American Needle Inc. v. National Football League, a case currently before the Supreme Court:

Most people would rather be a happy fan than anything else. Otherwise, there would not be so many fans for so many sports all over the world. This is irrefutable.

A friend recently emailed me that he didn't think there was any such thing as a truly happy progressive. This is false. If an American progressive's baseball team wins the Word Series, he is happy, if only briefly. A former colleague, a cricket fan, used to seek out late-night TV broadcasts in obscure bars in Queens, N.Y. It made him very happy.

Long ago, then-NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle figured out this greatest of all human truths, that the only value most people have in common, other than life itself, is the desire for a competitive home team. Family members who would sink a dinner fork into each other over Barack Obama's health-care plan will do high fives in the living room later if the Cleveland Browns beat the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Rozelle got the league's teams to distribute TV-broadcast revenue equally, so that no team would be permanently in the dumpster. Basketball and hockey did the same thing. Baseball has not, and it is well established that Chicago Cubs fans do not believe happiness exists.

Even defeat has its silver linings

I'm on vacation right now, because my father and brother are out; and they came out for a couple things, one of which was to go down with me to see our Seahawks play at Indianapolis. Given the relative strength of the two teams at this point this season, the outcome was predictable, and it followed the prediction: we got crushed. The score was 34-17 Colts, and the game was nowhere near that close; it could have been 42-3 if Indianapolis had had some reason to want it to be. They didn't, because they're a classy franchise. Similarly, their fans proved what I've been telling people my whole time here, that this state has good people; out of the thousands of Colts fans we saw, we only ran into two jerks, while there were a number who wandered over to have friendly conversations with us about our team, and theirs, and the league in general, and the city, and whatever else came up. (And to the one jerk who tried to heckle us and asked why we came to "his" stadium when our team "sucks": I'll tell you again, we came to see our team play. Why was that so hard for you to understand? Would you only want to see your team if they were good? If so, that says something pretty sad about your supposed fandom.)

Anyway, yesterday was a very long day. Aside from the result of the game, though, it was a good day to spend with family and meet some of my brother's good friends—good people all around. Now today I get to catch up on the things I wasn't doing yesterday when I wasn't home.

Thoughts on the President's Olympian effort

So, the President and his wife flew to Copenhagen (spending, I might note, a fair bit of money, and producing quite a lot of greenhouse gases) to lobby for Chicago for the 2016 Olympic Games; the IOC was so impressed, they awarded the 2016 Games to Rio (which, I think, was absolutely the right move, for all sorts of reasons). There has been much gnashing of teeth in some quarters, and a fair bit of schadenfreude in others; I can't remember ever seeing this much commentary on an Olympic decision, which of course is all due to the participation of the Celebrity-in-Chief.

The question is, does this actually hurt him? After some reflection, count me in with those who think it does. Granted, the matter was relatively trivial in the geopolitical scheme of things, but the fact remains: President Obama injected himself into the competition, trying to use his influence to bring the Olympics to Chicago, and that influence was rejected. Decisively. That’s why the Times of London opines, "Obama’s Olympic failure will only add to doubts about his presidency."

There has been a growing narrative taking hold about Barack Obama’s presidency in recent weeks: that he is loved by many, but feared by none; that he is full of lofty vision, but is actually achieving nothing with his grandiloquence.

Chicago’s dismal showing yesterday, after Mr Obama’s personal, impassioned last-minute pitch, is a stunning humiliation for this President. It cannot be emphasised enough how this will feed the perception that on the world stage he looks good—but carries no heft.

If they actually meant "grandiloquence"—which means "pompous or bombastic speech or expression"—rather than "eloquence," that’s a remarkable slap. In any case, the perception to which the Times refers is clearly not just its own creation, judging by French President Nicolas Sarkozy's recent comments at the UN; and its conclusions echo Fred Barnes’ observations in the Weekly Standard:

When an American president voluntarily takes up a fight and loses badly, it’s a big deal. Obama could have stayed out. Having the summer Olympics in Chicago doesn’t involve the national interest. But he thought the matter important enough to fly to Denmark and make the pitch for his hometown in person. He put his prestige on the line, only to be slapped down. He can’t blame George W. Bush for this one, though his minions may try.

We know the world loves Obama. What the action by the International Olympic Committee demonstrates is that being loved isn’t the same as being influential or taken seriously or respected or feared—the traits of many of Obama’s predecessors in the presidency. If he can’t deliver on a vote of the IOC, does he really have the clout to pressure the mullahs in Iran into giving up their nuclear ambitions? Maybe not.

Along with this, Barnes asks a pointed question:

Where was the charisma, the skill in persuading people to see things Obama’s way? The media has built Obama up as a communicator who’s the equal of Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt. True, he’s delivered several fine speeches, but all of them before he became president. Now he’s either lost his touch or never was the orator the press said he was.

A persuasive president is one who can move people and poll numbers his way. Obama hasn’t managed this as president. Last month, he spoke in prime time to Congress on health care, appeared on five Sunday interview shows, and showed up on the David Letterman show. The result: zilch. Support for his health care policy rose ever so slightly, then settled back to where it had been.

The biggest question I have is, why did he put his prestige on the line like that? Barnes suggests that the White House "thought the IOC was poised to ratify the president’s bid for a Chicago Olympics"; I suppose that’s possible, but if so, it argues for a remarkable degree of poor judgment on their part (which is exactly Barnes’ conclusion). If that’s the case, it also suggests a fair bit of cynicism, that the President and his staff thought he could swoop in and cherry-pick the credit for a Chicago win.

The other suggestion I’ve seen—which, to be honest, seems more likely to me—is that he was doing it as payback for support received from the Chicago machine. Chicago has done a lot to push him to the top of the political heap, after all, and turnabout is fair play; from their point of view, they helped him get there, and now it’s his job to help them out. Didn’t work, but that’s the way Chicago does business.

The amazing thing to me is, judging by the reaction shots, Chicagoans really thought the President had put it in the bag for them; which makes me wonder, could this be the first real crack in the Obama mystique here in the States? Sure, the White House is saying "it’s only the Olympics," but people can be funny about sports sometimes; and after all, if the President doesn't get a health care bill passed this year, there’s always next year, but Chicago only got one strike, and they’re out. It will be interesting to see if people really buy the "no big deal" line from the White House on this one, or if they end up holding it against him.

On the socialism of big-time sports and the distribution of freedom

I recently ran across a fascinating article by Brian Burke at Advanced NFL Stats on the power law. He uses it specifically with respect to such things as coaching tenure and distribution of Pro Bowl selections in the NFL, but along the way he uses such things as the financial crisis that hit last fall to illustrate and explain the power law, and that's what makes the article interesting (at least to me). For instance, Burke writes,

Our current financial crisis was in part caused by a fundamentally wrong assumption about risk distributions in the debt markets. An oversimplified explanation is that investment companies made lucrative but risky investments, and then hedged against their failure by buying insurance in the form of complex derivatives in case they went bust. These companies thought that they had cracked the code and solved the problem of risk once and for all. (One of the reasons the company AIG is central to the problem is that it's the company that led the selling of all that insurance.)

The problem was that the insurance was priced based on an assumption of bell curve distributions of market risk. A model known as the Correlated Gaussian Copula was developed by a Chinese mathematician named Li, and it was widely used throughout the financial industry for measuring and pricing risk. Unfortunately, financial markets act more like earthquakes than normally distributed phenomena like rainfall or human height. There are lots of minor fluctuations but occasionally the bottom drops out. The power law distribution has a ‘fatter tail’ at the extremes than the normal distribution, meaning extreme outcomes are considerably more likely.

As Burke explains, power law distributions tend to arise with networks, especially complex, self-organizing ones; thus, he writes,

Power law distributions are noteworthy because they are the signatures of mature self-organizing complex systems. It’s also a feature of ‘rich-get-richer’ systems. So when we see power law distributions, we can make some qualitative inferences about the system we’re observing. For example, the BCS system is certainly a rich-get-richer organization. We can even quantify just how hierarchical it is and how difficult it is for second-tier teams to break into the elite.

The problem with the BCS isn’t just that it’s a rich-get-richer system. That’s just the natural way of the world. Even in supposedly ‘egalitarian’ systems like socialism, the rich still get richer. The difference is that initial outcomes in socialist systems are based primarily on one’s political connections, where in a free market they tend to be based on how productive or innovative one is. The problem is that the elite ‘nodes’ of the BCS have colluded to preserve their status on top, preventing a natural churn in who the elite are.

This is, among other things, an excellent succinct explanation of why socialism doesn't produce the beneficial equality it promises: it actually increases the opportunities for elites to collude to preserve their status on top. The freer the market, the freer the society, the fewer levers they have to do so and the more opportunity there are for upstarts to upstage them and push them out of the way. The more controlled the market, the more controlled the society, the more levers the elites have, and the more ways and opportunities they have to use that control to keep anyone from breaking into their circle and taking their place.

The invention of the Black Sox

The common understanding of the Black Sox scandal was fixed in the public mind by Eliot Asinof's 1963 book Eight Men Out and the subsequent movie adaptation of the same title by John Sayles. As it turns out, that may be a highly unfortunate thing, as an article in Chicago Lawyer magazine by Daniel J. Voelker and Paul A. Duffy reveals. Having gained access to Asinof's files, the two discovered that his book is not in fact supported by his research; indeed, from their research, they've concluded that the book is, to a significant degree, fiction.

Those whose reputations seem to have been blackened the worst by Asinof's fictionalization are the team's owner, Charles Comiskey, who has been unfairly smeared as a skinflint whose miserliness drove his players to throw the 1919 World Series, and the biggest star among the banned players, Shoeless Joe Jackson, who always insisted on his innocence. Given his stellar performance in the Series that year—he led all qualifying hitters, on both teams, in batting average and slugging percentage, finished second in on-base percentage, hit the Series' only home run, and seems to have played the field well (at least, he didn't commit a single error)—I've always been inclined to believe him. Given the work by Voelker and Duffy, I think I've been justified in that.

Here's hoping this article is the beginning of a new trial for Shoeless Joe, not just in the court of public opinion but also before the Lords of Baseball; and here's hoping that the result is the clearing of his reputation and his long-overdue inclusion in the Hall of Fame.

Jack Kemp, RIP

It's not typical for a politician's death to get coverage on ESPN—but then, Jack Kemp wasn't exactly your typical politician.  To be sure, he wasn't the only high-profile athlete to go into politics—the U.S. Senate has even seen two Hall of Famers among its members in recent decades, Bill Bradley and Jim Bunning, though both are marginal inductees, and the House of Representatives currently has former NFL QB (and first-round bust) Heath Shuler serving from North Carolina—but successful athletes who become major political figures are rare, and Kemp was both.  He had a rough ride establishing himself in the pros, but when the AFL came along he seized the opportunity with both hands, quarterbacking Buffalo to four playoff appearances and two league championships (and losing another with San Diego in 1961) and making seven AFL All-Star teams.

He then parlayed his fame in Buffalo into nine terms in the House from upstate New York, during which time he established himself as one of this country's most intelligent, articulate, and vocal exponents of conservative political principles.  I'm sure I'm far from the only one who thinks that the GOP and the nation both would be a lot better off had Kemp won his 1988 bid for the Republican presidential nomination rather than losing to the name recognition of George H. W. Bush, the incumbent VP.  Still, he continued to contribute as President Bush 41's HUD secretary, then served as Bob Dole's VP nominee in 1996, bringing energy and conservative enthusiasm to the GOP ticket much as Sarah Palin would for Sen. Dole's fellow war veteran and centrist Republican John McCain twelve years later.

As a childhood fan of Kemp's Bills and a neighbor of his in Maryland who writes extensively on both politics and football, Gregg Easterbrook is uniquely positioned to write about Jack Kemp, and his eulogy on ESPN.com is well worth reading because it captures a sense of the broad sweep of the man's life.  As he notes, and as David Goldman (aka Spengler) points out in his piece on the First Things website, without Kemp it would be hard to imagine the Reagan Revolution happening the way it did.

Former vice-presidential candidate, congressman, and Housing secretary, he was the most improbable and the most important hero of the Reagan Revolution after the Gipper himself. Without Jack’s true-believer’s passion for tax cuts as a remedy for the stagflation of the 1970s, Reagan would not have staked his presidency on an untested and controversial theory. His death should remind us how lucky we were to have leaders like Reagan and Kemp, and a political system that allowed improbable leaders—an ex-actor and a retired quarterback—to appear at providential moments.

It was impossible to be cynical in Jack’s vicinity. He radiated sincerity and optimism. Corny as it sounds, Jack was the real thing, an all-American true believer in this country and in the capacity of its people to overcome any obstacle once given the chance. . . .

What attracted Jack Kemp to supply-side economics was the promise of advancement for ordinary people. . . . He passionately believed in individual opportunity and free markets, and he needed an argument to take to the union rank-and-file who made up the bulk of his district’s voters. Supply-side economics, the premise that tax cuts and corresponding regulatory reform would unleash the creative energies of Americans, persuaded him, and he became its great missionary.

A genuinely independent thinker, Kemp was that rarest of all birds:  an unpredictable politician.  Easterbrook captures this when he writes,

Kemp was keenly concerned with the plight of the poor. The libertarian side of his personality viewed tolerance as crucial. Kemp often broke with other Reagan supporters on women's and minority issues, respect for labor and an end of discrimination against homosexuality; and though a devout Christian himself—prayer circles are a regular event at his home—he was disgusted by all forms of religion-based bias. His signature issue became Enterprise Zones. Kemp was dismayed by the decline of mostly minority inner cities, and hardly just Buffalo. He felt excessive regulations and legal liability discouraged businesses from investing in urban areas where jobs were needed, while in effect encouraging business to develop unplowed land that ought to be preserved. . . .

When Bush was elected to the White House, he named Kemp Secretary of HUD, a position from which he implemented Enterprise Zone ideas. HUD is an agency that traditionally has not interested conservatives much, because it deals with issues of the impoverished, such as public housing. Kemp dove into HUD's subject matter with zeal, and over time was proven correct, as the Enterprise Zone was a factor—hardly the only factor, of course—in the spectacular American urban comeback that began in the 1990s. . . .

Beneath the surface of Kemp's political heterodoxy was a lifelong love of argument over ideas. Kemp clung to many causes viewed as idiosyncratic, such as a return to the gold standard, and advanced "supply side" economic ideas that were in some ways more radical than anything coming from the left. He spent far more time with writers and intellectuals than do most nationally known politicians, and he got more excited about books than about polls. While many politicians want to shake hands with intellectuals at photo ops, Kemp wanted to argue, sometimes well into the night. . . . Unlike so many politicians, who leave behind little but backroom deals and self-congratulation, Kemp's legacy is one of ideas. As of last autumn, Kemp was still banging out newspaper columns in support of John McCain and in opposition to taxes. Unlike so many political figures who only preach family values, Kemp was married for more than 50 years to his college sweetheart, Joanne Main. . . .

Kemp had read some of my books—he seemed to have read at least parts of every book—and took me aside a few times to talk public policy. It was pleasant, and I wish it had lasted longer. I couldn't convince Kemp that Obama is not a socialist; to win an argument with him, you would have needed to bring along an army. But I also don't think he really meant to insult the new president. I think he admired the new president quite a bit. He just liked to provoke political arguments and see where they led. For him, they led to a great life well lived.

Easterbrook ends with a testimony to Kemp's character; Goldman echoes the theme.

Jack was a leader who loved his country and put it before personal gain. When he left office he had the equity in his house and not much else. But he had four children, including two sons who played professional football, and seventeen grandchildren. . . .

A devout Christian, Jack made far more of a difference than an ex-quarterback with a physical education degree from Occidental College had a right to. He earned our gratitude not only for what he accomplished, but for what he proved about the character of the United States.

A good man, a godly man, a politician who brought his country great benefit—and a mighty fine quarterback to boot:  Jack Kemp was a great American, and this nation is poorer for his death.  Requiescat in pace.

Congratulations to the Spartan Nation

I root in all things for my Washington teams—the Seattle teams in the pros, the University of Washington, Gonzaga as well in basketball, and really, I'm usually happy to see Washington State do well, also—and of course for my alma mater, Hope College; but at the college level, I pull for Michigan State, too, since between my own extended family and my wife's family, I'm related to a large number of Spartans.  I have of course been cheering MSU on in the NCAA tournament this year (and especially since Purdue took out the Huskies, which made me quite unhappy)—I even called them beating Louisville, since I thought they matched up really well with the Cardinals, and I have great faith in Tom Izzo as a coach.  I figured, though, that Izzo would have to be content with his fifth Final Four in twelve years, since I didn't see them beating Connecticut (in fact, UConn was my pick to win it all); even with the home-court advantage, I figured the UConn front line would be too much for them.  I even expressed that belief to my father-in-law this morning.

I was wrong.  Michigan State 82, Connecticut 73.  Congratulations, Coach Izzo and the Spartans—and good luck against North Carolina Monday night.  They'll be your third straight #1 seed, which is quite a gauntlet to run . . . but I think you can take 'em.

The world's largest canary?

I don't know if you can imagine the Phoenix Suns' Amare Stoudamire, all 6'9" and 250 pounds of him, covered in yellow feathers and chirping, but if there's a canary in this economic mine telling us that things are going to get a whole heck of a lot worse before they get better, he just might be it.  Symbolically, at least.  Read Bill Simmons' column from last week, "Welcome to the No Benjamins Association," and you'll understand.  Even if you aren't a basketball fan, read it; it's partly about other problems besetting the NBA these days, but what's most telling is the angle it provides on where our economy is now, where it's going, and what the consequences are likely to be for people locked into long-term commitments made before the economy tanked.

From the library

A couple days ago, I pulled The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract off the shelf for a little light reading, and was interested to run across this item (the title is original):

YOU'D HAVE A HECK OF A TIME PROVING HE WAS WRONG

In 1960 Jackie Robinson went to visit both of the presidential candidates, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. He endorsed Nixon. In 1964 Robinson worked for Barry Goldwater. He felt that Lyndon Johnson, by politicizing the race issue, would ultimately undermine support for civil rights—as, of course, he did. Robinson realized that civil rights gains could not continue without the support of both political parties. "It would make everything I worked for meaningless," Robinson told Roger Kahn, "if baseball is integrated but political parties were segregated."

Make of that what you will, but Jackie Robinson was nobody's fool. I'm reminded of the question someone asked recently (I don't remember where I read it), would Americans have been so ready to elect Barack Obama to the White House if they hadn't grown used to seeing first Colin Powell and then Condoleeza Rice on the news every night as Secretary of State?

This week's sign that the Apocalypse is upon us

(to borrow from Sports Illustrated, since it's an old SI writer)

I'd call this unbelievable, but that's not strong enough; it's been a long time, even in this culture, since I've seen anything this despicably dishonorable. In this year's Georgia Class AAA high school baseball championship game, the pitcher and catcher of the losing team (Cody Martin and Matt Hill, respectively) colluded to bean the plate ump with a four-seam fastball (this just a few minutes after said ump called strike three on the pitcher's brother, Dodgers first-round pick Ethan Martin).

I agree with Rick Reilly: What are we turning into in this country, anyway?

Malcolm Reynolds, patron saint of not-quite-lost causes

—or at least, so he would be if he were ever actually canonized, which of course is a rather remote prospect. First the fight against the Alliance, which he could never quite stop fighting, then the "Can't Stop the Signal" campaign after Firefly's cancellation—the man positively collects them, and keeps on flying.

Which reminds me: there's a rally at the Federal Courthouse in Seattle at 4:30 pm on June 16, part of the campaign to stop that modern-day robber baron and keep the Sonics in Seattle where they belong. . . . Anyone in Seattle have Nathan Fillion's number?

(Update: the rally drew over 3000 people and earned serious attention from ESPN. Way to go, guys—you rock. Can't stop the signal!)

Prosthetics, athletics, and the human future

The cover article in the latest issue of ESPN Magazine is on the new generation of prosthetics and the difference they're starting to make in the world of sports; not only are they becoming sophisticated enough to allow athletes who have had limbs amputated to compete on a level playing field with those who haven't, some folks are beginning to be concerned that they might provide a competitive advantage. In a classic knee-jerk overreaction, sports governing bodies have begun to respond, not by developing intelligent guidelines for the use of prostheses, but by banning them. Clearly, this isn't fair.

The bottom line is this: Sports do not need knee-jerk segregation, they need rational and fair regulation. Every organized sport begins the same way, with the creation of rules. We then establish technological limits, as with horsepower in auto racing, stick curvature in hockey, bike weight in cycling. As sports progress, those rules are sometimes altered. The USGA, for instance, responded to advances in club technology by legalizing metal heads in the early '80s. In Chariots of Fire, the hero comes under heavy scrutiny for using his era's version of steroids: a coach, at a time when the sport frowned upon outside assistance. So if we can adjust rules of sports to the time, why not for prosthetics? Create a panel of scientists and athletes, able-bodied and disabled, and ask them to determine what's fair. One example: We know the maximum energy return of the human ankle, so that measurement could be the limit for the spring of a prosthetic ankle. That type of consideration is much fairer than simply locking out an entire group of athletes.

If prosthetic technology can be used to enable people to compete on an even footing (so to speak), then it should be allowed for that purpose; obviously, the rules need to be carefully tuned to be as fair as possible, but the relative difficulty of that task should not be an excuse for not attempting it.

There is, however, a deeper concern here.

If anyone can predict what sports will look like in 2050, it's [Hugh] Herr, who lost his legs 26 years ago in a climbing accident. Herr wears robotic limbs with motorized ankles and insists he doesn't want his human legs back because soon they'll be archaic. "People have always thought the human body is the ideal," he says. "It's not." . . .

Bioethicist Andy Miah predicts that one day, "it will be an imperative, and the responsible course of action, to reinforce one's body through prosthesis when competing at an elite level." In other words, all pros will have engineered body parts. History will view the steroids witch hunt as a silly attempt to keep athletes from using technology to help regenerate after a season of pain. "In many ways, we're facing the advent of the bionic man," says MLS commissioner Don Garber. "It's something our industry has to start thinking about."

This is worrisome talk. The desire for a superhuman/post-human existence has done a fair bit of damage over the years, and as science starts to make "improving" ourselves a near-future possibility, we need to be very, very careful with that. We simply are not wise enough or knowledgeable enough to make playing God with our bodies a good idea; and I say that not only as a Christian but as a longtime reader of science fiction. The downside of trying to re-engineer the human body is just too great; and honestly, I don't think the upside is worth it. If we "improve" everyone, what have we really gained?; and if we only "improve" some, haven't we only taken the inequalities among people that already exist and made them worse? Do we really need more reasons for some people to think they're better than others? These are the things we need to think about very carefully before we start declaring our bodies obsolete.

Bill Simmons for Sportsman of the Year

I don't tend to talk much about sports here—I do that other places (some of them listed to the left) where the conversation is already going on—but as a long-time fan of the Seattle SuperSonics (one of my earliest memories is of listening to part of the 1979 NBA Finals with my dad) I had to say this: Thank you, Bill Simmons.

In six years of writing for ESPN.com, this is the longest piece I've ever sent to my editors -- nearly 15,000 words of anguished e-mails from Sonics fans around the country. I spent the past 24 hours sifting through them and whittling them down the best I could. Don't print this baby out. Read it, skim through it, do whatever you need to do. But definitely check it out.

Here's why the Seattle situation should matter to everyone who cares about sports: After being part of the city for 41 years, the Sonics are being stolen away for dubious reasons while every NBA owner and executive allows it to happen, including David Stern, the guy who's supposed to be policing this stuff. I think it's reprehensible to watch someone hijack a franchise away from the people who cared about the team and loved it and nurtured it through the years. It belittles not just the good people of Seattle, but everyone who loves sports and believes it provides a unique and valuable connection for a city, a community, family members and friends.

Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to let an entire fanbase speak. In the end, thanks to the efforts of Save Our Sonics (the brainchild of Brian Robinson, Steven Pyeatt, and the other folks behind SonicsCentral—Sonics fans everywhere owe those guys a huge debt of gratitude), with special appreciation for the work of Seattle city attorney Tom Carr, I continue to believe that Seattle will not lose its team; still, the ongoing threats and arrogance and insults and mendacity we've had to suffer from Clay Bennett and his ownership group, and the possibility that despite everyone's best efforts and all the emotional and financial support invested in this team over the past four decades, these robber barons might actually be allowed to steal our team, have taken a real toll. Thank you, Bill, for letting us speak.

Update: Here's his follow-up. I don't agree with every idea he has, but I love the walk-on idea; and again, thanks to Bill Simmons for giving us a voice and a platform.

The mystery of redemption

Of the "other important matters" referenced up above there, the most important by far is baseball; and while I have to admit there are bigger stories in America this morning, even someone so unfortunate as to not like baseball has to stop and ponder this a moment: The Boston Red Sox just won the World Series.

But it's not just that they did it after 86 years of falling short, it's how. Eleven days ago, Boston was down 0-3 and 8 innings, with the greatest closer in the game, Mariano Rivera, coming on to close out a New York sweep; the Yankees were already preparing for their 412th World Series appearance, or some such ridiculous number. And what happens? Somehow, the Red Sox punched through, launching an eight-game October winning streak that might be the most incredible thing I've ever seen happen in baseball (which is saying something). They became the first team in baseball history to come back from an 0-3 deficit to win a playoff series—finishing the sweep in Yankee Stadium! (and leaving millions of Yankee fans wandering around like Esau, wondering where their birthright just went)—then went on to sweep the team with the best record in baseball, the St. Louis Cardinals, on the biggest stage of all, gaining some measure of payback for their WS losses to the Cards in 1946 and 1967. The mind boggles. (Fortunately for one's sense of sanity, despite the fact that they now have the NFL's dominant team and baseball's reigning champion, Boston fans are still Boston fans.)

I don't just mention this as a baseball fan—that day will come if my beloved Mariners ever manage to climb this mountain (which could easily take 86 years in its own right); I'm also struck by the theology of this moment. If one believes in the sovereignty of God as I do, that Jesus Christ is Lord of everything, then that includes baseball. Which makes sense, because God is the giver of all good gifts and baseball is definitely on that list (yes, even in years when the M's go 63-99—this postseason made up for a lot of those losses). And if that includes baseball, then the Red Sox' accomplishment has a lot of things to teach us about the improbable providence of God, and about redemption, because God isn't only concerned with our "souls," he's concerned about all of life. And maybe, just maybe, in the case of the Yankees, this has some things to teach us about humility as well.