Baseball Orpheus Ten Years Later

I was thinking about that time, just shy of ten years ago actually, when I wrote one of my impassioned rants about how the professional sports I once loved had been decimated by what I've termed competitive duplicity. I likened myself to Orpheus, the Greek guy who desires to rescue his beloved from hell, hoping that enough would see the truth about things and desire to see competitive integrity fully instituted. Alas, it would never be, something that I sadly knew then.

That piece, by the way, is here, and in it I made some predictions about what I thought would happen over the next ten years. Surprisingly (or not suprisingly, I imagine), some of them did indeed come true. I remember making wild predictions about who would actually appear in the World Series' to come, and except for being off on the Dodgers, those were reasonably on. (The Dodgers predictions didn't come true, I noted, because of the exact thing I wrote that Peter O'Malley warned then owner Rupert Murdoch about, something Murdoch quite dismissively ignored to his extreme detriment.)

Anyway, the spirit of those predictions is alive and well in NBA basketball, with the Yankees-Dodgers equivalent, the classic match-up of the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics being showcased over the next week or two. How did these two teams just happen to get into the Finals yet again, glory be? Shucksola, Batman, what a surprise!

Nah. No surprise. They're quite predictably there for the very same reason that there is competitive duplicity all around. It is simple:

Los Angeles: second largest market in the nation at 18 million folks.

Boston: fifth largest market at 7 million strong.

(You can also add the New York market in there because those fans always have some impassioned feeling about these two teams, so the Knicks being horrible doesn't detract from the duplicity--its market size: 22 million.)

Last year the two teams that met in the Finals, the Cleveland Cavaliers and San Antonio Spurs, were from the 18th and 30th largest markets respectively. Total population between the two: 5 million. That NBA Finals telecast received the lowest ratings ever. It is just not surprising why, and it is precisely why the bigger markets will always be awarded an advantage in building better teams.

The Lakers-Celtics sell, if only for the pure number of fans they both have. They were in it almost every year in the 1960's, they both managed to snatch Magic Johnson and Larry Bird from the clutches of any other nobody team for the 1980's (which virtually every pundit says revitalized the game), and they were each a series away from meeting each other again in 2002, both with almost completely different teams than the ones they have now.

You don't think the Powers-That-Be of professional sports are dancing on the ceiling with this match-up? They like to do this kind of dancing so much that they work to make that kind of match-up happen. How on earth did the Lakers get to land super-center Pau Gasol midway through the season, practically insuring they'd get in the championship game? (Those Powers must've been passing around the really good cigars at the party when the Chicago Bulls--market size: 10 million--nabbed the first overall pick in next year's draft. If you don't know, it is pretty much impossible to win a championship without one.)

All of this happens in the smoke-filled rooms, but many are convinced the officiating is involved too. Even the most strident doubters were wondering after Derek Fisher clearly fouled Brent Barry to push the Lakers past the Spurs--reminiscences of when Mike Bibby of the Kings was critically non-fouled to aid the Lakers back in the Shaq days. I honestly think, however, that the NBA will go so far as to even admit that Barry got fouled to keep us dwelling on questionable officiating when what really matters is going on in those back rooms.

All of this is truly just a microcosm of the way the entire World works. It's one thing for everyone to rant and holler and rage at what goes on at every level of World governance--including pro sports leagues. It is quite another to accept the fact that the people in the club allow it to happen, and as long as that happens the machinations behind closed doors will continue unabated.

The fans may spit up a forlorn "Gasp!" in seeing some of that duplicity seep out, but ya know?

It is exactly what they want.

Let's have a bit of jerking everyone around pretending there is competitive integrity, that every team has a chance, with a dash controversy thrown in--hey, it helps the ratings. Indeed the Powers-That-Be are resigned to having a Cavs-Spurs match-up every once in a while as the price that must be paid to convince everyone it's all legit.

Oh, and just to add, I've gotten out of the pro sports club, also. I'm over here, out of that hell, too. Don't pay any attention to it. The reason I know about any of this is simply because I see it in the news, hear about it here and there--because of my previous sports obsession I've got this sort-of built-in radar that just picks it all up. I know, dreadful.

I just do this to share some thoughts for those who might like looking a bit deeper at truthful things.

Anyway, just to close, I wrote a piece that details a lot more of this from the NBA angle. What's funny about that piece, entitled "The Stacked Deck," --quite a coincidence, not planned at all--is the date I posted it is exactly six years ago today.

I'm Basketball Orpheus.

Sure enough, my beloved Eurydice, still there in hell.

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