[Sports, Baseball, Hockey] Thing Are Getting Interesting

I've been watching a fair amount of sports lately.  Baseball and Hockey.  Both have been wonderful this year.

My local hockey team, the Red Wings, is not in contention.  (Aside: Detroit sports teams except the Lions -- Red Wings, Tigers, Pistons --  tend to be competitive once every 15 or twenty years.  The Lions tend to compete once every century.)  So as a result I spent the playoffs wondering who should be my favorite.  There are a number of ways to assess it. The closest teams to southern headquarters in Savannah would either be the Tampa Bay Lightning or the Carolina Hurricanes. There are two other teams that are related to places I love, the Florida Panthers and the Las Vegas Golden Knights. One other thing I enjoy about all four of these back-up teams is the irony of warm weather hockey.  That must really rub Canadians raw.  

A couple other teams that I hold a certain irrational affection for are the Seattle Kraken, just because I love to roll my Rs and say Krrrrraken.  I also like the Arizona Coyotes because they are the ultimate underdogs.  They are not particularly good, have weak fan support, lost their arena and ended up having to play on a local college campus.  If they were good, they could be like the Indians in Major League or the Jamaican Bobsled Team, or dare I say it, The Mighty Ducks. 

We are coming up fast on the Stanley Cup Finals and it's Vegas versus Florida, so I'm cool with either winner.  Truly there is no sport more fast and exciting than playoff hockey.  Hockey's not-so-secret weapon is changing lines on the fly.  The result is that skaters get on the ice and go all out for ideally 90 seconds and they are replaced on the fly by fresh skaters.  In fitness terms, think of it as 90 seconds of anaerobic exercise.  To compare to football, suppose that instead of after a play everybody stopping and setting the ball and huddling up, a batch of fresh players came on and just kept going where the last play left off.  (Would that be rugby?).  The action is relentless and game stoppages are relatively few -- you can get 4 to 5 minutes without a break; emotions and momentum and fate can turn in an instant.

The average hockey game is 2 hours and 20 minutes.  The average baseball game is 2 hours and 38 minutes this year, down from about 3:10 the last few years.  So in other words about as long as the standard mildly bloated Hollywood movie.  

Truth be told, the pitch clock in baseball has made the games much more watchable.  It's interesting that they were modifying the rules surrounding the 20 second pitch clock almost up to the start of the season.  Technically the rule is that the pitcher must pitch within 15 seconds if there are no runners and 20 seconds if there are runners on.  There is also stress on the hitter in that he must be in the box and prepared with 8 seconds left on the clock.  There has been some getting used to, but mostly it's really moved the games along well.  

I'm less enamored with some of the other rule changes but I understand them.  There is now a limit on trips to the mound, a limit on the number of times a pitcher can throw to hold a runner, and a minimum number of batters a relief pitcher must face in some circumstances.  These remove an aspect of strategy, but perhaps open another, in the name of stopping baseball from becoming like football where you stop after every play and re-adjust to maximize your personnel. One I continue to not like is the forbidding of "the shift", overloading one side of the infield to account for batter tendencies.  This was outlawed in the name of "making the game more athletic", but I don't know.  It does seem to have improved overall batting average so maybe that was the subtle goal.  More offense = more eyeballs?  Maybe.

A couple of narratives have started to build in the season.  One is the Tampa Bay Rays getting off to an enormous start.  One is the comic occurrence where, as I write this, the entire AL East has better records than the entire AL Central (including the Tigers).   Last place in the AL East is better than first place in the Central.  Sheesh.  Another interesting thing to note is that the team with two of the best players in the game and stars of the World Classic from the summer -- Shohei Otani and Mike Trout -- continues to struggle to stay above .500.  Lastly, the Mets, who have reunited the last great Tigers pitching duo of Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, are also treading water around .500.

In any event it looks like it's going to play out to be one of the more interesting and enjoyable baseball seasons in recent memory.  

Addendum:  The most fun reporting on baseball is generally coming from Jomboy Media on Youtube.  Simultaneously reverent and irreverent.  Both informative and entertaining.  Recommended.

[Baseball, Sports] Baseball Been Berry Berry Good

My attention to baseball has waxed and waned over the years and I haven't picked up a bat or a glove for decades, but I find it quite comforting that baseball keeps plowing forward, evolving, and every now and then grabs my attention again.

There were some truly great performances this season.  I am writing this the day after Aaron Judge hit his 62nd home run, passing Roger Maris for the most home runs by a player without a bloodstream full of anabolic steroids.   He is also very close to winning the triple crown, something that happens maybe once a decade.  Surely one of the greatest seasons in history. Oddly - or perhaps not - there hasn't been the fanfare there was for the record breaking steroid monsters back before the turn of the century.  Perhaps a reaction to it not being officially a new record (although it is an American League record), or perhaps a cynical public is waiting for the steroid shoe to drop.  I don't think it will.  Aaron Judge is a sizable dude, but he doesn't wear the hallmark bloated head and popeye torso of the steroid goons.  Oh and also:  Ruth (60), Maris (61), Judge (62) -- all Yankees.  Why?  Deserves analysis by some stat geek doesn't it? 

The other Ruth-ian performance this year came from Shohei Ohtani. Ohtani is really the first legitimate two way player (pitcher plus something else on non-pitching days) since the years when Ruth was a pitcher for Boston.  Ruth was a first class pitcher and could swing a bat better than just about anyone.  Ohtani is the inverse, an elite pitcher who is also a solid designated hitter on his non-pitching days.  Ohtani came over to the Angels from Japan after a few successful years with the Nippon Ham Fighters (why would anyone want to fight a ham?).  A Japanese import, playing two ways as designated hitter in the National League.  A unique thing that only contemporary baseball could produce.

A surprise feel-good story late in the season was Albert Pujols chasing his 700th home run.  In his prime with the Cardinals he was the best in the game.  He got traded to the Angels and immediately dropped off to be a good, steady, but rapidly aging, hitter.  Still he kept accumulating home runs.  He got sentimentally traded back to the Cardinals for his final season and started pounding the ball and lifted his total to 703, right behind Hank Arron and Babe Ruth for the non-steroidal #3 position (4th overall).  Great story.  I love it when old guys make one last stand.

Performances aside, the evolution of the game and its presentation has been fascinating to me, even if I disagree with most of the changes.  A number of TV outlets are providing advanced stats live, which I can easily geek out for.  ESPN keeps a running list of what pitches are thrown and at what speed as the at-bat progresses.  

There have been attempts to speed up the game. Once you reach extra innings you start the top and bottom of each inning with a runner at second, hopefully making extra-inning games less interminable.  Also, you can now intentionally walk a batter by just signaling to the ump rather than go through the motions of throwing four balls way outside.  Again, an attempt to save a few seconds. Evidence suggests these have been useless in speeding things along.  

This year, there is also the option of using something called PitchCom.  The catcher wears a device on his wrist with a series of buttons which transmit the pitch call to the pitcher via a speaker in his hat.  This is almost certainly a reaction to the Astros sign stealing scandal of a few years back.

All of these, especially PitchCom seem kind of gimmicky.  I understand the intent, but all of these just remove a human aspect of the game.  You no longer have to work to get a runner in scoring position.  You no longer have to worry about a passed ball on a pitch out.  You no longer have to be clever about hiding your signals.  Unlike, replay which is  an attempt to get things right, these just reduce the random variables in the game without any real payoff.  Games still average over 3 hours.  I could do without all of these and kind of hope they go away, but I admit they've been interesting.

Another development in recent years is something called "The Shift" where teams will make drastic changes in the positioning of the fielders based on the proclivity of the hitter. For instance, for a left-handed hitter who constantly pulls the ball a team will position the third baseman halfway between second and third -- roughly where the shortstop usually plays, the shortstop well to the first base side of second, the second baseman between the shortstop and the first baseman -- probably well back into the outfield, and the first baseman right on the line.  It turns out the idea that the batter can cleverly control where he hits the ball is probably false.  For the most part, if you have a tendency to hit the ball a certain way, trying to change that just makes you a worse hitter.  As a batter, Where you will hit the ball is highly predictable.  As a result, The Shift has been enormously successful.  So successful at reducing overall offense (despite the individual performances above) that MLB has banned it starting next year.  Again, I think it's the wrong decision.  If batters don't want to face a shift, they should learn to hit to all fields. Killing The Shift may boost offense, but it will make things a little less interesting for a fan like me.

Back to the duration of games, I'd be remiss if I didn't point to The Savannah Bananas, the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball.  Their games move like lighting because they live by their own rules:

1.) Every inning counts. The team that scores the most runs in an inning gets a point. The first team to five points wins.

2.) A time limit of two hours. No inning starts after the game gets to be two hours old. There’s a tiebreaker format if a game is tied when the limit is up (see below.)

3.) No stepping out of the batter’s box. If a batter steps away from the box at any point, it’s a strike.

4.) No bunting.

5.) Batters can steal first. If there’s a wild pitch or a passed ball during any pitch of an at-bat, the batter can go to first.

6.) No walks. If a pitcher throws a fourth ball, the batter takes off toward first base in a sprint. The catcher then has to throw the ball around to every defensive player on the field before it becomes live. The hitter is allowed to advance to as many bases as possible before the ball becomes live. The ball doesn’t have to touch the pitcher or catcher.

7.) A one-on-one showdown tiebreaker. If a game is tied when the time is up, each team picks a pitcher and a hitter to face off, with the defensive team only having a catcher and pitcher in the field. If a hitter puts it in play, he has to make it home to get a point before the pitcher gets the ball and throws it to the catcher. If a pitcher gets a strikeout or throws the runner out before scoring, there’s no point for the hitting team. The first team to prevent the other from scoring wins.

8.) No mound visits from any coaches or players.

9.) If a fan catches a foul ball, it’s an out. Bring your glove!

Sounds crazy right?  But good luck getting a ticket to one of their games.  I would not want MLB to adopt these rules verbatim, but if they could do something about hitters stepping out of the box or pitchers wandering aimless around between pitches, they could probably cut a half hour of run time on average.

The last thing that I have enjoyed this year is the discovery of Jomboy media on youtube.  They provide highlights and commentary for many sports but mostly baseball and do a great job of digging deep into events, lip reading, and comic observations.  Probably not for the kids, but better than looking for highlights on ESPN.

I'm looking forward to spending some time following the playoffs.  Things are getting interesting.

[Sports] Tour de France

Once again I find myself the only person in North America who follows the Tour de France.  I can't blame anyone.  The coverage is abysmal.  Half the time the camera feeds are focused away from whatever action is going on.  Not that there is a whole lot of action.  The event in its entirety is 20+ days of folks riding bicycles for 5+ hours a day.  The teams are so good that for the most part once you have the lead, it is extraordinarily difficult for another team to overtake you.  In this case there was one stage where the leader and favorite got overtaken significantly and it was spoken of as historic.

TdF stages are split into three types -- most between 100 and 120 miles.  

• There are mountain stages, which are utterly brutal and feature steep miles-long climbs through the Alps or the Pyrenees.  Mountain stages are when riders often "crack"; that is to say, their bodies effectively give out and all the desire in the world can't keep them in the game.  These stages are the ultimate test of endurance and will often make the difference among the race favorites.

• There are time trial stages, which are exactly what they sound like: riders go off at set intervals and hammer through a shorter than normal course at a pretty much full-on pace the whole way.  In these stages the cyclist is on his own, no team to help, no one to draft off of.  The final day of racing is always a time trial so that effectively the leader is on his own to defend his lead against the last chance efforts of the contenders.

• Thirdly, there are sprint stages. These are generally flat or rolling hills, not mountainous, designed especially for sprint specialists, guys with enormous thighs who can pedal at ridiculous speeds.  These folks are almost never in contention for overall race victories so sprinting is kind of a race within a race. So after riding along for 4+ hours and 100+ miles, these guys put the hammer down for what often amounts to a photo finish.

The winner of the race will always be someone who climbs well and is good in time trials. Most importantly, he will have the best team surrounding him: teammates who sacrifice themselves to let him draft and lead him back to the front if there is a crash. 

This year's winner was exactly to formula.  He took the lead on a mountain stage when the existing leader -- last year's winner -- cracked.  In subsequent stages when challengers tried to race out ahead of him, his teammates essentially drafted him back up to the front.  It was a textbook victory.

There are a couple of things I really like about the Tour.  One is the sportsmanship.  There are traditions that have no documentation in the rules but are followed none-the-less.  For example, the last day of the race is largely ceremonial.  If you are leading going into the last day, even by just a few seconds, no one will challenge you.  It's sort of an acknowledgement that after 20 days of biking 100 miles a day, you're just glad to have completed the Tour.

Another tradition that is perhaps slightly less often adhered to is to not take advantage of a competitor's, especially the race leader's, mechanical issue or crash.  I've seen this a few times where there will be a crash in the peloton that involves a top contender and everyone just takes it easy until his team brings him a new bike and he's back in the thick of things.  This year the leader actually slowed down to let his prime competitor back up after a crash. (Granted there may have been some strategy to that. The leader only has to keep pace with his competitor, not pass him, and it's easier to keep pace if you can draft off him.)  The idea here is you win the race on biking skill, not because of mechanical failure or accidents.

Such traditions stand in sharp contrast to the behavior in most sports.  They are both archaic and noble.

I think the thing that most attracts me about it is that everything the racers feel on these long rides, I have experienced.  Sure I experience it after one day of riding 30-50 miles, not after three weeks of century-length efforts, but I know the feelings.  In my own small way, I know what it's like to be exhausted and confronted with a steep grade or the relief of sliding into another rider's slipstream or simply going as fast as I can on a flat, smooth road.

I also know how to fast-forward skillfully enough that I can reduce a 5-hour stage replay to about 45 minutes.  Yeah, that too.

[TV, Sports] Toob Notes, Lonely a the Top

Two documentaries featuring the best ever athletes at their sport came out on ESPN.

Last Dance
The story of the rise of Michael Jordan and the stormy times with the six-time NBA champion Chicago Bulls. It was too long and with too much filler. It was also way too worshipful, but that's not surprising since it's motivator is Bill Simmons who is the author of the terrific Book of Basketball and almost certainly the biggest basketball fan in history.

There was a time when I was a basketball fan. I loved the NBA in the Bird/Magic era. I would often watch entire double-headers and I still hear the NBA on CBS jingle when I think of it. Of course, I followed the Pistons back-to-back championship teams who everyone else hated, and rightly so. They were truly thugs on the court, but they were our thugs. (That's lame at best and shameful at worst.)

Michael Jordan never interested me. I hated the fawning he got, no matter how much he deserved it. I hated the media saturation. Coming from this era of great competition between Magic and Bird followed by the home team championships we go into the era where it not only was just about one team, but about one person that caused me to sour on the NBA.

In any event, I learned a couple of things from this documentary. First, I never knew how much conflict there was on those Bulls teams, not just with Bulls management but also among the players themselves. The other thing I noticed was Michael Jordan's intelligence. He had much more shaded views of events than I would have imagined. He seems very self-aware and thoughtful about his actions during those times. The extent to which he is regretful about anything is never explored although it can be read between the lines in some cases. Still, there is no mention of gambling or the less laudable second comeback.

At ten hour-long episodes it would have benefitted from some more judicious editing. It could have been at least 30% shorter.

Lance
The Lance Armstrong documentary is more economical, covering two two-hour episodes. Now that all the lawsuits have been settled; Lance comes clean about his actions and feelings. It is anything but worshipful, and quite stark on that matter. At the outset the interviewer asks Lance if he is going to tell the truth, and Lance responds that he will tell "my truth". Well, then.

We all know the outlines of Lance's story. Highlighted here are many scenes from his youth, his pre-cancer youth. He was a real prick. Think of the kind of prickishness that many young people display and amplify it by his level of talent and there you go. I always knew he was a prick, I just didn't know how bad.

But the real meat here is following him deeper and deeper into his lie. More and more people have to be destroyed. In retrospect Lance regrets most of the harm he's caused. Most. There are some people he still feels are worthy of his wrath -- Floyd Landis in particular. He still feels victimized by inequities in how juiced cyclists are treated -- some are still loved, others trashed. And, of course, whatever his cycling legacy, there is no denying the good Livestrong foundation has done.

All said and done, these two documentaries (Lance being far superior) really haven't changed the way I think about their subjects. I disliked the fawning of Jordan when he was playing and I can't see anything in the fawning Last Dance to change my mind. I saw Lance Armstrong's downfall as a Greek tragedy of hubris and I see it even more so after Lance.

A more interesting question to me is, is it a good thing to be the best? It might seem that way, but as I look at these two documentaries, I see some terrible aspects to it. Jordan does a good job of keeping his family out of it so it's hard to tell about his relationships with them (I know his marriages have been stormy, but that's not unusual). With respect to his friends, you see people like Ahmad Rashard and a couple of others but what are those friendships actually like? What does it mean for them to be a friend Michael Jordan? Given the realities of the situation, the nature of the differences in their lives, are they really friends or orbiters. Another way of putting it is given Michael's stature and position in the world, is it possible to just be a friend of his or are there other constraints and requirements? Can you really see yourself as having an equitable relationship with Michael? I cannot say whether a "friendship" with Michael is rewarding in the way most friendships are. Nor can I speculate on whether being his son or daughter allows for the traditional family rewards. It may be better or worse, but I strongly suspect it's quite different.

I can pretty much guarantee that were costs to being Lance Armstrong's son. He tells the story of defending his father during his 'tween years -- and if you know 'tween boys, you know how brutal that would be -- only to have his father come out and admit the lies. Unlike the speculation with Jordan, Lance, and Lance, is upfront about the costs to the people around him. Even absent the "disgrace", it's clear the Lance's relationships are affected by his Lance-ness. One of the final quotes from a long time acquaintance is that he has been Lance's friend for decades and "I still don't know if I love him or hate him."

Michael is rich, of course. Lance was, but is less so now and doesn't seem to have strong prospects. Both experienced boundless glory. One is still famous, the other infamous. But what of the value of their lives.

Let's think 50-60 years out. They will be mostly forgotten as people, just the statistics and outlines of their stories will be left and known only to those who take an esoteric interest in their respective sports. As much as we elevate athletes, they are, in essence, entertainers; creators of ephemeral exhilaration. There is value in that, however fleeting. There is, of course, value in the charitable work they have both done. Michael, as Chairman of the Charlotte Hornets, keeps a large business running and makes payroll, which is an underrated source value.


At my age, I have come to the conclusion that the value of your life is in how much you've enhanced the lives of the people you care about and it would be easy to say that the added costs of your glory to those close to you are too high and swamp the benefits. But that would be to discount the value you have, or could have, provided to strangers. As I started this post I was assuming I would come to the conclusion that the personality types who have that level of competitive drive are ultimately toxic for those around them and so it would be more of a curse than anything else, but now I am not so sure. I think if you have that level of competitiveness in you and you do not have the gifts to achieve it, that might be another story. That strikes me as a recipe for sociopathology. If you do actually achieve that level of eliteness, it seems like the pluses you can offer to the world might -- might -- outweigh the struggles of those around you (and yourself).

Back to the documentaries, take Last Dance with a grain of salt. Lance is an all time great character study. Both are worth watching.

Addendum: Some have outright accused the Last Dance of being rife with lies. Maybe an entire shaker of salt is in order.

[Sports] A Better Tour

I remain one of eight Americans who follows the Tour de France. For nearly a decade, the Tour has been dominated by big teams right from the start, to the point where, barring incidents, the winner was nearly foreordained. The event was becoming sclerotic. Everyone knew everyone else's strengths and weaknesses. Everyone knew the optimal strategy at any point. This year, a number of things happened to shake it up.

First, the leader -- Chris Froome -- of the dominant team -- Ineos (formerly Sky) -- dropped out with an injury a few weeks before the race. Shouldn't have been a big deal, but his backup -- Geraint Thomas -- was only given co-leadership along with a new young rider -- Egan Bernal. That suggested that team did not have total faith in Thomas and/or was looking to the future as much as the current race. Though they still looked to have the strongest team, that opened the door to all sorts of other possibilities.

Second, intentionally or not, the course changed to further open the door to alternatives outcomes. They skewed some of the more difficult stages to earlier in the race and adjusted at least one of the stages in the Alps to have a descent on the finish. In other words, it did not as heavily reward great climbers as it normally does. It was not an upheaval, just a slight shift in emphasis.

As a result a lot of actual bike racing was going on and there was drama galore. An unexpected leader -- Julian Alaphilippe -- emerged and surprised everyone with both what he could do and how long he could hold on. It was the sort of surprise that the deck was stacked against in the recent past. With each stage he was gaining more and more adherents and more and more people were actually questioning whether his expected eventual collapse would happen.

Then came the real weirdness. One team -- Movistar -- actually got so twisted up over strategy that they probably lost an opportunity to win the Tour when a rider -- Nairo Quintana -- took off and carved a huge chunk out of the current leader and could've carved out even more if his team was set on supporting a different rider -- Mikel Landa -- and so let him proceed ahead on his own, without the help that would have turned him into a contender. A truly bizarre happening.

It got weirder when came the landslide. The leader was caught behind on a big climb early in one of the final stages and the question was whether he could recover on the descent, at which he is the best in the world when suddenly the stage was called to a halt. Torrential rains triggered a landslide over a huge swath of the course. As such the day ended with a new leader and a never to be answered question about what could have been.

Perhaps ironically, the winner did end up being a climber from the most powerful team, and his co-captain took second place. But at least it wasn't foreordained. That made this one of the best Tours in many years. Let's hope this Tour clued the race organizers in to the need to mix things up a bit more often. Admiring the French countryside and the fitness of cyclists in general isn't enough to hold interest.

Addendum: One of the more frustrating aspects of watch the Tour is the abysmal TV coverage; they lose track of riders and a couple of the announcers (I won't name them) make truly inane comments. They get no coverage of attacks or crashes until they are over and being sorted out. Honestly, can they not just put a chip on every bike. Better yet, a camera. Or why not use drone cameras. Hell, we don't even get a split screen. It's straight out of the '70s. It's really remarkable for such a huge event to have so little thought and resources put into TV coverage. I suppose given there are only 8 of us in the U.S. paying attention we should be happy with what we get. On the other hand, with some better and more dramatic footage, maybe there'd be more than 8 of us.

[Rant, Sports] Fakery for No Fun and No Profit

You probably know I have done a lot of running races - 5ks, half-marathons, etc. Most of these are local in origin. I've done some big ones, but even those are not particularly noteworthy to anyone except people running in them, or perhaps the drivers who have their commutes interrupted by road closures. So it astonishes me that people work hard to cheat at them. Honestly, what does that get you?

We usually do dishonest things for the sake of either money or status, and believe me, short of being Olympic-level elite, there is no money in running. Or at least it seems there is no money without cheating. Evidently a while back there was a trainer with a history of doping his near-elite runners. Said runners would then enter mid-level races -- too small for elites, but locally popular enough to have $500-$1000 victory prizes. These doped high-end runners, often Kenyans, would dominate the locals and disappear with their prize money before anyone thought to check on their history. Do this for 5 or so races a month and you can make a passable income or, if you live cheaply, a healthy amount of money to send back to your relatives in Kenya. Be a trainer with a stable of runners doing this and your cut could amount to real money. Here's the original story.

A couple of years ago a popular local race called the Dexter-Ann Arbor run had a scare along these lines, when a Kenyan runner won the half-marathon and started immediately demanding his prize money right away. Everybody got suspicious and there was a multi-week delay as the race authorities looked into it. Eventually the runner was found to be legit and got his money.

But most cheating is not that nefarious. The latest scandal concerned Dr. Frank Meza who seemed to set the over-70 marathon record in LA, then got suspected of cheating; basically taking shortcuts to skip sections of the course. Though he denied everything, evidence mounted. It makes sense that he's old since you would have to be from a different era to expect you can do anything in public with there being photographic evidence. In the end he was disqualified. This wasn't the first time he had been accused of cheating. He was disqualified twice from the Sacramento marathon for the same reason. Then things took a tragic turn three days later when he was found dead, cause ruled to be suicide.

Again, why cheat? This is a fully-mature, 70-year-old man; a retired physician. What on earth is he getting out of this? What is the obsession that would make him do such a thing? Is it a blow against mortality? As long as he keeps running faster he's not dying. Irrational or not, conscious or not, there must be some motivating force. What is it? I guess we'll never know.

Other cheating is more prosaic, like bib stealing. What a crook can do is steal a bib (a paid participants number that gets attached to your shirt to validate your entry) and sell it online. Some very popular races cost into the hundreds, so selling a handful of stolen bibs can be a nice quick piece of cash. It is reprehensible, but at least I understand it. Like most thievery, it's done for the money.

It's also astoundingly stupid. Racers are photographer throughout the course by companies hoping to sell them commemorative photos. All the victim has to do is find a picture of you after the race, go on social media to locate you, then call the police. They can then charge you and whoever you bought it from online. Frankly, short of trying to rob a police station, I can't think of a stupider crime. But it happens. My rule for life: Never do anything in public you would not want to see on YouTube.

Here's an interesting scam. This woman hangs out on Instagram and looks for folks who post pictures of their race bibs before the race. She then makes copies of them, essentially racing for free. In these instances, money is not the motivation. What could it be? Health? No. Certainly there is a health benefit to being able to run a 5k or something, but it doesn't come from the medal or the t-shirt. You get the same benefit from running around your neighborhood. Most of the positive motivations like love or altruism don't come into play. So what's left?

Why, our old friend Status, of course. Not in a straightforward sense -- trust me, no cares that you ran the Princess 10k at Disney in any important way. It's the Facebook photo. The image of being one of those fit people, but without actually making the sacrifice. It's your public brand. Look at the photo on the top of this page. Five girls, one bib number. You can't tell me this wasn't all for the purposes of Facebook/Instagram personality positioning. They desperately want to portray themselves as fun and fit and vibrant and gain all the Likes. To that end, they probably all pitched in for one bib then photocopied it. Scroll down on this page and look at the social media exchange at the bottom. Astonishing. If you want to understand better the interaction of status and social media, read Eugene Wei on status as a service.

This is entertaining in the same way watching a bungling incompetent is. Let's face it, when the stakes are so low, it's hard to get righteously indignant. But people who set up and work the races work hard, usually for a higher cause. Look at it this way, you wouldn't ignore someone who was shoplifting a $50 watch, so why would you turn a blind eye to someone copying a bib for a $50 race? (Broken windows, maybe?)

That said, you also have to admit that the profound level of stupidity involved does make it outright comical.

And yet, as with all fun and games, at some point something bad happens. Frank Meza almost certainly cheated, for reasons we will never truly know. He almost certainly deserved the minor shame that was cast on him. He also almost certainly didn't deserve to die.

Perhaps the common thread in all of this is an absence of perspective.

[Sports] Tour de Familiar

Poor Chris Froome. Nobody likes him. A four time champ and the chief guy on the strongest team, he was the overdog to begin with. He was brushed by scandal, and I do mean brushed. He tested high for an asthma medication which he has been prescribed (he does have asthma), so it's not like he was mainlining EPO. But still, in an age when riders target the TdF by skipping the major races earlier in the season so as not to wear themselves out, with his eligibility uncertain he took on the big early-season race, the Giro d'Italia (the Italian tour), and won it, wearing himself out in the process. Only then he was cleared of the charges and lined up with his team for the TdF, amidst the sancitmonious boos of the crowd. His fatigue showed. Although he was in the hunt most of the way, and finished third, a couple of deadly mountain stages made it clear he was not where he needed to be. Much speculation was that he was mentally exhausted from his fight against the ban, but in reality it was more likely physical. I have once in my life ridden 100 miles at half the pace these guys do, and it took me a few days to recover. These guys do it at twice my pace day after day. Granted they are about half my weight and less than half my age but, with all due respect to ultra-marathoners, channel swimmers, ironman triathletes, and such, the 21-days-with-only-two-rest-days aspect of this race makes these guys the most amazing endurance athletes on the planet.

Of course, in what is a clear commentary on one of the problems with the Tour, with Froome not able to win, his team, Team Sky, simply trotted out the next guy in line and won handily with him instead -- that would be Geraint Thomas. Team Sky has all the money. Their stable of riders is so deep that -- in one of the worst cases of bad timing -- last year's second banana Mikel Landa left rather than be second banana again so Team Sky just went to the next guy in line and never lost a step leaving Landa and his new team in the dust. In fact, the Team Sky's second banana from two years ago, Richie Porte, also left to be a first banana on a new team and was a favorite until he crashed out.

Predictability in sports is a problem. If you can predict the outcome with high probability it lessens the fan experience and discourages viewing. Sponsors don't like that. It's unclear how to resolve this problem other than to hope one year, one of these second bananas that strikes out on his own, comes through.

Another thing is the PED scandals still loom large over this sport. Froome got booed despite being cleared. Then, there is the highest of the high profile culprits, Lance Armstrong, still floating around the periphery. He's now doing a podcast where he often discusses cycling. He is working really had to rehabilitate his persona. To his credit, he doesn't dodge blame anymore. He seems to have accepted his guilt and that it will follow him forever. I don't know if it's good or bad that he's still around the sport, whether he is helping put the scandals in context or he is just reminding everyone of sad situation. I do know that watching Geraint Thomas win handily, with enough juice at the end to handily crush any challenge from other riders, the first thought that went through my head was, "Are there Vegas odds on him getting busted for EPO?"

The TV coverage needs a lot of work. The announcers are OK -- a couple of them get confused about things or say silly stuff, but they have enough personality to keep things lively. But you often get haphazard camera work, since it's all done from vehicles trying to maneuver through the crowd of cyclists without interfering with the race. An enlightened coverage package would plant forward and rear facing cameras on all the bikes with live streaming -- this is not remotely beyond the technical expertise of a production crew. If they were really smart, they'd have drone coverage too.

Still, the Tour is beautiful. The French countryside is amazing. And even if the big prize is foreordained, there are the other competitions, the sprints, the mountains, the stage victories, to keep things interesting. Also, for me, the attraction is that I can relate to everything that happens. I can see who making what choice as to heavy or light gear. I know how much easier it is to draft. I know what it's like to climb past the point of pain. And I know what it's like to crack. In my own small way, of course. I suppose that's part of the attraction for me -- I can go out and do a 40 mile ride on a Saturday, them catch up with the prime time replay in the evening, feeling a distant kinship.

A distant kinship to a 23-year-old, 135-lb Belgian in spandex. Very distant.

[Sports] Bore de France

I remain one of the nine total Americans who follow the Tour De France. This year's race left a lot to be desired. It was almost a forgone conclusion that Chris Froome would win. His team, Team Sky, buys all the high end cycling talent up and stays laser focused on the Tour from the instant the previous year's Tour is complete. The race organizers did what they could to make it more competitive -- reduce the number of finishes on the tops of mountains, reduce the number and length of time trials -- but it made no difference. An individually great cyclist like Froome could theoretically be overcome with good tactics, but not when the team around him is so totally superior. Time and time again, he would be surrounded by two or three teammates when his competitors were more or less on their own. So much so that even when he had a bad day, or looked like he was vulnerable, nobody else had anything in the tank to take some time out of him. This was exactly what was expected beforehand and it is exactly what occurred.

The battle for the sprinter's championship was a bloody mess. Defending champ Peter Sagan got himself disqualified, very controversially, by taking out one of his competitors who happened to also be on of the most recognizable names in sprinting, Mark Cavendish. There was a stretch in years past when Cavendish was unbeatable and he was still as likely to take a stage as anyone else. In the course of a sprint in the early stages they collided resulting in an tour ending injury to Cavendish. Upon further review, the Tour Administrators disqualified Sagan, imply he was the cause of it. Replays suggest that wasn't remotely true but, like Froome, Sagan has been very dominant and has been on the short end of efforts against him in the name of competitive balance. It wouldn't surprise me if this played into the decision to DQ him, in the hopes of making the sprint championship more interesting. As it turned out, it more plain weird than dramatic. After the loss of Sagan and Cavendish, Marcel Kittle, also a great sprinter, started to dominate, but when the Tour moved into the mountains he burned himself out trying to keep up, eventually dropping out entirely. The ultimate victory went to Australian Michael Matthews. It was well earned and he had contenders to fight off until the last day, but there was the lingering feeling that with so many big names gone, circumstances played a big role in his victory.

So, yeah, it was not a Tour that I would expect to increase viewership. The TV coverage was decent this year, though the commentators still are not the best, they are getting better and are at least entertaining. They have a tendency to shy away from controversy and occasionally miss the obvious -- at one point they couldn't understand why the crowd was booing Chris Froome; it was obvious they weren't booing him, they were saying "Froooome!" Also, the scenery and setting of the French countryside is simply gorgeous. It makes me want to take a bike tour of Provence.

With Froome aging and Sky cyclists anxious to lead their own teams, the current speculation is that next year should actually be less of a foregone conclusion. I and the eight other Americans watching hope so.

Tangent: I am proud to say during the Tour I completed my first ever 100 mile bike ride, referred to in endurance cycling circles as a Century. It took a few minutes over seven hours (not including breaks). It was as grueling as it gets and it laid me up for days afterwards. The TdF riders ride over 100 miles a day for weeks at a time all at a pace roughly twice as fast as mine. It really put their skill in a new context for me. That context being a blown mind. It really is remarkable how far elite athletes are above casual athletes like me.

[Sports] Cheater's Code

This pinged my radar because I am one of the eight Americans with an interest in professional cycling and who follows the Tour De France. One of the fascinating things about the Tour to me is the contrast between the strong sense of sportsmanly honor among the participants and the fact that it is also the dirtiest sport with respect to doping or juicing or bio-chemical what-have-yous. They have a tradition that if the race leader goes down in an accident or with a mechanical problem, everybody holds up until he's back on track because they want to win based on their cycling skills, not the happenstance of equipment or road conditions or the like. A point point a couple of years back everyone just stopped racing in a stage because an idiot had thrown tacks in the road and a number of people got blow outs, so they all held up and finished together as a group. It's very admirable and truly idealistic, yet there was also a string of well over a decade when every winner got stripped of his victory due to failing blood tests. The cycling subculture has its own concept of sportsmanship that is more extreme than other sports in both the noble and ignoble directions.

The doping issue seems to have been resolved -- seems -- but it's really hard to consider there to be any mitigating circumstances with the latest method of cheating in cycling. It appears some folks have taken to installing hidden motors in their bikes to give them an added boost. When I skimmed the headline I thought it too absurd to be real, but that's exactly what's going on. Evidently it's not a terribly new development and there are firms out there that provide kits to modify your bike in a stealthy manner. You can read the details at Gizmodo.

I would think cyclists would see this as a order of magnitude more ignoble than doping, because it is a mechanical thing. Shouldn't the same sporting instinct that makes you hold up when the leader has an equipment failure also make you ashamed to enhance your equipment for victory. Doping, as illegal as it was, was at least a change to the cyclist's body which is still, well, the cyclist -- not a piece of equipment. But I don't know. Human beings are designed for rationalized hypocrisy at the cellular level; maybe they'll figure out a way to justify it. If they do, it would really make me wonder where the line will be drawn. Maybe at taking a shortcut to the finish line?

It's going to make this year's Tour very interesting. To the eight of us watching, anyway.

[Sports] Just Another Tour

Just Another Tour: Once again, I was the only person in North America following the Tour de France live. Well, not really live. I was following it about 12 hours delayed on the primetime coverage of the increasingly indispensable NBC Sports channel. The coverage is a delight. The announcers are dead on professionals and the commentators have the right balance of seriousness and humor (Bob "Bobke" Roll is a great character). The scenery and camera work is amazing and beautiful, even if they occasionally miss the key events. Honestly, I love the panning shots of the colors in the peloton flying past some medieval castle -- really astounding images. Plus, it's great to have on in the background while writing or web surfing on your tablet.

Last year's winner, Bradley Wiggins, was out with an injury so his second in command, Chris Froome, inherited the ace Team Sky, then put on a show himself cranking out some astounding stage performances. The personalities of the two contrast significantly (although they are great friends). Wiggins was, well, let's call it forthright in his opinions, and more than a little salty in his language. Froome is about as soft spoken and polite as they come. His favorite band is Coldplay and his favorite movie is Shawshank Redemption. Honestly. Of the two I like Froome better. He paid his dues the previous year and got his shot this year, then just stomped everybody. He looks something like a space alien -- tall and blade thin with skinny angular arms and legs (he's 6'1" and a touch over 150 lbs.). It will be interesting to see how Team Sky sets themselves up next year. Will they want Wiggins back? If so, Froome should go somewhere else because he has no business being anyone's second banana. Also there is Richie Porte, who was to Froome as Froome was to Wiggins, just sort of laying in wait. Team Sky is sitting pretty and it's a fair bet whoever their top rider is will be the favorite next year.

As to the remainder of the field, well, Alberto Contador demonstrated that he cannot dominate a race now that he's off the juice. Sorry, I'm not a big fan of Contador. As filled with prima donnas as the Tour is, there is a still a fairly firm tradition of sportsmanship that Contador won't hesitate to violate if it suits him, doping aside. Cadel Evans, who won two years ago was never really close to contention. Next year's yellow jersey competition is going to be wide open.

Sprinting is wide open now too, despite being dominated previously by Mark Cavendish. Andre Greipel and Marcel Kittel were all over him at every finish line. And Peter Sagan took the green jersey by being a more rounded cyclist overall and swamping all the mid-race sprints. It's strange not to see Cavendish as unbeatable and it's hard to tell what happened this year. Either he didn't get the team support he needed or he's just getting older (trust me, that happens fast and shows up quickly when thousandths of a second count). He was also the focus of what little controversy there was in the Tour when he accidentally sideswiped another rider during a sprint, leaving him on the ground near the finish. I seriously doubt there was any sort of intent to it, but Cavendish is profoundly prickish and so the French took the opportunity to vilify him a bit. The following day somebody threw a cupful of urine on him. (Try to imagine what it is like in the mind of an individual who saves his pee in a cup to throw on one if the riders in the Tour de France. You can't, can you? To call it sociopathic is generous.)

The other news was the emergence of a rookie Colombian rider Nairo Quintana who proved to be an amazing climber and won the white jersey as the best young rider. He has the personality of a cardboard cutout but that may just be due to youth and language. He was the only one who seemed to be able to challenge Froome in the mountains. The most promising American was also a rookie, Andrew Talansky who finished 10th overall and second to Quintana for the white jersey. I hope something comes of him. It'll be good for the sport to have an American in the mix for yellow, so perhaps I'm not so lonely in my viewership. Don't forget the U.S. has exactly one Tour de France winning rider in it's history now, thank you very much Lance.

Which brings me to a lurking problem. When following cycling you have to hold back. You have to be careful not to get too enthusiastic. Recent history suggests that any one of these guys might end up stripped of whatever victories they have because of the juice. In this way cycling is similar to baseball now. Baseball as it is being played on the field now is probably the best it has even been (I should really do a post on that), but there's always that little voice in the background that tells you not to get too excited because that other shoe is dangling by a thread. It's going to be quite a few years until either of these sports shake that spectre.

But it won't stop me from picturing myself on a long open road, pedalling smoothly in a tall gear through an expansive vineyard, then snaking into rustic village and past a 14th century abbey. I know exactly what it would look like.

[Sports] Flat Tour

Flat Tour: I continue my tradition of being the only North American who follows the Tour de France, and this year it was rather a dull one. The winner was Bradley Wiggins and he had the race pretty much sewn up in the first few days. It was his unless he snapped a femur and couldn't continue. He was head and shoulders above anyone else on the time trials and he clearly had the best team around him, including the guy who finished second, so it really was no contest. Normally if the top two guys are on the same team, there is a controversy over who should be number one, but that never got off the ground because the number two guy immediately said "I'm the number 2 guy; I'm here to support the number 1 guy, and that's that," or words the that effect.

Last year's winner, Cadel Evans, was clearly not in condition to compete, to the point that another rider on his team taking over the top dog spot from him. A couple of other possible contenders were sidelined with injuries. Blah.

Oh, there were bits and pieces of excitement. There were massive crashes for about five days in a row. Some of these crashes are action-movie vicious. Imagine being hurled out a car moving at about 30 miles per hour protected by nothing but a helmet and a layer of spandex. More amazingly, during one stage, in a monumental act of asshattery, someone covered a stretch of the road with tacks and nails. But this only served to highlight something I love about the Tour -- the sportsmanship. The leader, Wiggins, managed to avoid any tack-induced flats, but the guy who was at that point still considered a main rival, Evans, suffered two blowouts (as did many others). Wiggins, upon hearing of this, intentionally slowed down (and the rest of the field slowed with him) until Evans changed tires and regained his ground. The overriding principle being that you should not lose the Tour because of mechanical problems. You should lose because the other guy raced better. This is really quite unique in sports, to my understanding. I guarantee you no NASCAR driver has ever slowed down because his rival had mechanical problems. In no running race has anyone ever held up because a rival's shoelace snapped. It's just the purest example of old school sportsmanship. It's the sort of behavior that is long gone from the wider world.

Of course, you can counter that with all the doping that goes on cycling may also be the dirtiest sport in the world. But viewed narrowly, it's pretty cool.