“My fault”

Instead of a monday morning edition, I’m going to try and start my sunday evening (word)press. I think it will help me to be more on top of writing…

A random, but similar, connection of events was the spark.

We have the Winter Olympics in Sochi this year. Ideally the top in the world, the cream of the crop, pushing the limits of safety to take the gold and the international acclaim until the next Olympics.

I have also started my spring tennis USTA men’s 3.0 practice.

As well for my own reasons I was reading about the history of cricket.

The obvious is that these are all sports. The beginning is when I started reading about the history of cricket.

Cricket is a major sport around the world, second only to football (soccer for the western folk). While reading through the history I was quite happy to read about the incredible sportsmanship that takes place by the players. I would say this is the number one sport, where players actually turn themselves in if they messed up or were wrong and the problem wasn’t caught. Even if they THINK they were wrong a batter may walk off the field. I’ve heard of this being done in golf. Not just in sports but how often in everyday life does someone come forth and claim fault if no one saw them.

In my own experiences with tennis, I will turn myself in by calling my serve or return out if I clearly saw it and the other team wasn’t sure. It doesn’t matter if I was doing this for money or as I do, just for fun. On the flip side, in the last few years I can recall many times during matches, usually when things are close, that a ball is called out that I, my partner if in doubles, and even teammates (mine and theirs) watching all thought was good. But there is no camera watching for a replay to contest this. It’s supposed to be based on good faith. I don’t succumb and start playing that way back. I want no one that knows me to ever think that I would cheat to try and win. I can only play as I do that day. Like yoga, it’s my practice that day. Some days you got it, some days you don’t. Now I do like the idea of the camera in professional tennis. Not because it gives the athlete a way to challenge or sometimes to take a short break. I hope that the computer systems get fast enough that it will supplement EVERY call by the line judges. Those balls can come fast and furious. The athlete placing the ball sometimes making it in or out by millimeters. I’m still happy if my serve makes it in the box. I wonder how many calls were missed because it wasn’t seen. If they made it they should get the credit for it. They earned it. I’ll just keep hoping that technology will quickly catch up for tennis at least.

In other sports it would be interesting if calls could be changed or reversed if seen on replay. Maybe seeing a player infraction during a reply of a reviewable play during american football would result in a penalty. Again, it was earned and now it was caught. Same with soccer. A goal is made and on replay a penalty was seen that if it had been caught would have stopped the play. Maybe the goal gets denied now.

I’m still not a fan of the idea that celebrities in sports, movies, music, etc, are able to do things that normally would get someone else in really big trouble. It’s the basics of greed over morals AND ethics. Morals because they aren’t conducting themselves responsibly and are a crappy role model and ethics because they are going against societal ‘rules’ and getting away with it. A more ethical method would be to ban a player from their sport (think cycling) for something illegal like being caught with drugs in their system. How many football and baseball players continue in their field with only a slap on the wrist. Last year’s scandal with baseball is a possible example. Possible because while people were suspended it’s hard to say why. For anyone that was ‘proven’ to have used enhancing drugs, a suspension is a slap on the wrist.

In this season with the winter olympics most of it is televised or being recorded and a lot of events are also individual, definitely not much of an opportunity for someone to get into trouble. I can hope it’s because they are the elites and not because it’s televised that they will continue to work and strive at the highest level to showcase what it means to be an olympiad and a true winner, metal or not.

-Santa’s Fallen Angel

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *