#gmmm does sports

[getmemymicroscope]

Someone needs to line up all the NFL officials and launch them into the fucking moon. They’re not even hiding their biases anymore and are quickly approaching MLB and PAC-12 levels of incompetence.

It’s not even fun to watch anymore (okay, it hasn’t been for a while, but this is really approaching ridiculous).

[getmemymicroscope]

Excitement, Somewhat

Growing up, I used to love sports. Some of this was a part of being a loner in a state where I was a clear outsider, some of it was because of the cyclical "think about sports -> loner -> more time to think about sports -> more loner."

I watched basketball, and baseball, and football, and occasionally soccer (world cup), and, as I grew up a bit more, cricket (world cup), and parts of the Olympics, and ice hockey. I played sports video games, A LOT (MVP Baseball; Madden, even the one with the 'vision cone' - which I loved!; NBA Live; Blades of Steel; FIFA; NCAA Football; NCAA March Madness, that 1 time; this random PC cricket game that required MS-DOS that we got from India on a floppy disk; whatever that android-based football game was for the original Nintendo system that was damn near impossible to figure out how to play; Mario Tennis, and Baseball, and Kart). ... In fact, pretty much every video game we owned growing up sports related (except, I guess, a couple of Pokemon games).

And I absolutely LOVED NBA and NFL draft season. Like, as much as I sorta enjoyed the games (made harder because the teams I rooted for sucked, and mostly still do suck*), the best part was the off-season and the draft (well, except for the fact that it took forever to reach and then immediately ended and left a giant swathe of empty time). Even in the sports video games, I cared less about playing the actual game and more about the team-building through drafting and free agency and trades.

At some point, probably around the time of undergrad, this love started dying. Some of it was just getting busy with other stuff (okay, that didn't really happen til I got to med school), but mostly it was things like seeing how horribly biased the officiating was (the fact that a 'foul' wasn't a foul if you were a superstar was always ridiculous to me), plus the move towards team automatically 'tanking' halfway through a season and not even trying to win, plus annoyance of the same teams winning over and over again (I do believe parity should be present, but I realize some of this was just that some teams never fully tried; but this was made worse by the biased officiating) - especially my chosen teams being utter hell. I remember, in particular, one game early in my undergrad career where my team essentially won a close game on a tough play at the end, but the star on the other team essentially glared at the official until he called a foul and allowed for free throws (and an eventual overtime win for the bad guys), and another instance years before that before another superstar committed a foul but was allowed to get away with it to win a game for his team. Beyond that, I'm not ashamed to say that I rooted for some teams that were perfectly happy with their "never gonna win it all" status quo - one team at least had playoff aspirations every where, whilst another was clearly just a way for the owner to make some dough without spending a cent (and remains so).

That second team did have a brief bit of limited glory (early playoff exits) around the time I got into med school, but it had been so long that even an early playoff exit was exciting. But since then, they've gone back to the dumps. But that, combined with the realities of med school, essentially crushed any interest I had in sports.

In fact, aside from like the Super Bowl (with friends), my watching is essentially now limited to World Cup soccer and/or cricket, a bit of tennis. the early rounds of March Madness, occasionally a hockey playoff game, and, in the case of one 3 month span where I couldn't find much else to do, curling. I'll occasionally watch a bit of 'Red Zone' football, mostly cuz I have some friends who are big fans and I like talking to them about it. (Keeping in my tradition about loving the off-season, I actually spend more time reading about the transactional stuff than the actual games most of the time.) Noticeably absent - NBA and MLB, which were my 2 favorite ones growing up (also, funnily enough, the ones with by far the worst/most biased officiating). And also college football, which I used to love before it turned into the SEC-biased fuck-fest that it is today.

But this all comes up because recently, I turned on a WNBA game. Caitlin Clark, of course, against the LA Sparks (her team's first win of the season, as it turned out).

In the end, it was a close game. I had only turned it on in the 4th quarter - so I didn't know at the time that she was like 0-7 or 1-8 or whatever from downtown at that point. But as the clock wound down, I said to my wall (still with the being a loner - I guess some things never change) "she's gonna make one now" - and she promptly, of course, hit one of her calling card long-distance shots. A few minutes later, she did the same thing again (another 1 I told my wall was coming before it did). And that level of excitement I felt when she hit those shots...!

Now, of course she's good and that adds to the excitement a bit - if it was me out there, I think people would just be like "what the fuck, bench that loser!" But like, that level of excitement is something I haven't felt in/from the NBA, or MLB (or honestly, even the NFL, which again might be a bit of a parity thing combined with questionable officiating that has become the norm), or college football in a long, long while. Seeing her hit those shots, though - even as someone who hasn't watched the WNBA since the local team left my at-the-time home state years ago and as someone who definitely doesn't having a rooting interest, team-wise - was absolutely awesome. It was honestly just enthralling, the type of thing you'd want to talk to your friends about and watch again (if, you know, they weren't of the mindset that the WNBA is shit), the type of stuff you'd want to watch on repeat.

The type of excitement I haven't felt in a sporting even since the time a player on my team hit a shot to send them to the finals for the first time ever, or when I correctly predicted a Super Bowl onside kick (though that was admittedly more about my accurate prediction than the actual play), or the Sosa/McGwire home run chase (steroids be damned - that was a level of excitement the MLB has not been able to garner in YEARS, and to deny them the Hall of Fame when they literally saved your sport back then is fucking stupid as fuck).

Like, literally - baseball was all but dead - and they made it a nightly thing. You'd turn on the game games to watch them get one swing closer to the mark - the contest between them literally brought baseball into the households of millions. And now, not only are they not in the Hall of Fame, but we have to deal with whatever the fuck this nonsense umpiring is (literally, they seem to be getting worse by the minute, and more power-hungry by the minute as well) plus this NBA-level bullshit (or '90s NY-level bullshit) of a few big teams literally buying all the big-name players.

At some point, I'll make a list, for sure. But just that feeling of watching Caitlin Clark make those shots - maybe it was because it's her first win, maybe it is just because I'm starved to watch and care for some basketball again now that the NBA is all but dead to me - is the most excited I've been by a sporting moment in quite a while.

That level of excitement from sports has been missing from my life for a long, long time (and even when something happens, the overall exciting moments have been delayed for me, like India winning the cricket world cup whilst I was literally in the middle of microbiology course final in undergrad). I think I could get used to that again. Now I just need to find a sport that hasn't been completely ruined by bad and/or biased officiating, lack of parity amongst teams/leagues, or whatever the fuck is going on with college football (lets just ban the stupid conference, life would be better for everyone that way).

[getmemymicroscope]

Absurdity

The MLB just gave the "comeback player of the year" to a man who pitched 5 innings this season before getting hurt.

Don't get me wrong - it's a great story, overcoming a stage IV non-Hodgkin lymphoma to return to the field. But to call him "comeback player of the year" for pitching 5 innings is ridiculous.

If you want to award it to the best story, that's fine - just change the name of the award.

Of course, the MLB is a fucking shitshow that completely revels in the idea of "rich get richer" and "fuck the little guys" and "turn a blind eye towards clear competitive imbalances" (they're much like the NCAA in that regard), so, really - fuck the MLB.

[getmemymicroscope]

NFL Officials

I understand the safety aspect of a lot of these calls - but the bullshit "roughing the passer" nonsense that every QB whines for every time they get touched is getting ridiculous. Especially when it's reached NBA levels of bullshit, where any "big name" QB can get any call they want whilst any other QB just has to take the hits.

It's almost like the leagues have told the officials that they should display favoritism at all possible instances.

What a fucking joke.

[getmemymicroscope]

Sportsball'n

Like, I understand that Bonds & McGwire & Sosa may have cheated on their way to becoming big names in baseball. But then, a ton of other people have also cheated, and most of them weren't that good even in the height of their cheating.

Also, other athletes have cheated. You think the no fun league is gonna hold out Belicheat or co. for cheating? Hell no.

And, unlike the aforementioned no fun league cheaters, the above - especially McGwire and Sosa - did something that no one has been able to do for years. They injected (pardon the pun) the sport of baseball with a level of excitement that they're not going to be able to match again for a long, long time.

I mean, sure. You've got fans of the evil empires who are always into it, because they're the like 8 teams that can spend money willy-nilly in a sport that refuses to adopt a salary cap - meaning that by 2-3 months in, 75% of the teams' fans can just go home and give up, because once again it won't be their year - and then, after the season, those teams will either trade, or outright lose, their home-grown star players to the teams that just buy the superstars. It's disgusting and totally makes for a pathetic sports league.

Point is, these guys made baseball exciting for all us other folks. For a good few months there, people who would have already given up on the season would sit down to watch these guys on TV. They literally made baseball a "much watch" event - something that really hasn't existed since, if we're being honest.

Don't get me wrong - I never rooted for them or their teams (well, aside for rooting for them to get the record). I'm not a fan of them, and if they cheated, well, boo on them. But I mean, they've been publicly ostracized by the sports folk for years. Deservedly so, if they in fact cheated.

But that doesn't change the fact that even with steroids, they had impressive careers. And, perhaps most importantly to the braindead asshats that vote on this stuff - they helped keep their sport alive for a bit longer, allowing for a few more years of rich teams buying all the good players. Because apparently that is worthy of celebration, but someone keeping the sport alive with a home run chase for the ages is not.

Fuck those entitled asshats.