As a sports fan, I enjoy this time of year more than any other. The baseball playoffs are about to start, the football season is just ramping up and even the NBA players are beginning to go through the standard preseason regimen of settling all their outstanding paternity suits.
Part of what makes being a fan so enjoyable is the pride in knowing that we Americans have generously shared our homegrown games with so many other nations. Now, admittedly, cynics might argue that the major sports leagues have only encouraged other countries to play baseball, basketball and football (or, as it’s known internationally, “soccer”) in a calculated effort to create additional revenue streams.
How silly. I mean, if professional sports teams only cared about profits, would they magnanimously hand out 24-ounce plastic cups absolutely free of charge with every purchase of a $7.50 soda? No way.
Not all attempts to spread our major sports to the rest of the world have been successful, however. Our friends across the Atlantic, for example, have greeted NFL Europe with roughly the same lack of enthusiasm they’ve shown for other U.S. exports like Euro Disney, growth hormone-saturated beef and backrubs from President Bush.
Still, there is a great joy in watching foreigners try to pick up American sports. Joy, specifically, in seeing them flail around, that is.
“Ha, look at those rubes,” I recall thinking while watching a TV report about a newly formed Latvian baseball club, “they can’t even execute a basic ninth-inning fake double steal hit-and-run play with men on first and third.” The Latvians were so pathetic they barely eked out a 5-2 victory over a team of American collegiate all-stars.
Which brings us to the main problem with letting other countries play our sports: Eventually they start beating us. Remember back in 1992, for example, when the “Dream Team” of NBA players cruised to an Olympic Gold medal, crushing all their opponents along the way by an average score of 211-3? Who could have imagined that today, just 14 years later, the U.S. team would lose the world basketball championship to Greece, a country that, as far as anyone can recall, hasn’t won a major international contest since athletes stopped competing in the nude.
Thankfully, American fans have adjusted to the stronger international competition. So while we may not be able to enjoy our favorite pastime of watching American superstars destroy everyone else, we can still focus on our second-favorite pastime — complaining on talk radio that our superstar athletes are a bunch of whiny, lazy, overpaid bums.
Nevertheless, the American sports industry is working hard to help our athletes stay ahead. And not just by handing out steroids like they’re Jujubes. The ingenious solution to the problem of falling behind other countries in sports we used to dominate is simple: Keep coming up with new sports.
This is why, when watching the Winter Olympics, you may occasionally be surprised to see a bizarre and unfamiliar event, typically involving a snowboarder whirling through the air while commentators utter seeming gibberish like, “Wolfrum busted a righteous 720 air to fakey with a stalefish grab!”
Your natural inclination is to remark, “This isn’t the Olympics — it’s footage of some outlawed Viking torture practice.”
But then take a look at the medal stand — if Americans have swept gold, silver and bronze, you’ll know this “sport” is the result of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s diligent efforts to make sure there’s still a competition American athletes can win.
I, for one, applaud their efforts, and will gladly continue cheering on all our high-performing athletes. Until they start losing to the Latvians, that is.
Examiner columnist Malcolm Fleschner is already in training for the day backside scratching is named an Olympic sport.
