Sports are rooted in tradition and many fans develop their beliefs based off their own biases and preconceived notions. Examples of bias exist in each sport: Bud Selig has called the Oakland A’s success “an aberration”, walks were an irrelevant statistic in baseball for over 100 years because of one statistician’s opinion, and an ESPN author once ran an article titled “Wisconsin: The Most Boring Team in America.” Throughout the history of sports, coaches and managers have been trying to find inefficiencies and rethink the way their game is played. When resources run low or tradition doesn’t exist, those in charge need to have a willingness to reconsider their sport: how it is managed, how it is played, who is best suited to play it, and why. …show more content…
James’ approach was to develop a statistical scientific method that would analyze and study why teams win and lose. Eventually, James would create Sabermetrics. James defined Sabermetrics as “the search for objective knowledge in baseball.” In other words, Sabermetrics tries to answer objective questions about baseball, such as “which player on the Brewers contributed the most to the team’s offense?” Sabremetrics does not deal with subjective judgments, such as “Who is your favorite player?” (Lahman). Through the development of Sabermetrics, James’ found that there were numerous miscalculations of a person's value in
Baseball statistics are meant to be a representation of a player’s talent. Since baseball’s inception around the mid-19th century, statistics have been used to interpret the talent level of any given player, however, the statistics that have been traditionally used to define talent are often times misleading. At a fundamental level, baseball, like any game, is about winning. To win games, teams have to score runs; to score runs, players have to get on base any way they can. All the while, the pitcher and the defense are supposed to prevent runs from scoring. As simplistic as this view sounds, the statistics being used to evaluate individual players were extremely flawed. In an attempt to develop more specific, objective forms of statistical analysis, the idea of Sabermetrics was born. Bill James, a man who never played or coached professional baseball, is often credited as a pioneer in the field and for coining the name as homage to the Society of American Baseball Research, or SABR. Eventually, the use of Sabermetrics became widespread in the Major Leagues, the first team being the Oakland Athletics, as depicted in Moneyball. Bill James and other baseball statisticians have developed various methods of evaluating a player performance that allow for a more objective view of the game, broadly defined as Sabermetrics.
When looking into the history of our culture, there are many subtopics that fall under the word, “history.” Topics such as arts and literature, food, and media fall into place. Among these topics reside sports. Since the beginning of time, sports have persisted as an activity intertwined with the daily life of people. Whether it is a pick-up game of football in the backyard, or catching an evening game at the local stadium, sports have become the national pastime. According to Marcus Jansen of the Sign Post, more specifically, baseball is America’s national pastime, competing with other sports (Jansen 1). Providing the entertainment that Americans pay top dollar for, live the role models, superstars, and celebrities that put on a jersey as their job. As said in an article by Lucas Reilly, Americans spend close to $25.4 billion dollars on professional sports (Reilly 4). The people that many children want to be when they grow up are not the firefighters or astronauts told about in bed time stories. These dream jobs or fantasies have become swinging a bat or tossing a football in front of millions of screaming fans. When asked why so many dream of having such job, the majority will respond with a salary related answer. In today’s day and age, the average athlete is paid more than our own president. The cold hard facts show that in professional sports, the circulation of money is endless. Certain teams in professional baseball and football are worth over millions of dollars. Consequently, the teams who are worth more are able to spend more. The issue that arises with this philosophy is virtually how much more? League managers, team owners and other sports officials have sought out a solution to the surfacing problem. Is it fair to let...
Ever since the introduction of steroids to professional sports in the 1970s (Assael), they have greatly undermined the core American beliefs that sports held dear for so long. Values like honesty, hard work, and dedication h...
Sports have served as a platform on which the subject of race has been highlighted. Sports have unfailingly been considered the microcosm of society. This is because the playing fields have revealed the dominant culture’s attitudes and beliefs that people held about race relations throughout history in the United States. Many racial barriers were broken in the world of sports long before they were crossed in the realm of mainstream society as a whole. From Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball during the year of 1947 to Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists clad in black gloves during the 1968 Mexico City Summer Olympics, sports have started conversations about race in the United States that have undeniably changed the course of race relations in the United States.
For many years the wining averages were used to dictate the achievements on how the two interacted. It was believed that if a team has more wins than loses that the coach and athlete combination was superb. The win – loss record has been established as a longstanding instrument measuring the success of athletic players and coaches. However, this is not really a direct correlation to the coach’s effectiveness in a particular sport, being that there are many other factors in coaching a team other than game records. The coach’s job is to enhance to the athlete physically, socially, and psychologically, winning is only considered a by-product of that job (Gillham, Burton, & Gillham, 2013). Gillham, Burton, and Gillham (2013) focused on developing a Coaching Success Questionnaire-2 to allow a means of evaluating other aspects of a coach’s interaction with their athletes as both a research and coach devel...
Baseball remains today one of America’s most popular sports, and furthermore, baseball is one of America’s most successful forms of entertainment. As a result, Baseball is an economic being of its own. However, the sustainability of any professional sport organization depends directly on its economic capabilities. For example, in Baseball, all revenue is a product of the fans reaction to ticket prices, advertisements, television contracts, etc. During the devastating Great Depression in 1929, the fans of baseball experienced fiscal suffering. The appeal of baseball declined as more and more people were trying to make enough money to live. There was a significant drop in attention, attendance, and enjoyment. Although baseball’s vitality might have seemed threatened by the overwhelming Great Depression, the baseball community modernized their sport by implementing new changes that resulted in the game’s survival.
Jessica Statsky, in her essay, “Children need to Play, Not Compete” attempts to refute the common belief that organized sports are good for children. She sees organized sports not as healthy pass-times for children, but as onerous tasks that children do not truly enjoy. She also notes that not only are organized sports not enjoyable for children, they may cause irreparable harm to the children, both emotionally and physically. In her thesis statement, Statsky states, “When overzealous parents and coaches impose adult standards on children's sports, the result can be activities that are neither satisfying nor beneficial to children” (627). While this statement is strong, her defense of it is weak.
Gender discrimination is prominent in every industry, but it is as though the sport industry is one of the worst. Women in the work force currently receive only 80 cents to every man’s dollar (Holmes, 2016). However, female athletes both in America and internationally receive a far lesser compensation for their attributes. The only difference of the sports being played is who plays them. There should be no reason why a male athlete receives better pay simply because he had a 50% chance of being born a man. At birth, no one controls the gender, but as they grow and mature, they control their personality and development. Payment should be on personal skills and not gender. As a female STHM student focusing on sport management and a former athlete,
Historical and sociological research has shown, through much evidence collection and analysis of primary documents that the American sporting industry can give an accurate reflection, to a certain extent, of racial struggles and discrimination into the larger context of American society. To understand this stance, a deep look into aspects of sport beyond simply playing the game must be a primary focus. Since the integration of baseball, followed shortly after by American football, why are the numbers of African American owners, coaches and managers so very low? What accounts for the absence of African American candidates from seeking front office and managerial roles? Is a conscious decision made by established members of each organization or is this matter a deeper reflection on society? Why does a certain image and persona exist amongst many African American athletes? Sports historians often take a look at sports and make a comparison to society. Beginning in the early 1980’s, historians began looking at the integration of baseball and how it preceded the civil rights movement. The common conclusion was that integration in baseball and other sports was indeed a reflection on American society. As African Americans began to play in sports, a short time later, Jim Crow laws and segregation formally came to an end in the south. Does racism and discrimination end with the elimination of Jim Crow and the onset of the civil rights movement and other instances of race awareness and equality? According to many modern sports historians and sociologists, they do not. This paper will focus on the writings of selected historians and sociologists who examine th...
The Fallacy of Minority Discrimination in Sports When someone flips through the channels on a TV and they happen to pause on a sports game, they will most likely see a small number of white athletes. The next thing that they might see is a commercial trying to tell them that minorities in sports are being discriminated against. This is not the case. There is no racial discrimination against minorities in sports. There is a much higher percentage of minorities than White Americans in more than just one professional sport.
Most people watch some form of sports, whether it be the Olympics or the highlights on ESPN. The NBA and NHL playoffs are underway and theyit seems to be the only news on ESPN. There is almost no coverage of the WNBA playoffs or any female athletics. Tennis isone of the only big sports on ESPN for women. While during the Olympics the coverage seems to be non-stop and close to equal. Women’s participation in sport is at an all-time high and has almost become equal with men’s, however,. sSports media does notfails to show this equality and skews the way we look at these athletes. Through the disciplines of sociology and gender studies, it can be seen that despite the many gains of women in sports since the enactment of Title IX, “traditional” notions of masculinity and femininity still dominate media coverage of males and females in sports, which is observed in Olympic programming and sports news broadcasts.
Racism in Sports Racism occurs every day and everywhere. We cannot get away from it. In sports, racism is happening more often and becoming a much bigger problem. Most agree that sports are a reflection of society. What this means is that sports often act as a small-scale version of society and thus, racial problems in sports have been, and continue to be, brushed away as nothing unique.
People would think that over the years that our country would have settle the inequality of equal pay between men and women. In sports we come to find out a different feeling that no matter how good the team maybe are how many World Cups have been won there is still statments about being treating unfair. I feel no matter what gender you are if you’re good enough to make a team that represents the World Cup there shouldn’t be any issue.
Dealing with the issue of sport and ethnology, three major factors come to mind; prejudice, racism, and discrimination. These factors span across gender, ethnic, racial, religious, and cultural groups. In the following paragraphs, I will discuss how these factors have played a part in the evolution of sport in our society. The first issue tackled in this paper will be racism in sports, followed by prejudice and discrimination.
Baseball fans, in addition to behaving insanely, are also fascinated by baseball trivia. Every day they turn to the sports page and study last night's statistics. They simply must see who extended his hitting streak and how many strikeouts the winning pitcher recorded. Their bookshelves are crammed full of record books, team yearbooks, and baseball almanacs. They delight in remembering such significant facts as who was the last left-handed third baseman to hit an inning-ending double play in the fifth game of the playoffs.