SAN DIEGO — The sporting brains, without a tank to think in, are messing with our main games. And messing them up.
We might be living in hard times, but football, basketball and baseball are being softened, and the players have been rewarded in harder cash.
And horse racing. Some folks believe the Triple Crown races are held too close to one another. Know why there haven't been many Triple Crown winners? Because it's hard. Don't mess with this.
Baseball can't really figure out what it wants to do. Football and basketball have twisted the rules — or, in the NBA's case, neglected them — to create more offense, more scoring.
We love scoring, which is why now, more than ever, defense wins championships. Because not enough teams are good at it.
The NBA — much more so than college — is the primary culprit, although its problem hasn't been about changing rules so much as not enforcing them.
Officials aren't good, but if they called it all, every player would foul out in the first quarter.
Back in my salad days — when, admittedly, I didn't eat much salad — I was an NBA junkie. Shot up. Inhaled it.
I must admit that I sneaked a peek or two at the NBA Finals, the Warriors dominating the Celtics (who had the Association's two best defenses, by the way). I'm no better for it, probably worse.
I found it painful to watch (but less so than the regular season, when players take staycations), and it got me to thinking of how it used to be. I got misty. Teared up.
Different time, different game. When an assist was an assist, when travel and 3 seconds were called (so it didn't happen as much), players weren't allowed to put their hands under the ball on the dribble, the dunk (outlawed for a decade in college and high school) wasn't a thrill, and the 3-pointer (a main root of the NBA's problem) wasn't sewn into the sport's fabric.
I knew that game. I loved it. I do not know this game. Can't stand it.
The Warriors' Steph Curry probably is the greatest among all pure shooters, and, while I'm sure it wasn't intentional, he had a big hand in ruining the game. Kids wanted to be Michael and Magic, finding it OK to take four or five steps and continuously carry the ball over. Now it's Steph, and it's simply not possible to be him.
Three-point shots are not exciting on most tries. But being that this generation can't know the sport as it was designed, it's the 3 and more 3s and missed 3s.
We've been over football. Quarterbacks are Faberge eggs. Receivers run patterns without opposition. Linemen hold continuously. The kickoff return, the sport's most demoralizing thing when successful, barely exists.
But what the NFL does does not affect it at the pump. Fans gamble on it, networks pay billions because it creates the largest TV audiences, and The League simply swats away whatever difficulties — some serious — come it's way.
Baseball has adopted the universal DH, which I can't stand, but knew it to be inevitable. It put a fake runner on second base in extra innings (probably gone next year). So, MLB wants to shorten games and adds an extra hitter that could prolong them. Baseballs are effervescent one year, flat the next. Pitchers can't go the distance so now we have "quality starts."
Our games now are poxed by their inconsistencies, uneven playing fields and slapstick management.
The three sports should have listened to Greta Garbo. Be left alone.
