Except for a few men trying to spoil it all. They have a woman-majority city council–which voted against buying a plot of land for a sports arena. I approve — sportsball is fine, but let the fans and teams pay for it, instead of letting wealthy team owners mooch off the public teat. But guess how some people reacted?
In hundreds of email messages and social media posts, the female Council members were attacked by people — practically all apparently men — who said they lacked intelligence and an understanding of the importance of sports because they are women. One Twitter poster simply used a four-letter graphic insult to define them. Another man, in a signed email, suggested they should all kill themselves and “rot in hell.” Other critics, in less violent but equally demeaning terms, addressed them as “ladies,” who should “go back to the kitchen.”
Disappointingly, I am totally unsurprised.
Someday, I could imagine myself retiring to somewhere near Seattle, but it won’t be the sportsball teams that draw me there…and the sportsball fans are likely to repel me.
I admit, I don’t get the whole sportsball thing. A bunch of brutes dressed in children’s clothes, smashing each other’s skulls while mainly expectorating juices from their digestive and other tracts, where is the importance of that, or even the fun? I think they should take up sewing. It’s fun too, it’s useful, it’s less wasteful, it teaches fine motor skills, and it leads to less waste in health care.
I played both team and individual sports in high school and they helped a lot with my maturation and development into an adult. So I think they have a place there. But when money enters the picture, like for pro sports, it becomes a different animal, one where owners abuse the residents where the teams are located by making them pay for stadiums and the like. It’s like a company telling a city “We’ll locate there if you build a factory for us.” Sure, cities can give tax breaks and other benefits, but paying for land or stadiums is too much.
The one nice thing about baseball: Zero violence. Player interaction is only getting tagged with the ball in hand, Time pressure also zero as no timer clocks involved. Getting hit by the ball is a major foul for the thrower. Carlin’s famous characterization of baseball v football, may have been satire but was spot on.
Can you send that memo to Edmonton? For the amount of public money spent on the city’s third (!) sportsball arena we could have added a couple hundred buses to our public transportation fleet, and hired drivers to drive them.
I totally understand the appeal of playing sportsball. I’ve always had trouble understanding the appeal of watching sportsball beyond watching your own kids, relatives or friends playing.
re 5:
yeah, it’s some kind of tribal behavior. Feeling like a better person because your team does better. Pretty obvious in Boston arounf World Series time, especially if the opponent is the Yankees. But that is a pretty slight example compared to some soccer aficionados around the world.
Not entirely true anymore, there have been (which I think are still ongoing) some experiments with timers for certain plays / situations: MLB pace-of-game; Also, In Baseball, the Times Are Changing: “[… A]t the two highest levels of the minors, Class AA and AAA, the effort has gone further [than in the major league], most notably with the introduction of a 20-second pitch clock designed to curtail the familiar dawdling that goes on in any given at-bat.”
Sure. Spend millions of public dollars to build a basketball arena in the hopes of attracting yet another NBA team after having lost their previous one. This after spending millions to build a football stadium for Paul Allen’s team, Allen being one of the richest men in the world and could easily affort the cost by cutting back on the fuel bill for his $100 million yacht.
Seattle is a beautiful city situated in one of the prettiest areas in the world but they sure seem to have a bunch of stupid sheep as citizens.
The problem I have with sports arenas is that they expect the public to pay for them, they expect huge tax breaks, they use the local police forcesto regulate and control traffic (at either time and a half or double pay), they make hundreds of millions of dollars and only give pennies on th dollar back. If the sports arenas gave back to the community it would be a great thing, but they don’t.
I know it’s irrational but I am totally terrified of the Cascadia subduction zone. When I am in Seattle all I can think of is getting out of there.
I love baseball out of all proportion, have followed the Angels for over 40 years, but public financing of stadiums is not justifiable by any measure. The public gets sold a story about “revitalizing downtown” if millions of tax dollars are sunk into a new stadium. Look at Glendale, Arizona- they will be paying for a football stadium and a hockey arena for the next 30-40 years. Anaheim is in negotiations now with Arte Moreno, the billionaire owner of the Angels, for a new stadium. There’s talk of a land swap and development rights to the old site as an incentive to keep the team in Anaheim. That I can deal with, as long as citizens don’t end up subsidizing the team. I don’t even live in the same county and it makes me mad!
they expect the public to pay for them, they expect huge tax breaks, they use the local police forcesto regulate and control traffic (at either time and a half or double pay), they make hundreds of millions of dollars and only give pennies on th dollar back. If the sports arenas gave back to the community it would be a great thing, but they don’t.
Remarkably similar to churches, once you put it that way.
One thing that strikes me is that you can’t use a football stadium for much besides football. Like, if you could say ‘in the off-season, the team agrees that the city can rent the space for concerts to bring in acts the citizens like’, that’s at least an argument about what the city and the non-football fans are getting from this. (Even harder to make for baseball, since the off-season is late fall and winter, the times that in the northern US, no one wants to be outside.)
Like, it’s assumed that the city is the one that should be begging the team to stay, rather than the team making a case for a partnership.
ck@5,
I enjoy making music, and dutifully went to my kids’ school concerts, but I still spend a lot of money and time buying and listening to music by, say, Mariza or John Prine, and I go out of my way to see them in concert. The appeal of professional sports, to me, is much the same–watching athletes who are at the peak of their profession showing what the human mind and body are capable of. Stephen Curry, Serena Williams, Lionel Messi–they are artists. And as a fan of all the Boston teams, I won’t deny that the tribalism is part of the appeal; the trick is to recognize it and not take it too seriously, and not to worship the people wearing the uniform.
All that said, I applaud the actions of the Seattle city council. Public funding of sports stadiums is essentially giving in to corporate blackmail.
Oh, yeah, the other appeal of sports is that it satisfies our desire for narrative–both over the course of a competition and a season, as well as across the years. In that regard, it’s a lot like a soap opera.
@ #13 Becca Stareyes wrote:
Of course you can, and they do. For example, AT&T Park in San Francisco, home of the SF 49ers, which was privately financed after voters rejected public financing, is used throughout the year for numerous events, especially concerts, plus high school and collegiate sports, and more. It also revitalized an aging part of the San Francisco waterfront. The proposed new indoor arena, also on the waterfront (and privately financed), which will be the new home of the basketball Warriors, will do the same for the city.
@ #16
My mistake, still half asleep here – AT&T Park is the home of the Giants, not the 49ers. But, of course, the same is true of the football stadium, Levi Park, home of the 49ers. For example, Beyonce is there next week.
tomh wrote:
San Francisco is definitely not in a northern state. Usage of outdoor arenas in states that have fairly warm or mild weather year round isn’t indicative of the situation for those subject to northern or continental climates.
#16:
To use Seattle as an example here, the old King Dome was used for many events year round, as it had heating and air conditioning and was generally nice.
The sportsball teams loathed it though because it didn’t support high enough profits for them, so they got the city to demolish it and build two new fantastically expensive outdoor stadiums in its place (at little or no cost to the teams). Neither of which is really that usable for anything else. The baseball stadium, for example, gets rented out for corporate events, but invariably people aren’t allowed to walk on the grass, so basically you have this weird vibe where you’ll get in trouble if you touch the hallowed sportsball dirt.
The city already has a perfectly good basketball arena, this is just the pro team trying to steal public funds again.
I used to live near the Kingdome. I went to a couple of boat shows and other events, never a game. I never heard why it was torn down, but it seemed a shame.
Yay for Seattle for having a women-majority, yay for them for stopping the money grabbing. Boo to the guys who won’t pay for their oen amusements, and hiss to the people making rude threats.
I find it also fascinating how all of these ballparks get built, but today, rather than naming them for famous people or even commemorating veterans, they’re named for large corporations.
Your tax dollars turned into a promotional for Very Big Incorporated, all for a very, very modest fee.
Coming to a city near you, “Whore’s park”. Something I’d respect more than AT&T or whatever bank is buying a park name this week.
Back when the Senators hockey team was brought back to Ottawa, multiple government departments sunk money into the endeavour as a gift and not a loan. A citizen tax advocacy group called the “Canadian Taxpayers Federation” responded that if the business was to be successful on its own, it should be funded on its own, getting money from the government only as a loan. This led to not only much nastiness being publicly stated by many people in the local media, but went so far as multiple murder threats and bomb threats against the taxpayer organization, possibly tied to the multiple venomous statements by one of the local talk radio show hosts.
There would be a massive public outcry if the government gifted tax dollars towards a speaking tour for an imam or rabbi, and the public would think that I was nuts if I expected free movie tickets and paid time off of work to see them. Since I’m one of those few people who view pro sports to be as pointless as PZ views religion, why should I be spending money to help millionaires and billionaires get richer, with minimal risk to their wealth?
@ #20
What pro team? Seattle hasn’t had a pro basketball team in 7 years and is very unlikely to have one in the foreseeable future.
Honestly PZ, can we please avoid the phrase “sportsball”? It comes off as really condescending and disrespectful. In a community like this where sports isn’t a major topic of conversation (and I don’t resent that at all, I’m fine with it and overall views about not spending excessive public money on stadiums for for-profit sports teams), it others the many of us who enjoy our various sports for various reasons.
Thanks.
Why? Explain your rationale.
@wzrd1 #22:
Is there a minimum entry fee?
When isn’t there an entrance fee for a sports park?
@26 Because it’s a word being used by someone who isn’t interested in the topic, over top of the words that people who care about the topic would use. It’s a form of deliberate, feigned ignorance when you damn well know what the correct words are. It’s elitist and condescending. And I am asking you and PZ and others to think about this and reflect upon it. because that is the way I respond when I see someone talk like that and I think you should listen on this occasion.
Maybe condescending is exactly the tone I’m going for.
Sport is a fine activity, and I’m happy to see my students participating in it. But there is an excess of reverence for what is simply light entertainment and healthy exercise. Just listen to the lugubrious, pompous announcers on any of HBO’s boxing shows — somebody needs to counter that crap.
That’s fine by me, PZ. I have no problem with that. I don’t have much time for sports analysis like that either, and even though I’m involved in sport I have no particular dispute with your views on it, which are valid and in most cases correct. Just the phrase “sportsball” really gets me up the wrong way, though. You can express your views more straightforwardly and avoid this lazy cliché.
@ #26
Well, if you do find it defined, perhaps in the Urban Dictionary, you will find, “the word is typically used in a derogatory manner by those who either dislike or have little interest in sports fandom.” You didn’t notice the derogatory manner in which it was used?
I think it was on the nose. Touche.
I think the only sports ball team I can respect is the Packers because the city owns them. And I like sports ball as a term both because it is derogatory AND it covers a variety of sports.
And I get the point of sports. I do. At their best they are about athlatism, poetry in motion, and clever strategy and teamwork. And I even get the point of sports teams. It’s a fandom- come together with shared interests to bond. But at it’s worst, it is the worst aspects of fandom (exclusionary, snobbish, overly impressed with what should be entertainment) combined with some downright toxic, violent behavior that taxpayers have to pay for with little gain.
@ #21:
The Kingdome was torn down because it didn’t have enough luxury boxes in it to satisfy the local baseball and football teams. Their profit margin is a lot higher on luxury boxes than it is on regular seats for the plebes, you see.
Also, the baseball team was unhappy that their elite ball playing celebrities had to sully their shoes on inferior astroturf as opposed to luxurious manicured lawn.
Since the teams get the stadiums for (nearly) free, it’s not like they have any reason to compare the few million extra they might get per year from luxury boxes to the billion dollars or so the stadiums cost (keep in mind, when the Kingdome was destroyed, the city was still paying off the bonds used to construct it). The local newspapers and TV stations made a lot of money on the sportsball contracts, too, so they provided free propaganda to get the politics done.
I wish Wisconsin would be more like this. Instead we cut money from the University of Wisconsin and gave it to the Bucks to build a new stadium. And they had the nerve to have “College day” where they played the Badgers. I honestly think the athletics department should have boycotted that farce.
My two cents on the term “sportball”, it really does feel super snobby. Basically I tend to interpret its use as : “All those hoi polloi and their sportsball, tut tut.”
I agree with PZ about having the sports organizations pay for their own venues. Good for the Seattle City Council! And shame on all of the abusive fans.
I’m not a fan of any sport, with the exception of ice skating and gymnastics, and a few others where the practitioners pull off stunts to make the jaw drop. Parkour comes to mind… now there are people worth watching! Far more interesting and awesome than just sending a ball flying and run like hell.
A few commenters here have mentioned the Red Sox. Tonight, my husband and I went to dinner at a local sports bar (I really like chicken wings with variety sauces), and I found my attention caught by the Red Sox vs. Yankees game on one of the half-dozen TV screens in front of me. It’s rather noticeable when the players on both teams are wearing white jerseys with pink logos…especially when some of them are also wearing pink hats, shoes, and long-sleeved shirts under the jerseys! And swinging pink bats.
I Googled for an explanation. It turns out that some teams are doing a Breast Cancer Awareness day for Mother’s Day with Komen, and have for several years. While I don’t care for Komen’s politics, I approve of tonight’s visuals and message!
The Canadian Taxpayer Association is right-wing anti-tax organization that whines about any and all taxation but occasionally they are right, like in tax-payers paying to make billionaire team owners more money.
As for “sportsball” I agree. We should call them by their proper names. Concussionball and concussionpuck especially.
Siobhan@4 – And remember, the new arena is in the corporate mandated named by committee “Ice District.” If you call it “the Ice District” the Chamber of Commerce will send their thugs around.
38) I think we should call you something more descriptive, like full of yourself assclown.
tomh (#24)
The Seattle Storm would beg to differ. They’re also not too full of themselves to use the perfectly good basketball arena Elladan was talking about. Maybe that’s why this yet-to-be-realized men’s team needs a new arena. You can’t entice a pro men’s team to your city if the current one has girl cooties all over it.
Jack (#29)
Sounds like that stick up your ass is affecting your reading comprehension, because the topic at hand isn’t really sports. If you understood that, you’d hopefully realize how inappropriate your whining is. And if you dislike lazy clichés so much, stop acting like one.
@41 Jesus, what’s got your goat? (Also the same @39, who seems to agree with me but seriously, not helpful)
I did try really hard to express myself without creating conflict in my comments. I wanted to make a point about a particular word I dislike that was used. I really did just want to ask people to pause and think about it and whether it is helpful.
Was that such a big thing to ask without getting that sort of response?
Or are you just being tribal?
Jack (#42)
How could you possibly think that this was an appropriate thread to make that point given a) the actual topic at hand, and b) the frequency with which some dude has to come along and try to divert a conversation about that actual topic onto some wholly trivial way his fee fees have been hurt?
Go back and reread the OP. Try to figure out what the actual topic is. Like why PZ would write about this on his blog? What is he shedding light on? Then have a good think about why your whining about your sporty-man-sports-feels is completely out of place and bound to create conflict.
And if you still can’t get it after that, I’ll explain. But try to pause and think about it for yourself first, and stop being so damn defensive.
Marcus Ranum #12
Spot on.
And this whole discussion resembles one between theists and atheists.
In Australia, when I went to primary school there was some weird clause where you started a year earlier if your birthday was before a certain time. So I was a year younger than everyone else in the same athletic events for my entire life. I was soon after diagnosed with bronchitis and then asthma, and also very much a bookish child, although it’s possible I may have found consolation in that due to my inability to keep up with others in sports.
For 12 years of school, I was mocked mercilessly for sucking at sport, including by my father, who constantly questioned my manhood over my disinterest in rugby. When I was forced to play against my will, I was the non-stop target of attacks on the field. I was once knocked almost unconscious by a cricket ball thrown straight at my head: the teacher supervising didn’t help me up until he’d finished laughing and only then to drag me off the pitch so the game could continue.
So whenever I hear people whining about “sportsball”, it just reminds me of white people getting all twisted out of shape over the term “privilege”. I give zero fucks for your being offended by a term that is about as weak as a derogatory insult can get.
I never would have guessed there were that many sportsball fans in the pharyngula commentariat. Personally, I’m fine with mocking sports (primarily professional and collegiate), when they tend to be financial leeches and leads to all kinds of unfair bullshit.
@ #40
The claim at post #20, about the proposed arena, was “this is just the pro team trying to steal public funds again.” My question was, what pro team are they talking about? Your post makes no sense in that regard.
https://youtu.be/x0d0pQgLNws
Football, america, jesus
Matthew Trevor said:
I recognise that. In the city where I was born, there were two famous soccer teams, and everyone was expected to be a fan of one of them. I was a fan of neither. Instead of having everyone as a friend, I was regularly beaten up by both sides. Just as was the case for Jesus and George W. Bush: if one wasn’t with them, one was against them. The neutral position was too intellectually challenging for the sportsball fans.
Until recently, I was regularly threatened by racing cyclists. They hate me for the snake-related work I do in a Toronto park where racing is explicitly forbidden. I do not project my suffering onto anyone else, nor do I wish anybody any harm, but why I would need to have ‘respect’ for fellow primates who exhibit such childish behaviour is completely beyond me. A screaming and spitting brute is a screaming and spitting brute, regardless of the ‘reason’.
sugarfrosted @39…
I’m sorry that not only are some major sports hugely bad for the human brain, but that their respective professional leagues have actively worked to downplay and/or disregard the concussion problem. I guess I am a full of myself assclown who doesn’t put my own entertainment above the health of others.
@3 slithytove: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmXacL0Uny0
Psh, making sports safe would be like getting rid of the crashes in NASCAR. What would even be the point if it didn’t sate my lizard brain desire for violence and tribalism?
@antigone10 #34,
A minor quibble: The city of Green Bay doesn’t actually own the Packers.
The Packers are owned by their shareholders, of which I am one despite living a three-day drive away from Wisconsin. The Packers will never leave Green Bay however, because the governing documents for the club specify that if the franchise itself is ever sold, the proceeds must go to the Green Bay Packers Foundation, which is a charitable organization that donates to other charities & institutions throughout the state of Wisconsin. IOW, the current owners cannot benefit from selling the club to another owner. Also, none of the current owners may hold more than about 4% of the stock, so nobody can just decide to move it either.
tomh (#47)
My post makes sense in regards to how your argument unnecessarily included the false statement that “Seattle hasn’t had a pro basketball team in 7 years,” ignoring the existence of the Seattle women’s pro basketball team. And pointing that out isn’t really tangential considering the topic of the OP and the attitudes about women’s role in sports underlying the dudes’ attacks on the council members.
It’s part and parcel of this larger cultural narrative that you’re exhibiting here (unwittingly, I’m sure) that women’s participation in sports is not legitimate, whether it’s as athletes or as journalists. Or as politicians deciding how their regions should support sports.
My problem with the term “sportsball” is that it doesn’t accurately reflect the disdain properly applicable in Canada. We’re left having to invent “puckball” for ourselves. “Yay, puckball! Do the thing, win the points, eh?”
So, is curling “stoneball”?
Curling is still just curling, never punch down.
Curling is not for sissies.
We just did a curling night.
5 experienced people, 40 newbies. 4 ends per game.
1 cracked elbow, 1 broken clavicle, 1 concussion.
priceless
Erm, they did know that in curling, one isn’t supposed to catch the stone, right?
They might have tried catching the stones,
if they could have remained on their feet.
I know this is a bit late, but Samantha Bee put her own spin on it:
http://samanthabee.com/episode/12/clip/the-seattle-seawards/
By the way, my most well employed child works for a shipping logistics firm.