The Volokh Conspiracy

New York Yankees co-owner Hank Steinbrenner recently denounced Major League Baseball’s revenue-sharing system, calling it “socialism”:

Yankees co-chairman Hank Steinbrenner [the other co-owner/co-chairman is Hank's brother Hal] says baseball’s revenue sharing and luxury tax programs need changes…..

“We’ve got to do a little something about that, and I know Bud wants to correct it in some way,” Steinbrenner said. “Obviously, we’re very much allies with the Red Sox and the Mets, the Dodgers, the Cubs, whoever in that area.”

“At some point, if you don’t want to worry about teams in minor markets, don’t put teams in minor markets, or don’t leave teams in minor markets if they’re truly minor,” Steinbrenner said. “Socialism, communism, whatever you want to call it, is never the answer.”

I don’t have a strong view about the revenue-sharing system. As a tool for maintaining competitive balance, it’s much less effective than the salary caps adopted by the NFL, NBA, and NHL. Moreover, the revenue-sharing system suffers from the flaw that the low-payroll teams that receive the money paid in by wealthier franchises can simply put the money into their owners’ pockets, as opposed to investing it in improving their teams.

That said, comparing MLB revenue-sharing to socialism is absurd. Socialism is government control of the economy, not a private arrangement to divide up profits from a joint enterprise. You might as well say that a law firm is “socialistic” if individual partners don’t keep all the profit generated by the clients they bring in, and instead have to transfer some of it to the other partners.

If the Steinbrenners really believe that socialism is “never the answer,” however, they should return the record $1.2 billion in government subsidies that they recently got for the building of the new Yankee Stadium. Even the USSR never spent so much public money on a sports stadium.

Government subsidies for private sports stadiums fall short of full-blown socialism (under which the state would own all stadiums as well as pay for them). But they come a lot closer to it than MLB revenue-sharing. Since the Steinbrenners clearly want to avoid even the slightest hint of socialism in their business dealings, I expect that their check to the long-suffering taxpayers will be in the mail soon.

Inasmuch as I feel it has become my duty to inform VC readers of extraordinary happenings in the world of international soccer, I’m writing to announce what those of you who follow these matters already know: today, at 245 PM (EST) (televised on Fox Soccer Channel) Barcelona travel to the Emirates Stadium in London to take on Arsenal in the first of two matches in the Round of 16 of Europe’s Champions League competition. [And yes, the rumors are true - I am indeed heading to Barcelona for the second match between the two on March 8] It promises to be a delightful affair — Barcelona this year, to many soccer fans, is not only probably the best team on the planet at the moment, but quite possibly the best team ever – and surely the most beautiful to watch. And Arsenal, though (imho) not quite up to Barcelona’s level in terms of overall talent and teamwork, nonetheless plays the same kind of game – free-flowing, short-passing, delicate and intricate — as their Spanish visitors. And neither team goes in for the kind of defense-minded bunker mentality stuff that often afflicts teams at the highest level 9and that can make soccer a bit of a snooze sometimes to watch). It should be, as they say, a cracker. Not to be missed.

Sports columnist Rob Neyer has an interesting post about the making of the movie based on Moneyball. Michael Lewis’ famous book about Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane’s successful efforts to build a great team with a small payroll by relying on statistical analysis to identify undervalued players. The movie will be directed by Aaron Sorkin, of West Wing fame. Billy Beane will be played by Brad Pitt.

I previously wrote about Moneyball here, here, and here. My own employer, George Mason Law School has successfully used Moneyball-like strategies to identify and hire undervalued scholars. If Sorkin’s movie turns out to be a big success, perhaps there will be a sequel focusing on Moneyball strategies in legal academia. That film will surely be a box office megahit. I can’t wait!

Co-bloggers Sasha Volokh and Ken Anderson express puzzlement as to why anyone would care about the outcome of professional sports competitions. By the same logic, why would anyone care about any kind of entertainment? Why, for example, do people care about and identify with fictional characters in the Harry Potter novels or in Jane Austen’s works?

Harry Potter is not a real person. Why should anyone care whether or not he manages to defeat Lord Voldemort? Elizabeth Bennet is not a real person either. Why should anyone care whether she gets married, and to whom? The answer, of course, is that vicarious identification with fictional characters is fun. Occasionally, it even has some educational value. The same, of course, goes for vicarious identification with sports teams. It’s fun to root for your team and hate its rivals, even if your initial reasons for identifying with Team A rather than Team B are essentially arbitrary (usually that you grew up in City A rather than City B). Though I hasten to add that there are excellent nonarbitrary reasons to hate the New York Yankees, even if you’re not a Red Sox fan like me!

Some literati will argue that they only read novels for their aesthetic value and don’t get invested in the fates of the characters. I suspect that such people are very much in the minority among avid readers of literature. How many people read and enjoy Pride and Prejudice or War and Peace without caring at all what happens to the characters? Similarly, there are some sports fans who claim that they don’t care which team wins, but just want to see impressive athletic feats. They too are a small minority.

Not everyone enjoys vicarious identification, of course. And among those who do, some prefer to satisfy their craving by means other than rooting for sports teams. But vicarious identification is a common and deeply rooted emotion – one that probably has biological roots. And it’s not really that surprising that it leads some people to root for sports teams in much the same way as it leads others to identify with fictional characters.

UPDATE: Upon rereading Ken’s and Sasha’s posts, it’s not clear to me whether they meant to suggest that there is no good reason for anyone to care about sports outcomes, or whether they merely mean to say that they themselves don’t care (a point made by a couple of commenters). I think I was too quick to assume they meant the former, in part because such attitudes are widespread among intellectuals and academics who don’t like spectator sports. I therefore apologize to Ken and Sasha if I have misinterpreted their views.

Some other commenters suggest that our supposed dislike of spectator sports says something profound about the VC bloggers or about libertarians in general. In reality, however, several VC bloggers are big sports fans, including Jonathan Adler, David Post, and myself. I know a great many libertarians, and my overall impression is that they are no less likely to be sports fans than adherents of other ideologies with similar backgrounds and jobs. So these speculations, interesting as they are, are based on a false premise.

In this recent Boston Globe article, sportswriter Paul Kix argues that human sports performance is close to reaching its maximum limits because track and field world records have plateaued over the last two decades:

In the sports that best measure athleticism — track and field, mostly — athletic performance has peaked. The studies show the steady progress of athletic achievement through the first half of the 20th century, and into the latter half, and always the world-record times fall. Then, suddenly, achievement flatlines. These days, athletes’ best sprints, best jumps, best throws — many of them happened years ago, sometimes a generation ago.

“We’re reaching our biological limits,” said Geoffroy Berthelot, one of the coauthors of both studies and a research specialist at the Institute for Biomedical Research and Sports Epidemiology in Paris. “We made major performance increases in the last century. And now it is very hard.”

I am skeptical of this claim. If you look at most other sports, it’s clear that performance is steadily improving. Anyone who follows baseball, basketball, or football, for example, can see that today’s players are stronger, faster, and more agile than those of a generation ago. Consider Wayne Gretzky’s recent comments about the development of hockey since his heyday in the 1980s:

“The game in my era was a completely different game [than] it is today,” Gretzky said. “The players today are so much bigger and faster and stronger, but that’s evolution. It just means our game is getting better. Fifteen years from now, these guys will look back and say, ‘What a different game.’…”

If Gretzky were playing in the NHL today at the same level as when he was in his prime, he would still be a great player. But he probably would not dominate to the overwhelming extent that he did back in the 1980s, when he was simply head and shoulders above the competition (at least until Mario Lemieux began to challenge him towards the end of the decade).

I think the hockey experience is more typical than that of track and field.

Moreover, a key reason why the track and field records of the 1980s and early 1990s have proven difficult to break is that that period was the era when the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs was rampant in the sport. With the fall of the Soviet bloc (the Soviets and East Germans were especially egregious cheaters in this field), and the rise of tougher testing, today’s track stars are less likely to be juiced than those of a generation ago, and therefore have trouble surpassing the records set in that era.

I recognize, of course, that steroids use also probably improved performance in other sports over the last 20 years, including baseball and football. So one could argue that these sports would have stagnated but for the availability of PEDs. But the standard of play in all of them remains much higher than in the 1980s, despite recent enforcement crackdowns.

In the medium to longterm, I think progress will continue as a result of improvements in preparation, strategy, and conditioning. It’s theoretically possible that today’s techniques are the best that can possibly be devised. But that seems unlikely. Eventually, genetic engineering could also provide a big boost.

The December 2010 issue of Engage features not one but two items written by members of the Somin family: a debate on Kelo v. City of New London and eminent domain reform between University of Chicago Law Professor (and former Dean) Saul Levmore and myself; and an article on Title IX and women’s sports written by my wife Alison, who is a special assistant at the US Commission on Civil Rights.

The debate between Dean Levmore and myself was held at the University of Chicago in February. A podcast of the entire debate (including audience questions not reprinted in Engage) is available here.

There is some irony in the fact that Alison is the first of the two us to publish an article about sports, even though I am a big sports fan, and she – to greatly understate the contrast – definitely isn’t. I will have to publish a sports article of my own as soon as possible in order to restore my standing as the resident sports geek in our household.

Although conspiracy theorists (perhaps even Volokh Conspiracy theorists) will never believe it, the appearance of our two pieces in the same issue of Engage is entirely coincidental. The journal editors asked me for permission to publish the debate with Dean Levmore long after Alison’s article was already in the pipeline. But of course that’s exactly what conspiracy-mongers would expect me to say in order to divert attention away from the successful completion of the first stage of the Somin clan’s plan for world domination!

Sports Fans!: Brian Phillips, over on Slate, has a nice piece on “the special feeling of euphoria, a kind of Olympian giddiness, that soccer fans experience while watching F.C. Barcelona.” Even for those of you who care little for the game, you should make at least a small mental note about what is happening over in Barcelona at the moment – it’s a global phenomenon of some importance, I think, certainly inside, but probably also outside, the closed world of sport. Many people believe that this is, simply, the best soccer team of all time — and who knows, possibly the best that any of us will see in our lifetimes, what with the uncertainty that always surrounds the structure of the sport, changes that may be imminent in the way players are allocated among teams, etc. etc. Phillips has a nice way with words — he describes the recent dismantling of their rivals Real Madrid, a 5-0 drubbing (of a team that could possibly lay claim to the title of 2d best in the world) that left the soccer fans of the world in a deep state of awe and wonder, as “a mesmerizing display of off-handedly beautiful ruthlessness,” which is a phrase I wish I’d written. And he captures something — not everything, surely, but something — of what makes this team, at this moment, so special:

Soccer takes great athletes and makes them artificially clumsy—forces them to show what they can do, in effect, with both arms tied behind their backs. It’s a game of tricks, one that turns the simplest action, just keeping possession of the ball, into a perilous high-wire act. But Barcelona pass the ball, and pass the ball, and pass the ball—938 times in their recent 5-0 win over Real Sociedad—and invert defenses as casually as if they were rotating a kaleidoscope. It’s not just that they make it look easy. It’s that three years into their reign as the world’s best soccer team, they still haven’t realized they’re playing 50 feet above the ground.

Teams like this, in any sport (let alone the world’s most popular), don’t come along all that often, and it’s worth pausing to appreciate how lucky we are to be around when it’s happening (and at a time when US television distributors have finally gotten around to showing lots and lots of international soccer on TV!! Oh rapture!!)

The New York Times Room for Debate blog has posted a forum where various scholars weigh in on today’s district court decision striking down the individual mandate. It includes contributions by co-blogger Randy Barnett and myself. My piece briefly discusses the Commerce Clause and Tax Clause aspects of the ruling:

Judge Henry Hudson’s decision today struck down as unconstitutional the “individual mandate” included in the health care bill enacted earlier this year; the mandate requires most Americans to purchase government-approved health insurance plans by 2014. The most powerful parts of Judge Hudson’s ruling reject the federal government’s arguments claiming that the mandate is justified by Congress’ powers to impose taxes and regulate interstate commerce…..

The federal government claims that forcing people to purchase health insurance regulates economic activity because everyone eventually uses health care in some form. But as Judge Hudson points out, “the same reasoning could apply to transportation, housing, or nutritional decisions. This broad definition of the economic activity subject to congressional regulation lacks logical limitation.” The same reasoning would give Congress the power to force everyone to purchase a car because everyone eventually uses some form of “transportation.”

Judge Hudson is equally persuasive in rejecting the argument that the mandate is authorized by Congress’ power to impose taxes. As he notes, it is actually a financial penalty for refusing to comply with a regulation. In September 2009, President Obama himself stated that “to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase.” He was right. If the mandate qualifies as a tax merely because it punishes violators with a fine, then Congress could require Americans to do almost anything on pain of having to pay a fine if they refuse.

As Sam put it here, “If you are a soccer fan–but especially if you aren’t–do yourself a favor and watch the Barcelona-Madrid game from Monday afternoon” (still available for replay viewing on ESPN3.com). Paul Gardner over at Soccer America has a good description of the game, too — but just watch the game if you can. This is simply as beautiful as the beautiful game ever gets — that it was played in the pouring rain just makes the precision with which Barcelona plays even more unbelievable than it would otherwise have been. It does not get any better than this.

A couple of weeks ago, I moderated a panel at the Philadelphia Sports Law Conference, organized by a former student of mine, Ed Wasielewski, who’s been working as an NFL agent for the past several years. I don’t know a great deal about sports law, or even about the specific focus of the panel I was moderating (last year’s Supreme Court case in American Needle v. NFL, holding that the NFL was not a “single entity” for purposes of antitrust claims), but I found the discussion on the panel immediately preceding mine to be fascinating (and a bit grisly). It focused on the recent spate of injuries in the NFL, and on the legal issues raised in regard to those — workman’s compensation, issues regarding disability payments under the current NFL-NFLPA collective bargaining agreement, and the like. The panelists were all pretty experienced folks — people who had been working as agents for decades, a representative from the NFL Players’ Association, and the like — and the stories they told were frightening; quite aside from the well-publicized brain injuries and concussions that have been widely discussed over the last year or so, the physical beating that these players take in the course of a season (let alone a career) in football is gruesome in the extreme — as one panelist put it, if the average NFL player walked into a doctor’s office at random for a checkup, he’d be rushed immediately to a hospital for treatment. It’s getting to the point, for me, where it’s becoming hard to watch the games themselves, knowing what the players are going through and the risks they’re taking.

So I raised my hand and asked the stupid question: instead of trying to design the perfect helmet and armor for the players to wear, is anyone seriously thinking about going in the opposite direction, i.e., taking away some of the padding that the players are wearing, as a way to reduce the frequency of severe injury? My model for that is rugby — it’s a damned violent sport, played at the highest professional level in dozens of countries around the world with world-class athletes, and yet the frequency of serious injury is much, much lower than in American football. A large part of the reason is that the players wear virtually no padding at all — you can’t run into someone a full tilt, head down, throwing the full weight of your body into the blow (the way you can in football) if you don’t have the full panoply of helmet and shoulder pads and all the rest. It seems, to me, like it’s at least worth considering (though the reaction was mostly nervous laughter at the conference when I raised the question – the general feeling being that the public would never stand for it).

Though I’m not that much of an NFL football fan, I can’t help but noticing the extraordinarily good writing of Mike Tanier, who writes for FootballOutsiders.com (and the New York Times from time to time). Here are some examples, from his discussion of this week’s games:

On the Jets v Browns: “Eric Mangini is on a cross-country quest to silence his doubters, joined by a ragtag company of spunky rookie quarterbacks, castoff veterans, fleet-footed punters and other misfits. Having conquered the defending champion Saints and vanquished his mentor Bill Belichick, Mangini hosts the Jets, whom he coached through his metamorphosis from Boy Genius to baby-faced Machiavelli before being ripped apart by the tectonic forces of Big Apple expectations and Brett Favre egocentrism.”

And even better, Seahawks v. Cardinals: “The N.F.C. West stages one of its sad little round robins this week to see who gets to go 8-8 and lose, 31-7, to the Saints or Eagles in the playoffs. It’s like a college basketball-style play-in. In fact, don’t give the N.C.A.A. any ideas, or the winner of this game will face the winner of Canisius versus Towson University.”

And Eagles v. Redskins: “All of the campaign strategists who produced effectively virulent political smear advertisements went straight to Washington after the election and, with nothing else to do for 11 months, started writing the copy for Mike Shanahan’s news conferences. Shanahan & Son (you can picture the truck and junkyard in your head, can’t you?) stopped just short of accusing Donovan McNabb of shipping jobs overseas, but they effectively created a divisive, rancorous environment that will make it impossible to get anything done. In other words, our nation’s capital gets the football it deserves.”

Really terrific stuff.

Political scientist Barry Rubin has an interesting column criticizing the modern tendency to teach kids that playing to win is bad:

My son is playing on a local soccer team which has lost every one of its games, often by humiliating scores. The coach is a nice guy, but seems an archetype of contemporary thinking: he tells the kids not to care about whether they win, puts players at any positions they want, and doesn’t listen to their suggestions.

He never criticizes a player or suggests how a player could do better. My son, bless him, once remarked to me: “How are you going to play better if nobody tells you what you’re doing wrong?” The coach just tells them how well they are playing. Even after an 8-0 defeat, he told them they’d played a great game.

And of course, the league gives trophies to everyone, whether their team finishes in first or last place…..

[A]m I right in thinking that sports should prepare children for life, competition, the desire to win, and an understanding that not every individual has the same level of skills? A central element in that world is rewarding those who do better, which also offers an incentive for them and others to strive….

The playing field was perfectly even, but the boys were clearly miserable. They felt like losers, their behavior rejecting the claim that everything was just great, or that mediocrity was satisfactory as long as everyone was treated identically. They knew better than to think outcomes don’t matter….

When the opportunity came to step in as coach for one game, I jumped at the chance to try an experiment…..

For the starting line-up, I put the best players in and kept them in as long as they didn’t say they were tired or seem fatigued…..

I didn’t put terrible players in at forward or in the goal. It didn’t take any genius to do so, just basic sports common sense….

Before the game, I gave them a pep talk, with the key theme as follows:

Every week you’ve been told that the important thing is just to have a good time. Well, this week it’s going to be different. The number one goal is to win; the number two goal is to have a good time. But I assure you: if you win, you will have a much better time!

And that’s just what happened. They took a 1-0 lead and held it, in contrast to the previous week when it was scoreless at the half but turned into a 3-0 humiliation when someone ill-suited was made goalkeeper just because he wanted that job….

I worried that the boys who played less of the game and were given seemingly less significant positions would be resentful. But quite the opposite proved true….

They played harder, with a bit more pressure and a less equal share of personal glory than they’d ever done before. But after the victory, they were glowing and appreciative, amazed that they had actually won a game. Yes, winning and being allowed to give their best effort as a team was far more exciting and rewarding for them than being told they had done wonderfully by just showing up, …. and that the results didn’t matter.

I agree with Rubin here. Playing to win encourages better performance. People, including children, are unlikely to make a real effort if they are told that results don’t matter. Moreover, the incentive of victory helps overcome one of the biggest obstacles to effective teaching of children: the fact that they tend to have very short time-horizons and can’t easily be motivated by benefits that lie far in the future. Few kids will work hard at soccer because doing so will make them more physically fit ten years later (or even ten months later). But many more will do so in the hope of experiencing the thrill of victory. As I wrote in a 2006 post on research on student incentives:

[C]hildren and teenagers have notoriously short time horizons and many are unwilling to work hard today for rewards that they can’t enjoy until many years later. [Harvard economist Roland] Fryer’s financial incentives [for inner city children to do better in school] represent one possible way to give students more immediate rewards for studying hard. As he points out, middle and upper class parents have often used such rewards for studying for their own children….

Like Fryer, … I was a terrible student for much of my school career. Although I knew that good grades were important for getting into college, this was too distant a reward to motivate me very much. What turned my situation around was high school debate. If I worked hard on a debate topic for 2 or 3 weeks, I could win a prize at a tournament at the end of that time…. Although tournament trophies (like Fryer’s $10 cash prizes) are trivial in value compared to the long-term benefits of education, they were an immediate reward that provided quick gratification to my teenage mind. Over time, learning to work hard on debate issues also led me to study harder in other classes.

Long-term goals such as college did play some role in my eventual academic turnaround. But the short-term incentives of debate had a much more powerful immediate effect. And like Rubin’s soccer players, I also found that winning after making a real effort is a lot more fun than losing after just showing up.

Everything has reasonable limits. We should not encourage elementary school soccer players to be as hypercompetitive as Michael Jordan or Vince Lombardi. There may also be gender differences here. Some research suggests that competitive incentives are on average less effective with girls than boys (which is not to say, of course, that they aren’t effective at all). Nonetheless, Barry Rubin’s approach strikes me as much more sensible than that of his son’s coach and others with similar attitudes. Contra Lombardi, winning isn’t the only thing that matters. But it’s foolish to pretend that it doesn’t matter at all.

Though faithful readers of the VC will realize that my fondest wishes will come true only when someone explains how my book (on Thomas Jefferson and the Internet) really explains the world of soccer, I’m pretty happy with the connections Samir Chopra draws, over at ESPN, with the world of cricket . . .

Sportswriter Jeff Passan describes evidence indicating that billionaire Miami Marlins owner Jeff Loria may have lied about the team’s finances in order to secure massive public subsidies for the construction of the Marlins’ new stadium [HT: VC reader Eric Robinson]:

A look at the leak of the Marlins’ financial information to Deadspin confirmed the long-held belief that the team takes a healthy chunk of MLB-distributed money for profit. Owner Jeffrey Loria and president David Samson for years have contended the Marlins break even financially, the centerpiece fiscal argument that resulted in local governments gifting them a new stadium that will cost generations of taxpayers an estimated $2.4 billion. They said they had no money to do it alone and intimated they would have to move the team without public assistance.

In fact, documents show, the Marlins could have paid for a significant amount of the new stadium’s construction themselves and still turned an annual operating profit. Instead, they cried poor to con feckless politicians that sold out their constituents.

The ugliness of the Marlins’ ballpark situation is already apparent, and the building doesn’t open for another 18 months. Somehow a team that listed its operating income as a healthy $37.8 million in 2008 alone swung a deal in which it would pay only $155 million of the $634 million stadium complex. Meanwhile, Miami-Dade County agreed – without the consent of taxpayers – to take $409 million in loans loaded with balloon payments and long grace periods. By 2049, when the debt is due, the county will have paid billions.

More on the Marlins stadium subsidies from Matt Welch here.

Even if the Marlins’ financial state were as tenuous as Loria claimed, it still would not justify massive government subsidies for a new stadium. Stadium subsidies almost never create benefits for the community that come even close to offsetting the huge costs. Professional baseball is a large-scale industry that can and should pay for its own stadiums. The fact that MLB franchises sell for hundreds of millions of dollars whenever one comes up for sale suggests that the industry is considerably more profitable than subsidy-seeking owners would have us believe. But if team owners find they aren’t making a profit, they should cut costs and work to become more efficient, just like any other business. For example, they could limit costs by adopting a salary cap, as have the NBA, National Football League, and the National Hockey League.

In fairness to Loria and the Marlins, they might have been able to secure massive government subsidies even without lying about their profits. The New York Yankees are the most lucrative franchise in baseball. But that didn’t prevent them from raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies for the new Yankee Stadium that opened last year. If Passan’s figures are correct, the Marlins’ stadium subsidies may actually surpass the record set by the Yankees. As a Red Sox fan, I am reluctant to admit it. But the Marlins may have outdone baseball’s Evil Empire in feeding at the public trough.

As regular VC readers know, I love baseball. But those taxpayers who don’t share my interest in the sport should not be forced to subsidize it. It is long past time to make billionaire sports team owners pay for their own stadiums.

Looking for opportunities to segue from my recent obsession with all things soccer-related to the more mundane matters of copyright law that I usually focus on here on the VC, and lo and behold . . . . Two opportunities, actually:

1. For the “Content Owners, Knee Jerk Protection Responses Of” file: I found the link to the Youtube clip of the horrible foul by Nigel DeJong on Xabi Alonso in Sunday’s final game, which I wanted to embed in one of my postings, but by the time I got there FIFA’s copyright police had already gotten YouTube to take the clip down. They’re within their rights, I know — though query how much copyright “originality” adheres in the broadcast file of the game, and why we usually unthinkingly assume that the broadcast is a protected work — but more to the point, does FIFA really think that they’re harmed in some way by the availability of the clip?

2. In his nice summing up of the Cup final, Jeff Klein at the NY Times blog, writing to congratulate the South Africans for a job well done in hosting the games, writes about one of “the many wonderful things South Africa has given the world (not counting vuvuzelas),” the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Not only does he include a link to the Youtube (audio) clip of the original 1939 South African recording (by Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds), as well as a link to the extraordinary article by South African journalist Rian Malan (“In the Jungle: How American music legends made millions off the work of a Zulu tribesman who died a pauper” lovingly detailing the amazing history of the recording (and the many, many, many copyright squabbles that erupted as its popularity spread around the world). Great stuff . . .

[thanks to Jerry Lewis for the pointer]

The World Cup final (and the Dutch) are both taking well-deserved beatings in the blogosphere – it was not a very beautiful game to watch, thanks largely to the unrelentingly nasty play of the Dutch. Jonathan Wilson over on SI.com summarized it nicely:

At least after an ugly, unpleasant game, the World Cup had the right winner, the only side in the tournament that was consistently proactive in its play.

A fourth 1-0 win in a row doesn’t tell the full story; Spain had none of the control it had possessed in the previous three rounds, as the Netherlands effectively kicked it out of its rhythm. An open extra time gave the game some credit, but this was a match ruined by Dutch brutality. Referee Howard Webb was booed by the crowd and will no doubt be harangued by pundits, but the greatest share of the blame belongs to the Netherlands and its negativity. The goodwill built up by years of attractive football was severely depleted by 120 sorry minutes. A more defensive approach is one thing; borderline anti-football is something else.

[Other interesting comments in a similar vein over on Slate and Sam's Posts]

Like a lot of US soccer fans, I watch “big games” like this with a dual perspective: just to watch the game, of course, but also to see if this one will be the one that will grab even those who are unenthusiastic and give them at least a glimpse of why this is the greatest sport on earth. Alas, that didn’t happen — there were a number of such games during this World Cup (USA-Algeria, Spain-Germany, Argentina-Korea), but the final definitely was not among them. [And it did illustrate, though not happily, Post's Fourth (or is it Fifth) Law of Soccer: The referee is a participant in the game. Howard Webb, the English ref, had a bad game - too many whistles interrupting play when he could have just played the advantage and let play go on, too many missed red card fouls, and way, way too many pauses to lecture the players about their nasty tackling . . . He didn't cause it to be a lousy game, but he sure didn't help]. But I certainly agree with what most people are saying: the right team won. The Spanish certainly deserved the crown, and perhaps gave a boost to the more positive and beautiful aspects of the game.

So we’re down to the final question: Who to root for on Sunday? [And who will win? See below] It’s a pretty complicated tangle. If it were a simple question (as it usually is, for me) of “Who’s playing the most beautiful and creative football?,” it would be easy to get behind Spain, who were magnificent in their semifinal against the Germans.

But the Dutch, surely, have a deeply rooted claim to our affections and whatever good karma we can send their way. The Dutch are to beautiful and creative football what Little Richard and Muddy Waters are to rock and roll. The great Dutch teams of the 70s, led by the incomparable Johann Cruyff, defined a style (“Total Football”) that was as mesmerizing and melodious, in its way, as the Brazilians’ jogo bonito, a flowing symphony of short passes and diagonal runs and relentless attack . . .

But the gods of soccer, who should have showered them with riches and rewards for their contribution to the game, have been cruel — crueler to them, probably, than to anyone. One major tournament championship, the European Cup in 1988, in the 36 years since Total Football was unleashed on the world in the 1974 World Cup. [The 1974 final, Holland v. Germany, was the first soccer game I ever watched; I was at a hotel in Nairobi, Kenya (long story), and the game happened to be on, and even for someone who knew not the slightest thing about the game, it was clear that the Dutch were up to something special. Plus, who could root against the Dutch playing the Germans, a mere 29 years after the end of WWII?] Always the bridesmaid, playing the beautiful soccer, never the bride. Time and time again, they’d get close, and fail. I was at the Ajax Stadium in Amsterdam for the semifinals of the Euro 2000 championship; the Dutch had murdered their opposition (6-1 in the quarters against Yugoslavia) and had a team with sublime talent all the way through; with 50,000 orange-clad fanatics in the stands, they lost their nerve, losing to Italy on penalty kicks after a 0-0 draw, in the course of which game they missed five penalty kicks!! Five!! Two during the match, three more in the shootout. The subway back to Amsterdam after the game was full of very, very unhappy people.]

So let them win already! Who could wish it otherwise?

The problem, though, is that this year’s version of the Dutch team is playing a most unimaginative brand of football — mostly dull and defense-oriented, lots of pushing and shoving and fouling, pretty predictable in attack. It’s the Spanish who are the new Dutch — at their best (and, as I predicted, they were at their best against Germany) playing with the kind of abandon and flow that characterized the great Dutch teams of the past. [Brian Phillips, over on Slate, has some interesting thoughts on this point] [And ironically enough, the Spanish wouldn't be playing as beautifully as they are now were it not for the Total Football of the Dutch, which Cruyff brought to Barcelona as player and coach in the '70s and '80s and which has remained the touchstone of the Barca style [and with six players on the Spanish starting 11, the Barca style has become the Spanish style -- and just this year, Cruyff was made Honorary President for Life of Barcelona FC . . . ]. While the Dutch spend a huge amount of time whacking their opponents on the shins, or feigning agony after being whacked themselves, the Spanish are all business, all about the game; the most remarkable thing about the Spain-Germany semifinal was that there wasn’t a single foul called in the first 25 minutes or so, and only maybe 8 or so the whole game, no diving, no writhing around, no yellow cards handed out, nothing but soccer — kudos to the Germans, too, for that). In the great battle for soccer’s heart and soul between the Realists and the Romantics, the Dutch have switched sides, ceding the Romantic banner to their opponents in Sunday’s game, and a victory for Holland on Sunday will — more irony! — be taken by many as additional proof that too much beauty is incompatible with bringing home the trophy.

It’s a bit of a conundrum. This is going to be one of those games where I’m truly glad I don’t have any actual say in who wins and loses – if those soccer gods were to come to me and tell me that it was my decision, I’d be truly unhappy. It would be nice if Spain got this year’s Oscar for Best Team, and the Dutch got their Lifetime Achievement Award, but it doesn’t work like that, alas.

As to what will actually happen . . . I think the Spanish will prove too patient and too clever for the Dutch defense, and they’ll win 3-1. [And though I'm really not given to bragging, I have to congratulate myself here for the prescience of my earlier observations and predictions. I didn't get everything right -- but I had Spain and Holland as two of the four teams capable of winning it all, Italy and France and England going out early, the Brazilians not that impressive, the Africans as a group doing badly, . . . not bad!] But I won’t be heartbroken at all if I’m wrong and it goes the other way. [Especially since I put money on each of them to win -- Spain at 8-1, Holland at 12-1 -- at the beginning of the tournament!]

[Update: And many thanks to Visitor Again for his comment on the Magical Magyars, who were indeed before my time but who were, as the comment reminds us and legend has it, a sight to behold ]

Uruguay’s loss to the Netherlands in yesterday’s World Cup semifinal may perhaps have been foreordained, given how deeply they had offended against the gods of soccer. For those of you who missed it, at the very end of the previous game, the Uruguay-Ghana quarterfinal, a tense back-and-forth affair which was tied 1-1 in the closing seconds of the 30-minute “extra time” period tacked on to the first 90 minutes, Ghana was awarded a free kick; the ball was sent into the box, and one of the Ghanaian players launched a shot that was clearly goal-bound but which Luis Suarez, the outstanding Uruguayan forward, punched away. It was an excellent save — except that Suarez is not the goalkeeper, and not entitled to use his hands. The ref spotted it immediately, Suarez was given his red card and expelled, and Ghana was awarded a penalty kick — which Asamoah Gyan pomptly clanged against the crossbar. The final whistle blew, the game went to penalties, and Ghana lost.

It was — to put it mildly — an excruciating moment. [A perfect illustration, by the way, of Post's First Law of Soccer: that we don't love watching soccer because it is "fun," we love watching soccer because it is compelling drama. There will not be many times you'll see, in public, pain like that; with a billion people or two watching, including just about everyone in Ghana that he knows or has ever known, with the ability to put an African team into the World Cup semifinals for the very first time in history (and on African soil, with the crowd going completely crazy with the possibility), and he hits the crossbar . . . I doubt that even the most passionate Uruguayan supporters would say that was "fun" to watch. But if you're watching, it touches something that a great performance of Lear touches -- I've seen some actors who can make me actually feel Lear's pain the way that I felt Asamoah Gyan's, but not many.]

But beyond all that, an interesting Internet kerfuffle has arisen concerning the “meaning” of Suarez’ action. Mind you, this wasn’t a case of someone sticking out his elbow a few inches to try to push a ball away and getting called for it, Suarez behaved just like a goalkeeper, throwing both arms at the ball and punching it away. To some (including Suarez, who talked about the incident after the match), he did the right thing (and would/should do it again in the same circumstance). If that ball goes in, which it will, Uruguay loses; if he punches it away, he’ll get a red card but his team is still in the game and might win (as it did). If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime — Suarez was prepared for the punishment and accepted it as the price to save his team. Way to go, Luis!

To others, though, he’s a cheater and to be roundly condemned for his act. [Much of the discussion in the blogosphere has focused on whether FIFA should enhance his penalty over and above the usual one-game suspension for a red card - perhaps suspend him from the rest of the tournament] Nobody but the keeper can touch the ball – that’s as fundamental a rule as there is in soccer, and Suarez knew it. The rules don’t establish an “exchange” (break rule/get punished), they establish principles of right and wrong, and what Suarez did was simply wrong; the act of murder is wrongful, even if done for good reasons and even if the perpetrator is prepared to pay the price for it.

Not at all sure where I stand on this one, to be honest.

[And, incidentally, as noted in an earlier posting, I'm picking Spain in today's match. Not just because I will win a pile of dough if Spain wins, having bet on a Spain-Holland final back at the beginning of the tournament when the odds were 23-1; and not, certainly, because Spain has looked better than Germany up to this point. Quite the contrary - the Germans have been revelatory, while Spain hasn't quite clicked. But there's just something that tells me they'll start clicking today. The Germans will not be able to do to the Spanish defense - which is outstanding - what they did to the Argentine defense (especially without the (unjustly) suspended Thomas Mueller), and I think the Spaniards will get their offensive machine in gear. We shall see.]

Having just returned from 10 days bicycling in France, away from my computer and therefore unable to share with you my thoughts on the developments in South Africa, it’s time to catch up. France was an unfortunate place to be, as it turned out, for the second round of the Cup; while it was pretty amusing to watch the French team self-destruct from afar, from inside France it wasn’t so amusing at all – it was actually pretty painful. “Morte au champ du deshonneur” was the headline in one of the papers the day we got in — “Death on the Field of Dishonor.” Ouch. People were genuinely depressed by the whole thing – so much so that there was ZERO interest in the remaining games of the Cup; more bars in Oklahoma, I’d bet, were showing games live, and many more people were watching there, than in the Dordogne region of southern France. The French government’s “Minister of Sport and Culture” — and nothing so clearly indicates the differences between France and the US than that they have a government ministry for “Sport and culture” and we don’t — had to defend herself against angry insults on the floor of Parliament, President Sarkoczy had a hastily-arranged meeting with Thierry Henry, sort of the elder statesman on the national team, to try to figure out what went wrong, and the newspapers, at least for the first 4 or 5 days we were there, had 4-10 pages of stuff about the teams disgraceful performance every day. There was a very palpable sense that the team reflected some deep failure of something, somewhere – national character, or will, or passion, or something. It was all pretty nasty and depressing, actually …

But on to the games . . . While I had predicted early exits for France, Italy, and even Brazil, I did not expect the Argentines to be going home so soon [though others were more prescient than I]. [As an aside, I recommend this little essay, by Joe Posnanski over at Sports Illustrated, on the genius of Lionel Messi]. The Germans, who have, for my money, been the big surprise in this tournament, simply took them apart. [I ended up watching that match at an Argentine bar in the heart of Paris -- not, as it turned out, a happy choice]. Germany v. Spain (Wednesday’s game) could be a cracker — Germany’s looked downright unbeatable, but something tells me that the Spanish, who have looked a bit out of sorts for much of the tournament, might be clicking at just the right time. But whichever team comes out ahead, I’m expecting a terrific match – both squads are built to attack (though both are also strong in the back), and it should be a no-holds-barred affair.

I have not, to be honest, been too impressed with either Uruguay or the Netherlands, who meet tomorrow in Semi #1; both have had a dose of good fortune to get where they are (Uruguay with a relatively easy draw, Netherlands with a Brazil squad that completely lost its cool in the quarterfinal), but I’m picking the Dutch to make it through to the Final. A Holland-Germany final would be nice, a repeat of the classic 1974 Final when the Johann Cruyff-led Dutch team scored right off the opening kickoff with a 15-touch move culminating in a penalty kick and a goal before any German player had even touched the ball! [though the Germans stormed back and ended up winning 2-1]. But my money’s on Holland – Spain in the final, with the Dutch — always remarked-upon as the Best Team Never to Have Won the World Cup — finally getting their longed-for trophy. It’s probably a case of my heart over my head, but there you have it.

Here’s the goal, if, like me, you want to watch it over (and over) again …

In reference to some of the comments on my earlier posting about the game , I’ll just say this: If you come to soccer with the mindset that the goal of sports is to create a playing field in which all elements of randomness have been removed — soccer ain’t really for you. Yes, the linesman made a terrible call to deprive the US of a goal. Yes, it sucked, and was unfair, and I and every other soccer fan wish that the refs didn’t make so many mistakes. But they do, just like the players do, and for the same reason: they are human beings. It’s just part of the game. It’s cruel, but you get over it — it took the players about 1.35 seconds to get over it, because they have to get their heads right back into the game. Fans, too. To let it sour a great moment like Donovan’s goal is really too bad. There is, as he put it over at Sam’s Posts, “really nothing in sports comparable to that last-gasp goal in soccer. After playing for so long, doing everything except scoring, the swing in emotions is indescribable. And for it to happen to the US team, in a decisive World Cup game! Even if they didn’t play the best soccer, team USA treated us to the two most dramatic examples of soccer matches in the last two games: a two-goal comeback, and a last-minute game-winner. We’re all lucky to have witnessed it.”

[And not to get ahead of ourselves or anything, but don't look now: the US plays Ghana in the Round of 16, and then, if it wins, the winner of Uruguay-S. Korea. Tough games, but definitely winnable by the US -- not the hardest route one could face to getting into a World Cup semifinal by any means . . .]

. . . stop reading immediately, go to ESPN3.com, and watch. Do not read further – you’ll thank me later.

If you watched it . . . that was not only the greatest moment in US soccer history (without question), but I’m thinking it may well have been the greatest moment in US sports history (or in the top 2 or 3 — “Miracle on Ice”? What else is even close?). I do NOT mean the greatest moment in the history of sports in the US — there are way too many candidates on that list. But I do mean possibly the greatest moment in the history of “US sports” — sports in which “the US” was a participant. Even those of you who don’t care much for the game of soccer have to agree – that was an extraordinary contest and extraordinary drama. I don’t know what others are looking for when they watch sports, but if that one didn’t do it for you, you’re . . . not a soccer fan, I guess. [I feel the same way about Wagner operas -- if you can listen to a great performance and come away unmoved, then it just means Wagner's not for you ...]. And it’s the first 91 minutes of frustration and anger — another blown call!! missed chances right and left!! bad decision-making!! — that makes it all the more delicious [a lot like Wagner, actually!]

This Cup, for my money, has had decent soccer (I’d give it a “B” so far, overall) and great drama. It’s compelling in the way that March Madness is compelling, but multiplied by maybe 10 million — fundamentally, because “Nigeria” and “Spain” and “France” and “Ghana” and the rest of them are, as ideas and symbols to which people are profoundly attached and about which they care very, very deeply, about 10 million times more powerful than “Duke” and “the University of Kansas” and “Butler” – no disrespect to those fine institutions, of course. The implosion of the French, the great fightback by South Africa yesterday to gain at least a degree of respect, the way the Argentines have finally found a way to get the most creative player in the world into the thick of the action, the Portuguese demolition of the North Koreans (who looked so strong against mighty Brazil) . . . . lots of great story lines throughout. [and for my money, I think Sam's posts on the Cup have been as good as anything I've been reading out there on the subject ...]

And I’m pretty happy so far with my pre-tournament predictions. I pegged Spain, Brazil, Argentina, and the Netherlands as potential winners, and they look like good choices thus far (though Spain still has some work to do to assure itself a place in the second round). “Italy looks old and tired, France anemic in attack, Germany unimpressive, and England . . . . well, England looks like England.” I think that was pretty prescient — except for the Germans, who look a lot better than I expected them to look. And also, as I predicted, the African teams were a mess – we may well have a round of 16 without a single African team in it, which would really be a shame.

(and with apologies to Paul Simon)
So here’s to you, Landon Donovan
The heavens are resounding with thy name, that’s what I’d claim.
What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson?
Landon took the shot that won The Game.
Hey hey hey, hey hey hey …

We really wuz – er, were. A truly stirring US comeback from a 2-0 deficit in its game against Slovenia was spoiled by an indefensible and inexplicable call by the Malian referee, disallowing what would have been the Americans’ third goal. Replays from every conceivable angle confirmed what most viewers thought at the time — the only possible fouls that occurred were committed by the Slovenians on the Americans, particularly one defendenr who literally wrestled US midfielder Michael Bradley to the ground as the ball was coming into the box. But Bob Bradley, the US coach, had the right attitude after the game:

“Honestly I think that the set piece, most of what took place was that Slovenia players were holding our players. One player had his arms around Michael (Bradley), Michael was trying to break loose and a foul was called. I don’t know if that’s accurate. But that’s one version. There are moments when you are frustrated because you feel that situations have not been handled 100 percent correctly or fairly. But that’s how the game works sometimes. You move on.”

And speaking of moving on . . . the good news on the day for the US was that England’s dispiriting performance in its 0-0 draw with a surprisingly confident and skilled Algerian team means that the US has its fate in its hands, and is a pretty good bet to progress to the second round. The permutations are complicated but the bottom line is that the US goes through if it can beat the Algerians next week, regardless of what happens in the other game. Even if its a tie, we’d get through if (a) Slovenia beats England (which, from the looks of things so far, is eminently possible), or (b) England and Slovenia tie and England ends up with fewer total goals than the US. [Currently, we're ahead on that measure by 3-1]. So get your vuvuzuelas out, people!

Richard Epstein — whom I believe, if memory serves me, is quite persuasive when it comes to articulating the reasons why the common law has evolved towards greater and greater efficiency over time — is apparently unwilling to extend that line of reasoning to the rules of soccer. He’s got some suggestions for changing the rules to make “transform a flawed game.” It’s an interesting and little-remarked-upon phenomena surrounding the spread of soccerphilia in the U.S.; Americans, I have found, are remarkably free with their suggestions, once they get a taste of the beautiful game, for measures that should be taken to make it better. Every four years, I hear from friends how if they only made the goal bigger, or got rid of the offside rule, well, then it would really be fun to watch . . .

I don’t mean to be unfair to Prof. Epstein — perhaps his suggestions (two points for a goal from the run of play, 1 for a penalty kick goal; and a hockey-like system for penalties to replace the red card/yellow card scheme) come from long study and deep understanding of the game. But I suspect not. The proposals would quite fundamentally alter a game that — lest we forget — two or three billion people are currently in love with. Hmm. It takes a lot of confidence — or chutzpah — to come in and say: I have figured out a way to make this better.

[Thanks to ajr13 for the pointer]

… and dedicated to Tod Lindberg and his daughter Abbey.  Tod is editor of Hoover’s Policy Review and a foreign affairs guru and both Lindbergs are soccer fanatics.  I, on the other hand, can only say – further to the very interesting discussion from Ilya, et al. – that I know as little about soccer as about American sports.  I am hazy on how most of them are scored, to start with.  Leaving my inadequacies aside, however, Chris at OJ has a fascinating post on the intersection of soccer and international law, specifically the recognition of which places count as countries to be able to send teams, and what those who don’t count are doing instead.

Padania’s victory [over Kurdistan] was not in the football (American translation: “soccer”) World Cup being played in South Africa but in the one that was just played in Gozo. You know, the Viva World Cup, the tournament among the unrecognized states of the world.

The World Cup being played in South Africa is sponsored by FIFA, the Federation Internationale de Football Association, the governing body of international soccer that is an association of the national football leagues from around the world. But, as author Steve Menary put it, there are “the lands that FIFA forgot,” such as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Gozo, Occitania,Somaliland, and, of course, three-time world (?) champions Padania. (No Transnistria, but Sealand is an Associate Member.) The Viva World Cup is organized by the NF-Board (see also wiki), which may have originally stood for “Non-FIFA Board” but is now referred to as the “New Federation Board.”

In a recent post, I wrote that US pro sports have an important unappreciated advantage over international soccer. Unlike the latter, they are not organized in ways that fuel ethnic violence and provide prestige for oppressive regimes. Co-blogger David Post seems to concede my central point, but defends soccer anyway:

I think Ilya’s on to something here. What’s most interesting, to me, is that he describes this as an “advantage” of US sports. Another way to say what he’s saying: people around the world care about soccer in a way that is far deeper than the way most US fans care about their sports. It touches a much, much deeper chord, and, as a result, is much more bound up with all those things people care deeply about — religion, and politics, and honor, and the rest of it. I’ve said it before: soccer’s like life, and people care about it the way they care about their lives….. But to those of us who love soccer — all 2.75 billion or so of us — that’s not a bug, that’s a feature. Do US sports have an “advantage” because they lack this quality?? Depends how you measure these things. Ilya (like Jonathan Adler) has an unspoken theory of sport standing behind his comments: sports should take us away from the real world, it should provide us a respite from the ethnic tensions and religious divisions and political problems of the real world. I can see it — I just don’t share it. Sure, “promoting ethnic violence” and “providing propaganda fodder for repressive and corrupt governments” are bad things. But the way I see it, it’s a lot like love — many, many terrible things have happened over the centuries because of love, but “on balance” we’re better off for it…

The analogy to “love” doesn’t really work for me. We can’t have the beneficial aspects of love without accepting some of its negative consequences. By contrast, the US example shows that we can enjoy professional sports without linking it to nationalism, ethnic hostility, and propaganda for repressive regimes. Perhaps there is an extra level of additional enjoyment when sports is connected to these things. But I doubt it’s worth the cost, as measured in people killed in soccer riots, wars, and political repression. I would make the same point about love. Yes, love is great. But we nonetheless try to curb those aspects of it that lead to violence and oppression. For example, we punish jilted lovers who kill or harrass those who reject them. We don’t let them off merely because their actions are an understandable part of “life.”

Sports is like life, just as David says. And we should strive to accentuate the good in both, while eliminating the “many, many terrible things” as much as possible.

UPDATE: I also disagree with David’s view that the differences between international soccer and US pro sports have to do with the nature of the sports as such. Rather, they are consequences of the social and political organization of international soccer. If baseball or basketball were organized the same way, we would see similar results. Indeed, Fidel Castro’s regime has in fact tried to used baseball in much the same way that other dictatorships use soccer.