Is this the most dangerous sport in America?

I hate to say it, bit no, they are not.

When you have some asshat deciding a winner on their own personal opinion, I just cannot call that sporting.

People who skate and do gymnastics do amazing things, but the way their "sport" is set up now, I would call it an exhibition more than anything.

Equestrian (I forgot to mention a clock) is a sport more than diving for example.

I know, flame away.

 

correct. I'm right there on the subjective scoring bandwagon.

 

I think both of you are full of shit. Baseball? Who determines balls or strikes? OH, an umpire. By your reasoning, not a sport then.

 

sc, it's certainly not a clear, defined break between sport/non-sport. but in baseball the score isn't subjective. scoring system is the same every time for every player, every team. even the yankees. there are officials in every sport that decide rules. human element is involved. doesn't change the actual scoring, though.

 

What the hell does the involvement of a ball have to do with anything? What an absurd criterion. Swimming, cycling, ski racing, speed skating -- all not sports? (I assume track counts because of the "Greek soldiers" criterion, which was clearly a joke. Right?)

 

In baseball, umpires are there to decide whether an objectively written criteria has been met.

Objective standards of victory based on physical feats will always be the gold standard for deciding what is a sport and what isn't.

 

You can say the exact same thing about diving and gymnastics.

 

You could say it. But you'd be ignorant of the rules of those competitions if you did.

Half of a gymnastics score is the so-called "E-score," or evaluation score. It is based on subjective, not objective, criteria.

Diving is a little closer. They have relatively objective standards (things like height at apex of jump, whether the diver held body in one of four positions, etc.) but the judges are expected to give subjective scoring based on them, there is no standard.

This is worlds different than having a human decide whether a ball passed through a predefined three-dimensional space.

 

It would be "worlds different" if every umpire didn't have his own strike zone, or if a strike at the letters had been called in the last how many years.

It's a fair distinction between gymnastics and diving, though. Injecting scores for artistry is problematic, no doubt about it.

 

I think the strike zone problems are overblown. A lot of the complaints come from the fact that most of us watch games from on TV.

TV camera angles flattening a 3-d view into a 2-d picture from well above and to the right of the plate.

There are three things that shooting from this angle does and flattening the image does:

1) Makes pitches look lower than they are.
2) Makes pitches look like they move more than they do.
3) Makes the pitch look further to the left of the screen than it really is.

What are the major complaints on the strike zone? The low strike being called more than the high, the outside (to a right-handed hitter) being called too much, and pitches that curve "around" the strike zone (a physical impossibility) not being called.

The complaints perfectly match up with the distortions.

 

boom, you're right about the ball thing. that's silly. but the scoring thing I'm behind 100 percent.

 

Boxing?