Academic

Chess boxing it is, then.

By Mark Weidemaier

Following up on Kim's posts about cheating, doping, and technology and the wonderful spectacle of a bunch of drugged-up cyclists riding up a hill - or, um, whatever that whole Tour de France thing is about - yesterday's New York Times has an interesting column by former baseball player Doug Glanville on doping in baseball. Glanville's particular topic is the slow, selective leaking of the names of baseball players who tested positive during 2003's supposedly confidential "survey" round of drug testing. But the article implicitly raises the question that Kim addresses: why are people so upset to learn about athletes doping?

I think Kim is right that there are some benefits to a system of cosmetic compliance: fans get to have their spectacle while pretending it's sport. Disclosing all the dopers shatters that illusion. Yet there may be another factor in play, especially in sports like baseball where many fans care deeply about cross-era comparisons. One commonly-invoked explanation for the fact that doping provokes hysteria in baseball and yawns in football is that baseball fans are uniquely obsessed with comparing players across eras. And really, what are we baseball fans to do if we can't be sure whether Barry Bonds or Hank Aaron was the better hitter of home runs? We might as well watch chess boxing. Or bog snorkeling. If it isn't already clear, I know nothing about the Tour de France (sorry, Kim!). But perhaps cycling fans are a little similar to baseball fans in this regard?

One final thought: At least in baseball, part of the problem could be corrected by use of the proper metrics. To take the Barry Bonds/Hank Aaron example, simply counting up home runs is a really, really bad way to compare players, even in the same era. Just as there are better ways to measure the validity of baseball strategy, there are better ways to compare players - using metrics that account for overall league performance, park factors, etc. When everyone in an era dopes, and the right metrics are used, doping doesn't seriously complicate the effort to compare players. The problem is when only some athletes dope. So perhaps there are sports - and baseball may be one of them - where the collective action problem really is significant from the fan's perspective. Defectors not only destroy the spectacle-as-sport illusion (when caught), they deprive fans of a key pleasure: the ability to argue endlessly about who was "best" at some particular aspect of the game.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on August 04, 2009 (boomark / email).