Unpopular Essays on Sports History

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Supposition. We live in a golden age of sports. I mean this not in the sense of athletes becoming stronger, speedier, savvier and smarter than ever before, nor in terms of the amazing access to live streams and stat feeds, the instant insights and opinionating, the quirks and personalities of celebrity heroes. This, rather, is a golden age of sports in humanistic, historical terms. The truth is that the great majority of people today, willingly or not, have a direct and regular connection to organized and/or participatory sports in their everyday lives than anyone born before the 20th century. In the United States, not a person alive can recall a time when sports was not a staple of the daily newspaper. For four generations, the notion that nightly news programs should devote up to one-quarter of their airtime to sports is taken for granted. Why do we take this for granted? At Unpopular Essays on Sports History, everything is questionable.

Episodes

  1. 03/19/2023

    What is the greatest sport ever invented?

    Another unpopular essay on sports history... On this episode of Unpopular Essays on Sports History, host Os Davis looks to answer the question, "What is the greatest sport ever invented?" Make your guess and run through a thorough process of elimination to arrive at a logical, objective answer. You may be surprised at how easy this question really is... The Unpopular Essays on Sports History theme and all other music used in this episode was written and performed by Shane Ivers or Silverman Sound Studios.

    11 min

  2. 03/06/2023

    Who invented baseball?

    Another Unpopular Essay on Sports History... Question: Who invented baseball? On April 2, 1908, Chicago Cubs president Albert Spalding made an announcement of earth-shattering importance to the game of baseball. Spalding was a huge name in the game, having played for over a decade before helping form the National League, and then player/managed his Chicago White Stockings to the championship in the inaugural season of 1876. (Not uncoincidentally, that same year Spalding Sporting Goods, still the sole official supplier of baseballs to the major leagues, was founded.) And just prior to the opening of one Major League Baseball’s most exciting seasons ever, Spalding announced the findings of the Mills Commission: “I claim that the game of baseball is entirely of American origin, and has no relation to or connection with any game of any other country, except insofar as all games of ball have a certain similarity and family relationship.” Specifically, the commission had “discovered” that a Civil War general named Abner Doubleday had written the rules for official organized baseball in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. This game of legend would have been played seven years before the acknowledged first official game between the New York-based Mutuals and Knickerbockers at Elysian Fields in New Jersey. “It certainly appeals to all Americans' pride to have had the great national game of baseball created and named by a major general in the United States Army, and to have that same game played […] by the soldiers of the Civil War, who, at the conclusion of the war, disseminated baseball throughout the length and breadth of the United States and thus gave to the game its national character.” It certainly was quite the appealing story for a country bursting with a new patriotic pride espoused by President Teddy Roosevelt. It was also *a complete fabrication. The Miles Commission was created almost entirely in response to a single newspaper article by England-born Henry Chadwick, the first great baseball writer and revolutionary statistician. In 1904, Chadwick wrote that the first organized team was that of the Philadelphia Olympic Club. The Olympic played townball, which “…was simply an American edition of the English game of rounders, which i used to play 65 years ago, when a schoolboy in England." Almost from the start, holes in the Doubleday story were easily punched: in 1839, for example, Doubleday was a 20-year-old student at West Point Military Academy – 150 miles away from Cooperstown. In fact, 90 years passed before any tangible link between baseball and Doubleday was found by a Civil War historian in 1998: A requisition form for baseballs and bats for his troops in training. Still, Doubleday was one of the great diarists of the 19th century and in some 60 volumes of personal journals covering most of his adult life plus his known personal correspondence, not a single mention of baseball is made. The previous Unpopular Essay on Sports History recounted the aggrandizement of William Webb Ellis, ostensibly the creator of rugby football, albeit accidentally. As with creation of the Doubleday myth, the Webb Ellis story was a product of a commission of gatekeeper-types looking to keep its sport rooted in local tradition. The commission for each “discovery” based key conclusions on a single eyewitness’s testimony decades after the genesis event took place, where the setting for each instantly gained in international prestige, particularly the village of Cooperstown, since 1937 home to the Baseball Hall of Fame. And in our present day neither story is widely believed in its country of origin; artificially-created historical events seem to have little sticking power, and by the 100th...

    7 min

  3. 03/02/2023

    Who was William Webb Ellis?

    Another Unpopular Essay on Sports History. Question: Who was William Webb Ellis? Answer: William Webb Ellis, were we to rely solely on tradition, is the guy who, in a split-second decision, triggered the creation of not only the organized rugby for which he is credited, but also soccer, American football and all their cousins. Webb Ellis got his early education at Rugby School in Warwickshire where, two hundred years ago, at the age of 16, precociously changed the history of sport forever. As a plaque on the school grounds reads: This stone Commemorates the exploit of William Webb Ellis Who with a fine disregard for the rules of football as played in his time first took the ball in his arms and ran with it Thus originating the distinctive feature of the rugby game. AD 1823 A statue of Webb Ellis on the grounds bears a plaque proclaiming him as “the local boy who inspired the game of rugby football....” Webb-Ellis was first given credit for this evolutionary leap by a contemporary of his named Matthew Bloxam to the school newspaper – in 1876, 53 years after the “fact” and putting Bloxam at about 70 years old. Even if Bloxam was possessed of excellent memory, his judgement of the “rules of football of his time” may be well off: Before 1820, few organized matches of any sort of football were held between school teams. For five decades thereafter, the rules for said matches were quite fluid, frequently hashed out verbally shortly before the match started. In 1895, the Old Rugbeian Society commissioned a report to determine an origin for the game; two years later, the report, which contained a solitary mention of Webb Ellis, was published. In addition, the society figured that likely the rule at Rugby School in 1823 allowed for a player to catch or pick up the ball, at which point he was obliged to drop back some number of steps before dropkicking the ball in a style still used today. Despite the society’s own lukewarm attitude toward the Webb Ellis story, the aforementioned plaque commemorating Webb Ellis’s unoriginal play was set at Rugby School in 1900. Naturally, this story is far too neat, too precise and, ultimately, too good to be true. And just as naturally it’s been debunked for quite some time already by better historians than Os Davis. The 1979 book on rugby by Eric Dunning and Ken Sheard entitled Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players asserted that “By giving pride of place in their report to the William Webb Ellis story, which correctly located the beginnings of rugby football in their school, the Old Rugbeians were attempting … to reassert their proprietorship of the rugby game at a time when it was escaping their control and changing in ways of which they disapproved.” In the opening pages of the 1997 tome The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Rugby notes on the origin of the modern sport that: “the only thing that is for certain is that Rugby School’s William Webb Ellis did not spontaneously invent the game when he picked up the ball and ran with it […] rugby was by no means the first code to involve running and handling. In fact, before Webb Ellis did his party trick in 1823, all codes of football involved running and handling.” Today, the winner of the Rugby World Cup is awarded the Webb Ellis Cup – yet few outside the most ardent believers in the myth seriously accept him as

    7 min

  4. 02/25/2023

    Why don’t MLB players hit .400 anymore?

    Another Unpopular Essay on Sports History. Question: Why can’t Major League Baseball players hit .400 anymore? The simplest possible answer: Because Major League baseball players never hit .400 – not in any un-asteriskable sense, anyway. “What?” those protesting may cry. “Since formation of the National League in 1876, 30 players have hit .400 or better a combined 41 times! We all know that Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941! And Artie Wilson hit .435 for the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948! That counts!” 1941 was the last American League season before the careers of a significant fraction of major leaguers – including Ted Williams – had their careers interrupted for military service in World War II. 1948 was the first full season of the Negro American and Negro National Leagues post-color barrier. Not only would these leagues start ’48 without Jackie Robinson, but also Dan Bankhead, Willard Brown, Roy Campanella, Larry Doby, Hank Thompson and Satchel Paige. Sure, two major leagues of 12 teams aren’t destroyed by the absence of seven star players – even if five of them are eventually Hall of Famers – but Jackie Robinson’s rookie season with the Brooklyn Dodgers was opened the floodgates of talent, which gave the AL and NL a potential strength they’d never had before. When Williams hit .406 in 1941, the 16 teams of the American and National Leagues were drawing from a population of less than 60 million individuals. By the time of Williams’s retirement in 1960, every team included at least one black player on the roster (even Teddy Ballgame’s own Boston Red Sox!), the Negro Leagues had folded, and the 16 teams of the MLB could draw from a potential talent pool of about 90 million. Apparently, all you really need to increase your team’s talent by 50% is some social equality… Some have suggested that, because of the color line, any statistic in Major League Baseball before Jackie Robinson’s debut should get an asterisk. Though Major League Baseball since 2020 has officially counted stats from the NNL and NAL in the record books, statistics are spotty and thus already asterisk-ridden. For example, Artie Wilson’s gaudy .435 in 1948 was achieved on just 130 known plate appearances – well short of the 275 the modern standard to qualify for the league batting title would require. And after the asterisk apocalypse ravages the MLB record books, we’re left with two conclusions: First, that hitting .400 against top-level major-league pitching has simply never happened. Concomitantly, the feat seems ever less likely to be pulled off, after three consecutive seasons in which the cumulative league batting average has been .245 or lower.   Second, Tony Gwynn’s .394 in 1994 should probably be acknowledged as one the finest individual batting seasons in Major League Baseball history. Though it won’t be, because … ah, don’t even get me started on the 1994 season… Finally, here’s the really interesting question: Why, at the highest levels of baseball, is .400 the unattainable batting average…?

    6 min

  5. 02/22/2023

    Who was the true MVP of Super Bowl LVII?

    Another Unpopular Essay on Sports History. Some time before yours truly enters that great podcast production booth in the sky, there is one feat in sports I'd like to see accomplished: Namely, for an offensive lineman to be named Super Bowl Most Valuable Player. Unfortunately, as Super Bowl LVII quickly retreating in the collective metaphorical rearview mirror, it seems as if this dream will never come to fruition. Because if what left tackle Orlando Brown Jr. did for his NFL champion Kansas City Chiefs wasn't enough, one wonders what would be for an OL to take the MVP... Tangentially speaking, the simultaneous appreciation and discounting of offensive line play among the official football cognoscenti is bizarre. The left tackle in particular can be recognized as the literal most valuable player on his offense – think Trent Williams or Tyron Smith – yet go unmentioned in the pre-game hype and post-game highlights. Many may find it difficult to compare the contributions of an offensive linemen to those of the so-called “skill position” players. Okay, here are some stats: • Number of quarterback sacks in the 2022 regular season by the Philadelphia Eagles: 70. That’s the third-most in a single regular season by an NFL team ever. Okay, that was over 17 games, but still – 70 is a lot of sacks. • Blitz rate by the Eagles defense in the Super Bowl, expressed as percentage of Patrick Mahomes dropbacks: 33.33%. Granted, Mahomes had only 27 attempts in the game, but that one-third is a higher rate than in any Eagles regular-season or postseason game. • Number of turnovers generated by the Eagles defense: zero. • Number of quarterback sacks taken by Mahomes: zero. • Number of times Mahomes was touched by an Eagles defensive player in the second half before getting the pass off: zero. • Number of times Chiefs were tackled for a losses: one, by Javon Hargrave who was lined up against the right, non-Orlando Brown side of the offensive line. As for other candidates for MVP of Super Bowl LVII, we begin with the premise that a player on the losing team cannot win the award, so Jalen Hurts (along with his three TDs plus more passing and rushing yards than Mahomes) is out of consideration. As part of a defense which allowed 35 points, eliminate Nick Bolton as well – despite the eight solo tackles and fumble-six. Meanwhile, no Kansas City offense player scored more than one TD; tops in all-purpose yards was Travis Kelce with 104. As for Mahomes, his 21-of-27 for 182 yards make great stats – for the 1970s. Mahomes’s numbers were the weakest for a Super Bowl MVP since Tom Brady’s 16-of-27 for 145 against the St. Louis Rams in 2001. The clincher for Brady (over, say, Ty Law or Adam Vinatieri) was the final scoring drive. Same for Mahomes. Fair enough, but Orlando Brown would have been the far more scintillating choice for Super Bowl LVII MVP. The dream is still alive, though fading…

    6 min

  6. 02/15/2023

    What is "Unpopular Essays on Sports History"?

    Supposition. We live in a golden age of sports. Not in the sense of athletes becoming stronger, speedier, savvier and smarter than ever before, nor in terms of the amazing access we have to live streams and stat feeds, to instant insights and opinionating, to the quirks and personalities of our celebrity heroes. This, rather, is a golden age of sports in humanistic, historical terms. The truth is that the great majority of people today, willingly or not, have a direct and regular connection to organized and/or participatory sports in their everyday lives than anyone born before the 20th century. In the United States, not a person alive can recall a time when sports was not a staple of the daily newspaper. For four generations, the notion that nightly news programs should devote up to one-quarter of their airtime to sports is taken for granted. Why do we take this for granted? At Unpopular Essays on Sports History, everything is questionable. Supposition: Those who play the games have ascended in the public eye to heights unimaginable in times past. Playing top-level sports can get today’s athlete into business, TV production, national politics – and just how did this happen? At Unpopular Essays on Sports History, everything is up for examination. Supposition: Sports – wherever they are played but particularly in these places where they are invented – effect culture, even pace it. One could argue that sports are more important than ever. Corollary: Sports history, too, should be more important, yet is probably more disrespected and disavowed than ever. At Unpopular Essays on Sports History, we love the past while marveling at the present, and wondering about the future.   The “unpopular essays” of the title is a nod to Bertrand Russell, the logical positivist and my favorite philosopher. (Plus it’s a great excuse to get my BA degree to finally pay off.) And as we’re taught in philosophy, It’s not about answering the questions; it’s about making them clearer. Three days a week, Unpopular Essays on Sports History will examine a moment in sports history, probe some modern ethos of our games, or speculate on what the past can teach the future – and all in 500 words or less – though probably occasionally throwing in the occasional longer interview.  We’ll tour the spaces and times of the whole wide world of sports history about as quickly as Secretariat ran the Belmont Stakes. Supposition: Sports history is fascinating, illuminating and fun. Join me, Os Davis, in making the questions of sports history clearer right here an Unpopular Essays on Sports History, an SHN production.

    5 min
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Supposition. We live in a golden age of sports. I mean this not in the sense of athletes becoming stronger, speedier, savvier and smarter than ever before, nor in terms of the amazing access to live streams and stat feeds, the instant insights and opinionating, the quirks and personalities of celebrity heroes. This, rather, is a golden age of sports in humanistic, historical terms. The truth is that the great majority of people today, willingly or not, have a direct and regular connection to organized and/or participatory sports in their everyday lives than anyone born before the 20th century. In the United States, not a person alive can recall a time when sports was not a staple of the daily newspaper. For four generations, the notion that nightly news programs should devote up to one-quarter of their airtime to sports is taken for granted. Why do we take this for granted? At Unpopular Essays on Sports History, everything is questionable.

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