Scenes from Moot Court 2007

Respondent: Your honor, may it please the court. Jack McLawyerstein, for the respondent, the American baseball fan. May I dispense with the facts?

Judge: No.

R: Alright. Baseball’s popularity plummeted after the 1994 strike. In an effort to regain its fan base, Major League Baseball embraced the long ball in the late nineties, turning a blind eye as players started putting up extraordinary homerun numbers. This peaked in 1998 when Mc­Guire and Sosa both broke Roger Maris’ single-season homerun record of 61. While all of America basked in baseball’s resurgence, one player surveyed the land­scape and was not happy with what he saw. That player was Barry Bonds. Irked at how he had been forgotten by the pub­lic, Bonds set upon a course of extreme weightlifting, drug use, and arrogance, which culminated in his 73rd homerun in 2001.

J: Counselor, please move on to your argument.

R: Yes, your honor. Barry Bonds is a blight on the game of baseball. His cheating should not be tolerated, and he should be punished.

J: Counselor, has Mr. Bonds ever tested positive for steroids?

R: No, your honor, but the new book Game of Shadows lays out in great detail Mr. Bonds’ doping regimen, which included several types of steroids and HGH, among other things. Furthermore----

J: Were steroids a banned substance in baseball before a few years ago?

R: No, your honor, but that’s irrel­evant for several reasons. First, the league turned a blind eye to the whole situation. Rather than protect the integrity of the game, Selig, the owners, the coaches, and players ignored the growing drug use problem. Second, steroid use with­out a prescription is still a crime in this country. Just because baseball had no specific rule against it does not mean that ste­roid use is acceptable. All this goes back to Bonds, who took advantage of baseball’s willful blindness to become the poster child of illegal drug use. His quick offseason muscle gain was unheard of, especially for someone in his late thirties. This led to Bonds hitting 73 homeruns in 2001 after not reaching 50 for the first 15 years in his career.

J: Counselor, do steroids even help a player hit more home runs? Isn’t it a matter of hand-eye coordination?

R: Hand-eye coordination is part of hitting, sure, but you can’t say that muscle and power are irrelevant when it comes to homeruns. I may have the greatest hand-eye coordination in the world, but I can assure you that I won’t be hitting any 400-ft homeruns anytime soon. Also, steroids help a player recover from injury much faster. After the long career that Bonds had pre-steroids, his body should have started breaking down, and injuries should have started mounting. Because of his steroid use, however, Bonds has been relatively injury-free during his latest run. But as you can see from the past year, Bonds’ injuries have been more frequent since the whole BALCO scandal surfaced in 2003.

J: Five minutes, counselor.

R: Bonds’ ar­rogance, like his drug use, is unsurpassed. He is insufferable to the media---

J: Since when is being mean to the media a crime? Why should players have to make nice with people who will throw them under the bus in the blink of the eye?

R: Being a media saint should not be required for every player. In fact, being too friendly with the media also leads to biased reporting, as writers refuse to criticize players with whom they are friendly. Back to Bonds though. Throughout his career, Bonds has treated the media with utter contempt, like they are out to get him. That may be the case now, but Bonds has always given the press the cold shoulder. This is the influence of his father and godfather, who confronted rac­ism and other hardships when they were players. Before the whole steroid scandal, Bonds had not dealt with even a fraction of what Bobby Bonds and Willie Mays faced. Barry grew up in a rich, sheltered neighborhood. He has no reason to act like the world is out to get him.

J: One min­ute.

R: Bonds is also a bad team­mate. He report­edly refused to mentor his young team­mates because he feared they might end up hurting the Giants if they were traded and played against them in the future.

J: That is a bold claim, counselor. Do you have any references to back this up?

R: No, your honor, I do not. I have searched for the original story or reporter that broke this news but have been unable to find anything. In closing, we are not asking the court today to wipe Bonds’ re­cord and statistics from the record books. Instead, we ask the court to uphold the lower court’s ruling that everyone should acknowledge Bonds as an insufferable asshole and furthermore that Giants fans should stop cheering for him.

J: Thank you, counselor.

As this is my last column of the year, I’d like to thank my editor Sarah and the rest of the Nota Bene staff for giving me the opportunity to write this column. I’d also like to thank the readers for making Left-Wing Lock the second most-popular student sports column at GW. Have a good summer.

THIS COLUMN IS SERIOUS!!!!

Ok, so this column is supposed to be some sort of satire because it’s the April Fool’s Edition. However, my columns this semester have been all been satirical, so it makes little sense to continue the trend this week. In order to satirize myself, I will actually have to write a serious sports column. I realize at the outset this is going to be a difficult task, but I just drank an entire gallon of milk, so I think I’m up to it. Here goes nothing.

America is an obese country. We eat junk food, never exercise, and follow ridiculous diet fads that don’t work. Why is this? Are we just too lazy to maintain a healthy lifestyle? Probably. However, I have an alternative theory. And it involves soccer.

A few summers ago, I went to see FC Porto versus Galatasaray at Giants Stadium as part of the Champions World Series soccer tour. As I watched the first half, I noted the obvious lack of play stoppage. No T.V. timeouts, no regular timeouts, no nothing. If you wanted to watch the entire game, you would have remain in your seat for 45 straight minutes (plus stoppage time). At half time, everyone got up to go to the bathroom, but they returned quickly for the 46^th minute. The crowd then remained seated for the remainder of the game, as I roamed the empty concourses by myself.

“That’s an interesting observation, but how the hell does this have anything to do with American obesity?” Calm down, I’m trying to develop a serious argument here. Now, in America, none of our major sports compare to this unique characteristic of soccer. Our games are flooded with a multitude of stoppage and commercials. Football is played in 20-second intervals. Baseball is divided neatly into at-bats and innings. Basketball and hockey, while more free flowing, are constantly interrupted by television timeouts. Now, this extra time spent not playing has an interesting effect. Whether you’re at the game or watching at home, these interruptions permit the American sports fan to constantly get up and get more food and alcohol. Change of possession? Great, let me go grab another beer. Inning over? Awesome, I’m going to get some more chips. Television timeout? I’ll quickly get one of those delicious chicken finger baskets for $9.

All this extra time spent waiting for the games to resume lets Americans eat more food and drink more alcohol. Isn’t it interesting that in most other cultures, obesity is not a big problem? What do they all have in common? Soccer. Soccer fans can’t step away from the game to stuff their faces or consume an alcoholic beverage because they might miss an important play whereas a baseball fan can easily leave between every inning and not miss a thing.

“Are you forgetting that soccer fans are some of the most drunken people in the entire world? Also, don’t they have vendors selling food and beer in the stands?”

Two good points, but both are easily debunkable. First, soccer fans do not drink. To the ordinary observer, the behavior of a soccer hooligan appears to be the result of massive alcohol consumption. In reality, these people are just so dedicated to their teams that they act like drunken idiots when they are in fact the soberest group of people on earth. That’s what happens when you only have one sport to follow—the energy that we Americans normally split between several teams is instead concentrated on one and only one team. Second, soccer stadiums are so packed that vendors have no room to walk around. What’s that? You’ve seen these vendors at soccer games? No you haven’t. You’ve never even come close to thinking about maybe watching a soccer game on T.V.

At this point, you’re very doubtful of my argument. You think all I’ve presented so far are interesting observations that are unrelated to each other. Fine. You’re in denial. I realize I’m going to need some more proof here if I’m ever going to get this theory published in a reputable scientific journal. To address this shortcoming, I’ve designed a simple study. The World Cup is this June in Germany. One month of non-stop soccer played at the highest level. I will pay the first ten people who respond to this column to fly to Germany and go to as many World Cup games as you can. You will record your weight at the beginning and end of the month. You will also keep track of your attention span by trying to sit through long movies every day (I recommend Titanic). I am confident that the results will prove me right and probably change the way you look at me. No longer will I be thought of as that columnist who is kind of funny sometimes. I will be the envy of the entire sporting and fitness community. Just wait and see.

Alright, let me wrap up this experiment in seriousness so that you can get on with the rest of this hilarious issue. I hope I’ve challenged you to think in different ways about stuff. Tune in next week when my regularly-scheduled non-serious writing will return in all its glory. Good night.