On TO And World Baseball
The sports news today is completely predictable. Once again, Terrell Owens (TO) is available on the NFL free-agent market. Just as the sun rises in the morning, some foolish team will now take an expensive gamble on this character and discover in short time that they have wasted their money and decreased their franchise value. Yes, TO will sell a few thousand additional tickets in his first year with a new team. However, his sociopathic behaviors will soon metastasize throughout the organization. Why are we so incapable of learning from history and seeing the obvious?
We have been at this point before, reinforced by my blog entry three years ago (below). Has anything changed in the TO category? No!
Sunday, March 19, 2006
TO or not TO?
San Diego
The Dallas Cowboys signed controversial receiver Terrell Owens yesterday. He is a predictably destabilizing force for any organization. Like too many people in the business of acquiring talent, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is gambling that TO's extraordinary ability will trump his pathological foolishness. Don't bet on it.
Hasn't the New England Patriots' success demonstrated the advantages that come with excellent strategy, superb execution and a selfless team orientation? Consider that the finalists of the inaugural World Baseball Classic here -- Cuba and Japan -- place individual star power behind cunning strategy, sound fundamentals and a focus on execution. After elimination of high-profile All-Star squads from the U.S., Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, tomorrow night's final features just two players on MLB rosters.
Terrell Owens will make a great deal of news for "America's team," some of it predictably ridiculous.
Interestingly, that TO chapter was occurring as the then-maiden voyage of the World Baseball Classic was reaching its conclusion (photos below). Yes, sports talk-show hosts are supposed to motivate feisty conversation, however inauthentic. But why is that seven-plus years after the events of September 11, 2001, we continue to have such difficulty understanding if not embracing events beyond our borders? To listen to some of the talk-show crowd - the hosts and not the callers - the current World Baseball Classic is some kind of ridiculous amateur sideshow in which "nobody" has any interest. Oh, those must have been mannequins this morning packing the Tokyo Dome to the rafters to witness Japan's utter dismantling of Korea.
Why does the American global lens continue to be so narrow? After all, those of us who knew about Daisuke Matsuzaka in 2005 did so because we attended games in Japan and later saw his conquest of Cuba in the 2006 WBC, just as the Red Sox fans among us now long for the services of the Nippon Ham Fighters young ace Ya Darvish. Why are these talk-show hosts really saying about themselves and about us when they make fun of the pronunciation of players' names from other countries, profess no interest in the tournament, suggest that our best players are better off engaging in less-meaningful spring training contests, and proclaim that "nobody" has any interest.
Yes, I'm biased. And yes, the WBC is mainly about money. Still, I have enjoyed international baseball over the years at the Caribbean World Series, in Japan, and at the initial WBC. Try it; you will like it. You may also see its potential for creating ever-greater numbers of peer-to-peer exchanges between and among peoples of different cultures. The world can remain a hopeful place if things like baseball still have the power to unite us and yet, in turn, we demonstrate the power to detach ourselves from the TO-like personalities that will only divide us.
Scenes from the 2006 WBC in San Diego.
The sports news today is completely predictable. Once again, Terrell Owens (TO) is available on the NFL free-agent market. Just as the sun rises in the morning, some foolish team will now take an expensive gamble on this character and discover in short time that they have wasted their money and decreased their franchise value. Yes, TO will sell a few thousand additional tickets in his first year with a new team. However, his sociopathic behaviors will soon metastasize throughout the organization. Why are we so incapable of learning from history and seeing the obvious?
We have been at this point before, reinforced by my blog entry three years ago (below). Has anything changed in the TO category? No!
Sunday, March 19, 2006
TO or not TO?
San Diego
The Dallas Cowboys signed controversial receiver Terrell Owens yesterday. He is a predictably destabilizing force for any organization. Like too many people in the business of acquiring talent, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is gambling that TO's extraordinary ability will trump his pathological foolishness. Don't bet on it.
Hasn't the New England Patriots' success demonstrated the advantages that come with excellent strategy, superb execution and a selfless team orientation? Consider that the finalists of the inaugural World Baseball Classic here -- Cuba and Japan -- place individual star power behind cunning strategy, sound fundamentals and a focus on execution. After elimination of high-profile All-Star squads from the U.S., Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, tomorrow night's final features just two players on MLB rosters.
Terrell Owens will make a great deal of news for "America's team," some of it predictably ridiculous.
Interestingly, that TO chapter was occurring as the then-maiden voyage of the World Baseball Classic was reaching its conclusion (photos below). Yes, sports talk-show hosts are supposed to motivate feisty conversation, however inauthentic. But why is that seven-plus years after the events of September 11, 2001, we continue to have such difficulty understanding if not embracing events beyond our borders? To listen to some of the talk-show crowd - the hosts and not the callers - the current World Baseball Classic is some kind of ridiculous amateur sideshow in which "nobody" has any interest. Oh, those must have been mannequins this morning packing the Tokyo Dome to the rafters to witness Japan's utter dismantling of Korea.
Why does the American global lens continue to be so narrow? After all, those of us who knew about Daisuke Matsuzaka in 2005 did so because we attended games in Japan and later saw his conquest of Cuba in the 2006 WBC, just as the Red Sox fans among us now long for the services of the Nippon Ham Fighters young ace Ya Darvish. Why are these talk-show hosts really saying about themselves and about us when they make fun of the pronunciation of players' names from other countries, profess no interest in the tournament, suggest that our best players are better off engaging in less-meaningful spring training contests, and proclaim that "nobody" has any interest.
Yes, I'm biased. And yes, the WBC is mainly about money. Still, I have enjoyed international baseball over the years at the Caribbean World Series, in Japan, and at the initial WBC. Try it; you will like it. You may also see its potential for creating ever-greater numbers of peer-to-peer exchanges between and among peoples of different cultures. The world can remain a hopeful place if things like baseball still have the power to unite us and yet, in turn, we demonstrate the power to detach ourselves from the TO-like personalities that will only divide us.
Scenes from the 2006 WBC in San Diego.
