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Big leaguers Make room for more little guys in sportsPosted: Wednesday November 21, 2001 5:48 PM
What I miss from sport is craft and guile. Unfortunately, sports are more and more about absolutes -- especially: Who's the strongest and who's the fastest? It's been an evolutionary process, but everybody is just so big now. Power reigns. This was the year Barry Bonds boomed 73 home runs and the Diamondbacks won the World Series because they had two pitchers who could throw lasers. The most dominant player in basketball is Shaquille O'Neal, who is fee-fie-fo-fum in the paint. The dunk -- power unleashed -- is the basketball signature now. The Ravens won the last Super Bowl basically without a quarterback. Just smashmouth, big and bad. Many hockey experts think the players have simply grown too big to skate on their grandfathers' rinks. The Williams sisters have turned serves into slap shots. Golf has to rearrange the earth itself to keep up with the power of Tiger Woods . Even figure skating -- figure skating! -- is now more about strength than grace. It's hard to believe it was only a few years ago that a lot of athletes were scared to lift weights. The conventional wisdom was that it would bunch up your muscles, slow you down. But sprinters today look more like shot-putters than they do the lithe likes of Jesse Owens or Carl Lewis. Today, athletes in all sports not only lift weights, but also do it year-round. Incredible to think, but the word "repetitions" didn't exist in the sports vocabulary a generation ago. Now it's the first question any scout asks. How many repetitions can he do? That's bench pressing ... I think. Of course, there have always been powerful people in sports. Bronko Nagurski. Jack Johnson. Babe Didrickson. Wilt Chamberlain still is the most impressive human physical specimen I've ever seen. The stories back in the 1920s about how fast Walter Johnson -- "The Big Train" -- could throw a baseball were part of the folklore. But what has changed is that now almost everybody is so strong. There's no room left for tricky little guys. Scouts won't even consider drafting a pitcher unless he can throw almost 100 miles an hour. Never mind that he might have control and lots of sneaky pitches. Two-hundred-fifty pounders are thrown back in football as if they were undersized small-mouth bass. And no matter how good you are, you'd better run the 40-yard dash fast enough. The 40-yard dash in sport is like the SATs for college or spots on a dalmatian hoping to compete in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. How fast did he run the 40? How many repetitions can he do? Of course, as pure strength and speed become more important, suspicions grow that athletes are getting more powerful and more swift thanks to pharmaceuticals more than repetitions. Athletes used to look so gloriously perfect. Nowadays, too often, they look better than that, not superhuman but unhuman. I don't know, but sometimes I wish there was still some idiosyncrasy in sport. I wish there were a few more little skinny guys still around, or even some fat guys who chew tobacco. I think one reason why automobile racing is so popular is drivers still look like normal people. It's easy to identify with NASCAR drivers. There's something to be said for the charm of imperfection. Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. His new novel, The Other Adonis (Sourcebooks Landmark), is available now at bookstores everywhere. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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