Sports and Truth

This summer has been very sporting; in the course of a couple of weeks I attended a World Cup match and a minor-league baseball game. Took pictures and thought about enjoying this stuff.

“Haha, sportsball… · I know that a whole lot of people, including not a few among my online audience, see neither joy nor virtue in fandom. That’s an attitude they’re entitled to have assuming they realize the absence of joy is a them thing.

After joy there’s virtue. Yes, organized professional sport raises serious ethical issues. That’s putting it politely. Many-to-most branches of commercial sport are rife with exploitation, oppression, and corruption. I’m not going to push back, and in fact I sometimes feel guilty about enjoying the spectacle as much as I do.

More to come on that.

On hating FIFA · I’m not going to re-tell the tales of galaxy-scale corruption, the ostentatious displays of wealth and privilege, and the cozying-up to dictators, both real and wannabe. Attending the 2026 World Cup gave me more reasons to hate; in particular the ticket-buying experience.

I have always loved fútbol generally and the World Cup in particular, as witness the plentiful digital ink I’ve spilled on the subject here on the blog. So when we learned that there were going to be games in Vancouver, I determined that I’d attend one. It was obvious they’d be popular so I decided to pounce on the first opportunity. Which is how I ended up buying (no, really) an NFT.

FIFA’s first round of sales wasn’t tickets, but NFTs, some of which came in packages that included a right to buy tickets for a game, participants unknown. Here — the first and I fervently hope the last time I link to an NFT — is part of the package. Can’t show you the right-to-buy NFT because I had to “burn it” to turn it into tickets.

Neither the NFT nor the tickets were cheap; my son and I attending that game cost well over a thousand (Canadian) bucks. (At this point, other attendees are scoffing at me for having paid so little.) For what it’s worth, the seats were good.

So, let’s enhance our basket of reasons to hate FIFA by noting that the ticket prices exclude everyone who’s not a member of a very privileged demographic.

The match · It was Egypt vs New Zealand, played at Vancouver’s “BC Place” stadium on June 21st.

Confession: My son and I had a blast, can’t think of it without smiling. Most of downtown Vancouver had become a swirl of happiness, people dressed up in all sorts of fanciful outfits, singing, chanting, drinking, dancing, photographing. I particularly liked the pharaoh’s-headdress the Egypt fans were wearing.

The game was great fun — watch the highlights. NZ played better than their international rating would suggest and we got to watch Mo Salah carve his way into the defense and put away a lethal strike.

There were way more fans from Egypt than from NZ, but the Kiwis had better-organized cheering; they’ve figured out how to set the syllables of “Aotearoa” to the Seven Nation Army riff, and does it ever sound great.

And, while FIFA are assholes, those assholes really know how to run a tournament. They had sold out BC Place to the last seat, but never for a moment did I feel scarily crowded. I even managed to grab a decent beer and sandwich at half-time without feeling crushed or catching Covid; it helped that I masked up.

I’ve watched a lot of the tournament on TV and enjoyed it. The games, to be frank, have become less and less interesting as the idiosyncratic minor players (in particular the non-European ones) get eliminated by the better-funded Euros with their crushingly-precise and often-boring game. It would’ve been nice if the final four included an outsider.

And if you can set that FIFA issue aside, at some level it’s a beautiful thing; nations competing against each other in a framework built on raw aggression, physical virtuosity, disciplined teamwork, and kicking a ball around.

World Cup without FIFA? · It could be done and it’d be politically popular. The nations of the world get together, dissolve FIFA on the evidence of its many sins, and run the tourney on some sort of co-op basis. They could slash most of the ticket prices and there’d still be buckets of money to go around to the national associations and some selected charities, based on the sponsorships and TV rights. Some of it would go to peacekeeping and Doctors Without Borders.

I can dream.

The game · (One says “football match” and “baseball game”. Sounds wrong the other way around. Yay English.)

It was my son’s birthday so nine of us went off to watch the Vancouver Canadians host the Eugene Emeralds in what’s called the “High-A” minor league. Oh my goodness, you can actually watch video of the whole game. I don’t recommend it. The tickets for nine, decent seats, cost $276 all in.

It was an OK game. Vancouver leapt to an early lead, then the pitching collapsed and the Emeralds got 12 runs; the home team brought it back to within three by game’s end.

But, what a happy place! Kids everywhere, dressed in hot-dog condiments and pop stains. Snuggling couples. Beer vendors. Hollering hosers.

Since, in baseball, nothing is happening most of the time, the emphasis is on chit-chat and eating and drinking and people-watching. I noticed that when I wasn’t talking I was usually smiling.

This happened: My son’s partner, let’s call them “X”, is of East-Asian extraction — a Richmond kid, for the Vancouver-savvy. Born here, perfectly Canadian, but sports-oblivious and had never been to a ball game. When the seventh-inning stretch came along, I tapped X’s shoulder and said “time to get up and sing”. The crowd charged lustily into Take me out to the ball game, and X’s face got this absolutely hilarious I’m-on-an-alien-planet look. Later, X told me “That’s the whitest thing I’ve ever seen.”

After the game, fireworks. They were pretty minor-league.

So MLB is OK? · I have a bit of back story. While working at Sun and then for AWS, I helped MLB evaluate and use various bits of Internet technology. Of all the world’s sports organizations, MLB is apparently the leader in effectively using the Net to promote and deliver their product. Plus the people I worked with were nice and highly competent. It was one of the highlights of my career.

You will have noticed an absence of the sort of ranting that FIFA provoked above. Does this mean that the MLB organization is honorable and nice? Not at all. They are a gaggle of billionaires with an explicit grant of monopoly privileges in the USA.

The Vancouver Canadians are the only surviving minor-league team in Canada; MLB has shut down many minor-league teams because while they make people happy they don’t make much money. Baseball is a big business and, just like any other big business these days, often acts in ways that most people would consider unethical.

There’s what looks like a really good book about all this, Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America by Will Bardenwerper. I haven’t read it yet, but you can get the gist in this conversation between Bardenwerper and Nate Silver.

The problem is… · …not baseball, nor fútbol, it’s late-stage capitalism, which reliably makes anything it gets its hands on worse. If we don’t like the way those guys behave, and in particular if we think some of it should be illegal (it should!) that’s a political problem that has to be addressed with politics. Feels like it would be a pretty popular party platform plank.

I’m not one who’ll preach “no ethical consumption under capitalism” at you, but I don’t have a good come-back when someone challenges me on sending money to the FIFA or MLB scum. Is there anyone reading this who is entirely comfortable with all the places and practices that bring them enjoyment?

The truth is on the field · The worlds of business and politics never contain a sentence that’s unscripted or incautious. The substrate of trust that a society needs to function is today weakened and still weakening. There’s a pervasive belief that what’s on our screen is at least in part self-interested untruth or, put another way, marketing. I often think of this as “The LinkedIn pathology”.

Not out on the field. When Mo Salah’s got the ball at his feet and charges at the NZ back line, nobody in the world knows what’s going to happen in the next few seconds. When the Canadians’ pitcher walks in the fifth run of the inning, nobody can tell which way his search for the strike zone will turn.

It’s unpackaged, unvarnished, and unedited. It’s physical truth, being created in real time.

Put another way: Live unscripted improvised drama. It’s not like anything else in most people’s lives; the only thing I can think of that comes close is an instrumental break in a jam, whether that’s in your basement on a stage before thousands.

It thrills and entertains me. I make no apologies for that. I’d sure like to improve the societal basis that poisons it, and increasingly more and more aspects of our lives, so I don’t have to feel bad about being a fan.

In the meantime, 🎵Take me out to the ball game…🎵