Quit with the myth. You know the one. The myth that statistics in sports tie eras together. It is completely unfounded. This myth serves to make purists feel like the players they grew up idolizing could play today’s game.
And really that’s what it’s all about. Being able to look at the players you think were the best and still have that nostalgic feeling that they really may have been the best ever.
Some of the people who are holding on to this myth the most are quick to either out right state, but certainly imply, that the size of the modern athlete is somehow unnatural. These people rarely ever note that there was a time when there was only a hand full of players in the NBA over six feet nine inches tall. That was fifty years ago. It is no longer the case. Certainly parents aren’t going to be accused of or implicated in feeding their children steroids. And as I understand it, steroids do not make you taller.
People are bigger now. And there seems to be a movement in sports media to disown all sports records and achievements because it is easier to be standoffish about records you don’t think are being broken “the right way”. It’s appearing to go beyond throwing the baby out with the bathwater. To get rid of the baby no one wants to deal with there are many who want to discredit the entire bathing process all together.
You remember when you were a child and someone said something you did not want to hear, you would cover your ears and sing loudly? La la la la lalalalalalala! Now. Do you remember that kid who had the sweet matchbox cars? His cars were better than everyone else’s. He knew it and you knew it too. Then one day a new kid moved in. He had cars too. The ones you friend had. He also had Hotwheels and a track with a loop to loop. Suddenly that kid who used to be king of cars had is little reality smashed by some new kid. Your friend pouted. And we wanted to stay on his side. Really we did. He had us convinced he had the best cars in the world and when we found out he didn’t we did not abandon him. Not at first. We played with the new kid’s cars and ran back and told our friend about the “new” best cars in the world. We implored him to come enjoy them too. The new kid wasn’t so bad. We could all get along. Really we could. He would not hear it. He cried to everyone who would listen about the new cars destroy the integrity of the games. He cried that people would somehow forget about the cars of old if new cars replaced them as our new best. When his pleas to ignore the new kid and his “dumb” cars and track went unheard. The new kid even pointed out that the old best cars have a place where they get retired and admired. The new kid even says he anticipates one day someone will have better cars than him even though no one can seem to know when that will happen. We figured it might not be in our lifetime. Maybe. Maybe not.
But that kid who used to have the best cars slowly makes himself irrelevant. His hostel attitude towards the new kid and the fact that even newer kids don’t know anything about which cars he thinks are the best drives him crazy. He swears that new kids don’t appreciate the cars enough to know a great one when they see one. And for those who listen to him, he carries the flag for the cars of old. Marching back and forth in defiance of the new reign of cars he doesn’t approve of. His voice shrinks with time as newer kids don’t recognize him as being someone who loves cars. They see him only as some bitter old man who won’t shut up about how good things used to be.
Things are good now. Sure there are idiot players and questionable owners. TV contracts and player’s associations have lives of their own. But the sport lives on and new kids keep coming to the game and falling in love with it. One day the new new new kids won’t know who we think the best 25 players of out era are. And on some levels that will be sad. But mostly just to us. They will have the Halls of Fame if they take interest in who one guy or another was. The statistics will matter. But I would argue most of us fall in love with a sport before we understand anything about statistics.
So ask yourself do you love your sports of choice or do you love the statistics? I grew up thinking no one played defense better than Hall of Famer Mike Singletary. And I count myself as a sports NUT. But I cannot tell you how many tackles he made or which years he lead the team/league in tackles if he even did. I wanted to play football because of him. And I did. But his height and weight or 40 yard dash speed time never factored into me thinking he was the greatest. Because statistics are like money. Whoever has the best or the most only means just that. It does not mean it makes one guy better than the next.
Now how come the kid with the old best cars doesn’t know that?
I am sick and tired of the perpetual myth in sports. The myth that says that numbers and statistics link eras and make them comparable to one another is false. They do not. They merely facilitate questions and debate that can only support the fact that sports have been great for as long as we have kept records.
