"Stop the Presses" brings you its very first sports blog, replete with the absurd ramblings of sports writer Jesse Temple. Feel free to post your thoughts on anything and everything sports.
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I've been an avid watcher of these 2008 Olympics in this first week. And not just the sports most people care about, like basketball and ... well, basketball. I'm talking table tennis, beach volleyball, swimming, and even archery. It's safe to say a permanent tush mark has been created from the hours I've spent planted on my couch, enthralled with these niche sports that won't be on TV again for four more years. Yet I can't help but wonder: The Olympics, for all its glory and awe-inspiring wonder, sure has some strange rules.
Take Olympic boxing's point system. Clubbing a guy in the temple is worth just as much as jabbing him harmlessly while falling backward. Knockouts occur about as rarely as a Kansas City Royals playoff appearance (sorry, couldn't help the jab at the hometown team). In fact, the Olympic scoring system is based solely on counting punches. Whatever the judges determine to be a punch, that is.
Watching gymnastics causes equal consternation. How can these judges be trusted to determine exactly how many tenths of a point one gymnast should lose compared to another? During the all-around competition on Thursday night, the announcers appeared flummoxed by the scores on more than one occasion.
But no rule is worse than what occurs on the Olympic baseball diamond. I was watching MSNBC earlier today with the volume on low. Cuba vs. United States in baseball. The score was tied 3-3 after nine innings, when I thought I heard the announcers discussing a new rule change. It sounded too ridiculous, though, so I turned the volume up. But this rule was real, and what a doozy it was. Turns out, if the game goes to the 11th inning, teams can actually start batting at any point of the order they want. And, oh yeah, they are awarded runners on first and second base with NOBODY out.
The U.S. ended up losing the contest 5-4 after the game reached the infamous 11th inning.
This preposterous rule change has "Stop the Presses" looking ahead to other future sports decisions that would drastically alter sporting events forever -- these rules are completely arbitrary, mind you, and have nothing to do with any other aspect of play. It seems to work for Olympic baseball, though.
Take next year's Wimbledon tennis final, for example. The All England Club rules committee concludes that any match tied at 6-6 in the fifth set of a final will be decided by a fastest serve competition. Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, locked in an epic 2009 championship, tie at 6-6 in the fifth. Based on the 2008 Wimbledon final stats, here are the fastest serves: Federer - 129 MPH. Nadal - 120 MPH.
Game, set, match, championship - Federer.
In a startling rule change, NBA Commissioner David Stern decides any 2009 NBA playoff overtime game will be decided by pulling four players from each team off the court. A 1-on-1 game between a team's best player will ensue. With the game tied at 101-101 after regulation and a championship hanging in the balance in Game 7 of the finals, the Boston Celtics' Kevin Garnett and the Los Angeles Lakers' Kobe Bryant play 1-on-1 to 21. When the game is still tied after 21 points, Kobe wins with a behind the back three-pointer from the baseline in a game of H-O-R-S-E.
The National Hockey League, longing for the days of Nintendo's "Blades of Steel," decides the only fair way to determine a tie game following regulation will be to see which goalie can be the first to punch the other five times at center ice.
New Jersey's Martin Brodeur promptly drops the New York Rangers' Henrik Lundqvist, 5 punches to 4 in an exhibition game. Lundqvist, knocked unconscious, is sent to the penalty box to wait there until the next game, while Brodeur is not punished. An advertisement for Konami video games appears on the jumbotron after the game, in which a little spaceship tries to destroy a big spaceship.
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