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Entertainment and Athletics.

buy generic Pregabalin In honor of the All-Star game, a defense of old categories.  There is a tendency for old divisions to fade away, and what was separate to merge into one – a process which goes by the name of corruption.  So we have business and athletics and entertainment, a trinity which many will tell you are really all one.

http://icrapoport.com/john-collins-man-who-lost-everything/?fb_comment_id=1000466060009271_3957377920984722 The All-Star game is a perfect example of what is wrong with this.  Athletics are in the end different from business and entertainment; and are tainted by the corruption.  In an athletic contest, it is absolutely necessary to “play the game right” – when the tying run is at second and two are out and you hit a single to center field, it’s not “right” to try to stretch the single into a double, to add drama: “I thought it would be more entertaining for the crowd to see if the run could score before I got tagged out at second.  And it would generate controversy later.”  That kind of Harlem-Globetrotterism is found all over the All-Star games, with stupid substitutions, laid-back play, runners who’d rather dash for third rather than stand at second, etc.  There is even a re-entry rule, which you don’t find even in most little leagues.

Athletics are about the contest, which has to be taken seriously if it is to remain athletic.  And it must be strenuous – it must demand from the athletes.  Otherwise it loses its macho element – there is nothing wonderful about a game in which no one plays to exhaustion.  This is one of the problems with the endless relief pitchers in modern baseball, and also one of the things that makes “pitch to contact” so lame – at some point, you should be challenging the manhood of your opponents and proving your own.  Even if you fail, that failure is more electric than bland corporate job-performance.  Here we see business taking over from athletics.

If the game is not played hard, by players whose goal is the honor of beating their opponents, it becomes unwatchable.

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