Originally Posted By Inspector 57 LOL! And right on topic, too, in a "meta" kind of way. Like mele said, all this arguing / sports / competition stuff comes down to... For those keeping score at home, I'm on the side of Mr X, who said that sports are just a subset of games, and that people draw an artificial line to define that subset at different points on the continuum. And for me Lisa further clarified with: <<Most people gauge sport on what they like and dislike.>>
Originally Posted By Inspector 57 I've always had respect for an opinion John Irving voiced through one of his characters. (I'm pretty sure it was Garp.) His perspective was that real sports don't use balls (the manufactured kind). Concentrating one's effort on dribbling or whacking a little plastic dimpled orb or using a bat to hit a ball is artificial. Real sports employ the body directly. Wrestling therefore is a sport and football is a game. Running and swimming could be sports; tennis and hockey are just games.
Originally Posted By Lisann22 I won't argue with John Irving, I like that. I like sports and games. I like betting too. ;> I like that there's a winner and loser too. I want to keep score in litte league, the kids are. I know Inspector will be back after that. LOL!
Originally Posted By vbdad55 <<<Sorry, but a competetive pianist is NOT an athelete.>> Is a competitive penis an athlete? (Sorry, but ever since I was ten I thought the similarity of those two words was amusing...) < your grade school music teacher must have loved you
Originally Posted By Inspector 57 <<I like that there's a winner and loser too. I want to keep score in little league, the kids are. I know Inspector will be back after that. LOL!>> Oh, yeah, baby. I got something to say about that, but it might not be what you're expecting. If you're going to play, play. And play to win. Be honest, be fair, but try to kick your opponent's ass. And, yeah, keep score. That's the point. Even in little league. I'm pretty competitive when I play games. Sometimes to a fault. Lisann, I think I might have told you about playing Candyland with Lindsay one afternoon. Candyland! You play enough games, it evens out, right? Well, it didn't. I just kept winning. She was getting really upset by it, which was upsetting for me. But I would *not* cheat to make her win. I felt like a real jerk, and I suggested we play something else, but I couldn't bring myself to throw the game. And... If there's a neighborhood volleyball game or family reunion softball or a bunch of friends who go bowling, it's FINE with me that you play even though you suck. It's fine with me that you're on my team. I WANT people to be included regardless of their skill levels. But if you're going to play, DO YOUR BEST. Do NOT go out onto the volleyball court and then giggle when you let the ball land at your feet. It's not cute. If you're in the outfield, I don't care if you can catch or throw. But PAY ATTENTION! If you're on my bowling team, I won't be upset if you roll gutter balls and make us lose -- if you do it honestly. But do NOT show up to the game in a skirt that doesn't let you bend over. It's a sickness. I was once playing bid euchre against a hopped-up bad guy who was playing poorly and losing. And he was getting PO'd at me for his own mistakes. Our respective partners kept catching my eye and begging me to let the guy catch up. Couldn't do it. It got VERY tense. (But ultimately nothing bad happened.)
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder "But do NOT show up to the game in a skirt that doesn't let you bend over." Um, actually, that kind of skirt is a requirement in our league.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder Yeah, well, imagine what the women bowlers have to wear....
Originally Posted By peeaanuut <<I don't see it as contradictory because I was saying that I viewed racing cars as MORE LIKE a sport than sailing but I stopped short of calling it a bonafide sport for the very same reason you gave which is there is pretty much no athleticism involved. >> I am going to counter this one. Lets do the definition first of or pertaining to athletes; involving the use of physical skills or capabilities, as strength, agility, or stamina: athletic sports; athletic training. Driving a race car takes alot of strength, agility like a you know what and of course stamina has already been covered. Being able to react to a flat, oil on the track, loose track conditions, weather, etc takes quite a bit of agility. Let alone the strength on most race cars that do not have power steering and your fighting large amounts of G forces. I would also put sailing on the list of sports as well. have you ever seen the amount of movement, speed and coordination that takes places during a tack? Watch the Louis Vuitton Cup race or an Americas Cup race and not John Candy in Summer Rental.
Originally Posted By Mr X Your arguments are valid, definitely. I think, overall, you have to put "racing" in all forms into the sports catagory, no doubt. The only weird thing to me is when you throw a machine into the mix (car, speedboat, whatever)...it seems to take away from the whole "sports" idea, in a way, beause it's not strictly "physical" (understanding your arguments about how it takes strength, agility, etc...).
Originally Posted By Lisann22 But there is still an affect on the person participatings body. Fatigue, dehydration, muscle soreness, eye-hand coordination so I see it as a sport for those reasons. Strength and agility can come in more forms than just running, jumping, etc.
Originally Posted By ClintFlint2 ///The only weird thing to me is when you throw a machine into the mix (car, speedboat, whatever).../// That is a very interesting angle I haven't thought about before and I am really glad that you brought it up. And I agree that since it is a machine it does cloud things up a bit.
Originally Posted By Mr X >>But there is still an affect on the person participatings body. Fatigue, dehydration, muscle soreness, eye-hand coordination so I see it as a sport for those reasons.<< Like I said before, plenty of things that require all of the above are not sports...like ballet, for example. You can't define "sports" as something that requires physical exhertion. In fact, if you do, then Clint's original arguments MORE than apply, and golf can NOT be a sport...but ballet is. See? To put it another way, if the cars were controlled by remote, would it still be a sport? Could you really call that person sitting at the computer remote controls an "athlete"? No, certainly not.
Originally Posted By Lisann22 I know Mr X but I explained my definition of sport, I think it's a combo of things, so I was just talking about that one aspect of it. I would call a dancer an athlete though.
Originally Posted By Lisann22 Another thing the call hunters "great sportsmen." So I think sport can cover so many things as I stated before I think it's more about what you are into. I learned recently (my head was dug way way deep in the sand) that the cheerleading competitions on ESPN are just that. They are not all associated with a school anymore they just have kids that cheer for the sport of it. Entire teams and competitions exist out there with no afflicated team to cheer on. Now that I found extremely strange but that's because I'm an old school athlete where cheerleaders were at football and basketball games only. LOL! Man did I feel old.
Originally Posted By Mr X >>I will obviously never "compete" in a spelling bee competition.<< lol. At first I read that word above as "afflicted", and thought it was very appropriate. As for calling a dancer an athlete, they are not. They are athletic, sure. But not athletes (unless they play basketball on the side or something). If you start to just generally change the definition of the word, it makes no sense at all (next you are going to tell me a carpenter is an "athlete" because they pound nails and sweat and work really hard, and sometimes try to build their house faster than the other guy). Hunting can be considered a sport though (don't know of any hunting "competitions" though). I don't see it as such, but some do.
