KABADDI AND BREATHING. As the wikipedia article indicates, there are several sets of rules for kabaddi, but the basic idea is: “Teams take turns sending a “raider” to the opposite team’s half, where the goal is to tag or wrestle (”confine”) members of the opposite team before returning to the home half…..The goal of the defenders is to stop the raider from returning to the home side before taking a breath.” Breathing is the distinctive feature of kabaddi. The word “kabaddi” is a Hindi, and punjabi word meaning “holding of breath.” A player chants the word “kabaddi” as proof that he or she is not breathing in. Breathing exercises are an important part of practices. The Wall Street Journal article describes a practice with “precise diaphragm movements to make the most of scarce oxygen.” I would think that water polo players might be the American athletes with the best chance at success at kabaddi.
Archive for the ‘Sports’ Category
KABADDI AND BREATHING.
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010KABADDI—THE WORLD’S OLDEST SPORT?
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010KABADDI—THE WORLD’S OLDEST SPORT? The Wall Street Journal (August 26) had an article about kabaddi, which is the national game of Bangladesh and the state game of several states in India. This wikipedia article lists 31 countries that are members of the International Kabaddi Federation. According to this site, “The history of Kabaddi dates back to the pre-historic times….and….Historians find resemblance with the technicalities of Kabaddi with a situation in the great battle of Mahabharata. Further: “According to the Buddhist literature, Gautama Buddha played Kabaddi for recreational purposes.” Although boxing, wrestling and track and field events go back to classical Greece and Rome, I can’t think of any team sport that goes back as far as kabaddi.
THE QUIRKINESS OF TARGET FIELD.
Monday, August 16th, 2010THE QUIRKINESS OF TARGET FIELD. About two thirds of the way into the 2010 season, it looks as if Target Field is quirky. I googled “Target Field quirkiness” and got 97,600 hits. I did the search after reading this article in USA Today Sports Weekly by Paul White with the headline “Twins are trying to adapt to Target Field’s quirkiness” (of course, the headline may have led to a lot of the hits.) The article deals with the difficulty that the Twins are having dealing with the quirks of the new ballpark even after over 50 home games. The article features the difficulties of playing a fly ball near the right field wall. There is an overhang which. If the ball misses the overhang, the fielder can catch the ball. If it hits it, it can’t. The extent of the overhang depends on where the ball hits, varying from two feet at the foul line to eight feet in center field. If the ball hits the wall, it will bounce in different directions, depending on where it hits because there are different surfaces. A ball may bounce off the limestone overhang, a concrete portion of the wall, a wood portion or padding. Mike Cuddyer, the Twins right fielder, says: “It’s definitely quirky. You have to deal with four different surfaces, and the ball bounces differently off each one.” Of course, it would take several years for a right fielder for an opposing team to have the experience with the wall that Cuddyer has at this point in the season. It’s a small sample, but the Twins have a home field advantage at this point that is about 120 points, which is greater than the 100 point advantage that they had last year.
DESIGNING A QUIRKY STADIUM.
Sunday, August 15th, 2010DESIGNING A QUIRKY STADIUM. I posted here last fall about the Minnesota Twins moving out of the Metrodome, their old stadium, which was considered to provide the biggest home field advantage in baseball. This Sports Illustrated article by Sky Andrecheck, posted at the beginning of the 2010 season, said that “[M]any are wondering whether Target Field [the new Minnesota Twin stadium] can match the advantage that the Metrodome provided the Twins.” Andrecheck pointed out that there is always a home-field advantage in baseball and estimated that it on average an 80 point wing; that is, a .500 team ( a team that wins half its games) will win at a .540 rate at home and a .460 rate on the road. The Twins had a 100 point advantage over the 28-year history of the Metrodome, equal to an estimated additional 1.6 wins a year. Not that big a difference, but Andrecheck points out that it suggests that, except for the Metrodome, the Tigers rather than the Twins would have won the Central Division in 2009. Andrecheck’s research shows that three factors that enter into a park providing a home team advantage are having a dome, being a good doubles park, and being “quirky.” The Metrodome was “quirky” with spongy turf, the unusual “baggy” right field wall, and the white dome ceiling which made it hard to follow fly balls. Quirkiness helps the home team because as Andrecheck says, “The Metrodome’s unusual features helped the Twins at home because Minnesota’s players acclimated to the difficult roof conditions and bouncy turf.” What would the new Target stadium be like? Writing in April, Andrecheck thought that the stadium followed the “same formulaic pattern” of other modern stadiums and praised the Twins for not building “another odd park with bizarre features to give the home team a slight advantage.”
GIVING BACK THE POINT WHEN THERE’S A MISTAKE.
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010GIVING BACK THE POINT WHEN THERE’S A MISTAKE. Kids, there was a time —back when Marty Riessen and Arthur Ashe were playing—when it was tennis etiquette at the professional level for a player to give away the next point if a referee made an obvious bad call in the player’s favor. I don’t think that the etiquette is the same today.
“INEQUITY AVERSION”—DOES GUILT AFFECT FREE THROW SHOOTING?
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010“INEQUITY AVERSION”—DOES GUILT AFFECT FREE THROW SHOOTING? Nick sent me this link which led to this article about “inequity aversion.” The article discusses an empirical study which confirms “the hypothesis frequently put forth by Rasheed Wallace…that a player will often miss free throws after getting a foul that he does not deserve.” The empirical study showed that players made about 53% of their free throws after an obviously incorrect foul call (against average for NBA players of about 73%. The effect was stronger when the foul shooter’s team was ahead. The empirical study has support in this experiment by cognitive psychologists which measured neural responses in a simple game.
JOUSTS OF WAR.
Monday, July 19th, 2010JOUSTS OF WAR. As with the combatants today, there were knights who courted danger. In jousts of war, the lances were uncapped. Mortimer describes one joust in 1351—a “behourd”, an older form of jousting in which two teams of knights fought—in which 30 knights fought on each side. On one side, 30% of the knights (9 out of 30) died. Mortimer points out that the odds are better in Russian roulette. In another joust of war with 20 on each side, 3 knights were killed. Both sides had agreed not to wear armor or other protective clothing. (!) Mortimer observes how unusual it is recorded history to have “the richest, most powerful and most privileged members of society risk injury and death for the sake of your entertainment.”
JOUSTING BACK IN THE DAY—JOUSTS OF PEACE.
Monday, July 19th, 2010JOUSTING BACK IN THE DAY—JOUSTS OF PEACE.. For my birthday, Nick gave me THE TIME TRAVELER’S GUIDE TO MEDIEVAL ENGLAND by Ian Mortimer. It shows that in the 1300’s there was the same split between the two versions of the sport—the violent and the less violent—as there is today. The two versions were called “jousts of peace” and “jousts of war.” The jousts of peace drew huge crowds. They were fought with capped lances and were “normally only occasionally fatal.”
THE SPORT OF JOUSTING.
Sunday, July 18th, 2010THE SPORT OF JOUSTING. This article in the New York Times Magazine reports on the modern sport of jousting. There are estimated to be 200 competitive jousters in the world. They are intent on making it what the article calls “The Next Extreme Sport.” The jousters are divided into two camps: “full contact” jousters (the American style) and those who require “historically accurate 15th-century armor, clothing and accessories, including arming doublets and hose” (European style). The European-style jousts feature lances is fitted with three-foot balsa-wood tips that shatter in competition. There is a sharp divide between the two camps. As one jouster puts it, “There’s a warrior class and an artistic-historic class.”
BOYS JUMPING ROPE.
Monday, July 12th, 2010BOYS JUMPING ROPE. Back in the day, jumping rope was a girl’s sport and boys didn’t do it. There came a time in high school when the boys’ gym class was misbehaving, and the gym teacher made us run a relay race, jumping rope up and back. We were sure it would be easy, but there were bodies all over the floor.
