The Bar is So Low You Can Step Over It

This year it was my turn to get my driver’s license renewed.  As I sat there waiting to be processed, I was able to observe some interesting things.  What does getting a driver’s license renewal have to do with sports?  Let’s find out.

I saw what’s great about America; its diversity - people from all walks of life, all ages, all ethnic groups.  Not unlike baseball.  We have age diversity (Bryce Harper, age 19; Jamie Moyer, age 49).  We have Panamanians, Americans, Japanese, Dominican, Cubans and even White Sox.

One thing I couldn’t stand, aside from the waiting time, was that everything was dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.  Can’t understand someone telling you to wait in Line D?  Don’t worry, there’s a HUGE arrow leading you to a HUGE sign that says “D”.  Do we want the lowest common denominator driving a seven thousand pound vehicle?  My oldest daughter has yet to receive a B in school as she enters her sophomore year.  I’m not sure I want her on the roads.  And she’s intelligent.

I saw people bringing their children to the facility so the children could INTERPRET FOR THEIR PARENTS!!!  If you can’t speak the local language, I’m assuming you can’t READ the local language.  If you’re incapable of doing either, how can you drive safely?

In sports, especially children’s sports, everyone has to be included.  We’re not allowed to have just the best of the best or those deserving participate-win-succeed.  Hockey allows more than half their teams into the playoffs.  Basketball has eight teams in each conference get to the playoffs so many times the seventh and eighth seeds haven’t even won more games than they’ve lost.  In Major League Baseball, Bud Dumber has decided that more is more (which actually is less) in baseball by including another wild card team.  Supposed to create excitement or something.  In kid sports everyone receives a trophy nowadays – just for participating.

At the DMV, by allowing for interpreters, by having signs a second grader could follow, we are perpetuating the societal view that everyone should be allowed to do everything.

I have four children and that means that I am an expert on “The Incredibles”.  In the movie, the evil boy-genius has a plan of perfecting his “evil super powers”.  His ultimate goal is to give everyone super powers, because “if everyone is super, then no one is.”  That’s our society in a nutshell.

Everyone has trophies, certificates, driver’s licenses.  And if someone doesn’t, rather than encourage that person to raise his bar for achievement, society looks to lower the bar and find a way to create another category so that a certificate or trophy or license can be handed to that one unfortunate sole.

Look around you.  It’s everywhere.  The Mortgage Loan fiasco, while surely driven by greed and profit, could also be viewed as making sure everyone achieved the American Dream by owning a home way bigger than they need, whether they could afford it (deserved it) or not.

An argument could be made that Baseball’s Hall of Fame is getting to be the same way.  Statistically it still is home to the fewest members of the major sports.  But major leaguers with good careers are making it into the Hall.  But that’s another blog for another day.