Two interesting articles in the local paper, The Gazette, today.
First, apparently a youth baseball league (8-10 year old co-ed) in Connecticut decided one kid was too good (able to throw 40mph pitches) to play pitcher in the league. The team was undefeated but has now had to forfeit at least one game because they wanted to start him. The first reaction is of course outrage, it is so typical of our “self-esteem” culture that we want to stop one kid from being really good to protect the egos of all the other kids. But ultimately, I can’t get too excited. With kids this young, there probably is some legitimate safety/competition issue involved. I don’t know what other options this star player has for more competitive leagues without putting himself at risk. Ultimately, when it comes to sport, sorting on age or even gender does not make as much sense as sorting on skill. Sure, in my sport of tennis the average man might be better than the average woman, or the average 20 year old might be better than the average 10 or 70 year old, but the average 4.0 rated player is the same level as another average 4.0 rated player. Certainly skill sorting should happen first before any secondary considerations (excepting safety).
The second bit of information was a Business report talking about how Ford and GM are retuning their 2009 model year cars for more gas mileage. Apparently they can add 1-2 mpg without additional parts, simply by reassigning the priority to efficiency potentially over performance. This makes me ask, why the hell did it take to now for them to maximize efficiency in this way?
