Cal just announced that they will be dropping baseball, along with gymnastics, women's lacrosse, and rugby (which will still be a club sport) from the athletic program. Yet they keep soccer (a sport primarily for kids that lack the physical ability to play football, baseball, or basketball) and golf, which is a skill, not a sport.
Baseball has been played at Cal since 1892. 38 players will have to either transfer or stop playing ball. Send your thoughts to Birgeneau and Barbour.
Robert Birgeneau: robertjb@berkeley.edu
510-642-7464
Sandy Barbour
athletic.director@berkeley.edu (obviously not her real address, but send a note anyway)
510-642-5316
2 comments:
Hey again Dave, thanks for keeping up with the site, and Go Bears.
I'm more ticked by rugby's going the wayside than baseball. But it's your comment about soccer that really caught my eye. I think you may have captured the American opinion on soccer fairly well, but that opinion is also fairly well off base.
I'm a sports fan who grew up in the Bay Area in the 1990's. Though my idols were Bonds and Rice, I would watch any sport if it was on TV--hockey, tennis, basketball, even bowling or golf. (And by the way, since these are activities of precise physical exertion, I call them sports. Running is not a prerequisite.) Each sport requires a mastery of a different set of techniques. To say a football player lacks the physical ability of a baseball player because he can't hit a fastball would be silly; to say it of a soccer player relative to athletes of major American sports is similarly silly.
It's true that many of America's best team-sport athletes are playing in the NFL and the NBA. But it is not necessarily true that these same athletes could have excelled at soccer.
As a former Cal employee in the area of Intercollegiate athletics, I am taken aback with the decision to drop baseball. The history and tradition of baseball at Cal must not mean anything to the decision makers.
On another note, I was appalled at the comment relative to soccer. I hope your kids grow up playing, and excelling, at soccer!
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