Bill James writes a very interesting piece on Grantland about how the deterioration of fan conduct at baseball games and prisons in America seems to have happened around roughly the same time. A great tidbit that stood out:
"That's the thing about regulating conduct; there is always some conduct that doesn't get policed. When baseball effectively prohibited its players from defending their good names with physical threats and small weapons, this in essence required the players to put up with verbal abuse from fat, pimply guys whom they could have very easily beaten the grits out of. People say things in public all the time now for which, if you had said them 40 years ago, somebody would have kicked your ass. We've regulated the ass-kicking, so the rudeness is out of control, and we wind up with Keith Olbermann and Rush Limbaugh doing political commentary that falls in the same general class as drunken, shirtless bellowing.
I used to know both of those guys. Limbaugh used to work for the Royals. I didn't really know him, but I bumped into him a couple of times. Olbermann used to be a broadcaster; funny, funny guy. They're good guys; I wouldn't have any trouble playing poker with either one of them, but I'm not sure what moron gave either one of them a microphone.
Which is an unfair thing to say; they have complex political philosophies, both of them, and they have microphones because somebody figured out that you could make a lot of money by combining a sophisticated political philosophy with oral flatulence. But I was reminiscing about the good old days, when men were men and high school girls didn't have nipple rings, and you knew who the heavyweight boxing champion of the world was — even the high school girls did — because there was only one at a time and he was a big deal."
He goes on about a number of topics that don't seem related at first but overall it's a good piece worth reading.
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