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When thinking about Detroit’s most influential sports figure, names like Joe
Louis, Barry Sanders, Ty Cobb, Gordie Howe, Al Kaline, and Bobby Layne probably
come to mind. Nobody thinks of Henry Ford. Many people today believe that Ford
invented the automobile, but he actually pioneered something that team sports as
well as virtually every type of manufacturing organization has benefited from:
division of labor. When the car manufacturer invented a moving assembly line
that realized the potential of the established principle of division of labor,
he allowed for a very complex machine to be made in as efficient a manner as
possible. He set the stage for both the manufacturing world and the sports
world for the next century. Division of labor lets each team member do one
thing extremely well and exclusively, and Henry Ford showed that it could be
used to create very complex machines. The team sports
organization has often been referred to as a machine, and division of labor has
been a big player in organized sports since the days of the Model T. But along
with the physical advances we have seen players make in recent years has come a
general decline in the division of labor in major team sports. In other words,
players are able to do more things, so the need for concrete, limited roles has
diminished or disappeared.
If football players can be measured on just two
characteristics, those characteristics would be speed and strength. Anyone who
has seen clips from the early days of football has probably noticed that there
were generally two types of players: big, plodding linemen and smaller, faster
running backs and receivers. The “skill” players had a monopoly on gridiron
speed, but they don’t anymore. Modern linemen are larger than their
predecessors, and they are much faster as well. But they still don’t handle the
ball. Quarterbacks, who used to stand in the pocket and hurl passes across the
field, have used their newfound speed to take some of the rushing duties from
their fellow backs. Michael Vick, the quintessential “new” quarterback, has
blurred the line between passer and runner and, at times, created the impression
that he could handle both responsibilities at the same time.
In the 1950’s, the NBA was characterized by George Mikan,
who stood in the middle and blocked shots, Bob Cousy, who handled and passed the
ball, and Dolph Shayes, who was a great shooter and scorer. And as recently as
1993, the University of North Carolina fielded a championship team that divided
almost completely the passing (Derrick Phelps), outside scoring (Donald
Williams), athleticism (Brian Reese), rebounding (George Lynch), and inside
scoring (Eric Montross) duties. In the past few years, with the increased
accessibility and popularity of the game, the influx of versatile international
players, and the de-emphasizing of fundamentals, both the college and
professional game have seen players who defy traditional roles.
Only recently has the NBA seen seven footers who are able
to make a living behind the three point line; the expectation of the big man was
once so limited that Bill Russell’s participation in fast breaks was considered
an epiphany. Now, the scoring abilities of big men have become so comprehensive
and thus so homogeneous that several NBA front lines feature three players who
can shoot from the outside, rebound, pass, and do just about whatever else is
required of them. And with the NBA’s defensive rules being the way they are,
point guards like Mark Jackson can go inside and post up, further blurring
basketball’s once unmistakable division of labor.
For almost the entire 20th century, the
prototypical baseball lineup has been as follows:
1)
A speedy player who gets on base a lot
2)
A contact hitter with a high batting average
3)
A player with a high batting average who can produce runs
4)
A power hitter
5)
A run producer
6, 7, and 8) Three players with
less hitting ability, placed in descending order and usually ending up with a
light-hitting middle infielder or catcher
9) A pitcher
Though this type of plan is still in effect to a certain
extent, the game has changed in such a way that the ideal baseball lineup has
morphed to something resembling this:
1-9) A power hitter
So as football and basketball’s changes have preserved the
basic functions their participants must master, baseball has lost a large part
of its skill set, namely base stealing, baserunning, and other “small ball”
pursuits. The configurations of ballparks haven't helped this problem:
cavernous turf stadiums with plenty of foul territory have given way to smaller
grass ballparks that reward eschewing ground balls in favor of fly balls.
Oddly, though, what has been lost on the offensive side of
the ball has been made up for on the defensive side. The starting pitcher, for
most of the 20th century, was much better than his counterparts in
the bullpen. Today’s relief pitchers are much different, with the ability to
get people out in very specific, well-defined situations. Major league bullpens
have a closer, a set-up man, and a lefty who specializes in facing tough
left-handed batters and who may appear only for one batter. This convergence of
disparate pitching talent creates a formidable pitching “machine” on the mound,
which would make Henry Ford smile.
When contemplating most of the rest of the sports world,
though, Mr. Ford must be turning in his grave. Sports teams are losing the
rigid roles that have made them productive for so long, mainly because they
haven’t needed to. Players have become better conditioned and more talented, so
the decline of division of labor has diminished not the quality of play but the
variety of many people doing many different things. Not that homogeneity is all
that bad. After all, Ford’s greatest creation, the Model T, came famously “in
any color, so long as it’s black.”
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