The Seven Great Games

Human beings have several avenues for entertainment. Particularly in today's world where we have 300 television channels, a movie house every so many miles, video games, theater and three sports for each day of the week.

No form of entertainment is as engaging, however, as one centered on competition. Even our television shows have now been focused on individuals or teams competing. These forms of entertainment I like to call games. They could be a game of chance, skill, knowledge or athletics, but they are all just that -- games. Everything from Jeopardy to the Super Bowl is a game.

And with that in mind, I'd like to list what I believe to be the best seven games we have created.

7) Poker: Easily the best of the card games, poker is as romantic as it is historical. We can envision Doc Holliday playing in a Tombstone saloon, or a celebrity on a Texas Hold 'Em tourney on TV. We play it ourselves, in basements or kitchen tables all across the country. Even James Bond turned in his Baccarat chips for poker in the most recent Casino Royale. It's a game of chance, yes, but it's also a game of knowledge and skill. Few things in the gaming world are as sexy as the art of the bluff.

6) Formula 1 Racing: Racing is as basic as competition gets. It's all about speed. In its purest form -- track -- it's about pushing the human body to its limits, either in a sprint or marathon. Horse racing is also beautiful and romantic -- and Secretariat's famous ride may be the greatest performance in sports history. There's also cycling -- few competitions can match the Tour de France. Still, I have to bow to auto racing on this one. More specifically, the European circuit. I mean, NASCAR may be popular, but driving 175 miles per hour in an oval is less gripping to me than the way they race in Europe. Windy roads, hair-pin turns, Ferrari, Porche, Alfa Romeo -- the way it ought to be.

5) Tennis: There are so many variations on this sport -- badminton, volleyball, ping pong, paddle tennis -- that it's no surprise it has made the list. It is a game requiring more than mere athletics. There is a strategy, there is skill. And there is style. Watching two greats go head-to-head in tennis is as wonderful as can be: McEnroe-Borg, Evert-Navratilova, Aggasi-Sampras, Federer-Nadal. You can't help but want to grab a racket when you watch them.

4) Soccer: Another sport with so many variations. Goal-oriented games come in so many forms. There is soccer with sticks on ice (hockey), soccer with sticks on horses (polo), soccer with sticks and nets (lacrosse). Even basketball and American football are just variations on the same theme. I choose soccer as the best of these games for a few reasons. First, it is one of the few sports where women have done so well. Watching a women's soccer match is as exciting as watching the men. Also, no sport has captured the world quite like soccer. And that is saying something.

3) Chess: Let's not forget the board games. When athletic prowess is not necessary, knowledge becomes the most important of skills. Strategy is the weapon here, and no board game captures it as much as the legendary game of chess. It's not even easy to understand, and it is as difficult as any game to master. Chess is the greatest exercise for the mind that we have created. Pull up a chair and get smarter.

2) Boxing: Fighting games are, like track, the purest of competitions. It is one-on-one, my best vs. your best. Winner takes all. There is no second place. What separates boxing from the other fighting games (wrestling, judo, karate, taekwondo, muy thai and "ultimate" fighting) is not that it is necessarily better. It's the boxers. Each era has its boxing legends. There are the ferocious sluggers we all feared (Liston, Foreman, Tyson). There were the skilled fighters who dazzled us (Robinson, Leonard, Ali). There were the warriors (Frazier, LaMotta, Holyfield). And, when we're lucky, we get to watch great ones bring out the best in each other (The Thrilla in Manila).

1) Baseball: Come on, it's me. Still, no other sport captures all the greatness of competition quite like baseball. It's one-on-one within a team sport. It requires athleticism. It requires skill -- it's often said that the most difficult thing to do in sport is to hit a pitched baseball. It requires strategy. It requires knowledge. It's not a race against the clock. As modernity has altered so many other games, baseball has remained remarkably the same. Our first and arguably greatest sports hero, Babe Ruth, was a baseball player. It's tied so closely to our nation's history it is in the very fabric of American culture. One does not need to be a biological oddity to succeed at it, as is the case in football and basketball. It even gives the illusion that anyone can play it. And in no other game are the competitors so burdened by the successes of previous players as in the game of baseball. There are other bat-and-ball games -- heck, cricket, rounders and town ball all pre-date baseball. But no game is as perfect as the game of baseball.

Bonds Junk

It has been a few days since the news broke. The initial emotion of it has waned and we are left with just the truth: that the home run king has been charged with lying under oath about knowingly cheating baseball by taking performance-enhancing drugs.

In the few days since the story broke, we have heard mostly the same reaction -- that the government finally charged him with what was so obvious. Still, we heard other reactions. We've heard that Charles Barkley, among others, called it a witch hunt and claims race played a role (after all, where are the charges against Mark McGwire and Jason Giambi?).

Hmm.

Barry Bonds did not get indicted on charges of taking steroids. He was indicted on charges of lying to a grand jury. It was the same grand jury that heard Jason Giambi tell the truth about his steroid use. And, last I checked, Mark McGwire did not appear before the BALCO grand jury. He did not perjure himself in front of the Senate either. He just didn't answer the questions. That is not a crime.

Barry Bonds brought this on himself.

In 1998, the turning point in Bonds' career, Barry Bonds was among the top three players in baseball. He was, without a doubt, one of the greatest to have ever played the game. For him, that was not enough. So he chose to take the wrong path -- the path so many other athletes take. It is the easy path. It is also the wrong path.

Bonds has lived in a vacuum all his life. He had been protected by being the child of a celebrity athlete, not having had to face the obstacles normal child-athletes must face every day. His abilities allowed him to be sheltered from reality. He's never had to do the everyday things that you and I must do just to make it through the week. He's always been the best. He's always had everything he ever wanted. He's Paris Hilton in a baseball uniform.

And when others grabbed the spotlight from him, he reacted -- wrongly. What was worse, was that he assumed -- wrongly again -- that the real world couldn't penetrate the wall his celebrity had created. So he lied. He lied to the grand jury and continued on, vandalizing baseball's most cherished records.

But Barry Bonds isn't different from anyone else. Perjuring yourself is a crime. Did race play a role in that? Only that Barry Bonds supporters can say it does.

Why it took so long is a mystery to me. I wish the federal prosecuters could have indicted him before he stripped baseball of its most prized record. But, in the end, it doesn't really matter.

His career is over. So is the impenetrable safety bubble in which he lived.

There is an old saying about dues: we pay now or we pay later, but we all pay. It's a truth. It's reality.

Welcome to the real world, Mr. Bonds.

Where The Real Genius Lies

One of the many frustrations I have with American society is how we worship celebrities. More specifically, I am puzzled by our obsession with actors and actresses. We place on pedestals men, women, boys and girls those whose special talent is pretending to be someone they are not.

Do not get me wrong here. The ability to perform as an actor takes an enormous amount of talent and creativity. One needs to become another person, take on traits that do not readily belong to them, and make it believable. It is a talent which I doubt I possess.

Still, I find a peculiar sense of justice at the recent strike by the writers of television and movies. It is now that we are seeing where the true genius of Hollywood lives. It's not with the actors, but with the very creators.

If you weren't sure before, look at what has happened to television recently. Shows have been forced to go to reruns. The supposedly quick-witted and sharp-tongued hosts of late night television have been silenced. 24, my favorite show, has been placed on hiatus. Other shows have found themselves struggling as well.

Writers, not actors, are the irrepplaceable ones. One may always associate Sean Connery as the "true" James Bond, but Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and others were able to successfully play the same role. Replace James Caan with, say, Paul Newman as Sonny Corleone and The Godfather would still be a great movie. Remove Sylvester Stallone from the Rocky role and it would still be a fantastic movie. Remove him from the writer's role and Rocky wouldn't exist.

2007 has marked some interesting turning points in American society. We've witnessed the fall of the publicity-obsessed trio of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears (though sadly her new album is actually selling). We've seen the pendulum begin to swing away from the superstar super-contracts (see the big black eye to Scott Boras' invisibility with the A-Rod fiasco). And we've witnessed the fact that our beloved actors cannot function without the writers who put them on the screen and tube.

Maybe we're finally getting wiser.