Dear Bookclub,
What an endearing email outpouring from The Novel Group for Martha and our sisterhood.
Confirmation that one can't learn everything from books :)
October and November meetings have been moved to one week later. Please see the calendar to the right for details.
The December selection is one that will tantalize the idea of nature vs. nurture. Epstein, a Sports Illustrated senior writer, examines the root of athletic success. I think you will enjoy his findings, ponder your own observations and experiences, and be prepared to share your amazement!
Review: ‘The Sports Gene,’ on the science of athletic performance, by David Epstein
from the Washington Post, Steven V. Roberts, September 6, 2013
Donald Thomas was bragging to his pals on the college track team
about his dunking skills on the basketball court. So they bet that he
couldn’t clear 6-feet-6-inches in a high-jump contest. When Thomas
sailed over a bar set at seven feet, the losers urged their coach to
recruit him. Eighteen months later, he won the world championship.
Albert Pujols is one of the best baseball players of his age,
but when facing Jennie Finch, a softball pitcher who threw underhanded,
he struck out. Badly.
Nature vs. nurture was probably a trending topic when sports
fans exchanged text messages carved into clay tablets during the Olympic
Games in ancient Greece. It still is, and Thomas certainly reinforces
the naturists. Turns out the guy has “a giant’s Achilles tendon” that
acts as a huge spring when he jumps.
Pujols illustrates the
counterargument. His “simple reaction time” is nothing special, but he
has amassed a vast “mental database” about big league pitching that
effectively enables him to “see into the future.” He guesses — no, he
knows — exactly where and when a ball will cross home plate. But against
Finch, he had no database. He was “stripped of his crystal ball.” So he
whiffed.
In his fascinating book “The Sports Gene,”
David Epstein — a senior writer for Sports Illustrated and a former
college runner — comes to a compelling if not surprising conclusion:
Nature and nurture are both essential ingredients for athletic
achievement. “The truth is, even at the most basic level, it’s always a
hardware and software story,” he writes. “Sport skill
acquisition does not happen without both specific genes and a specific
environment, and often the genes and the environment must coincide at a
specific time.”
Of course, software and environment can cover many
factors — fair and unfair. Distance runners know, for example, that
there’s a “sweet spot,” between 6,000 and 9,000 feet, “where the air is
thin but not too thin.” Training at that altitude increases lung
capacity in a legitimate way. But others, from cyclists to baseball
players, have tried to enhance their “software” through drugs, not
dedication, and policing those cheaters is a major problem for many
sports. See Armstrong, Lance, and Rodriguez, Alex.
Many
researchers and writers are reluctant to tackle genetic issues because
they fear the quicksand of racial and ethnic stereotyping. To his
credit, Epstein does not flinch. He reviews the best scientific studies
and reports that, on average, black athletes run faster and jump higher
than white ones.
But that’s not because of skin color. It’s
because they are descended from tribes living in low, hot, dry climates.
And over countless generations of natural selection, those Africans
reproduced traits well adapted to their environment: long legs, short
torsos, narrow pelvic bones. The same qualities also happen to make
excellent power forwards and wide receivers. (Short-limbed Europeans and
Asians, by the way, are better at weightlifting and gymnastics.) “So
this is not strictly about ethnicity so much as geography,” Epstein
writes. “Or latitude and climate to be more precise.”
Many other factors mix with genetic propensities, but they are much
harder to measure. One small region of Jamaica has produced “an
extravagant number of the world’s top sprinters.” Many are descendants
of escaped slaves from Africa who created a fierce warrior culture in a
remote corner of the island. Nature or nurture? Obviously both.
According to one researcher, Yannis Pitsilades, this is what
happened. The “genetic stock” of those Jamaican sprinters started with
the “strong people” seized and sold as slaves. Only the “strongest of
those strong” were able to survive the “brutal voyage” to the New World,
flee bondage and flourish in the wilderness. So genetics was enhanced
by experience. For these Jamaicans, speed was essential — to escape, to
hunt, to fight. Not everyone agrees with Pitsilades, but sprinter
Michael Johnson, winner of four Olympic gold medals, does. “Slavery has
benefited descendants like me,” he says. “I believe there is a superior
athletic gene in us.”
Or take a less dramatic factor. Jamaicans worship sprinters the way
Americans celebrate sluggers. So the top Jamaican athletes are
self-sortedinto one narrow specialty, just as talented young Canadians
play hockey and the best Brazilians focus on soccer.
Some of those
traditional patterns are disintegrating under the impact of
globalization, however. Sports are a huge business with vast profits at
stake, and success at the most elite level demands highly specialized
and hard-to-find body types — not just sport by sport, but position by
position.
And the best specimens can now be recruited from
anywhere. Natives of the Dominican Republic tend to have the perfect
build for a major league infielder — short, slender, nimble. But few of
them can block pass rushers or grab rebounds. The NBA has been “scouring
the globe for giants” and has found them in Serbia, Croatia and
Lithuania. Nigerian and Samoan names now dot NFL rosters, mostly as
defensive backs.
“As the expanding universe of sports physiques
has sped outward,” Epstein writes, “finding those increasingly rare
bodies has fostered an increasingly extensive, and expensive, global
talent search.”
A few questions emerge. Genetic testing for
athletes? Epstein acknowledges the risks of discrimination but comes
down in favor. Genetic mutations can cause enlarged hearts or increase
the risk of head injuries. Testing can lead to better vigilance and
greater safety. It can also identify athletes with certain traits or
propensities, but Epstein warns that genetic makeup, by itself, is never
a guarantee of success. Another quality is always necessary — passion,
intensity, heart.
“Acknowledging the existence of talent and of
genes that influence athletic potential in no way detracts from the work
it takes for that talent to be transformed into achievement,” he
writes.
Genetic selection? Epstein cites only one deliberate case
among humans. The very tall parents of Yao Ming, the gigantic Chinese
basketball player, were “brought together for breeding purposes by the
Chinese basketball federation.” An intriguing footnote: Some of world’s
best pure athletes are Alaskan sled dogs, and they have been heavily
bred for one quality above all — not speed or strength, but desire.
I
have only one complaint: The narrative slows down when the author shows
off what he knows about the arcane details of genetic science. In all,
however, this is a fine book with a moral message. “Each of us is like
the hero in a Greek tragedy,” Epstein writes, “circumscribed by nature,
but left to alter our fate within the boundaries.”
The fans at Olympus knew that. We should, too. Steven V. Roberts teaches journalism and politics at George Washington University and is writing a book about immigrant athletes in America.
