More = Better, Right?

My son returned to the baseball field this last weekend.  He looked spectacularly average.  Most of his teammates did, too.  He played between 30 and 50 less games this year.  His teammates started ahead of him.  Which begs the question: Is more better?

The marked decline in solid, fundamental play is not just a baseball situation.  The numbers bear out that fundamentals in basketball have declined.  Shooting percentages across the board are lower, and more shots are being taken.  Wish I had time to dig the numbers up, but I'll bet that points allowed are higher, too.

Some argue that better athletes make all games more difficult, but haven't the better athletes been playing in the past, too?  In the past, we expected athletes to meet a higher standard morally and ethically, now they are held to a lower standard.  It lets some better athletes that would have been washed out of the system play to the exclusion of good behavior.  All in the pursuit of the Holy Grail of Winning.

A local legend of a nearby town bears the point.  A kid with all sorts of talent, but no team attitude was cut from the high school basketball team as a junior.  During his senior year, the same group won a State Championship, sparking outrage from the kid and very few others.  The coaches chose team chemistry and attitude over ability and it worked.  The star of the team went on to play ball in the NBA and has even been a head coach.  

The kid walked out of school, and never went back. He blames the coaches for ruining his life, which has consisted of living in a storage facility with his dog.  Odd jobs and begging are his income, a sign of God's Mercy.

Today, public outrage would follow the cut.  Angry letters and threats would flow from all corners of the community.  The team might have gone .500 that year.

We are all to blame when we cheer the incredible individual talent over the solid team play.  We overcompete and underpractice.  The level of play absolutely bears it out.

So...am I off base?