Imponderables: Fun and Games (2 page)

W
e know that taste in art is a subjective matter.

We are aware that whole books have been written about what colors best reflect our personalities and which colors go best with particular skin tones.

But on some things a civilized society must agree. And rented bowling shoes
are ugly. Does anybody
actually believe that maroon-blue-and-tan shoes best complement the light wood grain of bowling lanes or the black rubber of bowling balls?

Bruce Pluckhahn, curator of the National Bowling Hall of Fame and Museum, told us that at one time “the black shoe—like the black ball—was all that any self-respecting bowler would be caught dead using.” Now, most rented bowling shoes are tricolored. The poor kegler is more likely to be dressed like Courtney Love (on a bad day) than Walter Ray Williams.

We spoke to several shoe manufacturers who all agreed that their three-tone shoes were not meant to be aesthetic delights. The weird color combinations are designed to discourage theft. First, the colors are so garish, so ugly, that nobody
wants to steal them.
And second, if the rare pervert does try to abscond with the shoes, the colors are so blaring and recognizable that there is a good chance to foil the thief.

Of course, rented bowling shoes get abused daily. A bowling proprietor is lucky if a pair lasts a year. Gordon W. Murrey, president of bowling supply company Murrey International, told
Imponderables that
the average rental shoe costs a bowling center proprietor about $25 to $50 a pair. The best shoes may get rented five hundred times before falling apart, at a very profitable $2 per rental.

Even if rentals were a dignified shade of brown, instead of black, tan, and red, they would get scuffed and bruised just the same. Bowlers don’t expect fine Corinthian leather. But can’t the rented bowling shoes look a littler classier, guys? Isn’t a huge 9 on the back of the heel enough to discourage most folks from stealing a shoe?

Submitted by Shane Coswith of Reno, Nevada.

O
r more properly, why does Mickey Mouse have three fingers and one thumb on each hand? In fact, why is virtually every cartoon animal beset with two missing digits?

Conversations with many cartoonists, animators, and Disney employees confirm what we were at first skeptical about. Mickey Mouse has four fingers because it is convenient for the artists and animators who have drawn him. In the early cartoons, each frame was hand-drawn by an animator—painstaking and tedious work. No part of the human anatomy is harder to draw than a hand, and it is particularly difficult to draw distinct fingers without making the whole hand look disproportionately large.

The artists who drew Mickey were more than happy to go along with any conceit that saved them some work. So in Disney and most other cartoons, the animals sport a thumb and three fingers, while humans, such as Snow White and Cinderella, are spared the amputation.

And before anyone asks—no, we don’t know for sure
which of Mickey’s fingers got lopped off for the
sake of convenience. Since the three nonthumbs on each hand are symmetrical, we’d like to think it was the pinkie that was sacrificed.

Submitted by Elizabeth Frenchman of Brooklyn, New York.
Thanks also to R. Gonzales of Whittier, California.

P
ut men in a uniform. Give them a helmet. And they all start speaking alike. At least, that’s what all of our football sources claimed. Pat Harmon, historian at the College Football Hall of Fame, was typical:

We’ll have to believe our football authorities, since no evidence exists that the “hut” barked by quarterbacks has anything to do with little thatched houses.

In fact, “hut” wasn’t always used as the signal. Joe Horrigan, of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, sent us a photocopy of a section of the 1921
Spalding’s How to Play Football manual that indicates that per
haps we aren’t as hip as our forbears:

Our guess is that the only important virtue of “hut” is that it contains one syllable.

Submitted by Paul Ruggiero of Blacksburg, Virginia.

H
aving lived in apartments most of our adult lives, we developed a theory about this Imponderable. Let us use a hypothetical example to explain our argument.

Let’s say a sensitive, considerate yet charismatic young man—we’ll call him “Dave”—is taking a brief break from his tireless work to watch TV late at night. As an utterly sympathetic and empathic individual, “Dave” puts the volume at a low level so as not to wake the neighbors who are divided from him by tissue-thin walls. Disappointed that “Masterpiece Theatre” is not run at 2:00
AM
, “Dave” settles for a rerun of “Hogan’s Heroes.” While he is studying the content of the show to determine what the character of Colonel Klink says about our contemporary society, a used-car commercial featuring a screaming huckster comes on at a much louder volume.

What does “Dave” do? He goes up to the television and lowers the volume. But then the show comes back on, and “Dave” can’t hear it. Ordinarily, “Dave” would love to forgo watching such drivel, so that he could go back to his work as, say, a writer. But he is now determined to ascertain the sociological significance of “Hogan’s Heroes.” So for the sake of sociology, “Dave” gets back up and turns the volume back on loud enough so that he can hear but softly enough not to rouse the neighbors. When the next set of commercials comes on, the process is repeated.

Isn’t it clear? Commercials are louder to force couch potatoes (or sociological researchers) to get some exercise! When one is slouched on the couch, adjusting the volume of the television set constitutes aerobic exercise.

Of course, not everyone subscribes to our theory.

Advertising research reveals, unfortunately, that while commercials with quick cuts and frolicking couples win Clio awards, irritating commercials sell merchandise. And it is far more important for a commercial to be noticed than to be liked or admired. Advertisers would like their commercials to be as loud as possible.

The Federal Communications Commission has tried to solve the problem of blaring commercials by setting maximum volume levels called “peak audio voltage.” But the advertising community is way ahead of the FCC. Through a technique called “volume compression,” the audio transmission is modified
so that all sounds, spoken or musical, are at or near the maximum allowable volume
. Even loud rock music has peaks and valleys of loudness, but with volume compression, the average volume of the commercial will register as loudly as the peaks of regular programming, without violating FCC regulations.

The networks are not the villain in this story. In fact, CBS developed a device to measure and counterattack volume compression, so the game among the advertisers, networks, and the FCC continues. Not every commercial uses volume compression, but enough do to foil local stations everywhere.

Of course, it could be argued that advertisers have only the best interests of the public at heart. After all, they are offering free aerobic exercise to folks like “Dave.” And for confirmed couch potatoes, they are pointing out the advantages of remote-control televisions.

Submitted by Tammy Madill of Millington, Tennessee.
Thanks also to Joanne Walker of Ashland, Massachusetts.

D
uring the 1953–1954 season, the National Basketball Association was beset by difficulties. Attendance was low; many franchises were in financial trouble.

Professional basketball’s problem was not a trivial one: Fans found the game boring. Hoop fans like to see plenty of shooting and scoring, but the rules did absolutely nothing to encourage teams with a lead to shoot the ball. If a team led in the late stages of the game, the custom was to have its best ball handler dribble in the backcourt, forcing opponents to foul intentionally, resulting in tedious but profitable free throws for the stalling team. There was also no incentive for teams in the lead to run cross court and set up their offense quickly, further dragging the pace of the game.

The owners knew they had a problem, but the solution was the brainchild of an unlikely savior named Danny Biasone. Biasone, a bowling alley proprietor, bought the Syracuse Nationals franchise for the princely sum of $1000. Biasone might not have had the clout within the league to compete with the Knicks or Celtics owners, but he concluded that a clock was necessary to force players to shoot at regular intervals and speed up the game.

How did Biasone arrive at 24 seconds? He found that the average game contains about 120 shots between the two teams. Since there are 48 minutes, or 2880 seconds, in an NBA game, teams averaged exactly one shot every 24 seconds. Figuring that players would be forced to shoot before the 24 seconds expired, a shot clock would compel teams to shoot more often and, presumably, score more often.

Biasone invited club owners to watch a demonstration of how a game would be played with a clock. All could see that the shot clock would add excitement to the game, and it was instituted in regular play at the beginning of the 1954–1955 season.

The shot clock changed basketball immediately. Scoring did increase, an average of 14 points per game in one season. Most important, attendance rose quickly. NBA historian Charles Paikert quoted former league president Maurice Podoloff as saying that the adoption of the clock “was the most important event in the NBA and Danny Biasone is the most important man in the NBA.”

Biasone’s shot clock had another effect that perhaps he did not foresee—it changed the type of player needed to build a championship team. The Minneapolis Lakers dominated the NBA before the shot clock, led by the physically bruising but slow and lumbering George Mikan. The Lakers, with the shot clock, could no longer afford to loiter downcourt while Mikan hauled down a rebound and casually jogged across the half-court line. Mikan retired the year the shot clock was instituted. He returned for the 1955–1956 season, but he averaged only 10 points versus a career average of 22 points, and he quit after half a season.

The shot clock was tailor-made for the team Red Auerbach was fashioning in Boston. In Bill Russell, the Celtics found a tall center who was also exceptionally quick and could spark a fast-break offense.

Although Paikert notes that Biasone has so far been denied a place in the Basketball Hall of Fame, he was justly rewarded in one respect. In the premier season of the 24-second clock, his Nationals won their first and only championship. Biasone sold the Nationals in 1963. They became the Philadelphia 76ers and went on to win many more championships.

How many more shots are taken today than in Biasone’s era? As this is written, with a few more weeks in the 2005–2006 season, NBA players took 156,586 shots in 489,406 player minutes, approximately 156 shots per game, about one-third more than Biasone’s day.

Dividing the number of shots per game (156) into the number of seconds per regulation game (2880), we find that a shot is taken on an average of every 18.46 seconds. Considering how many quick shots and tips are attempted on the offensive boards, which would bring down this average, it is surprising how much time most offenses take in getting off shots, and perhaps a tribute to the defensive skills in the NBA.