Sports books and movies as frauds

I've seen a lot of sports movies. I like them for a couple of reasons. I dislike them from the obvious reasons.

First off, most sports have rules. Well, all sports have rules. Some rules regulate the games, some regulate the leagues and some regulate the management of the games, the leagues and (ta! da!)

The Players.

Don't do a sports book without knowing what is or is not a rule.

I saw a movie a lot of years ago called Murder at the World Series. It was a made-for-TV flick with ordinary actors with ordinary resumes and it was in color, had the usual commercial breaks and was, all in all, not a terrible story.

The baseline was, the main character was a rookie who had been called up from the minors the day before to pitch in the Big Game. Houston was the fictional team when the Astros were still in the National League.

The problem, which could never be rectified no matter what -- there is zero rule, zero option, zero exception, zero chance -- not even God-given, to allow a pitcher to come up from the minor leagues the day before the World Series and pitch in the game.

It isn't allowed, never has been, never will be and is a useless argument to even postulate a 'yabbit waddif' scenario.

The folks who made this film could have made a phone call to the nearest VFW and asked the drunk at the end of the bar if this could reasonably occur, and they'd be told, 'No.'

So why didn't they?

Because they figured the viewers wouldn't care.

In the end, it was a TV movie that had no discernible value. I don't even remember who was murdered at said World Series, or why.

Maybe it was the pitcher.

There are other less egregious examples of bad research that builds onto an otherwise useful sports book/movie premise. Hoosiers cuts a lot of corners but most of the acting is acceptable. Hoosiers fails on the cutting room floor, not the gym floor.

Non-fiction sports stories are usually pretty dull. They are also not terribly useful. A fictional sports story can be fun. I did one once, and it turned out all right -- not that I want to offer it to a publishing house. It's not  inspirational. I did it for the exercise.

I might do something of a fiction about early 20th century baseball. There's plenty of low-hanging fruit there. Basketball is more difficult to write. I don't like football or hockey enough to care. Soccer is a sport about the fans, not the teams. Polo, ping pong, pool, perhaps. 

 I understand sports a little bit, especially the parts that are possible and legal within the rules. You can have somebody murdered at the World Series, or in the city park for that matter, without cluttering up the story with shoddy research.

If you don't know what you're doing, do something different.