Frazz by Jef Mallett for May 19, 2017

Winning is just one aspect. As long as you get exercise and have fun, you can play baseball for 20 innings and not keep count of the home scores for all I care. Coach here would have a heart attack about the very idea, but still…

Since “Sports” became nothing more then a business, who cares?

Sports weren’t professional at all until fairly recently – the 1860s.

@ignatz: sorry to have to ask but I am not a sports history fan. Is that time reference correct?

This is Friday. Are we at the end of this string yet?

Caulfield is playing Competative Debate Oneupmanship. And winning is important to him. I’ll bet he even keeps score.

Caulfield can be a “pita” and I don’t mean a flat bread…

If winning is so important, then why are there so many more non-winners? Heck, if there no losers at all, then how could there be any winners?

Actually, what Vince Lombardi had was a quotation! “Quote” is a verb.

The kid looks very bad today. Picture him saying this to a sports-loving family member. Now try to picture him getting away with that.

So…sports lack importance. Tell that to all the girls who benefited from Title 9. Disagreeing with the “winning is everything” philosophy is one thing, but making a blanket statement about sports being worthless is disingenuous at best. Both Caulfield and the coach are swinging and missing, but only Caulfield is smug about it. I’ve had it with Caulfield. I think the strip is better without him.

I don’t know, BIGPUMA. First, Caufield is playing a game, rules unknown. Coach butts in asking “what’s the score?”. Seeing the action, the initiative in setting up the game, the obvious physical interest and activity involved , one might expect a teacher to follow up with some interest and praise, recognition of the effort involved, understanding that this kid is not sitting in his room staring at a led display screen. But, no, this coach is a yesteryear coach who believes the greatest lesson a kid can learn is beating someone else. He is one of many type-cast characters in this comic strip which leans heavily toward the intellectual. Is he here the butt of a joke? I think so, as are most of the other teachers when they exhibit characteristics unreasonable. Is Caufield being sassy & rude? I think that is a label distributed on condition of personal prejudice. I see it as a really bright kid shining light on staid, old fashioned and probably destructive ideas.

For sailors ‘the doldrums’ used to be the belt of winds between the east and west trade winds. Calms, sudden storms, erratic winds. For writers and comic artists that can happen any time and last indefinitely. That could have been Jef’s problem off and on for a couple of weeks.