From my new column in Taki’s Magazine:

The Caitlin Conundrum
Steve Sailer

June 19, 2024

When thuggishness damaged the appeal of the National Basketball Association around the turn of the century, the executive leadership eventually took successful steps to rein it in. Why haven’t NBA executives intervened in their Women’s NBA vanity project to protect their most valuable asset, rookie Caitlin Clark, from racist, heterophobic violence at the hands of their black lesbian-dominated players, who have managed for almost three decades to keep the WNBA unpopular and unprofitable?

After all, sports league executives have considerable power to change their rules (and how the referees interpret them) to improve their product.

Normally torpid baseball, for example, sped up its play by 15 percent in 2023 by imposing a pitch clock to cut down on dawdling. The game still has problems, notably, excessive velocity on pitches leading to too many injuries and strikeouts. For instance, here’s Dodgers slugging shortstop Mookie Betts on Sunday getting his hand broken by a 98-mph fastball. Betts is amazingly quick, so the usual argument that it’s his own fault he didn’t get out of the way is silly.

But the success of baseball’s pitch clock reform is at least gettingpeople to talk about other possible changes to reduce pitch velocity, such as requiring starters to work five innings or miss their next start. Or why not call all pitches hitting 100 miles per hour or faster on the radar gun an automatic ball?

Read the whole thing there.

[Comment at Unz.com]