From: fujimoto@carson.u.washington.edu (Bryant Fujimoto)
Subject: Re: TO THE GM's/IM's FROM DON
Organization: University of Washington
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 01:46:44 GMT

dcrosgr@uoft02.utoledo.edu writes:

>In article <1992Dec21.105652.903@u.washington.edu>, fujimoto@carson.u.washington.edu (Bryant Fujimoto) writes:
>> dcrosgr@uoft02.utoledo.edu writes:
>> 
>>>My personal philosophy on life can be boiled down to:
>> 
>>>A working imperfect solution is better than a non-working perfect solution.
>> 
>>>I have little respect for 'critics' who lack the ability to climb to the top,
>>>and it spills over....
>> 
[stuff deleted]
>> 
>> If you look in the sports pages you find critiques of coaches
>> and athletes written by journalists who are neither.  The sports
>> writers may claim a player is no longer effective, etc.  And it
>> seems some people enjoy arguing over which of two athletes
>> (or teams), who did not play at the same time, was the better athlete.
>> This appears to be the same sort of activity which you are condemning
>> in some of your posts (how well did Fischer and Spassky play? is
>> Fischer as good as he once was? etc.).  However, since this sort
>> of thing is accepted in other sports, why do you object to it here?

>Because what Benjie (and the others) did was the equivelent of 
>taking two missed passes thrown by the WINNING Superbowl quarterback, and using
>them to 'prove' that the man is NOT as good as he was last year (which, by the
>way, his team ALSO won). 

Consider a quarterback who had a good regular season - high precentage
of completions, lots of yards passing, etc.  His team gets to the
Superbowl where he completes only 5 of 20 passes, has 3 intereceptions,
no TDs, etc., *but*, his team wins, in part because the opposing
team turns the ball over 8 times.  Even though his team won, his play
will be criticized by the sports journalists.  The difference between
your example and mine is the quality of play; if its bad, its going to
be criticized.  You appear to think that Fischer's errors are trivial or
minor (for a QB to have only 2 incompletions in a game is not serious),
and therefore can not be used as evidence that he no longer plays as well
as he once did.  However, to convince anyone of this you will have
to directly dispute the criticism of FS-II, and this you steadfastly
refuse to do.

>Maybe he saw 600 pounds of lineman running towards him.
>Maybe it was based on a run pattern that was blocked.
>Maybe he was just stopping the clock.

>Besides, it is not Fisher's coach which was making the comments, it was
>the quarterback of a semi-pro farm team for the losing team...

Please read the posts more carefully.  I was not referring to coaches
criticizing athletes, I was referring to coaches *being* *criticized*
by sports journalists (most of whom have never coached at a high
level, if at all). 

Be that as it may, most sports journalists are not even good enough
to be the losing quarterback of a semi-pro farm team.  So even *if*
we accept your characterization of the GMs, we still have in most
other sports a situation where the journalists are, by your
criteria, even more unqualified to comment on the quality of play,
than the GMs are to comment on FS-II. Yet criticism by sports 
journalists is generally accepted.  So why should chess be different?

Bryant Fujimoto
fujimoto@denali.chem.washington.edu