Baseball, Football, Hockey and Basketball as analogs for war

At one time it was widely accepted without question that team-sports were both analogs for, an training for warfare.

One can track the progression of history of warfare by studying "games".

Baseball is primarily a tournament of one-on-one battles between single champions. Pitcher-catcher was an analog of David-Goliath. The Champion vs Champion model was very economical when manpower was spread thinly across the landscape and a war could reduce your young, male population by 90%, if not through combat than through disease. For example, Alexander the Great met his demise near Babylon at the age of 33 possibly due to typhoid, malaria, drinking bad water or being poisoned.

Powerful men in a strange country often develop many enemies.

Even as recently as WWI, war could be seen as a baseball like enterprise, sneaking into no-mans-land and lobbing grenades, one-on-one trench warfare with bayonets. 

Football was primarily an enterprise of make-a-plan-execute-a-plan, rest and figure out what went wrong.

That mode of warfare described WWI and WWII. Yes, I know I listed WWI twice. These things do not have crisp start and endpoints.

Roles are specialized. Offence (bombers and submarines for instance). Defense (Maginot line). Special teams (code breaking, Manhattan project).

Make a plan, execute a plan. Make a plan, execute a plan. Make a plan, execute a plan. Punt. New team is fielded. Make a plan, execute a plan. Make a plan, execute a plan. The history of the NAZI Eastern Front in one paragraph.

Basketball and hockey are similar because they share the fact that the same team stays on the field for the entire game with players trickling in and out. There are very few programmed game-stops outside of the breaks between periods.

The "plays" are more a matter of recognized opportunities that are exploited on-the-fly than specific players blocking other, specific players and other players running pre-programmed (to-the-foot) passing plays.

The two games differ in that hockey still has some designated defensive players and a goal-keeper. With only five per team, basketball does not have a basket-keeper specialist or players whose dominant role is to play defense. Every basketball player is expected to be able to dribble and shoot and pass and steal the ball and rebound and defend the basket.

While the serious historians can tear this assertion apart, one can characterize the Vietnam war as the US fielding a hockey team vs North Vietnam fielding a basketball team. We had speed, mobility, shock on our side. NV had slipperiness and flexibility and could give up 100 points and still win the game.

Is the war/games analogy stretched too far?

I freely admit that any analogy can be stretched too far. But games were invented as battlefields-writ-small to blow-off testosterone and were enthusiastically embraced by West Point (for instance) as ways to train warriors. The link between sports and warfare is not a very long stretch. Look at track-and-field: discus, javelin, hammer were weapon of war..."marathon" was named after a battle in Greece 490 B.C.

What should be glaringly obvious

What should be glaringly obvious to any person with more than two brain-cells to rub together is that no sports team can win if they cannot play both sides of the field. That is, they cannot win unless they are proficient at both offense and defense.

This fact seems to have been lost on the media and "opinion leaders".

The residents of Gaza were like the runt sitting behind the star football linebacker in class, the runt who was sure that his small size gave him immunity so he kept subjecting the linebacker to physical harassment. The runt assumed that he was free to engage in offensive behavior, sure that the linebacker would never turn the tables.

And then one day the runt stuck the spike on his compass into the back of the linebacker's neck.

The linebacker, who had moving where he sat and trying to call the indignities to the teacher's attention (defensive moves) decided it was time to stop losing and went on the offensive.

At a more personal level

As a man I have been given the duty of being steward of my family, charged with defending them and keeping them safe.

I can have a layered defense of my house: Electronics, dogs, excellent doors-and-windows and it will be insufficient.

Electronics can be bypassed. Dogs are not infallible and can be poisoned. Doors and windows can be breached. Maybe you think this is improbable, but consider the number of vans (some marked, other unmarked) that visit the average residence and deliver packages.

I had to be a kill-joy but the spikes are not sharp enough. Also, spike longer than 2.5" might cause over-zealous prosecutors to come after you for use of a "lethal weapon". 1.5"-to-2.0" spikes are more defensible represented as the mechanical equivalent of pepper-spray.

Sharpening the tips to modified spear-points will allow you to more easily pull the spikes out of the first invader and use it on additional invaders or apply additional pain to the first person you hit.

A home-owner needs to have some (preferably multiple) forms of offensive weapons that they and other members of the household are physically capable of using. It doesn't HAVE to be a firearm, but even an elderly, enfeebled person can use a firearm effectively and at-range.

Spicy times!!!!

---Addendum---

Fani Willis claiming that it was very common for Black women to have huge amounts of cash in their homes partially motivated this post. Rumors can be total BS but drug-addled tweakers are not noted for their critical thinking ability. And tweakers can still kill you. Embarrassing, yes, I know but there you are.

This is not a pure-theoretical situation. I have a country neighbor who lives on property where it is rumored that the previous owner squirreled away $15k in cash in a safe hidey-hole. Then the previous owner died unexpectedly. My neighbor is paranoid because according to their security cameras, strangers trespass and poke around the barns and out-buildings while the neighbor is at work.

Another motivation came from the impending assault on Copperhead Cove. They are on-their-own. Even if they had phone service they are not likely to call 9-1-1. And even if they could/did, how long would it take for help to show up?