Sports Bloopers: All-Star Flubs and Fumbles

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

The success of TV shows such as America’s Funniest Home Videos, Dick
Clark’s TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes, and Mike Golic’s The
Lighter Side of Sports underscores how much people enjoy watching other
people “screw up,” especially when it occurs accidentally and with
limited harm. Sports Bloopers attempts to capitalize on that fascination
but, unfortunately, the authors have forgotten Marshall McLuhan’s
maxim, “The medium is the message.” “Bloopers” are
funny/entertaining because they are active; the viewer can anticipate
what should occur and then watch what actually does occur. A photograph,
however, freezes time and cannot be repeatedly replayed backwards and
forwards in slow motion.

Sports Bloopers consists of photos of some 130 different “all-star
flubs and fumbles.” Usually each “event” merits just one picture,
which occupies a single page. All but three of the glossy, briefly
captioned pictures are in colour. A wide variety of international indoor
and outdoor sports, both amateur and professional, are photographically
represented, including baseball, basketball, hockey, boxing, soccer,
auto racing, golf, Aussie-rules football, snowboarding, and wrestling.
Although not identified as such, Canadian content includes a streaker at
a Calgary Flames hockey game. Some of the photos are not of bloopers but
are just photographic “accidents,” such as that of the table tennis
player who appears to have a clown nose because the camera captured the
ball as it was in line with his nose. And while it may be unusual to use
a helicopter to dry a rain-soaked cricket field, that happening hardy
qualifies as a flub or fumble.

Despite the inclusion of a few mildly humorous photos, such as the one
of a small sailing vessel whose twin sails are appropriately labelled
“America’s cups” or that of a support person leaning out of a car
window and applying first aid to the posterior of a Tour de France
bicycle rider while he continues to pedal, most of the book’s contents
do not really evoke the kind of emotional response normally associated
with bloopers.