Here’s a sentence whimpering for a comma: Phil Jackson on Tuesday goes for his 500th coaching victory against the Los Angeles Clippers.
Now, while it might seem entirely plausible that Jackson’s Bulls will have beaten the sunken Clippers 500 times in nine years, it is, quite simply, inaccurate. NBA bylaws clearly state the Clippers must be shared equally by all teams, like merchandising revenue and locker room soap. So for the sake of fairness, let’s try it again:
Phil Jackson on Tuesday goes for his 500th coaching victory, against the Los Angeles Clippers. Much better, yes?
If the Bulls win Tuesday, Jackson will reach the milestone quicker than any coach in NBA history. All in all, it would be quite an accomplishment, considering the ball (Michael) and chain (Jordan) he carries around with him.
But let’s take a different tack, and for once, look beyond the man and to the number. A nice round number, 500 is. Full figured, if you will. In sports, we tend to stop there and loiter. We look at our maps and judge our position by that simple number. The question is, why?
Why does the number 500 make us pause and ponder? Why is the race named the Indianapolis 500 and not, say, the Indy 350? Why are 500 home runs a milestone for a baseball player? Why is a .500 completion percentage the line between good and bad in the NFL? And while we’re at it, why are the standings about which most athletes truly care called the Fortune 500?
There are certain numbers in sports that bring almost immediate recognition to even the most casual fan. Roger Maris’ 61 home runs in a season is the standard for sluggers. Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak still causes heads to shake in wonder. Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in one game.
But day in and day out, 500 is the most talked about number in sports and perhaps the most taken for granted. Think about how often it comes up in everyday talk. If a pro basketball player hits .500 of his free throws, he’s a bum. If a team has a .500 record, it is average, although sometimes if a coach can get to .500 for the season, he just might keep his job. If a player hits .500 of her three-point attempts, she’s great. If a major-league baseball player claims he is batting .500, he is on his way to the Betty Ford Clinic.
Behold the number 500, alternately scorned and admired, worshiped and ignored.
“Everything is relative,” said Seymour Siwoff, who, as president of Elias Sports Bureau, keeps track of such things.
After more than 100 years of major-league baseball, the list of players who have hit 500 home runs is only at 15. The number of NHL players with 500 goals is a bit higher (26) but still fairly small.
Why do we put such emphasis on that number?
“Since we have five fingers on each hand for a total of 10, that’s why we use numbers to the base 10,” said William Howard, a math professor at Illinois-Chicago. “After all, five is half of 10, and we count in 10s. That’s why numbers like 50 and 500 are significant.”
In other words, it could have been much different had Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown been a math pioneer rather than a digitally challenged Cubs pitcher. Or, as Howard points out, had the ancient Babylonians, who based their numerical system on the number 60, had their way, we would be yawning at Jackson’s upcoming accomplishment while waiting for victory No. 600.
Instead, we’re contemplating 500 and all that it connotes. Everyone knows what being .500 means. It’s a flip of a coin. It’s being neither good nor bad. It’s being so-so, if not Sammy Sosa. But if you get your head above .500, life begins to look a lot different.
“That is the figure you use before you become better,” Siwoff said. “If you’re 50 percent, you’re in. You’re normal. Beyond 50 percent, you start getting points. Until then, you don’t get any. Look at the NFL passer rating system: 50 percent is the middle point.”
Five hundred can be good and bad and sometimes even treacherous. A few years ago, a newspaper columnist wrote an entire column describing the parity that had descended on a recently completed NFL season. He based it on research he had done that showed the average record in the league was 8-8, or .500. If that wasn’t parity, he wrote, he didn’t know what was.
The day the column ran, after his telephone had stopped ringing, he wrote a correction. The mea culpa acknowledged the average NFL record would have to be .500, considering that in each game, somebody has to win and somebody has to lose, barring ties.
Somebody has to win? No one told the Clippers that. Don’t count that 500th just yet, Phil.
