CHANGE IS THE LAW OF LIFE. THOSE WHO LOOK ONLY TO THE PAST OR PRESENT ARE CERTAIN TO MISS THE FUTURE.

J.F. KENNEDY (Or "Nothing endures like change." Heraclitus, 500B.C.)

Those who think that all change is avoidable are delusional. Change is  inevitable in all things. Witness the evolution of beach volleyball, including the Manhattan Beach Open, over the past forty years. It is clearly not the same game it was then and it will  continue to evolve and in the process make it more exciting for the spectators and more profitable for the players.

Those who characterize as radical the new AVP format  proposed for the coming Manhattan Open have a short or very selective memory. The size of  the ball was changed, as was its material from leather to synthetic.  The size of the court was reduced, and the "let" serve was introduced, a fundamental departure from the traditional serve. And  the most radical change, "rally" scoring has stepped up the pace of the game, reducing the number of sides out that prolonged  closure and resulted in matches that became boring  for the spectators and  debilitating for  the players.

Is it preferable  to return to the gladiatorial battles  that continued till nightfall?  Those grueling  clashes involved long sides-out in which the winner of the loser's bracket had to defeat the winner of  the winner's bracket twice in order to win the tournament.  Thankfully none of this has existed for years. Athleticism and intelligence have won over the "carry me out on my shield" mentality. And these are changes, whether you like them or not, to the "unchangeable" Manhattan  Beach Open. No one has been  reported excommunicated or pilloried because of them.

            EXAMINING THE FACTS NOT THE EGOS

                                    

Did the change in rally scoring resulting in faster paced games  not improve the experience for both  player and  spectator? Was the joining of the men 's and women's tournaments under one unifying umbrella a less attractive event? Did the granting of equal prize money to both men and women hurt the image of the game? These are all "changes" that resulted in  the enhancement of the experience for the spectator. And isn't this what the goal should be for the tournament? And shouldn't the  format of the tournament be such that the best players are most likely to succeed? 

This vision is not possible when all the lachrymal  stops are pulled out for a nostalgic past that is mired in a yesterday and that precludes a  forging of a blueprint for tomorrow.  What are such words as "reverence," and "heritage," and "tradition" meant to elicit other than emotion rather than a rational analysis of the issue? And then there is the pretentious  and sophomoric use of the word "lore" in "The lore of Manhattan."  The subject is beach volleyball, not the "Holy Grail!" But then the word "lore"  carries a certain cachet that the words like "history" or "past" do not. How much more transparent can you get?

Moreover  there is the tiresome misuse of the metaphor, the Wimbledon  of Beach Volleyball, which is invoked as identity rather than similarity. The Manhattan Beach Open and the Wimbledon and the Masters of golf are all separate entities. The only thing they have in common is that the best players in  each sport contend  for their separate titles. There is nothing in the proposed new format in the Manhattan Beach Open that would circumvent that goal or diminish its achievement.

                          The Snake in the Garden

There is a back story to the whole ridiculous uproar that is apparent to anyone who has followed the rise of the AVP and the diminution of  the

generation that drove the AVP into bankruptcy in 1997. There is nothing that succeeds like success and nothing that generates envy like the success of your chosen adversary.

Kevin Cleary has chosen the AVP as his selected adversary. The reasons are obvious and unconscionable. Can anyone imagine a story on  the history of beach Volleyball and the AVP in particular inexplicably omitting the name of the architect  of the sport in the 21st century, Leonard Armato?  But I guess this is part of the back story.  The real question is who declared Kevin  Cleary the official analyst and historian of beach volleyball? I guess it's self-proclaimed, in spite of his obvious prejudice and consequent incompetence to assume  the role.

            

       A  PARABLE  ON THE MARCH OF PROGRESS

On June 4th 1896 Henry Ford announced the completion of the first successful horseless carriage which he called the Quadricycle.

Word got out about town and before long one Kevin Cloudy became so incensed over this new development that he called all of his friends who owned horses and asked them to join him  in protesting the advent of this  abomination.  A horseless carriage!  This smacks right in the face of thousands of years of tradition.  Besides where will I get my compost for my garden? He was heard shouting around town: A horse! A horse! My nerddom for a horse!  Henry Ford happened  to hear him one day and coined a phrase that has survived more than a hundred years: "Get a life, Cloudy. This is  change and progress which you refuse to accept. Heraclitus said it in 500 b.c. "Nothing endures like change," and you can never step into the same river twice. But you keep running upstream trying to step into yesterday's river. 

"This year 1896 is an eventful time," said Ford,  "with the unfolding of many important social issues, such as the resolution of the Plessy vs. Ferguson case which validated state sponsored segregation, certainly worthy of anyone's time and attention.  Or it might be advantageous  to examine the advent of "yellow journalism," a legacy of William Randolph Hearst who declared that there was a yellow peril with the arrival  of large numbers of Asian immigrants. And by the way this is also the year of the resumption of the Olympic games in Athens after 1500 years. Do you not have the social consciousness to focus on  these important issues  rather than  worrying about where you are going to get compost for your garden with the arrival of the horseless carriage? Get a life, Cloudy!"

Fast Forward: 2008.

A direct descendant of Kevin  Cloudy was a young man named Kevin Dreary. One day he was discovered lurking outside of Manhattan Beach City Hall  waiting for the council members to arrive because he believed that he had some  important news about an impending threat to the city if not the country. It was not about the consequences of global warming as dire as that could be. Nor the imminence of a seismic occurrence which has been predicted for the past ten years. Nor a terrorist attack he had discovered was to be delivered like a second 9/11.No! But as each council member appeared he accosted them with warnings that he considered more calamitous, more apocalyptic than any of the  aforementioned disasters: THE AVP PLANS TO CHANGE THE FORMAT OF THE MANHATTAN BEACH OPEN. Each of the council members was astonished by the energy and commitment he put into that innocuous pronouncement, given the real problems the city and the country were confronting, both political and economic. Then Dreary made phone calls to other volleyball players, past and present, for the next  eight hours trying to enlist their  support for his holy mission, to prevent the  disaster that was about to befall the Manhattan Open. The AVP wanted to change the format of the Manhattan Open! Can that happen without some global fallout? Then without warning   the voice of Henry Ford came resounding down the halls of yesteryear  :"Get a life, Mr Dreary! Get a life!"  

Sam Armato

samarmato@aol.com

Manhattan Beach