Pro tennis does not allow coaching during a match. I don’t know if other sports have that rule.
Baseball is the only sport I know of that says coaches cannot be on the field unless they are wearing the same uniform as the player. Which is why baseball managers do. The great Connie Mack refused to wear anything but a suit, and consequently never left the dugout while the game was in progress.
Can you imagine if that rule was more widespread? Phil Jackson on the sideline in a sleeveless jersey and a pair of long shorts? Or Bill Belicheck trying to diagram plays in shoulderpads and a helmet?
I suspect that this rule also applies to other solo sports including snooker, billiards, darts etc.
For example in 8-ball Pool
in golf the caddie is a sort of coach who can help the player at any time.
I played in a local pool/billiards league and they allowed coaching but it was not a pro league.
Speaking of golf, and caddies, are there other sports where somebody follows you around the entire game, carrying most of your gear for you?
Game of Thrones?
[d&r]
well in horse racing, the horse carries the jockey. 
jousting?
That is not a rule.
Connie Mack used to manage wearing a business suit. But I disapprove of the recent trend where the manager wears a different top than the players, I’d like to see them be required to dress as the players.
Football is the only sport where the coaches wear hats from another sport- they generally wear baseball caps.
I’m sure I could look this up but…
Where baseball caps invented by/for the sport of baseball? or did baseball use them before they took off and it’s just been associated with baseball ever since?
The Doubling Cube is used with Backgammon and makes that already exciting, fast-moving game even more exciting. Although my son and I play cribbage with a doubling cube, I don’t otherwise recall seeing the cube used in any other game or sport.
Doubling might not make sense in win-or-lose contests, but it could add excitement and strategy to match play or money play.
Other than a variety of baseball played by Beavis and Butthead, what is Frogs?
Invented for the game of baseball - USATODAY.com - Baseball cap has endured generations as the all-American hat
Bowling is the only sport I know of where your score for any given effort depends on how well you do in the immediate future. A touchdown is worth 6 points. A free throw is worth 1 point. An outer bullseye is worth 25 points. A boundary four, well, that one’s self-explanatory. These never change. A strike can be worthy anywhere from 10-30 points, and a spare anywhere from 10-20; it all depends on whether you get those other marks at the right time.
In nearly all pure striking sports, grappling is illegal, and in mueitai, the clinch is a setup for an attack. Boxing is the only sport where he can passively grab his opponent, the opponent can’t do a damn thing about it, and there’s no penalty whatsoever. All the effective attacks in such a position…throw, rabbit punch, armlock, etc…are prohibited. Oh, sure, he has to let go after a few seconds, but nothing’s stopping him from doing it again (and again…and again…and again…and again…).
Swimming is unique among Olympic disciplines in the ability for one person to garner a truly astounding number of medals. There are single-stroke events, individual medleys, and team medleys, each with a variety of distances…and every single permutation is a medal event. Furthermore, while the strokes are different, it’s essentially the same activity, so it’s not very difficult for a dedicated swimmer to become proficient in all the strokes. Boxing, weightlifting, and the martial arts are divided into weight classes; no one can get more than one medal in any of those. Things like rowing, pistol shooting, and fencing have a few permutations, but nowhere near as many as swimming. And while there are a multitude of running events, the type of body (and training) that makes an effective 100m runner is different than what 400m requires, or 800m, or 1600m. A swimmer going full tilt really isn’t much faster than one who’s pacing, whereas a sprinter is blazingly faster than someone conserving stamina for the finish. The other track events require highly specialized techniques, and it’s all but unheard of for any one person to make the podium in a multitude of them, much less win the gold.
And then there’s sumo.
- There is a height minimum for entry.
- The competitors wear a wide, thick belt that actually serves as the primary point of attack.
- Punching is prohibited, but any other kind of hand strike is perfectly fine.
- Every match begins with a ritual, starting from a perfunctory clap at the lowest ranks, to a simple one-minute warmup at around Makushita (I think), to the yokozuna and ozekis’ ceremonies which often turn out to be just as heated as the contest itself.
- The in-ring official, a gyoji, determines when a matta (false start) occurs, but that’s pretty much his only real power. He is required to bark “nokotta” repeatedly when the competitors are doing something and “hoi hakkeyoi” when they’re not (analogous to John McCarthy’s “Keep working!” and “C’mon, WORK!”, respectively). He determines when a match ends and who the winner is and also when someone commits a hansoku (foul), but these calls are not binding and can be overridden by the presiding judges at any time.
- A match ends when one man is either forced out of the playing field or touches the ground with anything other than his feet. Not knockout, not tapout, not pin, not ippon, not technical superiority. One little bitty contact is all it takes.
- For a competitor’s entire career, no matter how rich or famous he gets, he must live in a specialized dormitory.
- Until he reaches a relatively high level, he is essentially an indentured servant and must follow the commands of both senior members and the stablemaster.
Oh, and it’s also one of the few sports dominated by Mongolians.
In boxing clinching is illegal. Boxers get away with a lot of it, but they can have points deducted for it or be disqualified. It has happened.
I don’t know if the Olympics or other organizations have such a restriction, but professional boxers can hold titles in more than one weight class. The weights are upper limits, there are generally no lower limits.
Not entirely sure I agree with you there. Both Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis have won 4 gold medals in a single Olympics, 100m, 200m, long jump, and 4x100m relay. (I’m not sure if anyone else has equaled it.) It’s not the 8 gold medals that Michael Phelps won in 2008, but it’s not bad.
True enough for coaches. But consider the players:
I first watched NHL hockey in the early 1960s, and got to attend my first live NHL game in about 1966, with my Dad. I still remember Johnny Bower in goal for the Toronto Maple Leafs without a mask or helmet–but he did have a simple baseball catcher’s mitt on his left hand. Many NHL goalies used baseball catcher’s mitts in those days.
Flash forward. Now, NHL goalies wear full-face wire masks, with head protection, and use specially-designed gloves that can catch pucks. But I notice that some MLB catchers wear the equivalent of an NHL goalie mask: it’s not just protection for the face, but for the forehead, chin, and so on, just like NHL goalies.
It seems to me that if you’re exposed to hard projectiles flying at high speeds, you learn from other similar sports. So, hockey used baseball catcher’s mitts, and baseball uses goalie masks.
I always thought they looked a lot more like first-baseman’s mitts (or a catcher’s mitt for a catcher with a knuckle-ball pitcher and some of those did in fact use first baseman’s mitts.)
Well…not exactly.
–Backstroke, butterfly, and breaststroke have only two solo events each–100m and 200m–and no stroke-specific relays. Individual medley has 200m and 400m, and there are two team medley relays. Freestyle has 50m, 100m, 200m, and distances above 200m, along with a couple of all-free relays. To say that “every single permutation” is a medal event is not all that accurate.
–There’s a lot more specialization than you think. Freestyle and butterfly are quite similar in that those who are medal winners in one are often medal winners in the other–Michael Phelps, Michael Gross, and Mark Spitz are good examples. Backstroke is a somewhat different animal: it’s rare for a top-rank backstroker to be a top-rank anything-elser, though people do sometimes compete at very high levels in both back and free or back and butterfly. Breaststroke is not really like anything else. Folks who compete in the IM are certainly GOOD at all four strokes, but they are not medal contenders at all four.
–People who are good as sprinting are often not all that good at longer distances and vice versa. The Phelpses and Spitzes didn’t compete in longer freestyle events (such as the 1500); I’m pretty sure Phelps has only won individual freestyle medals at the 200m distance.
It’s certainly true that there are lots of events in swimming, and that in particular there are lots of relay events. If you are an American swimmer, especially, you can pick up as many as three relay medals per Olympiad because the rest of your teammates are really good as well. It’s almost a gimme. If Phelps or Spitz had been Canadian, or Irish, or Dutch, they wouldn’t have won nearly as many golds as they did. So that’s a fair complaint. But it’s not nearly as simple as all-the-strokes-are-alike-and-they-all-get-swum-at-the-same-distances.