Let’s return to the Inside Standard Setting newsletter of the Chair of Canada’s Accounting Standards Board, Armand Capisciolto.

The author’s obvious love of baseball is becoming a rather charming recurring element. Here’s a recent example:

• When I go to a baseball game, I want to see runs scored, preferably via the long ball. However, some of the most exciting moments in a game come from a hard-hit foul ball. A hard-hit ball down the foul line gets everyone on their feet. Fans of the team at bat are hoping it stays fair for the home run, while fans of the fielding team are trying to will the ball foul.
• Some of you may be wondering how foul balls relate to accounting standard setting.
• Well, the foul lines are a boundary, and I have been spending a lot of time lately talking about the boundary of financial statements…

In Capisciolto’s hands, such potentially dodgy analogies seem happily unstrained, lyrical even. My own knowledge of baseball would fit onto a marble; actually I’m not a sports viewer or student of any kind (I did attend Game 6 of this year’s hockey Stanley Cup playoffs in Edmonton, but that was the first sports event I’d been to in years) (it was great!). But anyway, inspired by a commenter on that post – “Always appreciate a well articulated sports analogy!” – I thought we’d see what we can find, accounting- and finance-wise (and not necessarily well articulated). Here’s a now obsolete one I remembered from years ago:

• “The counterpart to FAS 13 in IFRS is IAS 17, putative principles-based standard.  It’s more a less a carbon copy of FAS 13 in its major provisions, except that bright lines are replaced with fuzzy lines: if the present value of the minimum lease payments is a ‘substantial portion’ (whatever that means) of the leased asset’s fair value, you lose operating lease accounting.  If FAS 13 is tennis, then IAS 17 is tennis-without-lines.

Actually, I recall another writer in a now-defunct blog applying the “tennis without lines” analogy to the whole of IFRS. Let’s continue:

• Golf Eagles, Birdies, Rough, Fairway, Double Bogey – Golf has a language of its own. CGT, Thin Cap, Transfer Pricing, Profitability, Gross Margins – Accounting too has a language of its own.
• An Eagle is two shots under par. Fair enough. Why not just refer to it as “2 under par?” The same applies to CGT. It’s a tax on profit made from the sale of an asset (in oversimplified language). Why not just call it a tax on making money?
• …Accounting and Golf are both activities that take time. When was the last time 9 holes took you less than 2 hours or so? Same with Accounting – when was the last time a meeting with your accountant went for less than an hour?
• Basketball March madness is just around the corner and when you think about it, cash flow management is like basketball. The treasuries that don’t solve their bank connectivity issues before working on their forecasting are like basketball players who skip the fundamentals like dribbling and go straight to free throws.
• Snooker I used to play in two types of snooker league: the open league and the handicap league. In the open league both players would start the game on zero, and the best players had the best chance of winning. However, in the handicap league, based on a points system conditioned by past results, better players would give inferior players a head start in an attempt to narrow the gulf in ability and make the frames more evenly contested…The snooker handicap league can provide a pretty good illustration for when governmental interference in the market is good and when it is not. Policies that cause the participants in the market (snooker players) to waste opportunities (play below par) are likely to be bad policies, whereas any policies that cause as few wasted opportunities as possible (in a way that’s similar to handicap scoring) are less likely to be bad policies 
• Hockey Hockey helped me realize the value of asking questions from a young age. Many of my hockey coaches stressed the importance of asking for clarification if I or any of my teammates didn’t understand a drill in practice or a play that was drawn on the whiteboard. My coaches explained that asking questions would eliminate any confusion and put everyone on the same page, which would increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the drills and plays when we ran them on the ice. This ideology can be transferred to the accounting profession where its crucial to communicate with clients or co-workers if there is confusion on a topic. The company and engagement is more effective when everyone understands the assignment and their responsibilities, and asking questions can accomplish this task. 

Well, that all clarified a lot of things. Let’s go back where we started for the last word:

• Baseball is the ultimate sport for accountants because it revolves around numbers.  Almost every decision is supported by advanced analytics.  However, much like accounting, no single measure tells you the whole story.  Blue Jay fans experience this complexity every night, particularly when trying to understand why Vladimir Guerrero Jr. isn’t hitting more Home Runs…

Yeah, because you know what else accounting and sports have in common? Potentially bottomless frustration!

The opinions expressed are solely those of the author.