Hardball & Slow Pitches & Wiffles #2

Field of Dreams, with Puddles: Unthank Park softball diamond, on a soggy Saturday

A high sky—impossible blue—where a flyball can vanish only to re-materialize a few feet directly above the outfielder’s glove. A ring of fair weather cumulus clouds floating just above the horizon—a breeze from the west that merely suggests a cool touch under a warm orange sun. A day for standing on a ballfield—a diamond.

But I’m standing on the landing at the Failing Street Pedestrian Bridge: Friday, June 15th, just returning from a weekly hospital appointment where I receive a 30-minute infusion of Prolastin to counteract the degenerative effects of alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency. On this glorious spring day, my oxygen saturation—taken always as part of my “vital signs”—stood at 99%: nothing special for a healthy person (in fact, slightly low), unheard of for me—I often hover in the 94% range. As my nurses tell me, the difference between 94% & 99% is much more significant than one would guess. Typically 90% is considered a cut-off point for needing supplemental oxygen.

As I’d walked from the Overland Park Max station to the Failing Street Bridge I’d reviewed an assumption in my mind. In Thursday’s post, I mentioned how I’d stopped playing softball early in the 00s. In fact, I’d played well in the final July 4th tournament—but I decided it was simply too difficult for me physically to continue. I “couldn’t” do it anymore.

Of course it’s also true that my level of physical activity in general began to decline around that same time. When I first moved to Idaho I was in quite good shape: I’d played baseball at least weekly in San Francisco for a few years & I’d also both walked & biked a lot: no car. Once I made my new home in Idaho, I started in on my career of “boho rancher” with a vengeance—building woodsheds & fences & repairing outbuildings, splitting wood & hauling it, summer & winter alike—& more besides. While I realized something was wrong with my breathing, it wasn’t until after I took sick with a severe flu in December of 00 that the situation became so pronounced I had to drop my denial & seek medical attention.

As the great blues musician Son House once said, “If you think you can’t do something, don’t try—because you’ll sure enough fail.” But the fact is, subtly at first, I began to tell myself I “couldn’t” do certain physical things—apropos to softball, I told myself I “couldn’t” run. But it’s startling in retrospect how insidious “can’t” proves to be. Soon enough the list grows, despite the fact that I was being strongly encouraged by both my general practitioner & my pulmonolgist to be more active; I was being gently encouraged by my significant other, & she often took the time to create opportunities for exercise; I’m sure my recalcitrance was frustrating for her.

I’ve never been good about exercise for its own sake. Give me a glove & a ball, & I’ve been quite happy to run around; & for whatever quirky reasons, I’m always happy to walk significant distances in a city; in San Francisco, I was happy to bike both for its own sake & for its convenience. But give me exercise equipment or exercises, & I lose interest all too quickly.  & this also leads to further “can’t do” notions.

So much of this was flashing thru my mind as I walked from Overlook Park to Failing Street. & a little voice said: “Do you know that you can’t play softball?” & I had to say, “No, I don’t know that.”

Once I was back in my apartment, I looked to see what the age limit is on senior citizen leagues in Portland; I know some senior centers open up membership (like AARP) at age 55, & I’d qualify at that rate. But as far as I could determine, the cut-off for the senior citizen teams here is 65 (which surprised me—I definitely didn’t think it would be over 60.) Also, when I looked for teams that were open to disabled members, I only found a veteran’s league (as in service veteran’s); I think that’s great, but I don’t qualify.

On a lark, I also looked up Wiffle Ball. Wiffle is a misunderstood sport, actually—although the bats & balls are invariably found in the toy section, there’s the potential for quite a bit of skill in both throwing & hitting a Wiffle Ball, & I was aware that some adults play Wiffle Ball recreationally. In fact, I found a Wiffle Ball league right here in Portland: the Columbia Cowlitz Wiffleball Association.  This is an interesting find, because while there’s definitely skill involved in Wiffle Ball, it involves much less exertion than even softball, due to the fact that in official Wiffle Ball games, there are no real base runners—only “ghost runners,” as you recall from playground & backyard ball games in which there were never enough people to form full teams. There is some amount of fielding, but not that much running (tho catching a Wiffle Ball with all its wacky spin is definitely in the greased pig category.)

But softball remains my first choice—it’s closer to baseball, & actually I have no experience in “real” Wiffle Ball play, so there’d be some learning curve, especially in hitting something that moves more (when thrown by someone who knows how) than any baseball. “Can” I do it? I’m targeting next spring—leagues have already formed for this season, & I know I’m not currently in the kind of shape I need to attain. The big test: running. Other than hustling across a street occasionally when the situation requires it, I can’t recall the last time I actually ran. I’d need to be able to run at least 120 feet/40 yards (the distance of two bases) & be able to remain functional at the end of that run—which means that realistically, I should be prepared to run 240 feet/80 yards, since in an actual game it’s possible one might have to do that in increments that came in quick succession.

I’m walking even more—I’ve decided to shoot for the popular 10,00 steps per day, & in the week I’ve been keeping score, I’ve done well. I have some thought of either getting my bike out here or buying a new one (new to me at least.)  As far as the “skills” go—I’ll be rusty, but I expect I can still catch the ball reasonably well, & there are batting cages so I can work on hitting.

The odds? I realize they may be no better than 50/50—the running is a big deal, & I haven’t tried it yet. But it makes me happy to think about, & I tell myself that even if I finally reach a point where the can’t becomes not just a mental construct but an injection of realism, then so be it. The increased exercise—in ways I generally like—will be all for the good for my physical condition.

& that’s where I’m at on this rainy June afternoon!

Hardball & Slow Pitches & Wiffles #1

Some members of the Mission Team in the dugout; yours truly kneeling lacing my spikes w/cap reversed (sorry!)

There’s been a bit of a lull on  Beer League Box Score,but I assure you this hasn’t resulted from any waning interest in the game. Indeed, the spring & now summer of ’12 has certainly seen a re-kindling of my longtime love for baseball. & as such, I come to you today, friends, in a spirit more of the personal than the theoretical.

From the mid 1960s thru the early 1990s, my relationship to baseball was largely one of a fan—oh, sure, there were playground games, a flirtation with going out for my grade school team, & the odd softball games & games of catch here & there. But for the most part, my enjoyment was that of a spectator.

This changed in the spring of 1994. I was living in San Francisco, had just undergone a break-up of a six-year relationship & also had quit smoking (for the umpteenth time) in the late summer of the previous year. As a result, my appetite had returned with a vengeance, & while I’m grateful that I’ve never had to deal with weight problems (other than losing more weight than is good for me), it’s true that I was probably enjoying ice cream a bit much in the absence of cigarettes & it was starting to show a bit.

That being the case, I decided I’d like to get into playing softball regularly—get into a league—& I was sure that some friends of a friend either played in a league or had a regular, ongoing pick-up game in place on weekends. When I called the friend to ask about this, he insisted that theses friends didn’t play softball, but in fact played baseball. 

I questioned this assertion: after all, everybody knows (so I thought) that post high school or college at the latest, people drift away from playing the more rigorous game of baseball—hardball—in favor of the much more leisurely & casual sport of slow pitch softball. Turns out I was wrong.

I ended up at Jackson Rec, a baseball diamond in San Francisco off 17th Street, south of the Mission. The players were a motley crew of varying abilities, many of them musicians from various punk/indy rock outfits. & there were women who played as well as men. & I actually got a hit in my first at bat—a base hit to centerfield that I can still picture. In retrospect, I think my dear friend Dani threw me a fat one.

The pick-up game got me hooked—I was at Jackson every weekend—I think the games then were mostly Sunday afternoons—& when the game moved up the hill to Potrero Rec I followed it there. Before we knew it, the cast of characters became less fluid & more settled, & before the summer was over, a number of us had decided to try our fortunes in the Roberto Clemente League. The pick-up games continued, but now there were practices too! It was all rather absorbing.

In 1998 I moved to Idaho; did play a few more times in San Francisco pick-up games on visits to the Bay Area—in fact, I even got a base hit in my final pick-up game at bat—a kind of weak line drive-in to right field, but a clean hit nonetheless. Rural Idaho, however, didn’t offer this kind of “beer league” amateur baseball, & as I was busy living the life of a boho rancher with guinea hens & chickens & llamas & outbuildings to build & repair, I kept myself busy.

But then in 2000, I was asked to play in the July 4th tournament for local newspaper team. In fact, I was even considered one of the team’s best players, which was truly a new experience to me! I was still in good shape, & also not so terribly far removed from regularly playing the faster & more arduous game to be able to perform capably. Long story short, I was asked to join the town team, which played in a summer league in McCall (there are no winter softball leagues in that part of Idaho!) With the town team, I  I regressed to being an average player at best: fact is, I always played best when I felt there was “less” on the line—I used to play a good notch or two better in the baseball pick-up games than in the league, & that was pretty true with softball too.

During this time, I was diagnosed with COPD; in fact it was a softball team practice that spurred me to make a doctor’s appointment—on a breezy, cool May Sunday evening, I got completely winded during batting practice. Given that softball batting practice is not usually thought of as especially aerobic, this got me worried. I played the rest of that season in the league, as well as participating in the July 4th tournament; the next year, I dropped off the team & played one last game in the holiday tournament. In fact, my last at bast was a hard ground ball up the middle for a single.

& then I quit. I decided that given my condition, it was just too hard to play. I remembered a game in McCall in the league when I had to pull myself out of the game for the final inning because I was simply too fatigued & winded to continue. There was another game in McCall where I was playing left field. The opposing team had been peppering left & left center with line drives & I’d been doing a lot of running. A batter hit a drive to left center, but in an area where it was the centerfielder’s ball. Given that our centerfielder was one of our best players, I guessed that he’d handle the ball, & because I was completely “gassed,” I decided not to back him up. Of course you know the rest of the story; he botched the play, the ball skipped away to the wall, & chaos ensued.

Much has transpired since 2002: a full diagnosis of my condition, an increased focus on music as an outlet, a return to writing poetry, & eventually a move away from Idaho & the end of a long-term relationship. My move to Portland brought an increase in physical activity, especially walking—two main reasons here: first, I enjoy walking in cities more (counter-intuitive perhaps, but true); second: no car! Nor any likelihood of having one in any foreseeable future.

But while I might have been getting in better shape—maybe even significantly better shape—than I’d been in. But going back to playing recreational softball? Out of the question.

Right?

Stay tuned…more of the story on Saturday!

Reading Baseball

In Plato’s Apologia, he quotes Socrates as saying, “I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.” In a similar way, we have the quote I mentioned last time about baseball & sabermetrics: “"baseball is a game played by the dextrous but only understood by the poindextrous.” Parody, yes—but also a summation of an attitude.

My academic background is in both poetry—that is, the writing thereof—& literary criticism. If you haven’t undertaken these studies in any sort of focused way, you may well believe that they should go together hand & glove; in point of fact, the disciplines—as Plato suggested well over 2,000 years ago, are uneasy companions at best. If you talk to writers, they tend to approach literature from a perspective of technique & process; if you talk to critics, they tend to approach literature in terms of theoretical models & philosophical systems. That’s not to say that someone who is first & foremost a writer can’t read in the latter manner, but it is to say that when a writer is reading qua writer she/he tends to focus on technical & structural questions.
So we have writers, critics & readers. In theory, at least, in the act of reading, one participates mentally in both the creative, imaginative process (“the reader became the book”) & the critical process—the reader brings such critical tools as she/he has available to interpret the text.

In baseball: the player/coach; the statistician, & especially the sabermetrician; & the fan. These are not mutually exclusive groups—in fact, there’s considerable overlap, & in a way that mirrors the artist/critic/reader troika, “fan” ultimately encompasses the other two—even if the fan is, in most cases, a “player” only imaginatively.

I actually think the mirror I’m proposing actually is a key to understanding some deep questions concerning “fanhood” & the sometimes contentious divide between “the dextrous” & the “poindextrous.” In fact, baseball & sport in general is essentially a specialized form of the performing arts: somewhere between ritual drama & dance, but with teams & scoring. The ancient Greeks understood this: had they invented baseball, they might well have included it in the sacred Olympic games, right along wrestling, racing, sculpture & poetry.
Having existed to a great degree in all possible literary perspectives, & to a much lesser degree, in all baseball perspectives, I can see them as parts of a unified whole much more than as compartmentalized endeavors  & even at odds with each other. After all, as is both literally & figuratively true, Plato was himself a poet—not only did he compose poems, but he also used language to get at ineffable Being, which is (as Nietzche & others have pointed out), itself “poetic” in the extreme.

& yet, we see the traditionalists & the sabermetricians in  a war of words. When Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter was asked about the sabermetrical contention that there is no such thing as consistently “clutch performance,” Jeter replied, "You can take those stat guys and throw them out the window." On the other side of the aisle, one might read the sarcastic—I would say it doesn’t rise to the level of satire—introduction to the 2012 Baseball Prospectus that absolutely excoriates traditionalists who value intangible qualities such as “guts,” “hustle” & “leadership” as embodying not only stupidity but also fascistic tendencies—in 10 years time, the intro sarcastically projects, these traditionalists will have ensured that every copy of the publication you have in your hands will be destroyed.
 
Now, as I mentioned in a previous post, given the lucrative cottage industry based on sabermetric analysis, I don’t think BP’s dystopian vision is very likely to come to pass. Mainstream sports outlets such as the megalithic ESPN routinely use sabermertric analysis in their reporting & commentary. & well they should: as I said in previous posts, as statistics, the sabermetric figures do present a generally more rounded & complex pitcure of performance than traditional statistics.

But in any type of art, there’s also technique, & baseball is filled with complicated technique to such a degree that—for all the statistical overlay that’s accompanied the sport virtually since its inception—relatively small quirks & failures of technique can influence results to an extraordinary degree. Walter Alston, the longtime Dodgers’ manager, called pitching “a subtle thing,” & the same can be said of hitting as well. There are many “moving parts” involved in a motion analysis of either.

But are athletes—like poets in Plato’s version of the matter—unable to explain their sport & their technique? Is there no way for the fan to “read” the game except using statistical tools? It’s true that in some cases (but certainly not all) ex-players who are brought onto TV broadcasts & sports shows as “color commentators” & “analysts,” often do little but extol platitudes about “character” & “intangibles.” By the way, I disagree with the sabermetricians that these intangible qualities are unimportant or even don’t exist in any meanigful way because they aren’t measurable (if that’s really what they mean); but what interests me as a “reader” of baseball much more is the technique & thought process that a player brings to bear on a situation—just as this interests me when considering a poem.

We know that this isn’t true. Just as poets are able to write lucidly & insightfully about poetry, so are ballplayers able to speak (& even write, tho often with a ghostwriters aid) articulately about the techniques they employ: one need look no further than the classic The Science of Hitting by Ted Williams, certainly one of the very greatest hitters ever to play by whatever measures one brings to bear on the analysis. In addition, we know that when coaches work with ballplayers in practices, they are working on technique—the coaches, without exception old ballplayers themselves, are able to articulate technique. Are they also able to give a rah-rah spiel when the occasion calls for it? Of course, but there’s much more to playing the game than either the “intangibles” or the “numbers.”

So when “reading” baseball, I would wish to consider all three aspects: the intangible, the statistical & the technical. Certainly we can see that a baseball game, played as it is on a diamond, is poetry in itself.

Pix all link to their source

Plato & Aristotle, detail from Raphael's "School of Athens" (but you knew that)

Baseball Prospectus 2012

Derrida's Of Grammatology

Black-figure amphora c. 550 BC showing an armored race "Hoplitodromos." By Wiki Commons user Matthias Kabel, & licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Artists & Readers: Pittsburgh Pirates in the dugout, fans in the stands, 1903 World Series

Poet Kings or Philosopher Kings? Nap Lajoie & Honus Wagner, 1904

The Myths of Strikeouts

If you’ve ever wielded a bat in an attempt to hit a ball in any sort of competitive setting, be it backyard wiffle ball game, Little League, co-ed softball on the Fourth of July—or beyond—you may well have first hand familiarity with the experience of “striking out.” Of course, given how baseball terminology has entered so completely into US English, you may have “struck out” in any of a number of ways one time or the other, since the term is used to describe any signal failure.

Now the inability to “make contact” between bat & ball is indeed a frustrating situation—I know from whence I speak, because I’ve had my share of experience with this, especially in my few seasons playing in the “beer league” of the blog’s title. A groundball to the shortstop, a flyball to the centerfielder, even a weak pop fly to the second baseman—they are all (more or less—which we’ll come to shortly) just as much an out, but they are usually experienced as less shameful than the strikeout, or, in baseball scoring parlance, the “K.” But the sabermetricians, in their assault on baseball conventional wisdom, have called this into question: so that time you struck out in the big high school game wasn’t, by their lights, anywhere near as bad a thing as you may have believed at the time. Witness the following from Baseball Prospectus 2012:

“To be sure, strikeouts aren’t the disgrace they’re made out to be in Little League—in fact, they’re highly correlated with patience & power….”

It would be wonderful if nothing associated with Little League would be a “disgrace” for the kids who play it—but putting that larger question aside for another time, there’s some validity to ascribing singular negative value to strikeouts in Little League, beer leagues, junior varsity teams & the company picnic. The reason for this is simply: the defensive players in those settings don’t make a lot of the possible plays, even routine ones. If the batter manages to put the ball in play, the chances that he or she will be rewarded by getting on base & moving along whatever runners may be already on base, is significant. The higher the skill level of the players in the field, the more apt they are to make a high percentage of routine plays, & as the skill level increases, even a good percentage of difficult plays.

It’s also true that strikeouts correlate to power hitting. Indeed, if you look at the list of major league ballplayers who’ve struck out most in their careers, you find a lot of famous names. Even within the top 10, there are three hall of fame players: Reggie Jackson, who’s number 1; Willie Stargell at number 7, & Mike Schmidt at number 10; if you expand to the top 25, you find these additional Hall of Fame players: Tony Perez, Lou Brock, Mickey Mantle (who was number 1 for some time), & Harmon Killebrew. All of these men could hit for power, & in most cases, prodigiously so. The fact that Reggie Jackson struck out almost 2,600 times in a 21 year big league career doesn’t diminish the fact that he was one of the great all-time home run hitters & a valuable run producer for his teams.

The story is a bit different when you look at players who are at the top of the list for most strikeouts in a single season. Here we find that the top names are all active players—but none on that list is likely to get any kind of serious Hall of Fame attention. The names are Mark Reynolds (in first, second, fourth & ninth place!), Drew Stubbs, Ryan Howard, Jack Cust & Adam Dunn. 

All these players have value as hitters. They can all hit for power, & routinely hit 30-40 home runs per season. They are also what the sabermetricians like to call “Three True Outcomes” players. As defined by Baseball Reference: “They are called this because the three supposedly are the only events that do not involve the defensive team (other than the pitcher and catcher).”  Baseball Prospectus coined the term to describe slugger Rob Deer (of San Francisco Giants, Detroit Tigers, & Milwaukee Brewers fame—et al.)  Deer fit the definition to a T.The move in sabermetrics to divorce hitting & pitching statistics from fielding events is one I find curious—& one I’ll write about in the future. That aside, we can agree that a certain kind of power hitter strikes out a lot, tends to hit for a low batting average, yet also finds himself on base an relatively high percent of the time in light of the low average because he walks a lot. This is because the hitter, in addition to power, has “patience”—he’s able to identify pitches that aren’t in the strike zone & let them go by. He strikes out not because he has trouble identifying pitches, but because he’s utilizing a power swing—as the old baseball adage goes: “swing hard in case you hit something.” 

So how “disgraceful” are strikeouts? The new stats folks often condemn “old school” Major League field managers for a sort of Little League attitude about the strikeout. & I’ve read a fair number of commenters on baseball blogs who assert, “it’s just another out—no different.” True or not true?

There are good outs & bad outs of course: good outs tend to advance runners, bad outs keep runners from advancing, or at the worst, erase runners that were already on base. By that assessment, the double play is the “worst out,” because not only the batter, but also a baserunner is out (the triple play’s such a fluky anomaly that it needn’t be considered); in comparison, a strikeout only yields a single out.  Still, some of that depends on context: if a double play occurs with the bases loaded & no one out, there’s a good chance the runner on third will score (depending on how the defense is positioned, etc.) In fact, just this Monday, my favorite team, the San Francisco Giants, won a game by plating the deciding run in just this way.

So tho it yields but a single out, the strikeout does nothing to advance runners—except in the fluky case of the strikeout passed ball/wild pitch combination in which, with first base open, the batter can try to reach first before being thrown out when the catcher can’t catch the third strike. Our Mission beer league baseball team actually won a game where such strikeouts were a major “weapon” in our arsenal, & I myself reached base at least once that game via this route—but in general these are very unusual plays. Still, other outs don’t advance the runner either: infield pop flies, line drive outs caught on the fly, shallow fly balls to the outfield, & some ground balls, depending on where the runners are situated & how the defense is positioned. It certainly can’t be argued that a strikeout is any less productive than those outs—tho again, to be devil’s advocate, the chance of a defensive miscue on a ball put in play, even at the highest skill levels of the game, is still something of a factor, however small.

So “strikeout”—singular failure, run of the mill failure, or key to evaluating under-rated power hitters? Perhaps all of the above? One thing to always keep in mind when talking about or contemplating baseball: context is all, & there are many ways of contextualizing those Ks—keep your eye on the ball!

All pics link to their source

Top pic is from Wiki Commons, showing Adam Dunn striking out. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. The user name doesn't have a working link.

Second pic: Reggie Jackson

Third pic: Mark Reynolds

Fourth pic: Rob Deer Topps baseball card

Fifth pic: Mickey Mantle

Tell Your Statistics to Shut Up #1

I want to make it clear: I love baseball statistics—have since I was a lad. Reading a box score or a table of batting or pitching statistics is a pastime I thoroughly enjoy; perhaps it appeals to the same odd segment of my mind that has led me at times to peruse musical fake books. Yes, odd bedtime reading, I agree.

Statistical information for professional baseball is venerable: we have a statistical record dating back to the 19th century. Not to say that stats keeping hasn’t changed: indeed, since the 1980s, the introduction of sabermetrics has led to an increasing complexity in the record, as players are now evaluated according to complex mathematical formulas; in addition to being used by teams as an evaluative tool, this information is freely used & quoted by fans of all stripes. I was brought up on the more “traditional” stats, many of them simply a result of counting: how many home runs a batter hit or how many batters a pitcher struck out & so forth. The few “traditional” percentage-based statistics involve formulas using basic division & multiplication.

These traditional statistics have been characterized as painting players’ performances with a broad brush. I think that’s a fair criticism, & I also believe the new stats do overall present a more complex & detailed portrait of each player. Still, having said all this—& also recognizing that within the game itself, most evaluation is still done the “old-fashioned way,” by actually watching players perform in order to evaluate them—I do wonder sometimes about the proliferation of statistical information. What does this proliferation, qua proliferation, mean? I mean, sabermetrics was the subject of a Simpson’s episode, so it’s definitely a cultural “thing.”

 

An easy answer—& an answer that should never be neglected in analyzing any phenomenon connected to sports in the U.S.—is money. A formidable amount of literature  is produced annually to present & interpret sabermetric statistical information,  both in traditional book form & on the internet. Much sabremetric information is freely available (for instance, the baseball fan’s online Bible, Baseball Reference, is a free site); but much of it, including a number of sites that purport to analyze the data, such  Baseball Prospectus, are subscription sites. Baseball Prospectus exists both as a book publication & a website—I own the 2012 print edition, which set me back a cool $24.95 (which I don’t regret), & this book is a New York Times Bestseller (I don’t subscribe to the site, however.) There are a number of similar publications; Bill James, perhaps the most famous of the sabermetricians, (& who makes a cameo in the Simpson’s episode I mentioned above), also publishes a full line of such books. On the Simpson’s show, he’s made to say, “I've made baseball as much fun as doing your taxes.” 

 In addition, the phenomenon known as Fantasy Baseball or Rotisserie Baseball has grown up in the days since the sabremetric revolution began. Now many fantasy baseball leagues, such as the one I belong to, are statistically “basic” & free: there’s no money whatsoever on the line. While there are many such leagues, there are also many leagues that require entrance fees, that require the players to “purchase” the players they will use on their team—with real money—in the promise of cash prizes & payouts for building a collection of players that performs well in a variety of statistical categories.  Theoretically at least, being able to “predict” how a player will continue to perform based both on current & past performance would be a real advantage in such a game.

Of course, this latter incarnation of fantasy baseball is pretty recognizable as gambling—I have no moral compunctions against gambling at all, tho I no longer indulge; but I’m also old enough to know who really makes money in these gambling games: hint—it’s not the people who are paying to “field” their fantasy teams & who are studying involved statistical analyses to get an edge.
But there’s more to the statistical revolution than creating a couple of niche industries, however lucrative they may be for various corporate entities. The other aspect to analyze when considering sports: dreams.

I said last time out that baseball is an imaginary sport. As kids, so many in this country look on professional sports—especially the big three of football, baseball & basketball—as a sort of Valhalla to which they too might be initiated if they “have what it takes.” Of course, there are 30 major league baseball teams, each of which carries a 25-man active roster for the majority of the season—that’s 750 players. Even if we expand that to the larger 40-man roster, which includes not only the chosen 25, but also 15 others who have a real shot at playing in the big leagues at any given time, that only brings us to 1200. In the year 2000, there were roughly 40 million men in the US aged between 20 & 40, which pretty much delimits the age parameters of a major league baseball career. You see the odds. Even if we expanded it to include all the minor league professional players—who by & large lead an unglamorous life in a short-lived career that pays a scant fraction of what the major leaguers make—you can see it’s an infinitesimal fraction of the millions of dreamers.

 It seems that the stats always give us access to something: a way of understanding the game that we didn’t have the skills to play at any level even remotely approaching glory. Now as statistics have become increasingly byzantine, there’s the lure that we can “really” understand the game, even tho we don’t have the requisite physical skills—this is an especially seductive idea because importance of the sabermetric stats is not universally accepted within the game itself. It also occurs to me that the “dream” these days may be shifting from being a big league ballplayer to being a general manager, the administrator who oversees player moves such as trades, contractual bargaining & the like. Baseball fans from time immemorial have believed they could direct a team during the actual game better than the team’s field manager, but I think the general manager yen is—at least in its current degree—a newer phenomenon, & born of the idea that understanding mathematical formulas & certain current truisms born from those formulas could lead the average Joe (or Jane) to be able to run a major league ball club as well as the guy the team hired to do it.  As was said on The Simpson’s: “baseball is a game played by the dextrous but only understood by the poindextrous.”

Is this the new dream?


All images link to their source
The title is a quote from a Charlie Brown cartoon in which, after Schroeder reads Charlie Brown a litany of statistics to describe how all the other teams they play are miles & miles better than them, Charlie Brown responds: "Tell your statistics to shut up."