The NFL's Relationship with Rules

NFL rules dictate that overtime games will be decided by way of the sudden death system. This means that the first team to score wins the game. Whether by touchdown, field goal or safety--how cool would it be for an overtime game to end via safety?--the game automatically ends when the first points are scored. This system has raised serious questions of fairness from a host of critics. And these critics have a point. According to research done by Advanced NFL Stats, from 2000 to 2007, the team to win the overtime coin toss has won the game 60% of the time. Games are designed to measure talent, some combination of skill and effort. The better team should win most of the time. Why should a simple coin toss--the very definition of randomness--determine to such an extent the winner of a football game?

With these questions in mind, the NFL has decided to change the overtime rules for the playoffs. Thanks to Jason Kirk of SB Nation Atlanta for this quick summary of the changes:

The rules are designed to prevent the team winning the coin flip from getting a couple decent plays and kicking a field goal without the other team having a chance at the ball. The new rules:

• Each team gets to receive a kickoff at least once, unless the team receiving the ball first gets a touchdown on its first drive. A touchdown ends it.
• If the team that gets ball first scores a field goal, the other team gets to receive a kickoff. A touchdown on that drive ends it.
• Once each team has received one kickoff, the next score wins, whether it's a field goal, touchdown, or what have you.
• If the game is tied after 15 minutes, another period will begin, with the next score ending the game.

We're now one weekend--four games of varying excitement levels--into the 2011 NFL Playoffs. There has not, as of yet, been a game that required extra time to decide a winner. This in itself is not surprising: over the last five years, only six out of the fifty-five playoff contents went to overtime. Consequences are magnified in the playoffs, though. The staging of even one overtime playoff game a year means that the standard sixty minutes of football proved insufficient to determine a winner between two really good teams. A slight change in the basic rules of play may have a disproportionate effect on the outcome of an entire season. In 2007, the Chicago Bears defeated the Seahawks in overtime. The Bears progressed all the way to the Super Bowl. The next year, The New York Giants prevailed over the Packers in the NFC Championship Game. Thanks in part to the stickiest helmet in the world, the Giants won the Super Bowl. And last year, the New Orleans Saints needed overtime to defeat the Vikings in the NFC Championship Game before going on to defeat the Colts in the Super Bowl. Besides for the obvious lesson--Brett Favre sure does throw a bunch of interceptions in NFC Championship Games--it's important to realize that overtime has determined a Super Bowl participant in three out of the last four years.

I'm not saying that the playoff overtime rule is fairer than the regular season rule. I think there are issues with both systems. I just find it fascinating that the NFL would innovate in the very rules and strategy of the game but would limit such innovation to the playoffs. If the playoff rule is better, why not use this system for the regular season? If the regular-season rule is better, why bother changing it for the playoffs? Moreover, why would the NFL institute this change without testing it? (For a good example of a sport testing out its rules, see the NHL.)

Yahoo's Chris Chase describes the problem nicely, focusing on the potential benefits of the team that wins the toss deciding to kick off in order to know at the start of the possession which type of score is needed:

How would a team even know whether deferring is a good idea? It's not like any coach has ever been in a game situation involving these rules. Like or hate the new overtime rules, the fact that they're getting its trial run during the playoffs is insane. Whenever the rule comes into play, it will be the first time any NFL coach has ever dealt with it. What better time to test something out than in the biggest stage in the sport? Roger Goodell thinks ending a Super Bowl with a field goal on the first possession is bad? How about ending a Super Bowl with a new rule that nobody in football has ever had to deal with before? 

Let's take a step back and think about this for a minute: A new format that fundamentally changes the game is being instituted before the playoffs without any testing. Only the NFL could get away with that. Can you imagine if Bud Selig tried to do this in baseball. Maybe before the playoffs he issued a decree that a team has to win by two runs in extra innings. He'd be mocked in every sports column and on every sports station in America. The NFL does it and nobody bats an eyelid. Flippantly changing a rule that's been in use for 40 years and giving it no trial period? Sure, why not! 

I think the comparison to baseball is a helpful one. Chase is correct in anticipating the outrage a similar rule change in baseball would elicit. But more interesting are the two sports' relationships with rules and officiating in general. Baseball's rules are very clear. The runner is safe if he touches the base before the baseball touches him. The ball is foul if it lands on this side of a white line and its fair if it lands on the other side (or, on the line itself). Baseball officiating is, consequently, very clear as well. The umpire's job is to determine the facts of the play. Umpires are positioned around the field of play in order to observe as best they can what happened.

Compare this to football. Football referees are tasked with both observing the events on the field and interpreting the meaning of these events. Here, for example, is the key line in the NFL's pass interference guideline:

It is pass interference by either team when any player movement beyond the line of scrimmage significantly hinders the progress of an eligible player of such player’s opportunity to catch the ball.

What does it mean to significantly hinder the progress of a football player? Further complicating matters is the stipulation that the rule only applies when there is "[c]ontact by a defender who is not playing the ball and such contact restricts the receiver’s opportunity to make the catch." How can a referee know with any degree of certainty when the defender is playing the ball or not playing the ball? And, of course, there's the old discussion on what constitutes a football move.

It is the need for such interpretation that inspired Richard Deitsch, Sports Illustrated's wonderful sports media analyst, to name Mike Pereira the Sports Media Person of the Year. Pereira is the former NFL Vice President of Officiating who now works for FOX, offering commentary on the officials. Here's Deitsch explaining his pick:

Revolutions in sports television sometimes come with little fanfare. Fox initially thought Pereira, the former vice president of officiating for the NFL, would make his biggest impact on the web. But the opening week of the NFL season featured one of the more controversial plays of the year -- Lions wide receiver Calvin Johnson's apparent game-winning catch against the Bears, and Pereira's insight on the play proved invaluable. "Most people thought it was a touchdown but when they came out of replay, I predicted they would leave it as an incomplete pass and they did," said Pereira, who works out of Fox's NFL studios in Los Angeles. "That play generated more talk than I could have imagined and I think Fox recognized the value of addressing this immediately on television."

Viewers have longed for broadcasters to provide accurate explanations from the NFL's byzantine rule book, and Pereira, thankfully, has taken the burden off ex-jocks and announcers, who can come off as befuddled as fans. He has correctly predicted the outcome of 49 of 50 replay challenges this season (he disagreed with the judgment of the refs on a Jeremy Maclin reception that was ruled a catch and fumble; Pereira predicted the refs would overturn a play to an incomplete pass), but more importantly, he has imbued viewers with added knowledge.

Can you imagine such a prominent role for a former umpire on FOX's baseball telecast? What would he even say?

Rules changes are nothing new in the NFL. After all, the NFL has changed its sport more than any other governing body. There has never been a rule change more drastic or influential than the NFL's decision to allow the forward pass. For the NFL, changing a major rule just in time for the playoffs is just par for the course.

Yet More on Zippered Baseball Uniforms

Let's revisit baseball uniforms that close using a zipper, that topic that interests no one except for me.

I probably should have checked this site a while ago, but Paul Lukas' Uni Watch blog centered a 2008 post on the auction of a somewhat rare St. Louis Cardinals jersey, a somewhat rare jersey that happens to feature a zipper.

Lukas consults with Brian Finch, manager of the Cardinals Hall of Fame, who reveals that 1955 was the last season for zippered uniform shirts. What happened after that year? Did zippers suddenly go out of style? Did interlocking metal teeth pose a safety hazard for diving ballplayers?

Still not sure about the answers to any of these questions, but at least we have a time frame to work with here. The mystery is slowly unraveling.

More Evidence of Zippered Baseball Unis

Apparently Warren Spahn and the Boston Braves weren't the only ones who secured their uniform tops with the interlocking metal teeth better known as zippers. Here's the cover of Sports Illustrated last week:

Stan the Man zipped up his shirt. Why wouldn't these teams use buttons? Why did this stop? The mystery grows.

(Great article by Joe Posnanski about Musial, by the way.)

Warren Spahn's Zipup Jersey

Warren Spahn was a superb pitcher. The all-time leader in pitching victories by a lefthander, Spahn's greatness holds up even under a more statistically inclined investigation. He never struck out a ton of batters, averaging only 4.4 SO/9 over the course of his career. But this unfortunate tendency to allow batters to make contact with his pitches didn't keep Spahn from compiling ten seasons in which he tallied at least 5 WAR, with a peak of 9.4 WAR in 1953. So yeah, obvious Hall of Famer.

The most surprising thing about Spahn, however, might just be his uniform. Take a look. There're no buttons on his shirt. The thing zips up.

This is crazy to me. I ran across a photo of Spahn in this zipup jersey over the weekend and I'm completely baffled by it.

I can just about picture Eddie Matthews repeatedly unzipping Spahn's shirt in the dugout. Baseball players love pranks.

Was this a standard practice in the early 1950s? Did the entire Boston Braves team wear these uniforms or did Spahn have some sort of aversion to buttons? Anyone have any more information on these shirts?

Baseball's Fun, Even in the Rain

Jesus, has it really been just about a month since I brought you something besides a weekly paragraph?

That's gonna change, starting with this wonderful example of what happens when college athletes are confronted with the combination of boredom and a wet baseball field:

FAU and WKU present Rain Delay Theatre @ Yahoo! Video

[via @jeskeets]

Paragraph of the Week

From Will Leitch's series of baseball previews over at Deadspin, the Chicago White Sox edition:

But I'm more interested in those players who are supposed to be supernatural and then turn out to be, well, normal players. Just three years ago, Alex Gordon was supposed to be George Brett. A superstar phenom out of the University of Nebraska who had grown up a Royals fan, Gordon was the next great savior of a dormant franchise. Three years later, with some injuries and some big league struggles, he's entering his peak needing a big year just to make everyone stop thinking of him as a disappointment. But he's not a disappointment: He's just a regular player. That isn't enough. He's not what we thought he was, what we wanted him to be, even though none of us had any idea in the first place. He was mortal, not magic.

Baseball Prospectus and the Importance of Fanship

Maybe the best thing about the internet is that it allows people with shared interests to converse. I'll touch on why this makes Twitter so damn cool in a post later this week at PMI, but it's not just Twitter. The homepage of Meetup at this moment features such clubs and groups as the Baby Boomers Social Club, the Raleigh Horse Riders, and The Greater Boston Asian Professionals Meetup Group. Being a fan of something has never been easier and it's never been more important. Here's Matt Bucher, from a paper originally delivered at last year's Footnotes Conference:

This small group of dedicated fans is also a key resource for translators of Wallace’s writing. Members of the list have answered questions and helped with translating challenging passages for Italian, Dutch, Spanish, and German editions of Wallace’s fiction and non-fiction. This is a practice that seems commonplace on the list now, but would be inconceivable in the world of contemporary fiction even forty years ago. For example, were fans of John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse consulted on its Russian or Japanese translations? Before the Internet age, this would be almost impossible to do, but it is also unlikely that a translator would know of a group of John Barth fans and trust their understanding of his use of the language. If anything, the translator might discuss a tricky issue or two with a fellow translator or a Barth scholar at a conference. In terms of how Wallace is perceived around the world, this use of the hive-mind cannot be underestimated. It not only attracts an international population to the list, but furthers the understanding of the most idiomatic and idiosyncratic parts of Wallace’s writing.

However, this gets us closer to the question of what kind of people join the list, and it brings up larger issues about communities and intellectual discourse and group psychology. The list includes English professors, writers, musicians, mathematicians, artists, lawyers, bloggers, women who have deep and abiding crushes on Wallace, and every stripe of over-educated young man dying to talk about “important” literature. 

I'm still amazed at how The Grammys enabled music fans to become collaborators in a very real way with the musicians they emulate.

And so we come to my second annual trip out to a Baseball Prospectus book reading.

You know how Intel has rock stars unlike the public's rock stars? It's just as true with a Baseball Prospectus reading. These folks are the nerdiest baseball nerds who ever nerded. And that's why they're great.



Aside from learning that Stephen Strasburg is the highest rated pitching prospect in history--higher than Mark Prior, higher than Kerry Wood, higher than Brien Taylor, higher than anyone--I got to participate in one of the world's great niche language communities. At one point, an audience member mentioned that one of the problems with watching a baseball game on TV was that the camera angles don't allow the viewer to see the route an outfielder takes to the ball, missing completely an essential aspect of the defensive game. Judging just from the information available on TV, we have no idea how circuitous a route he may have taken. At this point, one of the panelists agreed and then mentioned the name Terrence Long. Without elaboration. Everyone chuckled. Here's why this is great: Terrence Long is a fairly obscure outfielder who last played in 2006. He most recently accrued 500 at-bats in 2003. He hasn't been a regular in a long while, and he wasn't all that notable even when he was earning a Major League paycheck. But the audience recognized both who, exactly, Terrence Long is and that his defensive reputation is, let's say, less than stellar. We were having a conversation through references, via a shared body of knowledge. And while Baseball Prospectus can still be depressing as hell, it's totally worth it for the language games I got to play.

Hack-a-Shaq and Sport's Rule of Law

The Olympics always make me question the rules of sports. I watch all these new sports with unfamiliar rules and I'm often struck by the seeming arbitrariness of these laws. But the weirdness might not be limited to foreign sports played on ice: questions about the meaning and motivation of the rules of familiar American sports abound, once we take a step back and look at them objectively.

A friend of mine directed my attention to what turns out to be a damn good Wikipedia article on the Hack-a-Shaq strategy. (He had to read it in lawyer school, in the context of legal loopholes; thanks, Dave.) For the uninitiated:

The Hack-a-Shaq name was originally used during [Shaquille] O'Neal's college playing days, and during his NBA tenure with the Orlando Magic. At that time, however, the term referred simply to opposing teams employing an especially physical style of play in defending against O'Neal. Teams sometimes defended him by bumping, striking or pushing him after he received the ball in order to ensure that he did not score easily with layups or slam dunks. Because of O'Neal's poor free throw shooting, teams did not fear the consequences having personal fouls called against them when using such tactics. However, once [Don] Nelson's off-the-ball fouling strategy became prevalent, the term Hack-a-Shaq was applied to this new tactic, and the original usage was largely forgotten.

The interesting part is the tension between the rulebook and the spirit of the game. The Wikipedia article goes into some detail describing the NBA's attempt to limit this fouling strategy (whether in Wilt Chamberlain's playing days or Shaq's) by awarding two-shots and possession to the team whose player is intentionally fouled in the final two minutes of game action, in order to preserve the sheer watchability of the contest. But should the governing rules of the sport be compromised for considerations of entertainment value?

This is a cool question, not least because fouling itself may be something of a compromise. The concept of free throws seems to be an invented solution to the problem of overaggressive defenders. In short, it's a punishment for cheating, rather than an essential part of the game. Theoretically, if defenders never fouled--if fouling wasn't possible--there'd be no need for free throws. (You can listen to Bill Cosby's take on this development here.) The flaw which the Hack-a-Shaq strategy exploits itself derives from a compromise solution.

Similar questions have been raised about the infield fly rule, most notably by William S. Stevens, who wrote a celebrated article titled “The Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule” in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. You can find the article here (PDF link), but here's the relevant section:

The Infield Fly Rule is obviously not a core principle of baseball. Unlike the diamond itself or the concepts of "out" and "safe," the Infield Fly Rule is not necessary to the game. Without the Infield Fly Rule, baseball does not degenerate into bladderball the way the collective bargaining process degenerates into economic warfare when good faith is absent. It is a technical rule, a legislative response to actions that were previously permissible, though contrary to the spirit of the sport.

Where because the men who oversaw the rules of baseball during the 1890's were unwilling to make a more radical change than was necessary to remedy a perceived problem in the game, or because they were unable to perceive the need for a broader change than was actually made, three changes in the substantive rules, stretching over a seven-year period, were required to put the Infield Fly Rule in its present form. In each legislative response to playing field conduct, however, the fundamental motive for action remained the same: "To prevent the defense from making a double play by subterfuge, at a time when the offense is helpless to prevent it, rather than by skill and speed."

[Note: I've left out the footnotes of this excerpt because they aren't strictly relevant to my point and because I'm stupid at HTML.]

Sportswriters often crack wise about the infield fly rule but I always thought that was due to the obscurity of the rule; I failed, until tonight, to understand the legal ramifications.

And--just so we hit all three major American sports--this makes me wonder about the onside kick in football. I'm not sure why it's allowed. Why can the kicking team recover the ball just because it traveled ten yards? Why is this rule limited to free kicks, and not, for example, punts? Is it allowed because of the increase in entertainment value, giving hope to teams teams trailing by multiple scores in the fourth quarter?

Maybe curling isn't so weird, after all.

The Great Rivera

Baseball's in the air. At least in Florida and Arizona. But even up here in chilly and rainy New York, now is prime time for baseball annuals. I'll have more on Baseball Prospectus 2010 sometime soonish, but, for now, I'd just like to point out how lucky Yankee fans have been since 1995, able to watch the great Mariano Rivera pitch an average of 67 times per annum. From the Baseball Prospectus 2010 non-numbers section on Rivera:

Rivera has had an entry in every edition of this book. Superlatives we have employed: "something special" (1996); "amazing...the most important player in baseball" (1997); "completely unhittable" (2000); "the best closer of his generation" (2002); "otherwordly" (2004); "a one-trick pony [but] the best of all time (2005); "splendid...like Fort Apache: The Lead" (2006); "the-by-acclamation Greatest Closer of All Time" (2008); "the closest thing baseball has to Fred Astaire" (2009). Get the picture?

But maybe the most important thing Baseball Prospectus has said about Rivera comes from the 2009 version. It's not quoted above because it is more a piece of advice than a superlative: "We don't know how many more years of this Rivera has in him, so enjoy it while you can still see him without having to schlep up to Cooperstown."

Greetings from Montana

I've been taking baseball fairly seriously this season. I've visited seven stadia, I have a fantasy team, I regularly peruse half a dozen baseball-centric blogs, and I've caught a fair number of games either on TV or on the radio. I figured it was time for a break, so I flew out to to Missoula, Montana which is the closest major airport to Turner, Montana. Turner, Montana is special because, according to the excellent Flip Flop Fly Ball, it is the American town farthest from a major league baseball team, clocking in at ~646 miles distant from Safeco Field in Seattle.

OK, that's not really the reason. I still like baseball. But I think it's cool that the FFFB guy figured that out. I heard there are cool mountains and stuff here in Montana. I'm going to walk on top of them. It's called, I believe, hiking, and you just walk for an extended period of time. It might be a soft "h." I'm not sure.

And but also, this is the last time I'll have access to the ol' internet machine, so no posts for the next 10-14 days.

Tour de Midwest

As I see it, it probably really is a good thing for the soul to be a tourist, even if it's only once in a while. Not good for the soul in a refreshing or enlivening way, though, but rather in a grim, steely-eyed, let's-look-honestly-at-the-facts-and-find-some-way-to-deal-with-them way. My personal experience has not been that traveling around the country is broadening or relaxing, or that radical changes in place and context have a salutary effect, but rather that intranational tourism is radically constricting, and humbling in the hardest way--hostile to my fantasy of being a true individual, of living somehow outside and above it all. (Coming up is the part that my companions find especially unhappy and repellent, a sure way to spoil the fun of vacation travel:) To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself on places that in all non-economic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.

--David Foster Wallace

Well OK, that's one way to think about being a tourist. And it is, I believe, an interesting way to begin a post that is largely focused on my experiences driving nearly half-way across the country to watch baseball games. Because I agree both with DFW in both theory and practice about tourism and the effect that being a tourist has on me. And yet, I didn't feel any of this humbling angst on my baseball trip.

I think this may be true for at least two reasons:

1) This baseball trip was not undertaken under any pretense of broadening horizons. Just about the only places we went were baseball stadia and a beer ad masquerading as a beer factory. (There seems to be a lack of consensus on this, but some media experts estimate that the average American is exposed to as many as 5,000 ads per day; this figure always seems way too high to me, except for those days when I visit a stadium which hosts a Major League Baseball team.) So yes, we went to visit places that are already--and, in a way, need to be--spoiled. Case in point: the thing in Cleveland which excited me most was this Nike ad.


So my expectations were set appropriately.

2) Maybe more than being excited about going to Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago, etc., I was excited about getting away from the day-to-day of New York/Jersey. I remember not much about the actual games we saw (I remember Joel Zumaya throwing smoke, the Royals late-inning defensive replacement at shortstop booting a play, the Mexecutioner, Albert Pujols being pitched around, and a nice double play in Chicago, and that might be about it). But it was great to be unable to check the ~dozen of job boards I check every day. (Upon checking these websites after a week away, I learned that I had missed maybe one relevant job.) The general idea of going away and keeping a full schedule (complete with a rarely referenced itinerary!) and basically skipping sleep for two out of five nights and not sitting around waiting for someone from HR to call me, felt great. I recommend it.

A few leftovers.

• We drove 1913 miles over the course of a bit more than four days. This means we averaged 19 miles per hour. For more than four days. Including the times we were sleeping.
• I slept in a different city seven consecutive nights.
• I think because I felt nervous about being disconnected from the internet, I binge-tweeted from my cell phone. If you want to read those tweets, you should follow me on twitter here.
• We took many pictures. You can view the ones I decided were worth saving here.
  
• We saw this:
  
  
  
  

[Update: My friend The Midnight Toker reminded me of this cool graphically enhanced video thing of DFW reading the excerpt quoted above:



]

Happy 3rd Through 9th of July

July 3rd is today. July 9 is the day I shall return from watching baseball games in four midwestern cities. I won't be blogging again until at least that date. It's sad, I know.

In the meantime, you can celebrate this extended holiday weekend by watching this video of Mike McCready of Pearl Jam play the national anthem before a Seattle Mariners game.



And for the record, I told the man who seeks to unite troubled souls about this video and he did not already know about it. If knowing first about this video was the only measure of a Pearl Jam fan's devotion, then a delicate apartment hierarchy just became upset.

Breaking: Red Sox Offer $22 Million Per Annum to Comic Book Guy

I know Theo Epstein, general manager of the Boston Red Sox, deserves a little faith for, y'know, leading the team to more W. Series titles in the last five years than they'd achieved in the preceding 86 ones. But I really can't figure out why, according to this ESPN.com report (by Peter Gammons and Buster Olney), they want to sign a comic book artist best known for his work on Ghost Rider.

Bill James is a Senior Advisor on Baseball Operations for the Sox, so I assume they know what they're doing, but still. This is just weird.

Innovative Blog Post Alert: Sometimes Sports Analysts Say Stupid Things

The last thing the internet needs right now is another blog criticizing the dumb things sports broadcasters say. But it seems like all the cool kids are doing it now.

I want to be cool.

Here's the game situation from last night's World Series contest: The Phillies (from Philadelphia) are leading the Rays (from Tampa Bay) by one run, in the bottom of the ninth. There are two outs. Carl Crawford is batting for the Tampas, facing Brad Lidge of the Philadelphias. I don't think I stressed this enough, but there are two outs. Out of three. That's like a major tenet of baseball. Tim McCarver, who holds the most prestigious analyst position in baseball, has this to say (quoting loosely):

It's really important that Crawford get on base in this situation, because with his good speed, he has a chance to steal second base, moving him into scoring position. Lidge has been relying heavily on his slider this inning, which is a good pitch to run on because--to be effective--the slider needs to be low in the strike zone, making it harder for the catcher to throw.

The end of this thought is somewhat enlightening (it's easier to steal against slider-heavy pitchers) even if it might be smarter to wait until, you know, Crawford reached base. But the beginning is really inexcusable: the important reason for Crawford to reach base is not so that he can get himself into scoring position. It's important because if he doesn't get on base somehow, that means he made an out, which would be the third one of the inning (and, remember, this was the ninth inning, the last in regulation play), and the GAME WOULD END if Crawford didn't get on base. He could have used his good speed to run all over the bases after he popped up in foul territory to make the third out and it wouldn't have mattered because the game would be over, and that fake run wouldn't have counted.

As Eric Walker, as quoted in Moneyball (pg. 58) put it:

Analyzing baseball yields many numbers of interest and value. Yet far and away--far, far and away--the most critical number in all of baseball is 3: the three outs that define an inning. Until the third out, anything is possible; after it, nothing is. Anything that increases the offense's chances of making an out is bad; anything that decreases it is good. And what is on-base percentage? Simply yet exactly put, it is the probability that the batter will not make an out. When we state it that way, it becomes, or should become, crystal clear that the most important isolated (one-dimensional) offensive statistic is the on-base percentage. It measures the probability that the batter will not be another step toward the end of the inning.

Walker happens to be a former aerospace engineer, but this concept isn't so difficult to understand that you need to be one to grasp it. Surely this country could produce one person to analyze baseball games on TV who is able to appreciate the value of outs.

What Would Nate Silver Think?

As I type these words, 25 baseball players, assorted managers and coaches, and maybe even a few security guards and cameramen are jumping on each other on a field in Tampa Bay, Florida. They are celebrating because their squad is going to play in the World Series for the first time. Soon, the players will break out the champagne and try to blind each other with it. In the first ten years of the Tampa Bay Rays's existence, the team had never won more than 70 games. They had finished in last place in their division in nine of those ten years. (The other year they finished second to last.) Now they are going to the World Series. Tonight's game featured an important performance by a rookie pitcher named David Price who is five months and thirteen days younger than I am. His first time pitching in the major leagues was September 14, a little more than a month ago. He recorded the last four out of the clinching contest against the defending champions, and three of those outs came via strikeout. The game-winning RBI (a dumb stat, sure, when trying to evaluate the effectiveness of ballplayers, but an important storyline) was struck by Rocco Baldelli, who has missed most of the last three seasons with injuries that may have been related to mitochondrial abnormalities which he is just now recovering from.

All this serves to remind me that sports--that last great unscripted bit of American entertainment--is way better when it seems as if it had been scripted.

I can't think of any feature of American life more diametrically opposed to this state of events than politics. Unlike entertainment, American life is seriously unscripted. Seriously unscripted, that is, except for political campaigning, which is the most overly managed, least spontaneous--in a sense--the least real aspect of America. I submit to you that the best moments of politics are (or, at least, feel) unscripted.

The most riveting facet of the third and most recent presidential debate was the physical proximity of the two candidates. I watched the debate on C-SPAN (cool, I know) which went with a split-screen view throughout the entire performance. Both candidates had ample time to prepare for the questions addressed directly to them. They were both very much on display when Bob Schieffer was addressing them. But they noticeably let their guard down when the other man was being addressed. And, thankfully, C-SPAN with their split-screen shots caught these scripted politicians when this occurred.



I think this compilation is somewhat unfair to McCain, and I think it was in poor-taste for Obama to use similar clips in a recent campaign ad, but I'm fascinated by this. The annoyance, frustration, and disbelief that McCain feels towards Obama is real and gripping. And it feels very much opposed to general political campaigning which consists mostly of speaking to and with people who already support you.

Politics is most interesting when it feels as it had not been scripted.

A guy who wonders both who will be the next president and what the heck is up with Miguel Tejada and Alex Gonzalez?

The man pictured at left is named Nate Silver. (You can tell he's smart because the newspaper or whatever that published this photo decided to have Silver sit near a computer.) Until a few months ago he was best known for his work at Baseball Prospectus, where he wrote articles with titles such as "Is David Ortiz a Clutch Hitter" and "Binomial Distribution (or What the Heck is Up with Miguel Tejada and Alex Gonzalez?" Also, he invented PECOTA, which the BP website defines thus:

Stands for Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm. PECOTA is BP's proprietary system that projects player performance based on comparison with thousands of historical player-seasons. Analyzes similarities with past player-seasons based not only on rate statistics, but also height, weight, age, and many other factors.

This is pretty smart: there's just about nothing in baseball that hasn't already happened in it's 100+ year history, so let's let that mound of data help inform our conclusions. And it's pretty clear that PECOTA is just about the best thing out there for predicting what will happen in baseball.

Mr. Silver decided to bring his predictive genius to the world of politics, starting a blog called fivethirtyeight.com (named after the 538 electoral votes in the presidential election), with the confident byline of Electoral Projections Done Right. He wisely declines to divulge his exact methodology, but Silver does explain some of what goes into his projections:

Firstly, we assign each poll a weighting based on that pollster's historical track record, the poll's sample size, and the recentness of the poll. More reliable polls are weighted more heavily in our averages.

Secondly, we include a regression estimate based on the demographics in each state among our 'polls', which helps to account for outlier polls and to keep the polling in its proper context.

Thirdly, we use an inferential process to compute a rolling trendline that allows us to adjust results in states that have not been polled recently and make them ‘current’.

Fourthly, we simulate the election 10,000 times for each site update in order to provide a probabilistic assessment of electoral outcomes based on a historical analysis of polling data since 1952. The simulation further accounts for the fact that similar states are likely to move together, e.g. future polling movement in states like Michigan and Ohio, or North and South Carolina, is likely to be in the same direction.

Silver is becoming a big deal. Appearances like this don't hurt.




Silver's latest projection: a win percentage of 94.7% in favor of Obama, meaning that if this election was run 100 times, Obama would win nearly 95 of those times.

I'm happy that this dude who has produced amazing work in a somewhat limited field is getting the exposure he deserves. He's smarter than maybe all the people who get paid to sit on TV and talk about politics; it's time his talent is recognized. But I'll be satisfied as long he keeps writing about baseball.

Unwarranted Analysis of an Inconsequential YouTube Video

This video's been making the rounds lately, so it seems warranted to take a closer look.

Fernando Perez, an outfielder with the Durham Bulls, the one time basis of Kevin Costner's best baseball movie, and now the AAA affiliate of the first place Tampa Rays, is the dude seen here who runs past the catcher, plays it cool, pretending that he already has touched the dish, the touching of which awards a run to your team. The overly excited minor league announcer declares that Perez faked out the catcher, but I'm not buying it. The catcher doesn't look fooled; he still goes after the runner. Perez just looks faster than the catcher. It's a nice football move, but fooling it ain't. Still, props to the dude for making baseball a little more athletic.

YouTube is a surprisingly fertile ground for instances of catcher outmaneuvering. Check out this 3rd Baseman of my almost hometown Montclair State baseball club.



There's still hope, of course, for those baseballers not blessed with, y'know, running or jumping abilities, by utilizing a method best exemplified by Pete Rose, here seen running over Ray Fosse, a move which sent the catcher to the hospital. Oh yeah, he did this in the All-Star Game. An exhibition.













Oh, that Pete Rose. Always sliding into Aunt Lindsay's second base.

What Do I Like, Again?

I've been wondering about a lot of things lately. Chief among them is this: why do I do things?

Allow me to explain.

This summer I have the opportunity to return to Camp Moshava and spend my summer hanging out with nine-year olds. The same opportunity, offered one year ago, elicited considerably more excitement than the current one. I think this may be true for two reasons: 1) There is always some excitement which accompanies a new project, and I was armed with the added motivation of proving myself worthy/capable of the job. 2) Although some of my friends were conspicuously absent from camp, most of my co-workers ranked in the upper-echelon of my friends.

This year neither reason applies. I already--at least in my own mind--proven that I can handle the job. And most of my day-to-day friends will not be joining me. Where, then, does that leave me? Am I really excited for camp because I love camp? Have I always gone for the friends, and camp was important because it served as a conduit to friends? Do I really do anything for myself, or am I mostly concerned with what my friends think? (I told you I've been wondering about a lot of things lately.)

About a week ago, in my daily Internet wanderings, I came across a piece written by Mark T.R. Donohue for Deadspin.com. Deadspin is running their annual preview of the baseball season and invited Donohue to write about the Colorado Rockies. Here is the link to the entire piece for those Rockies enthusiasts. I'll include here only the parts relevant to my point.

The lesson of the 90's was that in the absence of a clearly defined bogeyman our culture tends to immediately begin eating itself from the inside. We're not grown up enough for world peace, apparently. I'm old enough now to have absorbed this lesson, but the psychological damage from having grown up in the Bush I/Clinton "now that nothing stands against us, watch us either remain motionless or possibly even slide slightly backwards" age persists. After an adolescence spent watching umpteen "Next Generation" holodeck episodes, viewing movies where at the end it turns out the villain ... is the hero! (like Fight Club and Usual Suspects), and goggling in disbelief at sports theater of the absurd like Pete Rose's fall from grace, the Olympic sprinter steroid scandals, and Michael Jordan's career as a Birmingham Baron, I have come to the unshakable conclusion that nothing is what it appears it to be. Since none of the information I'm being presented is the whole truth, and I can only form opinions based on the facts I've been given, this extends to myself. I'm an unreliable source. I don't know if I believe the things I believe or whether I'm just pretending. I don't genuinely know if I really like the music I like or whether I just want to be perceived as the kind of cerebral uptown intellectual type who has biographies of John Cage and Ornette Coleman displayed prominently on his bookshelf as a matter of course. I've been losing sleep lately over the notion that my fondness for Barack Obama is founded on his race and not his politics. Given the choice, I'd much rather be a little younger, and live in fear of terrorists, or a little older and fear the H-bomb. But I was born when I was and I have to live with the fact that my worst enemy is my own brain.

This is the logical conclusion of my musings on camp: how much do I really enjoy the things that I enjoy because they make me happy? You can consider such examples as The Martha Stewart Show, polka music, origami, The New Yorker, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or anything. I have, and I haven't been able to come up with a straight answer.


Donuhue goes on to list the multitude of reasons why it makes no sense to root for this team. (Again, only interesting for people who like baseball.) But he concludes with this paragraph:

So why do I carry on with this team with no history and no chance of imminent relevance? What keeps me going to Rockies-Diamondbacks games at Coors with announced attendance of 15,000 and actual seat coverage of half that? Well, it ought to be obvious. My love for the Rockies is the one thing in my life about which I'm sure. It's pure. I have absolutely nothing to gain from it. It's not making me friends or influencing people. It's not making me happy in any lasting way, since whenever Colorado does manage to edge its way into a tie for third or creep within three or four games of the .500 mark, a 2-9 road trip through San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego must be right around the corner.

Camp might be my Colorado Rockies.

This will be my test to see if I actually like something for me. I'm hoping it goes well.