Logical Fallacy of the Week: Says Me

It won't be until the next generation of Sox fans that the Schopenhauerian pessimism and anxiety that comprised the Sox fan identity before '04 will really be cured.

But as a positive, self-affirming, Stuart Smalley step in the here and now, to combat the scars, I'm simply going to assert that the Sox will win the division, sweep Chicago in the ALDS, beat Anaheim in 6 in the ALCS, and then win another world series title against whoever that quadruple A league throws to us lions.

And I'm going to go all zealot on this one. I'm going to say providing evidence and argument in favor of this conclusion is to concede and sew seeds of secular humanist doubt, and that real faith is just saying something and deciding it's true. Yup, I'm committing the fallacy of assertion here- that I say it, I say, is an argument for its truth.

Of course there are reasons for doubt. The Sox only scored 3 runs against Tampa's, what, number 4 starter? The pen's put the 'argh' in 'inconsistent' all year, and obviously the coin has landed heads for Anaheim in our recent head to head.

But I won't put my critical period pre-rings pre- everyday sellout psychology as a basis for worrying about the future; I'll emphasize Lester's nastiness, his season high 9 ks, his beautiful sequences, like getting a called strike two on a backdoor curve in the 2nd to Navarro, and then dropping the slider in the inside dirt, inducing a meager half swing that died and went to limbo, or a fastball for a called strike on the inside corner to Baldelli leading off the 5th, followed by a cutter further in on the hands, off the plate and on Baldelli, chopping him down as he hacked, and then freezing Rhode Island's Own on a paint job, 93 mph outside corner at the knees.

Yeah, all that instead of the 1-0 fastball Lester grooved to Pena with 2 on and 1 out, as the tying run in the 6th, that Pena just got under and skied to center, or that Perez' scorcher to lead off the 8th was caught at short, that Zobrist missed a dong by about the length of the word 'dong' two batters later, and that Pena's double that knocked Lester out of the game bounced into the stands, saving a run, or that Francona doesn't trust Okacarmen in tight spots and had Lester start the 8th already having thrown 105 pitches, ultimately tossing 119 before going to Papelbon.

No, all that con stuff is for ol' timey Sox fans, and that pro and con stuff in general is for rational people. Funk dat. I don't care about bases of inferences, only bases and outs. Sox all the way. Woo. I believe it, therefore its true.

So there.

Logical Fallacy of the Week: Sox Sweep Texas

How can the Sox whooping Texas be a logical fallacy, you ask? (You do ask.)

Suppose someone props up a straw man, stabs and burns it, and declares victory in battle. If this ersatz man is an idea that nobody actually believes, you have what's called a "straw man" argument. So if someone argues "I hate them thar moneyball teams, always sayin' weez shud never bunt and never steel and never swing and allways walk. Well, I seen a guy take three right over the plate, just lookin' for the walk, but he struck out, and theyze lost, so airgo moneyball duzn’t work."

That’s a "straw man" argument. It’s not a good argument, of course.

And Texas is not a good pitching team. They're last in the majors with a 5.41 ERA, and they have allowed- but allowed isn't the right word; encouraged, perhaps?- 62 runs over their last six games.

In the last three games, the Sox slapped around Rangers "pitching" for 37 runs, 42 hits- 20 of which were for extra bases- and worked 19 walks.

That’s a straw man rotation if you ask me (you do ask), a fake pitching staff I tell you, existing simply for the purpose of having the shit beat out of them. That's not really a staff that anyone believes in, but a misconception of a general manager.

Sure, like any straw man, it might be decent practice for the real thing, sparring with one's logic muscle and all, and it goes without saying it's fun to beat stuff up, straw or not. (And a win's a win, as the poets say.)

But Roy Halladay is next up. The Sox will need to rub up the bats with extra sticky validity for this one.

Metaphysical Impossibility of the Week

Ok, this will not be a regular Soxlosophy feature. (I hope.) But the following problem isn't quite a logical fallacy, more of a two-impenetrable-objects-can't-exist-in-the-same-place-at-the-same-time sort of thing.

See if you think that even with Pedroia having the day off, this is a particularly offense-minded lineup the Sox put out there Wednesday night, according to the KC broadcast.

Logical Fallacy of the Week: Summer Re-Run

It's tempting to let the story drive the characters. The characters, though, tend not to think their fates are being written by an author other than themselves.

Fans like stories, and fans like repetition. Baseball is pretty much the same game everyday, played over and over again. And of course each game, each season, has it's own little narrative, it's unique story to tell, but they are often just variations on a theme.

So, as Boston Herald writer Jeff Horrigan points out, "the comparisons to 2004 were inevitable when the Red Sox finally parted ways at the nonwaivers trading deadline with a disgruntled superstar and retooled with two months remaining."

Well, we liked this story so much the first time, we bought the DVD. And now seems as good as any to watch it again, maybe with commentary and bonus features of Orlando Cabrera handshakes.

Nothing wrong with that. But the sportswriter, and many a fan, like to push and stretch, to make the story drive the events, when maybe that's not what's really going on. We do like our causality in storybook form, with pictures if possible. But whether the book of nature is in fact telling a familiar story, or the similarities are added to the margins at the expense of the text, is, well, something to wonder about.

Horrigan continues, writing "Four years ago, the jettisoning of Nomar Garciaparra in a four-team, blockbuster deal shook the Sox from the malaise of a lackluster July and jump-started them for a 42-18 finish and the eventual end of 86 years of frustration. Thursday’s three-team deal that sent Manny Ramirez to Los Angeles and brought in Jason Bay from Pittsburgh involved fewer teams and players but is beginning to have the same effect."

Horrigan's blurb is filled with causation-attributing terms: "shook", "jump-started", "effect."

Horrigan, like many of us, looks to the jumble of events, the blooming buzzing confusion of the world, and tries to see a pattern, a meanginful causal sequence that brings order and predictability to events.

But of course just because two sequences of events are similar in some ways doesn't mean they'll be similar in all ways. In short, the "argument by analogy" is not valid, and this is our logical fallacy of the week, sponsored by W.B. Mason. Who else but etc?

Imagine, for a moment, that this similarity that Horrigan reads into involved 2008 and 1904, not 2004. Would anyone suppose that just because it happened that way in 1904, it would have to happen that way in 2008? Of course not. And, among other reasons, that's because the characters in this story, the ones whose actions cause victory and defeat, aren't able to come out and play today.

Of course, not many remain from the championship squad of '04 (2004. The A.L. champs of 1904 were McGraw-blocked from winning it all.) But even if we still had Curtis Leskanic the Shirtless Mechanic and our other old favorites, the everyday stuff of causality- seeing the ball, hitting the ball, catching the ball, and, in Manny's case, lollygagging- are inevitably different; every game, every inning, every pitch, is new and unique. Just as Luddites and intellegiphobes say the players play the games, not the numbers on paper, well, the story doesn't play the game either.

Horrigan compounds the fallacy by pointing to a respect in which the two seasons are not analogous- that the trades this time around involve fewer teams and players- as if THIS, rather than a billion other things that are actually relevant, was the potentially disruptive element, the reason that 2008 might not play out the same as 2004. Oh, Theo, if only you'd have gotten more players involved with this trade! Then, surely, we'd beat the Cardinals and get George W. re-elected! If only!

(Excuse me. I just threw up a little.)

Right. As earlier, the characters in stories tend not to think of themselves as in a story, and so don't see their fates as written by authors not themselves. Naturally, Kevin Youkilis resists the storybook interpretation, and attributes the recent victories to "putting together good at-bats."

The sportstwriter sees narrative, meaningful similarities. Youkilis just sees one damn good at bat after another. We'll have to see how this one plays out.

Logical Fallacy of the Week; Manny vs. Tito

[Editors Note: 'Logical Fallacy of the Week' is the segment where I'm a real dick about language.]

Manny says stuff, Francona says stuff. And in this most recent episode, it turns out Manny was logical and well-spoken, whereas Francona packed fallacies and mal mots like they were his last chaw.

Let's start with Tito. "We've run into bumps in the road ever since I've been here and there have been some before I've been here." I know this is an expression, but doesn't one run onto bumps in the road? One falls into holes, runs into friends or brick walls, but onto bumps. Moving on.

Tito continues: "The result of two of the times has been a World Series ring."

But just because the Sox won the World Series after Manny's - or anyone's- bumpiness, that of course doesn't mean that they won because of or as a result of those bumps. This is our fallacy, known as 'post hoc ergo propter hoc', or 'after this, therefore because of this.'

It's like with Jeter. Just because Jeter couldn't field a routine grounder to his left after I said he couldn't doesn't mean that the result of my saying that was Jeter's not having any range. My yelling doesn't cause Jeter's shitty fielding, and Manny's bumpiness didn't cause the World Series victories.

But maybe I'm picking on the word 'result', and Francona only meant- but didn't say (despite talking at the time)- that the Sox have weathered the storm, and have won the Series despite Manny's bumpiness.

Maybe so. Nonetheless, there are two strikes against Francona on this one because what we need most in this media maelstrom is some clear thinking about causality, and muddled thinking and talking on the subject only exacerbates the problem.

For instance, there's all this talk about Manny being a distraction. Presumably, this is bad because this distraction will somehow result in more losses for the Sox. But does Manny's behavior actually affect the team? Is there any evidence for his whatsoever? Does Youkilis stand up there, stroking his bat, thinking:

"Look for the fastball up. He's gotta come with the cheese. Relax. Relax. Quick bat. Pop the clubhead. Open the hips. Relax. You're thinking too much. Get outta your fuckin' head, Crash [Youkilis calls himself Crash.]... Throw that shit again, meat. Throw that weak ass shit. Now he's gotta try to slip the cheese by me. One and one. You're on top. Now bring me the gas --This son of a bitch throws hard... Manny, Manny, Manny. Who is this Manny? Jesus, get outta the box you idiot, where's your head? Get the leftfielder outta your head."

I hope not. Manny causes beat writers to write lousy articles. But that's about it.

Secondly, the rest of Francona's quote was jibberish, which disturbs me. Tito then spake: "As a team, sometimes you fight through things, sometimes you work through things. It's not always perfect, but how you get to the end is what counts and that's what we're trying to do."

Huh? How you get to the end is what counts? It's not whether you win or lose, but how? Really? How much do they pay Tito? And what's the 'that' in 'that's what we're tying to do'? Is it ''How you get to the end'? That doesn't make sense. 'Get to the end'? If so, is he not contradicting the noise he made 1 second earlier by suggesting it's the end, not the how, that counts?

Contrast Manny. "If the Red Sox are a better team without Manny Ramirez, they should trade me."

Absolutely. Only Tampa Bay Yankee fans would disagree with this.

Manny continued "Enough is enough." That's definitely true. A necessary, tautological truth, even.

Manny said: "I could choose a team that offers me the best conditions or one in the chase for the postseason." Manny clearly lays out his options in the form of an exclusive disjunction.

He even said: "I don't care where I play, I can even play in Iraq if need be. My job is to play baseball," and "I don't want to be a problem and a distraction to the Red Sox in such a critical moment of the season. I want to help the team, even if that means I have to go."

Here, Manny selflessly offers his services to wherever Duty takes him, and nobly understands that his true Love for the Sox means that even if they're better off without him, then that's something he must accept.

Also, Francona said this in response to questions about Manny's possible bad mood: "I'm not sure that matters. I'd take a guy that's hitting .500 that's miserable as opposed to a guy that hands out bouquets to his teammates and is hitting a buck 45."

Really? I could have sworn Francona didn't pinch hit Casey for Varitek...

Logical Fallacy of the Week: Introduction

As I'm sure you're well aware, baseball folks make erroneous statements and draw invalid inferences and derive conclusions from nothingness and arbitrarity. All the time. And as someone in the thinking business, I feel duty-bound to point out such things when I notice them.

So, in what might become an irregular regular feature of Soxlosophy, I've decided to introduce the "logical fallacy of the week," a feature that in all likelihood will not be updated every week.

But it's a better name than "logical fallacy of the unspecified time-unit."

Now, strictly speaking, many errors in reasoning which I'll discuss (and by discuss I mean 'ridicule') are not logical fallacies at all, so the name's inaccurate on both fronts. But "the sloppy informal cognitions and ambiguous and misleading assertions of baseball folks of the unspecified time unit" is actually a worse name than 'Pujols' or 'Asdrubal Cabrera'.

For the trial run, I thought I'd start with a valid syllogism like 'modus ponens'- you know, the one that goes

(All) Yankees suck

A-Rod is a Yankee

therefore, A-Rod sucks

and work up some fallacies from there. But I changed my mind.

For what better place to start on the butchering of thought and language as we know it than with Fox's A-team, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver?

So lets take a trip down memory lane to last week's Fox national broadcast of the Sox vs. the Yankees, and with Tim McCarver in a moment, this is Joe Buck.

Buck has this habit of putting the predicate of the sentence in the place normally reserved for the subject, namely the beginning. So, for instance, last week Buck said "overpowered was Varitek by Veras", and "on deck is Ramirez".

And though one might think such Yoda-speak is cute, the habit of saying everything backwards led to the following vacuous statement, our very first "Logical fallacy of the week."

Buck said of Sox starter Justin Masterson after Masterson left the game, "he can only be the loser if he gets a decision."

Spot the f- up? Well, can Masterson be the loser if he doesn't get a decision? Buck seems to be laboring under the mistaken impression that he's saying something, namely "if Masterson gets a decision, he will be the losing pitcher." But he didn't say that. I had to guess that's what he meant. Because what Buck actually said was equivalent to "in order to be the losing pitcher, Masterson must get a decision." Thank God I watch Fox, or else I might not know that getting a no-decision precludes a pitcher from being the losing pitcher.

Thank you, Joe Buck. Thank you.

And then there's McCarver.

McCarver's analysis following a sacrifice fly was that the ball went "high enough and far enough" to drive in the run.

Apparently, there is a height the ball must reach before the runner can successfuly tag up. I did not know that.

But there's more. In light of A-Rod tying Mickey Mantle's career home run mark of 536, McCarver went on to wax sentimental about the Mick. Near to wiping away a reverential tear, Timmy McC said the Mick was "anything but slow, and anything but weak."

Wait, is McCarver saying Mickey Mantle was a communist? Or that Mickey Mantle was addicted to Robitussin? Apparently, according to McCarver, Mickey Mantle was every single attribute there is except slow and weak. And because 'communist' and 'addicted to Robotissin' are attributes, after all, and they are not the same as 'slow' and 'weak,' it sounds like McC thinks that these, among all others, are things that Mickey Mantle was.

The Mick sure was a lot of things to a lot of people.

But if McCarver meant something else, he should have said something else.

Of course, that probably would have been wrong too.

This is Mel Allen. See you next time-unit for another installment of "logical fallacy of the week." In Baseball.