conCERNed with the 4th Boson starter

Obama knows division is bad; so who wants to win the division anyway? Wild Card it is, then. It has a nice ring to it. (Pun, as always, intended.)

So, it turns out that choosing the Sox' 4th (and final) starter for the playoffs is a philosophical dilemma. Assuming Colon is out of the running, (also intended), it's between Wakefield and Byrd. Both are perfectly capable of shut outs and getting bombed. Though Wake's numbers are a bit better overall, he has two stinkers lately, and the stats aren't too far apart. So what's left? Symbolism, naturally.

There's the dialectic of physics and luck, on the one hand, and of will. I like to think of pitching, where so much is in the pitchers hands (I'll stop point them out), in terms of the human categories of will, focus, and drive. Hitting, though, is reactive, and is so often physics and luck; trajectory, geometry, physiology, wind...ology. (By the way, for these notions applied to Beckett vs. Sabathia and the 'o7 ALDS, see here.)

Assuming this schema, I can't stand watching Wakefield "pitch." He's all physics and luck; the knuckleball simply exploits laws of physics, it doesn't finesse them. There's little craft (though of course there's skill.) Off it goes, and, as is so often said, once it leaves Wake's hand, even he doesn't know where its going. Because 'he' doesn't have anything to do with it; it's in the universe's hands, now.

By amusing to me contrast, consider what I wrote about Paul Byrd a few weeks ago; in short, that Byrd can continue guiding the ball as it travels to the plate (it's kind of like in Nintendo's RBI Baseball); that's how subtle and sly the craft of the finesse pitcher is. I like to imagine a metaphysical extension of the self in the finesse pitcher; his will extends beyond the confines of his body to continue to finesse the ball as it travels to home, its teleological destination. Wake is detached at the albeit finely filed fingertips, and the ball is as likely to end up at the backstop as anywhere else; no natural home-seeking motion with the indiscriminate blind particle that is the knuckleball.

So I just can't leave the postseason to chance. For some, the postseason is the most meaningful of events. For others, it's too small a sample size. For the postseason to be meaningful, it has to be thought of as definitive, not random, the result of the virtues- perseverance, talent, and all that etc- not either statistical determinism or fluctuation, a blip off the bell curve. People are right to feel a sting at the disproof of the existence of clutch; it's a moral category replaced by measurement. Clutch is meaningful, not metrical.

So even if Wake can throw a gem- which of course he can- it doesn't mean the same to me. I want to see Byrd battle the elements, his physical shortcomings in the form of an 87 mph fastball, the battle against physics and luck for the sake of will and guts, even if those guts get splattered, rather than take the trial and error that maybe proves that there's a Higgs boson and maybe blows up the universe that is Wakefield.

Though I could be a bit biased. I was at the Aaron Boone game, after all.

With Specimen in Scoring Position

Inside 'Dry Storeroom Number 1,' in the basement of London's Natural History Museum, is the “type” specimen of the sunfish.

According to the linked above, "a type specimen is the official example of a given species, against which all creatures like it can be compared."

It is important to note that a type specimen is not necessarily typical, or average, but archetypal. An exemplar, the most blankiest instance of any given blank.

Often after a great feat, a ballplayer sends his spikes, or glove, or the ball- something commemorative of the moment- to the Hall of Fame.

Tied at 5 Saturday night, in the 8th inning, with Lowrie on third as the go-ahead run in a game the Sox once trailed 5-2, Jacoby Ellsbury, taking a full swing on a Scott Downs delivery, meekly tapped the ball about 30 feet towards first base, nestling just inside the line. Downs, in his rush to throw out the speedy Ellsbury, slipped, sprawling on his chest. The ball, with little resistance, came to a rest, just inches fair, and Lowrie scored what would be the deciding run.

Of course, they should send that ball to Dry Storeroom Number 1. It's not a typical Ellsbury hit, but it's an archetype, an exemplar, the official example of an Ellsbury cheap shot, helped along its slow slow path by the threat of speed. As such, it is the example against which all others are to be compared.

Towards that end, in Sunday's game, Ellsbury came to bat in the 2nd inning against Halladay, with another runner on third, and again with 2 out. Again, Ellsbury's bat managed to absorb virtually all the ball's energy, nudging a 90 mph pitch just a couple feet away. Yet the crowd didn't groan with disappointment, but roared in anticipation, naturally comparing this with the previous day's exemplar. But this particular hit just wasn't crappy enough, and for those of you scoring at home, it went down as your classic ground out to catcher, to retire the side.

Oh right. Just 1 game out.

Temporioles

The expression 'its only a matter of time' implies that nothing else needs to be done for a particular something to come about, that we should just wait around until whatever is supposed to be inevitable in the future finally happens already.

Even down 4-0, I was pretty sure that a comeback was waiting in the near future, and all that stood between us and it were the intervening events...

For the first six innings, the Sox seemed content to wait for nature to take its course, but, as the players, not spectators, they had to at least do something to get the ball rolling down the inclined plane. Enter Pedroia, who occupies relatively little space, but seems to show up at just the right time. (Though with Pedroia, who is 21 for his last 34, a .618 BA, every time at bat is the right time.) Reluctantly recognizing that motion only continues unabated in a vacuum, the Sox did as little as possible to keep things going, remaining determined to wait for time to do the heavy lifting and bring about the inevitable. After the homerun made it 4-1, an HBP, a BB, and a bunt single, and then another BB scored a run, the ball traversing, oh, 30 feet of space off Sox bats.

In the 9th with the score tied at 4, after a Cora single, Crisp dropped a bunt down the first base line. As a matter of time exclusively, it appeared to be heading foul; as a matter of a quirky divot, the Sox found themselves with runners on 1st and 2nd. And then, just to show how passive they could be, given that it was only a matter of time, no action necessary, the Sox came away with the win on Ellsbury's walk-off bunt and E1 combination.

We all fight a losing battle against time; the Orioles especially.

Something To Believe In

Karl Popper thought Marxism and Freudianism weren't genuine scientific theories, as they were often believed to be, because proponents of those systems did everything they could to interpret whatever they saw as confirmation of their -ist beliefs. For Popper, what made a belief scientific was the willingness to see that belief falsified, and not clinging to a belief despite evidence to the contrary.

Former catcher and current Yankees color commentator John Flaherty started with the simplistic belief that when Wakefield's knuckleball is up, it's hittable, and when it's down, it's not, and implied this hypothesis had predictive power- it looks like a good night for the Yanks, he suggested in the top of the 2nd.

In the 5th inning, after many high knuckleballs weren't hit, and some low one's were, Flaherty amended his statement, slightly, analyzing that now Wake's knuckleballs were hittable because they were falling down into the lefthanded hitters' zone, and they had no lateral movement. Ahh. How scientific.

Many philosophers think booing doesn't state a belief so much as express emotion. Yankee fans, no scientists they, expressed their displeasure, much to my satisfaction, booing A-Rod after he grounded into a double play with the bases loaded to end the 7th inning, keeping the Yankees down 7-3, and just moments after they had given a standing ovation, anticipating a heroic moment. But this theory was proven wrong. Clinging to their belief in A-Rod's talent, they were disappointed. Yankees play by play jerk Michael Kay said something to the effect of 'it looked like the crowd had the electricity pulled out of it', and that they were 'stunned' and filled with 'incredulity.'

Incredulity- disbelief-, the not-so-scientific response to reality contradicting expectation, theory, and prediction. I don't suppose scientists boo the petri dish when their cells don't culture. Though maybe they should. Or perhaps they could reinterpret the recalcitrant evidence; 'it's not the wrong enzyme, it just doesn't catalyze in the clutch.'

Man, A-Rod played such a shitty game. That's awesome. A K looking in the 1st, an inning ending double play in the 3rd, as the tying run in the 5th with 2 runners on- a fly out, as the tying run in the 7th with the bases loaded- an inning ending double play, and a K swinging to end the game. That's an 0-5, with 0 bases gained and 7 outs made. And he also committed an error. He was booed mercilessly in the 7th, 8th, and 9th. During the broadcast, Kay said that in the 8th and 9th innings in 2008, A-Rod has 2 RBI, contrasted with 31 in '07. ESPN said A-Rod is 0-7 this year with the bases loaded and 2 outs. David Ortiz, naturally, had 2 walks and 2 doubles. Ortizism is empirically sound; Rodriguezism is bunk.

Meanwhile, Michael Kay was looking forward to Wednesdays' starter Sidney Ponson coming to believe that his was a big game, a necessary game, a season saving game, and that he should prepare accordingly. Al Leiter strongly disagreed, and said that that kind of stuff doesn't enter the players' mind; a player can't have such different beliefs and attitudes about a big game than a regular one. Instead, he's got to keep it out of his head, clear his mind of beliefs about his place in the game, the season, the context. Kay challenged Leiter, in disbelief, asking that when Leiter started Game 7 of the 1997 World Series, he really wasn't believing it was such a huge deal? When Leiter said 'no', he had to stay in the zone, or some such, Kay responded, disappointed and a little afraid, that it sounded "robotic." Kay's theory of humans as nervous meaning-sensitive clutch warriors remained unaffected.

The inning ended. And after the commercial break, Kay returned to the subject with one of the greatest not great lines I've ever heard. He said to Al Leiter, "Al, it's not that I don't believe you. I'm just incredulous."

I can't say I know what Popper would say about that.

Texas is a AAA Battery; Sox' Energy Outlasts Rangers, 8-4

With the Sox up 8-0 in the 8th inning a day after giving up 17 runs, Orsillo cited "the old adage" that 'momentum is only as good as the next day's starting pitcher', suggesting, in so many words, that Lester's performance corroborated it.

Lester, pitching brilliantly through 7, had stopped the velocity, the forward motion of the Texas lineup. But I think I recall that momentum is mass times velocity. And the Texas' heavy hitters were still massive. And mass, among other things, is involved with (in some way I don't remember) potential energy. The Texas momentum, in an ill defined sense, was still there, latent, dormant, waiting to be unleashed.

So one batter after Don's hitherto accurate pronouncement, Kinsler rocketed a dong over the monster on a 3-2 fastball, making it 8-1, and then Young shot a liner to right on a cutter down and in. After Ellison's high chopper back to the mound yielded an Ellsbury single, Francona went to the ultimate momentum stopper, the immovable force, Mike Timlin (and his 5.23 ERA.)

Even Timlin's two championship rings didn't save him from boos after Bradley's 3 run blast and then Byrd's double employed some of the previous days' inexhaustible supply of latent momentum. Potential energy became kinetic, and the crowd became frantic, anxious, fearing the hidden potent forces that animate the universe might manifest, vengefully and angrily. And Timlin seemed as good a lightning rod as any.

(By the way, Benjamin Franklin was awesome.)

But Youkilis was a badass again, and the Sox offense generated its own force, and picked up another game in the WC race- now up 6- on the suddenly impotent Yankees.

That One Kid With The Mustache in Little League

I think Ellsbury got mad that I called him a little leaguer in yesterday's post. How else to explain his big league swings tonight?

Jacoby's had some luck with the Jeter Leaguer flares to the opposite field over the course of his short career, and rarely squares up on the ball. But in Wednesday's second consecutive 8-2 compression of the Royals, Ellsbury hit the ball solid three times, going 3-4. So solid, even, this phase change from gassy, diluted bloopers to solid line drives skipped right over the liquid phase, in a reverse sublimation.

Of course, three-run dongs to put the game away in the 7th are sublime.

The Royals announcers either jinxed this one, or used solid science to predict the outcome (I forget which is which); they repeatedly showed a graphic detailing starter Hochevar's opponent's batting average by time through the order: Well, sure, enough, that 5th inning of a 0-0 game rolled around, and the Sox, under too much pressure contained in a small volume, exploded for 8 runs in the 5th-7th innings.

It's Some Relative

If motion's all relative, you don't know if its moving, or you. In little league, someone might try to score from second base on a wild pitch or an infield ground ball; weak arms make little legs fast. But Ellsbury's fast legs make strong arms look slow, and so he plays a distinctly little league style.

But many big leaguers believe in absolute space, and so it doesn't always work; in Tuesday's victory over the Royals, Ellsbury, enamored of his speediness, was thrown out trying to score from second Jake Taylor/Willie Mays Hayes style on an infield hit to third, 5-3-2.

In other parts of the universe, though, the principle of relative motion held. In the 7th, Bay's drive bounced off Royals' centerfielder Mitch Maier's glove and sat atop the leftcenterfield fence. The earth then moved quickly under it, making the ball appear to roll along the top of the fence towards leftfielder Ross Gload, who leaped and knocked the ball back onto the yet again relatively stationary earth.

Some things aren't relative, of course. Like the Sox runners orbiting the bases 8 times, to KC's 2.

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.

Curses; Lackey's No-No Foiled by Magic Single

It's not criminal assault to stick an effigy with a pin if voodoo magic doesn't really exist.

But it's still not nice.

Despite betraying an odd view of the cosmos, Sox broadcasters Remy and Orsillo did their best to put a hex on John Lackey's potential no-hitter, which was indeed broken up with 1 out in the 9th inning of an eventual 6-2 Angels victory, their 7th in a row over the ragdoll Red Sox.

Repetitive to the point of ritualistic intonation, Remy and Orsillo uttered the magic word 'no-hitter' before Lackey had yielded a hit, violating the sacred taboo of no-hit superstition: never utter that which is happening in front of you (typically not a problem for Joe Morgan.) NESN even showed a graphic listing the pitchers that had "no-hit" the Sox since 1763. Never daring to speak these words during Sox gems, this was no accident; they were attempting to raise the dead, to cast dark spells, to curse the fortunes of the Angels hurler.

Of course, words don't do that. It's a primitive view of language that conflates meaning and causality; a rock may vibrate slightly in response to the soundwaves emitted by vocal chords, but it will not step aside because those soundwaves encode 'open sesame.' Or, as it's sometimes put, if an opera singer sings "shatter" and the glass breaks, it's the intensity of the sound, not the meaning of the words, that does the trick.

Though this makes Remy and Orsillo's hexing all the more ridiculous, it renders it morally ambiguous. They had malicious intent, but they stuck a doll with a pin. On the one hand, this renders the assault benign. On the other hand, not only are they mean, but they're dumb. I'm not sure which is worse.

Given that I just drank unattended rum and a bat hit the back of my head, I think I've changed my mind. Maybe Jobu made that curveball not quite reach the corner. Maybe the magic words pushed Pedroia's groundball just out of Izturis' range. Maybe the Sox can actually someday beat the Angels.

[sigh]

Yankees Suck; Metaphysics, not Physics or Subjectivity

Everyone knows the Yankees Suck. Some people think saying it is rude, or stupid, or old hat. But it's true.

Today, another boring article claiming that people shouldn't state what they know to be true oozed from the Globe, and great reaction here and here.

What I enjoy most about the fact that the Yankees Suck is that it is a metaphysical fact, and not a physical fact. You see, as a philosopher, I worry that there are few distinctly philosophical facts that go over and above scientific or physical facts. And this- the Yankees Sucking- is one of them.

That is, obviously the Yankees don't suck in the physical sense; they're good at baseball. (Usually.) No, they suck in the metaphysical sense.

They really do, but we have to be careful about the reduction-to-taste interpretation. For example, in a blog linked to above, Red Sox Chick wrote "'Yankees Suck' is shortened version of 'Good God I hate the Yankees and their obnoxious fans and big-mouthed owner' or some other similar phrase."

But I don't like this interpretation because it changes a statement about the Yankees to a statement about a Sox fan. And that changes everything.

To say beauty is in the eye of the beholder is to remove the beauty from the object, and put it in the subject. When philosophers want to deny that there are moral facts or moral truths in the universe, they attempt to reduce statements like 'torture is wrong'- putatively about a state of affairs in the world- to 'I disapprove of torture' or 'boo torture!', which now only express sentiments of the person making the statement, and leave the rest of the universe alone.

The real problem with this is that it makes feelings arbitrary; if the painting isn't actually beautiful, then the perception of it as beautiful can't be entirely due to the properties of the painting. If torture isn't actually wrong, that you feel it to be wrong comes from you, and not from it, and perhaps it's only because of your faulty wiring or arbitrary upbringing that you feel the way you do.

And as a result, those feelings can't be true. If the wrongness isn't in the torture, then it's not true that torture is wrong, though it may be true that you don't like torture. Instead, the only way to guarantee the truth of the perception of beauty or wrongness is to have that property reside in the object of that perception or feeling.

So I don't prefer to think that the Yankees have only a bunch of physical properties pertaining to their baseball-playing abilities, and I generate, on my own, feelings of antipathy that another observer, observing the same physical properties, wouldn't have if he were from New York or were himself sucky. No, I prefer to think of the Yankees actually sucking, as a metaphysical truth about them, not merely as an expression of my own arbitrary tastes and dispositions

The Yankees actually have the property of suckiness, and if you do hate the Yankees, you have that feeling in addition to the suckiness the Yankees actually have.

The Yankees Suck, in a metaphysical sense, and there are philosophical facts distinct from physical scientific facts.

Hooray!

Pulp Pulp Pulp; Sox swept at the Trop, 7-6

Foul balls are not do-overs. There are no do-overs. Time goes forward. Thermodynamics and such.

After Varitek fouled off a hit-and-run attempt with 1 out in the 9th, trailing by a run, Lowell on first, Tito tried again.

But a hit-and-run that is fouled off is not a case of the play neither working nor not working. The law of excluded middle is not violated; there is no third option. Logic is immutable. Don't fuck with it. A ball fouled off on a hit and run is a failed hit and run. Though no out is recorded, the play happened. It existed. Adjustments will be made.

That, and Varitek misses pitches like they're his long-distance girlfriend.

Perhaps Tito Jr. was desperate for control; he had seen his hurlers throw almost 50 pitches in Tampa's 6 run 7th inning, a mere 20 for strikes. The Sox had left 10 men on base. Perhaps he felt he had to step in there and do something. But there are no do-overs, and sometimes it's best to do nothing. Or pinch hit Casey for a struggling Captain. Where's Damian Jackson to pinch run when you need him?

3 losses to Tampa, by a total of 4 runs. Not necessarily projectible; a Lugo slide here, Hansen throwing a strike there, all within the realm of possibility (it would seem), and the outcome is different. But you can't go back, there are no do-overs.

Also, I have to dust off an old one. Varitek hits like he has 20 in blackjack.

I love the new camera angle!

From the Archive: May 2 2008

To: sports@nesn.com

I just want to say that I love the new straightaway center field camera angle! I've been hoping for years that NESN would adopt this.

If you would indulge me, I'd like to briefly explain why I think its so much better:

On the 2 dimensional TV screen, from the shortstop/ left center default camera angle that is the industry standard, the pitcher stands to the left of the hitter. So on the screen, the pitch appears to move from left to right as it approaches the hitter- no matter what kind of pitch it is. But in reality, of course, the pitcher is straight ahead of the hitter, not to the left, and moreover, in reality, any and all breaking balls, including cut fastballs, thrown by a righthanded pitcher move to the left, and not to the right; in reality, the ball moves in the opposite direction as seen on TV!! The shortstop/left center cam isn't just inaccurate, it’s actually completely deceptive.

I hope NESN continues with this straightaway center camera angle, and perhaps helps people who are uncomfortable with the change to adjust to the transition by way of a helpful explanation.

Thanks so much, and keep up the good work.

2007 ALCS: Physics and Luck vs. Character

From the Archive: October 17, 2007
[ALCS vs. Cleveland, Sox down 3-1]

I HATE LOSING!!!!!!!!! I HATE IT SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!

Tonight was unpleasant. I teach a class at 730, and I raced home afterwards. It was still 0-0. First pitch I saw, Blake homers. And then the floodgates. Ugh.

When watching the playoffs, I vacillate between the perception of the game as moral, as a manifestation of will and courage and tenacity- in a word, as a battle of character, on the one hand, and the perception of the game as physics and chance, void of meaning- an inch here, a bad call there.

It’s easier to see pitching as moral. In two postseason games, Beckett's gone 15 innings, with 15 K's and no walks. That’s aggression. Dominance. The imposition of will. Beckett is the champion, the ace, the man who will triumph.

Sabathia, in his two postseason starts, doesn't have it. In the regular season, he walked 37 in 240 innings. In the postseason, he's walked 10 or 11 in as many innings (give or take.) he's lost his nerve. He’s afraid of contact. He stops throwing the fastball. He has no killer instinct (watch him get ahead 0-2 and then walk the hitter.) he's weak.

So game 1 was a battle of morality and character, of meaning.

Since then, I’m not so sure. In game 3, a couple of terrible strike calls- for instance a 3-0 ball a foot off the plate inside on crisp turned a walk into an out, and killed an inning. Papi rips a ball to the right side for a dp, and lines out to right on a ball that took 1/3 second to get there. Nixon bloops the game winning hit off Lopez.

and game 4, Buck and McCarver were actually right to emphasize that had that ball either been caught by Wakefield for an out, or he missed entirely, Pedroia easily would have turned 2, inning over, only 1 run in. instead it trickled for an infield hit. and 6 more runs.

the Sox keep hitting sharply into double plays, the Indians hit grounders too softly to turn two. crisp and Pedroia both lined out in key spots late in game 4.

this is all physics and chance. No character. no morality. Hitting is about luck- Papi is imposing his will, but liners get caught. Bloopers fall in. but pitching is about morality. Beckett dominates. Sabathia's a pussy. but Wakefield and his knuckleball- with no pitch selection- is about physics and chance, and so we get beat by a trickler.

look. We got Beckett in Game 5. Quite possible to win that game. Then we're down 3-2. Someone's gotta be 3-2 after 5 games. no big deal. And then its two games at Fenway. Schilling acts like Schilling, and then its game 7, and anything can happen.

Physics and luck.

Youkilis, Eucharist, Data, Stigmata. Close enough.

From the Archive: May 15, 2006

I awoke this morning, okay, this afternoon, to find a somewhat disturbing article in yesterday's Globe sports section. Yeah, my days and times are all messed up. Whatever.

The article is another anti-intellectual 'I liked things better when I didn't understand them' piece by longtime Red Sox columnist Bob Ryan. You may know him as a talking head on ESPN.

I wrote him a letter in response to his article. You might be surprised to learn that I talked about baseball as a way of understanding science and religion (and vice versa.) Even if you're not on top of the latest anti-intellectual trends in the wide world of sports, I hope you're able to follow along and enjoy his article and my response. I’ll let you know if he writes back.

"
Dear Mr. Ryan-

I am a longtime reader of your column, and I read your May 14 article “A feast of data, with a slight glaze” with considerable interest, but also with slight concern. There is much debate in our society today over how to understand our world, as both scientific knowledge and religious sentiment wax and wane in different quarters. I am writing to you as both a lifelong diehard Red Sox fan, and as a professor of Philosophy, to let you know I felt that your article represented, albeit implicitly, that very debate. Though I hope the length of this letter does not deter you, as I know you are a busy man, I hope you will indulge me as I try to suggest an interesting perspective on this very live issue concerning how to enjoy this great game of ours.

One of the greatest differences between the ‘old-school’ statistics like BA and RBI, and the ‘new school’ stats like VORP, is that the Old School stats are something anyone can count themselves from their own box score. At the end of a game, you can count up the hits and errors and know, from that one box score of that one game, just what went on that day, and without knowing anything else that happened across the league. But by contrast, in order to know the ‘New School’ stats like VORP even for the players in the game you just watched, you can’t just rely on your own box score. In order to know VORP, one has to know virtually everything about everything- New School stats include what every other player did that day, and on every other day, and in what ball park they did it- as you point out, the New School is “in love with equivalency”- and so it is impossible by definition for a fan to be able to track New School stats just from his own box score.

The box score, and the anecdotal evidence of which you are fond, are both stories about a particular time and particular place. Such stories are ‘local’; one can understand something local just by being there- by keeping a box store or hearing an anecdote. But on the other hand, New School stories of equivalency, for instance, are ‘global’; one can only understand what’s going on after one has related the event in question to virtually every other event on the globe.

But this is much more than just a problem of how many box scores one might have to read to know what is going on, and I hope you will continue with my letter.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the so-called ‘butterfly effect,’ where the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Africa, through an ever-increasing cascade of tiny events, may result in a hurricane here at home. If this sort of thing is happening all the time, such that any nearby or ‘local’ event is shaped and perhaps even brought about by innumerable events far distant, then it would be misleading to think a box score of your local hurricane told the whole story, and it would be misleading to think one could predict the weather very accurately on the basis of that local box score. And if one could only know the flapping of every butterfly, one could predict the weather better than by just watching the local weather report. The New School’s emphasis on including league averages and ballpark effects is their way of tracking butterflies in Africa. The New School thinks its global statistics are better at predicting the future than such local or box score statistics like ERA and RBI.

Prediction and science go hand in hand. Part of taking a scientific approach to something is trying to understand precisely how all things interact with all things, for the purpose of isolating variables and trying to predict the future. But there is another essential element to the art of prediction, which is that the scientific approach attempts to understand each event as being of a certain type. If the hitter about to step up the plate today against Jorge Julio is a red-head, and if we know that red-headed hitters hit .370 off Jorge Julio in day games, classifying this single event – this at bat- as of this kind allows one to say there’s a 37% chance of a hit in this at-bat. Classifying in this way is the basis of prediction. And because the New School records and charts everything, it can classify everything, and so any new event you please can be found to be just like a million others, and given how frequently it happened in the past, one can then say what the odds are of that event happening again in the present or future.

This scientific way of doing things may not be for everyone, and it might be less fun than other ways of looking at things, and it does seem like a lot of time to put in for often trivial results. But what’s wrong with it? What’s the big deal, one might ask? Why do so many people dislike the New School approach so strongly? I’ve suggested that science seems to view all events as interrelated, and so as interdependent, in some or many ways, and also that all events are of a certain kind or another. Now why should this be bothersome? Well, this scientific way of looking at things contradicts two important ideas that many people hold- that the event we see before us is localized and distinct from all others, but more importantly, that the event we see before us is unique. And here’s what this all might have to do with religion, as promised earlier. The reason science does not accept the religious notion of miracles is that science does not accept the notion of unique events at all. A miracle is a unique event, something entirely unlike, and independent of, all others. Miracles don’t rely on something like a ‘butterfly effect’ to happen, and miracles, in being unique, cannot be classified.

And what does this have to do with baseball, you are probably asking. The enjoyment of baseball is very often the enjoyment of what appears to be a unique event; one hopes for the thrill of seeing a miracle. Fisk in ’75 or Roberts in ’04 are unique events, and felt like miracles. They even played the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ as Fisk rounded the bases! Now, neither of those players are the greatest players of all time. But who cares? Is it not an anathema to ask whether given 100 such pitches, how many more times could Fisk or Roberts have duplicated their results, as opposed to a ‘better’ player? You point out that the New School has provided us with the information to find out the odds of the Sox winning Game 4 once Roberts stole the base. But why would we need such information- they did in fact win, didn’t they? It happened. We saw it. And it was great. The meaning of such events is not how frequently similar things could happen, but that they did happen, once, end of story. It is their uniqueness that makes them special, and the idea of reducing them to others of a type or dragging in what appear to be outside factors to explain them seems to ruin what is most special for many people about such moments in the great game of baseball.

But can one make any predictions based just on single events like Fisk or Roberts, for instance, about how those players will perform the following year? Clearly not. And so whether or not there really are such things as miracles, they don’t do a General Manager any good, because miracles are useless for the purposes of making predictions. A baseball miracle is a single square in a single box score for a single time and place. And although such box scores or miracles may have meaning for other times and places, as memories of history always do, they don’t have statistical or scientific relevance on their own. The New Statistics are not fans’ statistics, if by ‘fan’ one means someone who enjoys the game most when unexpected and seemingly miraculous events occur. The New School stats are really for general managers, (or fantasy general managers), who do need to watch the waiver wire and know how much a player is really worth over the long haul so he can know how much and whether to risk.

So insofar as he takes the GM’s and not the fan’s approach, you might not want to watch a game with a New School stat guy. But it’s funny. People in this country often times vote for their President on the basis of whether he’s the kind of guy you’d like to have a beer with, even though you probably never will have that beer, and more importantly, even though being the kind of guy you’d want to have a beer with isn’t the Presidents’ job. And being the kind of guy you want to watch the game with is not the General Managers job- his job is to try to predict the future of each player and use that as a basis to decide whether that player should or shouldn’t be on the team. So even if your GM or your President is the kind of guy who prefers the unique to the pattern, or who prefers the miracle to the law, or who prefers the religious to the scientific, to do his job he should use every resource and trust every fact available to him, even if that means losing the meaning of the present moment for the sake of a winning future.

Thank you for your time,

etc.

irony butterfly and the doug mentkiewiczes

From the Archive:

January 27, 2005
[Doug Mentkiewicz steals the 'Final Out of the World Series' ball]

Yuh know, its kinda funny. in that ironing kinda way.

Bill Buckner, the event, not the man, assuming, for the moment, that the stability of matter is not explained at a deeper level as the regular pulsation of event-like energy interactions, never would have happened if John Mcnamara wasn't concerned with the photo op and the symbolism of THE MOMENT, y'know, the one where the sox finally won it all.

Johnny Mac knew that if the Sox won in the 10th inning of game 6 in '86 that the image of the Stanley throwing a sinker, inducing a grounder to Owen who threw on over to first, to Billy Buc, the number 3 hitter with over 100 rbis on the year, would last forever. so, he didn't put in Dave Stapleton, because 100 years later, it didn't seem right that the photo would have, well, Dave Stapleton in it, not Billy Buc.

i sure as hell hope you know where this is going. because for the rest of forever, our image, looking back, is of Keith Foulke and Doug Mientk... (i no longer have any obligation whatsoever to try and spell that name), y'know, the perennial all star closer, and that guy who hit .230 and played 8 innings over 2 months, the guy who stole the ball and wouldn't give it back and was found floating in the Charles back in '07. the purity of that moment is tainted by what we know immediately followed, and how contingent and almost, now in retrosepct, degrading it is that Mentkayvich was there at all. the gall... the ball.

so the man who deserved the ball, Buckner, couldn't even catch it in the first place, and the man who sure as shit don't deserve it ran off and hid it in a fortress where even Mookie Wilson and Ray Knight can't get at it.

all in all, maybe Johnny Mac was right.

on the other hand, fuck that fucker. I mean, I aint' saving the pixels from the tv I watched it on that night. It's just a symbol.

in the words of a wise coconut cracking horse simulating peasant, 'its only a model.'

they bunt in heaven too

From the Archive:

October 5, 2004: On “Field of Dreams”

Speaking of the briefest of appearances, and not counting virtual particle creation/annihilation, perhaps you'll recall doc moonlight graham, the elderly incarnation of whom was portrayed by Burt Lancaster in field of dreams.

All that doc graham regrets in his life of being a Samaritan is not getting an at bat in the big leagues, after coming so close. It is incumbent on ray (Kevin costner) to ease his pain. So magically the ghost of moonlight graham appears as his young self, on the side of the highway, prepared to get that one at bat. After winking at the pitcher and receiving a fastball at the noggin, doc graham lines out to right, for a sacrifice fly that drives in a run.

After accomplishing his goal, ray's daughter falls off the bleachers and chokes on her hot dog. She will die, but doc graham steps off the field, thereby foregoing his eternal future as a ballplayer, in order to become the doctor who can save the girl, and does so.

Doc graham ironically enough never actually got his at bat. A sacrifice fly, you see, is not an at bat. Fittingly, however, is that in so doing, he advanced the cause of his team through sacrifice. And appropriately, he does not receive credit for an at bat, which he will now never achieve; just as Socrates facilitates knowledge in others, but has none of his own, so too must the doctor simply facilitate the process, and sacrifice his own personal desires and goals to play the role of life-saver, at all hours and at all costs, which includes ensuring that a runner scores from third with less than 2 outs. Moonlight graham is permanently a facilitator, never at true participant, and will remain so in perpetuity.

But what is more important, for my purposes, is that the rules of baseball transcend the material world and apply to the fantastical world of ghosts. Even eternal immutable substances only get three strikes, and sacrifice flies still don't count as at bats.

Even where physics no longer reigns, sabermetrics ordains.

And ghost don't cheat. Neither should you.