!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!; ALCS Game 5

An agnostic doesn't believe in God due to lack of evidence. I don't believe what the Boston Red Sox did Thursday night, despite all the evidence that could possibly be. A greater leap of faith is required than I am capable of.

The Sox dropped a heartbreaker in game 2, were demolished in games 3 and 4, and down 3 games to one in the series, the Sox were down 7-0 with 2 outs in the bottom of the 7th inning. And they won 8-7. They won. Astounding. Astounding.

I need all the reassurance I can get that this actually happened. Sometimes its thought the difference between a scientific and religious temperament is displayed in the reaction to the same set of facts- a scientist looks at existence and sees something explainable, a religious persons sees that same world as mystery. I'm trying to understand how this one really happened, but I'm not sure I can, so I'm just going to go over it again, and stare ga-ga at the facts.

Lowrie lead off the 7th with a long double to right. After Varitek and Kotsay failed to deliver, Coco slapped a 2 out single to left, keeping the inning alive. Dustin Pedroia toughed out yet another 8 pitch AB, fouling off pitches long enough for TBS to run out of ways of anointing Tampa and actually get to some relevant statistics, mentioning that Pedey was far and away the league-leader in BA with 2 strikes this year, at just under .300, until Pedey shot one to right in front of Gross. Lowrie scored, breaking up the shutout, and Crisp advanced, putting 2 runners on.

And up strode the man once awarded with the greatest Red Sox clutch hitter plaque, Big Papi, but who had really come up small in this years postseason. Now, you can always watch a baseball game hoping for a homerun, but they rarely happen. The very best home run hitters only do it every 15 plate appearances or so. And Ortiz had zero homers in his last 61 postseason ABs, and was 1 for 14 with runners on in this postseason. Down 6 runs, with the season on the line, with the defense of the world championship on the line, I cannot imagine a single person watching or playing in this ballgame that was thinking about anything other than Big Papi crushing one. Had he woefully continued, a 7-1 game goes to the 8th. But he got a fastball down and in- his sweet spot- from Balfour, and he absolutely hammered it. In a rare moment, Papi looked almost surprised at himself; he did not characteristically flip the bat in a signification of dominance, and only tentatively left the box. But Fenway erupted, as did my studio apartment. A blowout had just turned into a ball game, the Sox were only down 7-4.

In that moment when Ortiz connected, fantasy became reality, wishes were fulfilled. Baseball really does do that sometimes; it makes the trite tremendous. TBS appropriately showed the guy with the 'i like baseball' sign. Three simple words, and all was right with the universe.

With the metaphorical wind at his back, Papelbon went back out there for the top of the 8th, buried some splitters, elevated some fastballs, and took 2 K's with him back to the dugout, getting those Boston bats back out there to batter the bullpen some more.

Wheeler walked Bay to start the 8th, missing badly low and away on the 3-0 pitch. Clearly rattled, he fell behind J.D. Drew, who righteously rifled one into the right field seats. It was now just a 1 run game, with the Sox only trailing 7-6. Wheeler then feel behind Lowrie, but Lowrie helped him out on the 1-0, swinging at a pitcher's pitch and popping to left. Outs are precious, and that one was squandered. And when Casey, pinch hitting for the captain in what might have been his final fenway plate appearance had he appeared, chased a splitter outside for the whiff, the realization hit that scoring 6 runs is great, but when the other guys have 7...

But Mark Kotsay delivered with 2 outs in the 8th, driving yet another liner to leftcenter field. B.J. Upton, who plays the laziest center field this side of Andruw Jones, yet again nonchalantly glided after the ball, but this time coming up empty, and deservedly so, as Kotsay's double clanged off his glove. Miraculously, the Sox had put the tying run in scoring position just 3 outs after having been down 7-0.

The lineup turned over. And even though Crisp had lined a single his previous attempt, no Boston fan hopes that the man who strides to the plate in the season's most important at bat is Coco Crisp. But whatever Coco hasn't done in his time here in Boston, and whatever he does or doesn't do from here on out, that at bat with the tying run on second with 2 down in the 8th inning of what had rapidly become a one run game was legendary. He fouled off pitch after pitch after pitch, 4 after the count had run full, even some that may have been out of the zone, as Coco was determined not to let the ump make the call; this was in Coco's hands, and he put up a noble fight. Finally Wheeler gave up, conceded, threw the 10th pitch of the at bat down the middle and Coco earned that clean, pure, single to right, that beautiful soft line drive, that sent in Kotsay and tied the ballgame at 7 apiece.

The old Red Sox would have squandered it in the 9th, of course. Carlos Pena, who has been death to Sox pitching, came up with 2 on and 1 out. But the kid Masterson buckled down and got the 4-6-3, sending a tie game to the bottom of the 9th.

But Pedroia and Ortiz went down, the former on a great play by Bartlett in the hole on a sharp grounder that had deflected off Longoria. Longoria then made an amazing stab on the short hop off a Youkilis chopper, but he threw off balance in the dirt, Pena couldn't make the stop, and the Sox had the winning run on second base. Bay was intentionally walked, and J.P. Howell faced J.D. Drew, the man who had hit the 2 run bomb to bring the Sox to within a run just one inning ago. Drew, nearly motionless, poised and ready to strike, walloped a 3-1 delivery, a screaming sinking liner over the wild leap of rightfielder Gross, and Tampa walked off in defeat, acquiescing to a Game 6.

Watching this one, logic and law goes out the window (I should get better insulation.) My girlfriend Rebecca was sitting at the kitchen table when Drew hit the homer to make it 7-6, but then moved over to the couch. Lowrie promptly popped up, and I yelled for her to go back to the table. Later, she had to go get ready for bed, but I wouldn't let her. She must sit at the table and not move. She had already made Lowrie pop up. I blamed her. She stayed put, and we won.

I imagine millions of other people refused to move from their spots too. To think logically where it clearly doesn't apply, we might reason that our not moving cancelled out the Tampa fans' not moving, that the sit in your spot jinx is a zero-sum interaction, and the players took it from there. Or one might think, as I clearly did, that my actions and mine alone were responsible for sending out anti-rays metaphysical rays from Brooklyn to Boston. When the transpiring are just so fantastic, so utterly unbelievable and absurd, doing anything to disturb that precious, teetering balance the universe has so fleetingly achieved seems like a sin.

I'm still out on the idea of retroactive meaning, both enhanced and diminished. If we lose Game 6 or 7, does that take away from game 5? I don't know. I'll cross that bridge after I pay the toll. For now, even after 2 rings in 4 years, and considering all the differences between now and '04, baseball, out of all the things in the world, still has this unique ability to perform the alchemy of turning despair into nervous hope into sheer delight, of creating a little universe where things can go right.

I like baseball.

Sense for a dollar?

So I get back from vacation and Pedroia's batting cleanup and hitting bombs. Makes sense. Drew, Lowell, and Beckett are on the DL, and the Sox are taking names. Also makes sense. It's September, and Tampa Bay has the best record in baseball, and an 11 game lead over the Yankees in the division.

???

Some sympathetic to religiousish worldviews dwell on the very fact of existence- isn't it amazing that anything exists at all!?!?, they wonder. It doesn't seem to make sense. Often, they think that the question 'why is there something rather than nothing?' demands an explanation called 'god'. And either that makes sense, or else it makes such much no sense that it must go beyond all sense and reason, and be true.

Others, though, have a handle on facts, and think that there is anything at all is no big whoop, as I used to say when I was 8, (the expression, not of the universe), or that labeling some mystery 'god' is no explanation at all, or that those other guys should just get over it- this whole existence thing- and stop dwelling on unanswerable questions and do something practical, like increasing bandwidth or cleaning in those hard to reach places.

But me, I can't help but dwell at the amazingness of this tampa bay leading universe in which I find myself. And that involves repeating facts, but this time with exclamation points. 11 games up on the Yankees! Best record in baseball! Existence! Something! Not nothing! Pretty amazing stuff, really. I can't get over it, and I just can't make sense of it.

Others, though, would simply point to a Tampa team ERA of 3.70, and a bullpen ERA of 3.41, and a Yankees team ERA in August of 5.09, among many other things that would serve as a perfectly reasonable explanation of the phenomenon in question.

Not me, though. It's inexplicable, really. Tampa Bay!

And yes, the Yanks beat Tampa today, and even have 8 wins vs. Tamper on the year. And that makes it all the more amazing- Yankees beat the Rays in September, with one team out of the running, and the other tuning up for the playoffs.

Makes sense after all.

Lookout! Archetypes Everywhere!

Paul Byrd is 37 years old. Manny Ramirez, 36. Brian Giles, 37. Three ballplayers, each in the, ahem, autumn of his career, and during this year's trading season, three different archetypal responses to the inevitable.

Giles, on a last-place ballclub, vetoed a trade to the pennant contending Sox, citing his wish to remain near to his family in temperate San Diego. Giles' is the bourgeois response; seeking not to improve but to maintain, content with mediocrity, domesticity, and a steady paycheck as an everyday player.

Manny, it has become increasingly clear, is exclusively focused on maximizing his earnings. His is the capitalist denial of death response; just because we end doesn't mean profits have to, get whatever you can while you can because you can. So even though you can't take it with you, accumulation gets you a bigger tombstone.

And then there's Byrd. Remy, talking on Thursday about Byrd's excitement at being dealt to a winner, noted that though winning is always important for a ballplayer, first establishing oneself as a deserving big leaguer, and then getting a long-term contract, are priorities in the early years of a career. But when a player reaches a certain age, Remy waxed, and "those years pile up, and there aren't many left for you," the "more important winning becomes". This is the religious response; in old age, as the years draw to a close, Byrd eschews further personal gain, and discovers meaning and completion in a collective seeking something larger than themselves.

Remy quickly transitioned to discussing underage female Chinese gymnasts.

The cycle of life continues.

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.

Numbers Tell You Everything, Except For What They Leave Out; 756*

Rob Neyer brought up the 756* thing again. No game Thursday, so, why not?

Some people go around all the time thinking that numbers can't capture meaning. 'Cold' and 'calculating' are associatively and alliteratively linked, and cliched images of emotionless logical number crunching robots are so common as to be... cliches. Religions decry the scientific worldview that wishes to 'reduce' meaning and quality to 'mere' quantity. People complain about not wanting to be a statistic (before participating in a focus group.) Some people laud qualities that defy quantitation- sometimes called 'intangibles'- as if this defiance were a mark of greatness, rather than non-existence.

So for these folks, what's the big deal about 756*? Numbers never determined meaning before, why should they in this case? These people are free to see meaning, greatness, and intangibility wherever they want, without the constraints of numbers. They shouldn't need an asterisk to tell them about the meaning of a record. 762 happened, so what? They can always tell tale tales about whoever they once saw play the game.

But of course some may be more scientific in their temperament. They may suppose that greatness, for instance, is a function of the numbers, and so is entirely determined by them.

For these folks, there's two ways to go. Either greatness is a function of old fashioned tally count-em stats which aren't context (i.e. ballpark, era, league difficulty) sensitive, like homers and wins, or greatness is a function of new fangled more sophisticated metrics that do compare players to their league or across eras (VORP, win shares, OPS+).

For folks who go the second way of the second way, home runs don't figure especially prominently anyway; not all home runs are created equal, after all, for a home run by itself doesn't tell you if it was hit in whiffleball, the no-splitter-no-slider-no-ethnicity 1920's, or in 1968.

It remains, then, that 756* should only be a problem for those who want the relative greatness of all those players who played at different times to be entirely determined by numbers that fail to present meaningful standards of comparison of players at different times. In short, 756* should only be a problem if you want greatness determined by the wrong numbers.

So the solution, then, is not asterisks, or divided categories- most homeruns for a player who only played against white people, most homeruns for someone with backne- but realizing why context-insensitive numbers have never been valuable for comparing different players at different times anyway, and so seeing why many records are superficial to begin with.

The only problem with the steroids, then, for this way of looking at things, is that only some people used them. But on the assumption that steroid use was widespread in this era, such that there's a relatively level playing field, even if a rampaging roider broke a count 'em record, they might not stand out in their own era, and it'll take that much more for the OPS+ to go up a tick.

Though perhaps a truism, by itself, a record is just another instance of one person getting more somethings than another person. Which records matter, and why, vary greatly, and for many different reasons. Some symbolize something beyond the sport- 715 could mean that it only took black players one generation to break an old white man's record, but that's sociological, not strictly about baseball, and most records don't have such meanings. And as far as baseball goes, few individual record breaking moments are as memorable or meaningful as moments of a team's victory or defeat; Dave Roberts vs. Barry Bonds, steroids or not? Please.

The idea that records symbolize some sort of purity, the good old days of baseball is- and always has been- a myth. Steroids happened, racism happened, crappy gloves and dirty dead balls that only went 250 feet happened; no number remains unscuffed by its times. Sure, there's a sentimental attraction in remembering what you read on baseball cards, but these numbers as indicators of reality or predictors of the future are inaccurate, and they probably never determined meaning anyway. If so, they fail as science, and they fail as religion.

Numbers are everywhere. If we like baseball numbers, I think it's the baseball, not the numbers, that really matters. The numbers are just there to help. They're not everything. Except for two numbers. 2004 and 2007. I like those.

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]

Pink Hat and Tails

Alright, fine. The pink hat thing.

This will require some credentials and caveats before I talk about it. I went to my first game in April of '86, cried when Buckner. I went to Rich Gedman All-American Baseball Camp for half a dozen summers, where I met Roger Clemens and Ellis Burks and Mike Greenwell, and even saw Bob Stanley throw a ball at Mark Fidrych's moving truck. He missed. Many years later, I attended Game 7, at Yankee Stadium, of the 2003 ALCS- That's right, The Grady Game- and lived to tell about it.

The moral of the story is I'm a suffering Sox fan (or was, now that we can play a ring toss game) as much as anybody my age, in contrast to, apparently, a 'pink-hat.'

Now, a caveat. I don't live in Boston anymore; Brooklyn, in fact, so I don't make it to Fenway all that often (also, as a philosopher, a ticket is about a year's salary), and I don't see much of the Kenmore rabble, so I haven't had the visceral experience of walking amongst, and feeling superior to or annoyed by, the pink hats. In fact, that expression, starting with the definite article (as opposed to a definite article?), is mostly foreign to me.

Another caveat. Not having NESN, I watch the games streaming from mlb.tv. So rather than the crisp, clean, shahp images of an HD broadcast, I get the wonders of a pixely Beckett and a blurry Manny, jumping discretely from stance to followthrough, leaving the swing merely implied, a subtle bit of subtext.

Basically, these third-world conditions have made me grateful, grateful I tell you, for whatever I can get.

So, that being said, I'm just not bothered by the pink hat thing.

But what's an opinion without a philosophical rationalization?

Notwithstanding the anachronism or meter, Its not 'take me out to the ballgame, take me to see how much the off-camera fielders cheat towards the opposite field when the hitters are behind in the count', its, well, 'take me out with (to?) the crowd'.

For many people, being a sports fan is about identification with others; feeling what the players feels, oohing and ahhing with the crowd, bonding over beers, chanting 'Yankees suck' (a metaphysical proposition, not a physical one, given their talent in previous years.) For Sox fans in particular, its about going through the drama, acting out that too familiar narrative of the team, living and dying with every pitch when none of them are even yours, physiologically speaking.

Religion is about collective bonding too; in fact, etymologically (yeah, i went there) 'religion' is related to 'ligament' or 'ligature', all of which means 'to tie together'; religion is about supernatural bonds. (perhaps a nickname for HGH Barry.) People who pray together stay together, I'm told, and this works for Sox fans as much as anybody. Maybe more.

Identifying with a collective, at least momentarily, involves taking on the traits of those others with whom you identify, blurring individuality, and allowing one, for example, to take pride in the accomplishments of others (as when I take pride in Kevin Youkilis, Gabe Kapler, and a Mr. Sandy Koufax.)

But what's the point of the group if you don't get to feel special? So one has to earn membership; initiation rites are as old as groups. For Sox fans, the initiation is suffering (as with fraternities and monasteries.) If not for this, and just anybody can get in, one risks taking on, through metaphysical osmosis, traits of those objectionable shouldn't-be members.

So to keep people out, groups define themselves in opposition to an Other which doesn't share their values or stories.

In the past, the suffering and oppressed Sox were contrasted with the tyrannical Yankees. Now that they actually suck, and we've whooped 'em good, Sox fans, as the article puts it, are having an identity crisis. Not willing to give up their identity as sufferers, they seek a new Other to define themselves in contrast to, now that vis-a-vis the Yankees, we are, at least temporarily, the ass whoopers, not the ass whoopees. (My old school Sox pessimism dies hard.)

So the pink hats are taken symbolically (whether any particular person who owns a pink hat is a 'real fan' or not is ignored- this is symbolism we're talking about), as playing the role of the Other, the fairweather fan who doesn't suffer through the storms and freezes and the being left out in the woods for a week to have a vision quest so that the 'real' Sox fans, who aren't yet comfortable in their new role as ass kickers (something with which I'm quite comfortable, I should point out. Also, I'm real- and as a philosopher, I'm an expert in existence), can maintain their traditional sense of collective self which is built around suffering. Cultures are intrinsically conservative and reactionary, Red Sox nation is no exception.

But its not an entirely symbolic attack; it's fair weather fans, presumably, that give that extra revenue bump that leads to big market victories, and so, to the extent that the Sox wins are a function of the market, the diehards can actually cite such fairweathers as a partial causes of their identity loss.

But what's with the massochism? (Bad pun intended.) The suffering is supposed to be redeemed through winning. And I like winning. I do, I admit it. I don't need another Grady Game. So the more fans, the better. They make it possible for Theo to give Julio friggin Lugo a 4 year contract and not have it sink the ship.

Also, I'm just not all that into the collective identity stuff. I'm more of a hermit monk type than a church picnic type of guy, so to speak. I watched the Sox win the Series in '04 with just one other friend. I typically watch games by myself. I enjoy a close, personal relationship with my Sox, (have you heard the good news?), unencumbered by sociality. I try to avoid thinking too much about those superfluous aspects- whether the players are really good people deep down inside or whether Wild Thing Vaughn slept with Dorn's wife last night. These get in the way of my spiritual whatever.

Look. People stink. Forget about them. I had standing room monster seats (an oxymoron) for Game 2 of the '04 World Series- Schilling pitched a gem, I recall. And who was sitting rows in front of me (in a seat, no less, the show-off) but Tom Hanks. People kept looking at him, not the game. Its the F'ing world series, I'd yell. Just watch the game. Jimmy Dugan would have told you the same thing.

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.

The Shroud of Schilling

From the Archive:

November 5, 2004

Last week we deified Curt Schilling for his miraculous and heroic performances against the Yankees and Cardinals. This week Curt was deifying the deity and stumping on his tattered ankle for Bush. Curt fears no hitter, but he fears god. Good for him?
Curt is quick to point to his finding god (yet he supports for pres. a man who couldn't find...) as a turning point in his career, a source of energy and motivation for his transcending his earthly constraints. Thanking the doctors seemed an afterthought, despite their having invented a new procedure in order for him to pitch.

Is our joy tarnished by Curt's beliefs? Can we no longer root for a religious Bush-supporting nut?

I really haven't had favorite players since I was a kid. This is one of the reasons why. As soon as one looks at a player as anything other than the sum of his past statistics, and as a disposition for future ones, we're screwed. What if he's a wife beater? What if he doesn't believe in dinosaurs? What if he's an anti-Semite? What if he wouldn't sign my ball? What if he honked his car horn at me and gave me the finger?

What we have to keep in mind is that these people, as ballplayers, are not people. They are baseball automatons. They are probably all jerks, they all picked on you in high school, they stole your girl because they were jocks, they spit on your loyalty and adoration for a few extra bucks that they will never need.

This does not lessen my joy. I learned long ago to think of the players as cogs, exactly as valuable as they facilitate the functioning of the machine, the team.

I've said before that 'most of the philosophers I like are dead. All of the baseball players I like are on the same team.'

You see, I use different criteria for the two. Not only are they all on the same team, but once they're not on the team, they can go fuck themselves (although for some reason I think I’ll always be fond of daubach.)

Viewing it this way makes one less inclined for hero-worship, and perhaps takes some of the fun out of pride and vicarious living. But I know I don't want to hang out with these players. I don't even want their memorabilia- manny's bat, the jock shilling wore at his first communion, or the condom for which Nomar thanked beautiful.

Athletes sometimes take it personally when fans boo. They sometimes don't get it that just because they were cheered before, they should always be. But of course we don't cheer them, we cheer their performance. Nomar was never able to distinguish Nomar the person from Nomar the player, and so was irrevocably hurt when he was deemed replaceable. A disposition for future statistics is replaceable.

Why are athletes republicans? Simple. They believe that hard work equals success. They don’t see why if they could do it, why can’t everyone? Everyone can’t because everyone is not equally talented. Some people have no talent, and some people have talent but can’t succeed because larger forces are too overwhelming, such that no amount of work can garner success. Josh Gibson had all the talent in the world, but that larger force of segregation prevented him from succeeding. It is very easy for the athlete to forget how special they are, and that ‘special’ only makes sense in contrast to those who are not. Liberals, quite simply, believe the government should help out the less fortunate, not hang them out to dry like a bloody sock.

As has been often mentioned, why don’t athletes who praise and thank god when they win, blame god when they lose? ‘That bitch ass Jesus made me drop that popup.’ Perhaps Bill Buckner’s a Satan worshipper. As I’ve noted before, God’s all time winning percentage seems to be .500

On the other hand, athletes do seem to realize their luck- their skills are ‘god given.’ It’s just very easy for them to translate that into a god given preference for them, that they are divinely special. And for those that are not, it is because God has seen fit for them to be mediocre and poor. And why should a government step in and try to reverse god’s plan?

Blasphemy!

Unsubscribe?

October 11, 2004:

[someone requested to ‘unsubscribe’ to the Sox fan email list]

Unsubscribe? There’s no unsubscribing. This is the first circle of hell. And you're in it. We Sox fans have had to put up with Yankee bullshit for too long, we've been kicked around and downtrodden and exploited for too long, and you spoiled Yankee fans have had such a fucking cakewalk, with no suffering. Well, now you're paying for your life of indulgence and plenty, thinking you deserve all that winning by some divine ordinance, never having to work for it, telling us that losing is just our lot in life, that we should accept it because of who we are, that we're better suited for losing, that its our nature, and that you the Yankees, are simply the winners, well now you're paying for your lack of humility and sacrifice, your unchecked imperialistic expansionism, your slave-owner who spends at the expense of the equilibrium of the environment, the only thing he's not paying is heed to the destruction his greed fosters, the lives that he tramples and destroys simply to fulfill his apocryphal delusions of grandeur, his yearning for expansion and control at the expense of all else, justifying it under the cruel credo of social Darwinism your godless materialism will be punished, oh yes. Its time for the meek to inherit the earth, the Sox are uniting, and there shall be a glorious uprising, throwing off the shackles of our Yankee oppressors, the cruel dogs with their smug assurance in their right to greed and spoils. This revolution will be televised, oh yes, Tuesday, 8pm on fox.

2004 ALCS Preview: Pray-Per-View

From the Archive:

October 10, 2004: On the Upcoming ALCS vs. the Yankees

[Please ignore the Messianic imagery. It was a very exciting time, if you recall. also, I really had a lousy time at Yankee Stadium a year earlier, during a certain game 7. see http://soxlosophy.blogspot.com/2008/06/2003-alcs-game-7-non-je-ne-regrette.html ]

Well, it's happening. And frankly, I don't think I can take it. It’s hard to imagine anything more exhilarating and trying than last year. From Pedro tossing Zimmer, to nelson and Garcia fighting landscapers, to Grady little and broken bat doubles, the gamut was run. But that was just a prelude. And I simply do not think I can take it.

Over the next week and a half, my screams will be heard, guttural howls emanating from places my soul doesn't even know about, in response to every pitch, ever sign shook off, every step shaded up the middle, every last little contingency that will forever change the face of the earth, and life as we know it.

I fully expect to be struck down by a Yankee fan at some point this week, when the angry mob hears me speak one too many truths, and out of hatred and fear of self- realization, must destroy me before I force them to look inside themselves, to see the evil burning within.

This week will be a true test of faith and devotion, one that'll make Job's treatment look like a manicure. A sox loss would be absolutely devastating. If they lose, I just don't know if I could bounce back. I will be suffering heart attack after heart attack, nervous breakdown after nervous breakdown, all week. Any and all ties to the outside world will be severed, I will be completely at the mercy of the epic battle god has seen fit to subject me to, for purposes of deeming me worthy.

I truly believe that we have the better team, and that we should, and deserve to, win. But then, Job didn't deserve what he got. And that was kind of the point. But his suffering was supposed to be rewarded, not merely a sadistic punishment. We are now at the point of judgment, at the point where for all time, suffering and loss are rewarded with eternal righteousness, and the sweet sweet reward. If we lose, I might very well be crushed, my suffering will have been in vain.

This has to be the year- we've never been in a better position. I simply cannot take more Yankee smugness, more favoritism from the proactive Satan against a complacent and negligent god, more evil in the world.

We humbly await your judgment.

I’m reminded of the 'problem of evil.' the problem runs, quite simply, as follows. Assume there is evil in the world. Is god willing to prevent evil, but unable? Then god is impotent. Is god able to prevent evil, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

But the problem will be eradicated if we win. Because evil will be vanquished, and the long-suffering Israelites, awaiting their messiah, will be vindicated. We will not have suffered in vain.

We humbly await.

In my philosophy, I do not believe in substance, or objects. But now there is one object which concerns me greatly. And that is curt schilling's right ankle. We disposed of the literal and figurative Achilles heel of the red sox, Nomar "thanks beautiful" Garciaparra. But this problem has resurfaced, has been instantiated in another bit of human, all too human, too too sullied flesh. Curt’s ankle, the very fulcrum from which all his power and leverage is derived, is weak. He must muster superhuman strength, to spontaneously generate energy from within, to transcend the physical limitations of his mortality.

We humbly await.

Pedro must continue to find within the great temple a source of oil, though appearing to have run out, that will last for 8 wins, that will combust at 95 miles per hour.

Baruch atah Adonai, elohaynu melech ha-olum, biray piree ha-fastball

We humbly await.

Bronson cornroyo must continue his David cone impression, throwing backdoor sliders and curves with impunity against the evil minions. He must stand bravely, he cannot waver.

The red sox are our army, protecting our fragile Nation's gates against the onslaught of cold oppressive Yankee fascism. Our freedom and fun loving protectors must persevere against the bitter robotic efficiency of the Yankee death machine. They wish to impose their anti-individualist and plutocratic dogma on our democratic, creative and expressive team. They are Sparta, we are Athens. We must defeat their martial empire. The Yankees represent brutal tyranny. The red sox humanistic democracy. The future of the world is at stake.

It had to come down to this. That much was destiny. But for destiny to mean anything, it must guarantee the just future, one in which suffering is eliminated, and faith rewarded. We know that time is near; otherwise, the end is nigh.

We humbly await.

2004 ALDS Game 3: Team Loyalty as Religious Commitment

From the Archive:

October 10, 2004:

[The following was written as an apology for watching Game 3 of the ALDS (Sox win series 3-0) instead of attending my friend Ian's birthday party.]

Firstly, I thought I had explained that I wouldn't be joining the birthday party until the game was over. If this was unclear, then I certainly apologize. If the very fact that I’d make such a decision is the issue, then let me elaborate.

Looking at such an issue 'objectively', one sees clearly a different sort of obligation (not in the 'dammit I have something to do' sense, but more in the category of 'moral duty', the morality of which makes the performance of the act both good and, for lack of a better word, enjoyable) between the acts of being a spectator and honoring a friend.

The main two differences, as I see it on the 'cost/benefit analysis', pertain to consequences of failing to live up to the obligation. With the former, no party is injured by the failure to be a spectator- the red sox will do fine without me- and secondly, that no possible punitive measures could be taken for failing to live up to the obligation- I won't get fired or in trouble for not watching the game. Whereas for the latter, the friend, clearly there may be an insulted party. And one is certainly inclined to think that the feelings of a real person would take precedence over the symbolic icons I have an allegiance to on TV.

I think the only way I can explain this to someone who does not have the feelings of allegiance and passion for a sports team is by relating it to religion. If you were having a party that I should be at, but it happens on, say, Yom kippor, and I can't leave my home until sundown, when Yom kippor is over, and I say I can't go, it would be very easy for the atheist (you) to say 'god will get on fine without you- you don't need to be there to honor him,' and second, 'since there is no god, there is no punitive action foreseeable against you for failing to honor this obligation.' this is contrasted with the hurt feelings of the person who's party isn't being attended. To the atheist, the obstinate insistence on remaining at home might seem both insulting and irrational. And I am inclined to agree. All I can say in this regard is that I simply have to honor my religious commitment.

To make this analogy stick, certainly I must cite precedent, if not already known, of my skipping everything else in order to watch important sox games. Just this week I skipped my Tuesday afternoon class, as the game was on. This, of course, is to the potential detriment of my grade. On Wednesday night, the game didn't end until after 2 am, and I had to teach class at 8am. So I taught on less than two hours sleep, to the immediate detriment of the students, who had an unintelligible professor that day, and to myself, who was too tired to do any serious work for the rest of the day.

Just thinking about this further, one must confront the idea of more drastic conflicts- would I skip somebody's wedding to watch a red sox game in April? Of course not. I skipped many of the games this year for various reasons (although I never like doing it). Sometimes you just have to drive on Saturday. But not on Yom kippor. The red sox in the playoffs is my high holidays, an event far more rare than annual, and one to me that is always fragile and in doubt and bound to end in horrific tragedy at any moment, and moreover, the end goal of which is something that generations of people have died having been denied the allegedly sublime satisfaction of experiencing.

Where I grew up half the kids couldn't show up for soccer practice on Saturdays. Some teams didn't even have games on Saturdays because of Shabbat. Logistically, one has to take such obligations into account. A further difficulty of yesterday was that the game went especially long, and then into extra innings- it’s as if sunset suddenly came over an hour late, thereby further interfering.

So basically, my obligation to the red sox in this regard is basically religious in nature, and the resultant obligations are upheld to the exclusion of all else. I have demonstratively risked both health and general welfare time and time again, particularly in New York, for my beliefs. I would hope, in general, that this is understood about me, such that people are not offended by my actions, just as I hope you would not be offended if someone couldn't go to dinner because it was Yom kippor. As you know, I went to Brooklyn to watch the game just so that I could be a part of your birthday dinner- otherwise I would have stayed uptown.

… I want to make sure that you hold no grudge against me vis a vis my actions towards you, but rather simply judge me to be an insane person with totally misplaced values. I can live with that.

2003 ALDS pre-Game 5

From the Archive:

October 06, 2003:

Before Game 5, ALDS, series tied 2-2 (in Game 4, David Ortiz hits the winning double, for his first hit of the series, off of eventual 2004 Sox Closer Keith Foulke.)

It’s Yom Kippor, or in English, the day of Kippor. (To the translation I give a C+). And I am fasting.

Why?, you ask. No, not for the big man upstairs, but I think it'll help the sox. I am atoning and suffering. And I shall be rewarded. I am a martyr.

Fuck yeah. I am one with this team. Me and a bunch of rednecks wear the same shirt, dammit. Ortiz has the best 1 for 17 ever. His batting average is .clutch, his slugging percentage is love and redemption.

Trot thanked the lord. Onward Christian soldier.

Some of these metaphors got to work out. It’s like that commercial with the workers on the bed with their boots.

I’m hungry and not making sense.

Tonight’s the night, and in the words of William Shakespeare,"bring on the yanks, those stupid ass licking fuckers!!