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“Growing Up In A Wealthier Neighborhood Is A Major, Positive Predictor Of Reaching The N.B.A.”

November 3, 2013 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Baseball, it is thought, doesn’t attract athletes from poorer backgrounds into college programs because it isn’t a popular TV sport on an amateur level and can’t offer full scholarships to very many players. College basketball and football make tons of TV loot and can provide full scholarships, so conventional wisdom says children of poverty with great athletic skill gravitate to them. Except maybe poverty is too much of an impediment for all but a few outliers. From Seth Stephens-Davidowitz in the New York Times:

“AS the N.B.A. season gets under way, there is no doubt that the league’s best player is 6-foot-8 LeBron James, of the Miami Heat. Mr. James was born poor to a 16-year-old single mother in Akron, Ohio. The conventional wisdom is that his background is typical for an N.B.A. player. A majority of Americans, Google consumer survey data show, think that the N.B.A. is composed mostly of men like Mr. James. But it isn’t.

I recently calculated the probability of reaching the N.B.A., by race, in every county in the United States. I got data on births from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; data on basketball players from basketball-reference.com; and per capita income from the census. The results? Growing up in a wealthier neighborhood is a major, positive predictor of reaching the N.B.A. for both black and white men. Is this driven by sons of N.B.A. players like the Warriors’ brilliant Stephen Curry? Nope. Take them out and the result is similar.”

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“When You Lose Yourself In The Game, As You Must, It’s All Too Easy To Lose Your Sense Of Home”

October 31, 2013 in Excerpts, Sports | Permalink

We make decisions, but sometimes it’s more accurate to say we realize them. A break occurs–sometimes physical, sometimes emotional, sometimes intellectual–and we know all of a sudden that we’re not the same. That nothing is. Walking away becomes the only sensible decision. Adrian Cardenas was a young major-league baseball player living the dream–except that it wasn’t his dream anymore. He just retired from–no, quit–the game he loved. From his story at the New Yorker blog:

“When you lose yourself in the game, as you must, it’s all too easy to lose your sense of home. It didn’t take long for me to see how it happens, as I became friends with players and heard about the relationships and marriages that broke up, the relatives and close friends who faded from view, the parents or grandparents whose funerals were missed because of an expected call up to the majors. Sometimes I’d stay awake through the night, almost laughing to myself, mentally weighing the small fraction of success against the overshadowing personal and professional failure that comes with being a ballplayer.

I came to realize that professional baseball players are masochists: hitters stand sixty feet and six inches from the mound, waiting to get hit by a pitcher’s bullets; fielders get sucker punched in the face by bad hops, and then ask for a hundred more. We all fail far more than we succeed, humiliating ourselves in front of tens of thousands of fans, trying to attain the unattainable: batting a thousand, pitching without ever losing, secretly seeking the immortality of the record books. In spite of the torments—the career-ending injuries, the demotions, the fear of getting ‘Wally Pipped‘—we keep rolling our baseball-shaped boulders up the impossible hill of the game, knowing we’ll never reach the top. Baseball is visceral, tragic, and absurd, with only fleeting moments of happiness; it may be the best representation of life. I was, and still am, in love with baseball. But I quit.”

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“It’s Almost Two Hours Per Game!”

October 30, 2013 in Excerpts, Sports | Permalink

Major League Baseball only makes a piece of its revenue from the World Series, so perhaps it’s time to take a little less network money to negotiate fewer commercial breaks and make the games of a more reasonable length. It also wouldn’t hurt if basic technology was introduced to enforce existing rules. Two things from the most recent chat by ESPN’s David Schoenfield follow (phrases made bold by me):

“David Schoenfield:

The biggest problem in the postseason is the length of the commercial breaks. We have a guy here who is keeping track of the time on commercials — it’s almost two hours per game!“

“Jeff (St Cloud):

The length of games this world series has been excruciating, and I fear replay will only make it worse. The fact that it’s the same subpar commentators every game doesn’t make it any easier to watch. If I was commissioner, I would make all reviews come from and be decided on by the league office, much like they do in the NHL. And add a pitch clock. The ratings aren’t down so massively because of the teams or markets, it’s because it takes more time and mental effort than a bad Monday Night Football game.”

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“The Guiding Principle Of Our Work Is Figuring Out A Way To Deal With Uncertainty”

October 23, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Paul DePodesta will always, always be asked about Moneyball, but he continues to have interesting thoughts on the topic. And he’s clearly aware that even a great MLB GM is wrong a lot. Those who minimize risk have the best chance of winning–but no guarantees. From Kevin Berger’s Nautilus interview with “Peter Brand”:

“Question:

Were there authors or books who shaped your thinking about baseball?

Paul DePodesta:

Yes. But it wasn’t necessarily out of my formal education. The summer after my freshman year at college, I interned in Washington D.C. for Jim Pinkerton. [Pinkerton was a White House analyst for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Today he is an author and panelist on the TV show, Fox News Watch.] On the first day I showed up at the office, Jim gave me $20 and told me to go down to the bookstore, buy a copy of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and don’t come back until I finish it. So I did. The thing that struck me about the book was how paradigms change and what needs to change for progress. I also read Peter Drucker—his interesting management-efficiency stuff. I remember Drucker talking about the value question. Very simply put: If we weren’t already doing it this way, is this the way we would start? Jim looked at everything that way. I remember talking to him about the DMV, and him explaining if we weren’t already doing it this way, do you think this is the way we would do it? So he got me thinking that way. 

Question:

What’s the guiding principle of your work now?

Paul DePodesta:

The guiding principle of our work is figuring out a way to deal with uncertainty. That’s what we deal with every day—an uncertain future. What’s going to happen on the next pitch is uncertain. We can’t figure out exactly what’s going to happen, but if we can get our arms around a range of possibilities, that gives us a much better chance to at least make better decisions. We’re still going to be wrong a lot, but hopefully we’re wrong less often now than we were 10 years ago. But we’re never going to be in a situation where our analysis tells us what’s going to happen. These are human beings interacting with one another in a highly stressful situation. So we’re never going to be perfectly predictive. But that’s what makes baseball interesting, makes it emotional.

Question:

Do you rely on probability theory, the math of potential outcomes, to help assemble a team?

Paul DePodesta:

Absolutely. We use probability theory every day, as it provides a framework for dealing with the uncertainty. The nice thing about baseball is that all of the possible outcomes are known—it’s not quite as messy as the real world. That makes the game an excellent playground for probability.”

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“The Content Plan Is To Cover Three Buckets That Are About Equal In Size”

October 20, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

It’s  little worrisome that Nate Silver is joining the ESPN family, since that company just severed ties to Frontline over its excellent program (here and here) about NFL-related concussions. But he tells Hollywood Reporter scribe Erik Hayden that he doesn’t fear editorial interference. He also out lines what the new FiveThirtyEight blog will be. An excerpt:

“Silver’s blog, formerly hosted by The New York Times, was acquired in July by ESPN with the goal of developing it into a standalone site similar to Bill Simmons’ Grantland. He outlined the three primary coverage areas for the new FiveThirtyEight — politics, sports and economics — which will debut ;very early’ next year.

‘It’ll be no subscription fee, we hope you guys click on the banner ads or the sponsorships,’ the statistician explained. ‘The content plan is to cover three buckets that are about equal in size — one being kind of politics and political news, of course emphasizing elections still very heavily, one third being sports and one third being everything else put together. So with a special emphasis on economics, for example, maybe topics like education.'”

 

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“We Were Absolutely Not Out To Get People To Boycott Football”

October 14, 2013 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed in a chat that accompanied the excellent Frontline program, League of Denial, which examined the NFL’s obfuscation in regards to its concussion problem. I was especially dismayed by journalist Mark Fainaru-Wada’s answer to a question about what he and his brother, Steve Fainaru, hoped to accomplish with the program and their book: “I think our hope is that through the book and the film people will be more informed about the challenges the game faces and how it might deal with that.”

There’s a certain element of denial there as well. I think the honest answer would be that if you allow your children to play football, they may very well incur some brain damage, especially considering how prone their skulls are at that age. Any adult who plays college football or in the NFL is at great risk of brain damage. Anyone who buys a ticket to a game or who supports it in other ways is complicit in these injuries. Football, like boxing, can’t escape this problem which is embedded into the game, and equipment alterations or rule changes won’t eliminate it. It’s not merely a “challenge,” so let’s be honest about what we’re risking and what we’re supporting.

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Comment From Kristi Hofacker:  

Why did frontline not mention all the advancements and changes of game regulations that have been put in place to decrease TBIs? People have been working to gain concussion awareness so they can further their movements to fix the problem. After the frontline special, people don’t want to help, they want to boycott football all together. Is that what you were trying to accomplish?

 
Mark Fainaru-Wada: 

First and foremost, we were absolutely not out to get people to boycott football. Steve and I are both huge football fans — he has season tix to the 49ers — and we love the sport. I think our goal was simply to trace what the league knew, when it knew it and to what extent it sought to tamp down the emerging science. There’s no question the league has made strides on this issue since it was hauled before Congress in 2009, and we note that to some degree in the film, although the commissioner is still not openly acknowledging a link. I think our hope is that through the book and the film people will be more informed about the challenges the game faces and how it might deal with that. Again, though, it’s a violent, brutal sport, which is one of the things many of us love about it, and not sure that can/should be changed.

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“The Things We Do To One Another…Hell, I Don’t Know What I’m Saying”

October 9, 2013 in Books, Science/Tech, Sports, Videos | Permalink

I know it makes me a killjoy, but I feel like any adult who plays in a fantasy football league has failed on some level, has never fully matured. Whenever I hear someone excitedly discussing “their team,” I feel sad. What makes it so bad, of course, is that the players suffer devastating brain damage (and other serious injuries) as part of this entertainment. And the “fantasy” aspect of the game, where teams are imaginary and players merely statistics, has moved us a further distance from this horrifying reality. The NFL has marketed the car-crash violence on Monday Night Football, in video games, and in every way imaginable, only feigning concern for its on-field personnel occasionally for PR purposes, attacking the credibility of those who’ve spoken the truth, like neuropathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu.

Make sure to watch the Frontline episode, “League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis,” which takes its impetus from the new book by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru about the NFL’s terrible record in regard to brain injuries. That it focuses in part on the Pittsburgh Steelers team of the 1970s makes it that much more poignant. It was those Steel Curtain teams partly responsible for pioneering steroid abuse in the NFL.

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“The Game, In Other Words, Has Never Been Healthier. So Why Does It Feel So Irrelevant?”

October 7, 2013 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

babepointing

Some things are immensely popular right before a steep decline, like cricket in America in 1900 or newspaper advertising in the 1990s. Just because you’re on top doesn’t mean you’re staying there. Baseball has never been more popular in America than it is now, as measured by ticket sales and television contracts, but something seems amiss. It’s no longer the national pastime; thanks to gambling, a taste for violence and a less-demanding schedule, the NFL reigns supreme. And there isn’t a star in baseball equal to Lebron James of the NBA. 

From the moment of the Nelson Doubleday hokum, the sport was always sold on a lie. Myths were built, and that was unsustainable. It was never a rustic sport nor a clean one, but it was protected as such because it was considered too important to the national psyche. It was the present being sold as nostalgia, and that can’t work in a world of decentralized media. 

But even before the PED scandals of the ’90s and aughts (which are largely silly and filled with hypocrisies) made it all come crashing down, baseball had lost traction with the popular culture, a sport that revered team before individual and humility before braggadocio, unless you were looking for a fastball behind your ear. These society-wide things are (probably) cyclical, and all you can do is better promote your stars.

Commissioner Bud Selig’s retirement is a positive, as his leadership has flagged on almost every important issue, from technology to padded caps for pitchers to stadium disputes. The rise of regional sports cable and its need for live content has provided the MLB with money to paper over Selig’s failings. Owners and players have never been richer, and there’s some danger in that. I have doubts that the next commissioner will be more progressive, but we can hope. So many kids and young adults having no interest in the sport is scary.

The other best thing that could happen to baseball would be to have its antitrust exemption stripped. There is no way for competition to arise under the current system. (To be fair, even without the exemption, it would be difficult to start a new league.) But perhaps a speed league that enforced rules to shorten games to two hours would force the MLB to change and grow. Good competition for the league is as important as good competition between the teams–maybe even more important in the big picture.

The opening of “Is It Game Over?” Jonathan Mahler’s recent New York Times essay:

“MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL is doing just fine. Unlike the N.F.L. and the N.B.A., it has been free of labor strife for nearly 20 years. It has more exciting young stars than I can ever remember. It has even achieved that elusive ‘competitive balance,’ with seven different champions over the last decade. Teams across the country are playing in brand-new ballparks that they somehow persuaded local governments to help pay for. Over the last 20 years, baseball revenues have grown from roughly $1 billion to nearly $8 billion.

The game, in other words, has never been healthier. So why does it feel so irrelevant?

Maybe the best evidence of this admittedly unscientific observation is the national TV ratings. There’s no sense comparing baseball’s numbers to football’s, which exist in a whole other Nielsen’s stratosphere. But baseball is losing ground to pro basketball, too. In 2012, the N.B.A.’s regular season ratings on ABC were nearly double those of Major League Baseball on Fox. The last eight years have produced the seven least-watched World Series on record.

More to the point, baseball seems simply to have fallen out of the national conversation (unless the conversation happens to be about steroids, that is). The last time baseball felt front and center, culturally speaking, was the 1998 home-run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. And we all know how that turned out.”

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“Maybe The Human Eye Can’t Do Better”

September 26, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

I’ve said before that I favor computers calling balls and strikes in baseball as soon as that becomes viable. A human error can decide the outcome of a game, but it should be a miscue by a player, not an official. Until the system is automated, umpires should be paid much better than starvation wages in the minor leagues, which is the case now. With no guarantee of ever making it and no real salary, it’s hard to attract and keep the best. That leads to the most stubborn people, not the most qualified ones, ending up in the majors. That’s why you see so many argumentative umps in the bigs.

From “Five Important Issues for Next Commish.” by David Schoenfield at ESPN:

“Instant replay and quality of umpiring 

We finally get expanded replay next season, so that should help resolve some of the controversial and blown calls. It remains to be seen how effective and efficient the system will be, but it can be adjusted as necessary. Just as importantly, the new commissioner has to work to improve consistency of ball/strike calls and reduce the episodes of ump rage. 

Right now, the best umps (Eric Cooper, Chad Fairchild, Phil Cuzzi) get about 90 percent of ball/strike calls correct, according to our pitch data; the worst umps (Wally Bell, Tim Welke, Kerwin Danley, Jerry Meals) are at 86 percent. That difference may not seem like a lot, but that’s a spread of 10 incorrect calls per 250 pitches. Even a 90 percent correct rate means thebest umps are missing about 25 to 30 ball/strike calls a game. Maybe the human eye can’t do better, but MLB needs to pay its umpire better, and in particular pay minor league umpires a living wage, so you can recruit from a wider field of candidates.”

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“From Super Brains To Supercomputers, He’s Taken Them All On”

September 25, 2013 in Politics, Science/Tech, Sports, Videos | Permalink

Garry Kasparov is a real-life John Henry, having been felled by the steam-powered hammer of IBM’s Deep Blue. He was the chess king as we were being dethroned by automation, as computers came to rule games–and other things. Kasparov now dabbles in Putin-punching and writing. I’m glad he does the former and wish he would do more of the latter. He’s a very gifted writer.

Below is a recent interview about chess and politics the just-departed David Frost did with the chess champ.

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“The Computer Reveals What Plays They Used Under What Conditions And How Often”

September 24, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

I tend to think of analytics in sports as a recent invention, but Tom Landry, square-jawed coach of America’s Team–God’s Team, really–the Dallas Cowboys, was apparently a computer-friendly technocrat back in the 1970s. From “Tom Landry Is a Believer: in Himself, His Printouts, His Cowboys and His Lord,” Kent Demaret’s 1977 People article about the laconic leader:

“The process starts on Monday. Game films from the day before are shown, and each player’s performance evaluated and graded. That done, Landry turns to computer printouts—bound into a book the size of the Manhattan phone directory—for a minute analysis of the next opponent. The computer reveals what plays they used under what conditions and how often. As the week progresses Landry and his coaching staff absorb the mass of data, design countermoves and settle on a game plan for both offense and defense. The offense is rarely changed. ‘You don’t spend three days working up a game plan and getting all the players ready, only to change it during a 10-minute halftime,’ Landry says. ‘You just go out there and execute it better than they can execute a defense against it.’ Such intensive preparation motivates the team, he adds, far more successfully than locker room histrionics. ‘Confidence comes from knowing what you’re doing,’ says Landry. ‘If you are prepared for something, you usually do it. If not, you usually fall flat on your face.’

Not all those who now play or have played for Landry admire his push-button approach.”•

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“I’m one of the best-known cowboys in Texas,” 1986:

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“With Computer Football, You Call The Plays”

September 24, 2013 in Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Even before things were computerized, we wanted them to be, we pretended as if they were. We prepared ourselves for the real thing, when computers would make us more powerful, not yet realizing they might want to keep the power for themselves.

A 1969 commercial for Computer Football, which was not computerized.

“What Is ‘Hot,’ Statistically?”

September 23, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Videos | Permalink

The idea of the “hot hand” in sports has long been derided as an antique of a more narrative-driven era, but could analytics have rescued the decidedly non-sabremetric idea from the dustbin? Perhaps. Some researchers now believe that basketball players who are shooting well see their percentage improve, if slightly, over a progression of shots. Still seems fishy to me. From “Biting the Hot Hand,” by Zach Lowe at Grantland:

“The same implication issue arises when we consider work by Jeremy Arkes, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, who found over a giant sample size that players are about 3 percent more likely to hit their second free throw on a two-shot trip to the line if they also hit the first one. That’s fascinating, if it holds over multiple seasons. But how do coaches and players adjust to that kind of information?

Incorporating all this research is easier during timeouts, when a coach can design plays to minimize the chances of a bad heat check, as Henry Abbott has written before at TrueHoop.

Believing or not believing in the hot hand might change some things about the way a game flows, but even proponents of the hot hand’s existence claim it’s a relatively small effect that doesn’t emerge very often. And that’s part of the challenge in the data, even apart from trying to explain the factors that might lead a player into a better rhythm on a particular day. What is ‘hot,’ statistically? Making two in three shots? Eight in 12? How do we know when to start the streak and when to stop it? How many times do players really get ‘hot’ in a given season? Five? Ten? Two?

‘It’s very hard to define,’ Ezekowitz says.”•

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“Reggie Miller with a clutch trey”:

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“It’s True That The World Series Has Lost A Bit Of Luster”

September 22, 2013 in Excerpts, Sports | Permalink

I know baseball fans are supposed to hate player agent Scott Boras because he’s greedy and forces the game to be about money and makes ticket prices go up, but I don’t feel that way because it’s hypocritical in addition to being plain wrong. Boras represents his clients in a professional manner, works to see that players do as well as the owners (as it should be) and has no effect on ticket prices, since those are determined by owner perception of what the market will bear. Only in baseball can a small group of rich, supposedly capitalist people (owners) use an anti-trust exemption to eliminate competition, continually ask for welfare (i.e., taxpayer money to build luxury-box lined stadiums which price out those taxpayers) and complain about someone (Boras) who just wants a free market. Or a freer one, at any rate.

For a few years, the agent has been pitching the MLB to switch to a neutral, warm-weather site for the first two games of the World Series, in an effort to stem the championship’s increasing regionalization. It’s certainly better than anything Bud Selig and his lieutenants have come up with. Boras’ thoughts are covered this week in Nick Cafardo’s Boston Globe column, a perplexing weekly baseball roundup that mixes intelligent reporting with stupefying close-mindedness. There are gems like this: “Andy Pettitte is a Hall of Famer. Period.” No, he isn’t. Exclamation point! But even if you disagree, we should be able to debate the matter without someone preempting it so he doesn’t have to defend his position.

Anyhow, I’ll post some of the better stuff from this week’s Cafardo column, which concerns Boras’ proposal, followed by my own idea along the same lines for a rehashed Wild Card playoff.

From Boras:

“For five years super agent Scott Boras has called for something that makes a lot of sense — having the first and/or second game of the World Series take place in a neutral setting. Set it up much like the MLB All-Star Game or the Super Bowl, thus creating a year’s worth of interest in an event that has become, in Boras’s opinion, ‘regionalized.’

If you had two games to start the World Series in a warm-weather climate and/or dome, you’d create quite a buzz. The prelude to the game or games, Boras suggests, would be a gala, followed by a big ceremony where the Cy Young, MVP, and other awards would be part of a TV special in the host city. He calls it, baseball’s Oscars.

All of this, in Boras’s view, would get the corporate world involved much like it is for the Super Bowl. …

‘It would be a gathering place for all of baseball,’ Boras said. ‘The team officials would have to show up for the awards and other business. It could be the start of the hot-stove season as it once was. It would bring baseball center stage. It would make the World Series an event, much like the All-Star Game, which is the best in sports. Why not take all of the metrics of that event and apply them to the World Series?’

It’s true that the World Series has lost a bit of luster.”•

My idea for Wild Card Weekend:

End the regular season on a Wednesday and leave two days for possible tie-breaking games and travel. Three days after the season ends is Wild Card Saturday (“One Saturday, Two Celebrations”). You choose a neutral, warm-weather or domed location and hold both the AL and NL Wild Cards on the same day on the same field. (If you want a home playoff game, you have to win.) There would be one early game and one late game with “halftime” entertainment. Reveal regular-season awards in a live televised event from the host city the night before the games are played. Have cities bid on Wild Card Saturday a couple years in advance. Because you are guaranteeing two victory celebrations on the same day, it should be an easy sale for TV.•

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“If You Won’t Kill Them, We Won’t Let You Beat Them Up”

September 18, 2013 in Politics, Sports, Videos | Permalink

George Carlin on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1971, perfectly explicating the illogical reasoning behind Muhammad Ali’s forced Vietnam Era exile, as the fighter prepared for his first bout with Joe Frazier. Carlin’s performance was broadcast during the final few months of Sullivan’s 23-year run on CBS.

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“That Article Includes The City Supervisor Calling The Race ‘Three Billionaires In A Tub'”

September 18, 2013 in Excerpts, Sports | Permalink

The 1980s was a particularly jingoistic and muscle-flexing time in America, and for awhile we were encouraged to care about our place among the world’s yacht racers. The original Tan Mom, Dennis Conner, who seemed to have nothing better to do with his time, led us to un-classy prominence. Larry Ellison, who has plenty of better things to do, is struggling to put us back there, if in a seemlier manner. From “The Peacock and the Raven,” Katie Baker’s Grantland article about Ellison’s embattled re-engineering of a race that is so important to so few:

“Asking a random San Franciscan about the America’s Cup is like asking a tea partyer about death panels. The former group can be reliably counted upon to mutter something about ‘a bunch of billionaires with their toys’ in the same way that the latter group is sure to unfurl their Don’t Tread on Me flags at the slightest provocation. That, and the name ‘Larry Ellison’ is pronounced with the same crazy-eyed venom as ‘NOBAMA.’

You can’t really blame them. They were suspicious a few years ago when they kept hearing wild promises being thrown around about revenues and hotel room projections and global melting pots and vague reassurances that taxpayers would be reimbursed by private donors. (According to estimates, the city of San Francisco remains about $4 million in the hole. Also, that article includes the city supervisor calling the race ‘3 billionaires in a tub.’ DRINK!) They were confused by the haphazard marketing around the city this summer, never knowing which races actually constituted the America’s Cup. They either live in the Marina, in which case any hubbub in the neighborhood is a hassle, or they don’t, in which case they probably brag about how they never go there.

They’ve seen one bit of bad news after another, like the fact that only three syndicates ultimately coordinated Cup challenges (as opposed to the ’14 teams, 16 teams’ Ellison envisioned) because they found the boats too dangerous and/or too costly, or that one of those three syndicates, Artemis Racing, disastrously capsized during a training run in May. It was the second AC72 capsize in seven months — Oracle had flipped in October — but with far graver consequences: Adored 36-year-old crew member and father of two young sons Andrew Simpson was killed.

In an interview with Charlie Rose, Ellison called Simpson’s death a ‘freak accident,’ but you could tell he was rattled.”

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“Significant Numbers Of Sportsmen And Women Are Born To Dope, And Get Away With It”

September 18, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

Some athletes have genetic advantages and others arrange for chemical ones. And a certain amount may have both, according to a recent Mail Online article by Nick Harris which says that some competitors have natural masking agents that allow them to dope at will. The opening:

“Eight of the most explosively gifted sprinters in the world are settling into their blocks on the start line of the 100m final at a major championship. The tension is almost unbearable; the rewards for success are huge.

To the spectators in the stadium and millions of fans watching on TV around the world, it is a spectacle without equal in sport.

But what very few of them will even suspect is that it is statistically likely that at least one of those runners will have a genetic make-up allowing him to take performance-enhancing steroids for his entire career — and never fail a drug test.

Science fiction? Far from it.

Now imagine the starting blocks of a swimming final at a significant international event in Asia — the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea, for example.

It is quite feasible that half of the athletes about to dive into the water — perhaps as many as six out of eight depending on whether they are Chinese, Japanese, Korean or from another background — also have bodies that naturally allow them to take drugs but not get caught.

Astonishing though it sounds, significant numbers of sportsmen and women are born to dope, and get away with it. The proportion ranges from around one in 10 of those with European ancestry to one in five with African heritage, and up to a staggering two-thirds of people in some Asian countries, notably Korea.

These shocking statistics, largely unknown to followers of sport, go part of the way to explaining the vast difference between the numbers of elite athletes who are taking banned performance-enhancing drugs and the numbers being caught.”

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“It Is Merely Part Of An Odyssey”

September 15, 2013 in Excerpts, Sports, Videos | Permalink

Why the fuck did Bruce Jenner do it to himself? Here he is in 1976 becoming the greatest athlete in the world, before the divorces, the Village People, the cosmetic surgeries and the Kardashians–before he performed reverse alchemy, going from gold to plastic.

From a 1980 People magazine profile of Jenner at 30, just as his first marriage ended: “At the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal, Bruce Jenner won the gold medal in the decathlon and became the great American Olympic hero—perhaps the last of the line, given the parlous state of the Olympics today. He was lionized shamelessly. He and wife Chrystie were invited to a state dinner at the White House. His was the face on the Wheaties box. He apparently learned from the amazing vanishing act of Mark Spitz. 

Today Jenner endorses everything from lines of shoes and sporting clothes to 10-speed bicycles and weight-lifting equipment. He has a syndicated sports advice column and a sky-high deal to advertise Minolta cameras. He didn’t pass his screen test for Superman, but makes his movie debut in June in Allan Carr’s Can’t Stop the Music (co-starring Valerie Perrine and the Village People). He has co-authored a spectators’ handbook to the Lake Placid Olympics. He has a sports commentator’s contract with NBC that will take him to Moscow if the American athletes go. He is negotiating with NBC to produce a couple of made-for-TV movies. He makes big bucks on the lecture circuit (‘I’ve just raised my price—it separates the men from the boys’), mostly from corporate audiences. And when others might grab for the Geritol, Jenner, at 30, feels on top of the world. ‘I’m very fortunate,’ he says smugly. ‘I now no longer have to do things I don’t want to do.’

But Bruce’s decathlon of life since 1976 has taken atoll. One casualty is his seven-year marriage to Chrystie, who worked as a United stewardess to see him through the grueling training that led to the Olympic gold. ‘Chrystie didn’t like the whole public scene,’ explains Bruce tersely.”

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“People Said It Couldn’t Be Done”

September 14, 2013 in Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

I really don’t want to own stuff, but I am fascinated by great product design, whether the thing we’re talking about is a chair, a push-button telephone or a pencil. I think the classic VW Beetle is pretty much perfect, and this 1966 commercial, featuring Wilt Chamberlain and some still photography, is likewise flawless.

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“I Believe There Are Other Bolts Out There”

September 9, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

A few exchanges from the early part of an excellent Ask Me Anything at Reddit being conducted by the Sports Illustrated and ProPublica journalist David Epstein, author of The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance.

__________________________

Question:

I have always thought that Usain Bolt was dirty. He was beating the best guys in the world easily, and they were doping. But in your book you talk about why the Jamaicans are so good at sprinting. Essentially it is years of breeding amongst the best athletes that produced the best sprinters in the world in this tiny part of this tiny island. After reading that section, I started thinking, “Wow, this guy may actually be clean!” So do you think Bolt is clean, or just the possessor of the best genes the human race has to offer?

David Epstein:

I don’t want to be naive, but if I were absolutely forced to bet on it at this moment, I would go “clean” for Bolt. Would I be surprised to be wrong? Not really. After all the lying from athletes, it’d be crazy to be surprised any more. That said, there hasn’t been the proverbial “smoke” around Bolt yet, and not because people aren’t looking, so I give him the benefit of the doubt. And not that this means he’s clean, but I think his junior records are at least as impressive as his world records, so at least my suspicion index doesn’t increase just because he made bizarre performance jumps. Honestly, I think a guy like Randy Moss would potentially be Bolt-like, but in how many countries does a guy who is 6’4″ at age 15 with blinding speed end up on the track? Jamaica, Trinidad, Bahamas, maybe Barbados, and probably nowhere else. I believe there are other Bolts out there, but the sifting system I describe in chapter 10 makes sure they find them in Jamaica.

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Question:

How do you think the U.S. would do in World Cup Soccer if the best athletes in pro football, baseball, and basketball were playing soccer instead?

David Epstein:

I think the U.S. would do extremely well. In The Sports Gene, I write about a Danish scientist who takes muscle biopsies of soccer players, and his frustration that they don’t get enough guys with a high proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibers at the top level. We have a load of sprinters here! And I also write about the Netherlands soccer pipeline, and a sports scientist who helps track the top kids, and look how well they’ve done with a relatively small population. One thing she has found is that the kids who go on to the pros are always, starting from age 12, about a quarter second faster on shuttle runs than the kids who don’t make it. I tend to think if Adrian Peterson and athletes like him grew up playing soccer, we’d have a much better team. At numerous points in the book, it’s clear that one way a country dominates a sports is simply by making sure the best general athletes go through the talent funnel of that sport. Obviously, we’re massively diluting that in the U.S. I think we would be a world power if even just American football were taken out of the equation.

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Question:

With all the new science on concussions and other health issues, do you think football, the NFL in particular, will exist in a decade.

David Epstein:

I think it will exist. I look at boxing, which is completely medically indefensible, and it still exists. That said, every time I look through the new scientific literature on brain trauma, here’s the troubling trend: rather than concussions being of primary importance, the accumulation of sub-concussive hits is taking center stage. So all the rule changes in the NFL that go toward protecting defenseless receivers and all that, those are great PR but do nothing for the linemen who are taking the sub-concussive hits to the frontal lobe on every single play. And, of course, the majority of players who are ending up with their brains dissected are linemen, not receivers. …In The Sports Gene, I write about a gene variant–ApoE4–that about one in five people and that we know makes it more likely that a carrier will have permanent brain damage from taking hits to the head. All in all, I think there’s increasing evidence that some people, maybe many people, simply can’t play football without being brain damaged in some way, whether that damage is temporary or permanent. I do think, ultimately, that it will reduce the pipeline of children who participate in football, but I don’t think the game will be gone in a decade. Here’s a piece I wrote about subconcussive hits in high school players, for whom the cost/benefit analysis is vastly different than an NFL pro.•

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“I Woulda Been A Bum Compared To You?”

September 8, 2013 in Sports, Videos | Permalink

Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis seldom had a good word for each other–“Slow Joe Louis” was one of the nicer things Ali called his predecessor—and it wasn’t just joking. Louis picked Sonny Liston to win both Ali-Liston fights, and Ali never really forgave him. Louis seemed to be jealous of the brash younger fighter who was set to eclipse him.

This 1966 clip captures the two heavyweight egos when the men were actually working together briefly, with Louis acting in an adviser capacity. But Ali’s stance on the Vietnam war, among other issues, soon led to a bitter falling out.

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“Have You And Malcolm X Split?”

September 6, 2013 in Politics, Sports, Videos | Permalink

In this 1965 TV meeting with female members of the press, Muhammad Ali discusses Malcolm X’s estrangement from Elijah Muhammad’s brand of Islam. That means it had to have been recorded somewhere from January 1 to February 20 because the minister and activist was murdered on February 21 of that year.

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“Jamaica Is Where You Find All The Runners”

September 5, 2013 in Books, Science/Tech, Sports, Videos | Permalink

On his new ESPN show, Keith Olbermann just interviewed author David Epstein, whose book, The Sports Gene, I blogged about earlier in the week. In this segment, he explains the two-fold reason why Jamaica turns out the world’s greatest sprinters.

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Should Baseball Get Rid Of Errors?

September 4, 2013 in Sports | Permalink

One of the topics bandied about in baseball Sabermetric circles lately is the elimination of errors. If you hit the ball and you get on base, you get a hit no matter if it’s a line drive off the wall or a dribbler through the first baseman’s legs. Some reasons for this thinking:

  • Errors tell us little about defense. A great defensive shortstop can commit as many errors as a terrible defensive shortstop. If a player has tremendous range and can get to many more balls, he is penalized for his ability by error totals. Ultimate Zone Ratings, which don’t rely on errors, are a much better judge of fielding ability.
  • Error calls made by official scorers are deeply subjective and inconsistent. They often are biased based on the needs of the home team.
  • A pitcher isn’t charged with unearned runs if a team scores with aid of an error. These are also wildly inconsistent judgements that often obscure a pitcher’s failings. More advanced stats of pitchers have long since replaced ERA as a way to measure their value.
  • While getting a hit because a third baseman bobbles a weakly hit ball requires some luck, so does a bloop that lands cleanly just over the head of the shortstop. Luck is a real part of the game already.

The only downside to such a change would be that players would accrue a few more hits each year and that could eventually decide a record or two. But it isn’t as meaningful a difference as stretching a 154-game season to 162 games. Likewise, mounds have been higher and lower depending on which era we’re talking about, which, of course, affected hit totals. And which stadium a player hits in for 81 home games a year causes a variation in how many hits he totals. Baseball has always been inconsistent in its rules, so changing this one won’t be a shocking departure from tradition.•

“I Do All The Nutty Things Around Here”

September 3, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Sports | Permalink

Five years before the world-gripping Frost-Nixon interviews, the recently deceased David Frost contacted Henry Kissinger to ask him if he could help convince the ever-enigmatic Bobby Fischer to compete in the World Chess Championship in Iceland. The resulting Fischer-Spassky matches became legend. An excerpt from the declassified transcript of the Frost-Kissinger call (which is still censored to a degree):

“David Frost:

I was calling you, A, to greet you and, B, I’ve had three calls this morning about a hilarious diplomatic matter that I just wanted to ask you whether you thought it was worth anyone at the White House, from yourself down, as it were, doing anything about. It’s an extraordinary story. Can I tell you about it?

Henry Kissinger:

Certainly.

David Frost:

It’s about America’s gist to the world of chess — Bobby Fishcer. I got to know him when he appeared on my show. He came to the party in Bermuda and so on.

Henry Kissinger:

That’s right.

[SANITIZED]

David Frost:

Now the question is, is it worth someone doing that?

Henry Kissinger:

Yeah, I’ll do it. I do all the nutty things around here. Where is he?

David Frost:

Well, now, I’ve got two phone numbers. Now unfortunately,…he is staying at the moment with a Mr. Fred Saidy who is a Broadway writer of things like Brigadoon. And his son is a grand master in chess. S-A-I-D-Y in Douglaston Long Island. And the man who knows…

Henry Kissinger:

I think if I call him I should just call him and tell him a foreign policy point of view I hope the hell he gets over there.”

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