The Old Man and the Baseball Diamond

Umpire School starts on Wednesday. I’m in the process of transit this week [1] and I should arrive at the La Playa resort in Daytona Beach on Monday night. You may ask, what is the Nachoman doing to prepare? Well, I’m gobbling as much Chicago-style pizza and Skyline chili as I possibly can. Such ambrosia is only available to me when I travel.

I have been reading the umpireschool.com message board, on which I can interact with students. I’ve learned that about a hundred prospective umps will be attending, including exactly one woman. The students hail from all over the country plus Canada; I will likely be able to meet a few other early arrivals on Tuesday night, as some of us are arranging to watch the Sugar Bowl together.

Now, the question on many of your minds might be, how will a 34-year-old physics teacher who hasn’t played organized baseball in twenty years fit in? [2] Interestingly, someone other than the Nachoman hesitantly asked about the ages of attendees. Those who responded were all 19 or 20. That doesn’t mean that everyone is that age… I chose not to respond to that question, preferring my classmates to infer my geriatric nature for themselves.

The whole situation is an eerie role reversal from my graduate school experience. I jumped into Northwestern’s mechanical engineering graduate program right after college. At 21 I was the youngest of a mostly 22-25 year old class. But then there was Bill… Bill was 34, entering grad school after a career as an engineer on a nuclear submarine. We whippersnappers got along very well with Bill, even though had some mind-boggling old man traits. [3] When my friends would get together to do our course work, Bill was always a step behind. He’d catch up with us eventually, but he just didn’t think fast enough. “Wait, wait… can you explain that to me again? I lost you back there,” he’d say. On many occasions, he felt moved to sheepishly remind us that he *used* to work as well and quickly as the rest of us, but that he’s been away from science for too long, that his fundamental math and problem solving skills had eroded. We felt sorry for him, and we always helped him out… but I have to say that a good way to test the mettle of a prospective physics teacher might be to make him or her attend problem solving sessions with Bill.

So this time, I will be the old man – without Bill’s colorful and endearing Navy anecdotes, of course. More to the point, while Bill once had been capable of high-level physics, I have *never* been capable of playing baseball beyond high school junior varsity. Will that matter? Possibly not… perhaps my past experience listening to the obnoxious complaining of spoiled parents in Chicago and Boca Raton will be of more use than baseball expertise. That said, I don’t think it will be long before my relative baseball incompetence will be exposed. We’ll see…

[1] Meaning, playing gin rummy with Burrito Girl for an hour while waiting for I-65 to start moving

[2] Reply hazy, try again

[3] For example, he was married. Weird.

I've Been Cybersquatted!

This is rather freaky...

I woke up before anyone else this morning, and so I took to my computer. The gentleman filling in for my AP physics classes this trimester, Mr. Chat Hull, had sent out a Decemberween email referencing his blog at chathull.wordpress.com. I thought about how I named my blog, my window to the universe, after my theme name rather than my actual name. This was a deliberate choice, but an admittedly strange choice.

Now, I know from google that there are several notable Greg Jacobses out there, including a country singer, a minor league baseball player, and the author of Hell on Wheels: A Tour Stories Compilation. So I wouldn’t have been surprised had my trip to gregjacobs.com turned up albums for sale, batting statistics, or links to tattoo parlors(?).

Instead, I got a cybersquatter site. Someone unrelated to any of us “real” Greg Jacobses acquired the domain name and put up an ad site. How do I know he’s just a squatter? Aside from the vacuous ads, try clicking at the bottom where it says “why am I seeing this site?” You will get a form with which to email the site owner with subject line “inquiring about the domain gregjacobs.com.” In other words, the site author knows dang well that he’s squatting.

I have two questions for my readers (yes, both of you):

1. Just out of interest, have any of you ever been cybersquatted? Check it out! Post a comment if you have!

2. Not that I have much desire to own gregjacobs.com, but it’s the principle of the thing… anyone know how to evict a squatter, other than hiring the A-team?

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, when the lights of suburbia illuminated Santa

I read regularly in Physics Today and other sciencey publications about political advocacy against light polution. The premise is, as ever more of civilization becomes lit with 1000 watt sodium bulbs, ever more people lose the ability to see the night sky as our ancestors saw it. They then spout lofty prose about the inspiration available in the stars. They also are none too pleased that paid professional astronomers like them have to go ever farther from civilization to build their observatories.[1] I kind of support their cause in spirit... but my own feeling about such causes is that if I were to turn myself into a political advocate, there are about 3200 other issues that are of more importance to humankind that I should start with.

At the home of the Nachoman, in middle-of-nowhere, Virginia, the light pollution is minimal. Though the lights of the Sheetz gas station four miles down the road obscure the view of the most southern sky, mainly our sky at night is dark. [2] In fact, we observed the aurora borealis a couple of years ago.

Burrito Girl [3] and I have trained our four-year-old Nachoboy not to wake us up ungodly early in the morning. Though he occasionally does wake up before dawn, he doesn't bug us then. No, not because the Nachoboy can tell time... because he knows that he is supposed to stay in bed until morning. Morning is defined by the sky -- if it's still dark, it ain't morning yet. (This technique is a bit less useful in the summertime, but in the summer when I don't teach I'm less disturbed by being sat upon at 5:30.)

So perhaps you might be seeing the upcoming punchline...

We are traveling for Decemberween, visiting family in large cities. On Christmas Eve, we put the Nachoboy to bed at my mother-in-law's house in Munster, Indiana, near Chicago. He was so excited in anticipation of Santa's deliveries that he didn't fall asleep until 11:00. He woke up at 4:30, jumped on me, and declared it morning. "Huh?" Well, the sky was quite bright, owing to the general bright haze over northwest Indiana, and assisted by the full moon. Bright sky = morning, I guess, especially for a four-year-old on Christmas day.

Merry Christmas to all, but Umpire School can't start soon enough.

[1] For example, Charlottesville's McCormick Observatory, once the home of the largest telescope of the world and once one of the greatest worldwide contributers to astronomy, now sits on a hill above Scott Stadium, the well-lit main sports venue for the University of Virginia.

[2] Except for the stars and the moon, of course, when they're out.

[3] Burrito Girl is the Nachoman's wife and sidekick.

College Football as American Cultural Anthropology

You may recall the Nachoman’s zingers aimed at college football journalists. I particularly took the Sporting News's Matt Hayes to task for his lack of substantive analysis – his columns rarely rise above formulaic BCS ranting. The teacher in me recognizes that the right to call out journalistic stupidity comes hand-in-hand with the obligation to compliment journalistic virtuosity. So where do you go to find a well-written, insightful, and whine-free college football column?

Check out Stewart Mandel of SI.com.[1] In season, Mr. Mandel posts to a sort-of-blog throughout the day on Saturday. These posts discuss interesting aspects of the (wow) actual games that are actually going on. He usually focuses on one major matchup, often one that he personally attends.[2] As for the BCS – well, he doesn’t complain about the flaws in the system, he just discusses the bowl ramifications of game results. What a welcome relief his writing is.

I was moved to praise Mr. Mandel when I read his bowl preview today. One line that caught my eye involved his Papajohns.com Bowl preview… the game pits Cincinnati against Southern Miss:

The Bearcats' slide to Birmingham has to be insulting on two fronts: a) They're a BCS-conference team playing on Dec. 22.; and b) Any rightful Cincinnatian prefers LaRosa's to Papa Johns.

[Okay, Nachoman… you like this guy just because he makes Cincinnati references that you get, and that no one else understands. Whoop-de-do, he makes you feel like a special insider. It sure helps that he worked at the Cincinnati Enquirer for a while. But no one else gives a fig!]

Now, now, let me explain… sure, I enjoyed the insider Cincinnati reference. But, I’ve seen Mr. Mandel make inside jokes about other parochial cities and their traditions. He, probably above all other college football writers, recognizes the regional nature of college football. Most of the country might not care about the University of Oregon now that they’re out of the championship picture, but in Eugene, the football team is still the biggest thing happening. The students and the community didn’t abandon their team because they went 8-4. Mr. Mandel writes for a national audience, but he tries to convey a sense of the local flavor that infuses the sport.

He makes his point with a wry, mildly sarcastic comment about the Sugar Bowl:

What a sight it's going to be. In front of nearly 80,000 spectators, Hawaii's players will take to the field and perform the "ha'a," a Hawaiian war chant that serves as their pregame ritual. Confused Georgia fans will presumably respond with their traditional, "Hunker down, you hairy Dawgs." The BCS -- a cultural melting pot.

Sure, Mr. Mandel is making some fun of Georgia… but the deeper point is dead-on. This is college football: not the nationally uniform, salary capped NFL, but weekly matchups of diverse schools with unique cultures. I’m glad there is at least one national writer who can give his readers insight into this special American anthropology.

[1] SI here represents Sports Illustrated, not the more interesting and better respected Skeptical Inquirer, available in the William White Library at Woodberry Forest.

[2] In fact, most of the posts to his blog are written from a stadium press box.

Mr. Easterbrook, They Use Bookbags!

Let no one doubt that Gregg Easterbrook’s “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” NFL column is a primary influence upon “Nachoman’s Baseball.” TMQ is a Brookings Fellow and an editor for the Atlantic Monthly and the New Republic… and he’s a leading national football writer. What’s not to like?

That doesn’t mean that TMQ doesn’t get some things wrong, occasionally. I was moved to write in response to this note in Tuesday’s column regarding a cheerleader character in NBC’s Friday Night Lights:

Last season, Lyla Garrity… was working on her college apps and otherwise acting like a senior, but she once again is strolling the halls of Dillon High, textbooks pressed against her bosom. High school girls usually carry textbooks and binders in the up position, against their chests; high school boys usually arry textbooks and binders in the down position, on their hips. If you have a theory on why this is so, propose it...

But his fundamental assumption is incorrect! Here’s what I wrote:

Mr. Morning-Quarterback,

Regarding book carrying -- the FNL writers, and writers of seemingly every other show featuring high school students[1], get it completely wrong. Apparently they've never actually visited a high school...

I teach physics at Woodberry Forest School, a boarding school for boys. I don't believe I have *ever* observed a student carrying his books on the hip. Last week I visited Oak Ridge (Tennessee) High School (where awesome AP Physics teacher Peggy Bertrand is preparing a team for the USIYPT, a national physics debate tournament) – even in the co-ed public school with crowded, locker-rimmed hallways, I observed no one of either gender carrying their books as television portrays. Why not? They all use bookbags, of course! Any other method becomes quite impossible, considering the sheer (literal, not necessarily figurative) weight of the typical student’s course load. In fact, when Peggy designed her new physics lab, she included bins underneath the lab tables for bookbags, solving a major tripping problem. Ask Spencer[2] about this if you disbelieve me.

So the question becomes, why do Hollywood writers perpetuate this mythical book-carrying method? My only thought is that it’s the same underlying reason for so many television myths… it makes the girls seem more vulnerable, the boys more macho.

Am I wrong? What’s the deep sociological explanation for television’s conceit? Upon even more reflection, I’m wondering if TV writers portray book-carrying in this manner simply because TV has always done so. It’s kind of like how “aliens” all look the same and travel in flying saucers – because TV teaches us that that’s what aliens look like.

[1] Including Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Cosby Show, which I think both used stereotypical book-carrying

[2] “The Official 14-Year Old of TMQ”

The Nachoman in Mathemagic Land

I emphasize repeatedly to my students that physics is not magic – the natural world obeys straightforward rules whose effects occasionally boggle the mind. But once a year, I choose to do a “magic trick,” and I let the class propose all kinds of crazy explanations for what turns out to be a simple but counterintuitive bit of mathematics.

Here’s the trick, and you can try it at home: I have each student imagine the results of 100 coin flips, writing down the resultant sequence of heads and tails (something like HTTHHHTHTHHTH and so on). Next, each student grabs a handful of pennies, and actually flips 100 coins, writing down the resultant sequence on the other side of the same paper. All the students hand in their papers: one side of each paper consists of a real, random sequence of coin flip results, the other side consists of fake flips. Though the student has identified for himself[1] which side is which, the sides are indistinguishable to me.

Except that I correctly identify the real coin flip sequence for the vast majority of the papers.

The students at first don’t believe that I can do it; very quickly, as I get the first five or six right, they start searching for the “trick.” Did I watch them carefully when they were writing? Did I pre-mark the paper? Did I have an accomplice, or a hidden video camera? No, no, and no. I just played an old Jedi mind trick.[2]

What’s counterintuitive about sequences of random events is how frequently a “run” occurs. It’s human nature to think that, if the last four flips have been heads, the next one probably will be tails. After all, getting five of the same outcome in a row is a rare event. If you flipped exactly five pennies, then they’d all come up the same way only about 6% of the time.

Thing is, we’re NOT flipping exactly five pennies. We’re flipping 100 pennies. And the more pennies flipped, the more likely it becomes that that we see 5 in a row. Sparing you the details, in 100 flips, it is 96% likely that there is, somewhere, a set of 5-in-a-row; it’s 79% likely that there is a set of 6-in-a-row.[3]

All I do, then, to figure out which is the real set of coin flips, is to look for the longest run. Chances are, the students won’t include a run of more than four of the same outcome in a row; chances are, the real flips will include a run of at least five. It’s amazing how well this works, and how much the trick can impress even a surly class of teenaged boys.

Uh, Nachoman, this is a sports column, not the nerd-of-the-month blog. Where’s the relevance?

I was just getting to that… really…

I have seen it suggested[4] that “streaky” shooting in basketball is nothing but an artifact of the behavior of random numbers. By the same logic I used in the coin flip trick, a basketball player who hits 50% of his 3-pointers should, over the course of a 250-attempt season, hit 6-in-a-row at least once. In fact, during the season there’s about a 10% chance that he hits 11-in-a-row.[5] Call it a hot streak if you want, but he’s still got a 50-50 chance of making the next one.

As for baseball, we can estimate the likelihood of long hitting streaks. Consider a .300 hitter with a long career spanning about 2500 games. With some basic assumptions like four at-bats per game, we can calculate about a 7% chance for this player to accomplish a 40-game hitting streak. Not much of a chance, eh? Well, consider that 48 players have played 2500 games in their careers, and 210 players have bested 2000 games. Our 7% estimate suggests that at least 3 and no more than 14 players own 40-game hitting streaks.

Sure enough, I checked it out – six players (all of whom played more than 2000 games) boast 40-game hitting streaks. Math works, folks.

And okay, I promise less math in my next post.


[1] I teach at a boys’ school – no political or grammatical statement is being made by the use of the masculine pronoun here.

[2] As described in “On the run: Unexpected outcomes of random events” by Mark P. Silverman et al, in the April 1999 issue of The Physics Teacher.

[3] And more than half the time, there will be a set of 7-in-a-row. Wow.

[4] Though, to my chagrin, I didn’t take the suggestion seriously enough at the time to write down the source of the suggestion

[5] …and the same likelihood that the player has a similar streak of misses.

Evidence of a Mitchell Report Cover-Up

This post actually has very little to do with the Mitchell Report itself, but (a) it was an astounding coincidence that the event discussed herein happened the very week that the Report was released, and (b) I figure that I can increase readership if I pretend to be talking about hot-button sports yak topics.

A yearly pre-Decemberween class activity that I’ve developed is an investigation of pseudoscience and urban legends. I present the students with a twenty statement true-false “quiz,” including things like “A duck’s quack can not echo” and “When a city’s professional football team plays a home game, wife beating incidences in that city rise dramatically.”[1] Rather than grade the quiz, I ask the students to choose a statement they think is true, and to check it out. Some of the statements are shown to be false with a quick link to snopes.com or straightdope.com; others require more detailed research, or are in fact true. The whole point is that after this exercise, my students are (hopefully) less inclined to believe everything that some guy in the pub tells them.

For years I included on the quiz the myth that Mountain Dew will shrink your[2] testicles. It was amazing how many of my students believed this one, and only because a friend had told them so.[3] But as steroids and baseball became increasingly linked, and especially once the famous commercial came out, I changed this entry on the quiz to “Taking steroids will shrink your testicles.” This claim draws strong interest from my class, probably since my students are all boys and mostly athletes.

This year Dennis, a particularly strong student, investigated this claim. He quickly found evidence from reliable sources, but he wanted to go further. Sure, he had quotations from prominent doctors and medical researchers that steroids can in fact shrink testicles; but he knew that a thorough investigation would include the biological evidence behind the researchers’ statements. He went looking for the physical or chemical mechanism behind testicle shrinkage. But here’s where the vast Mitchell Report Cover-Up kicked in.

Every site Dennis tried to use was blocked by a pornography filter.

[1] This latter statement is a classic example of a media frenzy based on pseudoscientific “research.” Back in the early 1990s, an idiot crunched the numbers of referrals to a D.C.-area battered women’s shelter. The shelter saw an average of about two women per day over one entire month; but on the one day that month that the Redskins played, the shelter admitted three women. Therefore, the idiot concluded (and major media outlets repeated), professional football causes a 50% increase in wife-beating. The Nachoman is not kidding – check it out.

[2] Sorry, not your personal testicles, especially if you don’t have any. I guess I should rephrase.

[3] This myth was so widespread that for a while a number of teenagers claimed to be using Mountain Dew as a contraceptive, as reported by the Wall Street Journal and addressed by Pepsico public relations officials. Really… google “Mountain Dew Contraceptive” to find a few gems on this topic, such as the Orange County, Florida Health Department responding to the frequently(!) asked question “If you drink Mountain Dew after sex, can you still get pregnant?”

Bobby Petrino and Professor Harold Hill

The NachoGrandpa fills the role of Assistant Nachoman in charge of observation of Sports Talk Radio. During his hour-long commute each morning and afternoon, he (willingly!) listens to local and national sports talk shows, and often relays the content to me.[1]

This week has been rather light in terms of true national sports news, defined as issues about actual games or championships to discuss. College basketball is on sort of a hiatus as the players prepare for their tutors to take their exams for them; college football is done until the Stuffonmycat.com bowl later this month. Even the NFL playoff picture is reasonably settled, except for a bunch of .500 teams who are fighting for the right to lose in the wild card round. So, what did sports yaks have to talk about?

Bobby Petrino’s departure from the Falcons saved the Nachograndpa from a week of ignorant steroids speculation.[2] The Nachograndpa complained to me that he couldn’t understand the big deal. He saw a (presumably) skilled professional accept a better offer from a competing company, admittedly an always awkward situation. “People might put forth moral or character or whatever issues here regarding Petrino’s behavior,” said the Nachograndpa, “but the main concern of the press seems to be, ‘He lied to me. Journalists must never be lied to.’ Nonsense.”

On one hand, I completely agree that lying to the national sports media ought to be at worst a misdemeanor, especially with regard to coaching changes. I continually hear journalists make mountains out of molehills when coaches carefully explain that they’re not considering leaving their current teams. No matter what the coach says, reporters will engage in irresponsible speculation. Though I don’t think it right, the Nachoman can at least understand the temptation to feed the media sharks baldfaced lies during contract negotiations.

The Nachograndpa and I have disagreed previously about the propriety of a sports figure abandoning his responsibilities in the middle of a campaign. He makes his argument by comparison to the working world of the typical salaried employee. Nachograndpa works as a computer systems analyst. If he were to receive an employment offer from a competing company, he would have every right to give a few weeks’ notice, and leave – in fact, upon finding out that he’d be gone soon, his firm might well say “get lost” without waiting the advance notice period. It would never occur to him, or to his employer, that he was “bailing” on the team. So, why shouldn’t Bobby Petrino take off as soon as he has a better offer in hand?

Having never worked as a typical salaried employee, I had trouble at first grasping Nachograndpa’s argument. I teach for a living – I can’t in good conscience just leave in mid-school-year, even if I got a better offer. (In fact, it would be rather unethical for a competing school even to make me a better offer mid-year.) Teaching, like coaching, is seasonal work. If I want to leave my current position, I am expected to do so during the offseason, and to give my employeer as much advance notice of my intentions as reasonable. Leaving mid-year would burden my school, my colleagues, and my students; not the least, it would seriously damage my prospects for future employment. A teacher who leaves mid-year had better have a good reason, such as becoming the next head coach of the New York Knicks.[3]

And so it is with a sports team. The principal complaint I heard in direction quotations from actual Atlanta Falcons players was one of hypocrisy. “Coach Petrino preached that we were family, that we should dedicate ourselves wholly to the success of the team and of our teammates. And then he left us with three games left to play. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about how we feel,” is my paraphrase of a typical player comment. Mr. Petrino’s crime was not lying to reporters. His transgression was signing an enormous contract to coach the Falcons; demanding that his Falcons adapt to his rules, game plans, and coaching style, including the entire family concept; then hopping the first train out of town.

All that said, Professor Harold Hill only could scam River City, Iowa, because so many townspeople were ignorant rubes; if Springfield couldn’t see the true nature of Lyle Lanley, well, then they deserved the decrepit monorail that they got. I can’t feel too sorry for Falcons owner Arthur Blank, whose judgment as an employer rivals that of the New York Knicks, Detroit Lions, or the University of Alabama.

[1] I guess Sports Talk Radio is the modern equivalent of the jungle drums: they’re very loud, ignore them at your peril… but you usually just wish they’d shut up.
[2] “Sources have told ESPN that Homer Simpson, backup to Daryl Strawberry on the 1992 Springfield Nuclear Power Plant league championship softball team, will be named in the Mitchell Report.”
[3] I hear they are taking applications. No skill required, intern fondling optional.

Thoughts On Sesame Street: Some Will Suggest That This Post Comes Twenty-some Years Too Late

[Editor’s Note: Burrito Girl gave me a Sesame Street DVD, featuring episodes from the 1970s, for Decemberween. The Nachoboy and I watched for a long time last night, inspiring me to update some Sesame Street thoughts I first posted in 2005.]

I’m through with Sesame Street.

The Nachoman grew up with the venerable PBS institution, of course. In fact, on occasion in college I and my friends would watch episodes of Sesame Street for fun, and this was well before I had a kid. I had a couple of tapes of classic 1970’s episodes, when the show was heavy with improv, when the scripts weren’t particularly preachy, when muppet man Jim Henson was still alive and creatively active. Some of the bits are so fun to watch: an adult would sit and talk to some kids and some muppets about, say, the letter B. The kids, though, would be trying to pull Ernie’s hair, or to hug Oscar the Grouch… and the bit would continue, as the actors and muppet controllers deftly steered around any distraction.

Then, in 1985, there was the Snuffle-Upagus Decision.

Mr. Upagus, as you may or may not remember, was Big Bird’s “imaginary” friend. Part of the show’s backstory was that Mr. Upagus was a real person, or at least a real woolly mammoth sort of thing. But, only the kids ever saw him; he would always go home a moment before an adult showed up.

Now, cultural philistine I may be, but it seems to me that English professors have a descriptive phrase for this literary device: it’s called a running gag. Even the Nachoman, when a mere Nachoboy of five years, recognized that Snuffy’s existence or nonexistence was being played for comic value. But some brilliant PBS wonks decided that Mr. Upagus’s plight sent the wrong message to children. Children must not feel that adults don’t believe them! It must be shown that the Children were right about Mr. Upagus’s existence all along! So, Snuffy became real.[1]

Then, there was the whole hideous fiasco about Bert and Ernie’s sexual orientation. A faction of idiot parents and activists bombarded PBS with complaints: it seemed to them that Bert and Ernie were gay. That’s funny, the sexual preference of two silly muppets hadn’t been particularly relevant to me when I was little Nachoboy, nor was it relevant to any other little kid friends who watched the show.

Now, if I were a PBS public relations person faced with such complaints, I would invite a contingent of these activists to the set of the show. I would bring them straight to Bert and Ernie, and I would invite the activists to conduct a thorough physical examination to see if they (the muppets) had any sexual organs with which to be gay, or even straight. If that exercise didn’t serve as a hot steamy bowl of sanity-flavored oatmeal, then I perversely might be tempted actually to out Bert and Ernie on a specially-created episode to be shipped to these activists on videotape.[2]

But, no, the PBS wonks decided to make Ernie and Bert sleep separately from then on, and to be sure that there were no more bathtub scenes involving both characters, caving to the anti-gay-muppet lobby.

And in 2005, for the icing on the cake, or at least the low-fat ranch dressing on the celery:

According to a new generation of parental watchdogs and activists, Cookie Monster is teaching children to be obese. So, PBS wonks have decided that Mr. Monster will from now on emphasize that cookies are only a “sometimes” food, and he will not gluttonously gobble cookies.

Huh. I note that when my very own Nachoboy was only two, he found Mr. Monster humorous in the extreme; the way the young Nachoboy imitated Cookie Monster was by growling while eating, even while eating cheerios or carrots. I never noticed any particular monster-inspired need on the boy’s part for cookies. Interestingly, this was the same point made by the parent of another two year old – Cookie Monster’s influence has been limited to silly growly gobbly noises at the dinner table. Real parents of two year olds are thankful for such influence, as sometimes we are happy that the kid is willing to eat anything at all.

[1] No one thought about the fact that Sesame Street was then sending the message that it’s not really okay to have an imaginary friend. I wonder how many poor kiddies suddenly were cruelly traumatized when their own imaginary friend failed to be recognized by adults.
[2] Now you see why the Nachoman is a physics teacher and not a public relations professional.

P.T. Barnum Was Right

First of all, some disclosure: I have written two books in Adams Media’s “Everything” series. The series is best described as a competitor to the “For Dummies” books.

As I whiled away an hour in a Knoxville, Tennessee Borders today, I perused the Everything Casino Gambling Book, 2nd edition. I especially enjoyed the author’s repeated, clear reminders that The House Always Wins. She warned readers about the seductiveness of the winning streak, and how streaks are to be expected in any random process. (More on this mathematical fact in a future post.) She stated emphatically in a highlighted box that there’s no sure fire way to win at games of chance, such as roulette, craps, bingo, keno, and slots.

But don’t forget to buy the Everything Craps Strategy Book, available at this and other fine bookstores. Its subtitle tells you to “Win big every time!”

The Whiny Nature of the American Sports Yak

(or, Why There’s No Point In Staging A College Football Playoff)

Ah, it’s that time of year. The traditional sounds from the radio both soothe and incite our passions, anticipation for the Big Day mounts… Although we all are happy and excited about the upcoming event, we are also a bit pissy, complaining that the event isn’t exactly like we want it to be. (For example, we didn’t want to see Aunt Bertha and her family, her kids terrorize the dog and double-dip their nachos. Why were they invited, anyway?) And we feel the same way every year.

I am, of course, talking about the BCS national championship game.

The whining seems to start earlier every year, to the extent that I now have only one criterion by which I judge a college football journalist. It’s called the Moaning Index: count every sentence devoted to criticism of the BCS,[1] and divide by the sentences devoted to analysis of games, players, conferences, or even coaches. Several years ago I cancelled my subscription to the Sporting News, in large part because their college football writer (Matt Hayes, I believe) had a Moaning Index well over 1.5.

I’m not going to defend the BCS as a perfect system for determining a national champion. Nor am I going to make you read my own proposal which would create a perfect system.[2] I merely ask for an end to whining in the press. The fact is, the BCS is far, far better than the “system” that came before it. Does anyone want to go back to the dark days in which, because of conference alliances and perceptions about which teams can bring lots of fans with disposable income, LSU would face Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl, while West Virginia would play TCU in the Poulon Weed Eater Bowl?[3] In his December 4 column, Tuesday Morning Quarterback detailed the arguments in favor of the BCS in far more detail and more eloquently than I ever could.

Yet, I know that my plea to end the whining is doomed. Sports yaks make their living off of controversy, so much so that it is their job to create controversy, even where none does or should exist. Let’s pretend, for the moment, that the NCAA did create a four-team playoff so as to settle the national title “on the field,” as so many yaks have demanded. Consider the likely media reaction:

Preseason news cycle: “They didn’t structure it right. There should be more teams invited. What if my alma mater ends up not being included?”
In-season news cycle: “If the season ended today, the playoff would exclude these worthy teams, including my alma mater.”
End-of-season news cycle: “Here’s the list of teams whose fans and coaches are complaining because they didn’t get into the playoff. The NCAA has got to expand its playoff format to be more inclusive, otherwise their championship is simply not fair.”

Oh, reader, you don’t think so? Just take a look at the other annual NCAA moan-fest, focused on the men’s basketball tournament. That tournament invites 64 teams, some of whom couldn’t even manage a winning record in their conference. Yet, every year, we hear the same venomous complaints from sports journalists, about how the selection process didn’t get it right, and how the tournament should be expanded. That’s right, I read at least 10 articles last year from major, ostensibly reputable sports news organizations calling vehemently for more “bubble” teams to be invited to the men’s basketball tournament. Now that’s what I call March Madness. I mean, why play the regular season at all? Let’s just invite everyone to a big ol’ tournament that will last all year, why don’t we. And while we’re at it, let’s make it double- or triple-elimination, just to be more “fair.”

[Slap]

Woah, sorry. Thanks, I needed that. I get a bit riled up when I contemplate the collective brainpower put into sports journalism in America.

I will close on a calmer note by suggesting that attempting to placate sports journalists and the sporting public is no more likely to be successful than the UN bargaining with North Korea.[4] Look at the evolution of both the college basketball and college football postseasons. With each incremental “improvement” designed to answer critics, ever more complaints from the sports yak world emerged. There’s no ending to this slippery slope. So why should college presidents bother to change a bowl system that provides substantial television interest and spectator support? The answer: they shouldn’t, no matter what the ignorant sports press might say.

[1] This category also includes complaints about the NCAA’s administration, use of replay, eligibility requirements, and other such staples
[2] In case you haven’t noticed, every sports journalist knows precisely how to fix college football. And their ideas are all completely different. Oh, if only the journalists were in charge, the world would be a better place.
[3] This was a real bowl. It was played on artificial turf.
[4] “We’ll give you money, subsidies, and concessions if you’ll end your nuclear program.” “Okay!” Then two years later, “We must have money, subsidies, and concessions if you want us to end our nuclear program,” with the previous bargain forgotten.

Umpire School, or What I Did Over My Winter Vacation

Remember when you were in grade school, and your first assignment every September was to write about What You Did Over Your Summer Vacation? I was always tempted to re-use the same essay each year. I mean, how would the teacher know the difference? I wasn’t convinced that most of my teachers actually read every kid’s entire essay, anyway.[1]

Well, I’m going to get that assignment again, twenty years later. This time, though, I’m going to have to describe what I did over my winter vacation. And I’m going to have a lot more interesting stuff to write about, to the extent that I don’t think I’ll be able to use my 1986 vintage “Band Camp Was Exciting and So Was The Week With Grandma” essay.

My employer is ponying up the time (and money) for me to attend the Harry Wendelstedt Umpire School in Daytona Beach this January. At first glance, one might think that I had just scored a perk on par with a congressman on a taxpayer-funded ski trip in the Swiss Alps.[2] But think again, please. The Wendelstedt school is no spa and resort. I will train rigorously with about a hundred or so other umpire wannabees, a small number of whom will be offered actual honest-to-goodness minor league jobs next summer. (An even smaller number will make the major leagues in 6-12 years.) To prepare their charges for the life of a professional umpire, Mr. Wendelstedt’s staff of instructors will work us hard. The schedule calls for a couple of hours of classroom instruction each morning, followed by a long day of on-field drills. Though (as far as I know) there won’t be any 5:00 a.m. crawling through mud, I expect umpire school to be closer to boot camp than to Club Med.

This trip comes courtesy of Woodberry Forest School’s generous sabbatical program. After our seventh year of hard labor, we are allowed to request a trimester off in order to rejuvenate ourselves according to a proposal we submit.[3] Though the headmaster found himself battling to keep a straight face when I suggested the umpire school trip, he nonetheless approved the idea. I suspect that he is curious about how a 34-year-old physics teacher with junior-varsity-level baseball skills will survive five weeks of serious umpire training. I’m rather curious myself. While the terms of the sabbatical merely require a report upon my return to school, I thought it would be more interesting to post some running commentary.

And that, folks, is What I’m Going To Do Over My Winter Vacation. Updates will be available regularly at this site.

[1] I do have experimental evidence: Once in about ninth grade, I turned in a three page paper, the second page of which contained nothing but the word “blerp” repeated ad nauseum in order to fill the page. I got an A.
[2] Researching methods of revitalizing the flagging American tourism industry, to the benefit of all citizens, especially the congressman’s mistresses.
[3] …but we are tricked into marrying Leah rather than Rachel so that we will be encouraged to work for another seven years.

History of Nachoman's Baseball

In 2005, the “Nachoman’s Baseball” internet column appeared for the first time (read the very first column via this link).

The column’s goal was to fill a still-vacant ecological niche. It’s possible to find excellent reporting about local teams and their games; it’s also possible to read well-written, nationally syndicated debate about players, themes, and other baseball gossip. That said, it is NOT easy to find a national column that covers specifics about the games themselves. “Nachoman’s Baseball” took some inspiration from Gregg Easterbrook’s “Tuesday Morning Quarterback,” in that the columns were long-winded, discussed details about games, and included the occasional interesting but irrelevant tangent.

Through the first few months of 2005 and 2006, the column was posted on a weekly basis; it tended to die out in mid-summer, as I found myself occupied with physics-related travel and football-related season preparation. In the 2007 season, I hardly posted at all. Instead, I wrote two books (The Everything Kids’ Football Book and The Everything Kids’ Baseball Book, 5th ed., both to be available in stores in early 2008). Despite this productivity, I missed writing the column.

Now, of course, it’s too late to write a true “Nachoman’s Baseball” column – baseball season is over, and the column’s primary mandate is to discuss the games themselves. But, now I actually have time to write. Woodberry Forest School, where I teach, has granted me a sabbatical, meaning that I don’t have to write a physics quiz or grade a problem set for three months. Freedom to write is mine, for the moment.

I thought it would be interesting to reformat “Nachoman’s Baseball” as a blog, at least for a while. For five weeks in January, I will be involved in a special offseason baseball endeavor (details to come in the next post). This blog will contain updates about my experience, along with other commentary about the general sports world as it occurs to me. Reader comments are encouraged; regular contributors will earn a nacho-related theme name!

Until I post again, feel free to relive classic columns at the nachoman's homepage.