Category Archives: Baseball

APOPHENIA AND SPORTS JOURNALISM.

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Philip

APOPHENIA AND SPORTS JOURNALISM. In yesterday’s cartoon, the first character says: “A weighted random number generator just produced a new batch of numbers.” The other character replies: “Let’s use them to build narratives.” The caption at the bottom says: “ALL … Continue reading →

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APOPHENIA—THE CARTOON.

Posted on October 8, 2011 by Philip

APOPHENIA—THE CARTOON. I posted here on September 25 about apophenia, and I have since been encountering discussions of the phenomenon although they don’t use the new word. Nate Silver even linked to this cartoon which dramatizes the phenomenon. The site … Continue reading →

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THE STORY OF A LONG SEASON.

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Philip

THE STORY OF A LONG SEASON. The use of statistics represented by MONEYBALL changed sports journalism as much as it did baseball on the field. There was a flood of baseball writing by newcomers writing from a different point of … Continue reading →

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WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE BASEBALL MOVIE?

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Philip

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE BASEBALL MOVIE? This article in Salon finds a consensus choice—somewhat surprisingly because there are a lot of good ones. The winner is Bull Durham. I was pleased to see a few mentions of Major League and surprised … Continue reading →

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MONEYBALL AND STORYTELLING.

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Philip

MONEYBALL AND STORYTELLING. I have posted several times on MONEYBALL, the book by Michael Lewis. The movie of MONEYBALL has now opened to generally favorable reviews. The reviewers who seem to be the harshest critics are sportswriters, who point out … Continue reading →

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POETRY AND BASEBALL.

Posted on August 14, 2011 by Philip

POETRY AND BASEBALL. Nick said that when he made his post he had in mind this post (@morncale on Twitter): “Barrold L. Bonds’ defunct who used to crush a maplehit-heavy homer and break onetwothreefourfive recordsjustlikethat Barry OPS’d 1.4 and what … Continue reading →

Posted in Baseball, Literature, Sports | 1 Comment

POETRY AND BASEBALL.

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Philip

LITERATURE AND BASEBALL. Tony Phillips and Mike Marshall, who had long distinguished careers in major league baseball (they faced each other in the 1988 World Series), got into a fight in an independent league game where Phillips is still playing … Continue reading →

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ANOTHER THREE-BALL BASE ON BALLS!

Posted on July 16, 2011 by Philip

ANOTHER THREE-BALL BASE ON BALLS! When I began posting about everybody in a major league baseball game losing track of the pitch count, I thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of occurrence. I posted here when it happened to Seattle … Continue reading →

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BREW MORE COFFEE AGAIN.

Posted on July 3, 2011 by Philip

BREW MORE COFFEE AGAIN. I have posted before (see here) about amazing occurrences when everybody on a baseball field—on both sides—forgot what the pitch count was. I made the analogy to the financial crisis where a lot of the problems … Continue reading →

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VEECK AS IN BEAK.

Posted on June 19, 2011 by Philip

VEECK AS IN BEAK. Bill Veeck presided over the only White Sox pennant in over 80 years. He brought back Minnie Minoso. They were contenders. And yet my father every so often would go through a stretch of mispronouncing Bill … Continue reading →

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