From: palmer2@sscl.uwo.ca (The Econoclast)
Subject: SCDN Manifesto
Organization: The Economics Institute for Journalists
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 16:28:45 GMT

When I was a young kid, my family all loved baseball. We used to
listen to games on the radio much of the time and go to local little
league games all the time. I was never much good as a player , though.
I discovered at an early age that I found the records and basic stats
of players almost as interesting as the games themselves.

Later in life I found baseball games much less interesting. They were
great to turn on if was suffering from insomnia, but basically I
thought baseball was boring as a spectator sport.

When I reached my mid-thirties, I started playing recreational
softball. Again, I began to enjoy the game, but more for the fun and
the friends. Watching others play wasn't much fun. 

Several years later, I discovered Bill James and Sabremetrics. I was
hooked. I loved the intuitive ways that James and others tried to
solve tough statistical problems, such as interdependence,
simultaneity bias, and sampling bias. And I loved the way they
destroyed so many myths that I had never understood anyway. 

Meanwhile, I had gone to maybe twenty or thirty Major League games at
Exhibition Stadium in Toronto and at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Tiger
Stadium was pretty nice because we were close to the action no matter
where we sat. Exhibition Stadium was pretty bad for lots of reasons.
Since then, I've been to SkyDome three times, once with pretty good
tickets behind the Jays dugout, and twice we stayed in the hotel (no,
it wasn't me!). The hotel was fun, but Skydome was not. 

In other words, I've been to quite a few major league games, and so
far as I am concerned, they just aren't worth the price of admission, not
to mention the travel and other costs of seeing one. 

So when the AA London Tigers came to town, I started going to quite a
few of their games. I liked the hominess of the park, being able to
see the action from up close, and the near-zero travel costs. I even
bought season's tickets in 1990 and 1991. This past year I did sports
reporting, and I broadcast twenty of the games for a local radio station,
so I sat in the pressbox and didn't need the season's tickets.

After this long preamble, here's the punch line. I still don't enjoy
watching baseball nearly as much as I enjoy the analysis and
discussions of the game. I like being in the pressbox so I can argue
with the true (i.e. paid) mediots about why runs scored and RBIs are
worse indicators of players' production than OBP and SLG. I like being
in the pressbox so I get access to more stats than are available to
the public. And having a press pass to a Detroit game once was nice,
too, since the food and the stats provided at the major league level
far outweigh the disadvantage of being farther from the action.

To put it bluntly, I am a Stat Drunk Computer Nerd. (SDCN).
Unabashedly. I hate day games because the sun gets too hot. I hate
night games because the bugs come out and up here the temperature
drops precipitously in the spring. I am not a true fan who loves the
smell of the grass, the sun, the clear blue sky, and the sound of the
bat cracking, and all that other mumbo jumbo. But I love looking at
the stats and I love formulating, discussing, and even sometimes
testing hypotheses about baseball. 

And whether I like to watch baseball, whether I've ever been to a
game, whether I've ever played the game....those are all irrelevant
when it comes to asking whether the ideas or hypotheses I put forward
have any usefulness in understanding the game.

To those who feel sorry for me because I have my nose buried in the
stats, save your pity. I'm happy this way. And I've learned more about
the game from the stats and the discussions here than I have from
players and managers who vaguely talk about, "Well, Doc, I'm hitting
better now because I'm seeing the ball better." [As a mediot
impersonator I got/had to interview players and managers much of the
time during the past two seasons]. I once asked Gene Roof how he
taught players to see the ball better; he said,"Whats to teach? you
just tell them to see the ball, the same way you see a car or anything
else." I found that statement revealing in its emptiness. But it did
emphasize the importance of good vision, I guess. Big deal. Stat books
tell me lots more. You may feel differently; so be it.

If you want to feel sorry for me, feel sorry that our sorry excuse for
a local newspaper does NOT print any interesting stats for players at
any level. 

But don't tell me I don't know how to enjoy baseball. I do. My way.
And how I enjoy baseball has no bearing at all on the validity of my
arguments.


-- 

  Regards,

  John Palmer      London, Ontario     Voice: (519) 661-3533     FAX: 672-3185
  reply to palmer2@vaxr.sscl.uwo.ca     The Philistine Liberation Organization
  ============================================================================
  Doc Palmer, Stat Drunk Computer Nerd, and proud of it
  radio voice of the AA London Tigers
Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball