From: genetic+@pitt.edu (Dr. Dave)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: season over for SDCNs?
Date: 7 Oct 92 14:47:23 GMT
Organization: Department of Industrial Engineering

There hasn't been enough snow in Sudbury yet this year to build snow men,
so Roger Maynard builds some straw men instead, thus:

Thus spake 91287041@ramsey.cs.laurentian.ca (Roger Maynard):

>I guess now that the regular season is over all the stathead types
>are going to be turning their attentions elsewhere.  It is the larger
>sample size of the regular season, after all, which determines the
>"best" teams in baseball.  As we have been told, time and time again,
>the short series tells us only which team is the "luckiest" and that
>is surely nothing to get worked up over is it? 

Hee hee.

I hereby nominate Roger Maynard for the 1992 MLB Brass Balls award, in 
honor of his insistence yet once again, despite certain knowledge to the
contrary, that none of the "stathead types" on the net are really baseball
fans.  Do I hear a second?

>Are the 4 million fans that have paid to see the Jays all fools to 
>want to see the Jays go all the way this year?  

No.

>Shouldn't they just
>be satisfied to know that over the long haul their team tied for the
>overall best record in the AL?  

No, but it's a start.

>If the Jays should get "lucky" and
>actually win this year wouldn't the Canadian population just be
>displaying their lack of knowledge of the essence of baseball if they
>were to go nuts?  

No more so than somebody who "just gets lucky" and wins the lottery.

>The big party should have happened after they won the
>mini-pennant right?  Short series doesn't prove nothing does it?  

It proves who won.  I can sense your ears closing as I say this (for the
thirty-seventh time), but all of us root for our teams to win.  Passionately.
Fervently.  We just lack the mental short-circuit that makes you think that
winning is empty if you aren't "the best".

>Frank Thomas won't be there.  Roger Clemens won't neither.

A pity, true, but we'll cope somehow.

>Well guys, if the Blue Jays do go all the way and beat Atlanta and win
>the whole thing and you still don't think that they are the "best" team
>in baseball then who gives a rat's ass who the "best" team in baseball 
>is?

General managers?  Owners?  People placing bets for next year?  People who
can grasp two concepts at the same time?

The crowning irony, of course, is that the "stathead types" get labelled
"arrogant" left and right, but would never presume to such world-class 
arrogance as Roger here (and Gary Blickhan of recent hilarious memory, and 
many many others over the years) casually embraces in denying that The Other
Guys even *like* real baseball enough to care who wins the World Series.  It
doesn't matter how many times somebody patiently(*) explains to them that
98% of the statheads here were originally ordinary die-hard baseball fans 
just like the clutch&chokers, who eventually became convinced that baseball
statistics give us a way of learning more and better details about how the
game works.  It doesn't matter how many games Sherri sits freezing through
in the icy rain at Three Rivers Bowl-a-Rama with 3000 other maniacs, cheering
on her pathetic Pirates in 1986.  It doesn't matter how far Neal Traven goes
out of his way just to visit the Field of Dreams, or to catch games in as
many different stadia as he can.  It doesn't matter how many games of baseball
Gary Huckabay actually plays, at a level most of us can only dream of reaching.
No, Roger knows best, tucked in his snug little office somewhere, blithely
rewriting the lives of everyone concerned just to match the cozy view he's
painted for himself on the inside of his blinders.

Go back to sleep, Roger.  You can dream reality however you want it to be,
and the rest of us won't mind at all.
_______________________________________
(*)patiently at first; after the ninth or tenth time explaining how stupid
these comments are, tempers get frayed, somebody posts something personal
like this, and all the finger-pointers pop out of the woodwork.  Why is it
that Joe Anybody can accuse me of being both incompetent in my profession
and not really a baseball fan without fear of censure, but I can't point out
elementary logic mistakes or poor understanding of probability without being
immediately labelled an ogre?

>Joe Carter for MVP because 'cause he is a winner!
>Jack Morris for CY 'cause he is a winner!

Don't forget Alfredo...


-- 
       David Tate        |"Out of the dugout endlessly swinging,
 dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu | Out of the manager's throat, the sound fundamentals,
 Prof. of Story Problems | Out of the six-month season..."            
 Member ORSA, TIMS, SABR | 	Walt "Lefty" Whitman
Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball