Slashdot Mirror
Rocket Science vs. Barry Bonds
Ray Radlein writes "How about a good old-fashioned Sports story? With its multitude of different statistical measures, baseball has always had the highest Geek Quotient of any major sport. Alpha Geeks of Baseball have included former relief pitcher Rob Murphy, who put his Computer Science degree to good use writing software to evaluate thoroughbred race horses, and Boston Red Sox ace and probable future Hall of Famer Curt Schilling, who not only runs a company that makes hex-based war games, but once got embroiled in an on-field feud due to Everquest. However, Baseball Geeks have a new hero to look up to: Jason Szuminski, who on Sunday became the first MIT graduate to pitch in a major league baseball game. His degree in Aerospace Engineering must have stood him in good stead as he observed the ballistic trajectory of a Barry Bonds fly ball which just barely stayed inside the Padres' new stadium."
All this talk about projectile motion is making me itch to play a game of grand theft auto
He's only doing a case study.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
One might say Bonds fought he law, and the law won.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
"But what's the bag going to look like?" Szuminski asked.
Methinks this guy has been watching a little too much Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
Oh well, at least he's a pitcher and not a catcher.
1. get killed by your friend in everquest
2. get back at him by hitting two home runs
3. take down the espn servers by linking it to slashdot
4. ???
5. profit!
The generation of Moneyball General Managers is here. Billy Beane, John DePodesta (Harvard), Theo Epstein (Yale) are paving the way for seamheads who know baseball and use statistical analysis to build their teams.
Now, there's hope for geeks with math and statistics degrees who want to break into baseball.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
"With its multitude of different statistical measures, baseball has always had the highest Geek Quotient of any major sport."
You might want to check out cricket, www.cricinfo.org and Wisden for some serious stats.
Not to mention that with all the offshoring to India there's a huge cricket loving geek population there. Baseball's only a fairly minor sport in world terms.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
Everquest players caught playing baseball... how tragic!
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
What's the mathematical symbol for steroids and how would you represent it in your equation?
There's no crying in math.
Slashdot... sports? You do realize that would involve getting up and moving right?
Slashdot sucks
I thought that cricket had the highest geek quotient out of all the sports, since you need some kind of technical degree to understand WTF is going on in the game.
Schilling is likely to make it to at least 40, at an average of 15 games per season if he stays healthy and plays with a winning team (he managed four 15 or more win seasons and one 14-win season in *Philadelphia* for heaven's sake), giving him about 209 wins over 20 seasons. I'd say he's on the cusp, given how poor some of those Philadelphia teams were, and how good his first two seasons with Arizona were.
The guy that Schilling played everquest with, Doug Glanville has got to be the reigning baseball alpha geek. Check out the articles he wrote for espn.com. I am sure they are going to hire him when he decides to hang up cleats. Stark loves to interview him.
5 1 7 8
Trip to africa - http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=17308
Astronomy club - http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=17719
<high-level position here>
<name of stupid small company here>
You simply must hit the williard into some cilium with your fracaman. And remeber: it doesn't matter who wins. It matters who wins three times in a row. Tally ho!
Oh, like that episode of the Simpsons where the hammock makes clones of Homer?
after failing to connect for the fifth straight game
Then get a new dial-up service!
although he was intentionally walked
They're taking that Petco thing too far.
and scored in the five-run eighth inning
Look, let's keep that kinda thing private... but scored with who?
"I'd like to do it at home," said Bonds
<butt-head>heh-heh heh-heh, he said "do it"</butt-head>
got Bonds to fly out to left
Cool! Like what the flying chair everybody thought the Segway was going to be?
San Diego's bullpen fell apart in the eighth
They obviously didn't engineer that structure very well.
San Diego manager Bruce Bochy had his only lefty reliever
Sounds like my adolescence.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
- And Schilling's a much better pitcher than Ryan.
I disagree. Ryan is better than Schilling lifetime in many important statistics like ERA and SO. I could see a claim that Schilling at his best was as good as Ryan at his best (although Ryan's 1.69 ERA season of '81 is hard to beat), but you can't credibly claim that Schilling is a much better pitcher than Ryan.Of course, these statistics aside, Ryan's No Hitter record combined with his longevity near the top make him a shoe-in for the HOF, things that Schilling will find hard to match. Ryan was a shoe-in, though, so Schilling could get in, too.
What is this Sports of which you speak?
SIGLOST && SIGUNUSED && SIGQUIT
How about Curt Schilling himself, who carries a powerbook on the road and has quicktime clips and a database of hundreds of batters?
Reportedly he also spent time on a famous red sox chat board the night before he signed with the sox, trying to make up his mind whether he should sign...and convince everyone he really was Curt Schilling(he managed to, after instantly returning questions on his career stats that, according to friends, would have taken a "good baseball researcher" at least 5-10 minutes to find).
He finished up VERY late that night(well, morning) by saying essentially "Thanks, I've decided to sign with the sox, I've always heard red sox fans were the most knowledgeable, you guys have proved it". A few hours later(heh) at the press conference, John Henry(who also logged in at one point) joked(along the lines of) "and in Curt's contract is a clause prohibiting him from staying up past midnight talking on internet chat boards the day before a game."
Please help metamoderate.
It was invented to keep the team in the field from getting two outs whenever the bases were loaded or there were men on 1st and 2nd and the batter popped up in the infield (or shallow outfield, umpire's disgression).
The reasoning was: the runners had no chance to get out of a double play. The fielder could choose to catch the ball (and double up the runner) or drop the ball (and make an easy double play). The runner was damned if he ran to break up the DP or damned if stayed on base to keep from getting doubled up. Now the team in the field just gets one (automatic) out.
But I guess you probably weren't serious.
No sig for you.
I certainly agree that football involves a lot more thinking and planning than people usually credit.
If you're up at, like, 3:00 AM or so during football season, ESPN has a show called Edge NFL Matchup, hosted by Suzy Kolber, Ron Jaworski, and, er, some other guy whose name has just flown out of my head. A lot of the show is stock football stuff, but every so often they will break down not just the execution of plays, but their design -- and it can be quite fascinating.
I remember watching them explain one play where they went over every last bit of it for like five minutes or so, explaining what every player on offense was doing, and what the expected defensive reactions would be; and the upshot of it was a play where, basically, every last player was involved in some specific set of actions designed solely for the purpose of getting the right cornerback to turn his hips slightly towards the inside of the field at just the wrong moment, so that the receiver could break off his move. It was so intricate, so meticulously planned, and so well explained, that I can't imagine any True Geek not getting a rush out of it. Their explanation, with the film, and the diagrams and arrows they superimposed, was like single-stepping through an elegant piece of code in a good debugging environment, watching all the variables change just so as everything falls into place.