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Sunday, October 09, 2005 |
In A Distant Land: Visions Of Tracy
As Jon recently noted, the hagiographies of Jim Tracy have been flying pretty thick through the air, mostly from guys who have significant cases of amnesia. I commend to you the Super Friends story of Original Sin, and remind everyone to check their capes at the Justice League of America cloakroom.
Comments:
The sabre vs. whatever culture war in baseball is kinda fascinating to me, since football and basketball people already use stat analysis to plan out their weekly strategies and player evaluation. The way Larry Brown schemed the Pistons against a vastly superior Spurs team, in order to generate low-risk turnover ratios, reflects that. Starting with Bill Parcells, pro football teams break down every signal play and work out statistical models to figure out what they should do given a myriad of situations. Now with sites like football outsiders.com and 82games.com, we're starting to get that kind of management access, which a lot of us have hungered for.
In that regard, I don't understand why baseball people fight it so much. The weirdest thing is that the same journos who see this as threatening for baseball, celebrate football people for using such probabilistic argumentations. What they find inhumane in one sport, they vaunt as good old Yankee ingenuity.
This isn't talked about much, but my hunc is htat journo's greatest fear -- socioculturally, economically, philosophically -- is that baseball will become football to them. The irony is that baseball is always becoming like football in some form or another, though 5-10 years behind the curve. But journos need one to balance the other. Football must remain the anti-baseball, a mechanistic complex reflecting ultimate cooperation. Baseball must remain the anti-football, the celebration of ego and individuality influencing the fate of many.
In that regard, I don't understand why baseball people fight it so much. The weirdest thing is that the same journos who see this as threatening for baseball, celebrate football people for using such probabilistic argumentations. What they find inhumane in one sport, they vaunt as good old Yankee ingenuity.
This isn't talked about much, but my hunc is htat journo's greatest fear -- socioculturally, economically, philosophically -- is that baseball will become football to them. The irony is that baseball is always becoming like football in some form or another, though 5-10 years behind the curve. But journos need one to balance the other. Football must remain the anti-baseball, a mechanistic complex reflecting ultimate cooperation. Baseball must remain the anti-football, the celebration of ego and individuality influencing the fate of many.
# posted by 
: 10/11/2005 12:14:00 AM
: 10/11/2005 12:14:00 AMNewer› ‹Older
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