The (Statistical) National Pastime

      If you think baseball is a game of statistics, you haven’t seen anything yet. Sportvision, the folks who brought us the yellow first down line in football, and the pitch locator (the one with the crosshairs) in baseball, are busy in the off season installing their FieldFX camera system in major league ballparks. Up to four cameras will be located on the light standards along the first and third base lines.
      On every play, the cameras will report the position, movement, direction and speed of every player on the field. It will also track the flight of the ball. In fact, not just the flight, but the position, angle, speed and who knows what all at every instant.
      All of these will feed into a computer which will output things like “only 27% of the players in major league baseball could have made that play,” or “Joe seemed a little slow on that play; he was running at 15 miles per hour, but he generally averages 18 to 19 miles per hour on a play like that.”
      Although Golden Gloves will still be issued by a panel of coaches, at least for a few years, the selection will be second-guessed by statistics on the defensive play of every player in the league.
      Baseball statisticians are salivating at the prospects. Those of us who think that baseball commentators already talk too much may want to mute the TV.

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There Are Only Seven Jokes - Introduction

The statement “There are only seven jokes – all the rest are variations,” has been around for a long time, but no one ever seems to know what the original seven are. I think I have found the solution to the mystery. The answer is to be found in an article published in the New York Times on May 2, 1909. Entitled “New Jokes? There Are No New Jokes, There Is Only One Joke,” it goes on to say that all jokes are a distortion, and lists seven categories of distortion. Supposedly every joke will fit into one of the categories. I believe that repetition changed the seven categories into the seven jokes. Each of my next seven blogs will be devoted to exploring one of the categories. In addition, I shall attempt to give an example or two of jokes which I think fit the category. You must realize that this article appeared over one hundred years ago, so most of the jokes a...

By Today’s Standards Many of my Teachers Would be in Jail

I started school in a two-room building: grades 1 to 4 in one room; grades 5 to 8 in the other. One teacher in each room taught all four grades. I don’t remember first grade very well – the teacher left at the end of the year. I am pretty sure it was not my fault. Now keep in mind that reading the Bible every morning was the standard for all grades at that time. But my teacher in grades two to four went a little above and beyond the normal practice. As a member of a “plain” sect, she considered it her duty to lead the little heathens to Christianity. She offered a free Bible to all students who managed to memorize 20 verses. I memorized my verses – “Jesus saves” was my favorite because it was the shortest – and got my Bible with my twenty underlined in red. That would be illegal today (not the underlining), and rightly so. Teachers may not teach religion, although contrary to what many folks seem to think, students may bring their Bibles to school, read them, and pray their...

The First Snowfall of the Season

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Thoughts Before The Alarm Sounds

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