In The Big Inning...

Why is it that sports broadcasting is dominated by former players? Honestly, it doesn't make any sense, at least not from the perspective of trying to give the best commentary to viewers. I've ranted and raved about the stupidity of the ESPN football broadcast team (and my Redskins fandom does not prevent me from seeing the Joe Theismann is an idiot, although Paul Maguire is worse. I do not know if Maguire is a formal player, but he's so unbelievably stupid that I can't imagine he's not. I just looked: He was.) but it's not just them. They're just one of the best examples of inept announcers.

I'm not saying that ex-players shouldn't announce at all. But it's pretty clear that they aren't employed due to their announcing skill. Rather, many former players seem to have been hired as announcers because of their names. Isn't it strange that most of the big market announcers are players that were really good, or at least moderately popular? In baseball, it's Joe Morgan, Rob Dibble, Jeff Brantley. In football, it's guys like Theismann. Of course, there are some relatively unknown players that become announcers, but that's because they're actually good announcers. Harold Reynolds is a good example of this. In general, it's pretty safe to say that the better the player, the worse announcer they make.

Why shouldn't players be announcers? Because most of them are delusional about their playing days. They're (usually) not delusional about how good they are, but rather WHY they were that good. One of the great things about the technology we have these days is how it's allowed us to store and analyze data. With the internet, it's become possible for many different people to access statistical data, and understand some of the details about these sports really work.

A fantastic example of this is the "Moneyball" phenomenon. "Moneyball" is an outstanding book that dissects how the Oakland A's, with their tightly constrained budget, are able to compete, year-in, year-out, with teams that have two or three times the money available. One of their tools is detailed statistical analysis. The book describes, in detail, how Billy Beane, the GM of the team, figured out how to beat an unfair game. He determined that data on college pitchers was more useful than high school pitchers. He determined the value of players that took a lot of pitcher per at-bat. And, of course, he popularized the use of on-base percentage as an important statistic. Billy Beane actually used to be a professional baseball player. (However, he wasn't that good, which might be a reason why he's an effective analyst.) But the central message of his book was that you need intelligent analysis to determine what qualities are undervalued in the market if you're on a constrained budget. Pretty simple concept, actually, but hard to execute.

"Moneyball" is a compelling book, but it doesn't have all the answers. The A's still haven't won the World Series, so clearly it's not perfect. (Beane chalks that up to the randomness inherent in playing a short playoff series.) But what's amusing to watch the backlash against "Moneyball". Many pundits claimed that Beane's success was really just due to him having three fantastic pitchers. This year, he traded two of them, and they're still in the playoff race. It's almost like people are itching to see him fail.

Why do some people detest "Moneyball" so much? Well, the other month I was listening to a baseball show on the radio, and Larry Bowa was on. He's a part-time analyst for Baseball Tonight, and also a former All-Star and, more recently, a former Phillies manager. He was ranting against "Moneyball", and was quite incoherent. He talked about how on-base percentage was B.S., and how winning in the playoffs wasn't randomness. He poo-poo'ed the importance of taking walks, and just generally sounded pissed off that such a thing was ever suggested. A caller then asked him if he had ever read the book, and he replied that no, he hadn't. He said that he would never waste his time reading a book that claimed all of the things it claimed. The caller tore Bowa apart, telling him how the book was really about determining which commodities were undervalued in the market and exploiting those inefficiencies. Bowa continued, saying "the playoffs aren't about luck", and "who cares about taking walks?" He basically sounded like a bitter idiot.

So why was Bowa so pissed off? Why do Theismann and Maguire spout so much nonsense about "being tough", and blitzing all the time? Why does Tim McCarver rave about Derek Jeter during the playoffs every single chance he gets? Because it all feeds into this idea that great players have "something special" about them. This special thing is unquantifiable, and lives deep down in their souls. It can't be described by something as pedestrian as statistics. Really, it's self-aggrandizement, although I don't think it's on a conscious level.

With fantasy sports, a hobby that pretty much is based solely on statistical analysis, becoming more and more popular, the rift seems to be growing. But it's a tough line to tread. Lately, the NFL has been showing screens on its "top fantasy performer" during the games, and once in a while you'll hear an announcer snap and talk about how fantasy sports is completely unrelated to the real thing. (The particular example I saw today involved one announcer mentioning that fantasy owner had ranked a certain wide receiver pretty highly during their "drafts", and then he wondered if maybe that should have been a sign to the public that he was due to play well. The other announcer responded "no" in a quite disdainful manner.)

I'm certainly no professional, but I've played enough organized sports at various levels of competitiveness to understand the "code" that athletes seem to have. They like to believe that sports come down to willpower, spirit, and of course some talent. But the fact is that's it's some talent, and a significant amount of intelligence. Athletes don't want to believe that some nerd behind a keyboard might know a little more about the strategy of the game than they do, but it's slowly becoming that way. Teams that accept this, like the Boston Red Sox, who hired stat guru Bill James last year, will be able to succeed. Teams that hire Larry Bowa will not. (The Phillies canned him last year - lo and behold, they're making a playoff run this year. Of course, that might have nothing to do with stats, and more to do with the fact that he's an asshole.)

I guess ultimately, I'm not a big fan of those who delude themselves, but usually it's rather harmless. But announcer stupidity extends beyond just annoying me by stating stupid platitudes. In the case of the Cy Young award, deserving athletes get slighted because of moronic pundits. The Cy Young award is supposed to go the best pitcher in each league. There are a number of good statistics that can be used to determine who the best pitcher is: Earned Run Average (ERA), Walks and Hits Per Innings Pitched (WHIP), Strikeouts per 9 Innings (K/9), or what have you. But there's one statistic that's pretty poor for determining pitcher quality: Wins.

Seems pretty counter-intuitive, doesn't it? Shouldn't Wins measure how good a pitcher is at accomplishing his goal, namely, winning? Well, no. But it's that simplistic reasoning that leads Wins to be a huge factor in Cy Young voting, and it's a shame. The fact of the matter is that winning a baseball game depends on two things: How many runs your opponent scores, and how many runs your team scores. But here's the thing: Pitchers can only control how many runs the opponents score. (Let's ignore pitchers hitting for now.) That's what all these statistics measure.

This year is a good example of why the Wins argument is stupid. Chris Carpenter is having a fantastic season, and has a 2.71 ERA, with a 21-5 record. Roger Clemens is having an amazing season, with a 1.89 ERA, but only a 12-8 record. He's given up about 50 less hits than Carpenter. Is it his fault that his team is only scoring 3.57 runs per start, compared to St. Louis' 5.42 runs in Carpenter's starts? Of course not.

Why do people care about wins? Maybe it's just because the name of the stat is erroneous. It should be "Games Won In Pitcher's Starts". Good ol' GWIPS. Pundits wouldn't vote for a guy just because of something silly like GWIPS, would they? What kind of logic leads them to vote for the guy with more Wins, even though he clearly had the inferior pitching year? The same kind of logic that leads Larry Bowa to believe that "Moneyball" is crap. The common phrase is "good pitchers know how to win". How, exactly, does that work? Do the best pitchers somehow pitch better when the other team has scored more runs than their team is capable of scoring? Are they telepaths, so they know when to "bear down", because their team won't score any more? Maybe some pitchers are just such jackasses that their teammates refuse to score more runs for them to get them the win. Maybe the best pitchers are just so inspiring that they can guide a team to victory by sheer force of will. Of course, it's all crap, and that kind of thinking just feeds into the "superhuman athlete" mythos. And Poor Roger Clemens gets slighted. Of course, Clemens is precisely the kind of tough jock guy that wouldn't vote for himself in this situation anyways, so maybe it's all justified.

By the way, I do think that there's more to the analysis of sports and sports strategy than just armchair quarterbacking and managing. I do think that one can't quite understand the intricacies of certain sports unless one's played them. Furthermore, I'm confident that there are very deep sorts of analyses going on at the highest level, ones that I can't even understand. It's those details I'd like to hear about more from players. I want to know about the game within the game. I want to know what causes a shortstop to scoot two inches over to the right when a certain batter comes up to the plate. Those types of insights are valuable, and that's why you should have an ex-player sitting in the back of the broadcast booth, only offering little nuggets of wisdom when spoken to. And they should be wired up to electrodes and shocked whenever they utter some nonsense like "defense wins championships" or "he's a leader because he's a clutch hitter". (By the way, if the Yankees do manage to make the playoffs this year, expect to repeatedly hear about how Mariano Rivera is the greatest clutch closer ever, and ignoring him blowing the 2001 World Series Game 7, or the 2004 ALCS Game 4, or the first couple of games this year against the Red Sox. Here's the deal: He's a great pitcher. That's it. No better or worse in the clutch. Just like Jeter.)

Maybe the sports are worried about becoming too "wonky", and just want to appeal to the lowest common denominator intentionally: That wouldn't surprise me. At least, it allows me to be entertained by sites like Fire Joe Morgan and Tuesday Morning Quarterback, who basically exist to point out the stupidity of conventional sports wisdom. Eventually, we might go too far towards statistical analysis and lose the "soul" of the game", but as long as Cy Young voters still believe that Wins are everything, I think that's a long way off.

In case any of you wonder why I was never quite the ladies' man (and I doubt any of you are wondering), it may not surprise you that I have uttered to women on more than one occasion, "I'm all about efficiency, baby." And while I don't apply that philosophy to all aspects of my life (certainly not the illicit subjects I'm sure you're snickering about right now) (and yes, I know how people might extrapolate that statement and apply it to those subjects, but suffice it to say that I don't think I've ever said that phrase within 10 minutes of any state of undress), for some reason, inefficiency seriously bothers me.

Of course, simple slowness bothers everyone. No one likes getting stuck in traffic, or being on hold, or waiting at the DMV, or talking to people who fall asleep in the middle of sentences. But for some reason, I'm always optimizing, and often get disproportionately frustrated when I see small things that could be easily made more efficient, but aren't. If you're a dedicated "In The Big Inning..." reader (and, honestly, I don't have enough readers to group into "dedicated" and "undedicated" classes at this point, so the fact that you're reading this means that I consider you sufficiently dedicated, so go back and read what I'm talking about if you missed it), you might recall me complaining about waiting to get off of airlines, or other inefficiencies. I probably could write a book on the topic of little inefficiencies that really bother me, but that would be a monumental waste of time. Instead, I'll just waste time, but less of it, by complaining here. See, I'm even optimizing my time wasting!

The latest inefficiency-related pet peeve of mine regards being on hold and talking to automated systems. And I realize that automated phone systems themselves are a common complaint, but bear with me. Although, I will say that I'm impatient enough that as soon as I get a machine, I start punching "0", or if it's one of those completely moronic systems that only listens to your voice, I say "help" and "operator" over and over again until I get a live human. Really, you should try this system; it's quite effective.

But, back to my particular complaint. So, I'm at work, and realize that I need to call some customer service line. I dial, and lean back in my seat, ready to sit on hold. Then, before they let me do anything, I have to enter my phone number. Fine, I can do that. I sit forward, enter it in, and then wait on hold. After some silly amount of time waiting, a person finally comes on the phone. I'm all excited about talking to a real person, and what's the first thing they ask? My phone number. What a waste of time! Maybe people wouldn't be on hold so long if they didn't have to enter in their numbers twice! I realize that the first time is probably just to authenticate me and make sure I'm a customer, but I'm confident that technology has progressed enough that they can track my call and know who has been waiting. Hell, I've seen it done before. Even worse is when it's a credit card company and I have to enter in my credit card number: That's 6 more digits! Plus, usually I've already put my credit card away after entering it the first time: That's wasted movement.

I know, this seems like a stupid thing to complain about, and you're right, it is. I don't know why it bugs me so much. I've asked an operator or two why I have to tell them my info when I already entered it, but they never seem to have the answer. The stupider thing is that I almost definitely would spend that extra 1.5 seconds (accumulated 600 times over the previous year - remember I just moved and have therefore spent a lot of time on the phone with customer service) on something completely stupid, like watching "Big Brother 6" on TiVo, but at least it would be MY 1.5 seconds. Hey, remember, I said I'm all about efficiency, baby, not logic. What, that doesn't turn you on?

One thing that made OPNETWORK worse than it had to be was the fact that we had a minor flood in my house during the annual event, which was a couple weeks ago. I had never experienced the pleasure of flooding, but boy, was it a joy.

OPNETWORK is a grind. It's a week-long user conference that we put on for free for all of our customers. The entire company essentially shuts down for a month to put it on. Honestly, in the long run it's worth it to the company, but that doesn't make it any more fun to go through. For the few weeks before the actual event, we're all preparing classes and presentations. I swear, I've created more PowerPoint slides for OPNETWORK than I care to admit. Frankly, it's mind-numbing. We're also fixing up all the software, preparing demos and fixing bugs, since we usually try to release something interesting during or right after the conference.

The weekend before, we're downtown at the conference site (The Reagan Center) for approximately 20-30 hours. Then, during the conference, we have to get up early (7:30-8, which is not a big deal unless you normally get up at 10, like I do), and stay until at least 6, but often longer. Furthermore, I had to give a couple presentations, including a 4-hour class on Monday. I knew what I was doing, but it sure was draining talking for 4 hours straight.

So, it was within that context that I came home on Tuesday completely drained. I had actually played softball at 8 and 9 PM on Monday, after a weekend of moving computers around and setting things up, as well as getting little sleep and being on my feet the whole day. Yeah, I'm old and crusty. I decided to do something I never do: Take a bath. I know it sounds girly. Tough. I was sore and tired. I figured I'd read a book in the bathtub. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

I head up and fill the bath around 10pm. At about 10:10, Sam knocks on the door. She tells me that she thinks the basement is flooding. I tell her that it's probably just something simple, like maybe she had left a washcloth in the basement sink while running the washing machine. She leaves, but then 5 minutes later comes back and says the water's rising. I figure this is not likely to go away by ignoring it, so I finish up my aborted (and none-too-relaxing) bath and run downstairs.

Sure enough, the basement's flooding. The drain in the basement supply closet floor is overflowing. The water doesn't look like sewer water, which is nice. In fact, as we step in it, we notice that it's warm. We realize that it's my bath water. Hmmm...this is strange.

At this point, I wasn't sure what to do. I had never really had to deal with plumbing problems more complicated than a stopped shower drain. (And, in fact, we had had that problem a couple weeks prior, and I had simply Drano-ed it out...but clearly the problem was bigger than we thought.) I figured the first step was probable to get rid of the water. Not yet owning a Shop-Vac, Sam and I picked up dustpans and started bailing water into pails. To be honest, the water wasn't that high, but it was spreading over much of the basement, and that didn't seem like a good thing.

We started bailing, and when I had a full bucket, I dumped it into the basement sink. Bad move. The water came right back up the floor drain. Ok, what next? Well, I bailed another bucket full, and this time, dumped it out back, where there was another drain. Surely, an outdoor drain wouldn't flow back into the house, right? That would be absurd. Well, welcome to absurd-land. That water came back up as well, although with the added bonus of the dirt and grass that was outside around the drain. Nice.

At this point (11 pm, mind you), we were out of options. We didn't really want to leave the water there overnight, and also be unable to run any water without exacerbating the problem. First, I called the Washington Sewer and Sanitary Commission, and described the problem. They told me it was a plumbing problem, and who was I to disagree. I looked up a 24-hour plumbing service, and called one. They told me that there would be a 130 dollar emergency fee if they sent someone out within the hour, and likely a 40 dollar charge for snaking the drain. At the time, it sounded like a deal to me.

They dispatched the plumber, and he showed up in about half an hour. He was a friendly fellow, considerate enough to put little plastic booties on over his shoes so as not to track water over the entire house. He asked a couple of questions, and within about five minutes he determined that it was a problem with the main drain form the house to the city's water lines. He said that the only solution in a house like ours (50 years old) was to snake it. And that was gonna cost money, because the only way to snake it properly was to pull up a toilet.

He looked in his little book, and adding in the emergency fees, the total cost was going to be 966 dollars. I was stunned! But I also didn't feel like I had a choice. I could have him come tomorrow morning for a couple hundred dollars less (because it wouldn't be the emergency rate), but given that it was OPNETWORK, I didn't quite have the time. Plus, he was already there. And it wasn't work that we could do ourselves, because we didn't own an industrial plumber's snake. (Although, I have to admit that I wondered how much one might cost.) We decided to bite the bullet and get it done. We didn't want the water sitting there overnight, and we didn't want to lose access to our water. Furthermore, we figured it would have to be done sooner or later anyways, and we knew the company was respectable.

So, our plumber went to work. He brought his snake in, and went to town. We tried to get other stuff done while he worked for about an hour. He pulled up the toilet, and ended up having to use about 45 feet of snake. In the end, he never found anything clogging the drain that he was able to pull back up, which was kind of frustrating. Still, he said he definitely detected a clog, but that it was actually in the drain, all the way out of the house. He guessed that it was something that had actually been there for months, and had just built up and built up until the drain was completely blocked.

In order to verify that the drain was working, we ran all the faucets in the house for what seemed like 15 minutes. I can only imagine what that did to our water bill. But it seemed to be draining, so we were happy that the problem was fixed. The plumber replaced the toilet, cleaned all of the walls and fixtures, and even gave us some complementary drain cleaner that we were supposed to use for preventative maintenance.

After all of that, we were left to bail water out of the basement. We spent the rest of the evening (there wasn't a whole lot of evening left, to be honest), bailing water with dustpans. Then, we moved all of the cardboard boxes that full of magazines that had been soaked through. The next day, we bought a couple mops and cleaned the entire basement.

Can you believe we only paid 966 dollars for the privilege of experiencing that much fun? I tell ya, we got quite a deal. Ah, the joys of homeownership. They pale compared to the fun of OPNETWORK.

This past weekend, I went up to my old fraternity house at school to help them out with rush. More details on that later, but for now, suffice it to say that I only got about 12 hours of sleep total over the past three days, and spent about 16 hours in the car. It's generally not good when you've spent more time driving than sleeping in any significant time span. However, I figured I'd throw some random thoughts out there:

It's looking like the death toll from Hurricane Katrina will be at least 3,000, possibly as large as 10,000. Will anyone be placing magnets on their car in support of "hurricane preparedness"? Will there be special license plates made commemorating this horrendous even, labelled "Never Forget"? Will we start singing an additional song at sporting events? Of course not. Honestly, the stories from New Orleans are horrifying and mind-boggling. There's nothing I can say to do it justice, but I do think this is something we should never forget. The lack or preparation and support that allowed the problem to be as bad as it was deserves just as much attention as our attack preparedness did post-9/11.

On an utterly unrelated and much less significant note, my Outlook has started giving me problems whenever I try to delete a message. It says: "The message interfacing returned an unknown error." It's like a meta-error. But, about as useless as an error message saying "unknown error". Thanks Microsoft. In the meantime, my inbox will continue to grow until it destroys my entire computer, given that I can't clean anything out of it.

I bet you haven't noticed, but gas is expensive. I spent about $120 bucks getting to Boston and back. One might think that at some point, flying's gonna be cheaper than driving, but one's also gotta think that fuel costs will drive up flight costs a bit. Still, you're splitting those costs among a lot more people, right?

The Orioles are way out of the pennant race, but the Nationals still have a shot at the wild card. It would be quite a story if they made the playoffs their first year here. People are definitely excited about them. It's pretty cool. Hopefully one day they'll overtake the dismal Redskins, but I'm not holding my breath: D.C. is definitely a football town. But if you didn't have a baseball team, you'd follow football too. What are you gonna follow? Basketball? Don't be silly.

That's it. My brain is toast. Time to watch something insanely stupid on television. I have many exciting tales to tell when I can form a coherent sentence.