Personal essays
Thoughts while watching a baseball game
Speed limit
I crossed the border and got on the QEW headed for Toronto.
The speed limit was 100.
Wait - what do I remember about metric conversion.
A liter is about a quart.
I can approximate the temperature in Fahrenheit by doubling the Celsius temp and adding 30 (for ambient temperature that’s close enough - I’m not going to multiply by 9/5 to decide if I need to wear a coat).
A 10K race is something like 6.2 miles.
So that means 100 km/hr is about 62 miles an hour. Let’s say 65.
The speed limit changed to 110. That’s 10 more than 100 so add 6.2 to 62 and it’s about 70 mi/hr.
Then I remembered that I could just change the settings on my Bolt from US to metric.
Cool. The speedometer now displayed km/hr and the display to the side showed me how many kilometers of power I had left.
I just don’t have the intuition for metric units.
The Bolt reminds me that this is a US problem. Pretty much every where else in the world they’re comfortable with metric.
Batting Average
After the conference, the organizers treated the speakers to a night at the ballpark.
It was a beautiful night for baseball. The retractable roof was open and we looked down from the top level from behind home plate.
The scoreboard was crowded with statistics and advertisements. It was a bit overwhelming.
It wasn’t the relaxed experience I remembered.
After each pitch the scoreboard told us what kind of pitch it was. This wasn’t just fastball, curve, or slider - we were told if it was a four-seam fastball or a slurve.
We were also shown the pitch speed. Unlike the roads outside, these were shown in miles per hour and not kilometers per hour.
I suppose that’s good for me. I don’t have the intuition to understand that 145 km/hr is a decent but not great speed for a fastball.
The scoreboard has changed quite a bit. Next to the players names was their position and their OPS.
I had to look up what that meant. I was used to batting average.
This may be in the same category as Fahrenheit, miles per hour, and quarts, but I know what a good batting average is.
The batting average is just the number of hits divided by the number of at bats.
It’s really interesting to go to a game with people who are new to baseball because a lot of nuance comes out as you watch.
A players total number of at bats isn’t the number of times the player is at bat. Nope. Those are plate appearances. If a player is walked, that doesn’t count as an at bat.
A few innings in, we saw a player hit a ball into the infield and the first baseman dropped the ball.
The play was correctly scored as an error. This means the batter doesn’t get credit for a hit.
To my surprise, this does count as an at bat so the player’s batting average goes down on an error.
Those are the rules.
It’s kind of like the rule that says this foul ball is a strike but this one isn’t because a foul can’t count as a third strike.
Those are the rules.
Try explaining that to someone knew to the game.
Rules
Actually, you can’t explain much to someone during the game.
(Here comes the “get off my lawn” part of the essay.)
When I was a kid, I went to baseball games with my dad and he taught me how to keep score. He explained the nuances of the game. He showed me how to write 3-1 next to an out and later I could understand that the first baseman (3) fielded the ball and tossed it to the pitcher (1) who was covering first base.
We would chat about the game, the players, and other games that were going on.
He could have explained OPS to me. (If you absolutely don’t care about OPS, skip down a few paragraphs. I don’t mind.)
It turns out the O in OPS is On Base Percentage. It counts any time a player makes it to first base due to a hit, or a walk, or being hit and divides it by essentially every time a batter comes to the plate.
It measures something different than the batting average - it measures how often a player gets on base.
The S in OPS is Slugging percentage. It’s a lot like the batting average except that the player gets rewarded for extra base hits. So instead of the number of hits divided by the number of at bats, you get one point for every hit that takes you to first base, two points for every hit that takes you to second base, and so on.
OPS is On Base Percentage plus Slugging Percentage.
I don’t have a bit of intuition of what it tells me.
It’s one of the ways that the game felt different. It was a reminder that this isn’t the game I used to know.
The biggest difference, though, was that there isn’t a moment of quiet where you can talk with the person next to you.
Any time the ball isn’t in the hands of the pitcher or in play, there is loud music being played.
And the crowd loves it.
The home team was down 6-0 for most of the game and these people were up and dancing trying to get their faces up on the huge scoreboard. I’m not sure how many of them noticed their team was getting crushed.
Actually, I’ll tell you how old and cranky I am.
In the early ’80s I had a roommate who was the promotions director for the local indoor soccer club. His crew had a whole presentation they would do during games to teach the crowd how to do the wave. They positioned cheerleaders in front of sections around the arena that told them when to stand up.
I always thought that if I was playing on a team and we were losing, I’d be angry at seeing my fans doing the wave and dancing.
I guess I don’t have any intuition for that either.
The rules have changed for players and fans and it’s just a different game.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 177. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe