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An entertaining read....

The game of numbers

By Hal Habib

 

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

 

Sunday, April 02, 2006

 

It's in baseball, and only baseball, that 56 + 714 + 1.12 gives you the same thing as .406 + 755 + 2,130. What those numbers add up to, no calculator could ever say.

 

Think about them.

 

Let them swirl in the mind a minute.

 

Let them swirl in the mind a lifetime.

 

Baseball doesn't just ask us to do that, it requires it. Whether you live and die with the Yankees or couldn't care less about the Devil Rays, these numbers are imprinted in your brain like your PIN, only longer lasting and more important.

 

They belong to DiMaggio and to Ruth and to Gibson. And to Williams and to Aaron and to Gehrig. They belong to each of us.

 

They let us compare and contrast. They settle arguments. They start them.

 

They prove facts. They tell lies.

 

They're statistics, lovable statistics, damned statistics, as integral to baseball as the bat and the ball.

 

"That's what our sport is about, the statistics and the records," Yankees manager Joe Torre says.

 

But why?

 

Other sports are deep in stats, but who memorizes them? As much as we love Dan Marino, nobody wraps their arms around 61,361 (his yards). Michael Jordan, basketball god, never saw anybody drop to their knees at the sight of 32,292 (points). Wayne Gretzky was The Great One, but 894 (goals), spectacular as it is, grates on the eye.

 

.406? Now that's a hottie.

 

714? An absolute Babe.

 

"You're looking at numbers that are the greatest numbers in the history of sports," Yankees bench coach Lee Mazzilli says.

 

Baseball entered the digital age the moment somebody first yelled "Strike one!" No computer or Rotisserie League required, although a scorecard certainly came in handy.

 

"Statistics are themselves the vital part of baseball, the only tangible and imperishable remains of contests played yesterday or a hundred years ago," declares Total Baseball, the sport's bible. "Baseball may be loved without statistics, but it cannot be understood without them."

 

Understanding takes time, time in which we see hallowed numbers over and over. The moment a Barry Bonds comes within sniffing distance of, say, Hank Aaron's home run record, the number 755 becomes a beacon in a lighthouse, guiding the wayward ship.

 

"Baseball to me is similar to soap opera," Marlins manager Joe Girardi says. "Every day there's a storyline and it just keeps going and going and going, so I think people are really intrigued with the numbers and the records."

 

It's intrigue and more. As author Robert S. Weider bluntly put it in 1981, "Baseball fans are junkies, and their heroin is the statistic."

 

Every morning, the fix arrives via box scores and league leaders. We compare what Luis Castillo did yesterday to what Joe DiMaggio did yesteryear. When it comes to stats such as DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, sure, you could look it up, but who really has to?

 

"That's the absolute beauty of baseball," says Florida Marlins analyst Tommy Hutton. "You can't look at the NHL or the NBA or the NFL that same way. You know Cal Ripken, you know DiMaggio's streak, all that stuff. It's just stuff that you've kind of grown up with. It gets planted in your brain."

 

And that was long before ESPN and TV subscription packages.

 

"Baseball is the first of our national team sports," says John Thorn, editor of Total Baseball. "It is the game of memory from when we are children, not only in terms of learning how many home runs Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron hit, but in remembering the score of the game our dads first took us to or where we made that catch in center field that we still can't believe."

 

The results can be alternately romantic, addictive and curious. At Bowling Green State University, a summer course that crunches baseball numbers is a useful diversion for statistics students.

 

"If you have some reason to do something and if you understand the context, it makes it more interesting," says Jim Albert, the course professor. Similar principles have been used to hook elementary school students on the joys of division.

 

"Hey," Hutton says. "I wasn't real good at math, but I knew how to figure my batting average."

 

Baseball is so infatuated with stats that no self-respecting fan takes a seat at Yankee Stadium without a foot-long hot dog, thus beginning a numerophobic's worst nightmare: Bottom of the ninth. Three on, one out, 3-2 count. No. 9 hitter slugs one 425 feet, avoiding the dreaded 6-4-3 double play. "Let's play two!" he says. Meanwhile, Frank Sinatra croons about being "top of the heap, a-number-one."

 

Why? Can't anyone get to the square root of this?

 

"That's a tough question," former Yankees slugger Reggie Jackson says. "I know you're right, but I don't know the answer."

 

As if to prove it, Jackson adds, "I know that three home runs in one World Series (game) for me is imprinted in people's minds."

 

If anyone hits three home runs in a World Series game this October, he'll forever be linked with Mr. October. Never mind the feats would be separated by 29 years.

 

"The game has been back so far and you can measure the game of Ty Cobb to Pete Rose to Derek Jeter, and the home runs from Hank and Babe Ruth," Yankees hitting coach Don Mattingly says.

 

Consistency counts. Other sports change rules to increase scoring, whether it's football restricting contact with receivers, hockey targeting clutching and grabbing or basketball adding the three-pointer. How comparable is Marino-to-Mark Clayton to Johnny Unitas-to-Raymond Berry? How many more times would Gretzky score on a Martin Brodeur devoid of so much padding?

 

"Our stats have stood up over time," says Torre. "Sure, we changed from 154 (games) to 162, and that's why Roger Maris only had 20,000 people in the stands when he hit his 61st home run. But to me the game hasn't really changed. . . . We lowered the mound 5 inches that was the extent of it."

 

Plus, as a stop-action sport, baseball lends itself to chewing on numbers, Thorn says. Football also has pauses, he adds, but can't offer the one-against-nine duels of baseball.

 

"Baseball leaves a footprint of all its games on our minds in a way continuous-action sports can't," Thorn says.

 

The footprints lead back to Oct. 22, 1845, when The New York Morning News published the first box score as a way to measure individual performance and give the game greater importance.

 

Of course, there were bugs. Nobody bothered to record hits; the original boxes, based on cricket box scores, listed only outs and runs because in cricket, there was no such thing as a successful hit that did not produce a run.

 

Home runs, too, were outta here. "Long hits are showy," said Henry Chadwick, the Englishman who became the "father" of baseball boxes. "They do not pay in the long run." He was somewhat correct, because under the original rules, a ball hit out of the field, even fair, was considered foul. Apparently, chicks in the '60s the 1860s dug the short ball.

 

Through the years, baseball survived various quirks in scoring, including a seven-year period in which American League scorekeepers were told to not keep track of pitchers' won-lost records. Mercifully, the "total bases run" category vanished before the Internet could grant it validity.

 

"A lot of them are full of crap," former Mets first baseman Keith Hernandez says of statistics.

 

Atlanta Braves manager Bobby Cox adds: "In baseball, it seems like there's more things to keep track of. If there's not, we'll create something."

 

Cox appreciates hallowed numbers as much as anyone, but stat overload can drive managers batty. Former Marlins manager Jack McKeon loved keeping stat packs "for my fireplace." Admin Bowa, the current Yankees third-base coach who managed the Phillies and Padres, told his teams' PR men, "I don't want those stats in our clubhouse."

 

Torre takes a similar approach: "I encourage them not to necessarily pay attention to it. Hank Aaron told me one time, 'Each at-bat's a new day.' "

 

Pete Rose gave Hernandez a lesson in stat perspective early in his career.

 

"He said the difference between a .300 hitter and a .280 hitter on a 600 at-bat season is only like 12 hits," Hernandez says. "So what Pete used to do was look in terms of every 100 at-bats . . . so you're not constantly thinking day-by-day. You can get caught up in your own statistics and get yourself in a lot of trouble. It's a long season."

 

Some are more caught up than others. Mattingly, a career .307 hitter, waited until after the season to judge his numbers. Jackson says he always knew his average.

 

"You can't help but see it every day," Jackson says. "You get to the ballpark and the batting average is on the scoreboard."

 

As important as stats can be, they're not everything. After all, games are played on fields, not calculators.

 

"You could look at stats all you want," Bowa says. "When you make a pitching change, the easy thing to do is righty-righty, lefty-lefty, but sometimes you look into a guy's eyes, he's going to let you know if he can get a guy out. . . . Then there's other guys, they've got the deer-in-the-headlight look and you know it, he knows it. Then you make your change."

 

Torre remembers second-guessing himself years ago for having Wade Boggs pinch-hit for Luis Sojo.

 

"I needed contact with a man at third base," Torre says. "It was against a right-handed pitcher and I know Boggsy puts the ball in play all the time. I never even looked at the stats."

 

What happened?

 

"Boggs struck out on three pitches. I looked at the stats and Sojo worked this guy over pretty good in his career."

 

Torre concluded he probably would have made the same move regardless. But, he adds, "I made it a point whether I needed help or not deciding, I would always look. If something jumps out at me, I'll use it, but for the most part when you're with these players day in and day out, you know who you want in a certain situation."

 

Says Cox: "A guy's 10-for-12 off somebody . . . the odds are he's going to get him out, I think."

 

Maybe he will, maybe he won't. The only certainty in the equation is that tomorrow morning, and some morning 100 years from now, you can see how it played out.

 

You could look it up.

 

Or, if it was really important, you won't even have to.

 

Link

Talkin' baseball (stats)

A list of some prominent Web sites devoted to baseball statistics:

 

www.baseball-reference.com

A tremendous resource for any baseball fan, listing accurate stats for nearly every known player, manager, team and league. The site also has numerous interesting features, such as an engine that can match a player's stats at a given age with any other player at the same stage.

 

www.retrosheet.org

Another excellent resource, mostly for its amazing compilation of box scores and play-by-play accounts of nearly every game since 1959. Also lists plenty of stats (though it wasn't updated with 2005 stats in late March) and has a mammoth database of baseball transactions.

 

www.sabr.org

Not the best site for those who aren't members of SABR, but a great jumping-off point for fans who want to further their interest in baseball research or associate with those who delve into the subject and who help develop new and better stats.

 

www.baseball-almanac.com

Lists basic stats for players and managers, but more impressive, has interesting, often hard-to-find statistical and biographical nuggets on various baseball players. Site also has box scores for noteworthy games and dozens of different career leaders in dozens of categories.

 

www.baseballprospectus.com

A paradise for the hard-core baseball sabermetrician. Lists all the basic stats and the more esoteric numbers, and then goes even deeper. Baseball Prospectus has developed its own set of stats that help project a player's performance during the next five years.

 

www.beyondtheboxscore.com

The blog started by Marc Normandin devoted to discussion of sabermetrics, especially as to how it pertains to current teams and players. The site also has a great source of links to team-specific stat sites and loads of other sites that deal with baseball stats.

 

www.baseballgraphs.com

A sabermetrics site and blog run by Dave Studenmund. The site is devoted to showing stats in easily deciphered graph format, and also has a blog covering baseball stat questions and issues that can get extremely detailed. It's not for beginners, but raises interesting baseball questions.

 

www.baseballamerica.com

The breadth of stats doesn't come close to matching other sites, but this stands alone in keeping up with a solid amount of numbers for minor-league and college players. Also annually produces highly respected list of big-league prospects.

 

www.baseballanalysts.com

A blog covering a wide variety of baseball topics, often related to stats, and nearly always going beyond the surface of a topic and fully explaining the author's analysis. The site also has an extensive list of links.

 

- Scott Andera

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