Baseball Philosophy: Probability

My last post is garbage.

Just because Player A gets 333 hits

out of 1000 opportunities,

over two or three seasons,

does not mean there is a 33% chance he will get a hit right now.

one could argue there is Always a 50% chance

for every baseball player:

they will hit the ball, or they won't

Baseball Philosophy: SSS

My last post is garbage.

If I 'actually' acquired $50-55 of spare change per year, my ceramic containers of change would be overflowing.

And they are not.

My sample size of 76 days is only about 20% of a year, which seems in hindsight too small of a percentage to accurately 'predict' or 'forecast' a trend.

The idea of the Small Sample Size stuck with me from baseball:

That Player A hits a mammoth homerun on Opening Day does NOT Mean he will finish the season with 162 homeruns.

I often ask myself: Is this a large enough sample size to use for accurate predictions?

Change Is Good: Part 2

I destroyed my wagon on January 4th.

Mom gave me her Volkswagen Bug the very next day, maybe the SAME day, until I was able to get into another vehicle, on March 20th. Mom stepped up to the plate and saved my world.

There were 76 Days of transition. I left the star on pink ribbon hanging femininely from the rearview mirror, and listened to her Bonnie Raitt tapes, as penance.

Before we turned the Bug in for trade, I removed all my possessions, which included my spare change.

I've already reflected on spare change, you can find PART 1 somewhere in April of 2011...

I realized this morning that I had a bag of spare change, and an exact range.

Which is to say: I had a full blown Experiment on my hands, desparetely waiting to be calculated.

76 Days yielded:

$1.26 = pennies
$1.90 = nickles
$4.00 = dimes
$3.75 = quarters

$10.91 = total

Divided by 76 days =

14 or 15 cents per day

This experiment tells me that I generate 14 or 15 cents of "spare change" every day. Which is to say, if I can hang onto it, I should have an extra $50 or $55 bucks every year.

Season 2

I asked Dan the Postman which was more vital to a well-executed television show: characters or plot

He replied,

"why would we be interested what someone is doing if we are not first interested in the people themselves"

Season 1 of AMC's The Killing destroyed this theory, or so I had thought, and then completely cemented it.

I was interested in solving the mystery. That was the point. That was how AMC sold it.

But as the season progressed and some plot developed, the characters did not...

and we realized you couldn't actually 'solve' the mystery.

The season ended, critics lashed out, and the show's head honcho Veena Sud dropped this condescending remark on us,

"We never said you'll get closure at the end of season 1..."

That quote is wrong on so many levels (read Andy Greenwald's review of the episode for a perfect skewering of Sud and her show)

I don't want to watch season 2, but I'm stuck in a Seinfeldian dilemma:

I generally watch television on Sunday evenings. Season 2 of The Killing will be running on Sunday evenings. and I will watch it.

But hear this, Veena Sud:

I'm only watching it because it's On, for the Unintentional Comedy (of which there is much), and as fodder for procrastinatory blog posts about television.

Baseball Philosophy: Who Butters Your Bread?

Two things about Baseball:

1) My beloved Red Sox ended last year's season with historical failure.

Historical.

To make matters worse, they sent Terry Francona out the door wrapped up in a salacious slander campaign that ultimately tainted job interviews and prevented him from managing elsewhere this year. It left a bad taste in my mouth, and I wondered why I choose to support a crooked organization.

but Now we are far removed from September, time goes by and life happens and Winter happens and one day you look up and there are real live Baseball Players playing baseball down in Florida and your mind realizes the Winter is almost over, and considers the Promise & Potential and warmth of the coming year...

also the beautiful ghosts of games past:

2) like when my Dad and his buddy O.B. and a tiny snotty kid version of me are coming up into Fenway we pass a musician busking and Dad gives me a buck and I get amped being able to run up close and toss it in his case and he's singing the lyrics but squeezes a "thank you" awkwardly in there and then keeps singing and I think that sounds a little sloppy so I ask why he would stop singing just to say thank you and O.B. says

"Because he knows who butters his bread. Joey, you have to know who butters your bread."

I wasn't sure what that meant until years later.

Creation vs Evolution

The Internet says that the raging debate of 'Creation vs. Evolution' dates back to the 18th Century,

which seems Crazy, to me:

I think that God created Evolution.