Tag Archives: baseball

The Physics of Baseball – Robert K. Adair

by Myrna Posted on December 4, 2019

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

The Physics of Baseball

Third Edition, Revised, Updated, and Expanded

Robert K. Adair

Genre: Physics

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: January 20, 2015

Publisher: Harper Perennial

Seller: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS


Blending scientific fact and sports trivia, Robert Adair examines what a baseball or player in motion does-and why. How fast can a batted ball go? What effect do stitch patterns have on wind resistance? How far does a curve ball break? Who reaches first base faster after a bunt, a right- or left-handed batter? The answers are often surprising—and always illuminating. This newly revised third edition considers recent developments in the science of sport such as the neurophysiology of batting, bat vibration, and the character of the "sweet spot." Faster pitchers, longer hitters, and enclosed stadiums also get a good, hard scientific look to determine their effects on the game. Filled with anecdotes about famous players and incidents, The Physics of Baseball provides fans with fascinating insights into America's favorite pastime.

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The Physics of Baseball – Robert K. Adair

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Obama Dances the Tango During a State Dinner in Argentina

by ChandaThibeault Posted on March 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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President Obama danced the tango during a state dinner in Argentina on Wednesday, after receiving a friendly invitation from a professional to join her on the dance floor. The president, who initially tried to decline the dance, nailed the impromptu performance, which was both wonderfully awkward and a delight to watch for everyone else.

Well, almost everyone. By morning light, political pundits jumped at the opportunity to chastise the president. That buzzkill brought to you by Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations.

However, the advance person who let him do the tango, that person ought to be looking for work on somebody’s—in somebody’s campaign very far away. That was a tremendous mistake. It’s fine to go to Argentina, you want to do the work, but you’ve got to be careful of these little photo ops and optics. Baseball games and tango, that’s inconsistent with the seriousness of the day.

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Obama Dances the Tango During a State Dinner in Argentina

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Mike Judge Prepares to Heap Fresh Ridicule on "Silicon Valley"

by BerylThielen Posted on April 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Judge and the Pied Piper crew talk “tip to tip efficiency.” Kyle Platts

Mike Judge is dog tired. It’s 7:30 p.m. in Los Angeles, and he’s headed home after a 13-hour shift directing the second season of his delightfully snide HBO comedy Silicon Valley. He knows the turf well enough. After earning a physics degree from the University of California-San Diego in 1985, Judge, now 52, worked a few tech jobs himself, including a miserable gig as a test engineer for a Silicon Valley hardware maker.

But Judge loved to draw and tinker. On a whim, in 1989, he bought a vintage Bolex camera and used it to make Office Space, an animated short that got picked up by Comedy Central. A subsequent short, Frog Baseball, introduced the world to a pair of depraved young losers, and the rest is history: Beavis and Butt-head became an MTV staple and Judge went on to create, among other hits, King of the Hill and the 1999 feature film Office Space, now a cult classic. Silicon Valley, whose second season premieres Sunday, April 12, follows a crew of misfit hackers whose file-compression algorithm, Pied Piper, sparks a bidding war. The series, packed with hilarious dialogue, makes a mockery of the tech world’s hippie-capitalist hubris, smarmy lawyers, eccentric CEOs, and glaring deficit of X chromosomes.

Check out the original trailer, and then we’ll chat with the director:

Mother Jones: With apps like Titstare, protesters vomiting on Yahoo buses, and tech-libertarian island havens, a satirist hardly needs to exaggerate. Silicon Valley must seem like one big fat target.

Mike Judge: It’s definitely a wealth of material. Titstare actually happened after we had written and shot the Nip Alert episode, but hadn’t aired yet, so sometimes things almost happen simultaneously.

MJ: You make fun of how these companies all claim to be making the world a better place. Do you think they actually believe that?

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Mike Judge Prepares to Heap Fresh Ridicule on "Silicon Valley"

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Which World Series Team Has the Less Obnoxious Owner, Giants or Royals?

by FloreneGKQN Posted on October 28, 2014

Mother Jones

Game 6 of baseball’s World Series is tonight in Kansas City, and the stakes are high: The San Francisco Giants could clinch their third championship in five years with a win, while the hometown Royals need a win to stay alive. Don’t have a rooting interest, or looking for another reason to tune in? Check out Mother Jones‘ report from last year on the political and business dealings of Major League Baseball’s owners. If you like Karl Rove, you may want to pull for the Giants—but if rationalizing child labor is more your taste, go Royals!

Here’s the dish on the Giants’ Charles B. Johnson:

Johnson, a mutual-funds baron and the 211th-richest person in the world according to Forbes, spent some $200,000 to try to defeat California’s Proposition 30, the sales and income tax increase that included elements of the state’s millionaire’s tax initiative. (Prop. 30 passed in November.) Other political expenditures: $50,000 for Prop. 32, which would have kept unions and corporations from using automatic payroll deductions to bankroll political activity, and $200,000 for Karl Rove’s American Crossroads.

And the Royals’ David Glass:

In 1992, when he was still president and CEO of Walmart, Glass was confronted by NBC’s Dateline with evidence of child labor at a T-shirt factory in Bangladesh. His response: “You and I might, perhaps, define children differently.” As Glass explained, looks can be deceiving—Asians are short. Then he ended the interview. Meanwhile, as the Royals’ owner he’s pocketed profits without making any discernible investment in the on-field product. He also once revoked press credentials of reporters who asked critical questions.

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Which World Series Team Has the Less Obnoxious Owner, Giants or Royals?

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How the World Series Might Just Help the GOP Win the Senate

by KishaAnsell Posted on October 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Kansas City sports fans aren’t used to celebrating. The town’s NFL team, the Chiefs, hasn’t won a playoff game since 1994. The Royals, the other major sports franchise in town, hadn’t made a playoff appearance since 1985. But local baseball fans are experiencing a rare bit of jubilation this year. Not only did the Royals sneak into the playoffs as a wild card, they won the AL pennant last week and are hosting the San Francisco Giants in game one of the World Series Tuesday night.

That’s an exciting development for any millennial-aged sports fan from Kansas City who has lived a full life without post-season baseball. It’s also welcome news for a pair of Republican politicians from Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback and Sen. Pat Roberts, both of whom are battling their way through tight reelection bids: Research has shown that important wins by local sports teams around election season can boost an incumbent’s performance.

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Post by Governor Sam Brownback.

A 2010 study by researchers from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and Stanford University’s business school looked at presidential, gubernatorial, and senate elections between 1964 and 2008, and overlaid their outcomes with results from college football games. When the local team won within two weeks of the election, the incumbent on the ballot received 1.05 to 1.47 percent more of the vote on Election Day.

But not all sports fandom is created equally, with certain victories carrying extra weight. When one of the teams that the researchers termed “locally important” won ahead of an election, they found that it could boost the incumbent’s vote share by as much as 2.42 percent—a large enough margin to swing any close contest. “We find clear evidence that the successes and failures of the local college football team before Election Day significantly influence the electoral prospects of the incumbent party,” the researchers wrote, “suggesting that voters reward and punish incumbents for changes in their well-being unrelated to government performance.”

The researchers attributed these results to an improvement in overall happiness among voters around the election, boosting a willingness to support the political status quo when they’re feeling content about other parts of their lives. The recent success of the long-struggling Royals reaching the championship round would certainly make the cut as a now important team. “These are different times in Kansas City,” declares the Boston Globe. “Passengers arriving at Kansas City International Airport on Monday were greeted with stacks of blue and white balloons with yellow crowns on top.”

Though the Royals are actually from Kansas City, Missouri, they’ve got plenty of boosters just across the border in the Sunflower State. About 20 percent of Kansas’ population resides in Johnson County, the ring of suburbs outside Kansas City and one of the pivotal electoral zones that could decide whether Brownback and Roberts get to keep their jobs next year.

Brownback, who won by 30 points four years ago, has struggled in polls against his Democratic opponent all year as voters have turned against him over his giant tax cuts and efforts to purify the state GOP. And questions about Roberts’ residency hurt his image enough that independent Greg Orman has run about even with Roberts since the Democratic candidate dropped out of the race. Both races have tightened as Election Day approaches, so don’t be surprised if Roberts and Brownback strut around town in royal blue until November 4.

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How the World Series Might Just Help the GOP Win the Senate

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Did Obamacare Wreck a Baseball Game?

by HwaCopewic Posted on August 22, 2014

Mother Jones

A few days ago, a Chicago Cubs game was called in the fifth inning after the grounds crew had so much trouble spreading a tarp that the field got soaked during a rain delay and play couldn’t be continued. The Corner reveals what really happened:

Insiders at the ball club report that the real culprit is Obamacare. Because the Affordable Care Act requires offering health benefits to employees who work more than 130 hours per month or 30 hours a week (“full time”), the Cubs organization reorganized much of its staff during the off-season. Sources that spoke to the Chicago Sun-Times claimed that, on Tuesday night, the crew was drastically “undermanned.”

Huh. What do you think of that, Dean Baker?

The problem with this story is that employer sanctions are not in effect for 2014. In other words, the Cubs will not be penalized for not providing their ground crew with insurance this year even if they work more than 30 hours per week. Apparently the Cubs management has not been paying attention to the ACA rules. This is yet another example of the skills gap that is preventing managers from operating their businesses effectively.

Quite so. My guess is that this is just another installment in the long-running effort of American corporations to use Obamacare as a scapegoat for everything under the sun. Usually this has to do with raising copays for their employees or something like that, but the ingenuity of American capitalism knows no bounds. Why not blame a rain delay on Obamacare too?

For a more likely cause of penny pinching on the grounds crew, the Wall Street Journal has you covered.

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Did Obamacare Wreck a Baseball Game?

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50 Cent Is Not a Great Baseball Player

by DemetriusBeike Posted on May 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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But to be quiet honest, neither are we and no one can be perfect all the time.

Here are 10 other terrible first pitches, courtesy of TIME.

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50 Cent Is Not a Great Baseball Player

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Here Is Some Pretty Great Advice About How to Respond to a Bully, Courtesy of Wil Wheaton

by HattieCoode Posted on March 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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Growing up is hard. Children are generally awful to each other. The world is filled with unhappy kids taking out their unhappiness on even less happy kids who then take that unhappiness out on still less happy kids. This cycle is often punctuated by tragedy.

People do this at every age, obviously, but one of the best parts of becoming an adult is realizing the shallow sophistry of bullying itself—that it has nothing to do with the bullied and everything to do with the bully’s sick psychology. But when you’re a kid and you already feel like you are alone and someone who appears to be popular and well-liked says something cruel to you, it can be hard not to think that they just may well have a point.

If time machines existed we could go and warn ourselves. “Look, young me, kids are going to say mean things to you but only because they’re from a broken home and their father didn’t go to their baseball game and they’re beginning to suspect that maybe they aren’t very bright and they have very little self-worth and they’re trying to make themselves feel better about their own mediocrity by putting you in a position that allows them to think ‘well at least I don’t have it as bad as him!'” Then—poof!—we’d vanish in a puff of smoke and our young selves’ would ride off to grade school with armor optimized for adolescence.

Sadly, time machines do not exist, but YouTube does! So, if you have a child, show them this video of Wil Wheaton explaining to a young girl how to respond to kids who may call her a “nerd.”

It was taken at the 2013 Denver Comic-Con which was a year ago but Wheaton didn’t post about it until today. It’s pretty great evergreen advice, so enjoy. Happy Sunday!

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Here Is Some Pretty Great Advice About How to Respond to a Bully, Courtesy of Wil Wheaton

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Hot Hand? Well, Maybe a Lukewarm Hand….

by XNYMelisajdeots Posted on February 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Decades ago, the “hot hand” theory of sports was debunked. Massive statistical analysis showed that players in most sports went on streaks about as often as you’d expect by random chance, and when they were on a streak, their odds of making the next shot/goal/hit/etc. were no higher than at any other time. You might feel hot when you sink three buckets in a row, but that’s just the endorphin rush of doing well. It doesn’t mean you’ll make your next basket.

But now, there are all-new mountains of data to crunch, and two teams of researchers have concluded that hot hands really do exist in at least two sports:

Baseball: Brett Green, at the Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley, and Jeffrey Zwiebel, at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business…controlled for variables, like the abilities of the batter and the pitcher, the stadium in which the at-bats took place, and even matchups like lefty versus lefty. And their findings, laid out in a working paper, show that a baseball player on a hot streak is batting 15 to 20 points higher than a teammate who is cold.

Basketball: Ezekowitz and his coauthors…with the help of cameras that NBA teams had installed at 15 arenas…could see that players with recent success in shooting were more likely to be taking shots from further away, facing tighter defenses, and throwing up more difficult shots….So the researchers controlled for these variables—and found what players and fans have long believed: The hot hand does exist. At least a little. According to the new research, players enjoying the hot hand are 1.2 to 2.4 percentage points more likely to make the next shot.

Hmmm. So that’s about 1-2 percentage points in both cases. And even that tiny effect is visible only after introducing a whole bunch of statistical controls that strike me as being a wee bit subjective. I suspect that if you varied your assessment of how tight the defense was or how difficult the shot was, the effect might go away entirely.

But even if it’s all legit, I have to say that 1-2 percentage points is pretty damn close to zero. And frankly, that’s still surprising. The truth is that it’s always seemed pretty logical to me that players would have hot hands now and again. But they don’t. At best, they occasionally have lukewarm hands. All the rest is just chance.

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Hot Hand? Well, Maybe a Lukewarm Hand….

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Sports Teams Go to Bat for the Environment

by Jacobi Posted on October 17, 2013

The Cincinnati Reds’ stadium, the Great American Ballpark, adheres to green practices. Photo: Cincinnati Reds

When Great American Ball Park, home of the Cincinnati Reds, opened in 2003, the Reds unveiled a stadium that was more energy-efficient than its previous stadium — and that was just the beginning. Since then, they have launched their sweeping Red Goes Green initiatives to become one of the greenest teams in Major League Baseball.

Starting with energy conservation through reduced power usage and lighting efficiency, they also unveiled a comprehensive recycling plan that collected everything from grass clippings to cooking oil. Their efforts have continued, and they’re now collecting and recycling more than 96 tons of cardboard, cans, bottles, metal, cooking oil and grass clippings in a single season. They also host special recycling events, such as e-waste recycling drives featuring current and former players.

“Our overall mission is to be good stewards of the environment,” explains Michael Anderson, public relations manager for the team. “We owe it to our fans and taxpayers to operate [the ballpark] in a manner that is efficient, fiscally prudent and environmentally friendly.”

The Reds aren’t alone in their efforts; in fact, a growing number of professional sports teams are taking responsibility for their environmental impact and making drastic changes to reduce their carbon footprint. In 2010, the formation of the nonprofit Green Sports Alliance provided green-minded teams, venues and leagues with solutions and support to improve their environmental performance. When it made its national debut in 2011, the GSA had just 11 teams on board; today, it represents more than 170 teams and venues from 16 different pro and college leagues. Most recently, AEG — the behemoth worldwide concert promoter and one of the largest sports and entertainment companies in the world — joined the GSA, pledging to maintain green initiatives at its venues.

Next page: Changing the Game

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Sports Teams Go to Bat for the Environment

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