Don't just use stats for their own sake

When I was a freshman in college, I had a friend who was on some kind of philosophy kick or something (maybe it was a class she was taking), so she used to walk around and ask in a joking, whiny voice, "What does it meeeeeaaannnn?"

As part of my job involves trying to make things relevant for people, I ask myself and the people who work for me that a lot. In honor of her last name, I call it "Sullivan's Question." In my business, if you can't make something meaningful for people, you're wasting your time.

I got thinking about Sullivan's Question outside of work recently when I came across Jay Jaffe's Sports Illustrated blog about sabermetrics starting to make their way into baseball broadcasts (he likes the idea), which linked to a New York Times article on the same subject.

I will never buy into sabermetrics completely, but I also don't want to be so closed-minded that I can't see where they may have value. I think MLB Network's new show "MLB Now" could be a really good show it it features smart conversation between a true believer in sabermetrics in Brian Kenny and Harold Reynolds, who's more of a skeptic, so I hope it isn't just a forum for them to automatically disagree all the time.

But both the Jaffe post and the Times piece point out what will be the major issue with bringing advanced stats into the booth.

"Now, as the two (Robert Ford and Steve Sparks) settle into the Astros’ broadcast booth, they and their colleagues across the country face a balancing act. How much do listeners want to know about these advanced numbers? How much is informative? And how much would prompt the audience, a group that spans all generations, to tune out?
Listeners and announcers alike say that striking the right balance will be a challenge."

The challenge of that balance is going to be making those statistics meaningful to people, to answer Sullivan's Question, and not just spouting off numbers for the sake of it and hoping people figure it out. (I have a term for that, too, the "Graveyard of Numbers.")

Some are easy. WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched) and OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging) are simple addition. I happen to think they can be superfluous in that people can figure out if a pitcher doesn't allow a lot of baserunners, a batter gets on base a lot and/or tends to do a lot of damage without them, but I don't find them offensive and they can perhaps be helpful.

However, those stats are easy for fans to grasp because they're simple math. What about the harder ones? Even though I can't think of them by name off the top of my head, I believe there are several stats intending to strip out luck and ballpark factors and quality of the team someone plays for; can those be implemented in a way that intelligently spells out for fans something they may already know instinctively if the math behind them is complicated?

Or what about something like WAR (Wins Above Replacement), the formula to which I find incomprehensible? In the future, will it be enough to just cite someone's WAR and people understand what that means, or will the math involved be its undoing?

My first instinct was to say no, that Mike Trout's 10 WAR last year, which from what I've read is sensational, could be meaningless to fans because they wouldn't be able to understand where those numbers came from.

But then I thought about it some more, and realized there are numbers in life that are relevant and meaningful to people who aren't familiar with the statistical methods used to acquire them. For example, how many people who don't know the science of television ratings or political polling read the numbers and think "Wow, Show X is really popular" or "Gee, Candidate Y looks like he's going to win"?

So it's possible, over time, for fans to become as comfortable with advanced statistics on the TV or radio as we are with terms like batting average that we've used forever and know what they "mean" (this point provided by Poopsie, my ambassador to analytics, with whom I am chatting on Facebook as I write this), but at least for the time being, it's probably going to take a skilled practitioner to answer Sullivan's Question and give them meaning.

I think we can all agree that John Sterling, quoted in the Times piece as avoiding advanced numbers, is NOT that guy.

I will close with a brilliant example that Poopsie just gave me.

"I would LOVE for a ground ball base hit to roll into left field, and then the announcers be able to call up video of that shortstop giving up ground ball hit after ground ball hit all in that same location.
The announcer could say 'According to data complied by Baseball Info Solutions, this guy only fields 30 percent of grounders hit 7 feet to his left, a league average SS gets them 60 percent of the time.'"

Now that would work.

My Sportsmen: Two guys who said it was OK

Every year, Sports Illustrated names a Sportsman or Sportswoman of the Year (or both, like it did last year). Sometimes, it's for someone who achieved something great during the year, like Michael Phelps in 2008 or Drew Brees in 2010. Other years, it's a combination of that year's achievement and a lifetime achievement award, like Mike Krzyzewski and Pat Summitt last year or Derek Jeter in 2009.

If I had to hazard a guess off the top of my head, I would guess LeBron James or Miguel Cabrera, maybe Gabby Douglas, but I'll also be interested in reading who SI's writers in the "My Sportsman" pieces it runs on its website. (An example, Richard Deitsch's nomination of Maya Moore last year.)

This year's pieces haven't started yet, but given recent events, I'd like to throw in a couple nominations of my own.

* * * * *

Chris Kluwe got mad, and so he wrote himself a letter. Perhaps you heard about it. It was brilliant; it was profane, and it basically set the Internet on fire. It also made him kind of famous, for of all things, smacking down a Maryland state legislator complaining about someone supporting same-sex marriage. (Quick, name three other NFL punters. I got Mike Scifres of the Chargers, Zoltan Mesko of the Patriots and Steve Weatherford of the Giants.)

Kluwe wrote some other stuff, like after former teammate Matt Birk wrote an op-edit piece against same-sex marriage. And he did it without one profanity. When he thought the stance the newspaper he wrote for took on the proposed marriage amendment in Minnesota was dishonest, he stopped blogging for them.

After the amendment failed on Nov. 6, he had this to say:

 Together, we made a statement that America is tired of division. America is tired of discrimination, of exclusion, and of unthinking oppression—the belief that people have to live their lives according to someone else's views rather than their own free will.

 Together, we made sure that the world our children will grow up in is one step closer to tolerance, love, and equality; a world where our children can make their own choices instead of being shackled to dusty hate from the past.

But let us not forget who Kluwe was defending in the letter that made him famous.

* * * * *

I've written about Brendon Ayanbadejo before, and why his advocacy of same-sex marriage got Emmett Burns Jr. all worked up in the first place, but absent a Sports Illustrated profile of him, I didn't know much about him or his motivation for supporting the cause, so I looked it up. In addition to his background, there was this:

The linebacker spent critical adolescent years living in a building designated for LGBT students at the University of California at Santa Cruz. His stepfather worked as the resident director, and the family lived in an apartment at the base of the dorm.

“It was sort of their safe haven, where the students could be themselves," Ayanbadejo said. “I was in eighth or ninth grade, and we’d do these activities with everyone, skits or plays with me and my brother and sister. Men would be holding hands with each other, and women with women, and I was so young I didn’t really think much of it. Now, I kind of rejoice when I see same-sex couples together, sharing their love, and being able to be themselves outside, not just in their homes."

I wasn't exposed to gay people in any serious way until I was an adult, when I worked on the Outer Cape in Massachusetts, where there a lot of gay people, including one of the couples involved in the lawsuit that brought same-sex marriage to Massachusetts, who I came to know through my job.

A funny thing happens when you spend time around gay people ... they stop being "strange."

When Maryland voters approved same-sex marriage Nov. 6, Ayanbadejo said, "It's like I woke up and it was Christmas."

I'm normally against any references to Christmas before Thanksgiving, but this time, I'll make an exception.

* * * * *

We are eight years removed from a presidential candidate possibly being helped in his re-election by state ballot measures restricting marriage to one man and one woman. Until Nov. 6, same-sex marriage had lost more than 30 times at the ballot box.

Kluwe and Ayanbadejo are not the only sports figures to support same-sex marriage and gay rights. Scott Fujita and Sean Avery made videos supporting marriage equality (as, by the way, did one of the daughters of the president who probably benefited from the anti-same-sex marriage initiatives). Teams and athletes have recorded "It Gets Better" videos. (I picked Sergio Martinez's because I'm a fan.)


But Kluwe's and Ayanbadejo's activism this year was during a time when the people of the states where they play football were deciding on same-sex marriage, and those states, along with Maine and Washington State, accepted it.

I don't know how much of an impact they had on the vote, but I can't imagine it hurt to have football players tell football fans, their fans, that it was OK to support gay rights.

My problem with what Reggie said

So Reggie Jackson said a few things lately that have gotten people's attention -- that there are a bunch of Baseball Hall of Fame members who don't belong there, that "no Hall of Famer will attend" the induction ceremony if anyone linked to performance-enhancing drugs is elected.

And yeah, he had some stuff to say about Alex Rodriguez.

"Al's a very good friend," Jackson says. "But I think there are real questions about his numbers. As much as I like him, what he admitted about his usage does cloud some of his records."

The Yankees are somewhat displeased about Reggie's comments about A-Rod, while Keith Olbermann is somewhat displeased about the way the Yankees have handled the situation.

As for me, Reggie was my first favorite player from when I was a child, and since his birthday is a couple weeks before mine, seeing the annual reminder that he's getting older makes me feel a little bit older, too. I don't particularly agree with his comments, especially that he seems to have the same tunnel vision about cheating as so many people have, which is especially funny coming from Reggie, given his history with Gaylord Perry. (I tried to find the video with the water bucket, but I couldn't.)

But he's entitled to have his opinion, and I'm entitled to disagree. What really bugged me, however, is what he said about Andy Pettitte.

"The question is going to be a guy like Andy Pettitte, who admitted that he got involved for a while, but who is so universally respected in the game. I think he'll get in, but there will be a lot of [members] who won't go."

Would Reggie? Jackson takes a deep breath.

"He's an awfully good friend," he says. "I've known Andy since he was 20. I'll leave it there."

Andy Pettitte used performance-enhancing drugs. He may not have done enough to look like a cartoon character who could throw a ball 200 mph, but he did them.



But people like Andy Pettitte (including me, by the way), so Reggie backpedaled just a bit. It's easier to dump on Alex Rodriguez (or Barry Bonds, who is also mentioned in the article); after all, no one likes him.

In other words, Reggie is like so many other people when it comes to PEDs -- get all high and mighty when it comes to someone unpopular, because that's safe, but it's a different story when it comes to someone who's well-liked.

Who could possibly help Clifton Herring?

Sports Illustrated recently had a fascinating story by Thomas Lake on Clifton Herring, the man who has gone down in history as The Idiot Coach Who Cut Michael Jordan.

Except, according to the article, that's not exactly how it went down.

The decision to leave Jordan on jayvee as a sophomore was not an oversight. Herring and his assistants knew Jordan would ride the bench on varsity, so they put him on jayvee, and it worked out perfectly. When he got to varsity, he was ready to lead the team. Pop gave Mike his time but made him earn everything else. They would play Around the World after practice, and Pop was nearly unbeatable. Jordan hated to lose, of course, so he kept improving until the day he finally won.

As it turns out, Herring was a pretty darn good coach, but the story tells how the last few decades haven't been kind to him due to mental illness substance abuse.

It also tells something I've known for a long time -- that Michael Jordan can be a real jerk. From the night Jordan's number was retired (sorry about the long excerpt):

"There wasn't one coach that I didn't listen and try to learn from," Jordan said. "They all knew more about the game than I knew, and probably still know about the game, more about the game now, than even I know at this point. But I respect them for taking the time to teach me the game of basketball. Goes all the way back to Clifton Herring, who was the first guy to ever cut me."
That was Pop's big introduction, to nearly 20,000 fans at the United Center and two million more watching on TNT. The first guy to ever cut me. The new arena had been designed to amplify the roar of the crowd. Now there was a rumble, a swelling chorus of voices. The fans were booing Pop Herring for an imaginary crime.
Jordan continued.
"But I think what people never knew, and I never had the opportunity to express, and my mother knew, and my brothers and sister knew, the next year, he picked me up every day at six o'clock and took me to the gym to help me work on my abilities. Thank you, Coach Herring."
The fans reconsidered. They began to cheer. Jordan could have stopped there, but he kept going. He raised his voice and his right hand, seeming to point toward the coach. "He knew he made a mistake! He just tried to correct it."

In one of life's sad ironies, Herring was arrested right around the time the article appeared in the magazine. In his update for the print edition, Lake wrote:

Herring, 59, was kind to many people before he became sick almost 30 years ago. Were you one of them? Did you ever consider helping him? Now would be the time.

Yeah, Michael ... it would be.

Or are you still mad?