Cafe Hayek

Baseball graphics

If you like baseball, graphic design, and the presentation of information, you will like this (HT: mark Lanoue).

Manny being Barry

(The title isn't mine. Stole if from some commenter at a forum somewhere.)

There are a number of ways to think about the steroid era.

1. A few hitters got an unfair edge by cheating. Their numbers should be discounted.

2. Most batters got an unfair edge. Offensive numbers should be discounted and the numbers of pitchers should be inflated.

3. Most batters and pitchers used steroids. Then the question is whether steroids help batters more than pitchers.

With every new discovery, I lean toward 3. When everyone is a cheater, it's not cheating. When everyone else is taking steroids, your taking steroids levels the playing field. I also remain agnostic about the value of steroids. It isn't so clear to me that they make a big difference. When Manny returns it will be interesting to see if he can still get around on a fastball.

What's wrong with the country

There are a lot of things wrong with college football. The most obvious thing that's wrong with college football is that the NCAA restrains its members from paying players, maintaining the illusion that they are student-athletes and enriching the universities. There are a lot of things wrong with this system. It is unfair. It corrupts universities. But a lot of people, mainly university administrators, football fans, and the NFL, like it for various reasons.

But Congress has decided to tackle a different injustice related to college football—the inadequacy of the Bowl Championship Series (the BCS). The BCS is arcane, complicated, and inevitably unfair, as any particular system of deciding a national champion has to be. Its unfairness and complexity generates a lot of heat and very little light on sports talk shows every fall and winter. But since that is the essence of sports talk shows (much heat, little light) one could even argue that the BCS system is perfect rather than deeply flawed.

But this feeling is not unanimous. A number of politicians, presumably motivated by either arrogance or the complaints of their constituents want something done about it.

Words fail me. Except to note that when Congress spends time doing stupid things it shouldn't be doing, it is not doing even stupider things it shouldn't be doing.

It's Friday Afternoon

I'm no basketball fan.  Actually, I'm not much of a sports fan at all (although I confess to suffering from a heart-breaking affection for, and interest in, the New Orleans Saints).

So unlike many Americans at this time of year, I remain sane throughout this period of "March Madness."  But all the alliteration is inescapable -- "March Madness"; "Sweet Sixteen"; "Final Four"; "Elite Eight."

Wait!  "Elite Eight"?  What a terrible term for the eight college basketball teams remaining in the annual NCAA tournament.  It's not alliterative at all.

I suppose people use it because "elite" starts with an "e" -- just like "eight" starts with an "e."  Alliteration, though, is not about the alphabet; it's about sound.

The first sound heard when an American says "elite" is a long E.  The first sound heard when an American says "eight" is a long A.

A better term for the eight teams remaining in the tournament is, say, "Awesome Eight."  "Amazing Eight" also works pretty well.  Even "Great Eight" works better than the abominable term now used.

Hearing sportscasters say "elite eight" is grating.

Adjusting expectations

One of our biggest challenges as human beings is adjusting our expectations when a trend reverses. We think housing prices are going to keep going up, gasoline prices are going to keep going up and free agent sports contracts keep going up.

But the need not keep going in the same direction. So when things change, it is sometimes hard to adjust one's expectations. A lot of baseball players (HT: Jeff Bliss) seem to be struggling with this. They don't seem to have fully appreciated that the market for their talent is very different from what it was just a few months ago.

Objectivity

From ESPN. I see a pattern:

Striking out

Sometimes I get depressed about the quality of statistical work in economics. Then I read something from another social science. Here is a recent study where psychologists find that having the initial "K" increases your chance of striking out when playing professional baseball. Why? Well, it's obvious isn't it? The letter "K" is used when keeping score in baseball to represent striking out. So it's obvious now isn't it? Still don't get it? Neither do I. But hey, it's in the data. Between 1913 and 2006, players with first or last initial "K" struck out 18.8% of the time compared to 17.2% for the fortunate players unhandicapped by their initials. Here is the "explanation" of the authors:

Despite a universal desire to avoid striking out, K-initialed players strike out more often.  For those players, we argue that the explicitly negative performance outcome may feel implicitly  positive. Even Karl “Koley” Kolseth would find a strikeout aversive, but on the whole, he might  find it a little less aversive than players who do not share his initials, and avoid it less  enthusiastically.

But why? Why would having the initial "K" make striking out more pleasant? I just don't get it. The authors go on to "test" their theory by looking at grades of a sample of MBA students:

The MBA students in our sample are well aware of a direct connection between academic  performance and successful job placement. Nevertheless, despite the pervasive desire to achieve  high grades, students with an unconsciously-driven fondness for C’s and D’s were slightly less  successful at achieving their conscious goal.

That is, Charles Darwin received poorer grades than Alan Alda. But it turns out that Alan Alda didn't do better than the non-ABCD initialed:

Interestingly, A- or B-initialed students did not perform better than students whose  initials were grade-irrelevant. There are two possible explanations for this. First, students with  grade-irrelevant initials may already be maximally motivated to succeed. Second, because  performance is determined by motivation and ability, any increased motivation to succeed that  arises from having initials that match positive performance outcomes may not necessarily  translate into increased performance.

There is, of course, a third explanation: there is no real relationship and the authors have been fooled by randomness. Yes, their results are statistically significant. But how many relationships did they explore before finding the ones that were statistically significant. And ho many relationships are there to explore? To really test the theory, you'd have to look at baseball players with the initial "E" and see if they commit more errors than others. You'd have to look at guards in the NBA to see if those with initials "A" have more assists. Centers whose initials include an "R" should be better rebounders. You'd have to look and see whether students with the initials IC were more likely to take an "incomplete" in a class.

I guess Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of England should have been a football player. Or maybe he just gets fired more often than the average Briton because it doesn't bother him as much as someone with a different last name.

Did Kafka know baseball scoring? Does this explain why he found success in life so difficult? Is this why he named a character "K"?

Do players whose initials are a backwards "K" strike out looking more than the average?

Butt Out

Here's a letter that I sent yesterday to the New York Times:

Senator Arlen Specter imagines that it is his and his fellow maharajahs' duty to investigate why the National Football League destroyed the Patriots' tapes of the Jets ("Goodell Defends Handling of Patriots' Spying Case," February 2).

If I were NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, I would respond to Sen. Specter's threat to call a Senate committee hearing to investigate this matter by saying only "Dear Sen. Specter:  The rule that the Patriots violated is one that the NFL, not Congress, created.  We are a private organization quite capable of enforcing our own rules.  So butt out; this matter is none of your damn business.  Sincerely...."

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

Telling Stories

Which of these stories is right?

The Giants will win the Super Bowl. They have the momentum on their side. They have a great pass rush. They will be more relaxed than the Patriots because they don't have the pressure of the perfect season. They'll be able to control the ball with Brandon Jacobs. Manning hasn't thrown an interception in the playoffs.

Or is it this one:

The Patriots are the better team. They have Super Bowl experience. They have the better coach. Their quarterback is better.They will shut down the Giants running game and force Manning to make mistakes.

So which one is better? Neither, of course. They're just stories. But on Monday, one narrative will look convincing and the other will look foolish. But of course there was no way to really know ex ante which story was better. Ex post it will seem obvious. But even ex post, judging the stories or the storyteller is just so much finger-snapping. It's just one data point. Don't be fooled by randomness.

Can a camel understand football?

From the Asbury Park Press:

Forget what the sports analysts are saying. Super Bowl XLII will end in victory for the New York Giants, according to Princess, "Popcorn Park Zoo's famous prognosticating camel," the zoo announced Monday.

Princess had an 11-6 won-loss record for games picked during the season. And "her playoff standings were phenomenal, selecting eight out of 10 winning teams. Last week she accurately predicted the Patriots for the championships, but not the Giants," the zoo press release states.

Each week, Popcorn Park's general manager, John Bergmann, has had the names of two teams playing that weekend written on his hands. Then he offered Princess her favorite snack — graham crackers — in both hands. Whichever hand she nibbled from, that was regarded as her choice in the game.

"I can't explain it, but her predictions, more often than not, are right on the money," Bergmann said. "I'm hoping she's right this time, because I'm a Giants fan."

I think most people understand that the success of Princess is not due to her understanding of football, or her "gut feeling" or her intuition. It's just random. But on Monday morning, some human football "experts" will seem smart and some less so, simply because of one data point, the result of Sunday's game.

 

Which story is better:

The economy is in crisis. The subprime mortgage mess has taken down the housing market and thrown the banking industry into turmoil. The crdeit crunch that is inevitable will soon knock out other industries as well.  The anemic December job numbers (18,000 net jobs created) show are just the beginning of the problem. A recession is imminent or we may already be in one. We have to do something.

Or is it this one:

Yes, housing and banking are struggling. But the rest of the economy is healthy. The December job numbers were atypical. Unemployment claims are down. We don't need a stimulus package.

Who is right? Tomorrow, February 1, the January job numbers will be released. There are hints that they will be very strong. Some people's stories will look wise and others less so, at least for a while. If the numbers are strong, the worriers will find some other data point to wave around.

But I suspect the experts are like Princess, the pigskin prognosticating camel. We are fooled by randomness. We don't really understand the macroeconomy. Certainly not enough to micromanage it.

Ode to the Patriots

My ode to the Patriots written for WSJ.com is here.

The case for Clemens

Here's a statistical analysis of the career of Roger Clemens, purporting to show that his career trajectory is similar to that of Randy Johnson, Curt Shilling and Nolan Ryan, three people who presumably did not take steroids. The point is that it's not THAT unusual to be successful in your 40's and that Clemens's performance didn't spike when people think it did. The analysis is done by the agents who represent Clemens in contract negotiations.

Is it a convincing analysis or an example of how to lie with statistics? I'm only reporting on this one. You decide. I like the charts, though. Nice use of color to make the case.

UPDATE: J.C. Bradbury does his own analysis of Clemens (HT: Matt C.) and shows that Clemens strikeout and home runs relative to the rest of the league declined with age as you might expect if he weren't a user (or if steroids make no difference). There's no obvious spike relative to the rest of the league. Interesting. He does not look at the key questions of whether the decline is slower than for other pitchers or relative to the past. I would assume that all players are working harder to stay in the major leagues because the returns are higher to baseball than they used to be. On the other hand, younger players are working harder to make it into the league, so maybe there's no difference.

Is he a cheetah?

ESPN reports:

The IAAF ruled Monday that double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius is ineligible to compete in the Beijing Olympics because his prosthetic racing blades give him a clear competitive advantage.

The International Association of Athletics Federations had twice postponed the ruling, but the executive council said the South African runner's curved, prosthetic "Cheetah" blades were considered a technical aid in violation of the rules.

"As a result, Oscar Pistorius is ineligible to compete in competitions organized under IAAF Rules," the IAAF said in a statement.

Pistorius, known as the "blade runner," announced last week that he would appeal any adverse decision, including taking the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland.

"The natural feeling from our side would be to appeal the verdict and see what avenues we can take forward," Pistorius' agent, Peet van Zyl, told the BBC after Monday's verdict. "Oscar wants to prove that he isn't getting an advantage."

In case it isn't clear, this guy doesn't have feet, or at least the kind most of us are born with. He runs on artificial feet. See the picture here.

Can this distinction between "fair" and "unfair," "natural" and "unnatural" persist? I doubt it.

Another drawback of antitrust regulation

The NFL this year has put some games exclusively on the NFL Network, a cable offering that most fans don't have. The New England Patriots are playing the New York Giants this Saturday night on the NFL Network. The Patriots have a chance to go 16-0 with a victory, so interest in the game has become rather intense. So a lot of fans (outside of Boston and New York who can watch the game on local TV) are disappointed. They either have to sign up for NFL Network, go to a bar carrying the game or do without. Now, the NFL has changed its mind and will simulcast the game on the NFL Network, CBS, and NBC:

"We have taken this extraordinary step because it is in the best interest of our fans," commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement after the league announced it was reversing course.

Touching, but a bit weird. It punishes the people who signed up for NFL Network not just to miss this game. And of course, there's more to the story:

Last week, two prominent members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Goodell threatening to reconsider the league's antitrust exemption.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who co-wrote the letter with Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he was "delighted" by the NFL's concession.

"I think it was a smart move on their part," he said in a phone interview.

Leahy expected to speak with Goodell again next month about the ongoing question of how many fans will be able to see games on the channel. Saturday's matchup wraps up the NFL Network's second season of airing live contests, with eight per year. This one and a key Thursday night game between Green Bay and Dallas last month drew widespread complaints about the lack of availability.

"I never completely gave up hope, but I was getting a little discouraged Christmas afternoon when we still had not gotten a positive answer," said Leahy, who added that his staff members were talking with NFL officials during the holiday.

So much for the rule of law. When I told my 12-year old son what had happened, he said, "But they don't have the right."

Well, they shouldn't have the right. But they do have the right. And even though, as a cable-free Patriots fan since 1962, I am happy to be able to watch the game, I wish it weren't so.

Steroids and science

How much does steroid use improve strength and performance?

Here is Arthur De Vany's summary of recent research at the New England Journal of Medicine. Skip down to the bottom if you want the bottom line.

Here is his analysis of the impact of steroids on home run hitting.

Here is his first reaction to the Mitchell Report.

Here is JC Bradbury on HGH and a recent study at the New England Journal of Medicine.

Clemens vindicated

The uproar this morning is that Roger Clemens, someone who everyone agrees is one of the best pitchers of all time, is a cheater, a steroids user going back to 1998. His reputation is ruined, he may not make the Hall of Fame, and according to Thomas Boswell, one of the deans of America's baseball scribes, he's like Pete Rose,  Barry Bonds or maybe even Shoeless Joe Jackson in that his name will never be the same:

Now, Roger Clemens joins Barry Bonds in baseball's version of hell. It's a slow burn that lasts a lifetime, then, after death, lingers as long as the game is played and tongues can wag. In baseball, a man's triumphs and his sins are immortal. The pursuit of one often leads to the other. And those misdeeds are seldom as dark as their endless punishment.

Shoeless Joe Jackson, an illiterate outfielder who hit like a demon in the 1919 World Series, but neglected to blow the whistle on his crooked teammates, died with his good name as black as their Sox. Pete Rose, who bet on his team, but never against it, finally confessed. It could be good for his soul, and buys him dinner at my house any night, but may never get him into Cooperstown. Now, they have company: two giants of our time, just as humbled, though no less tarnished.

Why does no one seem to understand that if many and maybe most of the batters are taking steroids, a pitcher who takes steroids is leveling the playing field, not getting an unfair advantage?

BTW, I'm a Red Sox fan. Clemens left the Red Sox in 1997 saying he wanted to be closer to his family in Texas, then signed with the Toronto Blue Jays, a team not known for its proximity to the Lone Star state. Red Sox fans have always resented his exit, particularly given what followed. He proceeded to have what was arguably his best single season as a pitcher, throwing 264 innings and posting an ERA of 2.05 when the league ERA was 4.53, An astounding steroids-free performance.

Halfway through the 1998 season, when we know that a lot of batters started using steroids, Clemens, according the Mitchell Report released yesterday, started using steroids as well. He pitched extremely well in 1998, but nothing close to his 1997 performance.

Clemens's steroid use in 1998 tarnishes his reputation? How exactly? To suggest that his failure to blow the whistle on teammates or fellow players outside his team is to misunderstand the culture of athletes. And to compare him to Shoeless Joe Jackson for not blowing the whistle is a repugnant comparison. Boswell conveniently fails to mention that Jackson (who I do sympathize with, given his on-field performance in that 1919 World Series) took money under the expectation that he would deliberately play poorly. His failure had nothing to do with whistle-blowing.

Yesterday's report shouldn't tarnish Clemens or his teammate Andy Pettitte, or the other 80 or so names mentioned. The report relied on FOUR sources, a clubhouse guy for the Blue Jays, a clubhouse guy for the Mets, the Balco investigation and various news stories that have found evidence of steroid use. The number of sources wasn't low because they were the main sources. The number was low because virtually no one wanted to talk to Mitchell. The sources he used were already under investigation. That means that we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

What we now know is that steroid use was widespread, extremely widespread, in major league baseball beginning in 1998. The effects of steroids and HGH (which was also widely used) on performance are unclear. Yes, great players took steroids to get an edge. But so did mediocre players. It didn't make them great either because everyone was taking them or because the extra impact on performance was small.

When everyone cheats, it's not cheating any more.

You can judge a man morally for having so much competitive fire that he flaunts the rules and endangers his health. I think that's particularly strange when the rules are not enforced as they were not in 1998.

But even so, what yesterday's report makes clear to me is that you can't judge a man's reputation as a baseball player because he used something that so many other people were using in search of an edge. For me, the "scandal" of steroid use is now a smaller story, even though it is all over today's front pages.

Roger, you'll never be as good as Pedro, but you belong in the Hall of Fame. I wish I could vote. And of course, in some sense, I can. I believe that in 20 years, the consensus among fans will be that Roger Clemens was one of the greatest pitchers of all time, without an asterisk. And Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire will join the same true pantheon of greatness even if they never get to Cooperstown.

The Mitchell Report

The Mitchell Report is going to come out today. Supposedly it will expose at least 70 players by name as steroid users. ESPN is already reporting that Roger Clemens is one of them. This is going to change the perception of Barry Bonds and others as "cheaters" because we're going to find out that both pitchers and batters used steroids. Here is my old post where I speculate on Hayek's perception of the scandal.

Contract incentives

Curt Schilling is coming back to the Red Sox. His base salary is $8 million. he can make an additional $3 million based on meeting various performance milestones. Then there are some unusual incentives:

He also can make an additional $2 million by meeting weight clauses -- $333,333 for each time he passes one of six random monthly weigh-ins.

Now, I'd like to weigh a little bit less myself. Interesting question--how much money would it take for me to change my eating and exercise habits. Less than $2 million. But it's interesting how hard the Red Sox think it's going to be for Curt Schilling to do so and he admits he should weigh less. How much money would you have to be paid to go without that second helping at dinner? Then there's this:

Schilling also would get $1 million next year if he receives at least one vote in Cy Young Award balloting.

That's weird. Why would the Red Sox want to give a baseball writer a very easy way of giving Curt Schilling a million dollars?  Curt could just split it with him. Is Cy Young voting anonymous? Is it going to be awkward to vote for Curt if he goes 1-4 with a 4.90 ERA?  And if a writer votes for Schilling after a mediocre year, would Curt take the money? If I were the Red Sox, I would have made  the minimum number of votes two or three.

Schilling's version of the whole thing is here (HT: Jeff Bliss). He blogs well.

Bufoonery

In honor of Don's superb description of the politician's daily tribulations, and in honor of the start of the World Series, here are two recent examples of political bufoonery followed by a classic. First off, John McCain shows how tough he is. Or isn't. He can't seem to make up his mind. Actually he was joking or maybe not (HT: Drudge):

Republican presidential candidate John McCain told workers of small weapons factory that he not only wants to catch Osama Bin Laden if elected, but said he "will shoot him with your products".

"I will follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell and I will shoot him with your products," McCain said.

McCain told reporters afterward he was joking when he made the comment at Thompson Center Arms in Rochester.

"I certainly didn't mean I would actually shoot him. I am certainly angry at him, but I was only speaking in a way that was trying to emphasize my point," McCain said. "I would not shoot him myself."

Why not? Does he not think Bin Laden deserves shooting? Does he think it untoward to shoot someone, that it somehow smacks of the vigilante? Is it too violent an act for a man who would be President? Would he want Bin Laden brought to trial? Or would McCain simply delegate the task of shooting Bin Laden to someone else for some unmentioned reason? Was it really a joke? Can you name another joke that contains the phrase "gates of hell?"

Then there's McCain's competitor for the nomination, Rudy Giuliani, who at a fund raiser in Boston, goes out on a limb and says he is rooting for the Red Sox to win the World Series:

Rudy Giuliani, a big Yankee fan, said he will be backing the Boston Red Sox over the Colorado Rockies when the World Series begins tomorrow.

"I'm rooting for the Red Sox," Giuliani said while wearing a red tie during a press conference in Boston's financial district. "I am an American League fan."

The former New York mayor said he wasn't pandering to the local crowd either.

"I am not just saying that because I am in Massachusetts. If I am in Colorado in the next week or two you will see that I have the courage to tell the people of Colorado the same thing," he said.

Yes, he is a man of remarkable conviction isn't he? He's not afraid to tell the people of Colorado that he is a fan of the American League. The only problem I have with this incredible tale of political courage is that no Red Sox fan ever roots for the American League team in the World Series if it's the Yankees. And I doubt most Yankee fans root for the Red Sox.

My favorite political sports gaffe comes from John Kerry, Senator from Massachusetts who invoked "Manny Ortez" as a star for the Red Sox, combining Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz. He then corrects himself and refers to "David Ortez." He then mentions that this fellow, David Ortez along with Manny Ramirez and Curt Schilling and others will be off taking a break for the All-Star game when in fact the All-Star game break refers to the teams and people NOT playing and the players he names are actually playing in the game and hence going without a break. But the best part is Kerry's comforting the listener that he and John Edwards won't be taking any break. I assume he is referring to his relentless efforts to make my life better or at least win the nomination on our behalf. The Kerry clip is here. It ends with a clip of Kevin Millar giving a refreshingly candid assessment of sports talk radio. Kevin Millar will never be President of the United States.

Consolation

I'm a lifelong Red Sox fan and I thoroughly enjoyed last night's victory over the Indians. But here's a confession and consolation for Indian fans: We didn't deserve to win. I know. That sounds more like confession than consolation. But hear me out.

We didn't deserve to win. Last night, everything went our way. We got the call on Lofton that was clearly wrong. Your third base coach blew it on sending Lofton home later. You hit 400 foot outs that if they'd gone a foot or two farther would have broken the game open. We had infield singles that could have been outs. We killed rallies with double plays that should have cost us more than it did. You had a double that hit so high off the wall it could have been a home run if it had been hit almost anywhere else. So many what-ifs and all in one game? It's hard to bear. You can even say we didn't deserve to win because we spent about twice as much as you did and it just isn't fair.

So where's the consolation?

The consolation is that we've been where you are now. The Red Sox until 2004 had all the same complaints. We could point to so many what-ifs in 1975 and1978 and 1986 and 2003. Why did every crucial call (from the interference that made Fisk throw wildly, to Reggie Jackson's hip check of the ball in the basepath) have to go against us? I know, you have no idea what I'm talking about, but every Red Sox fan knows. Why did Dent's home run have to clear the wall? Why did Little leave Pedro in? Why was Buckner in the game instead of Stapleton? So many what-ifs. Why did they all seem to go against us? And besides, the Yankees spend so much more than us.

But when it ends, when all the breaks go your way, when Dave Roberts just beats the throw and when the umps reverse the call on Rodriguez knocking the ball out of Arroyos glove and a thousand other things happen along the way, the sweetness is so sweet because of all the sadness that came before. Your day will come. And I hope it happens sooner than later. And I hope it happens against the Yankees not us.

What does this have to do with Cafe Hayek? Not much. But I'm sure there's some neuroeconomics in the dopamine rush that comes from winning over so much losing. It has something to do with why we keep getting up when the world knocks us down, something to do with risk-taking and perseverance.

The UnNatural?

Here is my commentary on NPR's All Things Considered on the Rick Ankiel story.

Ankiel

The Rick Ankiel story is amazing. I was at Busch Stadium when he fell apart as a pitcher (thank you, RM) and have happily noted his absurdly glorious comeback as an outfielder. Ankiel is in the news today as the WSJ's Daily Fix reports:

Rick Ankiel had been one of the best stories in baseball this year. Mr. Ankiel, the onetime rising pitcher star who suddenly fizzled out and couldn't throw a strike, returned to the St. Louis Cardinals in August as a slugging outfielder.

On Thursday afternoon, he hit two home runs and drove in seven to up his season total to nine homers and 29 RBI in 23 games. His performance has helped the Cards to pull within one game of the Chicago Cubs and the Milwaukee Brewers, who are tied for first-place in the National League Central.

"He's been putting up Nintendo numbers," shortstop Brendan Ryan told the St. Louis Dispatch's Derrick Goold. "To do it in September where every hit, every RBI is everything we need to win is incredible. He's going to be a better position player than maybe he ever could have as a pitcher."

But on Thursday night, New York Daily News reporters T.J. Quinn, Christian Red, Michael O'Keeffe and Bill Madden broke the sad story that Mr. Ankiel received a 12-month supply of human growth hormone in 2004.

It's unclear whether Mr. Ankiel will face any repercussions legally or from Major League Baseball, which has been accused of doing too little to rid the sport of performance-enhancing drugs. Mr. Ankiel has not been accused of wrongdoing, and he stopped receiving HGH before MLB banned it in 2005, according to the News.

But why do the authors call this a sad story? A kid who had the potential to be a Hall of Fame pitcher suddenly finds himself unable to find home plate. It must have been devastating. I suspect he tried a lot of things to resurrect his life and cope with the despair of disappointment--prayer, alcohol, hard work, perseverance, weight training, and according to the cited story, HGH. Three years ago. It wasn't banned by baseball at the time. He wasn't alone in using it. Are we supposed to think of him as a cheater? I don't get it. Until we know how widespread the use of chemicals is and was in baseball, I have no idea what to think of Rick Ankiel's use.

Clutch hitting

It is very hard for sports fans, sports writers and even athletes do accurately assess which of their  players perform well under pressure and which do not.

This brilliant dissection (Rated R for language) of a recent sports column on the topic of "hitting in the clutch" shows how powerful numbers can be for clarifying fuzzy thinking.

Play Ball

Finally, baseball season is here. When your team isn't playing, check out The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed, by J.C. Bradbury. He takes a look at a number of empirical questions and uses economics and statistics to explore them. What's particularly good is how he uses economics to point out, for example, that a pitcher doesn't give the same effort on every pitch. He saves extra effort for extra important situations when the incentive to higher effort is there. So it's not clear that having a better batter batting behind you in the batting order means that you'll have a better chance of getting a hit. The standard argument is that the pitcher won't want to walk you and give the next guy a chance to drive you in. Bradbury observes that if the next guy is really good, the pitcher might try extra hard to get you out. A clever observation and then he tests it. He tests lots of interesting questions. Check it out.

I'm excited to read Crazy '08 by Cait Murphy, the story of the 1908 baseball season. It was an extraordinary season. It's hard to believe the drama and twists and turns off the field that made that season special. One of my favorite sports books of all time is The Unforgettable Season the story of that season from the news stories of the day. It's back in print. Looking forward to Murphy's version.

I'm the coach of my son's little league team. One of the things I've struggled with is teaching kids to hit and pitch. (I know—what's left? Rules. Throwing. Fielding. Where to throw. Where to run. When to run.) It's surprisingly difficult to find good instructional guides on hitting and pitching. Most of them are surprisingly opaque. What is striking to me about hitting (pun unintended but left anyway) is how differently a professional hitter hits compared to the rest of us. Look at any major leaguer when he makes contact. His head is over his back knee. His front leg is straight and his back leg forms an L. There's nothing intuitive about it. Learning to do it requires instruction and lots of practice. The secret turns out to be with the hips. The only thing I've found on how to teach a kid to hit the right way that you can actually figure out is by Phil Plante and is here. Download the first file at the top. Then check out the rest of the stuff.

On pitching, the best stuff I've seen is this page by Chris O'Leary, which has a healthy emphasis on what NOT to do, which is very important for young arms.

Finally, the best stuff on baseball you've never seen before is Alex Reisner's elegant work. Don't miss the dead bird page in the history section. 

Why they make so much

When college football coaches get a lot of money, people complain about the injustice of it. Some of those complainers are fans, who have romantic ideas about college sports. But they're the reason coaches make so much.

In this piece at the Boston Globe, I tell complaining college sports fans to look in the mirror. An excerpt:

But if those fans want to find someone to blame they should look in the mirror. They are the source of that salary they find so exorbitant. Their desire to revel in victory is what drives the university to pay not an exorbitant salary but merely the going wage, what it takes to attract a talented coach away from other universities and the professional ranks.

At Alabama, that fan is tired of losing to Auburn. At Oklahoma where Bob Stoops makes more than $3 million to coach the football team , alums from Oklahoma want to revel in victories over Texas. Now and then, they expect a national championship. At Ohio State, Jim Tressel makes a few million to ensure that the Buckeyes stay competitive with Michigan.

What I didn't have room to explore in the piece is the role of large public universities in the escalating rewards to college football and basketball success. If you look at the top 20 teams in each sport, you'll see the dominance of large public universities with an occasional USC in football and Duke in basketball. Part of the reason for this is the political pressure large numbers of alums put on Presidents of universities and implicitly through politicians to have a successful team.

The other interesting topic is the NCAA. One reader came to the defense of the NCAA as a well-intentioned organization that tries to keep the game honest.

I disagreed.The NCAA relentlessly prevents universities from paying their players in any remote fashion. They have so much trouble keeping the market from working that they ban any scholarship athlete from taking any job of any kind while on scholarship. That's to prevent the restaurant owner from overpaying the busboy as a form of bribe.

What they did to Alabama in a recent recruiting scandal is what they do to every school that tries to reward any player. They punish them. Some see that as a virtue because it stops something we call "cheating." But what we call cheating is a natural consequence of trying to stop market forces from working. Because that avenue of competition is ruled out, colleges pay coaches large sums of money and build absurdly luxurious dorms and practice facilities as a way of attracting good players.

The NCAA is a cartel. It is a way to reduce competition among rivals. It has no moral compass, no intentions. Anything resembling a moral compass is hype, spin and PR that exploits the public's romance about university life. They're not evil, either. They're just a way to make life easier for colleges and their leaders who see football and basketball as a way to make money and to have goodies to hand out to supplicants who want access to good seats, and the opportunity to rub elbows with glamorous coaches and players. Expecting the NCAA to put the interests of students first is like expecting Congress to pass a law against "special interests." It just isn't in the nature of the beast.

The NCAA is a private, voluntary organization. IMost cartels die quickly because of the temptation to cheat on the agreement. The form that the cheating takes here, is to build luxurious dorms--there's no way to limit and monitor luxuriousness. If you could, they would. But that's mild. So why doesn't more cheating occur? One answer is that it does and that there's a lot more under the table payments going on than the NCAA discovers.

The other answer is that no one team can cheat. If one team refuses to abide by NCAA regulations, and leaves the NCAA, they have no one else to play against. You need a group of teams to defect and start their own league. The appeal of that is that by ignoring the NCAA, they could pay the best players and have the best teams and get even more TV money etc. But the risk is high and the overt payments to players might handicap viewership and fan interest for cultural and romantic reasons. Even so, a group of teams did defect in some sense a while back and get their own TV package. Notre Dame did it, too. And the BCS is a sort of cartel within the cartel--it essentially recognizes that not all cartel members are created equal and deserve equal treatment.

College sports is a big business. I have no problem with that. (Though whether it should be tax exempt is another question. The threat of removing that exemption does limit the venality.) But it is a big business built on the bizarre illusion that it's not a big business. It's a big business we like to pretend is a game.  To pretend it's a game and complain it acts like a business is human but illogical.

Pre-game thoughts

The Bears are big underdogs to the Colts on Sunday. Yet Allen St. John of the WSJ predicts the Bears will win:

Over the last 22 Super Bowls, 18 -- 86% of them -- were won by the team that came into the game after allowing fewer regular-season points. (In the 2004-05 regular season, the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles each allowed 260 points.) Not since the Denver Broncos won 1999's Super Bowl XXXIII has the team with the weaker defense emerged victorious.

And that's why the underdog Chicago Bears should defeat the Indianapolis Colts in Miami on Sunday. Lovie Smith's NFC Champion Bears allowed only 255 points during the regular season. That's third-best in the NFL -- and is a whopping 105 points fewer than the AFC Champion Colts allowed.

He adds this info:

Savvy fans may dismiss many of these numbers, arguing that the AFC was the far better conference this year. That may be true for the conferences, but it doesn't necessarily hold for this matchup. The Bears and Colts played five common opponents this season -- the New York Jets, New York Giants, Patriots, Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins. Indianapolis went 5-0 against these teams, while the Bears were 3-2. However, in those games, the Bears scored 114 points and surrendered only 75, outscoring their opponents by 39 points. The Colts? Despite their perfect record, they scored 128 but gave up 107, for a 21-point differential, just over half that of the Bears.

This somewhat savvy fan would point out that that was then and this is now. The Colts defense has been playing much better. But it is interesting how easy it is to think that the Colts are unstoppable and that Peyton Manning is a genius. We felt the same way about the Rams and Kurt Warner against the Patriots.

I have been thinking a lot about the difficulties of forecasting based on the past because I am reading Fooled by Randomness. Very thought-provoking.

As a final pre-game prep, listen to the last half of the Michael Lewis podcast. (And listen to the first half, too, where we talk about Moneyball. Pitchers and catchers report in less than two weeks.) Lewis's insights into the role of the left tackle have changed the way I watch football. Or read his book, The Blind Side. You still have two days.

Podcast with Michael Lewis

This week's EconTalk is with Michael Lewis, author of Liar's Poker, Moneyball, and The Blind Side. We talk about the hidden side of baseball and football, and a bunch of other stuff—the movie business, the corrupt nature of college football, the tragedy of the inner city and the seen and the unseen.

One of my favorite parts is when Lewis explains why Billy Beane (General Manager of the Oakland A's) gave him such incredible access and shared his trade secrets that Lewis revealed in Moneyball. Lewis says that Beane didn't think any one in baseball would read the book or take it seriously, an expectation that was basically right. But Lewis says that Wall Street people read the book (because of Liar's Poker) and some of those people knew baseball owners and told them they needed to stop paying so much attention to their scouts and pay more attention to statistics.

Next week's EconTalk guest is Robert Lucas talking about growth.

Blind Side

Just finished (in half a day) Michael Lewis's Blind Side, the story of...lots of things—the hidden side of football, race and class in the South, an inner-city kid's journey, how market forces move things in unexpected ways. It is not as analytical as Moneyball but the underlying story is more dramatic and it's very well told by Lewis. Along with all of the above, the book captures the poetry of athletic excellence, the sheer magnificence of the outlier—the man playing a boy's game. It reminds me a bit of The Courting of Marcus Dupree, an under-appreciated gem and the movie The Scout, Albert Brooks's offbeat portrait of the baseball scout who finds a player too good to be true.

Fans of economics will love the way Lewis talks about the evolution of football and how what fans see and often respect is only part of what is really going on. You'll also like how Lewis understands and explains how competition in the free agent market makes left tackles on the offensive line the second most highly-paid players in football. Who knew? These themes are the framework for the human drama that Lewis portrays and that makes up most of the book—the tale of an inner-city black kid who finds himself taken under the wing of a rich, white, emphatically Christian, driven, sports-loving family. If you like football at all, you will not be able to put this book down.

Are Professional Sports Competitive?

Michael Lewis's Moneyball lays tells the story of how the Oakland A's became successful. Part of the answer is that they appreciated the value of an undervalued asset, the ability to get on base via walk.

In this EconTalk podcast, Skip and I talk about whether this story is true and if it is true, how such an insight about the value of walks could lay undiscovered (or at least underutilized) for so long. One interesting part of the conversation is about just how competitive or uncompetitive the baseball industry is. It appears very competitive. Winners and losers are observable. Unsuccessful managers and general managers are fired all the time. Yet I argue that the costs of failure are very small. Mediocre franchises can be highly profitable because of the inherent monopoly power an owner has in the local market. Even worse, it is very hard to buy out a mediocre owner because the replacement must be approved by the other owners whose incentives in this situation are rather mixed.

The next Econtalk will be Monday with Clint Bolick talking about the virtues of judicial activism.

What's in a Name? asks this Cajun

I emphasize to every class I teach that the range of possible explanations for any phenomenon is far larger than the range of plausible explanations -- and the range of plausible explanations is larger than the number of genuinely compelling explanations.

For example, in the early 19th century, human population began to soar upward at a sustained trend never before observed in history.  One possible explanation for this faster population growth is that about 200 years ago people became more interested in sex.  Having more sex, they had more children.  Having more children means higher population.  QED.

Of course, this possible explanation isn't at all plausible, much less compelling.  So we reject it outright.

The largeness of the range of possible explanations for observed phenomena is fertile ground not only for genuine disagreement among people of integrity, but also for people who aren't so much seeking truth as they are seeking to score political points or moral-grandstanding points.

All sorts of examples come to mind.  One is the insistence by many folks that today's falling gasoline prices are caused by GOP-friendly oil producers who want to increase the chances that the GOP will keep control of Congress with the November elections.

Now I suppose that some people are so dim-witted as really to find merit in this explanation, but surely anyone with any sense at all dismisses this explanation as implausible in light of well-known facts about the world (for example, fewer hurricanes this year than predicted; an end, at least temporarily, to the war between Israel and Lebanon) sifted through even just an intuitive grasp of basic supply-and-demand analysis.

One of the silliest and, at the same time, potentially very divisive instances in which people (willfully?) adopt an implausible explanation for an observed phenomenon involves names for certain sports teams in the U.S.

There's an on-going debate in Washington, D.C., over the name of that city's professional (American) football team: The Washington Redskins.  (The Washington Post wants the team's name changed, arguing that it's a racial slur that demeans Native Americans.)

Yes, a possible explanation for this team's name is that it was adopted to insult Native Americans.  But how plausible is this explanation?  I find it ludicrous.  Sports teams, and their fans, want names that make them proud.  Can you imagine a sports team even (or especially!) in the early 20th century taking the nickname "Niggers" or "Kikes" or "Homos"?  These are awful slurs, thankfully less commonly used today than in the past, aimed at dismissing and demeaning a group of people simply because they are black, Jewish, or homosexual.

If you can't imagine (and I certainly can't) any team owner 80 years ago saying, "Hey, you know what?  Blacks are so looked down on, so much fun to spoof and make fun of and to demean with insulting names, that we'll name our team the 'Niggers.'  That'll really bring in the fans!" -- then why imagine that the name "Redskins" was adopted for a similar reason?

The far-more plausible explanation for the choice of the Redskins name was that it was believed that that name would be one that owners, players, and especially fans would take pride in.

Other facts support this more-plausible explanation.  The Redskins' emblem does not depict a weak or a stupid or a barbaric Native American.

More significantly, in my view, is the fact that other sports teams have names obviously designed to foster pride.  Should ranch-hands today be insulted by the name of the Dallas Cowboys?  Gold-miners insulted by the name of the San Francisco 49ers?  Steelworkers insulted by the name of the Pittsburgh Steelers?  Meatpackers insulted by the name of the Green Bay Packers?  Texans insulted by the name of the Houston Texans?  Northerners insulted by the name of the New York Yankees?  Sailors insulted by the name of the Seattle Mariners?  Greeks insulted by the name of the Michigan State Spartans?  Descendants of 19th-century industrialists insulted by the name of the Vanderbilt Commodores?

Should I be insulted by the name of the University of Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns?

Of course not.  So to continue to insist that "Redskins" is insulting is either not to think about the issue sensibly or to be so intent on finding racism that you find it even when it doesn't exist.

Poor Poor Pitiful Me

The poor Yankees. Turns out they're losing money. Bloomberg reports:

The New York Yankees are losing money even as they're winning games, General Manager Brian Cashman said.         

The team's highest-in-baseball payroll, revenue-sharing outlay and other expenses eclipse its revenue, Cashman said in an interview on Bloomberg radio's ``On the Ball,'' to be aired this weekend.         

``We're making a lot, but we're spending more than we're making,'' Cashman said. He declined to say how much the team is losing.

One possibility is that it's not true. Could it be that the comments are slightly self-serving rather than an open confession?

His comments come a week after the team broke ground for a $1.2 billion stadium project next to their current home in the Bronx that is funded mainly through municipal bonds. It's scheduled to open in 2009.

And now for a reality check:

The Yankees this year became Major League Baseball's first team worth more than $1 billion, according to Forbes magazine's annual valuation published in April. The team had a baseball- best $277 million in revenue, Forbes said.

So I guess that losing money thing, even if true is probably not a long-term problem. It's unusual for a money-losing asset to be worth ONE BILLION DOLLARS.

This assessment also conflicts with Cashman's assessment of the motives of his boss, George Steinbrenner, altruist:

Cashman said owner George Steinbrenner's desire to give fans a winning team led to New York's acquiring high-priced players including Alex Rodriguez, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Johnny Damon and, in July, Bobby Abreu.

More on the new stadium:

Cashman said the new stadium, which will triple the number of luxury suites to 60, is ``vital'' to helping the team return to profitability.         

The Yankees issued about $967 million of municipal bonds through the New York City Industrial Development Agency to help finance the stadium. The bonds are to be repaid with money from ticket and luxury box sales at the new stadium.         

``The team needs to be a viable enterprise,'' said Moody's analyst Thomas Paolicelli. ``There's only so much time where they can run a deficit before it would start impacting their obligations.''         

Paolicelli said Moody's will monitor the situation. He said bondholders are protected because the Yankees would risk foreclosure on the stadium if they didn't repay the debt. Also, he said, the team estimates that revenue from ticket sales and luxury boxes should be four times as much as the annual debt payments due bondholders.         

``We think the incentive to pay the bonds is going to be very strong,'' Paolicelli said.         

Unless they're losing money. Then they won't be able to pay. Then all the Mayor will have to do is threaten to foreclose. That will be very popular among all those Red Sox fans living in the Bronx. But the natives would probably get very restless.

In addition to the tax-exempt bonds, the taxpayers are chipping in a modest $200 million. (HT: Volokh Conspiracy.) Taxpayers must be comforted to know they're helping a worthy cause —a struggling small business like the Yankees.

For the record, the Yankees may be worth a billion bucks, but they have not won a World Series title in this millennium.

Sanderson on Soccer

Allen Sanderson finds fault with the current state of soccer. Along the way, he tries to explain some of the peculiarities of the game and how it's run using some economics.

One more reason to root for the Red Sox

Mike Lowell has lived long enough in the tolerant culture of the United States so that he's a little uneasy about saying so, but he's rooting for Castro to die. (HT: Zev Fredman)

Waiting for Snow in Havana is one of the most remarkable books I have ever read. It's a memoir about growing up in Havana in the early days of Castro's rule. It's a good week to read it.

Thugs and the NBA

I did not see any of the basketball games last night, but I heard that the Spurs rallied from something like a 17 point deficit and then lost in overtime to the Mavs.

The local sports radio station, WTEM, 980 had an interesting discussion between the two hosts, Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin. Czaban asked Pollin why a big lead in the NBA often gets turned around into a nail-biter. Pollin gave the standard answers that the shot clock allows more possessions, three-pointers let a team score quickly, a team gets complacent when it's ahead and a team gets desperate when it's down.

Czaban's claim was that the refs make sure that the team that's behind gets the benefit of the doubt when there's a close call. He then proceeded to document all the bad calls that went against Dallas and in favor of San Antonio. He emphasized that it wasn't a conspiracy on the part of the league to rig games. It was simply that referees who made the calls in favor of the team that's behind get chosen to referee in the future. He was also clear to emphasize that nail-biters don't happen every night--just because the referees try to keep the game close doesn't mean they can. This latter claim removes most of the empirical content from the hypothesis but not all of it. A careful study of videotape would be able to tell you whether referees are consistent throughout the game independent of the score.

What I like about the hypothesis is that it mirrors my hypothesis of how a thugocracy such as Nazi Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union is sustained. There's no such thing as an absolute dictator. Hitler didn't "run" Nazi Germany. The span of control was too great. So how do you keep people in line? You reward people who brutalize others. You don't need a memo telling people to brutalize others. You set up the carrots and sticks so that there's an incentive to be cruel.

So the NBA is like Nazi Germany. OK, not really. But the point is that subtle forms of incentives can steer behavior without explicit orders. Czaban isn't saying that the NBA is like professional wrestling because the whole thing is choreographed. It doesn't have to be choreographed.

One response to Czaban's claim is so what. It's entertainment. We like close games. So what's the big deal?

I have a different response. Fouls in basketball are essentially arbitrary and subjective. That inherently reduces the appeal of the game. But rather than try and improve the refs through some objective standard or monitor them with something akin to an electronic strike zone, why not simply get rid of them?

Get rid of the refs and let the players make the calls.

Would a game without referees degenerate into violence?

The experiment is run every day on the playgrounds and gyms of America. Fouls are self-monitored. The players call the fouls. If you call your opponent for a cheap foul, you get a reputation for being a baby. If you foul constantly, you get a reputation for being a thug. These two reputational forces keep violence in check. Would they work in the NBA where so much money is at stake?

I'm not sure. Maybe not. But some level of fouling would emerge from self-enforced games that would probably be different from what the NBA is like now. The game might be more physical. It might be less physical.

One problem with my idea is that you'd presume that the league has an incentive to create the level of fouling that is consistent with maximizing fan interest. And because fans like close games, the current system is optimal. Maybe. But there's no residual claimant for league profits. Maybe the Commissioner is rewarded implicitly when the game is popular and punished when it is not, so he has the right incentives to choose the right level of fouling.

There's also the problem that in a close game in a playoff final, the reputational incentives might be totally overwhelmed by the amount of money at stake.

So here's another idea. Let the coaches call the fouls. Give them ten fouls per half. It would speed up the game. And to keep coaches from calling non-fouls, fouls, let the refs have the ability to override the calls via video. What would emerge? I have no idea. I'd presume it would be a very different game and one that isn't as interesting to watch as the current game of NBA basketball. But it makes for an interesting thought-experiment about how norms emerge.

The Unseen Aspects of Fielding

One of the reasons I enjoyed Moneyball so much was the aspect of the seen and the unseen in baseball. Billy Beane leans heavily on statistics and notes the importance of the unseen or hard to see or hard to perceive the importance of factors like walks or doubles or how many pitches a batter takes. Baseball scouts overemphasize dramatic factors they can see that are tangible--home runs, fielding slickness, speed of a pitcher's fastball and overall athleticism.

This article in the Washington Post looks at a new book by John Dewan on fielding, a very difficult skill to quantify but where analysts have been making progress.

Are such skills measurable? Author John Dewan has come closer than anyone else to quantifying defense in his book "The Fielding Bible," but some skeptics suggest Dewan -- with an assist from noted stats guru Bill James, Dewan's business partner and friend -- has just tried to do something that can't be done...

Dewan's company, Baseball Info Solutions, employs "video scouts" who review every major league game, charting every batted ball and recording its direction, location, speed, type (line drive, fly ball, etc.) and result. Given any combination of those factors, a computer can spit out how frequently such a play is made by the average major leaguer at that position...

Some of the results are not surprising. Alfonso Soriano, for example, achieved a rating of minus-40 over the previous three years as a second baseman -- meaning he made 40 fewer plays than the average second baseman -- which ranked next-to-last behind only Bret Boone.

Derek Jeter, on the other hand, last season's American League Gold Glove winning shortstop, does not fare so well:

James, for instance, spends 4 1/2 pages near the front of the book explaining why Houston's Adam Everett is a far superior shortstop to Derek Jeter. In fact, Jeter, according to James, was "probably the least effective defensive player in the major leagues, at any position" over the last three years.

But what is seen is easier to accept than what is unseen:

"Some people think you can [quantify defense]. I don't really buy that myself," Dombrowski said. "I've looked at some of those new formulas. I'm not sure I would believe everything I've seen there. It's one of those things where, if you study [the players] yourself, you can have a better feel for those things than any numbers can tell you."

Stadiums, Broken Windows and more

In this Econtalk podcast with Skip Sauer of Clemson University, we talk about stadiums, the economics of sports leagues and the economics of college sports. Again, comments much appreciated. This earlier post is based on our discussion. You can subscribe to EconTalk by going to iTunes, searching for "EconTalk" and subscribing there. Feel free to use the comments section of this post for any reaction to the ideas in the podcast.

Socialism in Sports

(This post was inspired by a conversation with Skip Sauer of Clemson that should be posted as a podcast here some time next week.)

Baseball season is under way and I heard a radio talk show host say this morning that Pittsburgh has no chance to win the World Series this year or in the foreseeable future. He's probably right for two reasons. One possible answer is that the Pittsburgh's franchise is poorly run. But even if it were run brilliantly, the Pirates would have to overcome the disadvantage of being in a small market relative to the Astros, the Dodgers, the Mets or the Cardinals—teams that have bigger fan bases meaning more tickets and more (sometimes much much more) television revenue. There is not a perfect correlation between a team's payroll and its winning percentage but small payroll teams are on average less successful than high payroll teams.

Baseball does have some revenue sharing but it is small compared to football. So baseball teams from larger cities have an advantage over teams from smaller cities. What is the argument for leveling that playing field? After all, the same logic doesn't apply to say, manufacturing or financial services. We don't argue that because New York has a better financial services industry than Kansas City that Kansas City's financial services industry should get a subsidy from New York in order to level the playing field.

The difference is that sports is a zero sum game. There has to be a winner and a loser in every game. If the Yankees defeat the Royals and every team 11-0 every single game, there's no pleasure produced. Increasing that edge to 23-0 actuall produces less value. We only watch the Harlem Globetrotters because they make us laugh.

In sports, unlike manufacturing or ordinary industries, there's an inherent value in competitive balance to produce excitement and drama. So there's a case to be made for giving Kansas City some of the New York's revenue stream. One reason is that New York's revenue stream depends on the rest of the league—it can't just go out and play games without opponents. The second reason is that without competitive balance, the product does not produce enjoyment for the fans. Though Yankee fans certainly enjoy their 26 World Series championships, if they literally won every year or close to it, even Yankee fans would probably tire of winning.

The competitive analogy doesn't carry over to financial services. There's no reason to subsidize Kansas City and penalize New York. That discourages excellence and rewards mediocrity. Unlike the sports example, there is no value to competition per se but rather in what that competition produces—first rate financial services. Unlike baseball, performing twice as well as your competition produces additional benefits in financial services. If a New York financial firm falters either by charging too high a price or providing a poor product, new firms can enter the financial services market in New York and elsewhere to benefit the consumer. It doesn't bother us at all that Lexus keeps dominating the luxury car industry or FedEx the overnight mail business.

When a New York firm "outplays" a Kansas City firm in providing investment advice or when a California firm outperforms a firm in Maryland in providing good computer software, the consumer benefits. And it's true when a Chinese clothing manufacturer outperforms one in  South Carolina. Leveling the playing field by putting on tariffs or by subsidizing poor performers makes us poorer, not richer. It punishes success and deters innovation. It leads to higher prices and benefits producers in South Carolina and punishes consumers.

That having been said, sports socialism, especially pure egalitarianism is not a cure-all. Even if the Yankees share their revenue equally with other teams, the beneficiaries of that subsidy may decide to simply pocket it rather than making their teams more competitive.  Revenue sharing does reward mediocrity and punish excellence and as the amount of sharing grows, the potential harm from that perverse incentive gets worse.

Just because the NFL shares its revenues equally doesn't mean that every team has an equal chance to win. Some NFL teams have no chance of winning the Super Bowl. Some teams have little chance because their coaches aren't very good. But some have little chance because their owners are content to live off of the other teams. This tension is always present in sports leagues. For the fan, you want the owner of your team to care about more than the money and to be willing to give up profits for a higher chance of winning. A successful sports league picks needs to pick its owners wisely.

The Flutie Factor

It is commonly believed that Doug Flutie's November 23, 1984 touchdown pass to Gerald Phelan against Miami capping an thrilling 47-45 victory as time expired was responsible for boosting applications to Boston College in subsequent years. I even stupidly told someone yesterday that my memory was that applications had doubled or tripled in the next year.

Turns out they only went up 16% in 1984 and 12% the next year. This article from a Boston College magazine does a nice job chronicling the facts and how I wasn't the first to misremember them or misrepresent them. It also questions the existence of any bump at all:

So was the Flutie factor real? The answer is that Doug Flutie increased               applications to Boston College, but not nearly as much as the public and the media believe or as academic planners at some institutions seem to hope in justifying the millions of dollars they invest in football.
 
Applications to BC did surge 16 percent in 1984 (from 12,414 to 14,398), and then another 12 percent (to 16,163) in 1985. But these jumps were not anomalous for BC, which in the previous decade had embarked on a program to build national enrollment using market research, a network of alumni volunteers, strategically allocated financial aid, and improvements to residence halls and academic            facilities, says John Maguire '61, Ph.D.'66. The chairman of the board of Maguire Associates, a well-known enrollment management consulting firm, Maguire headed admissions at BC from 1971 to 1983. "Doug Flutie cemented things, but the J. Donald Monan factor and the Frank Campanella factor are the real story," he said, referring to BC's former president and executive vice president.
 
Michael Malec, a BC sports sociologist who has studied the relationship            between athletic success and enrollment, notes that in 1972 the College of A&S opened its doors to women, and in 1974 the University acquired three residence halls at Newton College and built three more residence halls (the Mods, Edmond's, and Rubenstein), adding Walsh Hall in 1980, effectively doubling the pool of applicants and the housing capacity. "Doug Flutie made some terrific contributions to BC," said Malec, "but his personal impact on enrollment during    this period has been exaggerated."
 
Applications to BC had in fact increased 15 percent in 1973 (the year after Fr. Monan took office), 13 percent in 1975, and 14 percent in 1976—years when football was successful but not remarkably so. Between 1970 and 1983, in fact, applications to BC increased in 12 of 13 years, no matter the fortunes of the football team, and they nearly doubled (6,605 to 12,411) between 1970 and 1978...

In a 1994 article in the Economics of Education Review, BC economist Robert Murphy reported on a study of 55 universities with I-A football programs (BC was not in the study group) that found a positive and statistically significant correlation between a winning football season and increases in applications. But the predicted application increase based on the research was a modest 1.3 percent tied to a three-win improvement over the previous season.

It's always good to watch out for post hoc ergo propter hoc. The true BC story casts doubt on the presumption that George Mason is going to see a big increase in applications in the aftermath of the success of the basketball team. But a lot of people had never even heard of George Mason before the past two weeks. It will be interesting to see how it unfolds. Go, Patriots!

Play Ball at GMU

What do GMU Economics, GMU Law, and GMU basketball have in common?  In Slate, my colleagues Pete Boettke and Alex Tabarrok reveal the answer.

Markets in Action

I was at the Verizon Center on Sunday when George Mason beat UConn.  As UConn's last shot went awry, there appeared to be the equivalent of a moment of silence as people realized that the shot wasn't going to go in, the time had expired and GMU had actually won. Then the place exploded in a roar of exultation. People were jumping up and down, hugging, high-fiving and screaming. I turned around to take in what was going on in the stands behind me and saw a man ten rows up holding up a t-shirt in triumph.  It was beautifully printed in color with all kinds of logos and designs and announced that George Mason was in the Final Four.

I wonder who had the courage to take a risk and print those shirts. Twenty seven bucks on the spot. Cheaper today, I assume. (Get one here for $18.98) But wonderful that they could be had at any price within seconds of the game ending.

James Schlesinger, America's first "energy czar," once mocked free-marketers as people who believed that if you jumped off a cliff, there'd be someone half-way down to sell you a parachute. I always figured that if enough people jumped off cliffs unprepared, someone would find a way to sell them a parachute. I hope Schlesinger was at the Verizon Center on Sunday.

Here's the nicest tribute I've seen yet to George Mason, the man.

With Fans Like These...

Bjorn Borg was going to auction off his five Wimbledon trophies but has changed his mind. The Associated Press, via ESPN reports:

   The Swedish great, the only player to win five straight Wimbledon titles, changed his mind after pleas from his fans, London auction house Bonhams said Monday.

   Borg had announced earlier this month he would sell his trophies and two of his title-winning wood rackets in order to achieve "financial security."

   "After great consideration and reasoning, I have decided that I will never sell my Wimbledon trophies and rackets and I have withdrawn them from sale," Borg said in a statement.

   "Trophies of this kind have a meaning that goes beyond my comprehension of the victories, as they emphasize the bond between me as a player and all the people, family, friends and fans that have stood behind me through the years -- people that have my love and respect," he added.

   Andre Agassi and other players urged Borg not to sell the trophies.

Do the fans really care whether Borg has the trophies rather than some collector? It's hard to understand. Wouldn't a fan prefer that Borg be financially comfortable? Maybe there's another explanation:

   Borg won all of his Wimbledon titles between 1976 and 1980. The silver gilt trophies had been expected to fetch anywhere from $350,000 to $525,000.

   Since his career ended, Borg has had several failed financial ventures. He fought hard to avoid bankruptcy after a company that marketed clothing bearing his name ran into deep financial trouble in 1990 and was restructured.

Would the bond between Borg and his fans really be severed if someone else had his trophies? My guess is that the actual amounts the trophies would have fetched turned out to be dramatically smaller than originally anticipated. Better to be poor and proud than poor and ashamed that no one values your trophies.

Or maybe Borg was shamed into withdrawing the trophies after Andre Agassi spoke of trying to put together a "consortium" (a fancy word that simply means that Agassi didn't want to come up with all the money himself) to buy the trophies:

"I think there's a lot of people who could step up to help for sure -- Wimbledon being one and myself another."

In a statement, the 50-year-old Borg said he had decided to put the items up for auction because he and his family need long-term financial security.

Agassi, who won the 1992 Wimbledon title, was saddened by the news.

"It's not right," he said. "The only way you should have a Wimbledon trophy is if you win it, not buy one. I can't make any judgements on Bjorn, but I can say that the thought of a Wimbledon trophy being in the hands of somebody who has a lot of money is upsetting. Wimbledon is the greatest tournament in the world."

Agassi said he wants to ensure the trophies stay in tennis. The 35-year-old wouldn't reveal who he is working with, but did say he'd like to see them put in a museum.

"I think it would be amazing for the fans of tennis to be able to see them," Agassi said. "But first things first. I'd like to see the sport come together to figure out a way to make sure they don't get into the wrong hands."

I don't understand this at all. Why would anyone care who has the trophies? Its not like anyone is going to think that the highest bidder actually won them rather than bought them.

So now the trophies stay in the "right hands"—Borg's. They're just poorer hands than they otherwise might have been.

Risky Business

(This post has been updated now that I've heard from Levitt on the source of the numbers discussed below.)

In this past Sunday's New York Times, Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner make the claim that people systematically miss an opportunity to profit on the betting market.  If you always take the underdog at home in the NFL, you'll make money:

As it happens, there is one betting strategy that will routinely beat a bookie, and you don't even have to be smart to use it. One of the most undervalued N.F.L. bets is the home underdog — a team favored to lose but playing in its home stadium. If you had bet $5,000 on the home underdog in every N.F.L. game over the past two decades, you would be up about $150,000 by now (a winning rate of roughly 53 percent).

That figure of $150,000 seems like a pretty good deal.  Of course it requires betting $5,000 per game to get up to $150,000.  But is it true?  Is it true that a naive strategy of playing the home underdog wins 53% of the time and cumulates to winnings of $150,000 over two decades?  Where did those number come from? 

I emailed Steve Levitt.  He responded that the results are from his Economic Journal paper.

There he reports that between 1980 and 2001, home underdogs beat the spread 53.3% of the time.  There were 1483 games during that time when the home team was the underdog.  Playing the home underdog in those games leads to a profit over the 21 years of $143,110 or roughly $150,000 as the article in the Times suggested.

Can you count on those returns holding up?

Stephen and Philip Gray looked at NFL point spreads from 1976-1994 in their paper, "Testing Market Efficiency: Evidence from the NFL Sports Betting Market" in the Journal of Finance.  They found that a naive strategy of betting on the home underdog wins 52.51% of the time. 

If the next 20 years are like the 1976-1994 period you will only make $20,000 betting $5,000 on every home underdog.

Do not try this at home.  Do not bet the home underdog for the next 20 years.  Not only do readers of the New York Times now know about this strategy,  but it ignores the opportunity cost of putting thousands of dollars every week on betting football games instead of investing it elsewhere.

The bottom line is that betting the home underdog from here on out is not a "betting strategy that will routinely beat a bookie."   Don't bet on it.

Levitt and Dubner close their article with a worse suggestion:

A look at the past reveals this interesting anomaly: whereas only one-tenth of regular-season N.F.L. games have a final point spread in the double digits, fully one-third of the past Super Bowls (13 out of 39) had double-digit point spreads. This is especially surprising since the Super Bowl matches the best team from each conference, whereas regular games often pit a good team against a poor one.

What does this yawning gap mean? It suggests that faced with the risk of wiping out a season's profits, bookmakers play it safe on Super Bowl Sunday. Unlike a typical N.F.L. game, the Super Bowl gives a bookie incentive to balance his books and simply pocket the vig. To do so, he needs to inflate the spread against the favorite even more than usual, bringing in more underdog money and making the odds of the favorite's covering the bet even lower than usual.

A strategy of consistently betting the underdog has not done so well in past Super Bowls, paying off only 17 times in 39 years (the favorite covered the spread 19 times, and there were three pushes). But a small sample set should not get in the way of a larger truth: the economics of bookmaking suggest that betting the underdog today remains the single best bet of the year.

The claim (which is explored earlier in the article) is that bookies exploit biased bettors during the regular season.  Bettors systematically overvalue the favorite and undervalue the underdog.  Bookies know this and during the regular season tilt the point spread toward the underdog, essentially betting along with the underdog and punishing all that money that naively took the favorite.  Bookies take this risk because they realize that bettors are biased and underestimate the value of the underdog.

Could be.  I'm skeptical of the claim that bookies during the regular season systematically take on risk.  (Levitt makes this claim in his EJ paper.) Maybe it's true but I'm skeptical.  But somehow, bookies get risk averse on Super Bowl Sunday and try to even out the money.  To do that, they've got to give the underdog more points to get enough biased bettors to take the underdog.

The implication is that the underdog bet on Super Bowl Sunday is an even better bet than the rest of the year.

But the Super Bowl is a neutral site.  Even the optimistic 53% number comes from home underdogs.  Neutral underdogs don't overperform.  So betting on the underdog shouldn't be a profitable strategy.

At Super Bowl XL, the underdog again failed to cover the spread.  The "single best bet of the year" has still only won 17 times and failed 20 times.  I don't think the small sample has anything to do with it.

The lesson: beware the free lunch, even when it's given away by an economist.

Strange Bedfellows

Bloomberg reports that Ralph Nader has come to the defense of Terrell Owens, the NFL star suspended by the Philadelphia Eagles:

The two-time presidential candidate and consumer advocate asked the National Football League and the Eagles to reinstate Owens, who was dropped for the season after he complained that the team didn't celebrate his 100th career touchdown catch and said the Eagles would be better off with a different quarterback.         

      

While calling Owens's comments "boorish and unwarranted,'' Nader said the receiver should be reinstated because the ban runs counter to the American tradition of free speech and deprives fans from the chance of watching the five- time Pro Bowl selection play.

Freedom of speech is a bulwark against tyranny—it's about the government tolerating criticism.  It has nothing to do with employees mocking their co-workers publicly and making the enterprise less effective.  This destroys the freedom of association.  And it is that freedom of association that raises the cost of "churlishness" and creates civilization.

Nader sees the fan deprivation as a form of fraud:

Nader also said the decision is cheating fans who bought tickets to Eagles games "on the assumption that they will see one of the game's most exciting receivers.

Yes and they also want to see a winning team.  Evidently, the Eagles felt that tolerating this latest example of disruptive rudeness was bad for the team and ultimately bad for the fans.  The beauty of property is that the owner bear the costs and benefits of your decisions.  That gives the owner an incentive to take care of the property and try to enhance its value. 

True, the owner of the Eagles might be making a mistake out of spite or he might be pursuing his own self-interest at the expense of the fans, a result that might persist longer in the NFL than in an industry where entry is much easier.  But the self-interest of the owner of the Eagles is fundamentally tied to the self-interest of the fans—they both prefer a winning team to a losing one.  I have no idea what incentive Ralph Nader has to provide wise counsel on dealing with Owens's behavior.  Which raises a question unanswered in the article: why did Nader enter this fray in the first place?

Winter Reading

With the baseball season over, I want to recommend two lesser known baseball books to get fans through the winter.  The first is A Day of Light and Shadows by Jonathan Schwartz.  The book chronicles the 1978 Red Sox/Yankees playoff game.  But it's more than that.  It captures the poignance of sports and the role it plays in our lives in a beautiful way.  As a Red Sox fan, I always loved the book (and the original Sports Illustrated article that is the heart of the book) even though it was a bittersweet delight.  Now that the Red Sox have won the World Series, its sweetbitter.

The other book is harder to find: The Unforgettable Season by Gordon Fleming.  This is an account of the 1908 baseball season told mainly through the eyes and words of the sportswriters of the day.  The season is truly unforgettable—the stars include Christy Mathewson, Tinkers, Evers and Chance and the unforgettable Fred Merkle.  Merkle's famous blunder turns out to be more interesting and tragic than you ever might have imagined.  The drama of the season is tremendous but it's equally riveting as a portrait of what sports meant to Americans in 1908 (more than I would have thought) and how sportwriting has changed.

Baseball Justice

The umpires have missed numerous calls in this season's playoffs again prompting calls for instant replay in baseball, electronic umpiring and so on.  The outrage that fans feel over injustice in sports is part of a larger trend in society that demands precision when precision is impossible. 

I see it as a teacher when students complain about grades.  I see it in the recount process in elections.  I see it in college football when the "wrong" team is named the national champion.

This demand for precision has a good and a bad side.  The good side is that it is part of a quest for justice.  The right team should win.  The candidate with the most votes should be elected.  The exam score should reflect your performance.  There is something distasteful when a team wins that doesn't deserve it.

The bad side is that justice is costly and the demand for justice has unintended consequences.  I'm not talking about preserving tradition for tradition's sake.  Perfect justice means an infinite number of cameras with an infinite number of umpires conferring for an infinite amount of time to get it right.  And you would have to examine every play not just dramatic ones.  That is not an ideal, it's a curse.  It is the same force that partly explains our litigiousness and regulatory zeal.  Every inequality must be redressed.  Taken to an extreme, such a worldview inevitably puts more power in the hands of the arbiters (lawyers and politicians and umpires) at the expense of the other participants, including the fans.  It also changes the incentives.  It encourages participants to put in effort at pleasing or avoiding the arbiters in ways that are unhealthy.

This demand for justice is a function of our wealth.  As we get wealthier and as the stakes get higher in sports and in politics, people are less and less likely to shrug and say that's life and to assume that any one injustice against you will be balanced by others in your favor.

Roid Rage

How could Rafael Palmeiro be so stupid?  Why would he take steroids on the way to the Hall of Fame?  I have an explanation.  Palmeiro has an addiction.  No, not to steroids.  This addiction is even harder to shake.  He’s addicted to adulation.  Success.  Love.  His ego.

When Marilyn Monroe returned from entertaining the troops overseas, she described the cheering crowds to her husband at the time, Joe Dimaggio, “You can’t imagine what it was like.”  “Yes, I can,” he replied.

For athletes, entertainers, politicians and a billion or so wannabes, that love from strangers is an elixir that never gets tiresome.  And when age and wear-and-tear start to slow the reflexes or weaken the swing, athletes look for a way to regain the magic.  They work harder, but after a while, that is not enough.  The temptation to find a way to turn the boos into cheers must be overwhelming.  Mark McGwire gave into it.  Barry Bonds gave into it.  Those are the ones we know about it.  You don’t have to be Jose Canseco to know there are more.

Look at Hollywood.  How many actresses and actors use plastic surgery to reverse the natural effects of age? 

It's interesting to compare the outrage people are directing at Palmeiro to how people feel about Hollywood.  Is plastic surgery cheating?   If the Actors Guild bans plastic surgery, should we take away the Academy Awards and Emmies from those who used silicon and collagen and botox in the past to get what some might call an unfair advantage? 

At least to get the benefit from steroids you have to work hard lifting weights.  I know.  There’s a rule against steroids, now.  But there wasn’t before.  How can you keep Rafael Palmeiro out of the Hall of Fame, knowing so many others were also looking for an edge?

The response is that it’s not fair to those who decided that steroids is cheating.  After all, even when it wasn’t against the rules of baseball, it was still illegal in the United States to take a drug without a prescription.  But presumably it wasn’t illegal to have taken steroids if you took steroids outside the borders of the United States in a country where they aren’t banned.  Does that change your judgment of Palmeiro and the others?

Let’s look at one of those players who didn’t risk his health and stayed within the letter of the law.  Shawn Green is a fine player whose career numbers are just short of Hall of Fame performance. He has a body that suggests he has never taken steroids.  Evidently, he decided the health care risks weren’t worth it.  Or maybe the illegality bothered him.  A talk show host, in the middle of the McGwire and Bonds revelations asked, “How does this make Shawn Green feel?”  One possible answer?  Grateful.

The talk show host was implying that Green was punished for being a good citizen.  But there are compensations.  Shawn Green avoided the health risks of steroid use.  But he still benefited from steroids.  Dale Murphy played before the steroid era.  Murphy, a fine player who is also not quite a Hall of Famer, made just under $2,000,000 when he was 31.  Because of the resurgence of interest in baseball fueled by Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds, salaries in baseball are now much higher than they were when Murphy played.  Last year, Shawn Green at 31 made $16,000,000.  There are worse deals in the world.

I'm not sure a rule against steroids and human growth hormone and whatever else is coming is possible to enforce fairly.  If that is the case, the just solution may be to let the athletes make their own choices.  Shawn Green will make one choice and Rafael Palmeiro will make another.  Is that so bad?  It may be better than condemning those who are caught while letting those who escape detection bask in the love of strangers.

Silly Rules

Patrick Hruby at ESPN.com discusses silly rules in sports that should be changed.  One of them is the intentional walk in baseball:

Let's see: Spend $60 on a ticket to watch someone not pitch to David Ortiz? No thanks. Better to grant each team a single intentional walk per game, the way the NFL doles out limited coaches' challenges. And when the pitcher decides to chicken out? Give the batter two free bases.

Really, why should a meatball artist get a near-mulligan because he can't get the likes of Barry Bonds out?

It's an interesting idea.  There's nothing more boring or depressing than an intentional walk.  But like a lot of good ideas, it sounds great until you think about implementation and enforcement.  How would you actually implement a ban on the intentional walk?  If you ban what is now the intentional walk—a play where the catcher stands up, stretches out his arm and signals for a ball outside the strike zone, teams would counter the rule with what is called a semi-intentional walk.  You simply make every pitch very unattractive. 

In this world, an intentional walk would become a judgement call on the part of the umpire—a decision that would allow the umpire to award the batter, say, second base in the event of a perceived intentional walk.  If you dislike an intentional walk now, how much would you dislike an umpire making that call?  My guess is that it would never happen.  It would become a rule that would never be invoked similar to the option the umpire has to keep a batter at the plate after being hit by a pitch if the umpire feels the batter did not attempt to evade the pitch.  (Though I did see such a call in my kid's little league game this year.)

If you really want to get rid of the intentional walk, it would be better to use cultural norms rather than explicit rules.  Mock the pitcher and the manager for their lack of courage.  In fact, this used to be the norm of baseball.  When Babe Ruth and Ted Williams were at the top of their game, it may have made sense to walk them every time and not just when there was a man on second, or late in the game at a potential turning point.  But it just wasn't done.  It would have been considered gauche.  And a good thing.  That norm evolved in a Hayekian way to help baseball become more interesting.

So why did that norm die?  Maybe it didn't.  Maybe I'm wrong about the phenomenon.  But if I'm right, my guess is that it got harder to sustain that norm when more was at stake as it is today in the modern game where salaries of pitchers and managers are higher and being perceived as courageous is too costly.

UPDATE:  In 1957, when Ted Williams was slugging .731 and his batting average was .388, he was walked intentionally 33 times, or about one in every 14 plate appearances.  Last year, Barry Bonds slugged .812 and hit .362.  He was walked intentionally 120 times, or roughly once every four plate appearances.  as far as I can tell, baseball did not keep track of intentional walks before 1955.  All stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com, an extraordinary site for stats.

UPDATE: Reader Neema Salimi points out that one way to enforce the rule without being arbitrary is to penalize a four-pitch walk.  The batter could be awarded two bases.  Or a runner on second or third could be allowed to advance on a four-pitch walk.  It's an interesting idea.  It does punish the pitcher who is trying to throw strikes but is simply having control problems.  It would lead to a lot of good pitches on a 3-0 count.  And on 2-0 as well.  So while it would get rid of the intentional walk, it would have some additional effects on offense.

Pedronomics

The US has negotiated a so-called free trade agreement called DR-CAFTA with six nations, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua.  It's a pretty good agreement in that it moves these nations toward more open trade.  Unfortunately, it's not really a free trade agreement because it maintains restrictions on US imports of sugar, making trivial changes in the amount these nations can export to the US.  But overall, it's a step in the right direction.  Ratification of the agreement is up in the air both here and abroad as fears of the impact of trade are fanned by those with a financial stake in the matter.

I was recently in Costa Rica to talk to people about trade issues and encountered the exact same fears that Americans have about trade.  It's a little embarassing to be in a country that is dramatically poorer than the US and have to admit that some people in the US are afraid of CAFTA, too.  It's also just a little weird to have two partners in a trade agreement both worried that they are going to have jobs stolen from the other side.  They both can't be right.

I was telling my kids about this and they wanted to know why Americans are afraid of trading with poor countries.  I explained that while trade would be good for America and good for those countries we trade with, not every American would benefit.  If we had real free trade, sugar workers here in the US would probably lose their jobs.  They'd have to find something else to do.  And that scares them.  So they fight free trade.

I said it's like when African-Americans weren't allowed to play major league baseball.  A lot of white players liked that because otherwise they wouldn't have had jobs.

This explanation produced a reaction of shock and dismay from my seven year old son.  "But it would be good for the team to have better player.  Like Willie Mays!"  That's right, I agreed.  And then he looked me in the eye and said, "And it's not nice."

That a pretty good way to sum it up.  It's not nice to keep out Costa Rican sugar.

BTW, coming into this season, there were 385 baseball players from the Dominican Republic who have played in major league baseball, including Pedro Martinez, Sammy Sosa, Manny Ramirez, Vladimir Guerrero, Albert Pujols and Miguel Tejada.  Those imports have certainly displaced some native players, players who have turned to other careers.  But trade in baseball, as in everything else, surely enriches our lives in ways beyond the monetary.

Bill James, Economist

I've always been interested in Sabermetrics, the application of statistics to baseball.  Bill James has been the modern pioneer in this area.  He has a tremendous level of intellectual curiousity and integrity.  I wasn't surprised to learn that he was an economics major in college as most of his work is fundamentally about hypothesis testing and trying to figure out how the world works.  Statistics in baseball play a similar role to statistics in economics.  Sometimes, they are used carelessly to advance a foolish theory and sometimes they are used to illuminate something hidden.  My favorite simple statistic in baseball is on base percentage.  Drawing a walk isn't glorious and outside of Barry Bonds, few fans have any idea simply from watching a bunch of games who walks a lot and who walks infrequently.  Yet getting on base via a walk is very valuable and underrated by the casual or even serious fan until on base percentage came along and got noticed.

Here is a very thoughtful interview with James taken from the Sons of Sam Horn web site.  A few highlights:

James T:  What's your opinion of the comportment of fans today as compared to throughout baseball history?

Bill James:  Well, what do I know about manners?   I’m pretty much an unreformed lout, myself.   
        There were a couple of books published in the late 90s, one by Robert Bork and one by a prissy woman named Gertrude something, bitching and moaning about the degeneration of civility in our culture. I read the books, but the thesis doesn’t ring true to me. These books create the impression that our culture is in rapid decay. But they create that impression by (a) selective editing of the facts—for example, pointing to “exploding” crime rates, when in fact crime rates have declined throughout most of the last century, were declining at the time the books were published and are declining now—and (b) simply ignoring most of the ways in which things are getting better. Forty years ago, tolerance for racism and violence was at levels it is hard to imagine today. Thirty years ago, comedians made jokes about rape. Twenty years ago, you went to a baseball game, people would drink themselves silly and fights would break out all over the park.
        At the same time, we have problems now that we didn’t have 30 years ago. Public vulgarity is rampant; that’s not a good thing, because for one thing it takes all the fun out of private vulgarity. In some ways people are ruder and less considerate than they used to be, I think. I don’t know how to sum up the gains and the losses, honestly, but I’m an optimist by nature. Things always seem better to me.

And:

James T: I remember announcers saying, for years, that in Tiger Stadium the Tigers were letting the infield grass grow very high.  Can teams really do that with impunity, create hay fields to protect their groundball staffs?

Bill James: I think so. . .there may be some MLB policy regulating the length of grass, but I’m not aware of it. Honestly, major league baseball—and all sports—would be far better off if they would permit teams to do more to make one park distinctive from another—even so far as making the bases 85 feet apart in one park and 95 in another. Standardization is an evil idea. Let’s pound everybody flat, so that nobody has any unfair advantage. Diversity enriches us, almost without exception. Who would want to live in a world in which all women looked the same, or all restaurants were the same, or all TV shows used the same format?
        People forget that into the 1960s, NBA basketball courts were not all the same size--and the NBA would be a far better game today if they had never standardized the courts. What has happened to the NBA is, the players have gotten too large for the court. If they hadn’t standardized the courts, they would have eventually noticed that a larger court makes a better game—a more open, active game. And the same in baseball. We would have a better game, ultimately, if the teams were more free to experiment with different options.
        The only reason baseball didn’t standardize its park dimensions, honestly, is that at the time that standardization was a dominant idea, they just couldn’t. Because of Fenway and a few other parks, baseball couldn’t standardize its field dimensions in the 1960s—and thus dodged a mistake that they would otherwise quite certainly have made.
         Standardization destroys the ability to adapt. Take the high mounds of the 1960s. We “standardized” that by enforcing the rules, and I’m in favor of enforcing the rules, but suppose that the rules allowed some reasonable variation in the height of the pitching mound? What would have happened then would have been that, in the mid-1990s, when the hitting numbers began to explode, teams would have begun to push their pitching mounds up higher in order to offset the hitting explosion. The game would have adapted naturally to prevent the home run hitters from entirely having their own way. Standardization leads to rigidity, and rigidity causes things to break.

And:

James T:  Does your general approach to these issues come from your economics training in college?

Bill James: My economics training was very useful, yes. It had tremendous impact on me, but I have difficulty explaining how.
        Economics is fundamentally concerned with value—what is the value of a wingding, what is the value of a plate of chicken fingers, what is the value to society of clean air? And my work is fundamentally concerned with value—what is the value of defense as opposed to the value of offense, what is the value of a walk as opposed to a hit, what is the value of a 23-year-old star as opposed to the value of a 28-year player of the same caliber? So the ways of thinking about problems are often very much the same.

James T: Was the way of thinking taught to you in your KU economics courses so different from the way you thought entering school?

Bill James: Long before I entered college, I was thinking about the problems that I still think about today. What the economists did was to show me new options for working through those problems. You understand that these are numbers pulled out of the air, but I might say that, if I was worrying about quantifying the impact of first base defense, then before I went to college I might have been able to figure out five ways to think about the problem, and after I went to college I might have been able to figure out 105 ways to think about the problem. Of those other 100 ways to think about the problem, maybe 20 were shown to me by statistics or math professors, and maybe 15 were shown to me by psychologists, and maybe 15 were shown to me by historians, but probably 50 were explained to me by economists. So. . .yes, my way of thinking about the problems was very, very different after I finished school than before I started it, point a, and, point b, the economics classes had a great deal to do with that.

Roid Rage

Alas, Representatives Davis and Waxman did not read my earlier post and they are actually going ahead with hearings.  Does Congress have the right to use subpoena power to force employees from professional baseball teams to testify under oath about their drug habits?  Of course they do, as the New York Times reports:

The panel's Republican chairman, Representative Tom Davis of Virginia, also suggested that a failure by team owners to cooperate in the investigation by the House Government Reform Committee could threaten the sport's 83-year-old antitrust exemption, as well as a variety of federal tax breaks.

"They not only enjoy antitrust exemptions, they also enjoy a lot of tax exemptions," Davis said on NBC's "Meet the Press," adding that the committee would be ready to issue contempt citations against the subpoenaed players if they failed to show up for the hearing on Thursday, which could result in jail terms.

Invoking the antitrust exemption is a two-fer.  First, it's a threat.  Second, it's a justification.  You doubt the right of Congress to force these players to testify?  But what about the antitrust exemption?  Congress helped establish baseball as we know it via the antitrust exemption.  That gives them the right to hold hearings.  I hear this argument from friends and talk-show hosts.

By this logic, the fact that the street in front of my house is paved using public funds gives government the right to look into my bank account, chat with my daughter about my parenting skills and use my house as a temporary office.  After all, the government has contributed to my prosperity.  That entitles them to...to...to what? 

I understand the argument, but it's a lousy argument.  It's the same argument that says that because government gives pharmaceutical companies patent protection or because taxpayers funded fundamental drug research that pharmaceutical companies use, government then has the right to tell those companies what to charge.  I see the logic.  You can certainly make an argument that pharmaceutical companies "owe" taxpayers something for contributing to their profits.  But the real questions is whether draining the profits from pharmaceutical companies via price controls makes taxpayers better off.  The real question is whether it is good for baseball or good for its fans or good for our rights as private citizens in the face of a powerful state for Congress to hold these hearings.

And don't forget, by the same logic that baseball's antitrust exemption gives Congress the right to fiddle with baseball, your dog owns your house. 

Kidding about Steroids

Congressional Representatives from the Government Reform Committee announced today that they were just kidding about holding hearings on the use of steroids in Major League Baseball. 

"The whole thing was obviously a joke," admitted Representative Davis the Chair of the committee.  "We didn't invite Barry Bonds, did we?  We were just kidding.  After all, how could hearings accomplish anything other than give us a lot of face time on national TV and the nightly news?"

Ranking Minority Member Waxman agreed.  "We were never serious about accomplishing anything positive for baseball or children.  We just wanted to start a national dialogue.  We've done that.  Now we're going to get back to our central purpose—the business of running the lives of everyday people."

Some have speculated that Congress is simply reacting to the backlash generated by their call for hearings.  After complaints of McCarthyism, the Committee members may have decided that they had misread the benefits of grandstanding and appearing self-righteous in front of some of America's most popular athletes.

With the hearings cancelled, Major League Baseball has offered the politicians on the committee an alternative means of enhancing their image as courageous warriors for baseball and the children of America.

Representatives from the Government Reform Committee would come to Florida for a nationally televised event.  Democrats would bat left-handed against Randy Johnson and Republicans would bat right-handed against Roger Clemens.  Batters would not be allowed to wear a helmet.  Specially designed ski-boots anchored to the batter's box would help the politicians from bailing out.  Ticket sales and advertising revenues would be used to fund a Public Service Announcement on the virtues of playing Little League and the benefits from wearing a helmet while batting.

The major networks and the cable news channels have all agreed to carry the event live.  Calls to the offices of Representatives Davis and Waxman were not returned.