Baseball and Books -- A Bad Analogy About the 2015 Hugo Award Nominations

If there's one thing I love more than Science Fiction and Fantasy, it's baseball. And one of the things I love about the sport is not just the game itself—the content, so to speak—but the debates that surround it.

Who's better?

What stats matter more?

Who should win an award, and who should be in the Hall of Fame?

Obviously there's controversy. Perception matters. A player’s connection with reporters matter. Results matter (and yet, what those results are usually up for debate, too).

The funny thing is: I don't think they actually are up for debate. I think I'm right, I think if you disagree you're wrong, and I'm going to back up my argument with the facts as I see them. I'll cite sources and dismiss yours.

(For example, you'll never convince me that Miguel Cabrera--despite the Triple Crown--was the MVP over Mike Trout, or that Jim Rice is a Hall of Famer.)

And I love it. And, in the end, I still love baseball, no matter how wrong you are about the sport.  Because it's fun, and it takes me away from regular life for a while, and we all need something like that.

Clearly the parallels are imperfect, but I can't help connect baseball with what we're currently seeing with the Hugos and the Sad Puppies and the "Social Justice Warriors."  Because, at the end of the day—despite all the time, sweat, and money we have invested in it—we are part of this genre and community because we love it...warts and all.

That, though, is where things get blurry. Because warts are imperfections we can live with.  Cancers, though...

More on that in a minute.

First, though, I'll admit: I hadn't even heard of the controversies until the Hugo shortlist came out. My initial reaction was excitement—a book I acquired (Marko Kloos' LINES OF DEPARTURE, for 47North) was nominated for best novel.  This was a first for me, and Marko is an author I think any fan of military SF should be reading.

But then I was hearing it was tainted...and that got me thinking about baseball.

Right now, there are two major issues that still come up for baseball: steroids and gambling (a young pitcher on the Marlins is currently being fined for betting, even if it wasn’t on baseball). For me, the former is bad. Steroids can have serious health effects, and there's as purity we like to believe about baseball that is marred with needles and clear creams and pills. It's ugly, and it's about money, and it's sad to hear about favorite players falling under suspicion (or worse, being suspended). There are rules, and this is cheating.

And yet, I can't help feel it was part of the game. For good or ill, players chose to do this to themselves, and they'll have to live with that. And they might have hurt others by gaining an advantage (though, knowing what we do about steroids, it can't actually make you better at baseball. Rather, it enhances you're ability to build muscle mass and recover from workouts quicker--still an advantage, but it doesn't change the fact that you have to be good enough to hit a baseball or locate a 90 mile-per-hour fastball in a relatively small box), I don't think their actions were so reprehensible as to warrant complete exclusion from the game.

Gambling (in particular, betting on baseball), though, is more than bad—it’s something I think has no place in the sport. It can have serious repercussions that affect whole teams. It changes the fundamental aspects of baseball, because it's no longer player versus player, but player versus the line—versus money.

As such, I would have no problem including Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens in the Hall of Fame, but I would never want to see Pete Rose there.

For me, then, I can't say I like the stances of the proponents of the platform (or the views of some of those nominated), yet I can’t find a reason to actually fault what they did (the action, not the reason).  As many have pointed out, the Hugo Awards (as well as the Nebulas and any other voted on award—think All-Star games to bring it back to baseball) are flawed, and this group exploited that system.  It happens, and obviously we should be thinking about how to fix it (if we even care at this point).

But what we should never tolerate is any group that advocates specificity harmful actions to others in the community. A jerk by himself hurts himself—don't buy his book. But a jerk that espouses violence, such as members of GamerGate—the Sad Puppies staunch foot soldiers, apparently—then that's something worth noting.

Because the fact is, they are bad for the game. Threats and direct derogatory commentary not only shouldn't be tolerated, they CAN'T be tolerated.  Just as you can’t yell “Fire” in crowded theater (or baseball stadium), you aren’t protected if your views are threatening or abusive. Yes, you are entitled to your opinions, but it doesn’t mean your opinions are allowed to impinge on the safety of others.

The funny thing is—for the most part, I see this as a steroid problem.  This is something we certainly don’t like seeing, but people saw an opportunity and took it—I can’t fault them that.  But to then have a slate that seems to be okay with homophobia and racism and sexism…how is that okay?  And perhaps another baseball analogy will help:

Where would the game be without Jackie Robinson?

The world is evolving, and science fiction and fantasy has always been on the forefront of that. I’ve always been excited to see us pushing the boundaries and debate forward. I would hope we could do so amicably, with the idea that in the end, it’s the stories that really define this genre, just as the games define baseball.  The personalities are intriguing, sure, but we need not define ourselves simply by ourselves. Let’s enjoy the content, let’s debate the situation around it, and let’s keep it amicable. Because at the end of the day, the Red Sox are still going to be there, and I have to live with that…as long as they don’t start threatening my family.

*Awkward analogy: Ended*

A reminder: Kloos and Butcher and Anderson didn't ask to be on the Sad Puppy slate. Read these really good books and then decide.  Don't just "No Award" because they showed up with no affiliation to the group.

Links:

Sad Puppy slate: https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/sad-puppies-3-the-2015-hugo-slate/

Breitbart (pro-Sad Puppy commentary): http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/04/04/hugo-awards-nominations-swept-by-anti-sjw-anti-authoritarian-authors/

Larry Correia (Sad Puppy founder reaction): http://monsterhunternation.com/2015/04/06/a-letter-to-the-smofs-moderates-and-fence-sitters-from-the-author-who-started-sad-puppies/

io9: http://io9.com/the-hugo-awards-were-always-political-now-theyre-only-1695721604

Pornokitsch (Justin Landon reaction): http://www.pornokitsch.com/2015/04/justin-landon-on-the-hugo-awards-an-entity-at-war-with-itself-.html

Whatever (John Scalzi reaction): http://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/04/04/a-note-about-the-hugo-nominations-this-year/ 

Don't Kill the Messenger

When Michael Lewis decided to write Moneyball, his intention was to figure out how a team with seemingly no resources in which to compete with large-market teams could put together playoff runs year after year. He was specifically interested in how the Oakland A's, one of the "poorer" teams in baseball (I always smile a little when teams complain about having a payroll of "only" 40 million dollars) was able to be successful. What he found wasn't a magic formula but, in fact, the seeming opposite.

Baseball, a game built on traditions, didn't understand any of those traditions. Instead, with a series of superstitions and misguided beliefs, a multi-billion dollar industry was run with the efficiency of a ice cream stand on the sun.

With a little less melting.

The baseball theory itself is pretty interesting, but, amazingly enough, not really the point of the book. The point is to show that baseball is not really a game of gut-calls, but instead, a game of numbers. It can be a game of numbers because it produces such large sample sets -- 162 game seasons, multiple at-bats per game, multiple innings-pitched, multiple pitches thrown. What this means is that, over the course of a season, and over the course of a career, there is enough data to generate statistical probabilities that generally stand up. What the A's figured out was that certain statistics more accurately gauge a players offensive capabilities, and that those statistics weren't the ones that find themselves in the daily box scores, key among them, on-base percentage. The team had come to the conclusion that, when it comes down to it, the most important thing a hitter can do is not make an out. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter how you get on first base, just that you do (with the exception of fielders choices, of course).

What Lewis was amazed by (as were the A's, who people saw as this anamoly), was that this was a radical way of thinking. Logic-be-damned: no boy with a computer is going to tell someone who actually played the game that RBIs, steals, and batting average don't matter. The problem was, that the A's weren't saying that. They were saying that those numbers are not as accurate at explaining how good an offensive player is.

In the end, the book is less about the math (although it is important), and more about the philosophy. It wasn't that the A's were trying to prove that the rest of baseball was wrong. it wasn't trying to say that the people everyone else had designated as good were bad. It was simply trying to show how a baseball team, if run as an efficient business, can do so with less money by identifying the "parts" others were undervaluing, selling high the players other teams were overvaluing, and getting the best possible team for his money. The fact was, the A's couldn't afford superstars on their team, so instead they had to figure out a way to win that didn't include players traditionally labeled as being good (regardless if they had actually performed or not -- hence their liking college players over high school players: they had more evidence on which to make a decision).

That's why the book is called Moneyball. Because, although it's a game built on tradition, it's also a business built on cash.

The most amazing thing about this book is the reaction. This book was written a couple of years ago, and yet it seems as if people still think it's hogwash. They don't understand how a guy with a bad body, or someone who doesn't run fast, can be a major league baseball player. They don't understand how the sacrifice bunt is a wasted play (that the probability of a run scoring from first base with no outs is significantly statistically higher than a player on second base with one out) or how, for the most part, stealing is statistically too risky a play to warrant indiscriminate running -- no matter who the player is. Again, this is about tradition. We grew up playing this game, we grew up watching this game, and so many things that we took for granted -- usually because some ex-ballplayer who is now the announcer says it's so -- are being questioned. But the numbers don't bear out those plays. It is conservativism at it's worst, being afraid of technology because they refuse to see anything is broken at all.

Perhaps the worst of these nay-sayers is, amazingly enough, someone who has admitted he's actually never read the book: Joe Morgan. Now Morgan was a phenomenal player (or so I'm told; I never saw him play, but seeing how he's in the Hall of Fame and the numbers are there, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt), but he's a terrible broadcaster. This despite the fact that he's the number one baseball analyst for ESPN. What makes him so terrible is that he has no concept about why things happen in the games. He has a love for "little ball," and yet when he points to a successful "little ball team" (such as the 2005 White Sox), what he inevitably ignores is their tremendous "big ball" numbers and amazing pitching. If you pointed out to him that the same team, with the same philosophy, performed poorly the next season, he has no answer for that. Most importantly, though, is that although he hasn't read it, he still feels he has the right to comment about it. And his comments are wrong.

To observe how wrong he is, read one of the better sports blogs on the internet, Fire Joe Morgan.

The funny thing is, I had bought into the ideas espoused in Moneyball before actually reading it. When they were explained to me, they simply made sense. How could they not: they were backed up with numbers. The numbers were backed up with success. Yes, as Morgan gleefully points out, the A's have not won a World Series with their philosophy, but they have reached the playoffs a number of years with players people consistently belittle -- something must be working. Too, there can only be one champion each year, and it's not always the case that the best team in the regular season wins it all. But somehow winning division titles isn't enough for Joe, and yet he'll praise managers with losing records (because they play the game "the right way"). Reading the book was like having gravity explained to you by Newton -- it felt like I was getting the inside scoop from the man himself.

If you want to understand the numbers behind baseball, read this book. If you want to understand why some teams do better than others, regardless of payroll, read this book. If you want to learn more about Billy Beane, the A's general manager (who did not write the book), Scott Hatteberg, Josh Brown, Nick Swisher, or Chad Bradford, read this book. However, if you want to maintain your belief in baseball as being flawless, do not read this book.

You will not understand it or you will be defensive and resistant to it. Either way, it's not the book for you.

Clemens!

Re-Joining the Yankees! God reads my blog!

It All Comes Together in the End. . .Kind of

I had my last class on Monday, and throughout the semester, I had been consistently messing up in interpretations of a particular literary critic/philosopher. Time after time, I would claim an understanding, and my professor would look at me, and then the class, and then in a tone that left no uncertainty as to how everyone should think, she would ask “What do you all think of David’s idea.” David’s idea. You don’t even need to read between the lines: by it being my idea, it is clearly not the idea of the philosopher (and therefore not the correct idea).

And yet, there’s a stubbornness innate in my being, and if anything, you could praise my “if at first you don’t succeed” attitude. But the idea with that sentiment is that eventually you will get it.

I didn’t get it.

And so in our final review class, I once again asked a question about the philosophy, but I did so by first positing “I think I understand what he means when he says . . . .” In a consistency the envy of your grandmother’s gravy, I had not understood, so once again the class had to endure an explanation of how I’m an idiot. Amazingly though, all that is just a preface to the actual problem.

Because, as I’m wont to do, once I did understand it, at least as far as my professor explained it, I then had to go ahead (and perhaps a little defensively, at least in tone), I asked: But who actually lives their lives like that?

I think I pissed her off. She then proceeded to explain exactly who lives this way: people who take her class. Apparently, one of the main issues she was trying to tackle with this course was the specific concept I simply wasn’t able to grasp. I would speculate that her anger and disappointment stemmed from two possible causes. First, because she didn’t do a good enough job teaching the subject, or at least delineating the goals of the course. While I would definitely contend this is partially a reason, I don’t think it was a big part, and therefore don’t think that was the pressing matter on her mind. The second reason, though, is that she can’t understand how someone in a graduate program can hear and read something at least three times, and not only not understand, but then act “offended” when he finally does.

In hindsight, I don’t think I’ll be requesting a letter of recommendation from her. It would be kind of hard to ask a question after I’ve already put my foot in my mouth.

Sadly enough, I told that whole story to get to idiom “foot in my mouth” (and seeing how I’m pretty tired, I wouldn’t be surprised if, in reading this, my use of the phrase doesn’t really make sense—but hey, it’s the Internet, so . . . whatever). But I really have a cultural point here; I’m not just trying to tell an anecdote about my life (because even I’m not that interested in my tale).

What caught my attention about “foot in my mouth” is that people say it a lot, but no one really thinks what it means. What does putting a foot in your mouth have to do with embarrassment, in a literal or figurative sense? I think I’d actually be pretty impressed if someone could put their foot in their mouth. In today’s world of Pilates, it may not be such a novel maneuver, but even if you could get your foot to your mouth, you’d need to dislocate you jaw like a boa constrictor to get it in there (unless, perhaps, you are a Chinese woman in an incredibly repressive household):


Snake Eating An Egg

This in turn led me to think about a discussion I had with my friend. We were walking home from another friend’s house, and my one friend, I’ll call him Esteban, was complaining about the snacks that our other friend, I’ll call him Tiberius, had provided. I (I’ll call myself “I”) said “you shouldn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth,” and he asked what that meant. After explaining what the proverb meant (yes, that’s the level of intellect I’m talking about with Esteban), he still wanted to know what it meant. I explained to him that one way a prospective horse-buyer would determine if a horse was in good condition was by examining the horse’s teeth. The idea was that if a horse’s teeth were healthy, then the owner had clearly taken care of the animal. Hence, “looking in its mouth” (disturbingly and yet not surprisingly, this was also done in determining the health of slaves). Therefore, for some reason, the horse-fairy leaves you a present under your pillow (and you haven’t refused an offer from Don Corleone), the idea is that you should be happy someone gave you a horse, and not worry if it’s healthy or not.

On the flipside, considering how expensive horses are (stabling, food, vet bills), this may be more like a curse than a blessing.

Horses tend to smell, too.

Regardless, the saying, like many proverbs and idioms that we use, are taken for granted. Perhaps ironically, it is this very idea, of reading “texts” for what’s on the surface, that was at issue for me with my professor. To end your suspense, the philosopher we were reading was Emmanuel Levinas, who was talking about . . . never mind. I doubt you want my interpretation of a philosopher I’ve already admitted to misinterpreting on multiple occasions. What’s important to know though, is that my professor’s point was that we have to approach reading in the same ethical style that Levinas proposes (okay, so I guess just ignore the previous sentence), where we can only know about ourselves in relation to the Other, and that is because the Other puts us into question. Now I’ll say I don’t really know what this means. But when reading a book (or any text), it’s not a good idea to go into it by thinking “I’m going to understand everything this book is going to tell me,” because that’s impossible. Books have infinite depth, but too often we care about plot and characters. While I personally see nothing wrong with that, because I think most books should be read to get what you want out of it, as a student, I concede the point. And, to be honest, it can make reading a much different activity than simply curling up in your chair and enjoying the story. Whether that’s a good thing or not is another question. But if you want to see reading in a Levinasian manner, take this exchange from Bull Durham:

“Crash” Davis: “You have to approach the game with fear and arrogance.”
“Nuke” LaLoosh: “Fear and ignorance. Got it.”

There are two things to note here. First, LaLoosh’s position is the one akin to Levinas’ because we should come to texts not thinking we know everything and be a little apprehensive about what that lack of knowledge means about us. It is also (and in my contention, rightly so), the position the movie is telling us is wrong – LaLoosh is misinterpreting the Wise Mentor (albeit to get a rise out of him).

Second, the movie is about baseball, and not about “texts.” But it’s a great movie anyway, perhaps one of the greatest sports movies ever, but overall one of the better movies period. It’s very funny, has a sense of depth beyond character and plot (so there), and loving embraces baseball. For one thing, it stars a Kevin Costner who isn’t pee-drinking douche. For another, it shows that although you may be insufferable liberals in person, such as the other two stars, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, you can still be good actors, as opposed to, say, Sean Penn.

(I should note that part of my antipathy to Penn has to deal with the fact that I can’t really name any movies he’s been in, and the ones I can, I wasn’t impressed. My roommate swears by him, especially in 21 Grams, but even she couldn’t think of any other movies where Penn was good. I think maybe she’s thinking of Penn Jillette, which I could then understand. On the other hand, Robbins, if only for The Shawshank Redemption alone deserves praise, but he was also great in the aforementioned Bull Durham, had a great, smaller role in Arlington Road, was charming in Hudsucker Proxy (a highly underrated movie—check it out!), and of course was part of the classic Howard the Duck. In the case of Sarandon, it definitely doesn’t hurt that she’s very attractive—which is true of many insufferable liberals. Hell, if Ann Coulter was super-hot, I’m sure less people would call her a “Nazi-Devil-Bitch”—although that may just be my pet-name for her).

It’s also got the second best use of “Try a Little Tenderness” of any movie (although why they don’t use the Otis Redding version is unconscionable):



But mostly the movie’s great because it’s about baseball, and baseball is the greatest sport on the face of the Earth.

I know this may sound grandiose, but what other sport is both entertaining and poetry? Basketball is ballet with power, hockey is flying on ice, and football is war, but baseball. . .baseball is poetry. It is the greenest grass and the brightest sun. It is spring and summer and hot dogs and beer. The gliding outfielders, the slick infielders, the arc of a long fly ball to deep left. It is Yankee Stadium and history, it is Fenway’s Big Green Monster, it is Wrigley’s ivy.

It’s also a thinking mans’ game, in which the beauty of numbers comes to bear more than any other sport. Sabermetrics is the other piece of the poetic puzzle, because more than just a “game of inches,” it’s a game of statistics. The funny thing is, though, that too often, experts don’t even recognize this, hence the greatest sports blog of all time, Firejoemorgan.com. It is dedicated to being snarky to sports reporters who seem to get paid to know absolutely nothing about the sport they cover. How they can talk about “hustle” and “determination” and “clutch” as if these are quantitatively provable elements, and yet have no idea about why a pitcher’s win/loss record is says relatively nothing about how good that pitcher is (the reason, if you aren’t sure, is because wins are just as dependent on the team’s offense and defense as they are on the pitching performance. Case in point: Jason Marquis, of the St. Louis Cardinals, won 14 games last year, generally considered pretty good, but he had an ERA of over 6. That means for every one of those 14 wins, his team needed to score 7 runs. That’s a tall order for most baseball teams, which goes to show that all those wins were more because he was on a great offensive team and not because he was a great pitcher). How they can talk about how “good” David Eckstein is

Baseball is fantastic. If you don’t think so, listen to this and see if you don’t smile. And I don't really like the Mets (but at least I don't hate them like the Red Sox.

Which all goes to show you: Maybe if Levinas had taken some time to buy some peanuts and Cracker Jacks, he wouldn’t care so much about “defining himself.” Or maybe, the question he would be answering about himself is: Why can’t I be out there on the field, shagging flies?

And the answer? Because you don’t have the stats, Manny.

Probably won’t get an A in that class, though.