Fives In Quintuplicate

No one in the history of the NBA has ever had a quintuple double.*

I have recently become interested in the next best thing to a quintuple double: the 5-by-5 stat. Current players who are threats to get 5-by-5 include: Gerald Wallace, Ben Wallace, Josh Smith, Kevin Garnett, Andrei Kirilenko, Marcus Camby, and Shawn Marion. Tonight, for example, Josh Smith was one block short of his first-ever 5-by-5: 18 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists, 5 steals, and 4 blocks.

I postulate that the 5-by-5 stat has a high correlation with Ex-Factor.

Sinkhole Poll: Who do you think will be next NBA player to get a 5-by-5?

*This is not exactly true: steal and block statistics have only been kept since the 1973-74 season.

Ask An Expert: A ball is hit sharply at a runner on third base. What should the baserunner do?

Expert Answer:

I will answer your question with a series of questions: Is the game being played in a dome? Are there fewer than two outs? Does the manager like to hit and run? How flexible is the baserunner in his midriff area? Is the baserunner's uniform made of a synthetic polymer? Additionally, this question presupposes that the baserunner does not bruise easily.

Here is how I envision the scenario: It is a night game, the ballpark lights use halo-reducing technology, the always-solid Jerry Layne is the third base umpire, Jose Reyes is dancing off third, and a barely-healthy Cole Hamels is pitching and has an Effective Pitch Count (EFE) of 27. Obviously, it is the third inning (EFE = inning * 9).
Reyes is taking a 90% lead, meaning if the pitcher threw over, he'd only be able to get back to third 9 out of 10 times. The hit and run is on, but David Wright misses the sign. The ball is hit right at Reyes with 80e velocity (where e = .001 seconds) down the third base line. Umpire Layne is watching (professional that he is) but 73% of his thoughts are dedicated to a former girlfriend of his that he'd seen on the subway while commuting to the game.

What should the Reyes do? Try to get out of the way but get hit anyway. There is no way for a human, even a Reyes human, to get out of the way of an 80e line drive if it is hit directly at Center Of Gravity (COG). Still, because Reyes is so fast, the ball merely glances off his thigh.

Under normal circumstances, a batted ball that hits a baserunner relegates the baserunner to the bench in the form of an out. But Reyes, being a smart ballplayer with a Measurable Baseball IQ (MBIQ) of over 203, has taken his lead in foul territory. Upon the batted ball's contact of Reyes' muscular thigh, Umpire Layne correctly signals a foul ball. When play is resumed, Umpire Layne resumes thinking about the auburn hair his ex was sporting. It flowed like vino la naranja.

Q: If you had to wear a sports jersey...

...which player's jersey would you choose?

A week ago, I set out to perform a scientific study: I noted every sports jersey I saw, as well as the race of the person wearing the jersey.

Hypothesis: The majority of sports fans who deign to wear a sports jersey select, subconsciously or not, a jersey of a player of their own race.

Here is the data:

9/2 Payton Manning worn by African-American male
9/3 Jeremy Shockey worn by African-American male
9/3 Donovan Jamal McNabb worn by Asian-American male
9/5 Kurt Warner worn by African-American male
9/7 Dominique Wilkins worn by African-American male
9/8 Michael Owen worn by Caucasian male
9/9 LeBron James worn by Caucasian male
9/9 Stephan Marbury worn by African-American male
9/9 Kobe Bryant worn by African-American female
9/9 Jose Reyes worn by Caucasian male
9/10 Alex Rodriguez worn by Caucasian male
9/10 Alex Rodriguez worn by Caucasian male
9/10 Alex Rodriguez worn by Caucasian male
9/10 "Rothman" Yankee jersey worn by Caucasian male

Result: Nine of thirteen jersey wearers, or 69%, chose to wear jerseys of players not of their own race. As the scientists like to say, it seems there is no correlation between athlete race and jersey wearer race. If I better understood the definition of correlated, I could tell you if athlete race being different than jersey wearer race is correlated.

Note: This is merely a preliminary report. I will continue to collect data throughout the football season.

Note: For the purpose of this study, Derek Jeter will be considered African-American, even though statistically speaking he is, at most, 50% African-American.

A: And to answer the question I pose in the title, I think I would wear a Jose Reyes jersey. Or maybe an old Rickey Henderson Yankee jersey. I can also see myself wearing an Igawa jersey. For football, I'd wear a Brandon Jacobs jersey (I hope his knee is okay) or an Eli jersey (I hope his shoulder is okay). For the record, I also like the 5'6" Darren Sproles, but I would not buy his jersey yet. (Is there a such thing as a Tiger Woods jersey? I feel myself strangely compelled to love him. I watched two hours of golf today just to see him win...I can't think of another athlete that I would give that amount of time to). Musa would wear a Barry Sanders jersey. And Anson would wear a Vince Young jersey.

The sunsets in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea are pretty

In December of 2006, I made the following statement:

“I also publicly predict that the Bobcats will end the 2006-2007 season with a better record than the Knicks.”

With one game remaining in the regular season, the Bobcats have a one-game lead over the Knicks. And guess who the Bobcats play for their final game of the season? The Knicks.

I once met Bill James, that baseball stat guy that every baseball blog writes about. I have a friend whose mother is lead engineer on the Hubble telescope, and through her work she is able to get tickets in one of those baseball luxury boxes. I sometimes join them for a game when they have an extra seat. One night, Bill James was in our box. I introduced myself while we were standing over the ballpark frank bin at the buffet line in the back of the luxury box. After exchanging pleasantries, I said, “I’m currently creating a model that predicts the winners of NASCAR races. It has been successful so far (a .56 correlation rate), but I wondered if you could help me take it to the next level.”

He glanced at me, selected a hotdog from the bin, looked back at me and then said, “what is your math background?” I told him. He said, “You are math deficient. After you improve your math skills, I’d be happy to go over it with you.”

And that’s Bill, as far as I can tell: blunt to the bone, maybe to the point of being arrogant, but ultimately willing to be generous with his time.

Switching gears, I have been eating larger quantities of fruit and vegetables. The effect on my bowel movements has been marked. They now feel more like they are being squeezed from a tube. Previously, each episode was like giving birth to a small collection of miniature hairless bear cubs. My latest movements are more like the healthy droppings of a nervous greyhound before he’s pushed into a dog track’s starting gate.

"I don't even try to figure out this game anymore”

Brandon Inge said that the other day. He’d started off the season 0 for 20.

I should not have left Bill James off my list of people who would enjoy World War Z. I grew up reading his books, and I think he’s one of the most influential people in the past quarter-century of sports. His Historical Baseball Abstract is the best sports book ever written. I still remember that in his 1990 Abstract he predicted John Smoltz would win 200 games in his career (he had 14 wins at the time, he now has 194).

James was recently interviewed by a Mets blog, and some of his answers were exquisitely left-brained. When asked if he might start his own blog or web site, he replied, “Not a blog, no, but a web site, yes. Based around information.” He got a question about player development that rambled a little and informed the interviewer, “You're mixing up several issues in a jumbled question.” When asked about Mark McGwire’s candidacy for the Hall of Fame: “He isn't being judged by the standard that I would choose for him, but then, it isn't my choice, and there is no logic to admiring athletes, anyway. It's just arbitrary. It's like admiring people who won the lottery.”

Beep-boop. Beep-boop-bop.

But he’s right, as always, and, more impressively, unafraid to reveal an unsightly truth about the underpinnings of his life’s work.

James works for the Red Sox now, and he was asked about how that’s changed his perspective. “A lot of decisions in baseball are made on the basis of things that you never think about as a fan,” he said. “The internal discussion of the front office is vastly more sophisticated than the discussion that takes place in the public arena, more subtle, more layered, more complex, and with hundreds of times more information.” This from a guy who’s charted types and locations of pitches at hundreds of games, just so he could better understand what was happening on the field and why.

This brought to mind a conversation I once had with a friend whose father was a coach for the Michigan State football team. I asked her about the coaching changes that took place in the nineties. “The real reason [one assistant coach] didn’t get the job,” she said, “is that he was sleeping with the head coach’s wife.”

Is There a Word For “Zombie-Like”?

I recently received as a gift from some geeks I know a copy of World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War by Max Brooks.

World War Z is an impressive and endless series of interviews with human survivors of a global war with movie zombies. Admittedly, the narrative voices are all the same, the human emotions are counterfeit, and the sentences don’t sound like speech. It’s a humorless exercise in military technicalities, geopolitical trivia, and meaningless predictions: the X-86 will kill zombies while the FT-91 will be useless; the American government will retreat to Hawaii while Cuba becomes a superpower and Israel walls itself in; Iron Maiden will make a comeback. It’s a horror story crossed with a game of Risk. While sometimes gripping, the book moves at the pace of the undead. It progresses mechanically, like war games and mock drafts, with the added lure of gore.

My girlfriend read the first thirty pages. “It’s about AIDS,” she said. I think it’s also about something scarier—what if people just turned on each other? Mindless killing, cannibalism, humanity self-destructing. Someone literate in Latin could find a word for this. The book is, cover to cover, obsessed with death, but so is Hamlet. So is Cormac McCarthy, whose latest book Amazon.com wants to package with World War Z (as well as REAL Ultimate Power: The Official Ninja Book) to save you money, in case you need a gift for your grandfather.

I scoured the internet for reviews of World War Z. This thing gets fewer thumbs down than The Godfather. Paramount optioned the film rights before the novel arrived in bookstores. Random House has set up an elaborate website, which is tongue-in-cheek without being stylish or funny.

The geeks were eager for me to read it and pleased and avuncular with me when I finished it. They love World War Z, with its people behaving like machines and its massacre of the ignorant. The geeks value being right over being interesting. They value trivia over aesthetics. Peyton Manning, this is why some people don’t get you and your audible-polka.

Others who might enjoy World War Z:

• Bill Parcells
• Dick Cheney
• Ralph Nader
• Michelle Wie and her dad
• Spelling-bee champions
• The mildly autistic
• Tim Duncan
• Pete Sampras
• Anne Bancroft
• Slayer
• Distance runners
• My barber, Rich
• Laura Linney
• The lady who stamped my passport at Customs
• Kurt Vonnegut
• Rob Deer