Baseball, for example.
The guys in New York, who wrote the rules in 1857, were trying to create a game that was fun to play, and fun to watch. I don’t believe they cared too much about making money.
On July 20, 1858, an estimated crowd of about 4,000 spectators watched New York and Hoboken defeat Brooklyn by a score of 22–18. This was the first baseball game played before a paying crowd, with tickets priced at ten cents; the surplus receipts after costs were donated to charity.
Now the fun is gone, and we can probably lay a lot of the blame on the Oakland Athletics baseball team, and its General Manager Billy Beane. The 2002 Athletics, with approximately $44 million in salary, became competitive with large-market teams like the New York Yankees, who spent over $125 million in payroll that season.
Beane’s strategy, based on the ‘sabermetrics’ analyzed by Harvard-educated economist Paul DePodesta, was to find affordable players who, basically, can “get on base”. A baseball team can’t win the game unless they “get on base”. Beane and DePodesta understood that it didn’t matter how a player got on base, or even how well that player handled his defensive position out on the field.
All that mattered, really, was the number of runs scored at the end of the game. In this system, a ‘walk’ was just as good as a base hit.
But a ‘walk’ is… boring. Wasn’t the original idea to have a game that’s fun to watch?
This is how our world has evolved. A ‘walk’ is as good as a hit, when you are making your decisions based on data. And on money.
The ‘Moneyball’ Athletics’ recruitment strategy has since become a dominant trend in major league baseball. The result? Last year’s World Series viewership was only about a quarter of what it was in 1978.
Unfortunately, the Harvard-educated economists are ruining more than baseball. These are the same guys who calculated they could get me to buy a new phone every two years if they kept updating the operating system.
They also determined, statistically, that a corporation could make more money if they built their manufacturing plants in Third World countries. And they figured out that quantity of production matters more than quality. Make more stuff… even if it falls apart sooner. In fact, it’s a good thing if it falls apart.
Just like baseball.
The Philadelphia Phillies were one of the teams duly impressed with what Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta managed to do with ‘sabermetrics’ in Oakland.
In 2022, Phillies’ star batter Kyle Schwarber lofted 52 home runs, walked 101 times, and struck out 218 times, out of 743 at-bats. For 50 percent of his visits to the plate, Schwarber achieved one of baseball’s “three true outcomes”…
The “three true outcomes” are: a strikeout… a walk… or a home run.
When a batter’s performance at the plate leads to one of the “three true outcomes”, no one other than the pitcher and the catcher gets to touch the ball.
This was Phillies star hitter Kyle Schwarber’s performance, 50 percent of the time last year. “True outcomes”.
That’s what’s wrong with America. No one gets to touch the ball.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.