Youngest ever player in the major leagues, Cincinnati icon, and the dude that called every baseball game I listened to growing up. Sad.
Nuxhall was just 15 years, 10 months and 11 days old when he pitched for the Reds against the Cardinals on June 10, 1944, in front of about 3,500 fans at Crosley Field.He died Thursday from cancer, or being left-handed, you never can tell.
Matt Jones explains how Tayshaun Prince singlehandedly gave the commonwealth its NBA team.
A coming paper by a University of Pennsylvania professor and a Cornell University graduate student says that, during the 13 seasons from 1991 through 2004, white referees called fouls at a greater rate against black players than against white players.
Except that it really doesn't say that at all. This isn't a bullshit study by any means. I've read that the authors do a great job of considering a multitude of potential confounders, and that the authors do mention alternative hypotheses that their data cannot distinguish between, and that's heartening.
But the paper (or at least those interpreting it in the media and blogosphere) seems to be making a fundamental ecological error of attributing community level behavior to individuals. The study suggests that having more white refs on a three-man referee team leads to more fouls on black players, but it has no means by which to imply that white referees call more fouls on black players.
While not as elegant an explanation, a black referee with two white referees in his group might be more likely to call a foul on a black player, and the white referees might make no distinction.
The proper conclusion of the study is that a community-level effect exists, and another study needs to be performed addressing which of the individuals makes the call to create strong evidence for any individual level bias hypothesis. As the NBA has that data and will not release it, and no grad student probably has the time to watch 1500 basketball games a year to generate the data, I doubt we're going to get an answer.
Baseball's "hitting slump" probably isn't due to de-juiced balls or steroid deterrents, but about the ever-widening strike zone. Which makes sense, since the vast majority of baseball hits are not homeruns. And anybody that's watched Barry Bonds work the count has to wonder if anything that doesn't hit Barry's bat would ever be called a strike.
And more on the neuropsychology of hitting a baseball. Nerdy, but essential for the baseball-watching neuro-fan.
Check out the Top 10 80's Robots (We Expected to Exist By Now). Embarrass-your-self-at-work funny for the people who found link 2 interesting.
Darshak Sanghavi takes Jerome Groopman to task in Slate's book club for his focus on the efforts of individuals in improving health care, which has become an inherently systems-based practice. Groopman's been on a handful of NPR segments to blast doctors for being arrogant and tunnelvisioned, but I've struggled to really put my finger on what about Groopman's arguments really bugged me. Sanghavi proves why he gets to write on Slate, and I get to write on Sparkgrass.
And, from the somebody-had-to-do-the-study department, having a gun at home increases the risk for a death by suicide.
ESPN ran a nice article about a gay football player who choose to come out DURING his playing career. Granted, he plays for a division 3 program, but still! And the best part, he plays for my alma mater: Washington University in St. Louis!! Go Bears!!! :)
After losing at home to the most enigmatic team in the SEC (Vandy = 12-6 overall, 3-1 against Sagarin top 25, 4-2 against top 50 ... aka WTF, mate?), Kentucky will drop out of the top 25 (not that the coaches even let them in to begin with). Take heart, Mr Sagarin knows we're still Top 25.
Tom Brady is the other reason (first being Chris Webber) why my Michigan sports fandom will remain a non-starter. God knows, I've tried.
Which is greater?
A) My love for Tayshaun.
B) My MOTHERF@@#$^G HATRED OF CHRIS F@#$#@ING WEBBER!
I officially renounce my fandom of the Pistons until they get rid of Captain Douchebag.
When the Pistons signed Rasheed Wallace, who I'd previously hated for his asstardery at North Carolina, I decided to give him a second chance, and he turned out to be much more cuddly than Dean Smith would have had us believe.
But Webber's shitheadedness for the Wolverines cannot be forgiven.
I still heart Tayshaun. But a fella's gotta draw a line somewhere.
Daniel at Kentucky Democrat blogs that Bush's speech tonight about his bumbling new disaster of a plan for getting more Americans needlessly killed in Iraq could very well cause a delay in the broadcast of tonight's Kentucky versus Auburn game.
Clear proof that George W Bush hates America, or at least Kentucky.
Didn't Kentucky elect Mitch McConnell solely because he was supposed to be able to stop this sort of shit from happening? We have the most conniving (McConnell) and most incompetent (Bunning) Senators left in the capitol building, and a lot of good it does us, when Kentuckians can't see their Cats play.
With ESPNFullCourt, my coverage of the game will not be interrupted. But a Kentucky ex-pat understands true bluegrass values better than you might think. Kentuckians skip church for ball games. I have no reason to think they wouldn't skip wars for ball games as well.
So maybe the entire Iraq War is really just an attempt to bolster the cable companies' ability to sell more college basketball subscriptions. That somehow seems less dirty than whatever real justification Joe Klein is puking out this week.
I impart Bo to use his connections in the Fletcher administration to condemn Bush's use of time sanctimoniously set aside for the playing of the Cats. The Cats don't play tomorrow. He can talk then. Or yesterday, you're telling me he didn't know what crap he was going to pull on us yesterday?
Disclaimer: Yeah, I'm kidding. Except about Joe Klein. You should have seen the part I had about Bush being almost as bad as Eddie Sutton. But even I'm not THAT shrill.
UPDATE: The Herald Leader: Basketball or Bush? Tonight, you have to pick
Sutton takes a few potshots at Kentucky while talking to some folks at UK.
Eddie Sutton = alcoholic piece of shit.
As one of the few impartial observers in Ann Arbor (my Cats are going to a bowl? What?!?!?), I can particularly enjoy the Slate conversation: A Michigan fan and an Ohio State fan explain why they hate each other and who's going to win Saturday's big game.
As hard as I've tried, I just can't really care about college football when college basketball is so much a more beautiful sport. Having said that, I spent last weekend in Columbus with Matz, at a Decemberists concert, only to realize that, damn, Ohio State undergrads really are the most obnoxious drunken pieces of shit on the planet. I doubt Michigan undergrads are golden children, but the fact that most of them can wipe their asses by themselves suggests to me that they're light-years more evolved than the Buckeyes dancing drunk and pummeling my very short wife with their white-fraternity asses.
So I will root for Michigan next week, not because I'll have a few degrees from there, but because I really hope there are some assholes in Columbus who have their hearts broken along with their national championship hopes.
And if not, eh, Kentucky's headed to a bowl! Of course, that means we keep our retard coach, Rich Brooks. I would rather have had another 2-9 season so we could maybe get a coach that, say, any other Div-1 school would want.
