"How Can You Not Be Romantic About Baseball?"

The New York Yankees and the New York Mets have their own television networks. These networks broadcast nearly every game live and replay every game at least once. They may have the best color and play-by-play announcers this side of Vin Scully.
Both networks have some pretty savvy former ballplayers as color guys. The Yankees have Ken Singleton, Al Leiter, John Flaherty and Paul O'Neill. The Mets have Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez. Hernandez might have been the best fielding and best hitting first baseman of his era (he played 1974 to 1990).
The quote "How can you not be romantic about baseball?" is from the movie Moneyball with Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill about the 2002 Oakland A's. The movie looks at the clash between baseball traditionalists and statistically driven innovators.
But the roots to this clash do not lie with Bill James, as the movie suggests, the Turning Point in moving away from a traditionalism to a statistically driven approach was Strat-O-Matic baseball.
If you know what that is (SOM or Strato for short) then you immediately get the point. Most kids from my generation either grew up playing SOM or its competitor, APBA. Basically, you pick a team, you pick your lineup, you roll dice, you play a baseball game. Every player has a card based on last year's statistics.
In S-O-M, you have pitcher cards and batter cards. If you roll a '1', '2' or '3' on one die you look at the batter's card. If you roll a '4', '5' or '6' you look at the pitcher's card. Then you roll two dice to get the result. Sometimes on the pitcher's card you will have to check a fielder's rating to get the result.
During a Mets game, commenting on a terrible play by an outfielder, Hernandez exclaimed "oh my, that guy is a '4'. Gary Cohen, the play-by-play guy, has no idea what Hernandez is talking about.
Hernandez went on to explain that in Strato, fielders are ranked from '1' to '4' with '1' being the best fielders and '4's the worst. This guy who made a lousy defensive play was a '4.' This made me laugh, because I knew from experience that Hernandez in his prime was a gold-glove caliber first basemen who was usually a '1'. It was so cool that a ballplayer knew about Strato. Especially an All-Star like Keith Hernandez.
Last week in a broadcast, Hernandez said he was going to play a Strato game between the 1969 Mets and 1986 Mets to see which World Champion team would win.
As kids, we were playing Moneyball well before 2002. We were playing it in the 1970s. When we picked a lineup we looked at more than just a players average or homeruns. We looked at his fielding, his speed, his hit and run abilities, his walks and ability to get on base (which included hit by pitches, anyone remember Ron Hunt?)

Most of us who managed Strato teams growing up could do a better job of managing and picking a team of players than most of the executives today. Because Strato always used the previous year's statistics, you would NEVER pick a player on what he did five years ago. NEVER.
Routinely, executives today pay enormous salaries to former All Stars well past their prime. Strato players know NOT to do this. They know the guy can't run, can't field, can't hit lefties anymore.
Moneyball just further exposed ludicrous traditional thinking and grounded it more solidly in mathematics. Heck, we didn't need math, we had Strato.
By the way, with the advent of the designated hitter, there are some players who never play the field and shouldn't. To reflect this, Strato came up with a '5' ranking for these players. You don't want to put them in the field in an inter league game, they will cost you. For those interested, David Ortiz of the Red Sox is a '5'.
One of the reasons the Yankees are so good, besides their homeruns, is that Texiara, Cano, Granderson and Gardner are all '1's. They can field, too.
How can you not love baseball? Enjoy the playoff races my friends!!

Because It Matters

The Virginia Tech Hokies football team will be playing in the Sugar Bowl tonight. For the first time since 1964, one of their biggest fans will not be watching or listening to the game.
Richard Barker, my dad and a civil engineering professor for 30 years in Blacksburg, Virginia, died December 19 of pancreatic cancer.
As a youngster, dad and I would walk to football games and wait until halftime when they would let us in for free. We would sit in end zone seats (there were no sellouts in the early 60s) and watch the second half. Those early 60s teams, coached by Jerry Claiborne had Kenny Edwards, Terry Smoot, Frank Loria and Frank Beamer playing for them.
Dad was a quiet, reserved Swede, so it was hard to tell unless you knew him well how passionate he was about VPI (as Va. Tech was called then) football. Through years of losing seasons, dad persevered. Always loyal, always hopeful. But, as most longtime Hokie fans, also fatalistic. Hokie fans know success is fleeting and sometimes illusory.We spent too many years getting drubbed by SEC powerhouses like Alabama.
Because Blacksburg is not a large media market (don't think 30,000 residents qualifies) the national media has usually ignored or when they did pay attention, ridiculed the Gobblers We call ourselves the Hokies now and I suppose that's an improvement.

Dad followed this season with his usual keen interest. He was able to attend the first few home games in a wheelchair, but had to leave at halftime. By the time Homecoming came around (see picture) he wasn't able to attend, but stayed home and watched on TV.
Longtime Hokie fans get a lot of enjoyment in defeating in-state rival University of Virginia. Dad couldn't talk much on the phone by then, but he could text. Throughout the game, he texted. It was fun, the 38-0 drubbing was the Hokies' best showing of the year.
The next week against Clemson in the ACC championship, dad texted through the first half, but faded during halftime and fell asleep. I watched the whole second half in agony, watching the Hokies fall to Clemson just as badly as they had during the regular season. It was like they had learned nothing from earlier mistakes.
Around midnight, I got a text from dad. It was to be the last one he sent.
It said "Can you say out coached?"
He was ticked. He knew it would be the last Hokie game he would be a part of, that he wouldn't make it to the bowl game. Fitting that it would end for him the way many Hokie seasons have ended, losing a big game.
I told the story to a good friend of mine, who understood my dad's anger.
"He was upset," my wise friend said, "Because it does matter."
I will miss watching Hokie games with my dad, and getting texts from him during the game. Virginia Tech football is a big part of our lives together. If the Hokies lose big to Michigan tonight, he wouldn't be surprised. But he would still be ticked. Because it does matter.