EclectEcon

Miguel Cabrera, Baseball God?

There have been very few baseball batters who have hit as well as Miguel Cabrera. There have been some for sure. Ted Williams and Babe Ruth come to mind, and I expect there are plenty of others, too. 

But I just realized that if the opposing pitchers had walked Miguel Cabrera every single time they faced him, he would have a lower OPS than he does now. Wow!

Sponsorship at the Ballpark

Sponsorship in professional sports is big money, even at the minor league level. I recently had a Facebook exchange with some local friends about sponsorship at the local ballpark back in the days when I was Doc Palmer, doing play-by-play of the London Werewolves. Here is a summary I wrote for some friends.

Following some discussion on FB yesterday about promotions and 

sponsorships at sporting events, I wrote that John Kuhn, when he 

was general manager of the London Werewolves [Frontier League, 

baseball], once told me that he had a fantasy of having every pitch 

in a game sponsored, as in "the next pitch is brought to you by..." 

but likely much more creative than that. John then wrote to me via 

FB [reproduced here with his permission]:

22:22
John Kuhn
Doc,
If only to test the limits of one's patience.
"This crotch grab brought to you by Crüex--the brand real men 

choose when they have jock itch.."

22:24
John Palmer
May I pass this on? I love it!

Today

06:10
John Kuhn
Yes, you may Doc and thank you for asking.
True, I did once want to do a Promotional Gluttony night. 

I believe folks would rebel by the 2nd inning.

John was an amazing, creative entrepreneur while he was here.

Toronto's Honda Player of the Month for April?

I just received the following announcement:

TORONTO BLUE JAYS 1B EDWIN ENCARNACION has been named the HONDA PLAYER OF THE MONTH for April by the TORONTO CHAPTER of the BBWAA. ...

ENCARNACION, 30, earned his third consecutive award dating back to last season and fourth since the beginning of 2012. The right-handed hitter batted .238 with a team leading nine home runs and 20 RBI. ...

I don't know who the members of the Trono chapter of the BBWAA are, but I question their judgement. Arencibia had an OPS that was only 10 points lower than Encarnacion's and he is a catcher, a much more valuable defensive position than 1B/DH. Granted, Arencibia could do well to improve his OBP (a BIG plus for Encarnacion), but overall they're mighty close on offense, and Arencibia contributes so much more on defense.

Baseball Statistics in the Booth

Today's NYTimes reports that increasingly baseball announcers are being asked to use and interpret analytical statistics during their broadcasts.

Statistical analysis has swept through baseball over the past decade, becoming part of the fabric of the game and an object of growing fascination to its fans.

It's about time.

Back in the days of internet newsgroups and rec.sport.baseball, those of us who used analytical statistics referred to announcers who wouldn't try to understand them as "mediots" for good reason. They would trot out cliches and useless measures over and over again. Meanwhile, we screamed at them through our computers. 

Then, when I had the chance to do radio play-by-play of (AA) London Tigers games and then both radio and television play-by-play of the independent league London Werewolves, I got my chance to change things a bit. I continually talked about and used "on base percentage" [OBP] and "slugging average" [SLG]. And I refused to discuss RBIs. I even had it written into my contract the last year that OBP and SLG had to be shown on the screen and that they would not show RBIs. Here's a story about my efforts back then.

Slowly I had an impact on some of my co-announcers and even on some of the players. The big change came, though, when Billy Bean of the Oakland Athletics began to employ some techniques using baseball analytical statistics, and Michael Lewis wrote about his success in Moneyball. 

It has still been a long road; old-school announcers resisted the change. But it is slowly occurring. This year I have seen some telecasts that show a batter's OPS [a good, simple indicator of both power and the ability to avoid making outs: OPS = OBP + SLG]. And it looks as if some are going even further:

As players, managers and front office executives embrace the esoteric statistics, teams increasingly want their radio announcers just as fluent in the language of WAR, VORP and B.A.B.I.P. (Those stand for wins above replacement, value over replacement player and batting average on balls in play, for those of you dusting off your radios as the season begins.)

The use of statistical analysis (as opposed to just relating numbers) in baseball has come to be known as "sabr-metrics" [sometimes spelled "sabermetrics"], after the group SABR [the Society for American Baseball Research]. I was a member of the group back then. 

Addendum: I was once asked on air by a visiting-team announcer what I thought were the most ridiculous statistics. I told him the Triple Crown stats: batting average, home runs, and runs-batted-in. I tried to explain that OBP and SLG capture and reflect the ability of a player much better, but we really didn't have enough time for me to go into lengthy discussions about it all. 

Doc Palmer in the broadcast booth at Labatt Park

 

PJ Kwong again

I recently sent fan e-mail to PJ Kwong, complimenting her on her solo on-air sportscasting on CBC Bold TV during the World Figure Skating Championships. Here's the message I sent:

Subject: I absolutely love your work on CBC Bold.

I love your tone, your approach, your information. Everything!

http://www.eclectecon.net/2013/03/bless-cbc-bold-and-pj-kwong-cbcs-coverage-of-the-world-ice-skating-championships.html

In the above posting, I refer to you as "The Vin Scully of Figure Skating". I hope you realize I mean that as a VERY high compliment.

I really hope CBC-sports and others will adopt the model she used. She had online chats and tweets going, but she was the only voice on air. It was inexpensive (comparatively), fluffless, and solid. Here is her response today.

I am sorry for the delay in my response but have been trying to get rid of a post-Worlds cold !

 I wanted to be able to thank you properly for your kind words and for the amazing comparison. You cannot imagine how much your support means to me!

 Thank you again J

 Pj

I hope others feel the same way about her work and will also urge CBC-Sports to adopt this style for more telecasts.

The Economic Impact of the World Skating Championships on London, Ontario(it's minimal or negative)

The residents of London were told early on that hosting the World Figure Skating Championships would draw 50,000 visitors to London, Ontario, this week and have a tremendous impact on the economy, injecting millions of dollars of spending.

I was skeptical from the start:

• As I have outlined in previous work, much of the extra spending is often diverted from other local spending and it leaks right back out of the economy (see this)
• The Bud (Budweiser Gardens, formerly the John Labatt Centre, the venue for the event) holds only 8 - 10K. Actually, according the LFPress, the actual capacity for figure skating is slightly under 7K, and even that number has not been reached for any events to date. From the London Free Press article titled "Thousands of tickets remain unsold for World Figure Skating Championships; Fans disguised as empty seats":

There hasn't been a sellout yet in the first three days of competition at the world championships, though Patrick Chan [EE: Chan is Canadian and a local fan favourite] and the men's skate came closest so far with 6,593 tickets sold.

Capacity at the arena has been set at 6,991 and the event is expected to come in at 85 percent over the week (including Monday and Tuesday practices at the Gardens).

There are 11 sessions, which means there were 73,601 total tickets available, and 62,197 [sic. had been sold(?)] as of Friday. Organizers believe the Saturday evening free dance showdown between hometown Olympic champions Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir and Meryl Davis and Charlie White of the United States will be sold out.

• Many of those seats are being filled by people within walking or driving distance; they come in for an event, watch it, and leave, not spending much while they are here. Many other seats are being filled by people who shelled out $1300 for a full event pass. Even adding in all the media and support staff, there is no way this event will have drawn 50K visitors to the city. Indeed, later projections were lowered to 30-35K, which I suspect is still a sizable overestimate.

As is often the case, there is considerable anecdotal evidence emerging on FaceBook that many downtown merchants are having less business this week because of the concerns from locals about parking and traffic congestion. Many traffic lanes are blocked around the venue, and parking at the venue itself has been taken over by media and other equipment trucks.

The major positive impact on the local economy is, as usual, for the local hotel, taxi, and restaurant trade. But the impact on the restaurants in the area was odd: because of anticipated parking problems and because of the congested streets in the downtown area, locals avoided eating in the downtown restaurants. When the events were on, the restaurants were nearly empty; only when there was a break between events, did many of the fans wandered out to one of the nearby restaurants. But those who were attending two events in succession didn't really have time to patronize some of the finer local places, and so they rushed over to the food stands in the local market to grab something fast. Or they ate at the food stands inside The Bud. From MetroNews,

Several local restaurateurs told Metro Thursday about unfulfilled expectations — that the 2013 World Figure Skating Championships had made little to no impact on business.

“I’ll be happy if we break even,” said Seve Sanfilippo, manager of The Rocks on King, a restaurant/bar located across the street from the Budweiser Gardens’ busiest entrance.

... Figure skating competitions of this magnitude demand frequent stoppages in order to resurface the ice. As well, in between events fans only have enough time to stretch their legs and quickly grab a bite to eat.

Rushing outside to get a food fix has been an uncommon occurrence. “People are saying, ‘This is great, we don’t have to leave,’” Moore [manager of Ovations, which runs the food concessions at The Bud] added.

[For more on the problems the event posed for downtown restaurants, see this; and for a slightly contrary assessment, see this.]

The overall net effect of hosting the World Figure Skating Championships in London will surely be small or negative and short-run. Further, the city spent millions of dollars on security and to spruce things up, adding street decorations, reconstructing a pedestrian area, moving the panhandlers out of the downtown core, rerouting buses, blocking traffic lanes, adding purple-coloured lights everywhere, and sponsoring a massive light show.

It still amazes me that taxpayers are willing to praise politicians who bring things like this to their cities. I truly doubt that the net impact was positive overall.

Related articles

Cabaret, the Musical: March 22-30 McManus Studio Theatre, London, Ontario

Thousands of tickets remain unsold for World Figure Skating Championships in London

London's World Figure Skating Championships 'a complete experience for everyone': ISU official

Bless CBC-Bold and PJ Kwong! CBC's coverage of the World Ice Skating Championships

The Most Original Ice Dance... EVER

Bless CBC-Bold and PJ Kwong! CBC's coverage of the World Ice Skating Championships

Ms. Eclectic absolutely loves to watch figure skating on television. I watch it with her sometimes. 

This year the World Figure Skating Championships are being held here in London, Ontario. Rather than pay $1300 each for a full pass (let's face it: I wouldn't have), we opted to watch the competitions live on television. 

Interestingly, CBC decided NOT to telecast the entire event on their regular channels. Instead they are showing the competitions: all, everything, on their bizarre alternative channel, CBC-Bold, a channel which is not in most basic cable packages.

Ordinarily such a decision would irritate me. But I love this one --- not so much because the telecasts are on Bold, but because instead of all the horrid interviews and horrid chit-chat that we see on the regular CBC channel (when it does cover the event), we get very straight-forward commentary by PJ Kwong. She is superb in this role.

She is a former skater and former skating coach. She does the commentary alone, and is very informative with no nonsense. She doesn't whine, she doesn't moralize; she just describes what has happened and what is happening. She pulls no punches, and yet she is very supportive and very positive. 

In many ways, PJ Kwong is the Vin Scully of figure skating.

Wouldn't it be absolutely wonderful if more telecasters would do something like this for more sports!

And CBC take note: you can dramatically reduce the size of your budget by covering more sports this way in the future.

Related articles

The Most Original Ice Dance... EVER

London's World Figure Skating Championships 'a complete experience for everyone': ISU official

Molokai, Part 10 (of 11); Some Environs

Sunsets, sunrises. Both left us feeling grateful for the opportunity to be there, enjoying the splendour and colours. Here's a cloud, after the sun had set. We loved all the shades and colours.

Down the hill from the swimming pool and the abandoned bar/restaurant, the beach is very rocky. This particular clump of rocks intrigued me. It reminded me of the gap in the rock formations at the Gaspe or of some of the natural rock bridges that one can see lots of places. But it's a lot smaller than those.

In previous postings I've mentioned the abandoned hotel. It hasn't even been boarded up entirely, but many of the roofs look as if they are in need of repair, and there might be some serious leaking in some of the units. It was a large hotel complex. Here is just a portion of it:

All those buildings have been abandoned (though probably not abandoned legally). The part of the lawn that has clearly been tended to is on the northern edge of the condo complex.

Much of the neglected ground was once part of the fairways of the golf course that surrounded the complex. Quite frankly, Ms. Eclectic and I were just as happy to have no golfing there. It was more open, less crowded, safer, and quieter. But there's no doubt that the abandonment of the golf course (and hotel) had a serious negative impact on the resale values of the condos.

 

 

 

 

Related articles

Molokai, Part I (of 11?)

Molokai, Part 2 (of 11)

Molokai, Part 3 (of 11); Hiking in the hills

Molokai, Part 4 (of 11); More hiking in the hills

Molokai, Part 5 (of 11); Still more hiking in the hills

Molokai, Part 6 (of 11); On the beach

Molokai, Part 7 (of 11); Sunsets, beaches, and abandonment

Molokai, Part 8 (of 11); 2.4-mile beach

Molokai, Part 9 (of 11); Some Island features

Guide to Superbowl Cheers and What They Mean

First, my pick: I'll take Baltimore plus the 3.5 points.

and now this (h/t Rebekah):

The Most Original Ice Dance... EVER

 

Ms. Eclectic and I are watching the Canadian Figure Skating Championships off and on this week. As we watched the ice dance competition, I was reminded of the very strikingly different performance nearly 25 years ago at the 1988 Calgary Olympics by the Duchesnays. When I saw it then, I was just blown away. It really grabbed me. After their creative dance, the rules were changed (unfortunately). 

Here is a YouTube of their performance. It starts about two minutes in. 

Now that I have watched more ice dancing over the past 25 years, I can see that there were some minor technical flaws in their performance. But I am still appalled that they received such low scores from some of the judges on artistic interpretation. Here is a link to the Russian narration with, it seems to me, slightly different camera work (It's a long video, but the Duchesnays were first, so you can fast forward to about the 2:20 mark):

Wow. Just Wow.

Side Note: The Duchesnays were from Quebec, Canada, but skated for France because they didn't think they could progress to their satisfaction in the Quebec/Canadian skating hierarchy. I'm glad they made that decision.

The NFL Conference Play-offs

After going three for four last weekend, I thought I'd try my luck again this weekend. The simple fact is that in the past, over a long period of time, I just about break even against the odds (in fact, I don't bet on NFL games), and there is no reason to expect I'd do at all well over a short haul; I could very well get both picks wrong this week. Anyway here goes:

• The odds makers pick San Francisco over Atlanta by 3.5 even though Atlanta is at home. SF looked really good last week against Green Bay, and Atl struggled against Seattle at home, barely winning in part because of poor clock management by Seattle. This is a tough pick. In the end, I'll take Atl plus the points. It feels like a long shot, but 70% of nearly 60K participants on Sportacular picked Atlanta to win outright, despite the odds from Las Vegas.
• New England is favoured over Baltimore by 8 points (though earlier this week they were favoured by 9.5). NE looked really good in their victory over Houston, but Baltimore looked mighty good last week, too, and has a lot of injured players back on their active roster. They're playing in NE, which is probably worth quite a bit, but I'll go out on a limb and pick Baltimore plus the points. Interestingly, of over 50K participants on Sportacular, 59% have picked Baltimore to win outright. I'm not going that far. After all, as I have said before, "Don't bet against the economist (referring to the head coach of NE)." But I do think they'll have enough of a battle on their hands they could very easily not win by much, if at all.

NFL Picks for the weekend

1. Denver -9.5 over Baltimore. Take Baltimore plus the points.
2. San Fran -2.5 over GB. Take SF minus the points.
3. Atlanta -3 over Seattle. Take Seattle plus the points.
4. New England -9.5 over Houston. Take Houston plus the points.

The London Lightning...undefeated so far

With the NHL work stoppage, and with the London Knights OHL hockey games nearly or totally sold out so far this season, I'm surprised that there isn't more local interest in the National Basketball League's London Lightning. Yeah, it's minor league basketball, but it's live and local, and it's a decent substitute for everything else. What's more, the London Lightning were league champions last year and are undefeated this season.

For the league, the problem may be that the Lightning are too good. Fans in other cities may want to see the best in the league, but at the same time, they may not be interested in paying to see the local team blown away by the lightning.

Let's Hear It for Choice!

I haven't followed much of the Olympics this year, but it looks to me as we in Canada had THREE different channels, each showing different events most of the time (Sportsnet, CTV, and TSN). And then if we wanted to see rerun highlights with a US bent, we could watch the evening show on NBC, which someone told me, is all the US viewers could watch.

I love all the choice we have on our cable system. Sure, we pay for it. But increased choice is valuable. Some people could watch diving, while others could watch soccer, and others could watch running, etc. And meanwhile those who were less interested in the Olympics could watch the Young and the Restless. And I still had my choice of baseball games, NFL pre-season games, six or more newscasts, or myriad crime shows.

Choice is costly in two ways: it costs providers to offer such variety. But it also costs users something to search and to figure out what the options are (and then evaluate them). But overall, it's a net benefit. I love it!

SkyDome Hotel (or Whatever It Is Called These Days)

Ms Eclectic and I first stayed at SkyDome Hotel to watch a baseball game over 20 years ago when we took adjoining rooms with her parents to celebrate their wedding anniversary. We've been back several times since then and enjoyed our stays every time.

We're going to the hotel again today (Monday), this time for a two-night, two-game stay. We're taking the train there later this morning and returning home Wednesday morning. While there, we are also going up the CN Tower for lunch on Tuesday; neither of us has been up the tower. We are SO looking forward to this outing.

The Trono Blue Jays have just lost three straight games in Texas and will be hosting the division-leading Baltimore Orioles while we are there. It would be nice to see a couple of wins after that disastrous road trip. 

Sunday Night Baseball?? Five Sportsnet Channels and NO choice??

Sheesh. We received about 999 cable tv channels here in London, ON. We subscribe to LOTS of channels, and we especially like to receive every possible sports channel. 

Not one of them is carrying the Sunday night baseball game between Atlanta and Washington. 

Meanwhile several sports channels are carrying NASCAR. And Rogers Sportsnet, with five different channels because, in their words,

It's all about choices. The ability to give sports fans the freedom to choose what they want to watch, when they want to watch it. Welcome to the world of Sportsnet ONE,

is carrying the Memorial Cup (junior hockey) on ALL FIVE of their channels! I realize that most people here in London will be pleased because the London Knights are playing in that championship game. But I would like the option to switch to the baseball game now and then. Certainly Sportsnet Pacific could be offering the baseball game. What's the point of Rogers' having five different Sportsnet channels if they are NOT going to offer viewers the promised choice??

Addendum: I see their Sportsnet One channel is indeed offering some choice. It's scheduled to show cricket.

Google Auto-Completion: Here's some info I never expected to see

I use Google Search a LOT. 

This morning, I was trying to remember which tennis match at the Australian Open had involved a rally in which the combatants had a 42-shot rally.

So I opened Google and started typing "42 shots Australian Open".

After having typed the first part "42 shots", I was rewarded with this fact:

42 shots = 1.86313236 liters

I did some further calculations. It turns out that Google assumes a shot is 1.5 fluid ounces. 

I'm sure I shall make great use of these facts many times.

Bunting, Baseball, and Probabilities

I  recently posted on Facebook that I was frustrated because Jim Leyland, manager of the Detroit Tigers, always (well, frequently) seems to call for a bunt when the lead-off batter reaches first base. There were two comments.

• a former student, knowledgeable about Moneyball, said, "it's called 'manufacturing runs'". I think he was jerking my chain.
• a friend from many years ago posted that he thinks Leyland doesn't bunt enough. I clearly disagree.

The source of my frustration with Leyland's tactic (which is well-known) is the overwhelming evidence that the average number of runs scored in an inning is higher when there is a runner on first with no outs than when there is a runner on second with one out. Put differently, teams are more likely, on average, to score more runs if they don't bunt!

Yes, there will be times when the batter at the plate grounds or lines into a double play or strikes out, and yes, there are some batters who are so bad that you'd rather have them bunt than strike out or ground into a double-play (which is why it often makes sense to have pitchers bunt in the National League). But overall, roughly speaking, in general, you're more likely to score more runs by NOT bunting than by bunting.

I can readily imagine that the probability of scoring at least one run goes up when a team follows the bunt strategy, but the main times that is important occur late in a game when the team needs one run to tie or go ahead. It doesn't make sense to reduce the probability of having bigger innings earlier in a game. 

Leyland is clearly a bright and good manager. But this is one aspect of his game where it might be nice if he read more MoneyBall or Bill James or Baseball Prospectus material. 

Using the Size of 50-50 Prizes to Estimate Actual Attendance at "Major" Sporting Events.

The Brandt Arena in Regina seems like an ideal place to host a major curling tournament championship. Saskatchewan is the heart of prairie curling; curling is the official sport of the province; and Amber Holland from here was the silver medalist just a few weeks ago at the women's world championship.

So how has the attendance been?

Through draw seven, paid attendance has been a bit over 30,000. But that's paid attendance, not actual attendance. Her are the data so far:

Drw PdAtt 50-50 Cumul C 8am?
#01 05595 10935 05595 *
#02 05748 10515 11343 *
#03 03948 01818 15219 - *
#04 05633 10765 20924 *
#05 04497 05635 25421
#06 02513 02280 27934 * *
#07 02585 03318 30519

The Paid Attendance (PdAtt) and the Cumulative Paid Attendance (Cumul) are official figures. "C" indicates whether Canada was playing, and 8am? indicates whether the game was an early morning game.

As you can see, more fans come when Canada is playing, but even then, they would rather not come to the early morning draws.

The column of interest for this post is the size of the prize for the 50-50 prizes held during each draw. 50-50 contests are simple: people buy tickets and at the end, whoever's ticket is drawn wins half the total amount paid for the tickets and the sponsor (ordinarily a charity or non-profit organization) keeps the other half. A 50-50 contest is held after each draw.

In the interest of honesty and transparency, the prize sizes, along with the names of the winners, are posted after each contest, making these data readily available for those of us who might want to look at them.

My hypothesis in this posting is that the size of the 50-50 prize provides a fairly good indication of the actual attendance at each of the draws (games). If the tendency to buy 50-50 tickets does not vary much with the types of people who attend games in the morning vs. in the evening, or for games featuring Canada vs. those draws when Canada is not playing, then the size of the 50-50 prize should be a good measure.

But maybe people who attend curling games in the morning are less likely to buy 50-50 tickets (you couldn't prove that by me, given the number of tickets I have seen sold at charity breakfasts). And maybe fans from other countries are less likely to buy 50-50 tickets AND are likely to make up a larger portion of the audience when Canada is not playing.

With these caveats in mind, and with the rough estimate I made on Sunday morning that there were no more than 1000 fans in the arena, I propose the following proxy method for estimating actual attendance at each draw:

Actual Attendance = 0.5 x (50-50 prize)

In words, take half trhe 50-50 prize and that will tell you roughly the number fannies in the seats.

I think we need a SHRCC grant to hire people to actually do the counts to test this hypothesis. 8-)

Caveat: my recollection from attending RoughRider CFL games in the autumn of 2010 is that the 50-50 prizes there were roughly dollar-for-person equal to the size of the crowds. 

Clearly we need a grant to look into this in more detail.

[cross-posted here]

What do Christina Aguilera and Robert Goulet Have in Common?

Both botched the US National Anthem at a major sports event.

Addendum: For other memorable "Star-Mangled Banner" moments, see this.

Tentative Rider Pep Band Schedule at the Grey Cup

All times are Mountain Standard Time (6am in Edmonton is 8am in Trono). I'll likely be playing trumpet most of the time, but will be on drums now and then, especially for the parade. I'm not sure if we'll actually take our instruments into the game, but there's enough playing scheduled for the weekend to shred my lips:

Thursday, November 25^th

6:45 am                           Meet in the Northgate Mall parking lot 

7:00 am                           Depart for Edmonton

4:00 pm                           Arrive in Edmonton     Coast Edmonton House   

Confirmed performances times listed below – subject to change with many additions expected.

~~4:30pm         CKRM Sports Cage (this is before we even check in at the hotel!)

7:00 pm            Riderville

7:45 pm            Spirit of Edmonton

 

Friday, November 26^th

  6:15 am            Canada AM

  7:30 am            Spirit of Edmonton Breakfast

  8:30 am            CKRM – Flea Market

11:30 am            Riderville Luncheon

  1:10 pm            Touchdown Manitoba

  3:15 pm            Spirit of Edmonton

  3:45 pm            CKRM Sports Cage

  5:45 pm            Lions Den

  6:30 pm            CKRM Hospitality Suite

  7:45 pm            Spirit of Edmonton

  9:00 pm            Stamps House

  9:30 pm            Riderville

10:30 pm            Tiger Town

Saturday, November 27^th

7:30 am                           Spirit of Edmonton Breakfast

Noon                  Grey Cup Parade – Global Edmonton  

2:30 pm                           Riderville

3:15 pm                           Spirit of Edmonton

4:15 pm                           Lions Den

5:00 pm                           Supper at Buffet Royale

6:00 pm                           CKRM Hospitality Suite

7:30 pm                           Riderville

8:15 pm                           Spirit of Edmonton

????                   Double Blue Bash

10:30 pm            Tiger Town

Sunday, November 28^th

  ????                 CKRM broadcast

  ????                 Riderville – pregame party

  ????                 Depart for the game

 

4:30 pm             Grey Cup Game

                           Section “M”, Rows 25, 26, 27

                           Details regarding the game will be decided in Edmonton 

Monday, November 29^th

5:45 am    Load the Bus

6:00 am    Depart for Regina

4:00 pm    Tentative arrival back in Regina at Northgate Mall

Chuck Cecil Says, "Hello" from the NFL

I know he is just saying, "Hello" to me and to all my students. Here is why.

Opportunity Costs and Debt in the English Premier League

Fans of Liverpool and Manchester United are upset because some Americans used leveraged-buyouts to obtain ownership of their teams. From Brian Phillips at Slate,

The problem, in a word, is debt. The sales of both Manchester United and Liverpool were structured as leveraged buyouts—the owners borrowed money to finance their purchases, then transferred the debt back onto the clubs. This means, first, that the fans, those obliging trickles of revenue, are effectively being made to buy soccer clubs for owners they despise. It also means the clubs are gushing out millions of dollars each month in interest payments, money that might otherwise be used to help them compete in the cash-maddened upper echelons of the Premier League.

I'm struggling a bit to figure out what Phillips (and the fans) are complaining about here. 

• Okay, so they borrowed money to buy the team. As a result they have interest payments to make. If they had used their own money completely to buy the teams, they would be foregoing tonnes of interest income (an opportunity cost) and would be suffering massive losses in that sense. Since sports writers and sports fans seem incredibly dense when it comes to understanding implicit opportunity costs, it makes much more sense to make these interest costs explicit, using borrowed funds, even if the borrowing is done from a sister corporation. 
• If the fans understood opportunity costs, they would still be upset: prices have increased at a very rapid rate at both Liverpool and ManU. But so what? Do the fans at these sold-out venues really think they would be better off queuing to try to obtain tickets rather than letting prices do the rationing? Maybe some, who have low-valued uses of their time, would be better off; but most would be just as aggravated (or maybe more so) by any alternative scheme for allocating tickets. Ticket prices are high, not because of the debt incurred by the American owners. Rather ticket prices are high because demand for the tickets is high. 
• Sometimes I wonder if maybe the real problem for the fans is that these teams are losing increasingly to teams like Chelsea and Arsenal (and others in the Champions League).

Phillips' article makes for fun reading. But it doesn't show much awareness of the concept of opportunity costs.

An Odd Co-incidence? the Settle Roughriders?

The logos of the Settle Orchestra and Saskatchewan Roughriders are amazingly similar:

  

 

My friend, Stuart, plays French horn and has developed the website for the Settle Orchestra (Settle, Yorkshire, UK). I'm sure many of the brass players in that orchestra also perform with the Settle Brass Band, whom I had the pleasure of hearing in concert 3 years ago. 

Stimulus Spending and Sports Arenas/Stadia

There is a tonne of pressure in some circles to build a new stadium (oops) entertainment complex in Regina, Saskatchewan. Without considering any of the other pros and cons, from a purely Keynesian perspective it does NOT make sense to build one now when Saskatchewan has the booming-est economy in Canada, net immigration is staggeringly high, real estate prices are still rising rapidly, unemployment is lower than anywhere else in Canada, and people are having a difficult time finding places to live. 

If there is one thing Regina does not need now, it is fiscal stimulus. In fact, from a Keynesian stabilization perspective (of which I'm pretty skeptical, I'll admit), it would make more sense to try to dampen demand in Saskatchewan; that means an appropriate policy would be to increase taxes here in Saskatchewan and cut back on gubmnt spending in the area.  

Extreme Innumeracydistinguishing between clutch ability and clutch performances

In my sports economics course I wanted to demonstrate that it is difficult to determine whether an athlete has "clutch ability" or just got lucky and performed well in a succession of clutch situations. I was trying to emphasize the difference between "clutch ability" and "clutch performances".

To do this, I asked students to predict whether a coin toss would be heads or tails; then I tossed the coin. Those who predicted correctly "performed in the clutch" and were allowed to continue; those who predicted incorrectly "choked" in the clutch situation and were not allowed to continue. I presumed the students would all understand that their "clutch performances" were due solely to luck and had nothing at all to do with "clutch ability".

We repeated the coin toss four more times, after which there were only two students (out of 130) left in the game. Clearly (in my mind anyway), these two students  had not demonstrated any superior ability to predict the outcome of the coin toss; rather, they had been lucky. 

So I asked them, "Do you think you have any special ability to predict coin tosses?" 

They both said that, yes, they thought they did. 

Argh. If a sizable chunk of the population believes that people have the ability to predict the outcomes of coin tosses, that explains a lot: e.g. why people continue to play slot machines or throw dice or play roulette or why people continue to believe that clutch ability explains so many clutch performances.

I wonder whether, if those two students really do have such amazing abilities, perhaps we should all drop out of school and quit our jobs so we can spend our time and money following them around at the casino.

 I also wonder if they will show up for the next class....

Some Reflections on My First CFL Game

Fun things: 

• wading through the sea of green outside the stadium before the game, selling souvenirs. What a mass of happy people!
• entering the stadium and seeing almost nothing but green and white (the team's colours). Mostly green with a bit of white, but with some people wearing black shirts with Rider logos, too. There were a few pockets of fans supporting the Winnipeg BlueBombers, but not many.
• the feeling of belonging one has when being a part of a large group of 40-50 thousand people. I know it can be dangerous, but it also generates a type of euphoria, too.
• playing in a band at a football game. What fun. What memories from high school and from my few years with the UWO marching band.
• The flags, the watermelon hats (and bras!), the other amusing hats and signs. Sorry, no photos. 

Other observations:

• Concession prices. I understand but I'm stunned every time.
• the noise! Wow! I'm taking earplugs to future games. An old friend called my cell phone during the game, but I couldn't have taken the call even if I'd heard the ring. 
• Quality of play: I strongly suspect that any top-twenty NCAA team could beat any CFL team more often than not. It's hard to tell, though, because Canadian football is different: 3 downs, not four; wider and longer field, the backfield is always in motion; no yards rule; one point for a touchback, etc. Or maybe (I hope I am not ejected from the pep band for this) it's just that the two teams I watched on Sunday weren't very good that day.
• It may not seem possible, but it seems to me that last two minutes in Canadian football take longer to play than the last two minutes in either the NFL or the NBA. I think 3-down football, with its more frequent possession changes (and the resulting clock stoppages), contributes to this sense.

Living in Regina, Saskatchewan, reminds me in several ways of a very brief visit I once inadvertently made to Lincoln, Nebraska, on an autumn game day. In both places, everyone wears the team colours, especially on game day. In Lincoln, all we saw was red and white; in Regina, everyone was wearing green, mostly Roughriders shirts, hats, flags draped around them as capes, and other paraphernalia. In Lincoln, people were loud and boistrous, waving and honking their horns. Pretty much the same thing in Regina .... perhaps a bit more subdued (not much, though).

After the game, I changed out of my pep band uniform before Ms. Eclectic and I went out for dinner. I didn't think about it until we were in the restaurant, but I was wearing a pale blue shirt, and Ms. Eclectic was wearing a dark blue sweater over a pale blue shirt. Nearly everyone else in the restaurant was wearing Roughrider green shirts or jerseys; I'm sure some of them must have thought we were from Winnipeg (whose colours are dark blue and gold). I wonder if that contributed to the mediocre service we had.....

I'll have a chance to play during at least four more home games for the Roughriders this fall. And then the pep band regularly puts in an appearance at the Grey Cup (non-stop playing at different venues for several days, I'm told) no matter what teams are playing in it. 

Update: In the comments, Steve asks about the ticket prices, so here are some further thoughts:

The games are all pretty much sold out. It looked to me the last time I checked as if the prices were much higher than I would have thought, but given that they sell out at those prices (people drive in from all over Saskatchewan to watch the games), maybe the prices aren't high enough! Next home game, if I get a chance, I'll ask some of the quasi scalpers what tickets are going for. 

The stadium here in Regina isn't much smaller than SkyDome, and the population base is MUCH smaller. You'd think, then, the Argos should sell out in Trono, too. I guess the Argos don't sell out because they aren't very good. After all, one of the important determinants of the demand for tickets to sporting events is fans' expectations about whether the home team will win.

Also there is an immense sense of both belonging and stakeholdership (if that's a word) among the people in Saskatchewan. That must contribute immensely to their willingness to buy tickets, attend rallies, buy jerseys, etc. 

No, the pep band doesn't pay for its tickets. But if all I wanted was to attend and watch the game, given where the pep band seats are (low in the endzone), maybe I should quit the band and try for a media pass instead. 8-)

Brandon Morrow Pitches a "Dave Stieb No-Hitter"

Yesterday, Brandon Morrow of the Trono Blue Jays pitched what I have termed a "Dave Stieb No-Hitter", meaning he no-hit the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for 8 2/3 innings before giving up a single. Why do I call it a Dave Stieb No-Hitter? Check this out:

Of the past 16 pitchers to lose a no-hitter with two outs in the ninth inning, five have been Blue Jays hurlers.

Date	Pitcher	Opp.	Batter	Hit
9/24/88	Dave Stieb	CLE	Julio Franco	1B
9/30/88	Dave Stieb	BAL	Jim Traber	1B
8/4/89	*Dave Stieb	NYY	Roberto Kelly	2B
9/27/98	Roy Halladay	DET	Bobby Higginson	HR
8/8/10	Brandon Morrow	TB	Evan Longoria	1B

Economic Impact Statements in Sports

I am currently teaching a course on the Economics of Sports: An International Perspective at the Bader International Study Centre [BISC], Herstmonceux Castle, UK. This is the first time I have taught the course to students who have little or no background in economics, and it has opened my eyes a bit more to some of the major problems we will continue to face if we do not improve economic literacy. Here is what happened:

The BISC has a policy that every course must involve field trips. For our first field trip, we went to the Eastbourne Boroughs Football Club in Eastbourne to watch the World Cup match between England and Algeria. It was a great place for students (none from the UK) to watch the World Cup amidst excited fans, and yet be considerably safer than they might have been in some of the rowdier places I visited four years ago during the World Cup. 

What does this have to do with economics of sports? The economics came in the assignment given to the students. 

1. Estimate the amount of money people spent at the club during that World Cup game.
2. What do you think those people would have done with that money if they hadn't spent it at the club?
3. Based on your answers to the first two questions, what do you think was the economic impact of the World Cup on the local economy?

Two of the fourteen students suggested that the impact was probably, on balance, pretty small. The rest saw these expenditures as injections into the local spending stream that would boost demand throughout the local economy, despite having noted in their answers to the second question that the money would likely have been spent on something else within the community if it hadn't been spent at the football club.

When I read those answers, I sent the students e-mails telling them to read Chapter 13 of Why England Lose (a chapter we had not yet covered in class) and redo the assignment. In that chapter, Kuper and Szymanski point out that the economic impact is primarily to divert spending from one form of entertainment to another so that while there is a diversion effect, the net impact on an economy is minor (and might even be negative if enhanced congestion and security problems arise). 

Given my cynicism, I expect about 2/3 of the students understood the point I was trying to get across and might recognize it in a non-classroom setting; the rest just tried to give me an answer I wanted.

But if it took this process for smart students to have an "aha!" moment, i.e. to figure out and learn that economic impact statements for sporting events and stadia are often suspect and biased, imagine the difficulty of teaching this concept in general.

Our work is never-ending.

Vuvuzela Philharmonic? Who Knew?

Knowing our interest in the topic, Dave sent this article around to a number of us, along with this commet:

Are you as appalled as I am by the intrusion of unwarranted "sports events" on a great music festival? Let us hope for better on July 11.

Here is the introduction to the article:

JOHANNESBURG—Members of the South Africa Vuvuzela Philharmonic Orchestra, widely considered to be among the best large-scale monotonic wind instrument ensembles in the world, told reporters Friday they were furious over the recent outbreaks of international soccer matches during their traditional outdoor concerts.

"I cannot imagine what is getting into these football teams that they would suddenly begin full-scale international competition just when we are beginning our 2010 concert series," said Dr. Stefan Coetzee, the Philharmonic's program and concert director. "It is disrespectful to the performers, it is disrespectful to the music itself, and by extension, it is disrespectful to the great nation of South Africa."

It is pretty easy to guess the source of the article.