EclectEcon

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.

Why England Lose

For my course on the Economics of Sports at the Bader Int'l Study Centre (Herstmonceux Castle), my students are reading Why England Lose by Kuper and Szymanski. As part of the programme here, every course has at least one field trip. For this course, our first field trip last night was to the Eastbourne Football Club to watch England play Algeria in a World Cup football/soccer match. It was a great, boisterous atmosphere, but still sufficiently safe that I felt okay taking the students there. Four years ago when I was here, I went to some pretty rowdy pubs to watch World Cup matches, places I would rather not go with students.

One of the assertions of the K&S book is the "geographic rule": teams from western Europe dominate, especially in the early rounds of international play. While that conclusion has been borne out on average so far, the recent defeats of France by Mexico and of Germany by Serbia do not support the conclusion. The students have taken great delight in pointing out these exceptions.

 Further some (albeit weak) empirical results from the book conclude that teams with more international experience and from larger countries with higher GDP per capita will tend to score more goals. And of course the students pointed out that Slovenia's tie with (and near defeat of) the US, and Algeria's tie with England last night are not consistent with those empirical results. 

England play again on Wednesday at 3pm our time against Slovenia, the only team in Group C to have won a match. What a co-incidence.... that just happens to be when our sports economics course meets on Wednesday. But because the castle admins won't open the castle pub to show the match, we may have to re-schedule the class for that evening and may a trek up to the local village for yet another field trip....

.

Interesting.... this book is not available in the US.

Addenda: Two points I forgot to include in the original posting:

• Kuper and Szymanski had cautious optimism about the team's performance under coach Capello. However, they also pointed out that the team still struggle against strong opposition.
• My answer to Why England Lose: they just aren't good enough. It's not a lack of heart or drive or spirit. And it is not necessarily the money they make in the EPL; after all other countries have many players who earn big bucks in major football leagues. If money were the explanation, we should be able to find a negative correlation between the goal differentials and teams' players' professional salaries. I do not have the data to examine this possibility, but it might yield interesting results.
  
  On the field during the World Cup, England just don't look any better than the teams with whom they have drawn so far.

More on Vuvuzelas: some economics and other notes

Thanks to Kais, I learned there are iPhone apps that play the annoying sound of the vuvuzelas [plastic horns] at the World Cup. Of course there are! I have now downloaded one of the free versions and am prepared for rowdy pubs. Or maybe I'll just play my air horn app that was designed more for NHL games, I think. Or maybe the cowbells, designed for curling events. Or maybe I'll alternate until the battery runs out or I'm thrown out, whichever comes first... (I have an external battery source for my iPhone, so it'll last pretty long!)

Is it just my imagination, or are all the vuvuzelas tuned to the same note? It would make sense that they are, since they appear to have been mass-manufactured. But are the economies of scale in vuvuzela manufacturing so serious that the firm producing them has a natural monopoly? If not, and if there are other producers, is there some reason they are all produced to play the same note?

 If I had one, I would cut it off at the plastic mouthpiece just a bit and insert my french horn mouthpiece (which I just happen to have with me on my travels), all so I could have a slightly higher pitched noise-maker. 

 Some years ago, I made some vuvuzela-wannabes to take to a local baseball game. I just cut some gray plastic electrical conduit to various lengths (to get different notes; drilling holes didn't work for that) and they were good and loud. Not as loud as the real thing, but still loud in a small stadium. And they have the advantage that they are easily smuggled in, tucked down one's pantlegs (we were told that vuvuzelas are banned from some ballparks because they are so loud and so annoying, but not at the ballpark we attended).

I'm not sure, but I think this might be my first posting ever that combines three of my interests: economics, sports, and music. If I thought long and hard, I could probably incorporate acting, too, but that might detract from the topic of the posting a bit.

For my previous posting on this topic, see this.

Btw, no pun intended in the title for this posting.

Vuvuzelas at the World Cup

I have never minded those plastic horns at sporting events....until now. Every time I have heard them in the past, fans have used them to cheer for or about something rather than as substitutes for the drone pipe on a set of bagpipes. Making noise, all sorts of noise, when cheering seems appropriate at sporting events. For background, see this as just one example, which concludes:

... of course the last laugh belonged to the U.S. fans, who saw their team capitalize on a blunder by England goalie Robert Green, who now joins Bill Buckner and Steve Bartman at the Home for Unfairly Demonized Sports Villains.

Mr. Green probably wouldn't mind if someone blew a vuvuzela in his ear. Even the Infamous Plastic Horn of Distraction is less shrill than the panic coming from his homeland.

The constant drone of the vuvuzelas seems pointless other than to say, "See? We can keep up this pointless, annoying sound steadily for nearly two hours!"

I confess it might be fun to be a part of the annoyance if I were in the stadium. But watching a World Cup match on television is far less pleasant with all that noise in the background. And friends tell me that listening to a match on the radio is really unpleasant with all the vuvuzela noise going on.

My solution, however, is not to ban the plastic horns from the stadia. I see two possible alternative options:

• Glass in the announcers' booths so we hear less of the drone over tv and radio. 
• I'm not sure this would work, but it might: use similar technology to that of noise-canceling headphones to offset the sound of the vuvuzelas.

The Baseball Commissioner Must Change the Umpire's Callafter all, they did it in the pine-tar incident

I know that in the grand scheme of things, this really doesn't matter much. But it wouldn't take much to set things right.

Detroit Tiger pitcher, Armando Galarraga had retired 26 opponents in a row in tonight's game against Cleveland. If he retired the 27th, he would pitch a perfect game, only the 21st in the history of baseball (albeit the third one this year!). 

Ground ball to the first baseman, who tossed it to Galarraga covering first base. As the replays showed, the throw beat the runner by half a step. But incomprehensibly enough, the first base umpire, Jim Joyce, called the batter safe. See here for details. After the game and after studying the replays, umpire Joyce admitted he had "blown the call":

"I just cost that kid a perfect game," Joyce said. "I thought he beat the throw. I was convinced he beat the throw, until I saw the replay."

"It was the biggest call of my career," said Joyce, who became a full-time major league umpire in 1989.

Now it is time for the Commissioner's Office to make it right. If they could over-rule the umpire in the famous George Brett pine-tar incident, surely they can over-rule this blown call and award Galarraga a perfect game.

And since Galarraga got the next batter out on a ground ball to the shortstop, it would essentially cost nothing to make the change.

EastLink Cable Update

I just received a telephone call from Ashley at EastLink. She says they have worked out an arrangement whereby we will now be able to watch Toronto Blue Jays games on the MLB extra-innings package (channel 456 in our area) for the duration of the Memorial Cup hockey play-offs. I hope so; we'll find out tonight. 

I gather this plan required some fairly quick negotiations on their part. Surely in the long-run  it would have been (or would be) preferable for them just to carry the Alternate Sportsnet channel. Also, channel 456 is not in high definition (I don't know whether the Alternative Sportsnet channel is available in hi-def).

She was also quite apologetic about the inability to provide feedback to them via their website and said she had sent a note to their IT folks asking them to work on it.

Earlier today, I received e-mail from Sportsnet confirming that indeed they do NOT charge service providers to carry the Alternative Sportsnet channel.

Finally (full disclosure), to compensate me for my angst and hassles, EastLink is providing us with a month of no-charge for the sports package.

Dear EastLink Cable Company

You folks are total jerks. Here is what happened:

• In its infinite wisdom, Rogers Sportsnet decided to carry the Memorial Cup (Junior A) hockey games instead of Toronto Blue Jays baseball on ALL of its channels. They announced on the air and on their website that we could watch the baseball games on their "alternate network", which I gather is not unlike TSN2 or CBC-Bold --- a second set of programming from the network.
• We were unable to find the Alternate Sportsnet channel among the hundreds of channels carried by EastLink Cable (which recently acquired Bluewater Cable, our original cable service provider.
• So during the weekend, I called Eastlink to find out where I could watch the ballgames that were being played.
• During my first call, I spoke with Andy, based in Prince Edward Island (note: I live in Ontario). He remarked that one of his co-workers was dealing with a call about exactly the same issue. They had no idea why we did not have access to the Alternate Sportsnet channel. 
• I complained that since I, in effect, sign over my entire monthly paycheque (or so it seems --- I pay quite a lot for a home customer) to you folks, I thought it reasonable that I be able to watch the game somewhere, somehow on my cable system. I even pay extra for the MLB package, and said, "Well surely I should be able to find a telecast of the Jays game somewhere in that package. 
• Andy agreed and said he was certain I could view the Jays game on at least one of the MLB  package channels. To that end, he consulted with someone else and then gave me two different channel numbers to try that afternoon (I was calling in the morning).
• Well, sure as shootin', when game time rolled around, we tried every channel we could in the entire lineup from EastLink, and we could not find the game. 
• So I called your customer service number again. 
• This time I was connected with Tim in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He clearly had no idea what was going on, but he checked with someone at EastLink who said that EastLink was unable to obtain the license for the Alternative Sportsnet channel. 
• I said, "I don't believe EastLink is unable to obtain the license. Alternate Sportsnet is carried on Shaw Cable; it is also carried by Bell Satellite and by something called Cable-Cable. I don't believe EastLink couldn't get the license if you wanted it." He stuck by his story, and I stuck by my criticism, feeling considerably cheesed off.
• To make matters worse, it seems that because the BlueJays are carried on the Alternate Sportsnet channel, they are blacked out on the MLB package. So we were stuck: no Blue Jays games while the Memorial Cup is being played.
• Because I was curious, I sent e-mail to Sportsnet to ask why EastLink was unable to obtain a license for the Alternate Sportsnet channel:

Is there some reason I cannot watch the Toronto Blue Jays on East Link? I gather they do not provide the Alternate Sportsnet channel, but can you tell me why? They say it is because they are unable to obtain the license, but I don't understand that explanation.

What is worse, we cannot even see the Blue Jays on MLB extra innings. Why are we being left out?

• Today I received the following response from Sportsnet:

Thanks for your recent email. We provided the feed for the Sportsnet Alternative channel to all providers including Eastlink. No license was necessary, they just had to get the broadcast feed from us. We are not sure why they were not able to do so.

Sincerely
Jim LaChapelle
Audience Relations


• It isn't completely clear that Sportsnet provides the feed for Sportsnet Alternative at no charge to all providers. Their response certainly reads that way, though. And even if they were charging for the feed and you folks didn't want to pay for it, you should have told me that instead of saying you were unable to obtain the license.
• I then tried to write to you in e-mail to inquire further about the situation. I logged onto your site.
• But before I could click on "Contact Us", a box popped up that requires a user to click on the name of their former cable provider, in my case, Bluewater Cable.
• And no matter what browser I use, I am told that the link doesn't work. I cannot even write to you directly to express my concerns. Hence, I am left with posting this on a blog for others to read.

So, 

• not only did someone tell me I could watch the game on certain channels when I couldn't, 
• not only did someone tell me that you were unable to obtain the license when apparently you can,
• but then your "contact us" link is inoperable.

Is it time for the CRTC to look into your behaviour? Or is it just time for people in our area to reconsider their satellite vs cable decision?

There is a simple, two-part solution to this situation:

1. Stop lying to (or at the very least misleading) your customers.
2. Start providing the Alternative Sportsnet channel for your customers.

Regards,

John Palmer

Caption Contest

Over at the curling blog where I co-blog with Alan Adamson, I have posted a photo of the German skip, Andrea Schopp, at the 2010 Women's World Championships. If you have a suggested caption for it, please go there to post it in the comments (and please, keep it sort of clean):

Comments are closed here; please go there to offer your suggestions.

Earth Hour? Not me (and not the major media around here who are pushing it so hard, either)

Earth Hour just seems like so much "feel-good" clap-trap to me. Not that there's all that much wrong with feel-good clap-trap, but it becomes unconscionable when others try to shove it down my throat.

So I'm supposed to turn off my lights and tv and computer during the semi-finals of the 2010 Women's World Curling Championships tonight? Ain't gonna happen.

And I really doubt that any of the local radio or TV stations who have been telling everyone to participate will go off the air.

Curling

Two of the best teams in the world right now are facing each other in the last game of the round robin tonight at the 2010 Women's World Championship: Team Canada vs. Scotland.

I Couldn't Watch without Getting Tears in My EyesEven Reading This Moved Me

Joannie Rochette skated to a bronze medal in figure skating at the 2010 Olympics just days after her mother died suddenly and uexpectedly. Believe me, the tears were flowing in this household. This description is one of the best analyses of the figure skating event I have seen (most of the time I'm not all that keen on figure skating).

...But none of that mattered because I was too busy rooting for Joannie Rochette to make it to the podium.

The Olympics are full of manufactured feeling, but this was a dose of the real thing. Rochette's performance was moving, nuanced, and intimate. You could feel Rochette's desire to be there, with the crowd, even in the midst of her loss (the evidence of which was written all over her face every now and then). Having lost my own mother a year ago, I could imagine some of what she was experiencing, and, like everyone else watching, was struck by her grace and composure and clarity. TV commentators often go for cheap sentiment, but in this case, the words courageous and inspiring really did apply. (Too bad many of us can no longer hear them without a dollop of cynicism attached.)

Rochette's performance had a timeless patience to it and was suffused with a sense of longing. She has said her mother was very important to her skating; she even told reporters that she'd had to ask her mother to come watch her practice once a week, as a way of motivating herself. (Rochette noted, too, that it can be embarrassing for a young adult to say she needs her mom—her frankness won me over utterly.) If some of her footwork seemed less artful than Yu-Na's, the height of her jumps less stunning, so be it. She had our attention, and not merely because her mother died, but because her mother died and yet she went on to skate with a real quality of being present. You could see what this meant to her, and in that sense her mother lingered over the performance like the track of the skate on the ice. The performance was an act of ritual attentiveness, and we were lucky to witness it. At the end of her lovely, focused program—in which she offered up a number of solid jumps—she craned her neck upward and blew a kiss—to her father and, perhaps, also to her mother. Her eyes moved around the stadium almost as if she were looking for her. I couldn't help feeling that I wanted to say, as one motherless daughter to another, what millions surely thought: Surely her mother would have been proud. It's not sappy to say so.

Tears, again, as I re-read that. Very moving.

Whew! May We Have Our Money Back Now, Please?

I know lots of people in Canada get lots of thrills when Canadian athletes win medals at The Olympics. I don't, at least not much. And I certainly received negative utils from the "Own the Podium" campaign sponsored by the Canadian Olympic Committee. I sure hope they didn't get a whole tonne of taxpayer money to support their campaign "blueprint". As Michael said on his Facebook page,

With all due respect to the Canadian Olympic Committee, was this really ever in doubt?

And now they have admitted failure [h/t MT].

The head of the Canadian Olympic Committee told a media briefing Monday that Canada won't finish first in the medal count at the Vancouver Games.

Chris Rudge acknowledged it's unrealistic to catch the Americans.

Heading into Monday's competition, Canada is tied for fourth in the medal standings with nine. The Americans lead with 24.

Canada has spent $117 million in the last five years on Own The Podium, a blueprint to finish atop the medal standings at the Games.

It reminds me of the unhappy student a number of years ago who had written out a plan for being successful in university but just didn't have the ability to carry it out.

Support for Olympic Curling (and other?) Athletes

As I have watched the curling from the 2010 Olympics, I have heard several of the commentators tell us that so-and-so from such-and-such country is a full-time curler. S/he is sponsored by their gubmnt and unlike Canadian curlers does not have to have another job to support themselves. There is always a whinging, wistful tone to such pronouncements, suggesting that in Canada we should also provide gubmnt financing for our top curlers.

I find this tone and its implications offensive for two important reasons:

• It ignores the considerable sponsorship and prize money for curling that is provided by the private sector in Canada. Top curlers earn an acceptable (though probably not luxurious) living when their winnings and sponsorships are added up. This private support for curling in Canada is monumentally greater than the private support for curlers in other countries.
• If the gubmnt were to provide support for Canadian curlers, who should receive that support? Only the top teams? If so, how might the gubmnt bureaucrats determine which are the best teams? And keep in mind that the fourth best team in Alberta could well be considerably better (and more likely to win on the international level) than the best teams from some of the other provinces. Gubmnts are notoriously bad at "picking winners" in other industries, and I see no reason for them to be any more successful at picking winners in sports.

In fact, one might well argue that one of the several reasons for Canadian success in curling (aside from years of practice and inculcation) is that curlers in Canada must compete for sponsorship and prize money. Those who aren't very good don't receive much money; those who are better tend to receive more money. There is a huge incentive to improve one's game.

I doubt if these arguments would apply to all Olympic sports, but they certainly are important when discussing sponsorship for curlers (and probably most other sports for which private sponsorship and prize money are sizable).

Green-Foolery at the Olympics

Speed-skating at the 2010 Olympics was delayed several times as the ice managers tried to deal with the new, electric ice surface refinishing machines. It turned out that these new “green” machines left grooves and puddles in the ice. Finally, authorities had the good sense to import a propane-powered standard zamboni to use for the remainder of the speed-skating events. For more, see this (h/t Eva).

And keep in mind that depending on how the electricity is generated and stored, it isn’t all that clear that electric-powered zambonis are any greener than the traditional ones.

The Contribution of the Olympics to the Budget Crisis in Greece

As the 2010 Winter Olympics begin, it is appropriate to recognize what a drain the Olympics can be on a small economy. Vic Matheson summarized it well at The Sports Economist:

...[T]he Olympics broke the bank. Government deficits rose every year after 1999, peaking at 7.5% of GDP in 2004, the year of the Olympics, thanks in large part to the 9 billion euro price tag for the Games. For a relatively small country like Greece, the cost of hosting the Games equaled roughly 5% of the annual GDP of the country.

Of course, the Olympics didn't usher in an economic boom. Indeed, in 2005 Greece suffered an Olympic-sized hangover with GDP growth falling to its lowest level in a decade.

While its hard to place all of the blame for the current Greek meltdown on the Olympics, the lingering debts from the Games are undoubtedly exacerbating an already difficult situation.

Sunderland-Stoke, 0-0: At least in curling they changed the rules to get some scoring

After waiting all weekend to watch the Sunderland-Stoke football game, I was bored to tears by the lack of scoring. If I had been in the crowd, I might have booed, too. I saw some fine athleticism, as well as some shoddy play, but nil-nil scores are about as boring as pitching duels in baseball or defensive struggles in American football.

When the lack of scoring outraged fans of curling two decades ago, the authorities realized they had to do something to boost the interest in the sport (and the audiences on television), so they implemented the free-guard zone, an innovation of Russ Howard's rink in their practices. Now people rarely, if ever, shout "booorrrr-iiinnngggg" during curling matches. But if soccer/football is going to attract more fans and keep them, it too should do something to increase the scoring in their games.

The Scott Tournament of Hearts is Coming.Is the nude-women-of-curling calendar soft-porn or art?

The Scott Tournament of Hearts, Canada's curling championship for women will soon take place. I know this because in the run-up to the tournament, it appears that suddenly someone somewhere has written yet another article about the Nude Women of Curling Calendar, and hundreds of people are visiting this posting on EclectEcon and this posting on Curling, (where I co-blog with Alan Adamson) to look for the soft-core porn of curling. I'll grant that the few photos I have seen from the past calendars are superb art, but it never ceases to amaze (and disappoint) me that people are more interested in nudity than they are in our writings on other subjects.