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baseball

Just class stuff today

In my criticism class today we discussed this story. College sports’ racial, gender hiring practices getting worse instead of improving:

College sports received a C for racial hiring practices when it decreased slightly from 75.1% in 2021 to 73.3% in 2022. College sports also received a C for gender hiring, with 74.1%, which was a slight increase from 2021 when it was 72.8%. The combined grade was a C with 73.7%. That was down from 74.0% in 2021. In other words, overall, equal opportunity hiring practices are getting worse instead of improving.

As we look at the sidelines in the tournament, we see the best record for hiring of people of color and women as head coaches. But the coaches of color represent a fraction of the student-athletes on their teams. In 2021-22, Division I men’s basketball Black student-athletes made up 52.4% of the total, compared to the 24.8% of Black head coaches. We have a smaller percentage of Black head basketball coaches now than we had 17 years ago, when 25.2% of the Division I head basketball coaches were Black.

This is a project Professor Lapchick and his team at UCF undertake every year. They grade out the big professional sports leagues in the U.S., and also collegiate sports. The students picked this little story to read, and so we talked about the grading system a bit, Lapchick’s work, and also some of the math involved here, which was hilarious. A few of those students are in my organizational communication class, and they don’t know it yet, but we’ll be discussing Lapchick on Thursday, too.

We also considered this CNN piece. This injury has plagued MLB for most of the last century, but a new phenomenon is emerging:

It is an injury which has plagued Major League Baseball for the best part of the last century. The ligament in your elbow which connects the bone in your upper arm to the one in your forearm – and is only about as strong as “a piece of celery” – tears, leaving you unable to throw and facing a very lengthy spell on the sidelines.

This season, the likes of Gerrit Cole, Corbin Burnes and Shane Bieber have all had Tommy John surgery – the most popular procedure to repair a torn UCL – while Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani made his long-awaited return to the mound after almost 22 months away following the second elbow surgery of his career.

Dr. Christopher Ahmad, Tommy John expert and head team physician for the New York Yankees, has performed the surgery on some of the biggest names in baseball. But he has also been privy to the other side of the story.

“The alarms are going off on how devastating this problem is to the youngest players,” he says in an interview with CNN Sports.

One of the series of questions I try to get the students to answer is who is a story for, and who is the disadvantaged person, or group, in the story. Sometimes that’s subtle. Sometimes obvious. Wouldn’t you know it, at least two people in the room say they knew someone that had already damaged or ruined their UCL by high school.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to get the “piece of celery” imagery out of my mind when watching people throw a baseball.

We also discussed the Slaying the Badger documentary, which we watched last Thursday. I showed it because we watched a football-center documentary just before, and we’ll watch a basketball-themed documentary just after. There’s something to be said about watching something you nothing about. Plus, it’s a dramatic story.

I was impressed, they seemed to like it more than I would have expected. It is a trick and a challenge to try to explain a sport to an audience who may have no understanding of the sport, while also reaching an audience that knows a great deal about it, while also telling a riveting story. For the most part, the filmmakers here did that. (The book is better. Yes, the documentary was inspired by a book.)

I was proud of myself. I did not get too far into the weeds on the cycling minutiae while trying to answer their questions. That would have been easy to do.

Why was he wearing this jersey and now wearing that jersey? What’s the deal with stages?

You don’t need to know the sport to follow the story, but knowing the sport heightens your awareness of a film.

In org comm we had a great negotiation activity today. I was nervous about it, but it worked out well. I had one student play a quarterback who is about to become a free agent. I specifically chose a student who can be loud and opinionated and, often, correct, to be the player. That kept him out of the back-and-forth. I had two others play his agents. One of them a super smooth charmer, and another who is quite the thoughtful analytic type. They did their work with their client in the hall, and then they would come in and meet the team leadership for the negotiations.

The rest of the class I broke into groups representing his team. I wanted one person to be the GM, a student who also seems worldly and practical. The rest of the class broke up into various VP offices and so on. There was some designed conflict between those franchise groups, and every group had a certain series of motivations and criteria I gave them.

It took exactly one round for them all to get into the exercise. It took them five rounds of offers and counter-offers for them to reach a deal.

The most fascinating thing happened. though. Two of the team groups were supposed to be resistant to making a deal for budget and other considerations. So they had conflict with the boss group, my three-headed GM hydra. The GM(s), though, wanted to make the deal. So they had to go back and forth, which became incredibly animated. One group convinced themselves they were absolutely opposed to the signing. But when they finally reached a deal, franchise GM(s) and player-agents, everyone was so happy, and the various groups, even the ones that had been opposition just moments before, were “Welcome home!” and “Welcome to the team!”

The actual player will be a free agent soon. I’m curious to see how close, or how far off, our mock negotiation was.

I’m also wondering how we can take this org comm class and do more things like this, which are marginally practically and a lot of fun.

baseball / Philadelphia / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
30
Jul 24

Backyard to table

Slow day, as it should be. The only problem is I need to figure out how to do more with the slow days. Even the days I don’t want to do a lot, or perhaps especially on those days. The only other problem is I need to find a way to make something productive come of the slow days. (Hashtag, summer problems.)

We’ve been enjoying the first products from our backyard garden. Two cucumbers came out yesterday. They went into a fresh salad that we had with lunch yesterday and dinner this evening.

I wonder what we’ll bring in next? Probably the peaches. They’re getting close, and the first ones will come off the tree later this week, I’d bet.

We’ve still got a lot of peaches from last year’s harvest in the freezer. I had a giant peach smoothie for dinner Sunday night. You see, I forgot that we bagged some for smoothies, and bagged larger quart bags for general purposes. I grabbed a quart bag. I had a giant smoothie. Then I had another. And then a bit more.

Peaches, honey, a touch of milk, and that’s it. Somehow I didn’t think that’d make up dinner, but you can put … about a quart’s worth of peaches in a quart bag. And that’s a lot of peaches!

I sat outside and listened to the crickets and some music and enjoyed a lot of fresh frozen fruit. It was peaceful. And also peachful.

So it’s slow, but look what’s going on outside.

Quite lovely, innit? That’s why I sat outside Sunday night. Why I’ve got to remember to do that more and more.

Last night we loaded up the car — my uncle-in-law came to join us, and we all picked up my god-nieces-in-law (just go with it) — and went over to see the local guys play the visiting Yankees. We had some nice seats.

(Click to embiggen.)

But it was not a good game for the home team. Aaron Judge hit two home runs. The Yankees collected four more dingers, which have become quite boring, I’d say. Also, we saw a position player, the Phillies’ backup catcher, pitch the final inning in a game everyone just wanted to end.

We ran into one of The Yankee’s students leaving the park, so that happens now.

We got the girls home and caught up on the night’s Olympics. It was a full fun night of sportsing. And we had more sportsing today, which was probably the most productive bit of my Tuesday, truth be told. (Hashtag, summer problems.)

adventures / baseball / Philadelphia / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
11
Jul 24

We forgot our brooms

After a leisurely day around the house, I’ll give you one guess about where we went this evening.

OK, I’ll give you a second guess about where we went this evening. You’re sure to get it from here.

(Click to embiggen.)

Thursday night is theme night, I guess. And it was also inexpensive ticket night. So we semi-spontaneously went across the river and spent some time at Citizens Bank Park. We watched the great Shoehei Ohtani go 0-4 and saw Aaron Nola scatter four hits and two walks across six innings as the homestanding team beat the not-very-well-liked visitors 4-0. Brandon Marsh hit a home run and charted a triple to right, Trea Turner recorded his sixth home run in nine games. And just after I took that large photo (seriously, click it, it’ll open in a new window and you can scroll around) Kyle Schwarber hit a baseball a very long distance, as he frequently does.

The good guys won, 5-1. It was a series sweep. In a related story, after a two-inning battle I defeated the sunscreen that oozed into my left eye.

Did you notice the new graphic up there? The blue one? I’m updating a few of those as I go. And, this evening, as we were leaving the park, I had the opportunity to get a nice skyline of the city.

I was, of course, photobombed.

It was a delightful night over the river. Except for the sunscreen incident.

We’ll be back over there in a few weeks. Not eager to repeat the same mistake, I’ll be sure to have a new skin protection strategy by then.

adventures / baseball / family / Monday / photo — Comments Off
10
Jun 24

Dance, then baseball, now old

On Saturday we went to high school. I can’t remember the last time I was in a school. Probably a dozen years or more. We visited one because my god niece in-law (just go with it) was in a dance recital.

I wasn’t really paying attention to the exterior of the building as we pulled up, but I did notice this near the door. When was the last time you saw a pay phone?

If you look closely enough, you can see there’s no receiver. So maybe it isn’t a phone anymore. Maybe the school just dragged it out there and it is waiting for a garbage pick up.

The school, from what we saw, seemed nice. Very big. Old school. Hallways full of plaques marking their distinguished alumni. Some of the plaques were a little basic, but others were quite remarkable. A lot of professors and authors and civic leaders. There was a music promoter, and a touring manager for U2. There was someone who won the Nobel Prize in economics. The inventor of Lipitor went to school there. The state’s first black attorney, a man born a former slave soon after the Civil War, was a student there. His plaque said he got paid for his work by bushels of food. I’d like to have time to read more of them.

But there was dancing to watch.

Our dancer took part in two numbers, a ballet and en pointe. She looked great, danced with nice confidence and had a lot of fun. Had we all not had favorites, everyone in the auditorium would have chosen the two little girls that opened the recital as the stars. They were two young beginners, wearing shimmering three-tone tutus, mimicking what their coach was doing from the floor. They were adorable and stole the show. But all of the numbers and dancers were delightful in their own way, and they kept things moving.

I’ve been to two dance recitals. The first was a two-day recital, if you can believe that. Every group was organized by age, and they all danced to the same song. We heard that same bad song dozens of time. I was working on the video production, which meant I had to be there. It was a lot of standing, no food, and that same horrible song several dozen times. I am quite certain it scarred me. This weekend’s show was much shorter, had a unique song and style of dance for every group, and it was over in a little under two hours. It was a much better show.

After dinner we all adjourned to the ballerina’s home. That evolved into a big baseball game in the front yard. All of the adults sat in lawn chairs and watched the kids play. And me. We had plate music and everything.

This became a two-hour game. Usually because the kindergartner had to dance to his song, “Texas Hold ‘Em.” And we had no pitch count. A pitch count would have moved things along, but most of the kids were too young for that.

The day’s star dancer hit two huge home runs off of me. That’s what happens when you grove your pitches. There were also a lot of little league home runs. After everyone else went inside for snacks, the 9-year-old boy and I stayed out to play catch. (It was a little bit special.)

I was in a dress shirt and not-the-right-shoes for all of this, and so I was sore the rest of the night and tired most of Sunday.

Yesterday, I was admiring the new growth on the pine trees, (Pinus strobus, I think).

We have three in the backyard. They are growing tall and close to the house. They help block the late afternoon sun. They can’t stay forever, but we enjoy them now.

And the sky was just so casually brilliant …

It was worth noting.

It’s time, once again, for the site’s most popular weekly feature. We must check in on the kitties.

Phoebe was nice enough to pose, ever so briefly, on the landing this afternoon.

I’m a real sucker for when she puts her face on her paw.

Poseidon has recently discovered the lamp I have behind my computer.

He came to quickly realize that the light bulb gives off a fair amount of warmth, and so he’s never leaving.

Now, the only way I can keep Poe from that spot is to not turn on the lamp.

He knows cozy when he sees it.

So the kitties, as you can tell, are doing just fine. They’re ready for another fun week. As am I. And i hope you are, too!

baseball / Philadelphia / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
29
Aug 23

Dong!

Light day here, as most of my hours were spent on preparing coursework. Canvas! Where all the fun is had! It’ll probably be a light week all the way around because I’m not hardly done with all of this prep work. Classes start next week, though, so there’s some stress and relief in that. Will I hit the deadlines I’ve imposed upon myself? And if I don’t, somehow, hit those deadlines, will I have a backup plan?

There’s always a plan. Thankfully, though, they don’t get used a lot. Nothing a good solid 96 hours of concentrated attention and angst can’t address.

This evening, though, we went to Philadelphia. It was $20 ticket night at Citizen’s Bank Park and The Yankee is demonstrating her secondary fandom. Her beloved Yankees aren’t very beloved at the moment, so there’s the wildcard chasing Phillies.

The home team is hosting the Angels, and perhaps the greatest player of any generation, Shohei Ohtani. This is what you need to know. At Phillies games they pipe in bell noises when the good guys hit a home run. There were five tonight — Harper in the 2nd, Schwarber in the 3rd, Bohm in the 6th, Stott in the 7th and Turner in the 8th — so there was a lot of bell ringing. An almost standard night for a team that leads all of baseball in August home runs.

We also saw a successful squeeze play, a triple and watched the great Ohtani go 3-5, and get thrown out trying to steal third base.

It was a lovely night at the old ballgame as the home standing Phillies beat the #Angels 12-7.

We didn’t think the first thing about dinner. It was about 10 p.m. when all of the runs were put on the scoreboard and we made a shortcut out of the parking lot. Through the power of the Internet and cell signals I found the one restaurant between here and there that was still open at that hour on a Tuesday night. It was a sleepy little, brightly lit restaurant and bar with Formica countertops and giant flat screen TVs.

Outside were a man and woman and, though we didn’t hear it, one of them was apparently trying to get the other to do something that was no good. Of course this woman came in for a beer in her pajamas, which she pointed out to us all. The young bartender took our order since no one else was working in the front of the house. They offered sandwiches and a burger, so we got steak sandwiches. They hit the spot. The other four or five people that came in all knew him and one another. Truly a neighborhood joint. Just as we were leaving — cash only, and now I have three dimes and that felt weird.

What do you even do with these things anymore?

Some other baseball fans came in for their late dinner. The only restaurant open for miles around.

And most importantly, I guess, the Phillies are 2-0 when we’re in the stadium. There’s another $20 game opportunity coming up next month. Because it is easy to get in and out of there, we’ll probably go back again. And now we know when the kitchen closes, and just how casual the dress code can be.