Now for something really important, Major League Baseball. The key matchup between the A's and the Anaheim team looks like it's going to tilt in favor of the A's this year; the machine predictions back this up, even if the human predictions don't. Last year the A's suffered from an acute lack of offense, which placed the pitching staff under undue stress. The situation is reversed this year as the A's have a more potent offense than Anaheim, but there's no denying that the Anaheim pitching staff is stronger than the A's mostly-rookie rotation and mostly-discard bullpen. But the season covers 162 games and most of the results depend on which team's key players stay healthy. This is where the A's have the edge this year.
The Anaheim outfield is composed of players who are all on the down side of their careers, aging stars Bobby Abreu, Torii Hunter, and Vladdy Guerrero. While Vladdy is the only one with a significant injury history, the others are at the point where hamstrings, ACLs, and quads are more fragile. The A's outfield, on the other hand, features slugger Matt Holliday at the peak of his career and youngsters Travis Buck and Ryan Sweeney on the verge of breakout. The A's outfield is also stronger defensively, which is fortunate given the age of the pitching staff.
In the infield, the A's have rectified their three major deficits by signing Orlando Cabrera at short and Jason Giambi at first and getting Eric Chavez healthy. Giambi is an old-timer, but he's so happy to be back in Oakland after securing his retirement in New York that he's going to have a second childhood. Cabrera is one of my favorite shortstops because he's an all-around star, even if he's been labeled a clubhouse cancer by bitter fans who've seen their favorite player benched when OC came along. One of those guys, Nomar Garciaparra (he of the annoying tics) is a backup infielder for the A's this year. Eric Chavez appears to be healthy, hitting two homers in three games against the AAAA Giants last weekend, and his defense is stellar as ever. Jack Cust appears to be moving into a full-time DH role, suitable to his defensive skills and appropriate to his offensive ones.
Landon Powell, the new backup catcher, has injury problems but is a superior thrower and hitter to starter Kurt Suzuki. I'd take the A's infield over the under-performing, weak hitting Anaheims any day of the week.
The pitching staff is the big question mark, however. Justin Duchsherer continues to have problems with his elbow, shoulder, and hip indicative of bad mechanics. These problems don't tend to sort themselves out without the intervention of a Rick Peterson. Two of the A's starters haven't pitched above AA, so they're a wild card in big leagues at best. The remaining starters, Braden, Eveland, and Outman have thus far failed to distinguish themselves at the big league level, and the nominal closer is on the disabled list. Anaheim, on the other hand, has the most formidable starting five in baseball, when healthy. But fortunately for the A's, every single one is an injury risk (the season starts with the three best on the disabled list) so we can reasonably expect that the Anaheim farm system will end up carrying a great deal of the load this year.
If the pitching staffs perform consistent with past results, including injury history, the A's will win the division. If Anaheim's witch doctors cast healing spells in favor of their geriatric outfield and rickety starting rotation, the A's will once again sit out the post-season. The Anaheims will most likely go far in the post-season if they make it, but that's another story. For the time being, it looks like the A's will win the division by 4 games.
If you watch Numb3rs on CBS, you'll have noticed a rather bizarre discussion last night of Simpson's Paradox, which was alleged to say that combing two series of numbers into a single series can change their order (it doesn't really say that, but that's beside the point.) The example given was David Justice's and Derek Jeter's batting averages in 1995 and 1997. In each year, Justice had a better average than Jeter, but for the total of the two years, Jeter was alleged to have had a better average. It's not hard to figure out how this could be true, but it wasn't. The actual numbers for those years are these:
Justice's numbers, Jeter's numbers
If Jeter had hit better in 1997, much closer to Justice's average, it would have been true because Jeter very few at bats in 1995 and many more at bats in 1997 than Justice. For some bizarre reason, the show used fictitious numbers that didn't even add up, alleging that Justice hit .321 and .329 for a combined average of .298.
How a show that's supposed to be so math-oriented can screw up arithmetic so badly would be a a mystery if it weren't for the fact that mathematicians are notoriously bad at basic arithmetic.
H/T Amnesia, who also got it wrong.
UPDATE: Aha! Reader Brian Thomas explains it all. See comments.
A million fans came to the parade in Philly on Friday. I'd say baseball is still the National Pastime. This was a pretty decent World Series, apart from the Philly weather and the inept umpiring. I wanted the Rays to win, but the result's not exactly heart-breaking either. Comcast had a lot to do with it, apparently, which must rankle Mr. NASCAR, Kevin Martin, whose car has crashed.
[caption id="attachment_5084" align="alignnone" width="280" caption="Million Fan March"][/caption]
Yet what planners in Beijing miscalculated is that no matter how well you teach performers to smile, the strain behind the lips is still detectable. The near-hysterical drive by Chinese leaders to put on the biggest, most spectacular sporting event ever, and to engineer a generation of Chinese medalists regardless of the financial or human costs, is rather more disconcerting to the outside world than convincing. If it was Beijing's intention to prove China's greatness via the Games, what it has demonstrated instead is the fragility of its ego.
Couldn't have said it better myself. So what does this say for the London Games?
British officials are no doubt wondering how they can possibly top the spectacle of Beijing when London hosts the Summer Games in 2012. They shouldn't even try. The British have nothing to prove, and it will be refreshing to watch an event in which athleticism matters more than image. The London Olympics will probably be messier and less awe-inspiring than the Chinese Games, but it's a good bet they'll be more fun
Sports is supposed to be fun, you know.
That being said, an opening ceremony featuring Daleks and Cybermen would be welcome.
I hate to say "I told you so" (actually, I love it, but play along), but the director of the Beijing games' opening and closing ceremonies touts the obedience of his countrymen in boosting his own work:
China's most famous film director, Zhang Yimou, who directed both ceremonies, said only Chinese performers were skilled, disciplined and obedient enough to lay on the sort of song and dance display seen on Sunday night and admired around the world...
He also showed little concern for the few critical voices who found the mass organisation of thousands of performers reminiscent of the Soviet era.
"I often joke with (foreign interviewers) and say that our level of human performance is second in the world," he said. "Number one is North Korea. Their performances are totally uniform, and uniformity in this way brings beauty. We Chinese can do it too. After hard training and strict discipline, Chinese achieve that as well."
It takes a peculiar aesthetic taste to find thousands of people acting in perfect unison beautiful, and there's no accounting for it. Either you do or you don't, and I'm among those who would rather see individual talent than such displays. The Brit segment during the closing stressed individualism and was therefore much more enjoyable.
The Beijing Games were certainly well organized, with a minimum of cheating outside of boxing and women's gymnastics, and flowed well except for problems caused by the climate in Beijing and Hong Kong. Of course it rains in London as well, but it won't be so hot and muggy, and the equestrian events won't be shortened. It's kinda sad that baseball and softball won't be played, but all the events outside the core track and field competitions should be regarded as optional fluff anyhow; the Greeks didn't tumble and play ping-pong, because Britain didn't invent ping-pong until the 19th century.
Another day, another deception from the People's Republic of China's Olympics. Remember the cute assemblage of children in colorful ethnic dress carrying the flag in the Opening Ceremony? They weren't what they appeared to be:
Media reports said the children were from the Galaxy Children's Art Troupe, which involves young actors and actresses mainly from the dominant Han ethnic group which makes up about 92 per cent of China's 1.3 billion population.
But the programme for the four-hour ceremony had said the children were from different ethnic groups.
"56 children from 56 Chinese ethnic groups cluster around the Chinese national flag, representing the 56 ethnic groups," read the media guide for the opening ceremony.
The fill-ins came as China struggles to keep conflicts with its ethnic groups out of the spotlight during the Olympics.
So we had fake singing, fake fireworks, fake ethnic harmony, fake passports, fake fans bussed in to fill empty seats, fake promises of free speech violated by visa denials and arrested journalists.
The Olympics were supposed to be the coming-out party for The New China. Indeed they are, and we've learned that the New China is just like the Old China, only shinier.
Don't take my word for it. ask any of the 900 soldiers working the controls under the stadium who had to wear diapers because they weren't allowed to leave their posts for 7 hours.
And for more perspective. see Ruth Coniff of The Progressive on The Totalitarian Olympics:
I would be a lot more excited about the summer Olympics if the host country weren't fielding teams of athletes who are essentially forced laborers. Talk about taking the fun out of sports.
Yang Wenjun, a gold medalist in flatwater canoeing, told The New York Times recently that he longs to quit, but can't. The Chinese government refused to let him retire after he won his gold medal in 2004, threatening to cut off the income he and his poor, rice-farming parents live on. Yang's situation is typical.
The system of government-run Chinese sports schools takes children as young as 6 years old from their parents and trains them in their chosen sports, forgoing regular education. Stars are pushed to compete through injury, denied rest and medical care, and put through a grueling training regimen.
In the case of gymnastics, children are taken from their families at age three.
So our best gymnasts are now Nastia Liukin and Sasha Artemev, offspring of highly-decorated Soviet gymnast dads and moms.
It's funny how things work out. Twenty years ago, during the height of the Cold War, Valeri Liukin and Vladimir Artemev were slugging it out for the Marxist-Leninist system, and now their children are defeating its remnants on the world stage. Maybe Nastia's and Sasha's kids will be libertarian surfers.
Two weeks after announcing they had sold every one of the record 6.8 million tickets offered for the Games, Olympics officials expressed dismay at the large numbers of empty seats at nearly every event and the lack of pedestrian traffic throughout the park, the 2,800-acre centerpiece of the competition.
U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps won his third gold medal Tuesday in an arena with at least 500 no-shows, and there was a smattering of empty seats Wednesday morning as he captured his fourth gold in the 200 butterfly. The U.S. softball team played in a stadium only about 30 percent full on Tuesday, while the day before, 10 of 18 venues did not reach 80 percent capacity, officials said. Meantime, crowds of tourists and fans have been thin in the extravagantly landscaped Olympic Park, which holds 10 venues including National Stadium.
To remedy the problem, officials are busing in teams of state-trained "cheer squads" identifiable by their bright yellow T-shirts to help fill the empty seats and improve the atmosphere. They are also encouraging residents to apply for access to the heavily secured park.
Surely the capitalist media is making this up.
One event that was heavily attended was yesterday's Beach Volleyball match between Russia and Georgia. No tanks were involved, due in part to the fact that the Georgian team consists of two Brazilians hired for the Games. That's the Olympic spirit!
Anyhow, for bonus coverage, see Leni Riefenstahl's documentary on the 1936 Olympic Opening Ceremony, the source of the modern model:
Extra bonus link! See the latest on the Michael Phelps drowning incident.
Not content to slip under-aged girls onto their gymnastic team, Chinese officials also engaged in some sleight of hand in the Opening Ceremony. We're not talking about the Clone Army that performed all the synchronized drumming, but the little girl who sang the cute song. It was lip-synched fakery:
One little girl had the looks. The other had the voice.
So in a last-minute move demanded by one of China’s highest officials, the two were put together for the Olympic opening ceremony, with one lip-synching "Ode to the Motherland" over the other’s singing.
The real singer, 7-year-old Yang Peiyi, with her chubby face and crooked baby teeth, wasn’t good looking enough for the ceremony, its chief music director told state-owned Beijing Radio.
So the pigtailed Lin Miaoke, a veteran of television ads, mouthed the words with a pixie smile for a stadium of 91,000 and a worldwide TV audience. "I felt so beautiful in my red dress," the tiny 9-year-old told the China Daily newspaper.
"This is in the national interest. It is the image of our national music, national culture. Especially the entrance of our national flag; this is an extremely important, extremely serious matter," Chen Qigang, the event's general music designer, explained to a Beijing radio station.
Officials have already admitted that the pictures of giant firework footprints which marched across Beijing towards the stadium on Friday night were prerecorded, digitally enhanced and inserted into footage beamed across the world.
This is life in an authoritarian country, where the sky is whatever color the Central Committee says it is. But when that country is part of a world that doesn't embrace its conformist values, these desperate attempts to make itself appear more perfect than it really is simply backfire.
Downloading Olympics programming in HD from NBC involves using a private P2P network, some DRM, and a little bit of luck. After a few mishaps, I'm finally subscribed for some automatic Olympic programming updates.
I had to use Explorer to do this, as Firefox 3 isn't supported by the DRM plugin NBC uses, and neither is any form of Linux or any version of Windows older than XP SP2. But that's OK as my current home setup runs Ubuntu in a virtual machine alongside Windows Vista. So we have no more dual-booting or any of that nonsense. The ease with which we can switch operating systems these days is sick.
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