Stuff I like: Ball FourPart 5: The real taboo topics.

I've been reading online more stuff about Jim Bouton and his book Ball Four. There were a flurry of stories last year on the 40th anniversary, and apparently nearly all is forgiven. In a post script from 1980, Bouton said he was never invited to Old Timers games, but that has changed. Now, fans give him a rousing ovation. The main reasons for the decade or more of hard feelings stem from three things in the book, worse than the profanity or discussing sex and drugs.

1. Bouton writes about money. Back before free agency, the major leagues were willing to publicize how much they paid the superstars, so the $100,000 or more contracts given to the likes of Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle or Ted Williams were in the newspapers. They did not advertise how much they were paying everybody else, and the answer was "peanuts". Bouton always drove a hard bargain in negotiations, and even though he was a 20+ game winner on the perennial World Series participant New York Yankees, he never made more than $30,000, and by the end of his career, his salary was closer to $20,000. This was a good middle class salary in the late 1960s, but ballplayers often had to deal with moving expenses when traded, or maintaining a home for the family in some town away from where the club played. In the space of one season, Bouton has to move from Seattle to Vancouver to Seattle to Houston, with his family making two of those moves, then his wife and kids going to Michigan to live with family while he plays ball in Houston. Bouton claims some credit for swaying opinion towards the players in this era just before free agency becomes the law of the land, and he might very well have a point.

2. Superstars displayed in a negative light. You might think the story about Ted Williams in the batting cage doesn't show Ted at his best, but while it shows Williams as being somewhat vain, he had plenty to be vain about. No, the meanest stories Bouton tells are about the lack of hustle in superstars like Roger Maris and Carl Yazstremski, or the stunts Whitey Ford resorted to when his fastball wasn't as scary as it used to be. These were the things many ballplayers and sportswriters really objected to.

3. Bouton and authority. In Seattle, Bouton doesn't show much respect to his superiors, but the real problem for him is that he isn't getting straight answers or the information he needs to help the team more. In Houston, his attitude improves markedly. While Harry "The Hat" Walker has a reputation as a tough guy and a screamer, most of the stories he has about run-ins with Walker end with "You know what? Harry was right." Bouton actually does respect being treated like an adult, but that treatment was rare in the major leagues back in the day, and I'm not sure how prevalent it is now. The other coach he writes about with reverence is his old pitching coach Johnny Sain, once a star pitcher with the Boston Braves. Nearly every quote of Sain's is treated as a pearl of wisdom, and Bouton is always glad to talk to him and get his advice on situations Bouton faces as he makes the transition from fastball pitcher to knuckleball thrower.

In conclusion, I'm glad I returned to this book some 41 years after I read it first. While I don't think the obscenities will be as shocking to readers now as they were then, it's still a very entertaining book that does a great job of trapping a time and place very different from the 21st Century in a snapshot, a testament to Bouton's honesty, humor and innate skills as a writer.

Stuff I like: Ball FourPart 4: Sex, drugs and Jim Bouton.

Many people had written sports diaries before the publication of Ball Four, but Jim Bouton told a lot of truth about being on a ball club, and this pissed off sportswriters and the baseball establishment to no end. Bowie Kuhn, the commissioner of baseball when the book came out, was especially upset about sex stories that weren't really about sex and drug stories that were completely legal.

Lemme 'splain.

The Seattle Pilots, like sports organizations throughout recorded history, thought that making fun of homosexuality was the height of wit, so guys started kissing other guys when on the bus to a game or in the clubhouse. When it started, the perpetrator would put his hand over his intended's mouth and kiss the back of his own hand. Hilarity ensued. But later, guys stopped putting their hand on the other guy's face, so actual lips to face or lips to mouth action occurred, sometimes followed by fist to jaw action going in the other direction.

This deeply annoyed Bowie Kuhn.

Kuhn also was outraged by the idea that some guys came to the game still hung over and played, sometimes remarkably well.

Bouton also talks about real sex, though he doesn't name names much. He talks about the women who are available, known as Baseball Annies. He also talks about stewardesses, known as "stews". He says the stories are true. He also brings up a few fine points. Taking a Baseball Annie out for dinner and drinks is considered bad form, but it is fully expected if a ballplayer is hooking up with a stewardess. While someone had to be taking advantage of the Baseball Annies and the stews, Bouton snitches on no one.

The closest he gets to naming names is a practical joke where a paternity suit letter from a fake New York City law firm is sent to Fred Talbot, a guy Bouton kind of hates, and the guy goes into a serious funk. Bouton didn't do it, but everyone knew the letter was coming, except of course Talbot himself.

And then there's the drugs. Alcohol is completely accepted and provided after the game by the club, but the drugs whose legality are something of a gray area are amphetamines, known in the book as greenies. Some clubs provided them to the players free of charge. The clubs that didn't allegedly frowned upon them, but every club had a supplier, either a player or a guy on the coaching staff or clubhouse crew. Bouton writes that greenies are great. No one in the book is snitched as an abuser of alcohol or greenies. It's just relaxation and enhanced performance without consequence.

Forty years later, many in baseball have forgiven Bouton for his trangressions, and now that he is allowed to show up for Old Timers' games, the fans always give him a rousing ovation. But the greatest of his transgressions had nothing to do with sex or drugs, but instead the real taboo topics of sports: money, stardom and the chain of command.

More on that tomorrow in part 5.

Stuff I like: Ball FourPart 1: Introduction.

I've been doing a lot of review recently, watching movies and TV shows I liked when I was younger, re-reading favorite books. This week, I was able to get Ball Four by Jim Bouton out of the Oakland Public Library, opening the pages again forty one years after it was first published. It was a must-read book for any teenage boy in 1970 who liked sports even a little bit. Two friends of mine from high school, Andy and Steve, sometimes check in on the blog. They both read it back in the day. We talked about it for weeks. I would overhear conversations in the hall and on the school bus between guys I barely knew, and I'd hear them repeat stories and jokes from the book. We didn't use the phrase "water cooler material" back then, but that's what Ball Four was for adolescent males in 1970, provided your parents let you read it.

The book is the diary of Jim Bouton recounting his 1969 season playing for several teams, both in the majors and in the minors. Sports diaries had been published before, but Ball Four was significantly different in two major ways.

1. Bouton had been a top pitcher for the Yankees, but when this book is written, he is nearly washed up and struggling to make the club on The Seattle Pilots, a first year expansion team. (The team didn't work out in Seattle and move to Milwaukee the next year, changing the name to the Brewers.) Most diaries before this were by stars or superstars on winning teams, often teams that won the pennant in the year in question.

2. Bouton told the truth. He told about all that he saw that he found interesting: the funny, the petty, the ridiculous, the crude. Like other adolescents loved Catcher in the Rye for its raw language, my friends and I loved Ball Four, not only for the jokes and new permutations of obscenities, but for the stories it told and the characters we met.

I'm only about a quarter of the way through, but it's a quick read and I should be finished soon enough, probably by the weekend. I can honestly say I am getting more out of it now with the gift of hindsight than I did when I first read it when it was fresh.

When I was a kid, I thought it was funny and I still do. This may be because my sense of humor is still at the stunted adolescent level, I can't be sure. Here's a way to test yourself. Sing the following lyric.

Summertime.... and your mother is easy.

If you laughed at that, you'll laugh at Ball Four.

But the big thing is that when I was a kid reading about the escapades Bouton the adult and his teammates, the emotional tug wasn't the same as it is now that I'm a man far past the age of thinking about breaking into the majors, reading the words of a man in the twilight of his career.

In any case, get ready for about a week of posts about Ball Four, a honest book about flawed people, including the author, disguised as a filthy, funny book about sports.

Spike Lee has a point.

Everybody knows Spike Lee has a mouth on him. He's full of opinions and he isn't shy about expressing them. He has a theory on why actors are usually so messed up. Here's a quote from a recent interview in The Hollywood Reporter.

“You’re out there buck-naked and that is hard," Lee said. "The reason why actors are fucked up; can you imagine having a job where someone is, ‘No, no, no. Your butt’s too big, your head's too big, you’re too skinny, your nose is too big?'”

He's absolutely right about this. I saw the movie Beginners last night and I thought about what Lee said. Everybody in this film looked fantastic.

Forgive me if I give away a few plot points.

Christopher Plummer looked great, even though he was playing an old man in poor health. Ewan McGregor looked great, though his character is depressed. The Jack Russell Terrier Cosmo is a little scruffy compared to Eddie in Frazier, but it is impossible not to adore him.

And then there's Mélanie Laurent, who American audiences might remember best as Shoshonna in Inglourious Basterds. She is beyond adorable in this film. In her first scene, she is supposed to have laryngitis, so it's just close ups of her not speaking. She has stunningly beautiful eyes and a lovely face, every feature is wonderful and the camera loves her.

But consider this picture of her from a red carpet. The haircut isn't flattering. She has two moles, one on her neck and one in the middle of her collarbone. If just one of them is visible, it's not too bad, but if she's on camera and both of them can be seen, it's distracting.

She was terrific in both the movies I've seen her in, but I don't know if she is going to become a big movie star, all over two moles.

Here's a young woman in a different situation. Hope Solo, goalkeeper for the women's U.S. national soccer team, now playing in the World Cup in Germany.

How does she get judged? She gets judged on how many goals she gives up. So far, the United States has won two games by shutout against North Korea and Colombia. So far, Hope Solo is perfect, but every game from now on will be a tougher test, including the final game in the group stage against Sweden.

She was also judged four years ago on her performance as a teammate. She was benched against Brazil in favor of Brianna Scurry and the U.S. lost 4-1. She criticized the coach and she was benched also for the third place game. Obviously, she has returned to the good graces of the team.

And, oh yeah, Hope Solo is a very attractive young woman. Women in sports are obviously being judged on their looks, and sadly there have been some second tier female athletes given ridiculous amounts of attention for their looks in spite their lackluster performances, like Anna Kournikova in tennis and Danica Patrick in auto racing. But the standard for attractiveness for female athletes is not as unforgiving as it is for other entertainers, and more importantly, it isn't the bottom line. She and the other women on the team have chances to get endorsements, but the most important component is to become champions like the previous generation back in the 1990s when the international game began.

The long wait is over.

The Dallas Mavericks beat the Miami Heat in convincing fashion to become this year's NBA champions. While it is not one of the greatest upsets in sports history, the Heat definitely looked better on paper. Their three stars, LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh, are all in their seventh seasons playing, which would put them in their prime. The stars of the Mavericks were all at least ten year veterans and their starting point guard and playmaker Jason Kidd was in his 16th season and 38 years old, making him one of the oldest players in the league currently.

By winning, this gives Kidd his first championship in his long career, almost all of it as a starter, ten times on the NBA All-Star team. By an odd coincidence, if the Heat had won it would have been the first championship ring for Juwan Howard, also in his 16th year and also 38, but Howard is now a bench warmer and not considered a major factor.

Another famous All-Star in his sport who waited a very long time for his first championship was John Elway. He had been in the league 15 years before his Denver Broncos won the Super Bowl, and just to show it wasn't a fluke, they repeated the next year in his 16th season, after which he retired.

Unlike the other players on this list, Elway played for the same team his entire career.

But the longest wait for a championship I've heard of, and a tip of the hat to my friend Art Velasquez for remembering it, is hockey's Ray Borque. Widely recognized as one of the greatest defensemen ever to play the game, Borque played twenty one seasons for the Boston Bruins, was traded to the Colorado Avalanche late in the 2000 season, then helped the Avalanche win the cup in 2001, the culmination of his 22nd and final season.

Congratulations to Jason Kidd, who is a Northern California product by the way (St. Joseph's High School in Alameda, college at Cal), for joining this remarkable list of persistent and talented athletes.

The best football team ever?

Barcelona beat Manchester United 3-1 at Wembley Stadium in London today to win the Champions League final, to the surprise of no one. This was more like a coronation than a sporting event, the way some Super Bowls are or when Michael Jordan's Bulls were in the NBA Finals.

I hadn't seen Barcelona play this year. I was amazed. They controlled the ball 70% of the time. The game was tied at half, but it was a mirage. Man U scored one goal on one shot on goal by Wayne Rooney. That was it.

I was watched at a packed bar in Oakland. Early in the second half with the game still tied, someone asked about the overtime rules in Champions League. I said, "Don't worry about overtime. This is surgery, not football. It won't stay tied." Not more than two minutes later, Lionel Messi drove home a wicked twisting shot from 25 yards out to prove me right.

To be fair, I don't think Messi actually heard me and proving me right was not his main concern.

I could not believe how far outmatched mighty Man U was. If this was World Cup football, this would be like Germany versus Australia in 2010 or Brazil versus Japan in 2006. With all the squads spending all the money they have, it's hard to fathom one team can be this much better than everyone else. Their passes don't miss. There's always someone open. They finish strong and make a goalie's day a nightmare. If you stop Messi, their little Argentinian thunderbolt, then you have to deal with the native Spaniards Pedro and Xavi and Iniesta.

It's just not fair.

Congratulations to FC Barcelona, without question the best football team in the world today and arguably one of the best of all time.

The quality heartbreakers.

Over the past four decades, bay area pro sports fans have had it pretty good. We've had championships produced by the A's, 49ers, Raiders, Warriors (yes, it's true, youngsters; you can look it up) and most recently and currently, the World Series Champion San Francisco Giants.

I do not tire of typing that phrase.



That would leave exactly one major pro team out of the mix, our hockey squad the San Jose Sharks. Ironically, the Sharks are currently the best franchise in the bay area, what I define as a quality organization, a team that can produce a streak of seasons with not only playoff appearances but also advancing past the first round. (One could say the Giants have started on a streak of one season of playoff appearances and they are leading their division, but the season is still young.) The Raiders were that kind of organization for decades until their complete collapse early this century. The Niners were quality for most of the 80's and 90's.

But right now, if you want to enjoy a playoff game in the San Francisco Bay Area, you'll probably have to drive down to The Shark Tank in San Jose.

The Sharks have built a team around Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau, and have been either the first or second seed in the Western division of the National Hockey League for five straight years.

With a total of zero appearances in the Stanley Cup finals.

This year, the Vancouver Canucks stand in the way of the Sharks making it to the finals, and even diehard fans have this feeling that somehow, someway, the Sharks will find a way to screw this up.

Come on, Sharks! This is your year. Show the league you can choke on the biggest stage in all of hockey. I know you can do it. You are the quality heartbreakers.

You've been the Cleveland Browns for long enough.

It's time to become the Buffalo Bills.

Sir Henry Cooper: 1934-2011

Muhammad Ali's butt met the canvas only three times in his career.

The last (and easily least) was when the grotesquely out-matched Chuck Wepner stepped on Ali's foot and hit him at the same time. The referee missed it, so it counts to this day as a knockdown instead of a trip or slip. Besides this act of clumsiness or cleverness, Wepner has two other claims to fame: he is the model for Rocky Balboa, a third rate club fighter facing the greatest champion of the last half century, and his wonderfully and horribly accurate nickname The Bayonne Bleeder.

The second time Ali was knocked down was by Smokin' Joe Frazier in the first of their three epic fights, the one Frazier deservedly won on the biggest stage in boxing, Madison Square Garden, following the biggest hoopla for a boxing match in this country from then until now.


The first time he took a seat involuntarily in his career, Muhammad Ali was still Cassius Clay, and the brash kid from Kentucky had traveled all the way to London, England to meet the British Commonwealth champion Henry Cooper, later to be known as Sir Henry Cooper. Clay was already running his mouth as he would throughout his career, and in the pre-fight lead-in called Cooper "a bum". Cooper said he put lead weights in his shoes to make it to the heavyweight limit of 175 pounds that night, and no one disagrees that Clay was both taller and heavier than Cooper.

Clay was also a once in a lifetime athlete, a natural 200+ pounder with the speed of a man 50 pounds lighter. Cooper could not believe how deftly the bigger, younger fighter kept away from his blows, but at the end of the fourth, Cassius Clay met 'Enery's 'Ammer, the nickname the British sportswriters gave Cooper's vicious left hook. Clay got lucky and the ropes kept his noggin from bouncing on the ring floor, else he might have been out for the count.

The story gets better. Between rounds, Angelo Dundee, Clay's trainer, put smelling salts under his fighter's nose, which isn't legal. He also saw a small tear in Clay's glove and made it bigger, so the ref gave him some extra time to repair the glove. Cooper claims it was an extra two minutes, "all the time a fit man needs". In any case, Clay was ready to go the next round and opened cuts on Cooper's face that forced the fight to be stopped in Clay's favor with Cooper ahead on all cards.

After the fight, Clay took back all the unkind things he said about the plucky British bomber and the two men were fast friends ever after.


Once Clay beat Sonny Liston, became the champion and Muhammad Ali all on the same night, he decided to give Henry Cooper another chance. Older and wiser, Ali used his superior size and reach to jab Cooper's face and once again open cuts. This time, he didn't play around. One encounter with 'Enery's 'Ammer was enough. Ali later said Cooper hit him so hard "my ancestors in Africa felt it".

Ali fought several times in Europe, most notably against the Brit Brian London and the German and European champ, the southpaw Karl Mildenberger, but that first fight against Cooper truly stands out.


I have only once heard a discouraging word about the great Henry Cooper, and I only heard since he died yesterday. He never gave the Canadian heavyweight George Chuvalo a shot at the Commonwealth championship. The two fighters were about the same age and it would have been a great contrast in styles. Cooper was known for getting cut easily, the weakness Clay/Ali exploited twice, but he had one of the most feared punches in the game. Chuvalo was not as powerful, but he was as tough as a cheap piece of meat fried on a railroad tie. Some clever Trevor at the time said that if they still let heavyweights fight for 55 rounds like they did back in Jack Johnson's time, George Chuvalo would have been the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.

Let me call this a quibble. The travel costs would have been a lot for either Chuvalo or Cooper, and neither had the name recognition of an Ali or Joe Frazier.

I come to praise Cooper as others bury him. I write this post because a horrible cowardly villain died yesterday and the press can't stop talking about him. A brave and honest man, beloved in his nation to this day also died, dead from a broken heart at the recent loss of several loved ones.

Best wishes to the friends and family of Sir Henry Cooper, from a fan.

Repeat after me: Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.

Well, the first weekend of the NCAA men's basketball tournament has come to a close and my bracket is out of the running. It wasn't complete garbage, more like mediocre with 31 correct predictions out of 48, but mediocre ain't gonna get you in the money.

You might think that predicting the outcomes of win-lose games would be a 50%-50% gamble, but in our set of 127 brackets, the average number of correct prediction was 30.8 of 48, or around 64%. One of the big reasons for the improvement over flat out guessing is seeding. When a #1 seed plays a #16, it's crazy to pick an upset. Likewise, #2 vs #15 is pretty much a done deal as well and #3 seeds went a perfect 4-0 in the first round as well. If you picked all the #1, #2 and #3 seeds to win in the first round, that's 12 correct predictions and just 36 more "tough" games to choose. If you go 50%-50% on the rest, that's 30 correct without getting very lucky or clever.


Let's switch to a guessing game that is much tougher to do and hard to figure the odds on mathematically. Alt.obituaries, a newsgroup I used to subscribe to when the Internets were young and so was I, has a deadpool each year. Before January 1, you have to submit a list of 40 famous people who you think will die before the next January 1.

I had never done this before because I don't actually care for predicting people will die, but now that I'm running The Other Blog, I figured I'd make a list of 40 out of the people marked for death and right soon by the vultures of the gossip world.

I'm not really doing this for fortune or fame. There is no entry fee and first prize is a bottle of Moxie, an East Coast brand of root beer.



I entered the deadpool under the nom de mort Brave Last Dave, a pun on the "Brave Last Days!" headline the tabloids use so often in cases like this. Given how badly the tabloids did in 2010, six correct out of sixty six predictions fatalities, I figured Brave Last Dave would be near the bottom of the standings all year long. But on Jan. 3, I got my first hit, in fact the first hit of the year, with Anne Francis, the lovely blond who starring in Forbidden Planet and Honey West. I started getting the idea that maybe I'd get about a hit a month and actually have a chance to get that free bottle of Moxie, favored fizzy drink of the now departed Ted Williams.

But since then... nothing. In February, the tabloids were absolutely certain Zsa Zsa Gabor and Miss Elizabeth Taylor would be on the other side of the lawn before the month was out, but Spring is about to sprung and both of those lovely women are still with us. Zsa Zsa is pretty stunning. 93 years old, broken hip, found in a pool of blood, leg amputated, infection set in so the leg was amputated even further, had a stroke and is still clinging to life.

I tell ya, that old bird is tougher than a two dollar steak.

The tabloids lean very heavily on former TV stars when they predict someone is going to die, so there was no chance I was going to get a hit with the recently deceased Secretary of State Warren Christopher or even Dodger great Duke Snider. They could have mentioned Jane Russell before she died, but that's aiming slightly older than their target demographic. It's much more about Mike Connors (still alive and best wishes) than it is about Michael Gough (recently deceased and best wishes to his family and friends).

Yes, Spring is nearly here and though there are many months left, I expect that if I'm ever going to have any Moxie, I'm going to have to buy it my own damn self.

It's 4:00 p.m. PST on Saint Patrick's Day...

and I am stone sober and my bracket is already crap.

As for the first anomaly, I work this evening so I will still be sober until well after 7:00 p.m.

As for the second situation, having a bracket go to crap really doesn't count as an anomaly with me.

Yes, I know there are bigger troubles all over the place, but if the Leader of the Free World can put together an NCAA bracket, I think a broke-ass math professor should have the right as well.

Here's hoping things are going better for you.

Demeaning and offensive. But not for the reasons you might think.

NBA commentator David Aldridge wrote on the CNN website that the weekend of the NBA All-Star game is known as "black Thanksgiving". Though CNN has taken it down, it has been posted in many places around the Internets, with lots of comments on websites from black folks who had never heard the phrase before.

Of course, it's demeaning and offensive, most especially since the NBA All-Star Game is often the same weekend the Daytona 500, the opening race of every NASCAR season.

Or as it is known in the former Confederate States of America...

Cracker Christmas.

Sunday Numbers 2.0, Vol. 1: Return to football and mortality.

Over the past few weeks, I've received e-mails from readers saying they missed the Wednesday Math posts. I was a little surprised, but I did do 130 of them, so I could see how folks felt like it was part of the routine.

Right now, prepping classes is cutting into my precious blogging time during the week, so I am going to resurrect the Wednesday tradition on Sundays instead, calling it Sunday Numbers 2.0 to distinguish these new posts from the first set of Sunday Numbers in 2008 that used my system called Confidence of Victory to predict the result of the presidential election, predictions that were remarkably close to the actual landslide electoral victory of Obama over McCain, thank Odin, Krishna and the li'l baby Jesus.


About a year ago, I did a couple posts on professional sports and mortality. This week, a fellow named Jim Zimmerman who runs oldestlivingprofootball.com added a comment to the thread from last year, so I gave his site a visit.

A website full of numerical data sorted in an easy to understand way.

Honestly, I couldn't be happier if you sent me beer.

I took a couple hours to get the data, change the dates of birth and death to years instead of specific days and sorted it both by year of death and year of birth. Here are some of my early findings.



How has the Age of Steroids effected mortality of NFL players? This chart shows the average age of players who died in the years from 1980 to 2010. The general public started noticing steroid use in the late 1990s in baseball, but the premature deaths of John Matuszak and Lyle Alzado a decade earlier made steroid use in football a topic of conversation then. I took the average age of football players who died in the years from 1980 to 2010, and as we can see, the general trend is upwards, as it is for the public in general.

There is a fact that skews the in favor of longer life expectancy in more recent years that has nothing to do with improved health. More football players are living to be 90 or more because there more professionals as time goes on. If a man died in 1980 and he was more than 90, he had to be born in 1890 or earlier. If a man in his nineties died last year, he was born between 1910 and 1920, and probably played football in the 1940's or 1950's. There are more football players in that era than in the earlier era simply because the league started in the early 1920s.


Are more football players dying young as we move forward in time? Again, I looked at the years of death 1980 to 2010. If someone died in 1980, they likely played the game in the era from 1950 to 1980, which was not the age of steroids. For those who died young in 2010, their playing days would have been in the era of 1980 to 2010 when steroid use is assumed to be more prevalent. Looking at the graph to the left, we see the percentages of NFL players dying before the age of 50 fluctuates quite a bit year by year and the trendline (or line of regression) is almost flat. More than that, the correlation coefficient is incredibly weak, so the data does NOT let us state that steroid use has been a significant factor in premature death of the population of NFL players.

How do the ages at death of NFL players compare to the general population? For this question, I needed some sample from the general population that would be fair to compare to the list of NFL players who died in 2010. My method was to look at recent obituaries from the Associated Press. Both these data sets would be very different from a list of the deceased at a hospital because neither of the lists of celebrated people are going to have any infant deaths or deaths of teenagers. In the A.P. obituaries, I excluded anyone whose celebrity was being the Oldest Living Person, and I only took the obits that mentioned the age at death in the first paragraph. Here are the statistics I used for my tests.

2010 deaths of former NFL players
n = 134, average = 73.28, standard deviation = 16.82
% under 50 = 10.4%
% between 50 to 59 = 9.0%
% between 60 to 69 = 19.4%
% between 70 to 79 = 16.4%
% between 80 to 89 = 32.8%
% over 90 = 11.9%

100 deaths from A.P. obituaries, late 2010 to early 2011
n = 100, average = 77.65, standard deviation = 14.99
% under 50 = 5%
% between 50 to 59 = 7%
% between 60 to 69 = 13%
% between 70 to 79 = 23%
% between 80 to 89 = 28%
% over 90 = 24%

5% of celebrities who died were under 50 compared to 10.8% of football players. Is that significant? Good question, hypothetical question asker. With sample sizes this small and splitting into two groups for each set, under 50 and 50 or over, the chi-square test does not give us a test statistic that reaches even the 90% significance level. (test stat = 2.278, 90% threshold = 2.706.)

If instead we do a chi-square test and split both data sets into six categories, (Under 50, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79, 80-89, 90 and over), we get a test stat that does cross the 90% threshold, but not the 95%. (test stat = 10.368, 90% threshold = 9.236, 95% threshold = 11.071). The categories that add the most to the test stat are the over 90 numbers, and this can be at least in part attributed to league expansion. In 1960, the American Football League began, effectively doubling the number of professional football teams. When the leagues merge in 1970, there were 26 teams. There are now 32, but this increase is not as significant as the big jump ten years earlier.

The general celebrity list had an average age at death four years higher than the NFL list from 2010. Is that difference significant? Yes, it is. The test statistic t = 2.093 does get above the 95% significance threshold. Part of this is because of the greater percentage of celebrities dying over the age of 90 than football players over 90 dying, and again that can be partly attributed to league expansion. If instead we try to factor this out by looking at only the deaths at ages of 89 or less, of course the average ages of both groups go down dramatically. Here are the new numbers for those two data sets.

2010 deaths of former NFL players, 89 and younger
n = 119, average = 70.52, standard deviation = 16.0

deaths from A.P. obituaries, late 2010 to early 2011, 89 and younger
n = 76, average = 72.45, standard deviation = 13.32

Besides the averages going down, the difference goes from 4 to 2, the data sets get smaller and the standard deviations shrink slightly. The shrinking standard deviations would tend to increase the test statistic, but that small pressure to go up is overwhelmed by the smaller difference and sample sizes. The test statistic t = 0.911, which is not statistically significant at all.

What if we leave the NFL players alone and remove half the over 90 deaths from the A.P. list? Hypothetical, that's not a bad idea of how to adjust the data to compensate for league expansion. Let's give that a shot.

2010 deaths of former NFL players
n = 134, average = 73.28, standard deviation = 16.82

100 deaths from A.P. obituaries, late 2010 to early 2011, half the over 90s removed
n = 88, average = 75.65, standard deviation = 14.66

The new test stat is t = 1.11, not statistically significant at these data set sizes.

==

I want to thank Jim Zimmerman once again for maintaining this very nice website for mortality statistics of former professional football players. I still have all the info in an Excel file, so there may be more data mining in the future for my Sunday Numbers 2.0 posts.

Whew, that's lotsa 'splainin'. Glad it's a Sunday.

Next week: Perpendicular.

The speed of the Internet.

Former major league player and manager Chuck Tanner died today. He is best known for managing the Pirates to the World Series championship in 1979. The message on MLB.com is dated 25 minutes ago. A.P. obituaries is not carrying the story yet.

His Wikipedia page has already been updated.

God bless the nerds who work for free.

Carlton Chester "Cookie" Gilchrist, 1935-2011

"Cookie" Gilchrist, one of the premier running backs in the Canadian Football League, then the American Football League, has died from cancer at the age of 75. His obituary in the New York Times tells of his remarkable life.

I knew the name when I was a kid, a really great sports nickname, but I knew little about the man. He was one of the few players to speak out about the racism he encountered, and his biggest success in that part of his life was as the leader of a threatened boycott of all black players from the AFL All-Star game if it was held in New Orleans, after days of mistreatment of those players in that city, denied service in restaurants, nightclubs and taxis. The boycott did not take place because the league decided to move the game to Houston.

Besides his stands against racism, Gilchrist was one hell of a tough running back. At 6'3" and 250 pounds, he was one of the most bruising fullbacks of his era and the first AFL running back to pass the 1,000 yard mark for a season.

I know some readers may find my interest in obituaries morbid, but my view is different. Well written obituaries celebrate a person's life, and often remind up how much the world has changed since we were young. Writing The Other Blog, I sometimes get weary with America's new obsession with instant celebrity, and to read about people like Cookie Gilchrist is a reminder of a time when people achieved success the hard way, when success in sports was not a ticket to untold wealth but just a little more than the folks who sat in the stands.

Best wishes to the family and friends of Cookie Gilchrist, from a fan.

Never say "It can't get any worse."

(Photo by Ross William Hamilton/The Oregonian)

As far as I can tell, the Oregon Ducks football team wears a different variation on their uniform for every game.

Every game, I think their uniform is the ugliest thing I have ever seen a group of human beings wear. But just when I think that, they play yet another game and take the ugly to a whole new level. In the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl last night, they had the whole package, from the ugly helmets to the clumsy font for the numbers to the grotesquely garish shoes and socks.

And, oh yeah, they lost the game on the last play, 22-19.

Anything else, Matty Boy?

Now that you mention it, hypothetical question asker, both teams in the first half didn't just play sloppy football, it looked like they were trying not to score. Anyone betting on the under in this game won their bet very comfortably, possibly too comfortably.

Somebody at the A.P. obituary desk is sleeping on the job.

Often, the obituary pages are filled with people whose claim to fame requires lotsa 'splainin'. A couple people who died this week do not fall into this category.

Blake Edwards died today. The Pink Panther, 10, Victor/Victoria. The Associated Press thought he was worth a mention.

Bob Feller died yesterday. Hall of Famer, WW II veteran, still a name you have to consider when talking about the nastiest fastball in baseball history. The New York Times gave him a three page tribute.

The A.P. hasn't gotten around to mentioning him yet.

Shame on the A.P.

My two favorite Bob Feller quotes, one about him and one by him.

Bob played long before the designated hitter rule, so the opposing pitcher would have to bat against him. Most were ridiculously outmatched. Lefty Gomez came to the plate one game, never took the bat off his shoulder and sat down after letting three blazing called strikes whiz past him. Before he walked back to the dugout, Gomez told the plate umpire "The last one sounded low to me."

Bob's take on Ted Williams: "Trying to sneak a fastball past Ted Williams is like trying to sneak dawn past a rooster."

Best wishes to the family and friends of Bob Feller, from a fan.

Don Meredith, 1938-2010

Don Meredith, the great Dallas Cowboy quarterback who became one of the three guys in the booth during the glory days of Monday Night Football, has died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 72 in Santa Fe.

The original team in the booth was Keith Jackson, Howard Cosell and Meredith, but Jackson was moved back to college football where he was outstanding for decades to come, to be replaced by an ex-jock, Frank Gifford.

Howard was hated for many reasons. He was a know-it-all, he was homely, he was Jewish and he had an irritating voice. But the good old boy Dandy Don made it clear that he actually liked Howard, and the good natured tension between them made it the best broadcast team in football for many years. Personally, I think Frank Gifford is, was and always will be a completely useless idiot, but Don and Howard were broadcasting gold.

He said a lot of funny things in the booth, but my favorite was this about two incredibly successful head coaches of the day: "If Tom Landry and Bud Grant had a personality contest, no one would win."

While I usually end my obituary tributes with best wishes to Don Meredith's family and friends, from a fan, all fans of Dandy Don know how this one has to end, sung by Willie Nelson.

"Turn out the lights, the party's over..."

"You are what your record says you are."-Bill Parcells

(photo by Denis Poroy, Associated Press)

A few weeks back, the Oakland Raiders were 5-4 and I wrote to say they didn't suck. They then proceeded to lose big to the very tough Pittsburgh Steelers and get whipped on by the not so tough Miami Dolphins. But yesterday, the Raiders did what they have done best this year, beat up a team in their division. At the end of the first half in San Diego yesterday, the Raiders were ahead 21-3, and it wasn't really as close as that. They were not only putting points on the board, they were putting the Chargers on their asses. There was some controversy about the hit in the picture above when Rolando McClain hit Darren Sproles helmet to helmet and knocked the running back out of the game. Watching on TV, it looked like McClain actually lead with his shoulder and when a guy is as small as Sproles (5'6"), it hard not to hit him high.

So now the Raiders are 6-6 with four games left. Their record says they are about average in the league, but that's an improvement over recent years. They have lost some games they should have won, but they have beaten the teams in their division, which is important as a tiebreaker, should it come to that. They swept the Chargers, considered the pre-season favorites in the division, they crushed the Broncos in Denver and beat the Chiefs at home. They still have a game each against Denver and Kansas City, and if the Raiders have any shot at the playoffs, those are must-win games where I would expect them to be favored. Still, they have to win at least three games out of the next four to have a real shot, because Kansas City has a two game lead in the division now.

It is a long shot, but you are what your record says you are. In the past few years, the Raiders' record said they were dead by Thanksgiving. At least the fans have some hope in December, a feeling that hasn't happened for a long time.

--

Final fantasy football update for the Mutant Mercenaries: This year I sucked. The only good news is that my brother and my nephew are both making it to the playoffs, and my brother's record says he's got the best team in our league. Best wishes to both over the next three weeks.

Gil McDougald 1928-2010

One of my favorite trivia questions of all time is this.

"How many times did Mickey Mantle win Rookie of the Year and why not?"

Since you can only win this award once in your career at most, the obvious answer to the first part is zero. The second part is that his teammate Gil McDougald had a much better year in 1951. Mantle struggled some and was sent down to the minors for a while. McDougald became a regular in the Yankees' line-up that year, alternating between second and third base and batting .306 with 14 homers in the regular season and one in the World Series.

For all his talent, bad luck followed McDougald around. In 1955, he was struck by a ball during batting practice and lost much of his hearing, which is at least part of the reason he retired young in 1960. In 1957, he hit a line drive that broke the skull around the eye of Cleveland pitcher Herb Score, who had been Rookie of the Year in 1955. Score missed the rest of the 1957 season and much of 1958 as well, and never returned to his dominant form before the injury. McDougald promised to retire if Score went blind, but fortunately for both men, that didn't happen.

The idea of "the rule of threes" is popular superstition when it comes to celebrities dying, but in the past news cycle, there were five people who died whose claims to fame I knew: McDougald, Leslie Nielsen, congressman Steven Solarz, famous for investigating the corruption of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, and two film directors, Irvin Kershner, who was a professor of George Lucas' at USC and later directed The Empire Strikes Back, and the Italian comedy writer-director Mario Monicelli.

Best wishes to the family and friends of all these men, from a fan.

We love all you Giants

A lot of the stories being published right now would have you believe the last fifty years of fandom for supporters of the San Francisco Giants have been like a prison sentence. Don't get me wrong. It feels great to say "World Champion San Francisco Giants". It will certainly shut up some of the A's fans who actually put more effort into being Giant haters. But my memories of the Giants aren't about pain and misery. We got to root for some great teams and some astounding players over the last half century.

Of course we love Mays and McCovey and Marichal, but we also love Gaylord Perry, the forgotten man of the retired SF uniforms. He was like a precursor to Barry Bonds. Yes, he was cheating, but he was cheating for us, and that made a difference.

We also love the guys we got late in their careers who still produced for us. We love Harvey Kuenn and Joe Morgan and Rick Reuschel. We love the kids we traded away too early. We love Gary Mathews and Gary Maddox and George Foster and especially Orlando Cepeda.

We love Jose Pagan and Jose Uribe, Manny Trillo and Tito Fuentes.

We love all three Alou brothers.

We love the great nicknames. Ollie "Downtown" Brown. "Fireball" Frank Linzy. John the Count, Will the Thrill, Sudden Sam.

We love Jeff "Old Penitentiary Face" Leonard.

We love the guys we had at third. Jimmy Davenport and Jim Ray Hart. Matt Williams.

We love our second basemen. Hal Lanier, Tito Fuentes, Joe Morgan, Robby Thompson, Jeff Kent.

We even love the guys we hated. Poor Ray Sadecki, whose tombstone should read "The Bum We Got When We Gave Away Orlando Cepeda". Johnnie LeMaster, the shortstop who had the misfortune of taking the job after local boy and All-Star Chris Speier was traded away. LeMaster, who had the word "BOO" on his back for one home game back in the 1970s. We love Candy Maldanado, whose bad play in right cost us the NLCS so many years ago.

We even love Barry Bonds, a very unlovable guy. While it feels like a bad marriage now, I have to admit a screamed like a banshee at several home runs that found their way into McCovey Cove.

Thanks to all the guys who wore the uniform, who had on the cap the the big orange "SF" on it these past fifty years. It feels great now that this new team of kids and castoffs have brought home the big trophy, but we won't forget all the great guys and great memories that came before.