The Tin Lizard

Baseball's Great Moment

I suppose everyone by now has heard the story of the umpire at a game in Detroit who ruled a runner safe when (as replay showed) he was out by a mile.  The umpire, James Joyce, admitted his mistake after the fact; the runner, Jason Donald of the Cleveland Indians, should have been called out but the Detroit Tigers pitcher, Armando Galarraga, was nevertheless denied, at the last minute, the claim of a "perfect game," one of baseball's holy grails.

In baseball, the rule is that the umpire's call stands; baseball has resisted the trend toward re-judging everything on instant replay.  That policy might be questioned, especially since the Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Selig, seemed more confused than anyone about the reasons for the rule.  Personally, I think it probably should stand.  Baseball is a slow game that doesn't need to be made slower by constant reference to the sideline cameras.

And Joyce apologized, and Galarraga didn't fly off the handle, and everybody sort of kissed and made up the next day.  That's not bad news, either; sportsmanship isn't always practiced these days.  And in this case, even Detroit fans mostly accepted it.

Still, I find it hard to buy into all the hoopla about this being one of baseball's "greatest moments" just because it turned into a forgive-and-forget session.  What struck me about the whole thing, from the films that were shown, was that Joyce appeared to be standing in the wrong place to make his call.  He was directly behind the Detroit pitcher, who was receiving the throw to tag the runner out; his view of the ball was blocked.  How, from that vantage point, could he possibly have made any call? 

A sad result from an honest mistake is one thing; to make a call without being able to see the action is another. 

Joyce should have shifted to where he could see what was going on.  And when that doesn't happen, then perhaps baseball is going to need to accept reference to instant replay; the umpire ought to have the authority to call for a review the tape. 

Bike To Work Week

It's "Bike To Work Week."  Who knew?  Bicyclists, perhaps.  I haven't noticed any flood of new bicycle riders out on the roads, but there is a spate of articles and spots online, in the press, and in social media.

The articles have tended to focus on the problems cyclists face, competing with automobile traffic in U.S. urban areas.  The dangers -- and they are very real -- range from active hostility on the part of some drivers to inattention on the part of others.  American drivers aren't used to dealing with bicycles on the roads. 

The other half of the equation gets less focus:  drivers have gripes about the two-wheelers, sometimes for petty reasons (e.g. they're too slow and might hold you up for a moment), sometimes for legitimate ones. 

In the latter category, of course, is the number of cyclists who feel it's their right to ignore the traffic rules they're supposed to follow.  They swoop on and off sidewalks when it suits them, run red lights, dart in and out of traffic.  It's OK to put themselves in danger if they want but not if they're going to complain when they get creamed doing something stupid.  And they will. (Do something stupid.) (Great creamed.) (And complain.) 

Just a few days ago, before bicycle week, I was driving along a thoroughfare in my neighborhood when a bicyclist approached from the right.  It's a merge lane where traffic coming in yields to traffic on the main road.   He didn't yield, didn't slow down, as near as I can tell, didn't even look, just pulled right in front of me about 50 feet ahead.  He's not dead, and (it must have been one of my more mellow days) I didn't even honk.  The article above says "some" bicyclists do such stunts and give all bicyclists a bad name; I would say, unfortunately, that nearly every bicyclist I encounter is doing something he/she shouldn't be.  This needs to be fixed.

But I'm happy for those who have the fortitude to get to work on their bicycles, especially if they do so day after day and in all weathers.  It's a nice "green" thing to do, and it's good exercise.  Another advantage is that it encourages people to live closer to their work; bicycle fans I know may ride five miles or more one way, but it's unlikely they'll choose to live 30 or 40 miles from their work, as too many people do these days.

I don't think the frustrations of bicycle-riders or automobile drivers will really be solved until bicycles reach critical mass.  Right now, there are too few of them to be much of anything but a nuisance.   If there were more people out there on bikes -- take the Netherlands as an example -- bicycles could stay on the roads; there would be enough of them to make a nice lane-wide clump in the right lane at stoplights; as a group they'd be more noticeable and drivers would learn to tend toward the left lane to avoid them.

Unfortunately I have not seen much growth.  Here in Arlington, Virginia, bike paths were laid out nearly ten years ago on most major streets wide enough to accommodate them.  Even today, you will seldom see more than a half-dozen bikers using them in the course of a typical rush-hour trip into DC (about 7 miles).  Until we get well beyond that low-intensity mode, the problems are likely to remain unsolved.

Hardscrabble Existence

Can the rules of Scrabble change?  Today, reports filtered out that they could, and had, with the introduction of new game rules that would permit the use of proper nouns.  The game's fans across the country reacted with groans of agony.

It turns out, though, they needn't have bothered. The report of new rules wasn't true...well, but it wasn't exactly false, either.  It was kind of a rumor...but more than that.

The interesting factoid of the tale is that different companies own the rights to Scrabble in the U.S. and Canada (Hasbro) and in the rest of the world (Mattel).  Mattel is indeed talking about introducing a version of the game with different rules calculated to attract kids and new players.  But (second factoid) it wouldn't just allow players to slap down a proper noun any time; they might occasionally draw a card that would give them the right to do so on one turn of play.  Whatever the nature of the new Mattel game, though, it won't be available in the U.S. (because of factoid # 1).

I thank writer Montgomery for clearing all this up.  Otherwise,

I can see the arguments now:  "Alturba! - What's that supposed to mean?" -- "That was my dear maiden aunt's first name."  Other arguments could develop over the spelling of many, many foreign words, especially those from languages like Chinese, Arabic, or Russian who don't share our alphabet and are transliterated into English, often in wildly different ways.  What version of a word from such a language would be accepted in "proper name Scrabble"?  All of them?  Is the capital of China Peking, Peiping, or Beijing?  All have been used as "authoritative" in the past fifty years.  

It's not hard to see why the original writers of the Scrabble rules chose to omit proper names; they demonstrated a foresight at least as remarkable as that of the "Founding Fathers" who wrote our Constitution.

If there's a serious side to this, it's that allowing proper names to be used would make the game easier.  And that is certainly in keeping with trends elsewhere.  Look at a simple TV show like "Jeopardy," where the questions by and large are pretty simple, but often made even simpler by hints contained in the clue; and compare that to earlier quiz shows like "The $64,000 Question," where contestants actually may have had to know something (in fact, they had to know so much that it's no wonder some of them cheated).  The regrettable trend, to make shows palatable to the masses, is to dumb them down.  Now, Mattel seeks to do the same with board games; it's a natural progression.

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Dim

Are you kidding me?  Tiger Woods's "confession," "apology," or whatever it may be called, is the news of the day?  Attracting eyeballs?  Featured on 20/20? 

First, we should remember that "golfer" isn't very far removed from "gofer."  Should we really care about Tiger's problems?  I don't. 

Second, the actual statement (you couldn't have possibly avoided it) was uninspired, self-serving, and incredible (literally). 

The only thing the Tiger seemed really sorry about was his loss of income.  I don't mind if he gets back to golf and continues to win tournaments; even the product endorsements, if sponsors are in the mood.  But as for his personal life, it's of no interest.  Politicians, in this case, generally do it better.

Monopoly Money: Ticketmaster

Have you bought tickets for an "event" lately?  A local music concert, a sports event, theater during your planned trip to New York, even a dogfight two blocks down from your house...you just can't avoid "Ticketmaster," the company that seems to have a lock on the tix for every entertainment in the country -- nor its exhorbitant add-on fees.

It turns out that Ticketmaster doesn't just seem to be everywhere, it is, with a recently reported 83% market share.   According to Steven Pearlstein in the Washington Post, a degree of competiton emerged about a year ago, but in short order, Ticketmaster and its rival LiveNation decided to merge; this in turn was challenged by antitrust authorities.  You can read all the details of the antitrust action in the article, but what comes through clearly to me in all of it is "monopoly." 

I don't begrudge a company a profit for services rendered, but on a typical order I made recently, Ticketmaster's fees and charges added 15% to the price of the event.  And that was before I declined the extra 4.75 they wanted just to e-mail the tickets (...wait, isn't e-mailing easier and cheaper than snail mail?  Shouldn't the e-mail be free, and the postally mailed tickets cost extra?)  Welcome to the world of monopoly pricing, prices that we unfortunately can't pay with Monopoly money.

The approval of the merger comes with some limitations aimed at benefitting consumers, but it will be interesting to see if anything really changes.  The basic fact is that - as in many other businesses in the past decade or so - you're being charged again for something that's already included.  Admission prices have always included the costs of printing, selling, tracking, and delivering the actual tickets.  It's part of the cost of doing business, so when you purchase admission to an event, you have a right to assume you don't get charged a separate fee for the receipt (which is effectively what a ticket is).

At the arena/theater/stadium box office, you don't; consumers can still normally avoid the add-on charges that way.  But if you don't want to drag yourself to the box office, or physically can't (e.g., buying tickets in advance for another city), you'll pay more.  Ticketmaster offers a degree of convenience that some people in some circumstances may value, but any website, not just Ticketmaster's, can offer the benefits of ordering across the country, or receiving your tickets quickly by e-mail.

The event venues have abdicated their responsibility to their patrons by not running their own ticket operations.  More should.  Too many of those that do will still charge you a fee for online orders (figuring, I guess, that if Ticketmaster can get away with it they can too).  That practice should cease. 

Note: This piece is also being published on Morning Fog
 because its subject matter is relevant there also.  

The NFL's Magic Eleven

I'm not a huge fan of sports; I hardly ever spectate - an occasional game, and often, the Superbowl, which is usually poor football but good dip.  Maybe it's because in my career I spent so much time overseas, where U.S. sports might turn up at 3:00 AM or in the middle of the work day, if they turned up at all. 

But sometimes the side stories are interesting, like today's Fox Sports feature about what is actually broadcast during a typical NFL game.  It turns out that out of the total 60 minutes of game time, the ball is in play for only about 11 minutes.  ELEVEN!!  About 30 seconds for each of the 22 guys on the field at any given time; and far less if you factor in the offense, the defense, the special teams.  The rest of the time is killed as teams huddle, get to the line of scrimmage, unpile, and so on.  The same story also points out other interesting stats:  for example if 11 minutes out of 60 sounds bad, how does 11 minutes out of three hours (the typical broadcast length) sound?   And (shocker!) about 60% of that extra time is devoted to: c-o-m-m-e-r-c-i-a-l-s.  Come to think of it, maybe this is why I'm not a regular spectator.

Not that we should be surprised.  Most of us have noticed how much time of a regular TV "drama" show is taken up by commercials.  By the way, it's more now than it was ten or 15 years ago.

And I once did my own little sample of evening news on television, omitting all the commercials, the teasers ("coming up next..."), the banter between the newscasters -- the result was about 11 minutes (there's that number again) of actual news stories on local news; even less (about 9.5) on network news. 

I'm keeping my eye on the bills we pay to receive this flood of advertising and other "uncontent" - there may come a time when it's not worth it.