What happiness looks like – Jake Marisnick’s catch in deep center
Is anyone having more fun at anything that Jake Marisnick is having playing baseball right now? Make sure to watch after the catch for a) Marisnick’s smil...
Tag: baseball
Baseballs Unwritten Rules Are Bullshit, Says This MLB Pitcher
When David Ortiz hits a home run, his leisurely trot around the bases is just shy of a professional wrestlers ring entrance. The crowd goes wild, his bat is rai...
Moneyball Takes the Field: Gold Gloves, Team Positioning, and the Pittsburgh Pirates
A friend sent me a nice post by a fellow named Pat Lackey, at the wonderfully named Pirates site “Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke”. Lackey light...
The Cruel Curveball Science of Sandy Koufax
In honor and anticipation of Opening Day, I bring you Sandy Koufax, which is really all any baseball fan should need. This post mashes up two separate entries I...
Astronaut Plays Baseball by Himself in Space
Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa plays a game of baseball by himself aboard the International Space Station.
How Box Scores Are Like Gene Sequences: The Geek Path from Baseball to Bio
How is a box score like a genome sequence? This starts a wee slow, but go with it: Noted computational biologists James Fraser (UCSF) and Michael Eisen (Berkele...
Switch Hitter v Switch Pitcher
This is splendid. Pitcher who can pitch both ways switches up on a hitter coming to bat — then the batter does same. Rules chaos ensues: As far as I can d...
The Pope’s Balls, Nagel’s Bats, Barthes, Baldwin, and other pleasures
I’ve been head-down on a complicated piece of writing this week; an enormous pleasure, but it steals you away. Forgive the quiet. Below is what broke th...
The Tight Collar: The New Science of Choking Under Pressure
The Collar Late in May 2008, perched in superb seats a few rows behind home plate at Chicago’s Cellular Field, I took in a White Sox-Indians game with Sia...
How the curveball fools you: Illusion of the Year
The good curves do that: Even when you have that millisecond of curveball detection beforehand, they still seem to take a bend sharply and suddenly late in thei...