“Future of Sports” panel talks baseball
Tuesday, November 30th, 2010Is he from the future?
What do you get when you cross a speaking panel of Bob Costas, Bill James, Joe Posnanski and Gerald Early with a baseball-mad town in winter? A jam-packed Graham Chapel on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis. Although billed as a discussion on "The Future of Sports," we’d guess that the majority of the hungry crowd Monday night came to be served some baseball morsels from the Hot Stove, especially given the panel’s baseball-heavy reputations. However, we — along with the reportedly more than 500 other attendees — endured several non-baseball appetizer questions before moderator Michael MacCambridge dished up the baseball entree.
The banter at times could have been a live look-in on the filming of Ken Burns’s Baseball, with three two (how did Burns overlook James?!) of the speakers having appeared on the acclaimed documentary, and the other two with credentials to have done so. The panel was at its best when candidly relating personal anecdotes — Early’s childhood tales of the older black men at the barbershop talking sports — and jumping in to zing popular sports culture — Costas’s description of a televised poker player as a "clammy degenerate in a members-only jacket"; it was at its least enjoyable when parroting academy-approved, politically correct positions that would have been at home in a doctrinaire university lecture, such as Costas’s overwrought claim that Title IX was one of the most important social acts of our time.
After aplombly fielding questions on the potential of professional womens’ sports, the prognosis for boxing and the fate of a college football championship, the panel fielded some baseball questions. In particular, in addressing the problem of baseball being too slow, the speakers weighed in with answers ranging from the philosophical to the practical. James asserted that "It’s an easy problem to solve — if you acknowledge the need to solve it." Costas noted that the pace of baseball is to be "leisurely, not lethargic" and that the game in its current state runs "contrary to the metabolism of culture." He offered that calling the high strike would speed things up. Posnanski and James had a different and curious concern: That the rule allowing a team to change pitchers in the middle of a game has been perverted and that baseball could and should restrict late-inning pitching changes. That prompted some agreement from Costas, who offered that relief pitchers change the narrative of the game: Whereas once viewers enjoyed the struggle between a tiring pitcher like Bob Gibson having to face Willie Stargell for the fourth time in a game, today’s fans don’t have that continuity throughout a game. Citing evidence that we’re able to process information more quickly and multitask, Early ventured that Americans’ shortening attention spans means a problem for baseball.
James good-naturedly answered a question from the audience about the impact and currency of sabermetrics in the mainstream media, noting that it was "clear that Felix [Hernandez] wouldn’t have won [the AL Cy Young award] without the knowledge revolution." Given that Posnanski had recently blogged about how Hernandez’s award didn’t prove anything about sabermetrics, we thought that the topic would produce a fun debate, but neither party enjoined the argument. (We showed last year that the trend away from wins to strikeouts has been going on for several years now.)
Some other baseball-related commentary:
- James on baseball’s future: Despite the high barrier to entry, MLB is vulnerable to an outside league starting up if it promises a better product, such as 90-minute games. Costas’s counter: Any new league would suffer from lack of history.
- James on the possibility of an MLB salary cap in next five years: "0% chance"
- James on instant replay: He would rather build an electronic system that allows umpires to make the right call the first time, such as a green light indicator for close plays at first base.
- Posnanski on whether changes to the game make it better or worse: Baseball is best — perfect — when you’re 10 years old. After that, it can only become less perfect. Early agreed, and took the idea further to say that when you’re young, you don’t care about or at least have a hard time appreciating history. He related an anecdote about going to the barbershop with his dad and hearing the older men talk about Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige. "I didn’t care who those old guys were!" Funny to hear a man so well-known for his writings on race in America to admit to an adolescent apathy about the great groundbreaking players of the game.
- James on whether it’s ever okay to manage by gut: Yes, if for no other reason than to avoid being predictable. But stats don’t always offer a clear decision (e.g., when to sac bunt).
- James on the future of lacrosse (question from a member of the audience wearing a Yankees cap): Lacrosse needs better stats.
We had a chance to buttonhole James (and Posnanski — both were gracious and affable) afterward for some one-on-one questions (some from the Twitterverse). He is already on Twitter, though he claims he’s still figuring out how to use it (along with other gadgets), and he didn’t offer any ideas for the future of sabermetrics. When we asked him which was the next market inefficiency that teams could exploit this offseason, he dryly suggested "just watch what the [post-Minaya] Mets do." We inquired whether any major-league GMs still put stock in stuff like pitcher wins and losses; to our astonishment, he indicated yes, and that they were hardly a rarity. As he then said, old ideas die hard. Indeed, Bill, indeed.
[Related: Video (forum), Video (Q and A)]
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