Baseball Stories - Obama Edition

Obama As White Sox Fan

Here's a pretty cool article in the NYT about Barack Obama and White Sox GM Kenny Williams.

All 30 general managers at baseball’s annual executive meetings here at a Southern California resort spent Tuesday distracted by more than arbitration seminars and beckoning golf holes. Like many other citizens, they sat around televisions expecting to watch the national election returns deep into the night.

But Williams, general manager of the Chicago White Sox, followed the coverage with a keener sense of anticipation than any of his contemporaries. Not only is he one of just two African-American general managers — the Los Angeles Angels’ Tony Reagins is the other — but as a fellow prominent member of Chicago’s black community he has known Barack Obama for almost 10 years, and considers him a friend.

They have hung out at mutual friends’ barbecues, shot hoops at a local health club as recently as this summer, and — with Williams intrigued by public-policy issues and Obama a longtime White Sox fan — discussed each other’s jobs far more than their own.

“I’m interested in all these questions of foreign policy and national security,” Williams said. “In between his games, shooting a couple of baskets, he asks me, ‘What about your pitching?’ I said, ‘Excuse me, you worry about national security, I’ll worry about the pitching.’ ”

The ability of baseball to heal America, as Walt Whitman wrote. :)

Obama Might Help Baseball Back To The Olympics?
This one is a bit further out with the pixies. I don't think baseball is a good fit with the Olympics and I remain sceptical it can ever get back. While it was loads of fun in Seoul, Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, Athens and Beijing, its entry into the Olympics in the first place was predicated on the amateur comp. Now that the Olympics want Major Leaguers to turn up and there's no way the owners will have a bar of it, it's a really bad mismatch of expectations.

So it is against this context we find this article.

With Barack Obama in the White House, baseball officials think their sport could have a better chance of getting back into the Olympics.

"If the perception internationally of the United States improves by virtue of his election, then I think the U.S. stature in international sport of every type will be enhanced," San Diego Padres chief executive officer Sandy Alderson said Wednesday at the general managers' meetings. "I don't think the United States has the international stature in sport that it once had."

Baseball was added as a demonstration sport in 1984 and 1988, then was a medal sport starting in 1992. The International Olympic Committee voted in July 2005 to drop baseball and softball following the 2008 Beijing Games. When a vote for reinstatement took place the following February, baseball lost 46-42 and softball failed 47-43.

At the time, International Softball Federation president Don Porter said: "I think anti-Americanism was a factor." Softball was added for the 1996 Atlanta Games.
"I think clearly how the world looks at America is going to be different with Barack Obama in the White House," Cleveland Indians general manager Mark Shapiro said.
"And that will be initial. And then how he leads and how he governs will determine how they look at us over a sustained period."

Colour me sceptical. I just don't see it. The IOC and MLB are diametrically opposed in assumptions about sports. MLB is one of the first modern professional sporting organisations; the Olympics still cite amateurism and participation as its benchmark values. The MLB is focused on markets and everyday business for 162 season games per team plus play-offs; the Olympics are heavily invested in 2 sets of quadrennial events that last for 2 weeks. While the market is still very American, the composition of MLB teams are very international and post-Nationalism. The Olympic Games sing about being International, but when the competition begins, it's all about flag-waving Nationalism.

Even a quick survey like that shows just how distant their values actually are, and that makes them more incompatible as partners than you would think. All the things MLB values and has accomplished does not mean much to the IOC, and vice versa. It's hardly the basis for mutual understanding, let alone agreements to be made. Throw in the steroid/PED issue and you have a hornet's nest of 'issues'. Even with Barack Obama's vaunted oratory, it's going to be a really hard sell to bring back baseball to the Summer Games.

Nate Silver Scores Big

A couple of weeks ago, I alluded to baseball stat nerd Nate "PECOTA" Silver who was running his own analysis of the US Presidential election campaign and drew the conclusion that Obama would win with about 348.6 Electoral votes (It's looking like 364). He said at the point, it was Bottom of the Ninth in a 2-0 ball game with one out. McCain is at bat, but Palin's just been picked off first.

Anyway, Yahoo ran this story today about all the pollsters and Nate Silver got the pole position of mentions.

First, we can look at Nate Silver, a new prognosticator to the political scene. The baseball statistician turned Electoral College map savant really was the belle of the election ball, living up to his website's tag line: Electoral projections done right.

While Silver never did any of his own polling, he analyzed all the pollsters' findings and spit out every voting model possible. Ultimately, he said Obama would win by 52 percent to 46 percent. In the end, Obama won 52 percent to 46 percent in the popular vote.

Silver's Electoral College map wasn't far off either. This graphic below, shows a comparison of what he projected vs. what actually happened. Unless I'm looking at this map wrong, the only thing they projected incorrectly was Indiana. (A note: Many news outlets have not called Missouri yet because it's so close. The latest numbers have McCain ahead by about 6,000 votes. If that's the ultimate outcome, Silver got that right too.)

Pretty special effort there. I'm telling you, the smartest sports fans in the world are baseball fans. :)