One thing I've written quite a bit about this year is that we choose what we celebrate in sports. We. All of us. It's like a vote. As I wrote once before: We don't need a good reason to celebrate, we only need a consensus. This isn't just true of sports. My family decided at some point that our true holiday was Oscar Night, and so for a while we would all come back and watch the Oscars together. Did this make sense? No. But it made sense to us.
And it isn't just true of celebrations either. Here's a random sports example: I sometimes wonder why we so readily accept the NFL playoff tie-breaking system. We break up NFL ties based on head-to-head match-ups … OK, that makes some sense. But assuming the teams split, we move on to divisional record which is OK, I suppose. Then the record in common games. Then conference record. Strength of schedule. Points differential. Net points in common games. Net points in all games. Net touchdowns. I mean, at some point, this is plainly ludicrous.
And we know the league thinks it's ludicrous because if none of those things break the tie then they go to a coin flip.
We all know how much the NFL playoffs means -- to a team, to a city, to fans, to everybody. And we break playoff ties based on puzzling mathematical breakdowns that don't really tell us which team is better. Why is there not intense outrage and mutiny in great American cities when their teams get knocked out of the playoffs even though they have the exact same record as teams in the playoffs? Why should my team's 10-win season be worth less than theirs because of our conference record (come on) or strength of schedule (which we don't' control) or point differential (are we supposed to run up scores now?)
It's because: We have a consensus on the NFL tiebreaker. Hey, we have to break these ties somehow. Play-in games are not feasible. We're not ready to allow computer simulations break ties. So, we'll go with these tiebreakers as far as we have to go, including the coin flip if it ever comes to that. Is it fair? Logical? Legitimate? Well, we say it is. So it is.
We also say it is good and proper and fun to celebrate baseball's round numbers -- 3,000th hit, 2,000th hit, 500th homer, 600th homer, 300th victory, 3000th strikeout and all that. Is that any more reasonable than celebrating the 3,0001st hit, the 601st homer, the 301st win? Well, yes: Because we say so. Just the other day, there was a little bit of iChaos over Michael Young's 2,000th hit and whether or not that was a great enough accomplishment to celebrate. It turns out that 234 players since 1900 have reached 2,000 hits, which is more than I would have guessed. The way I look at it is more or less the way I look at everything: Everything is worth celebrating if you can get enough people to celebrate. Michael Young has been a fine player. Two thousand hits is a fine thing. If people want to throw a Texas-sized party for him, all I ask is: Can you point me to the barbecue?
Which brings us to: Hit streaks. Obviously hit streaks are on the mind these days because Dan Uggla is doing something so utterly unlikely that we can't help but be drawn to it (or repelled by it, I suppose). Uggla was well on his way to the lowest batting average in the history of the National League when he began this hitting streak. And the streak is at 31 games now, more than halfway to the magic number, 25 games away from Joltin' Joe DiMaggio.
In my mind, Joe DiMaggio invented the hit streak in 1941 It is probably his enduring contribution to baseball. Every single time you hear an announcer say that Neifi Perez is on a modest six-game hitting streak, every time you read a story about a player having a nine-game hitting streak snapped, every time people on radio discuss how much longer a player can keep a hit streak alive … I think thats ALL because of DiMaggio. If that had been Tuck Stainback hitting in 56 straight games, I suspect it would be an interesting but relatively obscure baseball quirk. And I suspect hit streaks on the whole might be viewed as interesting but otherwise pointless statistical blarney.*
*Who has there record for most consecutive games with a double? Do you know?
But he was Joe DiMaggio. He hit in 56 straight games when the world was going to hell and America was clinging desperately to the last summer of peace. And so the streak grew into something mythical and fantastic and meaningful, something deep about consistency and the power of an individual and all the other stuff you can read in Kostya's fine book about it. It was a marvelous assembly of the right player, the right moment and the right achievement. It left much of America -- and still leaves much of a America -- marveling at the way we at our best can triumph over odds.
But is that really true? Or do we just want it to be true. More or less everything we do is against great odds, of course. I'm on a plane right now flying from New York to Charlotte . I'm sitting next someone I don't know. The odds in a world of eight billion that I would ever end up sitting next to this guy are probably pretty astronomical. But that sort of thing happens all the time. We just choose not to celebrate it (or, in my case, even talk to this guy sitting next to me). DiMaggio's streak inspired us to care … and so we did care. And we still care.
I mentioned above that if it had been Tuck Stainback who hit in 56 straight games, we probably would not view hit streaks the same way. Well, you could counter that Tuck Stainback could not hit in 56 straight games. And you would probably be right, though Uggla's 31-game hitting streak opens up almost any possibility. Still: the hit streak is quirky. You probably know the answer because it's one of the greatest baseball trivia questions ever. But I'll ask again. Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak lasted from May 15, 1941 to July 16, 1941. Over those two months, who had the higher batting average: Joe DiMaggio or Ted Williams?
Well, you know: It's Ted.
DiMaggio during hit streak: .408/.463/.717
Ted Williams over same stretch of time: .412/.540/.684
It wasn't just average. Williams was probably a more productive hitter over that time. DiMaggio did slug 43 points higher because he hit four triples during the streak (Williams hit none) and he hit three more homers than the Splinter. But Williams walked so much -- he walked 50 times to DiMaggio's 21 -- that it sure seems like he was the guy you would want at the plate. According to Tom Tango's formula, a team of Streaking DiMaggios would score 13.1 runs per game. A team of Splendid Splinters would score 17.7 runs.
*It's worth mentioning here because amazing things are always worth mentioning: DIMaggio struck out just five times during the entire streak and, absurdly, he did not strike out a single time in the last 32 games of the streak. Of course, strikeouts were not nearly as prominent in 1941 as they are now. But, it's still pretty great. Williams, incidentally, struck out only nine times over the same two-month period.
It isn't just Ted Williams. I imagine quite a few players have been about as good or better over 56-game stretches as DiMaggio was over his hit streak. I just did a cursory search and came up with these 56-game stretches:
George Brett (May 31-August 26, 1980): .476/.523/.773.
Mickey Mantle (May 1-June 29, 1957): .404/.540/.782
Frank Thomas (May 7-July 7, 1994): .425/.546/.865
Stan Musial (April 29-June 27, 1948): .422/.506/.784
John Olerud (April 13-June 12 1993): .406/.506/.731
Mike Piazza (May 24-July 28, 1996): .403/.449/.692
Todd Helton (April 3-June 7, 2000 -- first 56 games): .405/.500/.779
And so on.
So DiMaggio wasn't BETTER than some other great players over his 56-game hitting streak. He wasn't more consistent (assuming batting average measures consistency). But he got at least one hit every day. And none of the others did.
Which brings us back to Uggla. Tom Tango unveiled a fascinating tidbit the other day -- Dan Uggla actually hit about the same over a 40-game stretch last July and August as he has been hitting during this hitting streak.
During the hitting streak: .355/.409/.685
40-game stretch last year: .354/.440/.660
Tom's point -- and it's fair -- is nobody cared about Uggla's 40-game stretch last year. But this year, because he has spread out his hits so that he's had at least one every game, it might be the most talked about story in the game.
And I understand his frustration. There is no intrinsic value in a hit streak. You could hypothetically hit less than .250 and have a 100 game-hitting streak. Tommy Agee did have a 20-game hitting streak where he hit .288. There's no reason I know to believe that 10 hits spread out evenly over 10 games is worth any more than 10 hits spread out any other way over 10 games.
But here's the thing: We do admire hitting streaks. We celebrate them. And, like with the round numbers, I guess I don't see anything wrong with that. All of sports is of little consequence except to the people who care. If you like baseball, the World Series is a huge event. If you don't, you might not even know it's happening. If you care about the NBA or women's basketball or hockey or tennis or MMA or NASCAR, you follow those things closely. If you don't, you are probably unaware of their very existence. On Friday, Tiger Woods made a long par putt on the first hole, and the announcers all agreed it was "an important putt." At that moment, he was seven-over-par, 14 shots behind the leader, unlikely to even make the cut, all but assured of not being any sort of factor in the tournament. How could such a trivial putt earn the weight word "important?"
Well, if you like golf, if you have spent a great deal of your life following Tiger Woods, if you are always looking for clues about his future and whether or not he will ever again be the best player in the word, well, in that context maybe it was an important putt … or at least an "interesting" putt. That's not just golf. That's not just Tiger. That's sports.
And so, baseball fans have come to celebrate the hitting streak. Does it make sense? Maybe not. But, if you think about it: Does any of it REALLY make sense?
One more thought: There's no way, of course, that Dan Uggla will hit in 56 straight games. We know that. Heck, at this moment, he's still hitting .224 for the year and .258 for his career. He strikes out a ton. If you put together the least likely every day players to break DiMaggio's record, he would be in the photograph. So, no, there's no way. In fact, I need to hurry and finish this and get it online Friday afternoon because there's a darned good chance the streak will end tonight.*
*It did not end Friday night ... Uggla extended the streak to 32 games in his first at-bat. Down to 24 games now.
But what if he did do it? What if the impossible happened? What if after all the books, all the odes, all the mathematical formulas, all the theories about DiMaggio's streak being the most unbreakable feat in sports … what if after all that the streak was not only broken, but broken by DAN UGGLA.
Well, for once, nobody would be able to say: "Crazier things have happened."*
*I am not entirely sure of this, but I believe Derrek Lee has the record with eight consecutive games with a double.
Lebatard did a funny riff the other day on what would happen to the baseball purists if Uggla got remotely close to 56. He had Bob Costas running on the field to perform an act of bodily harm if Uggla got to game 53.
ReplyDeleteSorry to be a pest, but specious reasoning on the odds of sitting next to that guy on a plane... unless you really predicted you'd sit next to _that_ guy. Odds of sitting next to someone you don't know? Very high. Pet peeve, mainly because of a grad school guest lecturer who used similar logic to defend creationism (only his wasn't tongue-in-cheek).
ReplyDeleteUsual caveats that belong with any critique: awesome blog, great writing, interesting ideas, can't beat the price.
Dan Uggla has finally done something that will make me (and probably many others) remember him for this hit streak and still the very low batting average rather than the three error All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium 3 years ago. I felt sorry for him then, now I think he's just one lucky fellow. He even had to beat out two almost identical infield hits earlier this week to maintain the streak. At least he's hustling!
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Brett has the highest 2 month average in mlb history.
ReplyDeleteI also wonder if you write these long posts on an ipad. I can't imagine typing that much on one. Portable keyboard, perhaps?
Lee does have that record, but Paul Waner got extra base hits in 14 consecutive games in 1927.
ReplyDeleteI find Ted Williams streak of 84 straight games of getting on base more fascinating than the 56 game streak. He also holds the post 1901 record by reaching base in 16 consecutive plate appearances. Walt Dropo has the consecutive hit record with 12.
About your list of better 56 game streaks: Brett in 1980 and Thomas in 1994 were otherworldly.
1) On Michael Young: 234 players have 2000 hits since 1901, but only 82 of them had 2000 hits for just one team. And Young is the only one of the 234 with 2000 hits for Texas. No-one has ever had 2000 hits for the A's, or the Mets, or five more recent teams, so yes, it seems like quite a big thing.
ReplyDelete2) Roby: I don't want to be blindly loyal to Joe, but I think that your reasoning may well be the more specious of the two.
You are allowed to believe in evolution, AND also to take the occasional moment to think "it really is amazing that there is even one planet that is suited for life: there are so many different things that all needed to go exactly right for us to exist."
I think we celebrate things that are hard to do. Regardless how “significant” it is, getting a hit game after game after game is hard to do. Whether you hit .250 or .500 for 56 straight games, getting that hit in every game is still hard to do. It’s hard to do even 10 games in a row.
ReplyDeletePeople still celebrate Carl Hubbell striking out five in a row in the All-Star game. The outs were no more significant to the game than if they’d been three ground outs and a pair of pop-ups. But we know that it is really hard to strike out five hitters in a row in any situation. We celebrate no-hitters even though many pitchers have been more impressive in one-hitters (and probably two- and three-hitters). But not giving up a hit is hard to do, so we celebrate it.
DiMaggio’s 56-game hit streak may be the most iconic because, as stated, of who it was, but also because no one has come close to it. Pete Rose came the closest and still fell 12 games short. (And had Ken Keltner not made two fantastic plays, DiMaggio’s streak would have been 73.)
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ReplyDelete@Pete Ridges: my reasoning may or may not be more specious, but it certainly was less well explained. The creationism argument in question was about the likelihood of a specific disulfide bond having evolved, when it was clear that any of a wide number would do. Much like the odds of Joe's specific seatmate having appeared in his seat, when any unknown seatmate would do.
ReplyDeleteNor was I likening Joe's argument to Michael Behe's in that lecture (at all). Just pointing out why I felt the need to point it out. I don't think we need to trouble the brilliant readers here any more with a lecture I went to 7 years ago.
I think Uggla's hitting streak being relatively meaningless is beside the point. What is happening is that Uggla is doing something uncommon with potential historical implications. This means it has broad interest. Fans in Seattle and Boston and St. Louis will be interested in it. If a player is doing meaningful things, usually that is related to a team winning, and more often than not the only people who care about that will be that team's fans.
ReplyDelete@Roby
ReplyDeleteI thought that was Joe's point: The odds of Joe sitting next to that guy were very small, but the odds of him sitting next to SOMEBODY he did not know was very high. Similarly, the likelihood of Dimaggio going on a 56-game hitting streak were almost infinitesimal. However, the odds that SOMEBODY would have at least a 56-game streak were much higher.
@Marshall, I don't know if that's what Joe was driving at, but what you say makes sense to me--as I understand probability. I think Roby's original point (that the high odds only come into play if we picked that *particular* fellow to sit next to Joe) also makes sense.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules-Lives/dp/0375424040
Is a very readable look at randomness and the history of probability knowledge. Accessible to the layman, such as me.
Quirky and fun were the exact words I used earlier in the week to describe Ugg's streak. Appears to me he views it much the same way which makes it less stressful which makes it more likely to continue. Unlike Rose who seemed to think it validated his greatness. I was at the game when his streak was stopped and he had the nerve to criticize Gene Garber for throwing pitches on the black.
ReplyDeleteI hate when people say Joe's streak is the "most unbreakable record." The way I see it, eventually, someone will luck into it. Every season a hundred, maybe two, maybe more, play in at least 57 consecutive games, eventually someone will chance into that. The more unlikely records to ever be broken are things like wins and strikeouts where pitchers just don't get the opportunity to break those records. How do you get 511 wins when many pitchers today will barely make more starts than that in their careers?*
ReplyDelete*For example, if CC plays another 10 seasons and gets 33 starts a year (plus 7 more this season), he'll finish his career with 685 starts. He'd have to win 74.5% of his starts or 100.2% (338 games) to tie Cy Young's 511.
Almost every player in baseball will have a shot at breaking DiMaggio's record, the chance is there. They just need a lot skill and a whole lot of luck.
@Roby
ReplyDeleteI think Joe's reasoning is better than your reading comprehension. He acknowledges your exact point in the very next sentence "But that happens all the time," i.e., the odds of sitting next to one particular fellow = low, the odds of sitting next to any particular fellow = high ("happens all the time"). The only thing that would give the event any significance would be if there were something special about that particular fellow.
If you really want to be pedantic why don't you comment about people using the word "astronomical" to describe odds that are really really small when what they mean is that the odds AGAINST are astronomical?
Eh. I think that people don't think about "511" because that will never come up, ever again. While almost every year someone goes on a month-long hitting streak, and that means that we have to talk about "56".
ReplyDeleteWhich, in a completely paradoxical way, means that its sheer unending presence makes it seem impossible to break, because "if someone was going to do it, wouldn't they have done it by now?".
Or, in a different way to put it, "56" is mysterious; "511" is alien. "56" is totally an achievable record, just not one that it has been proven can be bested. "511" is some crap that happened when walks were nine balls and the pitching mound was 40 feet and they played with socks on their hands and the manager's main purpose was to be hateful towards Germans.
OK, I apologize in advance, but this is just how my warped brain works:
ReplyDeleteRemember how they used to say that if one million monkeys pecked at a keyboard one million times, eventually one of them would write the Bible. Well, I once planned to write a short story in which one monkey, on the five millionth try, actually did it. Almost. Typing at random (to him, anyway), he spelled out Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and so forth, every single book on the Bible. The scientists were awestruck, the press got involved, the story captivated the world. Anyway, short story short, on the very last word, having gotten everything else right, the monkey types, "Amem".
One the one hand, we would be justifiably amazed by this feat. On the other hand, it would, quite literally, simply represent the 5,000,001st failure to write the complete Bible. Would the scientists keep at it?
So why do I bring this up? Well, I was wondering, after reading this post, whether, if we had an infinite number of computer simulations of baseball seasons, every major leaguer would eventually have at least one 56 game hitting streak. Even Mario Mendoza. Or, are certain events not just practical impossibilities (i.e., we'll never see them in our lifetime) but actually metaphysical impossibilities (i.e., nobody at any time, on any plane of existence will EVER see them)?
Sorry. I'll go away now.
I always think of Vander Meer's record as the most unbreakable. To break it, you need 3 no hitters in a row...
ReplyDeleteHow incredible is it that Brett's stretch is FIFTY points of BA better than the next best one?
ReplyDeleteI had forgotten some of the amazing details about Brett's 1980. (I remember the daily excitement about it around baseball, but I was 7 at the time.) Incredibly, after May 21 Brett was hitting .247. Yes, TWO FORTY-SEVEN. Then he got 17 hits in 9 games and hit .301 by the end of May. He only played 9 games in June but got 17 more hits in them: up to .337. When he returned in July, he played 21 games and had 14 MULTI-HIT games, putting him at .390. His BA for the months of June and July were .472 and .494. In August he "only" hit .430 but that pushed him over .400 for the year. He came back to Earth in September.
On Cy Young's 511: they were legit. The 1890s was very different from the 1880s, much more like modern baseball. The league was not as well organized as after 1901, but the game was very similar. The nine ball walk stuff and pitchers starting every other game were before Young's time. He regularly started 40+ games a year, but never 50+, and certainly not 70+ like Galvin or Radbourn had in the '80s.
"But what if he did do it?"
ReplyDeleteIf Uggla breaks Dimaggio's hit streak record, I think people will have less esteem for hit streaks. There won't be any cruel asterisk like the one for Maris, but the feeling will be similar--suddenly hitting streaks won't be so special.
...I have a feeling I should let this go, but: @rocketcy, a hitting streak is a prespecified event in our culture (and has been at least since DiMaggio's), hence its probability has meaning. A 30-game hit streak is actually quite rare, even with hundreds of major leaguers each playing hundreds of nested 30-game sets of games each year. Since sitting next to Joe Shlabotnik from Podunk, NY is NOT a prespecified event, its probability is meaningless. It's not rare, as any of several billion other potential seat-mates would fill the same criteria.
ReplyDeleteAll I'm saying is the one example doesn't illuminate the other, at least for me; the pre-specification of one and not the other is a fundamental difference. It may be a pedantic difference, but it's more than a semantic one. I agree more with your modification, that sitting next to a celebrity is a bit like going on a long hitting streak - it's not of much intrinsic value, but it is rare and we make note of it. And the fact that the celebrity could be anyone famous parallels the idea that @marshall brought up, that any one of hundreds of MLB players could be on this streak right now.
Ugh. Now I've gone and written way too much; I'm sorry I brought it up in the first place. Joe's larger point - why do we choose to prespecify hitting streaks as notable, but not, say, doubles streaks? - remains undiminished.
I think doubles streaks are mostly left to the obscure because the number is incredibly small when compared to the more recognized records.
ReplyDeleteIs it impressive to hit a double in 10 straight games? Yes, yes it is. But, I think because a double is collected by picking up a hit, it becomes more obvious to the fan to ask: "Well, what about these hits you speak of?"
@Roby
ReplyDeleteI agree with all of your logic and I'm not arguing the difference is semantic (and I even appreciate the pet peeve aspect of your argument). I just think that Joe did say the exact same thing, but with fewer words. Perhaps he could have used a few more.
One thing I'd like to pick a quibble with: Joe said that the number of potential seatmates was 8 billion. I'd say it's more like the number of people within driving distance of NYC, who are old enough to fly alone, who are not flying with someone else (wife, whoever) (well, assuming only two seats in a row on that plane), who have enough money to pay for a ticket (unless it's a business flight, of course), who have the necessary legal documentation, etc., to be allowed to fly, who aren't snagged by any other aspect of the security checks, etc. In other words, the number is probably just a few million at most, which, while still a staggeringly large number to pick one random person from, is a *lot* smaller than 8 billion.
ReplyDeleteP.S.: I tried to post this once, and it doesn't appear to have worked. I'm trying again; I hope we don't end up with a double post; if so, I apologize.
I understand why people think baseball is boring. I used to just love the game because I loved the game. Now I can't enjoy it without having to hear someone gripe about payroll, or some nerd sermonize about Wins Above Replacement or Ultimate Zone Rating. They have quantified the unquantifiable. The one god I believed in, the god of baseball, is now just fodder for numbers-crunchers. My dreams have been dashed against the rocks. I get halfway through one of these columns of statistical vomit and I realize I just don't care. I want to go back to the days when baseball meant something to me, of baseball cards and little league games, but I can't. Part of that is growing up. Another part is the new statistics and the stubborn attempt to quantify what was once a beautiful dream and bring it crashing back to reality.
ReplyDeleteI would like to point out as a New York football Giants fan, I absolutely did get all up-in-arms about being a 10 win team and missing out on the playoffs last year. Maybe it was more because of the NFC West being allowed into the playoffs than losing the tiebreaker, but still, I wouldn't say that everyone is fine with the system.
ReplyDelete