Baseball: A Game for Staatz Enthusiasts

I am a huge baseball fan. I go to many games every year and the games I don’t go to I watch on TV. There are very few games that I miss. Living in the Tampa Bay area means that not only do I have a great baseball team to follow but the team provides us fans with two great television announcers. Dewayne Staatz and Brian Anderson. Both are knowledgeable and fun to listen to, although they could use someone with more of a hitter’s perspective. The whole broadcast team is outstanding, including the radio broadcasters who are also first rate. I’m not going to dwell on Mr. Staatz, although his name makes his relevancy apparent. Mr. Anderson is my main focus.

One of the things that first let me know that Brian was not your average Joe jock turned color commentator was that he was always talking about sample size. Who does that? Statisticians and maybe a handful of other nerds. One of the main foci of my current practice is helping DNP (Doctor of Nursing Practice) students determine the sample size for their doctoral research paper. Scientists of all sorts are concerned with sample size but baseball announcers! Brian even has Mr. Staatz talking about sample size – too cool.

But what really got me excited the other day was when Brian started talking about how much he liked numbers. He said his interest in numbers came from following baseball and from an early age paying attention to things like batting average and earned run average. That was exactly how I started my appreciation of numbers. I would pour over the box scores and if the paper didn’t have the up to the minute batting averages of my favorite players, I would do the calculations myself. Of course, in those days there were no up to the minute stats during the games or even electronic calculators let alone computers to help you with the keeping abreast of the changes. All of the calculations were done either by hand or heaven forbid in my head.

Although the book, Moneyball, didn’t come out until 2003 I knew there were many more measurements that could be used to help with baseball decisions. In the mid-seventies a friend and I sent a letter to the Milwaukee Brewers offering to be their team statisticians. We had both been teaching assistants for the advanced statistics course. The Brewers never got back to us. That was not the first great idea I had that went nowhere nor would it be the last. The friend was Steve Maisto who today is the leading authority on substance abuse treatment efficacy. Imagine what he could have done for the Brewers if we had been given the chance to apply that intellectual power for them.
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Today, every sport has a set of statistics that they use to help understand the game, enhance performance, select players, and so on. Looking at the statistics adds a whole additional level of enjoyment and understanding of the game. It excites you to know that a quarterback, like a Tom Brady, is coming to your team because he’s got the “numbers” that let you know this guy can perform. The same is true in all walks of life. Numbers tell the story. In business, medicine, research, politics, engineering, sports, even in entertainment. But for me and Brian Anderson and probably millions of others we learned our appreciation for numbers from a love of baseball.

“They will come.” -from Field of Dreams
 
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