Baseball

The following is an extended version of my article for The News Lens International Edition, “What Baseball Says about Taiwanese Culture and Identity,” published on November 5, 2020.
https://international.thenewslens.com/article/142896
TNL is Taiwan’s highest-quality English news source and I’m grateful to them for affording me an opportunity to contribute. Due to space limitations, a lot of detail and the last section on Confucian and Japanese influences were sacrificed. They suggested I focus on the other three issues, and rightly so. I would add that the excised segment is not even an “issue,” yet adds to our understanding of Taiwanese culture. This paper contains the last point from the original while retaining the economy the TNL editors provided.

In the modern game of baseball the game can no longer claim to be completely won on the field. Instead, the game is now won on computers in dingy clubhouse rooms by number crunchers that would probably do better in industries such as finance or science. When looking at the revolution of sabermetrics (also known as performance scouting), or the statistical analysis of baseball data that drastically differed from the old-school visual-based method of scouting, the first thought to your mind is not a comparison of the conflict that surrounds the issue of abortion.

Winner of 2009 Outstanding Book Award, North American Society for the Sociology of Sport.

In parks and cafes, homes and stadium stands, Cubans talk baseball. I contend that when they are analyzing and debating plays, games, teams, and athletes, Cubans are exchanging ideas not just about baseball but also about Cuba and cubanidad, or what it means to be Cuban. I explore the interconnections between baseball and Cuban identity. Suggesting that baseball is in many ways an apt metaphor for cubanidad, I point out aspects of the sport that resonate with Cuban social and political life: the perpetual tension between risk and security, the interplay between individual style and collective regulation, and the risky journeys undertaken with the intention, but not the guarantee, of returning home.

Chapter One is available below

In the spring semester of 2015, I was given the opportunity to develop a digital history project at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Since my historical interest mainly involves baseball, and at that time I was researching the 1879 Northwestern Baseball League for a book, I was thinking about what options there might be to create a digital history project that included the 1879 NWBL. At that time, I had recently discovered that the league had only played half of its season when it folded in mid-July. One of the obvious historical questions that had been on my mind was that if a complete ‘championship season’ ran its’ course in 1879, who would have won? Was there a way to simulate the season that might provide this information? I had done this on other gaming platforms with contemporary baseball rosters and seasons. Then, I realized that Out of the Park Baseball 16 (OOTPB) provided a perfect opportunity to uniquely answer this question. This is how my idea for a digital history project came about. OOTP Baseball allows the user to recreate historical baseball leagues or even develop fictional leagues at the creators’ discretion. For this project, parameters were set to function in 1879, and the league with all the historical data gathered was included. The 36-game season was the framework for this ‘tryout’ that included a Championship series occurring at the end of the simulated 1879 season. The simulation model was set for 10 seasons to give an impartial representation of what the actual results might have been if a whole season had been played.

The emergent digital game-based learning (DGBL) concept is attracting educational enthusiasts across the world. This article will follow that global trend and demonstrate how Out of the Park Baseball provides a valuable framework for classroom-based, DGBL projects. The aim of this article is to exhibit the benefits, learning outcomes and potential for DGBL baseball projects in college and high school classrooms. This commentary will also reveal that DGBL can provide learning engagement and motivation for students when given the opportunity to participate in similar DGBL ventures. The editorial will offer a brief explanation of DGBL and provide simulation results, comparative analysis and conceptual modeling for a DGBL baseball project utilizing Out of the Park Baseball. Additionally, the work will provide learning outcomes for the classroom project and includes a suggested reading list that potential instructors may access. The hope is that this article will be referenced as a curriculum development resource in future DGBL projects.
Please feel free to contact me at foresmanrr@lopers.unk.edu with any questions or for the opportunity to collaborate further. The full article is free and open to the public.

The present study seeks for the relationship between optimism of professional baseball directors and team performance by comparison of their winning rates and their explanatory style.  From four sports newspapers published in Japan, 5454 comments made by 12 professional baseball directors in 2011 were extracted and rated their optimism/ pessimism according to Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanations (CAVE) technique. These explanatory styles were compared with the winning rates of their teams in the same year and the next year. The positive correlation of the explanatory styles and the winning rates of the same year was statistically significant. The sequential change of the explanation styles and the winning rates of each director were coupled monthly. A multiple regression analysis revealed that the optimism/pessimism or the directors was stronger than batting average but weaker than earned run average for the prediction of the winning rate next year, although it was statistically non-significant.

This book provides with the most comprehensive collection of new urban stadia built or renovated in the last 30 years.
It displays the success of the new urban pattern in designing and building stadia as part of an urban context. A unique collection of plans all presented at the same scale will help understanding the key role played by new urban stadia in shaping and re-generating existing urban neighborhoods.
The book allows academics and students to have access to the largest collection available today of new urban stadia.
Indice
Foreword (Xavier Jacobelli)
New Urbanism Vs Sub-Urbanism (Lèon Krier)
The New Generation of Urban Stadia
Urban Stadia in The Us
Urban Stadia in France
Urban Stadia in UK
Urban Stadia in Spain
Urban Stadia in Italy
Atlas of Urban Stadia
References

The purpose of this study was to determine the biomechanical and anthropometric factors contributing to elbow valgus torque during pitching. Video data of 14 youth pitchers throwing fastballs were used to calculate shoulder and elbow kinematics and kinetics. Peak elbow valgus torque averaged 18 Nm and occurred just before maximal shoulder external rotation. The magnitude of valgus torque was most closely correlated with the thrower's weight. When subject weight and height were controlled for, maximum shoulder abduction torque and maximum shoulder internal rotation torque were most strongly associated with elbow valgus torque, accounting for 85% of its variance (P <.001). When only kinematic variables were considered, maximum shoulder external rotation accounted for 33% of the variance in valgus torque. Given that the biomechanical variables correlated with peak valgus torque are not easily modifiable, limiting the number of innings pitched is likely the best way to reduce elb...

I begin this review with a brief overview of the book itself, followed by a discussion of its pedagogical usefulness as a text in Philosophy of Sport and Philosophy of Religion courses. I then move on to discuss a few points in the book that I take to be especially interesting and/or problematic from a philosophical point of view.

Context: Jump landing is a common activity in collegiate activities, such as women's basketball, volleyball, and soccer, and is a common mechanism for anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury. It is important to better understand how athletes returning to competition after ACL reconstruction are able to maintain dynamic postural control during a jump landing. Objective: To use time to stabilization (TTS) to measure differences in dynamic postural control during jump landing in ACL-reconstructed (ACLR) knees compared with healthy knees among National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I female athletes. Design: Case-control study. Setting: University athletic training research laboratory. Patients or Other Participants: Twenty-four Division I female basketball, volleyball, and soccer players volunteered and were assigned to the healthy control group (n  =  12) or the ACLR knee group (n  =  12). Participants with ACLR knees were matched to participants with healthy knees by s...

While most baseball fans agree that the use of performance-enhancing drugs should be banned from the sport, and many even think that players caught using them should be banned too, the philosophical question is, why should that be so? This question may be analyzed from the perspectives of various ethical theories – for example, Kantianism, libertarianism, and utilitarianism. However, I will argue that none of these theories can tell us why performance-enhancing drug use should be banned, and that getting to the heart of the matter requires recourse to the ancient theory of virtue ethics.

The study was conducted to evaluate one aspect of the entropy theory of aging, which hypothesizes that aging is the result of increasing disorder within the body, and which predicts that increasing mass lowers life span. The first evaluation of the impact of human size on longevity or life span in 1978, which was based on data for decreased groups of athletes and famous people in the USA, suggested that shorter, lighter men live longer than their taller, heavier counterparts. In 1990, a study of 1679 decreased men and women from the general American population supported these findings. In the present study data on the height, weight, and age at death of 373 men were obtained from records at the Veterans Administration Medical Center, San Diego, CA, USA. Men of height 175.3 cm or less lived an average of 4.95 years longer than those of height over 175.3 cm, while men of height 170.2 cm or less lived 7.46 years longer than those of at least 182.9 cm. An analysis by weight difference r...

The ultimate zone-rating extrapolation (UZR/150) rates fielding performance by runs saved or cost within a zone of responsibility in comparison with the league average (150 games) for a position. Spring-training anthropometric and performance measures have been previously related to hitting performance; however, their relationships with fielding performance measures are unknown. To examine the relationship between anthropometric and performance measurements on fielding performance in professional baseball players. Body mass, lean body mass (LBM), grip strength, 10-yd sprint, proagility, and vertical-jump mean (VJMP) and peak power (VJPP) were collected during spring training over the course of 5 seasons (2007-2011) for professional corner infielders (CI; n = 17, fielding opportunities = 420.7 ± 307.1), middle infielders (MI; n = 14, fielding opportunities = 497.3 ± 259.1), and outfielders (OF; n = 16, fielding opportunities = 227.9 ± 70.9). The relationships between these data and r...