Hey baseball fans, welcome to the MLB playoffs, featuring the New York Yankees, New York Mets, and other teams whose names I forget.
The first to come up is what his name is. This is his first at-bat since his last at-bat. And probably his last one until the next one. We checked with our production stand.
What’s His Name now leads the league in trash talk. Every third word that comes out of his mouth is a curse. His agent plans to get a tongue tan for Cooperstown.
Next on the plate is you-know-who. He has reached base in 34 consecutive games since dyeing his hair orange. Coincidence? Turns out his hitting percentage goes up 67% every time his mom and dad watch him from the stands.
Now comes what chamacallit. No one accuses him of being surly anymore. He just signed an eight-year, $200 million contract that included bonuses for having at least one smile during an on-camera interview.
What’s His Name went short for the 147th time in his career. You know who appears in short center field, with the ball reaching a maximum altitude of 119 feet. And this happens over three strikes, with all the curveballs spinning at an average of 1,800 revolutions per minute along a north by northeast latitude-longitude coordinate.
You think: Listen, enough statistics! RIGHT? Well, our latest MLB survey asked how season ticket holders viewed the amount of data broadcast on air. The study found that 59% think it’s “just enough”, while 22% say it’s “too little” and only 19% responded that it’s “far too much compared to any what a civilized standard, so please shut up already.”
We’re thrilled that fans want us to keep doing the math, so much so that we’ve cited 18% more stats this year than last. We are even creating a trend in all major American sports. Baseball play-by-play announcers now report 32% more statistics than those in the NFL and 45% more than the NBA.
And we’re only going to get drunker with our own Gatorade. Today, due to growing fan demand and starting next season, MLB will reveal an exciting new statistic: it will help determine which teams have the highest percentage of players married to former models and queens of beauty. It will also list the players who generate the most RBIs on Tuesdays in the third week of June.
And that’s just for starters. Our new dashboard will even list the players most likely to moan on TikTok that ESPN’s Sportscenter Top 10 left out one of their spectacular diving catches. He will also cite which players look the longest at a pitcher after throwing a third strike, as if to say, “Hey buddy, you better watch out because I’m going to get you next time and then I’m coming for your family.” . .”
Let us nevertheless recognize the elephant in the stadium. Given our never-ending quest to quantify, enumerate, calculate, categorize and catalog every event, both on and off the diamond, no matter how infinitesimal, some die-hard purists consistently assert that we went too far by dropping bars every time. syllable.
Certainly, last year alone, four chief executives were found literally drowning in data, a phenomenon clinically known as spreadsheet choking. Just as disturbing, 14 fans who were innocently watching footage of baseball highlights on YouTube suffered concussions from a near-fatal overdose of all the free stats downloaded and fell into a coma.
Finally, a word about so-and-so. He’s the announcer I replaced this year after quoting more stats per minute than any broadcaster in history during a doubleheader and having to be hospitalized for post-traumatic statistical syndrome. baseball (PTBSS). This increasingly common cerebral cortex injury is so severe that even the most optimistic neurologists doubt it will ever recover enough to issue another number.
So it is possible that reform is needed here. Hence our new commitment. We will never again run the risk of unduly complicating our divinely pastoral national pastime. We promise to never do anything to prevent fans from admiring the elegant beauty of this inherently simple game played on open grass and dirt in the spring and summer. We will no longer deprive fans of the well-deserved opportunity to escape from themselves and everything else for a few hours to contemplate the most sublimely entertaining game ever invented.
Brody, a consultant and essayist living in Italy, is the author of the memoir “Playing Catch with Strangers: A Family Guy (Reluctantly) Comes of Age.”
