Understanding Sports Archives - Page 28 of 43

Why is the start of a season in sports so exciting?

Dear Sports Fan,

Sports seasons are so long — how can anyone get excited at the very start? It’s going to be at least six months until the playoffs in most sports.

Thanks,
Jan

— — —

Dear Jan,

The start of a season is exciting for many reasons and only a few of them have to do with making the playoffs. You’re absolutely right about how long sports seasons are. Take the National Hockey League (NHL) which is starting tonight. The NHL regular season is 82 games. It starts in early October and ends in mid-April. That’s a long, long time and a lot of games! The National Basketball Association plays the same number of games. Baseball plays 162 or roughly twice the number. Football is the outlier here with relatively short seasons — 16 games in the National Football League and around 12 for college teams. Setting football aside, the first few games for a baseball, basketball, or hockey team don’t actually mean very much in terms of their eventual record and qualification for the playoffs. A fan’s excitement for and enjoyment of the start of the season can’t be measured in wins and losses but it can be described. Let’s give it a shot.

Saying hello to old friends and meeting new ones

Part of following a team is getting to know the players on the team. The players on your favorite team or even their biggest rivals^[1] become like characters on a long-running sit-com. You learn their quirks. You cheer with them when they celebrate and you share their anger and frustration when the team is down. You track their various injury rehabilitations with bated breath. You might even wear a shirt with their name on the back. Players on your favorite team feel like an extension of your social circle in a weird way. The start of a season in sports is a little like the start of a season of a television show you really like or a new book in a series you love. You can’t wait to drop back in on their lives to see how they’re doing, if they’ve grown a funny beard, lost weight, gained weight, changed in any way. As a Penguins fan, I look forward to dropping back in on Sidney Crosby’s life just as much as I look forward to seeing what’s up with Lady Mary as a Downton Abbey fan.

Teams never stay the same from one season to a next. Players are traded, retire, or become free agents and move to another team. The first games of the season are your first chance to meet the new guys or gals on the team you follow. Some of them are players you know from other teams in the league. This can be great if you’ve always grudgingly respected their play. It can be challenging if you’ve always (sports) hated them and now you have to find a way to root for them. Rookies or players who have moved up from the minor leagues are always exciting to meet because their potential is unknown and therefore theoretically limitless.

Returning to ritual

Watching sports is also an important part of many fan’s social lives. Whether you go to games in person, watch them in a bar, or at home, watch them alone, with a partner, or with friends, watching and rooting can be a big part of a sport’s fans life. The start of the season means a return to social settings that you haven’t had access to during the offseason. It’s like the end of summer when you were a kid and all your friends got home from summer camp or the end of a long sustained period of craziness at work that allows you to rest, relax, and actually meet a friend for a drink instead of just heading home to rest up for the next day.

I have friends that I know I’m going to hear from ten times more during a particular sports season than I would otherwise. It’s great!

Getting a feel for your team

The first few games of a hockey, basketball, or baseball season may not have much of a statistical effect on their outcome for the year but that doesn’t mean fans don’t watch them attentively to get a feel for how their team might do. If you root for a team that just won a championship, you’re looking for evidence of the lethargy that often infects teams after they win. If you’re like most of us and you root for a team that did well but didn’t win the championship last year, you’re looking to see if the team has improved or taken a step back. How has a new coach affected the team’s play? How well are new players integrated into the team? Which players have improved? Which have lost a step? If you root for one of the worst teams in the league last year, the first few games may be your only time of true hope during the year.

Truthfully, the first few games probably can’t shed too much light on what the season will hold for your team, but that won’t stop fans from trying!

Enjoy the start of the season,
Ezra Fischer

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

note the outpouring of sincere love from Red Sox fans for the departing Derek Jeter↵

What happens when a forest grows in a NASCAR track?

The Occoneechee Speedway in Hillsborough, North Carolina, was one of the first race tracks in NASCAR history. A .9 mile long, oval dirt track, it was purchased and expanded by NASCAR pioneer Bill France and was ready for racing during NASCAR’s inaugural season in 1949. The first NASCAR race at the track was won by Bob Flock and drew 17,500 fans. The Occoneechee Speedway continued to be used as a NASCAR track until 1968 when, in part due to complaints from local churches that didn’t like racing on Sundays, it was closed down. There’s a little bit of dramatic irony in this choice because the first Super Bowl had just happened a year before, in 1967. Little did those church-going folk know but Sundays were just starting to be dominated by another sport and getting rid of the raceway was not going to be the most effective move ever.

After a few years, the speedway fell into disrepair and a fast growing forest sprung up in and around the track, covering what used to be wide open fields with beautiful trees. In 2002 the site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A walking trail was created along the path of the track soon after and restoration of the grandstand and some of the track buildings in 2006. There is a local group devoted to the track’s restoration which you can join here and which also runs an annual racers reunion and car show.

I’m visiting friends in North Carolina this week and I had the pleasure of walking a few laps of the track yesterday. It’s a beautiful, peaceful place which makes it hard to imagine dozens of cars powering their way around the track while thousands of people watched and cheered. I took some photos:

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If you’re wondering what it looked like in the old days, check out the video clip of the track at the bottom of this New York Times article about the track by Robert Peele. The footage was taken in 1963 by the Peele’s father!

The Occoneechee Speedway is a great example of how sports weaves itself into the cultural and natural history of the world. It was fun to visit it!

Why is the bunt controversial in baseball?

Last week we answered a great question about what bunts are in baseball. We decided to split up our answer into two parts: How does a bunt work in baseball? and Why is the bunt controversial in baseball?

Dear Sports Fan,

How does a bunt work in baseball? And why is it so controversial right now?

Thanks,
Otis

— — —

Dear Otis,

One of the best things about baseball is how long we’ve been playing it professionally in this country. The first professional league started in the 1870s. Baseball fans love that their sport has such a long professional history in this country and they keep a lot of it alive. Bunting has been alive as a strategy since the very beginning of professional baseball and it’s been controversial for one reason or another for almost the whole time! Let’s take a quick trip back in time to see how bunting and the reasons for its controversy have changed. To help as along our way, I found two wonderful articles about the history of baseball and bunting that I’m going to lean on heavily. The articles are “Why do baseball players still bunt so damn much” by Erik Malinowski for Bleacher Report and “Baseball’s long and complicated relationship with the bunt” by Randy Leonard for The Atlantic. I recommend reading both!

In the 1870s, baseball was basically an adolescent. It was played by established rules but they weren’t the rules that it would settle into in time. The two rules that we’re concerned with are the shape of the bat and the rule that determined what a foul ball was. Today, of course, bats are rounded and a foul ball is one that either falls outside of the lines that extend from home plate to the outfield or passes first or third base to the outside of the bases. In 1870, these rules were a little different. The shape of a batter’s bat was up to him and critically to the subject of bunting, a flat bat was allowed. The foul rules were different in that a ball would be called fair no matter where it landed as long as it first hit the ground in fair territory. The combination of these two rule differences made bunting a particularly effective strategy. The flat bat made it much easier to do and the fair/foul rule made it much more effective because you had far more territory open to you to direct the ball away from fielders. Bunting was so effective that in the 1870s, a bunting specialist named Ross Barnes led the league in hits and batting average more than a third of the time.

Effective as it may have been, bunters took their share of abuse. According to Leonard, fans in the 1870s “jeered that it was effeminate” and in 1904, then president, “William Howard Taft publicly scorned the bunt.” And there’s more:

In 1873 The Boston Globe called bunting “the black game,” an acknowledgment of one’s “weakness at the bat,” and a few years later the Detroit Free Press called it a “babyish performance.”

There is something that feels, even to this day, underhanded about bunting. You feel instinctively that the batter should be trying to hit the ball hard not let it bounce gently off of their bat. When a bunt doesn’t work, it feels foolish, but when it does work, it makes the defense look foolish in a way that a hard-hit line drive or even a home run does not. The bunt plays against the ultra-masculine image of sports and for that reason it can be controversial. That’s not the main reason why the bunt is controversial today.

The bunt is controversial today because it’s basically been proven to be a bad idea. Baseball has been undergoing a statistical and cultural revolution since the 1980s. Many stats that once were seen as meaningful indications of performance, like RBIs and runs, have proven to be mostly meaningless and have been replaced with better stats. The statistical reality of bunting is that even when it works, the team that does it is intentionally sacrificing an out to advance a runner. The value of doing this is negative. A team with no outs and a man on first base (a normal scenario before a bunt) has a better chance of scoring a run that inning than a team with a runner on second and one out (a normal scenario after a bunt.)

Bunts are back in the news in a big way because the Kansas City Royals have been bunting like crazy. Or, more accurately, they have been bunting like they are a team from the 1980s, as Will Leitch suggests they might be in his enjoyable Sports on Earth article:

Watching them [the Royals] play — the five sacrifice bunts, the seven stolen bases, the lack of homers and strikeouts — has me thinking that this isn’t just the first time the Royals have made the playoffs since 1985: I’m honestly concerned that this team has been beamed here from the year 1985.

And they’ve been winning. The Royals are 4-0 in this year’s playoffs and are only four wins from making it to the World Series. Are they doing this because of or in spite of their bunt-happy retro style? Dave Cameron looked into the four bunts of their wild Wild Card victory for fangraphs.com and concluded that of the four, one bunt was a mistake, one was unclear, and two were “probably positive.” Overall, Cameron writes that:

In late game situations where one run is paramount, bunting can often be the correct play, and the don’t-bunt-ever reaction can be just as incorrect as the bunt-always fanaticism.

Looking at the comments under his article, it’s clear that many readers and baseball fans don’t agree. After 140 years of baseball history, the controversy about the bunt may just be getting started.

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

How does a bunt work in baseball?

Dear Sports Fan,

How does a bunt work in baseball? And why is it so controversial right now?

Thanks,
Otis

— — —

Dear Otis,

A bunt is a baseball tactic where the batter hits the ball softly and directs it onto the ground. This tactic is often used as a form of sacrifice where the batter knows that she is likely to be thrown out at first base but a runner already on first, second, or less normally, third base will be able to easily advance to the next base. It’s a very old tactic and has always been controversial for one reason or another for more than a hundred years. Bunting is in the news a lot right now because the Kansas City Royals have been bunting far more than normal and have won their first two playoff games. Let’s make this a two-part post. We’ll handle how bunts work in the first half and then look into why it’s controversial in a second post.

How does a bunt work?

When a batter decides to bunt or is given instructions to bunt, she waits until the pitcher is starting to pitch and then quickly does two things: she slides her hands up the barrel of the bat and separates them for better control; as she is doing this, she pivots so that her body opens up towards the pitch. Once in bunting position, the batter does her best to make contact with the top half of the ball, so that instead of popping up for an easy out, the ball goes downwards. Advanced bunters are able to also direct the ball towards their base or first, whichever is going to be harder for the defense to field.

Getting into bunting stance does not count as a swing. A strike can only be called if, once the player is in bunting stance, they make a “movement indicating an attempt to contact the ball.” This is a wrinkle in baseball’s rules so obscure that most players and umps don’t even know this, so you will see players draw back from their bunt position if they believe the pitch is out of the strike zone and they want to ensure themselves a ball instead of a strike. A better known bunting rule is that a foul ball on a bunt attempt may count as a player’s third strike. If a batter swings at the ball and fouls it off, that can never count as a third strike, but a bunt attempt can. A foul ball is one that passes outside of first or third base. Since most bunts don’t go that far, wherever the ball stops rolling determines whether it’s fair or foul. Here’s an example of a bunt hit perfectly down the line which flummoxed the defense which was hoping it would roll foul:

If the defensive team notices that a batter is trying to bunt or thinks they might from the context of the game, they may shift where they line up in the infield to position themselves better to respond to a bunt. This usually means closer to home plate. When a bunt is made, the infielders will charge towards the rolling ball and try to get to it in time to pick it up and throw a runner out. Here’s a third baseman fielding a bunt perfectly:

As we mentioned before, a lot of bunters bunt with the intention of sacrificing themselves for the good of a runner on base. This is called a sacrifice bunt and is most often done to move a runner from first to second base. Once on second base, a runner is generally though of as in “scoring position” because they can usually make it home on any ball hit safely into the outfield. This makes it less necessary to sacrifice an out to move them to third base. A special kind of sacrifice bunt is called a squeeze play. This is when a sacrifice bunt is made to get a runner from third to home base. Sounds crazy, right? An even more daring play is the “suicide squeeze” where the runner from third starts running home before the batter even makes contact with the ball. This takes real confidence in the ability of the batter to successfully bunt the ball because if they don’t, you’ve got the catcher standing there waiting to tag the runner out. Some players use the bunt without any sense of sacrifice. They bunt because they are good at bunting and fast enough to make it a reasonable way to get safely to first base. Bunting for a base hit means that you’re basically giving up on the idea of hitting a double, triple, or home run (although doubles do sometimes happen off of bunts!) but it can still be a good strategy, especially if you can surprise the fielders by bunting when they are not in position to field the bunt.

So, that’s how a bunt works. We’ll dig into why bunts are controversial soon.
Ezra Fischer

What are outfielders in baseball or softball?

Dear Sports Fan,

What are outfielders in baseball or softball? How many of them are there and what is the difference between the outfield positions?

Thanks,
Jack

— — —

Dear Jack,

Outfielders are the players who play farthest from home plate. If you imagine a baseball field seen from above, there’s the diamond that the four bases make, which is covered with a dirt and then the area beyond it, which is grass. The outfielders are those players who play literally out in the field. There are three outfielders in competitive baseball and softball: left field, right field, and center field. In “beer-league” or recreational softball, there is sometimes a fourth outfielder added into the mix. The primary responsibility of outfielders is to track the ball when it is hit, do the complicated calculation of where it is going to land, figure out in a split second whether or not they will be able to catch it, and then sprint to the best spot to catch it or, if that’s impossible, to grab it and throw it to the correct teammate in the infield. Playing in the outfield requires speed, good judgement, and a strong arm. Although it only happens once every dozen games or so, outfielders also have to be ready physically and psychologically to climb or smash themselves into the outfield wall while going at full speed to catch the ball. Although the outfield positions are much closer to each other than the infield positions are, there are some differences in what is required at each position.

Center Field

Center fielders are the unofficial captains of the outfield. They cover the most ground and field the most balls. They are also responsible for coordination if there’s any indecision about who is going to field a ball. In case the player trying to catch the ball misses it, outfielders back each other up on every hit. For center fielders, this means they are either fielding or backing up their neighbor on every single ball hit to the outfield. That’s a lot of running! Center fielders need to have endurance as well as speed.

Left field

Left fielders field the second most balls in the outfield. This is especially true in youth, recreational, or college ball because most hitters are righties and most righties naturally hit the ball in the direction of their swing — towards left field. The left fielder is able to have the weakest arm of all the outfielders. This is because, if a ball is hit to left field, there’s no real chance of getting the ball to first base before the runner gets there. In this case, the left fielder is usually able to throw the ball to the second baseman — or the third baseman who runs over to a spot between the outfielder and second base — in time to stop the runner from getting to second. If there’s already a runner on base and the ball goes to left field, the necessary throw to prevent things from getting out of hand is the shortest one possible — to third base. This great, old-school, typed Outfield Fundamentals by Mike Evans points out that a right-handed player will find left field easier.

Right Field

Right fielders field the fewest balls, but when they do, they have to make the hardest throws to prevent runners from advancing from first to second base or second to third. The throw from right field to third base is particularly far, difficult, and important. The reason why right fielders field fewer balls than the other positions is because batters tend to find it easier to “pull” the ball across their bodies as opposed to angling it to the “opposite field.” Only left-handed batters can pull the ball to right field. The practical result of this is that right fielders tend to be the weakest fielders in the outfield. In recreational softball or baseball, right field is frequently a place you can stash someone who really doesn’t know how to even catch the ball because so few balls will be hit to them. In major league baseball, where pretty much everyone knows how to catch, the difference between fielders is smaller but right field is still the place where you’ll find players who deserve their spots on the team because they are great hitters but who aren’t great fielders.

Outfielders cover an extraordinary amount of space in an impressive way. Baseball fields don’t have to have standard dimensions and in fact, they vary quite a bit. According to Business Insider, the average ball park is 2.49 acres. The largest field is home to the Colorado Rockies and is .18 acres bigger than average. The smallest is Fenway Park in Boston which is .15 acres smaller than average. That might not seem like a big range, but consider that the outfielders in Boston play their home games in a park 14,375 square feet smaller than the outfielders in Colorado. These differences, can play a part in how a team constructs their lineup. The Red Sox may be able to do with better offensive players who are weaker defensively in the outfield while the Rockies first priority has to be defensive range.

Hope this has helped you understand what outfielders in baseball and softball are,
Ezra Fischer

Why do catchers paint their nails in baseball?

Dear Sports Fan,

I stayed up late last night to watch the exciting playoff game between the Kansas City Royals and the Oakland As and one image kept jumping out at me: the catchers and their BRIGHT YELLOW finger nails. Why do catchers paint their nails in baseball?

Thanks,
Vera

— — —

Dear Vera,

I noticed that too and did some research about it this morning. Catchers paint their finger nails (or color them in other ways) so that their fingers are more easily visible to the pitchers on their team. Before each pitch, the catcher and pitcher need to communicate about what pitch to throw and where to throw it. This communication is important for practical reasons — the catcher needs to be able to catch the ball and he can often do subtle things to help fool the batter and even the ump — and for tactical reasons. Catchers have the primary responsibility for what pitches get thrown when and where. So, how do they communicate? And why does it involve colored nails?

Catchers communicate with pitchers through an occupational sign language. From their catcher’s squat, they stick one hand between their legs and flash a series of hand signals. There’s a simple standard for these signs. Baseball-catcher.com lists the simplest version of the language:

One Finger = Fast Ball
Two Fingers = Curve Ball
Three Fingers = Slider
Four Fingers and/or Wiggle Fingers = Change Up

Major league catchers use far more complicated signs because, even shielded between their legs, the signals might be seen by an opposing player, coach, or even a plant in the audience with a set of binoculars and a cell-phone.

The pitcher stands over sixty feet away from the catcher. We know from David Epstein’s amazing book, The Sports Gene, that baseball players have extraordinary eyesight. Major league players average 20/13 eyesight, which means they can see from 20 feet what the rest of us can see from 13. Even if sixty feet looks to them like 39 feet would look like to a “normal” person, that’s still pretty far. I just measured out about 40 feet in my apartment. From that distance, I could easily see a hand size object but I’m not sure how well I’d be able to translate fast moving hand signals with close to 100% certainty. Add to that the pumping adrenaline of performing in front of 40,000 screaming fans, the overwhelming pressure of a close game, and the mental sloppiness that comes from pushing your body to its limits of exertion, and you can understand why any visual aid would be useful!

So, catchers started adding a bright, contrasting, easy to see stripe of color on their fingers. At first it was just white tape on the fingers or finger tips. Then catchers like Yankees Russell Martin started painting their finger nails. In a 2011 Newsday column, Martin was quoted commenting about his bright orange nail polish:

“At first, I just put white on it. I used to use Wite-Out and then I’d have to take it off after games and it was messy. I just decided to put on a color that kind of pops out.”

[begin rant]

A quick aside about nail polish on male athletes and coverage of it.

I get that men don’t normally wear nail polish. In our culture that’s more common for women to do. I think it’s probably fine to recognize the humor of some of the most stereotypical masculine people out there, professional athletes, adopting a stereotypically feminine habit. The Newsday article does a good job with this by asking whether the Yankees were going to hire a staff manicurist and by describing Martin’s use of nail polish as a sign of his commitment to his team and to winning. Contrast that with the purely offensive way For the Record sports covers Russell Martin. In one short paragraph, they suggest wearing nail polish may be “how you get gay” and predict a homosexual “love triangle” between Martin and his teammates. Nice work guys — I guess that’s what we should expect from a site whose site’s main navigation bar’s first four categories are Pro, College, Hot Chicks, and Title IX. Here are a few of the headlines from their Title IX section:

Kate Upton in classy animal print photo sheet [VIDEO]
Slovenian triple jumper Snežana Rodić and her awesome butt
[VIDEO] When girls try to be coordinated
Diana Taurasi likes ironing her man clothes

This is everything wrong with one segment of sports culture. Even if you’re okay with a sports site having a “Hot Chicks” section, naming a section of your website after the landmark equal rights law that mandated equality for women in educational or other federally funded programs, which included almost all youth and college sports, and then filling it with sexist, disgustingly insulting junk is totally unacceptable. How more insulting could you possibly get?

[end rant]

From nail polish, the evolution continued to custom-made finger-stickers. The catchers in last night’s game looked to me like they were wearing the neon green stickers made by a company called Game Signs. Game Signs boasts that their “signal enhancement stickers are easy to use, easy to remove and durable enough to withstand the roughest of games.”

The stickers look great, and I’m sure it’s nice to be able to peel them off after a game, but I think that if my hands were going to be shown in close-ups on HD TVs around the country, I might just get a manicure anyway!

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

What are infielders in baseball or softball?

Dear Sports Fan,

What are infielders in baseball or softball? Doesn’t everyone play in the field?

Thanks,
Jacqueline

— — —

Dear Jacqueline,

Infielders in baseball or softball are players who play any one of these four positions: first base, second base, third base, or shortstop. Each of these positions have their own unique set of responsibilities which favor particular skills. With some exceptions, of course, the positions seem to attract or mold the personalities of people who play them in distinctive ways. The wrinkles of each position often shape the roles players play when their team is up to bat in addition to when they’re on defense. Although some major league players shift from position to position, most stick to one spot for the majority of their careers. As an added bonus, infielders in baseball were the focus of one of the funniest comedy bits of all time. Starting with first base and moving to third, we’ll describe each position in detail. For describing where things happen, we’ll use the perspective of the batter. As we go through the positions, I’ll notate the names of the players on Abbot and Costello’s team.

First Base

First basemen (the eponymous Who) stand farthest to the right as seen from the batter’s point of view. Their primary defensive responsibility is to bustle over to their base when the ball is hit into play and be their to catch the ball if one of their teammates gets it in time to try to throw the runner out at first. If the first baseman catches the ball while she is touching first base before the batter runs to first base and touches it himself, the batter is out. A throw to first base is the most common outcome from a hit and there are often reasonably close calls between the runner getting there first and the first baseman catching the ball. The first basemen plants one foot on his base and reaches, stretches, lunges, for the ball. Shaped by this requirement, the first baseman is the biggest of the infield players. He doesn’t need to run very much and every inch of height and wingspan help him reach the ball a split second earlier or snag errant throws that might go over a smaller player’s head. This has implications for batting too. Since size is an advantage at first base in a way it often isn’t at other positions, first basement are often big power hitters who aim for home runs whenever they can. After all, if you get a home run, you don’t have to run as fast. Playing first base is a challenging position. It’s hard to hide there because every infield hit is going to involve you catching the ball.

Second Base

Second base (What) is the least glamorous of the infield positions. Before the ball is hit, second basement usually line up between second base and first or just to the right of center from the batter’s perspective. They are in one of the least likely spots for a ball to be hit (assuming the majority of batters are right-handed) and their job is easiest when a ball does come to them. The throw from where a second baseman lines up to first base, where the play most frequently is, is quite short. The one truly exciting thing that a second baseman does is play a vital role in most double plays. A double play is when a defensive team is able to get two outs on a single hit. This usually happens when there is a runner on first. Because two runners cannot occupy one base at the same time, the runner at first is forced to run to second as her teammate runs from the batters box to first base. If the defensive team can get the ball, throw it to second base and tap their foot on second base while holding the ball, they can then try to throw the ball to first base and beat the runner there too, making for two outs. There are all types of strange ways to make this happen, but usually it involves someone throwing the ball to the second baseman, who stands on second base, catches the ball, and whirls around to throw it to first base. Runners headed to second base in this situation will slide at the second baseman dangerously, trying to break her nerve (or her ankles) to prevent the throw to first. As a result, second basemen are often small, agile people who have become very good at leaping out of the way while throwing accurately. Second baseman use their speed on offense too, often hitting first or second in the order.

Shortstop

The shortstop (I don’t give a darn) is the most glamorous position in the infield and arguably the whole team. Shortstops have the most balls hit at them and they are hit the hardest. Shortstops are athletic and acrobatic, leaping or diving to catch or even just get in the way of balls hit between second and third base. Once they get their hands on the ball, they have the second farthest throw in the infield from their position to first base. Often, instead of throwing to first, they might flip the ball to the second baseman to start a double play or just sprint over there and touch the base themselves. Shortstops are proud of their position and rightly so. In any casual game of baseball or softball, the best athlete in the group plays shortstop by default. Shortstops can have such an impact on defense that they can sometimes get away with being a weaker hitter compared to other positions.

Third Base

Third base (I don’t know) takes guts and a rocket arm. Third basemen line up closest of any infielder to the batter, so when a ball comes to them, it gets there fast! Playing third base, even in a rec-league softball game, can be a harrowing experience because so many of the hits come at you so quickly. Once a third baseman has successfully fielded a ball, they have the farthest throw to get it to first base. If you imagine a baseball field as a triangle between home plate, first base, and third, the line from third to first is the hypotenuse. On a major league baseball field, the distance from third to first is over 125 feet! When a third basemen stops being able to reliably make that throw, because of physical limitations or mental blocks, he or she has got to move to another position.

The infield positions are all unique and their peculiarities shape how baseball is played. Personality and physical attributes define who will be best playing which position. I hope this post has helped make the positions more understandable and baseball more enjoyable to play and watch.

Thanks,
Ezra Fischer

What is the red zone in football?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is the red zone in football? The announcers during football games are always talking about one team or another being “in the red zone.” What does that mean? Do the rules change when a team is in the red zone?

Thanks,
Sammy

— — —

Dear Sammy,

The red zone is a term used to refer to the area from the twenty yard line to the goal-line of the side of the field that the football team with the ball is trying to score on. A team that is “in the red zone” is one that has the ball and is less than twenty yards from scoring. The red zone is purely a convention, it has no implication on the rules of football at all.

Wikipedia writes about the red zone, that it, “is mostly for statistical, psychological, and commercial advertising purposes.” In terms of psychology and statistics, you’ll often see statistics about how often a team scores once they are in the red zone and what percent of those scores are touchdowns versus field goals. Fans feel like once their teams are in the red zone, they should score. Missed “red zone opportunities” are seen as disappointing and as potentially pivotal to the result of a game. This psychological understanding of the red zone is true of at least some football players as well. Reporter Sam Borden asked a football player about the red zone in an article on the topic from 2012:

Tight end Martellus Bennett says the irritation a unit feels when a red zone trip goes unconsummated is unique.

Initially, Bennett hesitated when asked to describe the emotion that came with walking off the field with the ball so close to the end zone. “I’m not sure this is printable,” he said. He ultimately offered a “cleaned-up” analogy that likened it to the frustration felt by an anxious, apprehensive man who spends hours working up the courage to talk to a pretty woman and then is only steps away when another man sidles up and slips his arm around her.

Sports statisticians have looked into the red zone and, for the most part, come up empty. As you might expect, there’s nothing magical about the 20 yard line that makes scoring easier or more likely once it is crossed. The best visual proof of this comes from NFL Stats Blog and it shows likelihood to score based on first down field position. Note that even the terms of this chart belie the red zone as a simple statistical reality because, of course it’s better to have the ball at the 22 yard line on first down than the 19 yard line on third. The likelihood to score curve is relatively smooth all the way down the field. A team in the red zone has a better chance of scoring as a team out of the red zone but there’s no statistical cliff that supports making a big deal over it. (As an aside, the most interesting part of the graph to me is that a team that gets a first down on the 11-15 yard line is more likely to score than if they get it on the ten yard line. This matches my instinct about football — it’s hard to go a full ten yards to get a touchdown — it’s better to at least be able to get another first down on the 1-5 yard line than have to score in one set of downs.)

No one seems to know exactly where the term comes from. One popular theory, which has floated to the top of this question on the sports question & answer portion of Stack Exchange, is that the term has military origins and means, “generally close to the enemy (red having been a symbol for danger for a long time).” I buy that as an explanation. Football has a long history of emulating the military. The same New York Times article from above, related a story about longtime New York Giants coach, Tom Coughlin, who early in his career:

Decided a psychological change of language was in order. Instead of describing the area as the red zone, Coughlin said, he consciously switched it to the green zone when referring to his team’s offense. His reasoning was simple.

“Green is go and red is stop,” he said. “What are you trying to do in the green zone? You’re trying to score. It’s not the red zone. If you’re on offense, it’s green.”

Coughlin’s got an interesting point. If you follow the analogy closely, the team in question seems to be the defending team, not the team playing offense. I think at some point, as football itself flipped to being far more about successful offense than successful defense, we flipped how we use the term red zone. My guess is that originally, the red zone was used primarily to describe the last twenty yards a defending team had to concede before allowing a score.

The red zone is a made-up concept but it’s a compelling one. Hearing that a team is in the red zone makes most football fans look up from their nachos (if they’re lucky!) and attend to the game. Some programming genius at the NFL thought about this and realized there was an opportunity to be had. The NFL created a television network called the NFL RedZone that springs from game to game on Sundays, showing every red zone trip all day, sometimes multiple games simultaneously. It’s a smashing success and will be the subject of a Dear Sports Fan post soon.

Until then,
Ezra Fischer

How are punts in football exciting?

Dear Sports Fan,

I don’t get why some people find punts exciting. Isn’t a punt basically a negative thing? It happens when a team decides they can’t advance the ball anymore and instead of trying, they punt. How are punts in football exciting?

Confused,
Connie

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Dear Connie,

You’re absolutely right that punts only happen when one team decides they cannot advance the ball anymore and instead of risking giving the ball to the other team where it currently is, they choose to trade field position for possession and give the ball up. This doesn’t mean it’s not exciting though. In fact, I think the punt is one of the most exciting plays in football and I’m happy to explain some reasons why. If you missed our post yesterday on how punts work, you might want to brush up on that before you read this one. Don’t forget to come back though!

Why the punt is exciting for the receiving team

The receiving team starts out pretty excited about the punt because it means they’ve succeeded on defense. They prevented the opposing team from scoring or even moving the ball ten yards to get a new first down. It’s also exciting because it means they’re about to get the ball back. The excitement doesn’t stop there though, because if they play the punt return right, they might even score on that play!

Although it may look a little chaotic, every player on the field while their team returns a punt has a very precise mission. First, the receiving team tries to worm through or around the guys protecting the punter to see if they can block the punt before it gets going.

If that doesn’t work, and it normally doesn’t, the players switch over to slowing down the opposing team’s players so that their punt returner has room to catch the ball and doesn’t need to call for a fair catch. Then, once the punt returner has caught the ball, the other players on his team turn into blockers — trying to prevent the kicking team’s players from hitting him and also trying to shove them around to create running lanes for the returner. This sounds like a thankless job, and a lot of times it is, but once in a while, someone blocking for a punt returner will make a block so spectacular that the crowd roars in appreciation. Of all the hits in football, hits while blocking for a returner can be among the most violent because of the speed and the potential to hit someone who is focusing on something else. Here’s an example of a player getting “decleated” on a punt return:

Once a returner catches the ball, he takes off like a wild deer and sprints upfield, dodging and spinning and hurtling until he’s either caught and tackled or scores a touchdown. Punt return touchdowns are among the most exciting in the game. Take a look at this one from the Dallas Cowboys and watch how all the players on their return team block for punt returner Dez Bryant:

Sometimes, even when the blocking fails, a supremely talented and fearless punt returner can create a touchdown on his own. These are the most exciting punt return touchdowns. This one from Dante Hall in 2003 has stuck in my memory as being one of the best I’ve ever seen:

That type of return is few and far between, but the potential is there on every punt. That’s what makes the punt so exciting for the return team.

Why the punt is exciting for the kicking team

The punt can be very exciting for the kicking team because they have clear goals that take extreme coordination, precision, and often a little bit of luck. They also have things that they don’t want to have happen. The good outcomes are often incredibly close from the bad outcomes. For instance, the punting team might be aiming to kick the ball out of bounds at the two yard line because then the opposing team has to start from their own two yard line on offense. If the ball flies an extra two yards, and goes out of bounds in the end-zone, it’s a touchback and the receiving team gets the ball on their twenty yard line. The same thing holds with a punt that bounces around within the field of play. If it goes into the end-zone, the receiving team starts on the twenty. If it stops on the one… that’s a nineteen yard advantage for the kicking team. Here, the kicking team can do something to aid their own cause. If they can run down the field in time to do it, they can grab the ball before it rolls into the end-zone or even bounce it back to one of their teammates. This can be an exciting adventure because it involves players trying to control a frustratingly oblong bouncing object after sprinting for fifty or sixty yards. Here’s a great example of a punt that the kicking team saved from bouncing into the end zone:

Another strategy is to aim for a corner of the field so that it either goes out of bounds or it’s harder for the punt returner to find space to dodge around the guys trying to tackle him. This strategy is called a “coffin corner” punt. Here’s a great example of a successful one:

Playing on the unit that covers punts for the kicking team can also be exciting because you and your buddies get to (if all goes well) tackle the punt returner. If you like playing football, it’s probably in part because you like to hit people in a completely sanctioned way. It’s pretty satisfying to watch too unless it gets too violent. Here’s a prime example of good punt coverage that ends in a decisive but not cringe worthy hit:

What are the Asian Games?

Dear Sports Fan,

When and how did the Asian Games start and how are they different from the Olympics?

Thank you,
Jeehae

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Dear Jeehae,

The Asian Games are a lot like the Olympics. They’re held every four years and they are an international multi-sport event. Right now they are happening in Incheon, South Korea, where they will continue until October 4. They vary from the Olympics mainly because they only welcome competitors from Asian countries instead of the whole world. They also have some very interesting different sports.

According to Wikipedia, the Asian Games were born after World War Two out of a desire to find a non-violent way of expressing “Asian dominance.” The first games were held in 1951 in New Delhi and consisted of fifty seven events in six sports: “Athletics, aquatics—broken into diving, swimming, and water polo disciplines—basketball, cycling—road cycling and track cycling—football, and weightlifting” although there was also a non-medal event that crowned the “Mr. Asia of 1951” based on “physical development, looks, and personality”. From the beginning, the competition was modeled on the Olympics. People even called the first Asian Games the, “First Asiad” similarly to how an Olympics may be called the “14th Olympiad” or “26th Olympiad.”

The Asian games are not alone in being an Olympic-like international sports event restricted to some smaller group. There are many other similar events, including the Francophone games, the All-Africa Games, and the Islamic Solidarity Games. There’s even a Bolivarian Games for “countries liberated by Simón Bolívar.” There are 45 countries eligible to compete in the 2014 Asian Games and all have sent teams. The two biggest teams are the Chinese with 894 participants and South Korea with 883. The smallest are Brunei with 11 and Bhutan with 16. Saudi Arabia is the only country not to send any women as part of their team.

One of the key differences between the Asian Games and the Olympics are the inclusion of some sports more popular in Asia than in the rest of the world. Here are some examples:

Wushu — a form of martial arts that includes a solo performance judged sort of like figure skating and an opponent based sparring component.
Soft tennis — which is just like tennis but played with (wait for it…) “soft rubber balls.”
Sepak takraw — which is Volleyball with a woven rattan ball where players are not allowed to use their hands, just like in soccer.
Kabaddi — a sport that sounds totally fascinating to me. It seems to be a combination of capture the flag, tag, wrestling, and holding your breath.

If you’re anything like me, or even if you’re not, you might be wanting to watch some of this now, especially the Kabaddi! I can’t quite tell if you can watch events live anywhere (and even if you could, you’d have to wake up in the middle of the night to do so from the United States,) but you can get highlight packages at eversport.tv. The official website for the 2014 Asian games is here and you can also follow them on Twitter.

Happy rooting,
Ezra Fischer