Bill Belichick Made the Right Decision

I wrote last year about football coaches punting too much. Most football fans think that those of us who advocate eschewing punting are crazy (or maybe just stupid). They see New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick's decision to go for first down on 4th-and-two at his own 29 with two minutes to go in last Sunday's last-minute loss to the Indianapolis Colts is further evidence that teams should always punt in situations like this. However, that is incorrect thinking. Belichick did the right thing. See here, here, here, or here.

Money quote (from Bill Barnwell), and the lesson we should take from all after-the-fact analyses:

"The important factor that the cacophony of responses seems to be missing is that you can't judge Belichick's decision by the fact that it didn't work. As we've mentioned more than once in these pages, you cannot judge decisions by their outcome. You have to consider the process that goes into them, and then decide whether they're right or wrong at the moment they're made."

If the goal was to win the game, Belichick made the right decision regardless of the outcome.

Humbling

Though I'd heard of him previously, I first met John McAlister in 2004 at the first event of the Society of American Period Furniture Makers (SAPFM) I ever attended. SAPFM may sound impressive, but it is really just 800 guys who have $35 and a table saw in their basement, and have a serious interest in 18th century American furniture. John had received the 2001 Cartouche Award from SAPFM recognizing outstanding American Woodworkers.He was the second person to be recognized with this award.

John grew up in Greensboro (he is of the Greensboro McAlisters) but spent most of his life in Charlotte where he was in the textile business. He began woodworking as a hobby in 1968 and is entirely self-taught--but boy, is he taught! I had the opportunity to visit John's home last weekend to see some of his furniture and his workshop.

Though he has never sold a piece, he has a large family (two marriages and seven children I believe he said) and so he has given away a lot of furniture he has made to family. I believe he said he is currently working on his fifth grandfather clock, for instance. Even with that, he has a home full of the most beautiful 18th century furniture you can imagine.

John's most famous piece is a copy of the Nicholas Brown tall secretary that sold for $12 million in 1989. Since then a number of woodworkers have made copies of this secretary, but John was one of the first, and he did a great deal of original research to be able to make the plans for the piece.

I've posted other pictures of John's furniture (and some of his workshop) on Flickr here but they hardly do justice to the scope of John's woodworking. I suspect there are very few woodworkers who have two bonnet-top highboys, one in their dining room and another in their bedroom.

Upon leaving John's house, one of the other amateur woodworkers in the group sighed "Boy, was that humbling." He got that right!

Mine Is Bigger Than Yours!

Joel Gillespie posts a picture of a big tree.

Ed Cone follows up with a picture of another big tree.

Steve Harrison adds his big tree.

John Nack of Adobe raises the stakes.

Game over.

(Be sure to watch the video at the NPR site.)

Oh, Wow! Oh, deer.

View Larger Map

On my way to supper earlier this evening I saw a large deer standing along Lakewood Drive as I turned left onto Lakewood from Farrar, heading towards Friendly Ave. The deer dove into the woods of Hamilton Lake park between Lakewood and Starmount about opposite 1106 Lakewood. This is the first deer I've seen this far into town. I don't know if it is a resident or a tourist, but I'll be looking for it on my daily walks through this area.

"What a coincidence!”

After the death of his high school friend Jas Howard, the UConn football player murdered a week ago, Clemson defensive back Chris Chancellor requested he be allowed to wear Howard's number 6 for the Tiger's Saturday game against Miami in his and Jas's hometown. The complication was that 6 was normally worn by Jacoby Ford, Clemson's outstanding wide receiver and kick returner. Coach Dabo Swinney realized that since Chancellor and Ford wouldn't be on the field at the same time (since one was on offense and the other defense) it was within the rules for two players to have the same number so he granted the request.

Chancellor played well in the game, making four individual and one assisted tackles in the game. Ford's play wasn't spectacular; he had two rushes for 16 yards and a first-quarter pass reception for 11 yards--until the last play of the game. In overtime, Ford caught a 26-yd pass for a TD and walk-off win for the Tigers. As fate would have it, #6 was the difference in the game. Coincidence, or the invisible hand at work? (For more details, see here.)

Today In History: Baby Fae

Today is the 25th anniversary of surgeons implanting a baboon heart into a human infant. "Baby Fae" survived 21 days before succumbing to kidney failure.

Scientists have still been unsuccessful in transplanting a human heart into a banker.

Today is Saint Crispin's Day

"This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."

Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3. Think of it as medieval Veterans Day.

My Trip to the World Series--Memories of Tom Romenesko

It's been thirty years since my trip to the 1979 World Series so I thought I'd tell the story:

It was a cold winter day in early 1979 when I first met Tom Romenesko. I called on him in his "office" at Memorial Stadium to sell him on Greensboro Printing Company producing the season game programs for the Hornets, the new baseball team in town. Tom was general manager of the new franchise, but as one of a three-person staff he was just about everything else too. His office looked like a converted storage room (I think it was), and the rest of the stadium was just as dilapidated. It look all of its 50 years old. Tom's office must have been heated, but all I remember was that it was damn cold! We talked about baseball, the old Greensboro baseball teams that I had so ardently followed as as kid, and the advantages of his having GPC produce the Hornet programs.

It must have been pretty good salesmanship--we got the order, and over the process of producing the job (and for the next two years, too), Tom and I got to be good friends. Tom was one of the most promotional-minded people I had ever met. He knew he was in the family entertainment business, not just the baseball business, and he worked tirelessly to make sure Hornets games were good family fun. I believe this is more than slightly responsible for the success baseball has had in Greensboro since then.

Tom's zeal for promotions reminded me of Bill Veeck, the great Chicago promoter. (Tom had many good ideas, but one that didn't work out was selling sponsorship of the foul-poles at the stadium to the Holly Farms Chicken folks--foul-poles, fowl-poles, get it? har-har.)

For the game programs, Tom wanted to print "lucky numbers" throughout the program so he could offer prizes to program purchasers to stimulate sales. This was a difficult technical production problem. GPC could only number two pages at a time and Tom wanted eight numbers per program,which presented a big challenge. We found that another local printer, L&E Packaging, a tag-and-label printer and not a direct competitor, could number large 8-page sheets so we contracted with them for that portion of the project and Tom was a happy customer.

The Hornets were a farm-team of the Cincinnati Reds that year and the "Big Red Machine" was in a battle for the National League pennant that summer. As a farm team general manager, Tom got four World Series tickets. He wasn't able to go to the series so he offered the tickets to me and my friend Hugh Morton, Jr. We jumped at the opportunity and planned a great trip to Cincinnati.

And we'd have had a great time, too, except for the fact that the World Series was in Pittsburgh that year. The Big Red Machine lost three straight games to the Pirates in the best of five 1979 NLCS so Hugh and I stayed home. All I have is copies of the tickets to our great seats for games that were 300 miles away.

Tom was GM of the Hornets for three years before moving on to bigger things. We sort-of kept up over the years, but the last time I talked to Tom was in late 2000 I think. The Hornets/Bats/Whatever had new ownership and one of the new owners said what they needed was a GM like Tom Romenesko. Someone then suggested why not get the real Tom Romenesko so they contacted him to see if he might be interested. Tom called me to see what I knew about the new owners and I told him I didn't really know much but I thought a lot of Jim Melvin. I wasn't able to see Tom when/if he came to interview, and in the end he didn't get the job, and I haven't talked with him since, though we've e-mailed a couple of times.

I have suggested too the Grasshoppers that they should have a Tom Romenesko Appreciation Day sometime. It would be a fitting tribute to the person who more than anyone else made minor-league baseball successful in Greensboro.

Here is an article from Sports Illustrated in 1979 with a little about the Hornets and Tom. It brings back some fond memories:

"In the meantime, Nashville cannot rest on its laurels. Greensboro, North Carolina, is suddenly challenging it as the nation's top minor league town. Greensboro had been without professional baseball for a decade when the Hornets arrived this spring, under the direction of a former umpire named Tom Romenesko. The Class A ball club is on its way to drawing 170,000, which would exceed Greensboro's population and perhaps make Romenesko the choice to succeed Schmittou as The Sporting News Minor League Executive of the Year. "

Here is a picture of Tom and his wife Becky (and my friend Jeanne Tannenbaum) from the fall of 1981.

But Can He Spell "Potato"?

President Obama had a little trouble with numbers yesterday when he was presenting Medals of Freedom to a number of prominent Americans. He didn't get any of Billie Jean King's right. (From Althouse.)

Significant Digits

Stumbling around the Internet this morning I ran across this post:

"Their findings aren’t all that favorable to those of us with lofty views of Twitter, because as it turns out, 40.55% of tweets are pointless babble."

I didn't click further to see how they defined "babble" or how they determined whether the babble was of the pointless or pointed variety. What stopped me cold was the precision of 40.55%. Not 40% or 45% or even 41%. 40.55%!

One of the concepts I learned in engineering school was that of significant digits. Way too many folks don't understand this important principle. For the innumerate it is the functional equivalent of a grammar error. It reflects poorly on the credibility of the author.

One-third of a million isn't 333,333, it's about 330,000. Any number more precise than that is drivel. There are only one or two significant digits in a million ( between 500,000 and 1,500,000 or even between 900,000 and 1,100,000) so a third of that number has only one or two significant digits.

That's today's lesson in Numeracy. For further reading, go to this book. I recommend it!

The Hurt Locker

I saw The Hurt Locker yesterday, and I really liked it. It is a realistic, unromantic, austere, intense story of a squad of EOD (explosive ordnance demolition, i.e. "bomb squad") soldiers in Iraq in 2004. Joe Morganstern of the Wall Street Journal had a very accurate review.

Kathryn Bigelow’s film, which was written by Mark Boal, manages to be many things at once—a first-rate action thriller, a vivid evocation of urban warfare in Iraq, a penetrating study of heroism and a showcase for austere technique, terse writing and a trio of brilliant performances. Most of all, though, it’s an instant classic that demonstrates, in a brutally hot and dusty laboratory setting, how the drug of war hooks its victims and why they can’t kick the habit.

I give the movie 4 Stars!

Our Representatives in Congress Are Hip!

So, Congress has decided to spend the $100 million in savings they recently trumpeted by purchasing three new Gulfstream G550 executive jets for $200 million. This makes Congressfolks hip, as in hypocritical, ironic, and privileged.

"The notion that some lawmakers feel it beneath their dignity to travel with the masses on commercial jets is nothing new. But news of the House plan does bring to mind three salient facts, all of which the Democratic leadership hopes the public does not think of in relation to the jet purchase.

Congress isn't short of hypocrisy. Most of the Democrats and their environmentalist allies are reflexively opposed to private jet travel because of its excessive carbon footprint. Or, at least, they are opposed to private jet travel for others.

Neither does it recognize irony. CEOs of the Big Three automakers were excoriated for traveling in their private jets last year to testify in Washington.

And some have an outsized sense of privilege. In 2007, just a month into the new Democratic majority, Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked that taxpayers provide a jet that could make a nonstop flight to her Bay Area district. She reportedly wanted a luxury, stateroom-outfitted version of Boeing's 757-200 like those the vice president, first lady and Cabinet officials fly on.

And there was a lot of foot-stamping when the Bush White House said no."

Happy Birthday. Good News!

Sixty-seven years ago today I entered this world. It was front page news in the Good News:

My Other Car Is a F/A-18

Or is it a Formula One Racer?

Details here. (From Adobe's John Nack.)

On Grammar

I might have become an English major if the discussions on grammar in Mrs. Hunsinger's 9th grade English class had been this interesting. (Vulgarism ALERT)

Orders of Magnitude

Today's Rant: I hate it when writers mix up various number denominations (trillions, billions, millions, etc.) in the same article. I believe good writing form dictates writers should chose one denomination and stick with it. For example in today's Wall Street Journal there is an article on the federal government's efforts to institute various cost savings In a Savings Shocker, the Government Discovers That Paper Has Two Sides. In it, Jonathan Weisman writes about a $2 trillion budget deficit, a $100 million savings challenge, and various savings of $52 million, $320,000, $18 million, $5 million, $573,000, $318,000, $47,160, $2 million, $3.8 million, and later, $40 billion.

This is seriously misleading. If Weisman were to pick one denomination, (say, million, since that is the most common) and be consistant, these numbers would be a much more revealing: $2,000,000 million, $100 million, $52 million, $0.18 million, $0.47 million, $2 million, $3.8 million, and $40,000 million. The difference between $2 trillion and $100 million may not sound like much, but the difference between 2,000,000 and 100 is clear.

Is Your Doctor Killing You?

This month seems to by my "doctor" month: colonoscopy last week, cardiology 6-month check-up this week, and my annual physical next week. I am a "victim" of coronary by-pass surgery as well as a small stroke a couple of years ago, so I'm attentive to my coronary health. As best as I can determine, the one thing I can do to improve my life expectancy is to lose some weight.



But the hard thing is just how does one go about losing the weight. I'm not sure physicians are all that good at telling us how to shed the excess pounds. A year and a half ago I read ("slogged my way through" may be more accurate) Gary Taubes book Good Calories, Bad Calories which makes a very persuasive case for the fact that the basis for most nutrition advice in this country is wrong, i.e., we should be eating a heart-healthy low-fat diet and should be exercising and controlling the amount of calories we consume. Taubes says the science and the medical research prove that a low-fat diet, which by its nature is a high carbohydrate diet, is precisely the thing that is making us all fatter.

The Good Calories book is a very difficult read. It goes deeply into the physiology of obesity and diet, but I think the results are worth the effort. For someone who doesn't want to invest the couple of weeks of free-time reading the book takes, it is probably worthwhile to listen to Taubes lecture on the subject. He recently did so at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock School of Medicine, available here.

The entire lecture is about an hour long, but if you don't want to spent that much time, forward to the conclusion (click on the "Thumbs" tab in the player window and then click (or double-click) on the antepenultimate slide (third from the last) and listen to the six minute summary at the end of the lecture.

Taubes' research makes a lot of sense. One questioner calls this "the biggest public health disaster in modern history--the epidemic of obesity and diabetes". Most physicians still believe what they learned in school in the past 40 years--that low fat is healthy because everyone knows it's true. Physicians who are not aware of the latest science and research may be killing us with bad advice.

In the 18 months since I read Taubes book I've been following a low-carb lifestyle, and though I haven't lost much weight, I haven't gained any either even though I've paid virtually no attention to the number of calories I've eaten. However, I am influenced by that fat-is-bad image in the back of my head. For example, at lunch I've given up Vienna sausages (0 grams of carbs) and will have a whole wheat sandwich (20 grams of carbs) instead because everyone says the sandwich is healthier. Maybe soon more doctors will realize low-carb is healthier than low-fat and it will become easier to eat a healthy low-carb diet.

Tom Watson

I've been a fan of golfer Tom Watson ever since he came out on the PGA tour in 1971. I had a good friend in the Army named Tom Watson, and though they was no connection between the two I still always was a Tom-Watson-the-golfer fan. When TWTG came to the 1993 GGO my friend Wade Peoples got the above autograph for me.

About the only resemblance between my golf game and Tom's was that we generally carried the same number of clubs in our bags. I did, however, once make a stroke that Tom would have given a lot of money for. In 1984 I took a golfing trip to Ireland and Scotland with my buddy Roy Johnston. We played one round at Carnoustie in Scotland and it was very memorable.

We had two old guys, John and Charlie, for caddies. Both were life-long Carnoustie residents. John was 67 and retired and had been caddying since his retirement. John was 76 and had been caddying all his life. Both had followed Ben Hogan when he came to Scotland for the 1953 (British) Open tournament at Carnoustie and had several stories about Ben's exploits. After hitting our tee shots on the first hole, I asked Charlie if they played "mulligans" in Scotland. His reply: "Aye, lad, we do. We call them 'three'.".

Roy, John, Preston, and Charlie

Tom Watson won his first Open Championship in 1975 at Carnoustie. He needed five rounds to win that year since he and Jack Newton were tied after 72 holes. In all five rounds, Tom boggied the 16th hole, a 235-yd par three he has described as the toughest par 3 in golf. For Tom, maybe, but not for me. Against Charlie's advice (he thought it was too much club) I rifled a 3-wood shot to about 5 feet from the hole. Of course, I missed the birdie putt, but I know Tom Watson would have loved to have that 3 in any of his five tries in 1975. I even have photo evidence of the shot.:

Does Tom have a chance to win the Open Tournament tomorrow? I don't think so. The USA Olympic Hockey team had no chance against the Russians in 1980, The Jets had no chance against the Colts and the Mets couldn't win the World Series in 1969. NC State stood no chance against Phi Slama Jamma in 1983.

On second thought, maybe Tom can win.

Ted Williams

As I have written before, I've been a Ted Williams fan since I was a little boy and my father told me he had been in service with Ted. I never met Ted and I was very envious of my friend Hugh Morton, Jr. who had a picture of himself and Ted. Ted has been the news a couple of times today.

In the Wall Street Journal today Allen Barra has a review of the up-coming HBO Special “Ted Williams—There Goes the Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived”. I don't have HBO and I hope that some of my friends who do will tape the show for me. (Do you think anyone still knows how to tape tv shows?)

This morning, the right-center field of Bloggerstan was all atwitter with stories about President Obama's throwing out the first pitch at last night's All-Star Game. See here, here, or here. Locally, even Dr. Joe couldn't help piling on. Joe certainly had the cruelest critique: "Obama throws like a girl". Joe also included a YouTube video of pitcher Steve Hamilton throwing his "floater folly" pitch, but Joe doesn't mention one of the early "floater" pitchers, Rip Sewell, and his Eephus pitch.

Ted Williams probably did more than anyone else to make the Eephus famous. In the 1946 All-Star Game, held at Fenway Park, Sewell faced Ted in the bottom of the 8th inning with the National League already behind by nine runs and with two men on base. Rip threw Ted a first Eephus pitch and Ted missed badly, but Rip couldn't stand prosperity. He tried again. On the second Eephus, Rip always said Ted popped it up. Rip said at first he thought he could catch it, and then he thought the second baseman would catch it. Finally, he thought the right fielder would surely get it. Reportedly, the ball landed many rows deep in the right field bleachers, others say it was the bullpen. The final score was 12-zip, the first All-Star shut-out, and the Eefus was legendary.

One of my other favorite Ted Williams stories involves the All-Star Game a decade later. At mid-century, two of the best players in baseball both played in Boston, but they rarely faced each other. Ted's Red Sox were in the American League, and Warren Spahn, a Hall-of-Fame left-handed pitcher was with the Boston Braves in the National League. The Red Sox and Braves did play an exhibition game each spring, and in one of those games, Spahn faced Williams and struck him out with a very tough pitch. After the game, Ted was effusive with his praise of the pitch and told Warren it was one of the toughest pitches he had ever seen. It was almost unhittable. In the 1956 All-Star Game, in Washington, DC, Spahn faced Williams in the 6th inning with the NL leading 6-0. Nellie Fox had singled ahead of Ted, so Warren badly needed to get Ted out. He decided to try his "unhittable" pitch, and Ted parked it over the big right field fence in Grifith Stadium. Rounding second base, Ted looked at Spahn and grinned, and Warren knew he'd been had! He must have lost a little concentration, as Mickey Mantle, following Ted, went back-to-back and Warren was finished for the day. The NL won the game 7-3 but Spahn had learned a valuable lesson about Ted Williams devotion to hitting.

Who Ya Gonna Believe?

Me or your lying eyes?

Do you see the pink, green and blue spirals? The green ones and the blue ones are the same color. (From frolic with Volokh.)