Some of you may know that my new journalistic hero is Mike Seate of the Pittsburgh
Trib. Remember him? The guy who said that fans of an imaginary thing called
superbike racing were morally superior to fans of baseball?
Remember? This guy:
Awesome.
So, Mike Seate has recently become part of a point/counterpoint involving the speeds at which various people drive on the streets of our nation's cities.
Here's "point," in which Seate describes a section of Pittsburgh riddled with high-speed traffic accidents (these excerpts are not necessarily continuous):
Commuters treat North Shore like NASCAR track
Last week, I visited Derek Gamret, a North Shore parking lot attendant who is used to the sound of crunching metal...I was amazed to see how close the attendant had come to calamity, as the waist-high brick wall surrounding his lot recently was torn apart by a speeding car.Either NASCAR has added the North Shore as a track or something weird is going on.
Cars speed across the bridge from Downtown, he said. Just as I had suspected. To verify my research, I headed back to the intersection with a handheld radar gun.
I use the radar gun to keep my buddies honest when they brag about the top speeds they allegedly reach at local racetracks, but my racer friends have nothing on North Side commuters.
The Seventh Street Bridge's posted speed limit is a lazy 25 mph, but in less than 15 minutes, I managed to track cars doing more than twice that speed.
It's one heck of a gamble to take on a daily basis. Stand there long enough, and you'll be amazed there haven't been more crashes -- and more trees and buildings bearing the scars of too many commuters who think they're NASCAR drivers.
Excellent work. I like the idea of a journalist trying to keep speeders at bay in a like vigilante-justice kind of way. I also love that Seate owns his own radar gun -- for recreational purposes.
Now here's "counter-point," in which another journalist argues that laws against speeding on public streets are draconian and unnecessary:
Fla. lawmaker aims to crush cyclists' thrills
A few years back, I wrote a book about the then-emergent sport of motorcycle stunt riding. At the time, maybe a dozen teams of young riders were making a good living pulling wheelies and other collarbone-crushing stunts on high-powered motorcycles. Definitely seems like the kind of behavior you want to go out of your way to...protect?
Florida State Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera (R-Miami) has introduced House Bill 137, which is aimed at stamping out stunt riding once and for all. If the bill becomes law, anyone caught stunt riding or exceeding the speed limit by 50 mph on a motorcycle in Florida will be arrested and have their bike impounded and their license suspended for 10 years.
I love this law. This is an awesome law. How can you be against this law? [
Edit: see comments for a far better understanding of it than I provided here.]
Lopez-Cantera said he's determined to make stunt riders "fear the law." It might sound like action-movie dialogue from "Robocop," but, unfortunately, this is an elected representative talking. The state senator claims the 119 motorcyclists killed in roadway accidents in his state in 2006 motivated his decision. But he fails to address how car drivers -- many distracted by cell phone conversations, drugs or alcohol, or just plan bad drivers -- might have contributed to the number. Drivers do get distracted by cell phone calls, yes. Possibly by drugs and alcohol, too. But another thing that might contribute to accidents involving motorcycles going 50+ MPH over the speed limit while doing dangerous stunts is: the motorcycles going 50+ MPH over the speed limit while doing dangerous stunts.
This kind of overzealous, punitive lawmaking is a threat to all motorists, regardless of how we get around.
Also a threat to motorists: people who go really fast on motorcycles and do stunts.
A proposed law might mean one thing on paper, but out on the streets, where cops can and, often, will interpret the rule of law with millions of variances, there's no telling what they might construe as "stunt riding."
Like, possibly, going 49 MPH over the speed limit while doing a dangerous stunt? You're right. Get rid of the law.
You can find car drivers exceeding the speed limit by 50 mph every day, but I can't imagine anyone jailing them for doing so.
Mike Seate seems to want to, based on that earlier column.
Maybe lawmakers like Lopez-Cantera wouldn't introduce ill-conceived laws like this if they respected the rights of motorcyclists, and viewed us as something more than a group of thrill-seeking kids who need to be taught a lesson.
America!
Now, kids at home, I want you to guess who wrote the "counter-point" to Mike Seate's "point."
That's right -- it was Woody Paige!
Just kidding. It was also Mike Seate.
So, to sum up: people in cars who go 50 in a 25-mph zone: dangerous NASCAR-wannabes who should be brought to justice.
People on motorcycles who superbike-it-up and go 115 mph on the highway and do crazy stunts on public roads: kick-ass dudes who are being hassled by the man.
(I know. It's only mildly sports-related. At least it mentioned NASCAR.)
Labels: epistemological nightmares, mike seate, nascar, superbike racing, that can't be right
Yes, that is the title I'm going with.
I have received an FJM-record-breaking number of e-mails concerning the section of the last JoeChat (see post below) wherein Joe addresses, yet again, his reasons for not reading "Moneyball." (
Note: If discussion of this bores you, skip this post -- it's only for people who are really really into a like New Critical-style close-reading of Joe's off-the-cuff babble.)
It is worth re-printing the key section and its interrogatory antecedent:
Patrick (St. Louis, MO): You stated in your last chat that because you've been around the game for so long, there isn't much more anybody can teach you about it. It seems like you're saying that everything in baseball is known already, whereas I feel that there is plenty that we don't know, especially with advances in sports medicine, the ability to use technology to evaluate defense more accurately, and the increasing availability of pitch-by-pitch data to study long-term trends in the game. Don't you owe it to your listeners to listen to new arguements and research, especially if they are intelligent and logical? You seem to have the notion that a lot of the objective analysis being done now is trying to get rid of traditional scouting, but most sabremetricians feel that both are essential to get the best results.
Joe Morgan: The guy that wrote Moneyball can't teach me about the game. That is what I meant. If you haven't been on the field, why should I read your book? How can that person teach me about the game? I learn plenty about the game everyday. Every Sunday night I learn something. The game changes almost every day. But I'm still not going to read Moneyball or books written by people who haven't been on the field or really experienced what goes on in the game of baseball.And later:
I want to clarify the misunderstand [sic] about what I learn. Every Sunday I learn something new. But I'm going to stand by the fact that somebody who didn't play the game can't teach me about the game. I learned from the best, the legends who played the game. I played alongside so many great players. I'm just not going to read a book in hopes of learning how to play baseball. But this is an everchanging game and I do learn something almost every day. I'm just a former baseball player who is now an analyst. My thoughts are about the game and not medical technologies and such. Just because somebody writes a book doesn't mean they know the game.Many readers wrote in to discuss this -- especially the statement:
"If you haven't been on the field, why should I read your book?" and its follow-up:
But I'm still not going to read Moneyball or books written by people who haven't been on the field or really experienced what goes on in the game of baseball.My initial response concerned the fact that although Michael Lewis himself did not play pro ball (though he did, as several readers pointed out, play high school ball in Louisiana and later wrote a book about his HS coach), the subjects of the book, like Billy Beane and Scott Hatteberg, etc., were "on the field," thus rendering Joe's bitterness at once ignorant and pointless. Also, as Coach points out in the comments section of that post, apparently nobody has told Joe that "Moneyball" is not a how-to manual on bunting -- it is a book mostly about the
business of baseball. Blah blah blah. Preaching to the choir.
But. Several of you brought up other excellent points, that I feel are worth adding to the discussion, to wit:
Adam writes in with an intriguing idea:
Joe claims not to need to learn anything from books because he played the game and played with other people who played the game and has been in the game for 40 years. 'Watching' is not involved. I would like to test Joe, though. Say, lock him in a sensory deprivation chamber completely isolated from the outside world, then have him predict the outcomes of ABs, games, and seasons based solely on his intuition and experience.Adam takes things a bit literally, but I appreciated the idea of Joe locked in a closet.
Chris raises an interesting point about those who did not "play the game":
What about things that Jack Buck, Harry Carey, or Lon Simmons have said? Branch Rickey never actually played baseball, but he was directly responsible for 1) creating a minor league system, and 2) Jackie Robinson joining the Dodgers in 1947. Again, I guess there's nothing he could teach Joe Morgan (ignoring the fact that he was around a bit before Morgan's time).Excellent point. The more you think about it, the excellenter it gets. What about oft-praised Joe favorites like Tony LaRussa? I happen to think he's an idiot, thus kind of proving Joe's point accidentally, but Joe loves him, and he never played ball. Tommy Lasorda barely did. Tons of GMs, coaches, scouts, and so on had either little or no actual on-field experience. Conversely, plenty of HOFers have made terrible managers -- Pete Rose, Ted Williams... Not that Joe argues the converse, but still. The theory that only those who played the game have knowledge of the game worth listening to or reading is so backwards and insular and wrong it's hard to imagine how one could ever espouse it.
But my personal favorite e-mail came from reader Nicholas, who focuses on the part of Joe's answer that reads "I learn plenty about the game everyday. Every Sunday night I learn something." Nicholas writes:
Can you please point out the epistemological unsoundness of Joe's answers about experience? The suggestion is that he can learn about the game by watching, but Michael Lewis can't; therefore one has to have played the game in order to learn by watching the game. If one reasonably assumes that this incommensurability also applied to talking about the game, the implications for the in-booth dynamic are mind-warping. Presumably, Jon Miller can teach Joe about the game because Joe's experience playing makes him able to learn. But despite Joe's pedantic railings, Jon won't be able to learn because he never played.Also, implied in this analysis: although Joe's playing experience enables him to learn from Jon, Jon's lack of experience renders him unable to teach -- Joe is a European socket and Jon's cord doesn't have the right adapter. (Metaphor intended non-sexually.) Poor Jon Miller -- all he does is talk and talk about baseball right next to Joe Morgan, and yet Joe can never learn a thing; and poor Joe, whose brilliant insights fall on impotent, non-having-played-the-game ears.
I had never considered Nicholas's central point -- in order to learn by watching, Joe essentially posits, one has to have already played. Thus (as I wrote to Nicholas) imagine the flow of "knowledge" as EM waves, emitting constantly from those who played and are now talking, being absorbed by those who played, but bouncing off those who did not. Now, imagine a booth filled by Peter Gammons, Billy Beane, Bill James, and Dayn Perry on one side, and Joe Morgan, John Kruk, Hawk Harrelson, and Mitch Williams on the other. Now imagine trying to track the motion of these knowledge-pulses as they bounce around the room.
Now imagine the intellectual content of what each person is actually saying.
Labels: epistemological nightmares, joe morgan, joechat
