Jeremy Affeldt & Paternity Leave

Some facts about Jeremy Affeldt. 1) He's a pitcher for the San Francisco Giants. 2) You probably didn't know that unless he was on your fantasy baseball team or your last name was Affeldt. 3) Based on the vision tab of The Jeremy Affeldt Foundation he's pretty hardcore Christian, 4) which is mitigated by the fact that apparently he's really dedicated to fighting child slavery, which also makes it really hard to ridicule him . . . so number five is said in light-hearted jest. 5) Jeremy Affeldt re-joined the Giants' roster earlier this week after missing a few games for paternity leave.

Affeldt's a set-up closer and averages probably around 3 innings of pitching a week. For those unfamiliar with baseball's temporal landscape 3 innings means, including warming-up Affeldt probably plays for an hour a week. Take team meetings and practice into account he probably puts in 10 hour work weeks. Tops. Like averages 6-8 hour work weeks until things really starting picking up at the end of the season in September and October. Major League Baseball also has a 5 month off-season. DBSF ran some back-of-the-envelope calculations--Affeldt probably works the equivalent of eight 40 hour work weeks per year. So someone who has well over 150 free hours a week--during his profession's 'high-season'--needed a few days off the birth of a child, and--another critical point--his wife, not Jeremy, had the baby. Walking into your manager's office and submitting that leave slip epitomizes audacity. Well done Jeremy.

NBA: Cup of Coffee Review

Among its many great resources, Basketball-Reference.com collects data on NBA players that played exactly one game, or just long enough for a cup of coffee. (DBSF didn't vet the data for accuracy but a superficial review suggests it seems right.) While over 40% of the players went scoreless and only received a handful of minutes there are some noteworthy accomplishments. Oliver Lafayette, a Houston grad, went for 7 points, 4 boards, 2 assists, and shot 50% but didn't get a second game. In the early 1960's Dave Gunther had 2 points, 3 boards, and 3 assists in 5 minutes of play. There were also some guys who were likely keenly aware of the fleeting nature of their opportunity as a professional basketball player and immediately started chucking: Bill Stricker and Forest Able averaged greater than one field goal attempt per minute on the court. In 1947-48 Nat Hickey might have had the most memorable game going 0-6 from the floor and collecting 5 fouls. 51 seasons later Trevor Winter averaged a foul per minute in also accruing 5 fouls in 5 minutes.

Campaign Finance. Triangulation.

The website HoopHype released a list of NBA players, owners, and executives and the amounts they've donated to candidates in the 2012 presidential campaign. DBSF wanted to get a better picture of what type of NBA employee was giving to which candidate. So, he exported the data into statistical software and conducted something called logistic regression, which is often used to analyze binary outcomes, like yes/ no questions, or candidate A vs candidate B. In conducting the quantitative analysis DBSF went through a range of rigorous exercises and nuanced statistical modifications to make sure his findings were accurate. The results are as follows: The young black guys that play basketball gave $ to Obama. The old white guys that own the stadiums & local energy/ utility companies gave $ to Romney. DBSF has pitched the research to top economics and political science journals. Fingers crossed.

Triangulation is a way of using angles to measure location. In the social sciences it is a way of using multiple sources to confirm something (i.e., double/ triple checking). So like if you want to know if there was a sequel to Double Team you could check on Wikipedia and IMDB and maybe just a few random Google searches to learn that like every other movie Jean-Claude Van Damme (and Dennis Rodman for that matter) starred in there was never a sequel. Melky Cabrera doesn't get this concept of triangulation. After finding out that he had failed a drug test that would incur a 50 game suspension, Cabrera allegedly paid a colleague $10K to create a fake website that claimed that a legal supplement could cause the failed test. It is important to note that as of 2010 there were 1.2 zettabytes (aka 1.3 trillion gigabytes) of information on the internet. Ergo, there isn't much that the average MLB investigator or, 4 year old, would have to do to verify if one--yes one--questionable website presented accurate information. And this says nothing of other alternative, such as information in print form, or simply calling medical professionals. That being said, the effort and ingenuity is worthy of praise.

Three Best Scenes from Robocop 3

Constantin Stanlislavski. Stella Adler. Lee Strasberg. Anymore is needless distraction. 

1. Officer Down (39:18) 

2. Friends (28:30)