There are two warring camps in baseball: those who use statistics and objective data to drive decision-making and performance assessment vs. those who look to romance, nobility, experience, and all things idiosyncratic for both teaching and managing the game.
There’s a website called FireJoeMorgan.com [Joe Morgan was one of the best players in history, but he's probably the worst analyst in history, too] that pokes fun at bad sports journalism that is either factually inaccurate, refuses to recognize logic or weaves that delightful tapestry of both. Those rapscallions at FJM could switch over to education and they’d never miss a beat.
If we substituted a few words in the following article, we’d have a fine specimen of the defensive, willfully-ignorant, protectionist puffery that makes up the majority of education philosophy.
Background:
- Dusty Baker is the manager of the Cincinnati Reds. He famously defies common sense and logic with his commitment to… God knows what, but he sure is experienced.
- The Society for American Baseball Research [SABR] has over the last few decades led the scientific approach to baseball into its current state of maturity.
- Bill James is considered the father of what we call “sabermetrics.”
Here are a few selections from the article [original piece, FJM post]:
Baker judges by his senses: Knowing what makes his players tick more important than their stats
FJM: Dusty Baker can literally smell whether a guy has a couple hits in his bat. And if his bones ache while a starter is warming up, that means 6 2/3 IP, 4H, 1R. Welcome to the age of divining rods and augurs, Cincinnati.
Education Parallel: The UFT’s Randi Weingarten saying, “Any real educator can know within five minutes of walking into a classroom if a teacher is effective.â€
“The best baseball managing is done by the seat of your pants, using good, old-fashioned, pre-sabermetric logic.”
FJM: If I live in Cincinnati, I have just purchased a one-way ticket to Canada, draft-fleeing-style.
Education Parallel: See above and/or most teacher blog posts.
“If Baker manages by a book, it’s one inside his head, not one written by Bill James.”
FJM: Unfortunately, the book inside Dusty’s head is “Lightning” by Dean R. Koontz. This will not help him.
Education Parallel: Research? Oh, forgot the scare quotes. “Research?” Drill and kill?!? DI and the rest be damned. Let’s use every teacher’s personal experience and substandard academic experience, combine it with a commitment to social justice and equality, and out pops The Best Teacher Ever.
“Unless they’re intentional walks, or the big boppers are being pitched around, walks aren’t what you want from players hitting third through sixth. You want them up there smart-hacking.”
FJM: You want these guys to brain-swing. You want them to think-swipe. You don’t want your 3-6-hole hitters to engage in torque ignorance. You want them to cognitive-swivel.
Education Parallel: Just like traditional baseball managers who think that walks don’t matter [you know, getting on base, the opposite of making an out], too many teachers want their students to smart-hack instead of master the basics. Literacy and math skills? Psh. They’d rather assess kindergarten children on data collection and making simple graphs. Why would you want a child who can read when you can instead cultivate lifetime learners who know how to take ownership of their curricula and make supercute folding things?
“By-the-book managing is for men who aren’t confident in their ability to read players and situations. It’s for managers who don’t know their players’ personalities. It’s what you do so you can say later, after it backfires: “Don’t blame me. I went by the book.”"
FJM: What you are calling “by the book managing” is often completely thoughtless, ignorance-steeped tradition. 2-1 count with a guy on first? Hit and run. Leadoff guy gets on? Bunt him over. That’s by-the-book managing, and it’s dumb. What people like Bill James, and Rob Neyer, and BP, and Billy Beane advocate is: research, analysis, thought, science. But *&$% that. Let’s read some tea leaves.
Education Parallel: If you - an aspiring teacher, a parent or an education reformer - want to go by the book [or something else that is clearly effective], it’s because you can’t read the situation. You aren’t a certified teacher - you’re an ignorant outsider who can’t possibly understand what goes on. You’re just a hopeless caveman who doesn’t understand that acrostics are better than Coleridge or that school today just isn’t like your drill-and-kill Sputnik-era classroom. You’re insecure and inexperienced and you need “the book” to make up for both.
And Leo Casey’s dad can beat up your dad.
“Anyone with a laptop can locate the Web site baseball-reference.com and sound like an expert. Anyone with a library card can pick up one of James’ mind-numbing baseball “abstracts,” in which the author makes the game sound like a first cousin to biomechanical engineering.”
FJM: Which is why it boggles the mind that some people don’t. Especially the ones paid millions of dollars to operate one of 30 several-hundred-million-dollar franchises. And for the record, I’m not trying to sound like an expert. I’m trying to sound like a dude with a computer who can look %$#^ up and point out that Adam Dunn is doing just fine, thank you, and if you start making him swing at pitches he doesn’t like, you’re going to screw up your team.
Education Parallel: We’re all just stat-loving Googlemonkeys who think we know education. We might be successful writers, parents, businesspeople, etc., but we’re not teachers. We didn’t go to ed school. We don’t get it.
Article: “It ain’t that scientific.”
FJM: It’s not purely scientific. But it goddamn is kind of scientific.
Education Parallel: Constant reductio ad absurdum of any structured instruction, belief in objective data, etc. We’re not compassionate and we dehumanize kids with our insistence on the non-fruity. We hate kids, we’re mean, we’re big doo-doo heads. And we’re committed to pumping out a nation full of automatons who will be the cogs in our corporate… oh, whatever.
*Wrings hands in wry pleasure, waxes mustache*
You can read the rest of FJM’s commentary here. Parallels a-plenty.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Stephen Downes 03.12.08 at 6:31 pm
Interesting if fluffy comparison.
Anyhow…
If you manage in baseball ‘by the book’, using evidence and statistics to inform your decisions, then you re giving the opposition a way to anticipate your moves, and plan accordingly. That’s why, with a 2-1 count with a guy on first, you so often see a pitch-out.
In education, of course, you don’t have an opposing team trying to anticipate your moves and respond accordingly - but it’s a human endeavour, and in human endeavours in general, being unpredictable is generally an asset.
That’s not to assert that either managers or educators should ignore the data.
But there’s data and there’s data - the mass of data, however carefully collected, is generally an unreliable indicator of outcome. The numbers, even if reliable (and in the field of education they often aren’t) take us only part of the way.
That’s why we play the games, rather than just run the numbers.
Eric Jablow 03.12.08 at 9:35 pm
Dusty does have one educational virtue, though. He encourages children to have educational experiences on the baseball field. For example, his then 3-year-old son was a bat boy during the 2002 World Series, and nearly got run over when he retrieved Kenny Lofton’s bat during a play at the plate.
Matthew K. Tabor 03.13.08 at 6:09 pm
Eric,
Ha! Rigorous, relevant, hands-on, project-based learning!
Matthew K. Tabor 03.15.08 at 6:17 pm
Stephen,
I’d love to play against a team that frequently pitched out on 2-1. You’re right - as the opposing team I’d be surprised!
Pleasantly surprised, especially if my guy on first stole at a 75% success rate and I had a hitter in a 3-1 count with a man in scoring position.
I’m going to apologize in advance, but I have a feeling I’m going to pull out the following line fairly often between now and the end of time:
“But there’s data and there’s data - the mass of data, however carefully collected, is generally an unreliable indicator of outcome.”
“Wee Willie” Keeler, chosen for this example simply because his name is great, had 8500 at bats in his career. He got 2900+ hits. Using those rounded numbers - and then rounding the result - I can say that he got a hit about 34% of the time he tallied an at bat.
Those are big numbers. I’d even call 8500 “a lot” of at bats. And I’d also say that the data was a generally reliable indicator that Wee Willie would hit safely once out of three at bats.