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The Boston Red Sox’s designated hitter, David Ortiz, makes extensive use of video replays during games. He reviews at-bats right after they happen and can watch every pitch he’s ever seen from the pitcher that he’s facing, on demand. (via collision detection)
I’m no Yankees fan, but I got a little sad reading this article about Joe Torre’s possible departure from the team after 12 years. It seems like the individual leader gets too much credit for successes and is assigned too much blame for failures these days. Surely the team’s poor hitting and pitching was a big contributing factor that Torre couldn’t do much about?
(Last night’s game was great, BTW. The way those fans almost willed the Yankees back into the game while Cleveland held fast was fascinating to watch.)
As part of this weekend’s New Yorker Festival, a parkour demonstration was held at Javits Plaza. Before the demonstration, Alex Wilkinson talked with David Belle, the inventor of parkour and the subject of Wilkinson’s NYer article about parkour from April. In the interview and the Q&A that followed the demonstration, Belle explained that parkour is not about competition or showing off or being reckless. It’s a test of self, of control, of deliberate practice. The journey is the point, not the sometimes spectacular results.
The demonstration consisted of a group of about 20-30 parkour practitioners, beginners and experts alike from all over the country. It seemed as though they included anyone with parkour experience who showed up and wanted to participate, and instead of a highly polished display of high skill (which is what I think the audience might have been expecting), we were treated to a more authenic look at the sport. The first five minutes were taken up with calisthenics and stretching in preparation of the jumps and vaults to come. After warming up properly, they began running through the course, each participant picking his way through the course according to desire and ability.
Experimentation was the rule of the day, not performance. With each pass, you could see the group learning the particulars of the course, where the good holds were, finding smoother combinations, and, much of the time, trying and failing. And then trying again until they got it. There was a single woman participant, one of several beginners in the group. When she had some trouble with an obstacle, Belle and his “lieutenant” stopped to show her some moves, a moment that revealed more about parkour than Belle’s jump across a ten-foot gap twenty feet off the ground. Belle himself didn’t do too much during the performance — a couple of high jumps — and had to be coaxed during the Q&A to perform one last big move for the audience. He shrugged off the applause and attention as he back-flipped down to the concrete, knowing that the true parkour had taken place earlier.
I love the idea of conservation of concentration conveyed in this piece about Roger Federer, that we’ve got only so much intense focus to go around and successful athletes like Federer are really good at saving it up for the big moments.
A couple of times during press conferences, I noticed something kind of interesting about Roger Federer. I’ll get to it in a minute, but let me describe the scene first. Players enter Interview Room One, where all of the Rajah’s pressers take place, at the corner diagonally opposite from where the players enter. The players come in and turn right, to take their seat behind the microphone on the little dais or stage. Most players look to their left as they enter, just gauging the room and who is in it and how full it is. Federer, though, always keeps his head down and eyes averted, until he sits and begins to answer questions, when he makes direct eye contact with each questioner.
Anyway, a couple of times during his press conferences, someone’s cell phone went off, each time with an annoyingly loud ring tone. Both times, everyone turned, first to locate and then to glare at the culprit: have you no shame? And both times, I noticed, Roger kept his eyes locked on his interlocutor, never glancing in the direction of the phone. I’m sure he was conscious, on one level, that there was an interruption occurring, but he had decided to ignore it. Not even a darting of the eyes towards the irritant. Both coming in the room with his head down and refusing to allow himself to be distracted or interrupted seemed to convey the same thing: he chooses to focus selectively, and focuses intensely once he does.
It was difficult to keep the quoting down to those two paragraphs…just go read the whole thing. (And of course, this ties into my continuing fascination with relaxed concentration and the battle with the self as the true struggle in life.)
Mesmerizing video of basketball dribbling drills (with two balls at a time). Be sure to keep the volume on…the sound of 12 basketballs intensely bouncing is an odd one. (via truehoop)
Great set of infographics that illustrate the differences between grass, clay, and hardcourt surfaces in tennis, particularly with regard to how the ball bounces on each.
Watch the baseball bat on the replay…it does some crazy stuff.
The top 100 greatest beatdowns in history, most of them related to sports. #1 is Secretariat’s 31-length victory at Belmont, the footage of which is well worth a look if you haven’t seen it. That horse so totally pours it on down the stretch that it gives me goosebumps every time I watch it. (thx, david)
Novak Djokovic lost the US Open final to Roger Federer last night but the 20-yo Serb clearly left his — how do I put this? — impression on the tournament. Here’s some video of Djokovic impersonating Maria Sharapova and Rafael Nadal at the US Open. He does several other players as well, including a fine Andy Roddick.
Update: In case you’re unfamiliar with the mannerisms of the players mentioned above, here’s video of Roddick, Sharapova, and Nadal. (thx, flip)
A must-see for football fans: NFL TV distribution maps. Check out what football games will be on in which parts of the country.
Stats (wins, losses, probability of making the playoffs, etc.) from the rest of the MLB baseball season, played a million times. “The post-season odds report was compiled by running a Monte Carlo simulation of the rest of the season one million times.” (thx, david)
Before the 2007 season started, mathematician Bruce Bukiet’s mathematical model predicted the NY Yankees would win 110 games this year…they might win 90 based on their current pace. Related: check out how the team salary vs. performance graph is shaping up as we move into the last few weeks of the 2007 season.
Some Infinite Jest fashion notes: an Enfield Tennis Academy tshirt from Neighborhoodies and…
Was the designer of Infinite Jest’s book cover influenced by the color palette of the Nikes that Andre Agassi wore in 1991? Compelling visual evidence is available at lonelysandwich.
This is interesting. The PGA offers a non-traditional pension plan for their players that depends on how they perform throughout their careers. Tiger Woods, who performs quite well, could be eligible for almost $1 billion for his retirement if he keeps playing and winning. Billion. Wow.
In critical situations in matches, female tennis players play more conservatively, commit more unforced errors, and serve slower than male tennis players do in the same situations. “While men’s performance does not vary much depending on the importance of the point, women’s performance deteriorates significantly as points become more important.” (via mr)
Amateur runners, cyclists, and triathletes are starting to choose to compete in lesser-known smaller races in order to have a better chance of placing higher in the results. “Some are trying to gain an edge by finding where the fast racers aren’t. Instead of training harder, they’re spending hours online to scout out the field, and they’re driving hundreds of miles to race against thin competition in out-of-the-way places.”
As a 14-yo, Donald Young seemed like a can’t-miss tennis prospect. Now, nearly 18, he hasn’t missed but he hasn’t exactly lived up to all the promise either.
Lessons learned at an experimental basketball game where the rims were 11 feet high. “Perhaps the biggest impact was on the interior players. No longer could centers like Billbe catch the ball on the low block, turn and simply extend their arms and lay the ball over the rim.” (via clusterflock)
The rules of unicycle quidditch and juggling quidditch.
The Philadelphia Phillies have lost more games than any other team in professional sports, almost 10,000.
F1 driver Heikki Kovalainen tells us what he goes through during a typical race. “The actual driving, keeping the car on the road, is all natural, all automatic — what I’m thinking about is where to make time.” (thx, ajit)
Top 20 plays of the 2007 NBA playoffs (so far). It’s a good list but YouTube sucks for watching sports highlights…the quality is just too low. (via truehoop)
Vincent Laforet talks about a sports photo series he did using the tilt-shift technique.
Tiger Woods tops this year’s list of top-earning American athletes. He makes $111M a year, more than twice as much as the fellow in second place. A list of the top-earning non-American athletes is available as well. (via cyn-c)
A rare positive review from Speak Up of the new London 2012 that everyone else in the world seems to hate. “I believe, despite any ensuing boo’s, that this is some of the most innovative and daring identity work we have seen in this new millennium, and the lack of cheesy and imagination-impairing gradients gives me hope that identity work can still be resurrected on a larger scale.”
Update: Coudal loves the logo.
Nation to Ken Griffey Jr.: We Wish It Were You Hitting 765 Home Runs. “They talked about his 1989 Upper Deck rookie card, and how, instead of going down in value with every hamstring injury, it should have skyrocketed in price with his 800th, maybe 900th home run.”
What a game! How badly does the NBA want the Cleveland Cavaliers in the finals? Very very. TrueHoop’s got more.
Wiimbledon is a Wii Tennis tournament taking place in Brooklyn in late June. I’d come kick your ass, but I have plans that day.
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