Kevin Youkilis Does Not Eat Bacon
Part two of my Israeli travelogue. Tuesday morning, Toby and I were invited to volunteer at the Ben Gurion elementary school in Bat Yam, Israel. Our route to school was a cab ride to Elana’s apartment, walking half a kilometer to the #19 bus stop (picking up my morning soofganiya – Hanukah jelly donut – [...]
The Value of Pie
No, not 3.14159 or circumference divided by diameter or even the real but irrational part of the natural logarithm of -1 (e to the i pi references rule). Something natural, real, rational and not subject to circular arguments. It’s not even a thinly veiled reference to my favorite high school hockey goalie, best known for [...]
Nick Swisher Renews My Faith
Nick Swisher has renewed my faith in baseball players. For years I’ve thought of most baseball players as being too busy, too focused, or too impressed with their large contracts to pay much attention to the fans. Yesterday I attended the Nick Swisher autograph signing at Sports Express in the Livingston Mall, where I waited [...]
Hot Potato and The Friends You Don’t Know Yet
Disclaimer: I consider Justin Shaffer a friend, and have gone to Yankees games with him, but we bought our own food. Justin Shaffer, former geek in residence at MLB Advanced Media, the digital arm of the nation’s pastime, is on the cusp of tossing a new entrant into the social media game with “Hot Potato”. [...]
More Jewish Baseball T-Shirts
My “Jews For Jeter” t-shirt provided comfort, good luck and naches during the Yankees’ championship run. But if you’re a Mets fan, the off-season came early, without celebration or pre-holiday post-season splurges at the local Dicks or Sports Authority. Take heart, fans of the injury-prone but get’em next year Amazins: New Rome Clothing has something [...]
Counting the Growth Rings
Sports fans most definitely mark time by sports seasons, and clearly associate events staggeringly good or bad with particular slices of our life. The 1969 Mets are what I remember from 1st grade; the 1972 Pirates-Reds National League Championship Series marked the beginning of understanding sadness in sports; the Devils won their last Stanley Cup [...]
Geography of Abuse
It’s time for the Fall Classic, and this year it tramples the Garden State in multiple ways. Growing up in Freehold, NJ, I had the benefit of being located as close to the centroid of the state as you could be. We lived only a few miles from the boundary of the 201 and 609 [...]
Teaching Kids To Play
There’s a disturbing trend of parents pushing their kids into sports thinking far too long term. Elementary schoolers toting half-sized golf bags around the driving range are the next Tiger Woods. Pop Warner football players are Heisman material as soon as the other 8-year olds have trouble catching them on long runs. Little Leaguers who [...]
Facebook Reveals The Snowman’s Origins
My intense and borderline unhealthy obsession with snowmen and their numerical equivalents (the number eight) stems from a childhood fascination with Pittsburgh Pirates slugger Willie Stargell. I remember liking Stargell because he was the de facto leader of the Pirates, and my best friends Scott and Glenn cheered for the Bucs so I followed gold-and-black [...]
xkcd and Home Run Hitters
I adore Randall Munroe’s xkcd comic, mostly for the math jokes. I define “geek” as someone who uses epsilon in a sentence, so anything that references irrational number or NP-completeness is good for several laughs. And here I thought I was the only one who made Erdos number jokes. Unfortunately, Erdos number theorists would dispute [...]