FanNation

1 % of pitches. Who cares.

Buckeyes FTW | 08/13/07, 03:36 PM

The statistical significance is beyond weak. This article is pathetic.

Zebedee | 08/13/07, 04:09 PM

America is a racist country, we just have to accept that.
But in this case we can address the symptom with QuesTec.

I guess the gods who accidentally made us Americans so racist, thank QuesTec's manufacturer for helping to alleviate their mistake.

Even gods make ooopsies sometimes!

HappyGilbert | 08/13/07, 04:27 PM

this study is FAR FAR too limited to draw any conclusions worth publishing. Journalistic rabble-rousing is what it is. BOO!

whitesoxmark | 08/13/07, 04:42 PM

This is insanely ludicrous.

What was the probability of error on the study? I'm 100% sure it was more than +/- 1%. Funny how the inflammatory article didn't mention that.

Just another example of idiot ivory tower professors who've never had a real job, trying to justify their existence - and their research grants.

AngelsFan | 08/13/07, 04:44 PM

This article has no merit whatsoever and was a complete waste of time. Typical now days....trying to find racism in everything. Coming from "Time" it doesn't surprise me. Daniel Hamermesh should get back to paying attention at the drive-thru.

TypeO | 08/13/07, 05:03 PM

Enough of the infinite political correctness. Is no one safe from the bleeding hearts, even in the sports world?

baseballfanatic#1 | 08/13/07, 05:23 PM

Isn't it also possible that a pitcher of one ethnicity would be at least somewhat more likely to model his game off of a pitcher of a similar ethnicity? Are minority pitchers more or less likely throw to throw breaking pitches? Are white pitchers more likely to "paint the corners" with non-breaking fastballs and change-ups? Are umpires more likely to call all types of pitches in favor of someone of a similar ethnicity? Fastballs? Breaking pitches? I wouldn't know, because the study seems to fail to take any of this into account.

Ned25 | 08/13/07, 05:43 PM

This is the most ridiculous article I have read all year! Umpired are not going to be perfect. If they make a mistake on only one pitch a game then they are doing d**n good and deserve a raise! I would like to know how much baseball this Hamermesh guy has played...What an idiot!

Sniper | 08/13/07, 05:51 PM

wow...we should totally cancel the world series at this point. 1% of pitches were biased against pitchers of color? i mean, how much time did Hamermesh spend thinking up this one? not once does he mention anything about the $6 beers or $5 hot dogs. with the doping in professional sports not to mention the new NBA gambling scandal, we needed to find another thing to hang athletes and referee's with? thanks for sucking the fun out of our sports. it's people like Hamermesh that take the fun out of sports by pulling back the white curtain to show Bud Selig, the Grand Wizard of the Emerald National Pastime. get a life.

Donpedro | 08/13/07, 06:48 PM

Wow...another study on racism. Amazing.

Why didn't this study mention the race of the batter?!?!?!? We know that Albert Pujols will get calls that any player on the Pirates will NOT. I guess the study could not have addressed the race of both the hitter AND pitcher...it would have screwed up his percentage.

STICK TO ECONOMICS, PROFESSOR.

Lazo | 08/13/07, 07:50 PM

and the tax payers paid for this BS

colo_diver | 08/13/07, 08:51 PM

1% of the pitches. The probablity that 1 or 2 bad calls (due to race) affects a game (likely after the 7th inning) is even less. Add to that the race of the batter and it really gets complicated. Heck, why not add the managers race into the mix? Ball boy maybe????? Mascot???? What is the Philly Fanatics race anyway.....

mexyank | 08/13/07, 09:25 PM

My initial reaction as an umpire is that there is no way when facing watching and judging pitches coming at that speed that one could even subconciously make a change in the judgment based on the race.

As another response said, did he take the race of the batter into account? The height of the batter must be taken into account with every pitch also. Why wouldn't an umpire be responding to the race of the batter.

It's beyond ridiculous.

Rita C | 08/13/07, 10:13 PM

There are two separate issues here, both of which I will address. The first is the study's reliability and the other is Time's reporting of it. I went and found the paper that Time summarizes in their article to ascertain how meaningful it was. I realize most people have an aversion to math, especially statistics, and I'm not one of them, so I wanted to look at the raw data to make sure their handling of it was appropriate. It does not appear to be. No where in the paper (which is not published at all, a significant eyebrow raiser...in the world of science, a paper that is unpublishable is a paper not worth the ink used to write it) is there mention of their specific error. The never report the level of error. While their sample size is enormous (over 2 million pitches, most data crunchers would love a sample size that large), they fail to report not only what their error is, but indeed, if they even measured their error. That's basically strike one, two, and three right there. To claim that a 1% difference is statistically significant (which, over a 2 million+ size data pool is more than feasible) there must be a transparent accounting of the method used to calculate the error in their statistical manipulations. They do not, thus from an objective viewpoint, their conclusions are groundless. It may still be true, but their handling of the data does not display this, if indeed it is.

The other point is Time's reporting. While I am unfamiliar with the finer points of writing a paper in the economic sciences for hopeful publication, I cannot imagine that this is a good example of it. Time should be employing people who can tell the difference between legitimate articles and that produced by an undergraduate in fulfillment of a lab course. This paper reads like the latter. I am honestly surprised that this rather poorly written document would receive national media exposure. Though, if you head over to the drugereport.com, you'll see that Time magazine's subscription has fell over 17% in the past year. So perhaps this example of poor journalism is not as surprising as I thought.

Sorry for the long post, but I was a little surprised by everyone's harsh judgements when it's probably safe to assume that none of you bothered to look at the paper yourselves. Subconcious behaviors (regardless of the speed at which a baseball travels) and a statistically significant 1% difference over a sample size of over 2 million are both well within the realm of possibility. This paper, however, does not display this as rigorously as it needs to.

DrewT | 08/13/07, 11:05 PM

This has nothing to do with race and everything to do with favoritism.......certain umpires like certain players and that's that. Does anyone really think Tom Glavine could get those 300 wins without being so beloved by the men in blue all these years and being given strikes on all those balls 10 inches off the plate all those years in Atlanta? Same for Maddux, same for Pujols or Arod the other way on close pitches to them. Umpire favoritism toward certain players has been rampant since the beginning of time, and it has absolutely nothing to do with racism. Unless the ump's from Alabama......lol, lol, lol.

Mark1npt | 08/13/07, 11:56 PM

Big difference between racism and favoritism.....every ump favors certain players for all kinds of reasons. Baseball has been that way since it's inception. Anybody really believe Tom Glavine got those 300 wins on his own? How about all those years of Atlanta catchers setting up a foot outside and Glavine getting strikes? How about a rookie pitcher getting squeezed the first few years until he proves to the umps he has control of the strike zone? Amazing how the strikes go up when a young pitcher credits an ump with calling a good game or just befriends a few of them? What an idiot for thinking the one pitch the ump blows a game is racially motivated against the pitcher.......if I was this idiot researcher's boss I'd racially motivate his **** right out of a job and give it to a friend of mine!

Mark1npt | 08/13/07, 11:57 PM

Thank you DrewT for your insightful comments.

As a science major, I am exposed to the complexities of statistic analysis.

What I find absolutely ridiculus is that magazines such as Time and the newspapers with the earlier NBA ref bias paper do not allow these studies to go through the academic filter necessary to be published in an actual journal of science.

Its just speculation without this

tom brocaw | 08/14/07, 12:25 AM

Why do people find it so hard to take observations for what they are. The study observed a bias and with the introduction of penalty for that bias in the form of scrutiny, the bias diminishes. Doesn't anyone read anymore?

@Lazo: Why didn't this study mention the race of the batter?!?!?!?
Well, the article says the study found no influence based on the batter's race

@ all who claim this is about minority pitchers
The study observed bias as long as the umpire and pitcher were of different races. Hispanic pitchers face Black umpires, for example.

@sniper
Does it make if difference to you if you know beforehand which call will be in error. If you are a betting man it is to your advantage to know which team is not likely to get called strikes.

@all who say "1%, who cares"
Give me one percent of your net worth? 1% is approximately the advantage the MIT blackjack team had over the casinos and that slight advantage drove the casino operators nuts. A true 1% advantage where the stakes are high can make you very wealthy.

@mexyank: "likely after the 7th inning
That is just your wishful thinking. The data are available so if you want to back it up, please go ahead.

@Time and in concurrence with DrewT
You should have noted that the paper is unpublished. This still does not excuse the irrational attacks.

Seems puzzling to me that people who call for a level playing field scream foul when informed that that field may have some major bumps, It seems almost everyone missed one big point of the research -- MLB is just a proxy for the labor market as a whole which only the most na??ve (or most racially biased) believe exhibits no racial bias. Hammersh, et al seek to show that simple measures can reduce this bias. Their results need to be scrutinized, but not by those who consider uncomfortable observations some form of political position paper.

I am sure the more rational baseball fans are already looking over the stats to figure out better betting strategies.

BallJunkie | 08/14/07, 12:25 AM

These are not irrational attacks. Most were cogently written and quite germane to the subject matter. However, I have a few questions.

Who decided which pitches were bad calls? The professor? The student? Exactly how do you analyze 2.1 million pitches? Video? GameDay? This study apparently didn't address the means of which it came by its conclusion of "bias" What if the professor and/or student had a bias when judging what they perceived as "bad calls" ?(One can just imagine that interchange). And just who are they to decide bad calls to begin with?

This "study" and subsequent article are testament to academia's and the media's fixation on race.

jjmeeker | 08/14/07, 09:26 AM