Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Randomness

Over time, things have a habit of evening out. What I mean by this, I suppose, is that while something really peculiar may occur, you would expect things to eventually revert to normal (whatever that may be).

Sometimes, however, things that occur are so bizarre that they are noteworthy, even though they are just random fluctuations.

An example of this would involve Doc Ellis's having pitched a no-hitter while on LSD. Most of the time that people are on LSD, they don't pitch a game, but if you started a study on people under the influence of LSD on June 12, 1970, you might have assumed that it was a common occurrence.

That's all pretty intuitive and very useless.

My point is that sometimes things happen and they are interesting in their out-of-the-ordinary way. *

My point is that Honus Wagner, the greatest shortstop in baseball history (and it's not close) pitched 8.1 innings in his career and had an ERA of 0.00. **

*I think that this is what I am trying to say. The fact that Babe Ruth led the AL in home runs 12 times in his career is pretty amazing. But if had, say, turned a triple play once, it would have a distinctly different kind of interest to it.

** Which means, in case you were wondering, that he pitched so well that he didn't have an ERA+. And you thought Zack Greinke was good!

By the Way: There's a new poll up.

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