You may recognise me from my English Football series. I am still working on this, but a mix of being busy IRL and writer's block have precluded a new instalment. I hope to get the drama juices flowing with another sporting mishap and another football instalment up at some point this week
For now, we take a trip back to the 1930s and discuss the England cricket team's controversial 'Bodyline Tour' of Australia
Background
It is often something of a national joke that the British are excellent inventors but poor innovators. They often invent a new concept before being promptly overtaken by the rest of the world in it. The Industrial Revolution and the computer as we know it both owe their origins to the British, but Britain was the first major economy to suffer post-industrial decline, and there has never been a major British computing giant in the vein of Microsoft.
Sport is no different. British national teams dominate none of the three classic team sports codified and spread across the world during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
When an Australian cricket team toured England in 1882 and inflicted a shock defeat against England at the Oval in London, a satirical obituary printed in the papers mourned the 'death of English cricket' and that the ashes would be cremated and taken to Australia. This is the genesis of international cricket's second most intense rivalry and the reason that full Test series between England and Australia are known as 'The Ashes'.
After the First World War Australia ran rampant in international cricket. From 1918 to 1925, England mustered just one win out of fifteen tests over three five-test tours against Australia. Things picked up a little after 1925 and the passing of a 'golden generation' of Australian crickets while England saw an uptick in talent, but one man would change all that and tip the balance back in Australia's favour.
Enter the GOAT
If you were forming a team of the best 11 cricketers of all time covering all positions, to include Sir Don Bradman would be a no-brainer. Generally considered the greatest batsman of all time with a career batting average of 99.94 runs (for reference, the best batsmen in contemporary Test cricket would average about 60-65) and quite possibly the greatest Australian sportsman to ever represent his country in any sport, the Don absolutely changed things.
Australia toured England in 1930 and were widely expected to get a drubbing from England owing to their side's inexperience compared to the increasingly ascendant English side.
This isn't what happened.
In the Third Test at Headingley in Leeds Don scored 309 runs in a single day, a feat unsurpassed to this day. Also unsurpassed is his record of 974 runs over a standard five-Test series.
At the Fourth Test at the Oval in London English players and commentators noticed that Don struggled to play against 'bouncers', fast balls pitched short in order to bounce fairly high towards the batsman. I'll give a rundown of bowling mechanics later, but suffice it to say that this information would become critical later.
Australia surprised all by winning the series 2-1 and the shy and self-effacing Don was suddenly thrust into the limelight of an adoring Australian public. Don also thrust himself into the attentions of those in England who sought to avenge the defeat by winning the next English tour of Australia.
Enter Douglas Jardine
The cricket administrator 'Plum' Warner had noticed Don's struggles against aggressive fast bowling at the Oval, and he rapidly put himself to work planning on how to neutralise Don Bradman when England toured Australia in 1932-3, for surely only then could the Ashes be reclaimed.
He saw to Douglas Jardine being appointed captain of the England side in 1931 as a prelude to the tour. Jardine was amenable to Warner's plans and strongly disliked Australians. In the 1928-9 tour he received a good amount of 'banter' from Australian supporters owing to his haughty demeanour and habit of playing while wearing his Oxford University cap, the latter was hardly rare at the time amongst those entitled to one, but Jardine wore one while fielding which was a little strange. He also fielded out on the boundary, near the spectators, and proved an awkward outfielder which further encouraged mockery from Australian supporters. Rather than shrug it off or endear himself to the home crowd by giving a little back, he tended to draw in on himself and criticise what he saw as uneducated and lower class Australians.
A Plan Assembles
Jardine arranged to meet the two fast bowlers from Nottinghamshire (English professional cricket was and is organised on counties) Harold Larwood and William Voce. Nottinghamshire had been a dominant side in the late 1920s with their fast bowling, and Jardine saw in them a solution to his Don problem.
Remembering Don's discomfort against high-pitching balls at the Oval in 1930 and believing Don Bradman to be physically lacking in courage and inclined to shirk against aggressive bowling, Jardine asked the two men if they could repeat this style of bowling and do so accurately. They believed they could, and after a trial in the domestic competitions yielded mixed results, the England team departed for Australia in late 1932 eager to reclaim the Ashes with their secret weapon.
The Mechanics of Bodyline
I'll very briefly try and explain what we mean by 'Bodyline'. Essentially in cricket the bowler typically tries to hit three wooden stumps (called the wicket) with his delivery. The batsman generally faces the bowler side-on and stands slightly to one side of the wicket, meaning that a ball aimed at the wicket is generally unlikely to hit the batsman. When we talk about pitch we talk about how the bowler makes the ball bounce. A cricket delivery nearly always involves the ball bouncing at some point between the bowler and the wicket. The earlier (or shorter) that the ball bounces, the higher it will be when it comes to the batsman. This is an important part of cricketing strategy as different bowling styles suit different circumstances and pitches.
Jardine essentially asked Larwood and Voce to bowl leg-side (that is at the side of the wicket the batsman stands on) and pitch it short, meaning the balls comes directly at the batsman and at an intimidatingly high angle.
The batsman's reflex move, if he does not duck, is to use his bat as a shield and try and push the ball away, this puts it straight towards fielders on his leg-side who will be close.
On this diagram you may notice the 'Slips'. They are close-in fielders used when bowling aggressively for close catches. The slips are shown here on the 'off' side, opposite the batsman, but in 1932 they could line up like this directly behind the batsman's leg in order to take catches from the strokes he makes to defend himself from high balls.
A final major factor is the pitch. Australian pitches have more 'bounce' than English ones owing to generally being drier, making a tactic reliant on short-pitching to generate high balls more extreme in Australia than England.
Arrival in Australia
Jardine came to Australia with a score to settle, claiming from the off he had not come 6,000 miles to 'make friends'. The Australian press had noted his selection of an unprecedented four fast bowlers as being an obvious retort to Don Bradman's genius with the bat, and such comments did little to defuse what was already becoming a contentious tour.
In the matches before the main Test series against Australia against various Australian sides such as New South Wales England dabbled a little with Bodyline bowling but did not seriously employ it. It was enough to indicate the direction that Jardine had gone with his tactical choices and initially a substantial section of the Australian cricketing world accepted that England had merely adopted long-standing theories around fast bowling which had been common enough in the English domestic game.
The Early Tests
Don Bradman didn't play in the first test in Sydney. He was embroiled in a dispute with the Australian cricketing authorities about his writing a newspaper column, although Jardine appeared convinced that he had simply bottled it or had a mental breakdown.
The First Test was a comfortable win for England as Jardine's methods bore fruit. Larwood took ten wickets and a strong English batting performance saw England win essentially with an innings to spare.
Nonetheless, the early seeds of the forthcoming shitstorm were apparent. One of Jardine's fast bowlers, Gubby Allen, accepted using aggressive fielding positions but refused to bowl directly at Australian batsmen. An Indian princeling, the Nawab of Pataudi, on the English side (who would later go onto captain the Indian team, making him one of few Test cricketers to represent two countries) refused to field in an aggressive position on the batsman's leg side, to which Jardine remarked that 'His Highness is a conscientious objector' and largely removed him from the side for the rest of the series. Australian cricket remained split, with many still seeing Bodyline as a sharp but lawful practise.
The Second Test in Melbourne saw Don return. True to form, he scored a century, while a disastrous English batting performance granted the match to Australia. Jardine, a batsman, in particular had a bad game. Normally icy and virtually emotionless on the pitch, he did a 'war dance' when Don was surprisingly bowled out early in the first innings, showing perhaps his sheer desire to 'get one over' on the Australians.
Adelaide
England would win the Third Test in Adelaide, but at the cost of potentially ending the tour and causing a huge rift.
On the second day a Larwood ball hit the Australian captain, Bill Woodfull. The English fielders crowding around the batsman's position gathered around Woodfull to check on him, while Jardine called out 'well bowled, Harold!' in earshot of a now-irate Australian crowd. 'Sledging', the practise of playing mind-games against a batsman, was nothing new in cricket, and Jardine apparently intended to unnerve Don, who was the non-facing batsman and so stood near to him, but he succeeded only in appalling Woodfull and the Australian supporters.
Woodfull for his part gained respect for not retaliating during this game and acting perhaps more magnanimously towards the English players than most people would.
But it gets worse.
Later that day, 'Plum' Warner went to the Australian dressing room to visit Woodfull and apologise in person. Warner had sought to make Jardine captain, but he had likely underestimated Jardine's single-minded desire to defeat Australia by any means. Woodfull's reply to Warner was leaked to the press, to the fury of all involved and his quote would go down in cricketing history

I don't want to see you, Mr Warner. There are two teams out there. One is trying to play cricket and the other is not

Warner tried to tell Jardine about this, who appeared unrepentant.
Could it get even worse?
Absolutely.
The following day another Larwood ball struck an Australian player. Bert Oldfield was knocked unconscious and suffered a fractured skull in an era where cricket helmets were unheard of but the ball was the same wood and leather as today. The ball which struck Oldfield was a misplaced 'bouncer' rather than a true bodyline ball, but it became symbolic of the highly aggressive bowling which Larwood was rapidly gaining notoriety for.
You can see Oldfield falling to the right in this picture
Diplomacy
Things escalated, as at the end of the fourth day the Australian cricket authorities warned their English counterparts of the diplomatic damage being done to the otherwise close relationships between Britain and Australia, which was self-governing in nearly all respects but not quite wholly independent. Their telegram directly accused the English team of unsportsmanlike behaviour contrary to the spirit of cricket.
After a reply from England, the Australian authorities requested that the series continue but that 'bodyline' bowling would be considered by the authorities afterwards. The English authorities now seemed those most inclined to end the series, stating they would only play if the Australians retracted the 'unsportsmanlike' accusation.
At this point, the actual governments got involved.
Neither the British nor Australian governments wished to see relations damaged over cricket and both sought to defuse the situation. Eventually the Australian cricket authorities retracted the accusation but only after the Prime Minister of Australia intervened, as he did not wish to risk a public boycott of Australian goods in Britain for an economy still heavily reliant on the British export market.
The Series Winds Down
Bill Voce missed the Fourth Test in Brisbane and his replacement with a spin-bowler (ie a style of bowling by definition incapable of 'bodyline') indicated a shift away from the pure dedication to this approach. Larwood was now the only bowler still committed to bodyline bowling, but he appeared to dip in form after the earlier tests and was less effective.
England won this match and the final Test in Sydney, but without resorting to the methods employed in the earlier games.
Legacy
Relations between Britain and Australia did weaken, with some anecdotal evidence of reduced trade and antipathy towards Britons in Australia and Australians in Britain existing during the mid-1930s.
Bodyline became more widely used for a brief period after the tour in England as Larwood and Voce continued to ply their trade at home. The method saw heavy employment by both sides when a team from the West Indies toured England in 1933, and it did turn English opinion against it. In the words of Wisden, the main cricketing publisher

Most of those watching it for the first time must have come to the conclusion that, while strictly within the law, it was not nice.

In 1935 the laws of cricket changed. It was now forbidden to directly bowl at a batsman, and the umpire had discretion to forbid it on the pitch. A later law in 1957 altered fielding arrangements (banning more than two fielders being in the quadrant behind the batsman on his leg side) which effectively prevented pure bodyline from happening.
That being said, the concept of intimidatory high-pitched bowling has remained. There are limits on how many balls can be bowled in this way, but it isn't banned. In the era of mandatory helmets in the professional game and the proliferation of other protective equipment against fast bowlers it is a part of modern cricket to an extent which would doubtless shock both the English and Australians of 1932-3.
Bodyline didn't stop Don Bradman. He was a young man in 1932 and his greatest career highlights were ahead of him as he attained truly unbeatable batting averages for Australia. Following a hiatus in the Second World War, he captained Australia on a triumphant 'Invincible' tour of England in 1948.
What of Jardine, Larwood, and Voce? Larwood and Voce remain heroes for Nottinghamshire cricket, having a stand named after them at Trent Bridge in Nottingham, a major ground which generally sees an Ashes Test when Australia tours England.
Bill Voce and Harold Larwood did not have their reputations unduly damaged by bodyline. They were both working class players from Nottinghamshire (Larwood an ex-miner, and Voce from a mining town), then a major coal mining county in the Midlands, in contrast to Jardine's more elite background. It became generally accepted they had merely done Jardine's bidding. Bill Voce had a largely unremarkable career after 1933 and had never committed as strongly to bodyline as Larwood had.
Larwood was largely unrepentant. He had been the most prominent of the bodyliners and had cold relations with Don Bradman. As an old man he claimed he never bowled at a batsman's head, but he would sometimes aim for the chest or legs.
Ironically Larwood moved to Australia after the Second World War, joining thousands of Britons who benefited from subsidised emigration to Australia. He received a warm welcome from both Australian cricket and the public, although his broad Nottinghamshire drawl caused some issues in understanding apparently. He occasionally received abuse when the topic came up in the media, but generally lived quietly in Australia with a few slightly cantankerous media appearances in the 1970s to criticise the proliferation of protective equipment for batsmen and to criticise the then-England star all-rounder Sir Ian Botham. When he received a medal for lifetime service to cricket in 1993, an Australian newspaper expressed the class angle quite bluntly.

At last the ruling classes honour the man who carried the can for their savage arrogance

Jardine for many is the villain of this piece. He represents an elite and classist attitude towards the more egalitarian Australians, whom he nursed a strong distaste for. As above, Australian opinion would later forgive working class English players who bowled bodyline, but such forgiveness did not come to Jardine. Nonetheless, he was a complex figure who above all had a desire to win which went beyond the norms of sporting decency in his time. He left cricket in 1935, disillusioned with negative press and the phasing out of bodyline. The English cricket establishment was all too happy to blame the scandal on him, and his name has gone down in cricketing infamy, deservedly or not.

Infantilization of Gen Z

East Coast kids VS Bay Area kids

Hi! It's January! I took two weeks off after I finished with students on Dec 30, and it was really bad!
A joke I like is that there is nothing inherently dangerous about traveling 300 miles per hour. It is only when you stop traveling 300 miles per hour that you are at risk.
I decelerated sharply into the New Year, and it was not pretty.
But now I'm doing OK! My cat is here! She's cleaning her face with her paw!
—-
...I'm still kinda fried. I have a big piece coming called "I don't have senioritis, and neither do you." The problem is, I have all the symptoms of what we call senioritis, only I'm a workaholic man-child instead of a teenager. I don't feel like writing anything that matters right now.
So! Instead! I have a fun one!
One of the 70,000 weird/awesome things about my current job is I work with students all over the world...kind of. I actually worked this fall with exclusively students from the San Francisco Bay Area and East Coast. Also, two God Slayers: one from Texas and one from what was formerly the USSR. But they both get their own pieces someday because they are two of the most inspirational human beings I have ever met.
Also, one absolute bro-legend from LA. But that kid is also Bay AF (you know I'm right), so he gets in as an honorary Bay member.
So him plus the other 17? Well, it's seven from the Bay and eleven from the East Coast.
That seems a bit lopsided. But I also worked with 100% Bay kids at my old Cupertino tutoring-center job. I've also lived here 25 of my 29 years on planet Earth, so excuse me if I fill in some blanks about how we go dumb here.
Consider this my Spiderman: Far From Home — A fun, unpretentious interlude after the end of an epic saga that both reflects on what's happened as well as prepares everyone for an exciting future that is in limbo because of COVID-19. Let's hit it!
East Coast kids are from all over. Bay Area kids are...from the Bay Area
We got Canada (Hi!!), DC, Delaware, Florida, Jersey, also Jersey, New York, also New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
In my mind, the entire East Coast is roughly 2/3rds the size of California. That led to a lot of fun conversations like this one:
"Ya. I think I'd like Cornell because it wouldn't be so hard to travel back home and see my sister."
"I agree. Do you think you could bring a car up?"
"I mean, I think I'd fly. It would take like 20 hours to drive there from Florida."
"Oh."
*Student goes quiet as she realizes I've already cashed the check.*
For the Bay, we have...like, Fremont. Um, I know one is close to where I grew up. Another is in Bellevue, I think?
A couple were real close to me here in Palo Alto. A few knew students I'd worked with in years before! Gotta admit, it was surreal being on a Zoom call working with someone whom I could bike to, only we ever knew each other because they liked what I wrote on Reddit. The present and future of client acquisition is creative social marketing. I told this to the 25 other people in my Berkeley college consulting class last February, and not one even tried to listen. Maybe a 17YO reading this will.
I plan to be Zoom man going forward. But the plan next fall is to rent out a shared workspace once a month somewhere centralized—probably Hayward—on Saturday and invite all my local Zoomers to come enjoy complimentary sodas with me while we work. I'll even bring my shitty $130 Amazon laptop I used last year with last year's crumbs still inside it! If an East Coast kid wants to make the fourteen-hour drive across the country, I'll throw in a free session.
I also plan to make a Bay student work all day with me at a specific fast-casual chain restaurant, so we may then get his or her ass into U Chicago.
Bay Area kids have more "traditional" ECs while East Coast kids get weird
It's not just non-profits. Bay kids love them some USACO, DECA, MUN, COVID charity involving Zooming with old people, lab internships with places I've lost money on trying to pump and dump through Robinhood, and all the other classics.
Not trying to hate. These kids are good at what they do. There's simply a lot of overlap in what they do. Bay kids also seemed to have a larger, deeper range of activities. Like a well-stocked buffet instead of a home-cooked meal.
East Coast kids? Significantly weirder. Stuff like raising bugs, and building model planes, and working at zoos, and learning fake musical instruments, and creating puzzles. Stuff that I, Mattie, College With, really like. I'm still kind of fingers crossed that colleges will, too, because otherwise the Matrix I've cocooned myself within comes crashing down. I'm already scanning for duplicate black cats.
This is one of the top battles I will be scanning for in a few months when decisions come back. As I see it, there are two thought processes an AO could have, each benefitting a different wing of the country:
1) AOs at top schools are trying to build an elite class of specialists. Meaning they prioritize excellence over all else. Being excellent at something weird isn't as good as being excellent at something common, but it is still better than being very good at lots of stuff.
2) AOs at top schools scan EC lists to check off certain “must-haves” like they’re filling out a DMV form. Because that’s what they were told matters during their two weeks of training before getting to decide the fate of the world’s most sensational young people.
By my tone, you can probably guess which one I want to be true. By my tone, you can probably guess which one I'm terrified is true.
East Coast kids apply to the UCs with the same mindset you might have while opting to order an ice-cream cone with your meal at McDonald's.
Oh...Ya! I would like that! Hmm...can I afford to do it? Oh, look! Here's $1.21 in my cupholdefour hours on a Friday I found! That's plenty!
It's difficult for me to accept. I go so hard with my Bay kids on the UCs. Of course we do; they're the UCs! In my career, I have literally had one Bay student not apply to the UC system because she was stubborn. Guess who!
I won't say that the UC work was the most critical content for most Bay kids, but it was certainly a priority. All four essays discussed, outlined, edited, looked over, then usually we'd re-write the bad one before sending it all in, just ahead of schedule. Maybe not a war in itself but certainly a major battle.
East Coast kids? They just kind of did it. By my count, five of the eleven chose to apply. Of those, only one seemed to care that much about how good the work was. Then he got in ED so WELP.
The other four were some flavor of, "Ya, I did them. I think they're fine. I only checked the box for Berkeley, UCLA, and *insert third UC with a program they're interested in that there is a 0% chance they will attend*.
I wasn't, like, angry at them. But it was such a culture shock chatting with them vs. Bay kids, whom I had already spent 10+ working hours with, crafting that perfect third essay about their job at the mall to make sure UC Davis found them well-rounded enough.
I guess I should chill out consider how I talk when a student applies to Michigan, UNC, UVA, U-Dub, Purdue, or any other destination state school:
Ya, man. This school's pretty solid, but also it's a state school a billion miles away and also you'll be paying twice as much as everyone else to go there. The good news is that these schools are desperate for cash and will shamelessly accept OOS kids to cover their asses. You have stats at or above their averages, which my personal data suggests means you have a 99.3% chance to get in.
...How dare I. I have zero idea how my Eastern Warriors will fare against the impenetrable fortress that is UC admissions! They don't even take test scores anymore! That makes them way more likely to choose students who have earned the right to be there instead of those who will make them more money and/or support ongoing applicant quotas!
...Apply to UCLA and Berkeley more, East Coast kids. Ain't nobody been laughed out of nowhere for a UCLA/Berkeley degree. And also, pay me to help you so that I may claim credit for it when you do get in. I'm buying the shirt, either way.
Bay kids have much less of a problem with the concept of paying a consultant like me in the first place
NGL, point Bay kids.
This was my mindset, as well. I had a consultant in high school back in 2009. She alerted me to Tulane and referred to it as "a school on the rise." She was technically correct. In the same way America is currently "increasing resources towards supporting public health". There were still watermarks on buildings when I got there.
But that's the vibe here. Grabbing a consultant is "what you do." It's not good or bad. It's like applying morals to hiring a private batting instructor to help you with your swing. Sure, many students can't afford it, but if you can, you do.
East Coast kids I had to justify my existence to a bit more. It wasn't like I was forcing anyone to take my help; they found me. But many Atlanticans seemed relieved that my system wasn't about making shit up or sneaking them in as a farming major but instead about taking what they'd done, learned, and felt in high school and packaging it as effectively as possible.
This is also where I can answer a question you might have:
Why did I only work with Bay Area and East Coast kids?
Cause I'm expensive. Soz. What it comes down to is cost of living. Everything costs more in the Bay Area: clothes, food, the right to sleep inside. College consulting merely follows that trend. A similar level of inarguable affluence is required in East Coast hot spots like Tri-State and Maryland. I am expensive in the same way the place I used to work at was expensive. The difference is now you get me whereas last year you got maybe but probably not me.
I have no doubt that there are tons of midwest students out there who would like to work with me. And some of them likely could afford me. But that's a tougher ask when they could instead go to their local guy who costs a fourth as much. Now, what's stopping that local midwest guy from hopping on Zoom and taking clients from the coasts at a much higher rate while still enjoying the lower cost of living from his home state?
?
US college consultants currently range in price from $12 to have a Stanford student use Grammarly to $1.5 million for 30 hours with an intimidating lady in a super nice office. It seems impossible for me to believe there's a satisfying r between escalating price and resulting value.
I'll be thinking of ways to merge this divide in the future. I wanna get some bro from Montana into Duke.
While talking to East Coast kids, I would occasionally hear large birds making noises from outside their house
This is the only actual difference.
East Coast kids get out of school around 11:30AM PST
OMG IT'S THE BEST
IT'S THE BEST!!!
In previous years, I worked with all Bay kids. For reasons I still don't understand, Mon-Fri they couldn't meet until around 4 PM. Apparently, they had to go to some facility near their house that made them do things besides write fun essays for their new best friend.
The result was my schedule looked something like this:
Tue-Thur: 4PM-9PM
Fri: 4:30PM-10PM
Sat: 8AM- 6PM
BURN IT WITH FIRE.
But that was just the deal. Kids have school, so I work when they're not in school. I also had to sit and wait an hour in between meetings sometimes because no student could fit that spot. Did my tutoring center pay me for those hours? Do I still work there? Throw in an hour of Bay Area commute, and I'm so mad.
But this year??!?! This year I got to work with the sun out like a real-life human! Peep this shit:
Tue-Wed: 1PM-6PM
Fri: Noon-6PM
Sat: 9AM-6PM
THAT'S SO MUCH BETTER!!!!
All it took was starting a company with no business experience, creatively marketing it on a high-demand/low-supply social network, creating and releasing a book's worth of written content in five months for free, and capitalizing on new-found consumer trust in digital consulting to entice a formerly skeptical client pool to pay me!!!
And then I didn't have to work at night anymore!!!
So that's how it went. I'd meet with EST students first and then PST after. Saturdays didn't matter so much. One annoyance is that sometimes I would try to meet with a student before school if something was on fire. With 100% certainty, that student would be East Coast, meaning my ass would need to be up at like 5AM to make it work. Also, sometimes I’d casually book an East Coast student at 7PM PST, only for them to appear in a halo of darkness, illuminated only by their Macbook screen, eyes both exhausted and defeated.
...
Oh! And also, I have Zoom at my house. So I'd wake up every day seven minutes before my first session. Then, in between meetings, I'd play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for fifteen minutes to relax. Sometimes I would eat roast beef from my fridge so I wouldn't be hangry. I'd then resume steering the lives of the future most powerful people on Earth. What a country!
Everyone applies to USC. Everyone.
I have 17 unfinished blog files in my Google Drive. About 10 I started and failed to finish this fall. One of them was about the USC supplements. I didn't get that far, but I would like to include my central thesis for how I see them:
The USC Supplements are what I would have come up with if my ADHD were unmedicated at the time.
They're frustrating. Frustrating because there was obvious time and energy put into them. Frustrating because there are cool, different ideas up and down the form. Frustrating because they represent the USC brand well and give off a positive vibe of the school to prospective students.
Frustrating because they are a Goddamn mess.
And I would know. USC is in that weird Michigan/Georgetown/Tulane/Santa Barbara range where it's either a reach or safety for everyone. I don't think a single student this year super wanted to go to USC and also thought they would get in. The result is I have filled out those stupid QuIrKy short-answer questions like 15 times. All I have is meta-analysis:
The following short questions are good and fun:
– Describe yourself in three words.
– What is your favorite snack?
– Dream job.
– Dream trip.
– Favorite book.
– If you could teach a class on any topic, what would it be?
The following short-answer questions suck because they say nothing about the student and also elite teens don't have time to consume media:
– Best movie of all time.
– If your life had a theme song, what would it be?
– What TV show will you binge watch next?
– Which well-known person or fictional character would be your ideal roommate?
That theme song question is so bad. No one has a theme song.
I still don't know what the hell they wanted for the Dornsife essay. I also misread it one time as "Dornslife," and now 100% of the time read it in my head as "DORNS-LIFE!" in the same way you would scream "thug-life."
Lol I ranted about USC for a bit because I ran out of material. There really wasn't that much difference besides the bird noises
What I want to write now is what all my students this year had in common. Namely that all of you worked your ass off this fall, and I am so proud and grateful to have had the opportunity to spend time with you. I never want to be that old guy who comes to school to talk about his time serving in Vietnam, only to go on a rant about how "college applications were so much simpler back then. I didn't do any of this stuff!" Ya, dude. We know. We don't have to worry about being drafted.
But I did feel it with you students. I didn't work as hard in high school as you have. I mostly goofed around and let my natural talents make up for my lack of everything else. It worked out for me, alright, but I don't think I'll ever shake the wonder of what I could have accomplished if I went for it. You all went for it, and I think nearly all of you will be pleasantly surprised by what your academic future has in store. I merely plan to be pleasantly.
And what made you different? Everything. That's why this article was clickbait trash. Screw coastlines. My absolute, #1, bestest, most favorist thing about this job is how wildly different every student I meet is. You all have different personalities, and backgrounds, and stories, and interests, and talents, and flaws, and dreams, and insecurities, and greatness inside you that I pray you one day see as clearly as I do.
None of you are perfect, which makes me realize that perfect doesn't exist; if it did, some of you would have willed yourself there by now. Instead, you're a collection of some of the smartest, kindest, most likable human beings I have ever met—each with a dazzling coating not found anywhere else on Earth. I crave novelty, so such variety is the spice that makes my current life so fulfilling. It is how you were different from any other student I've met that will make it impossible for me ever to forget you.
You're neat. Teens are neat. Holy shit teens are so neat! I love my job so much.
Thank you so much for being my Zoomers. I hope you thought I was neat, too.
- Mattie

The Sacred Grove and Grod's Law: How Path of Exile's fundamental itemization design conflicts with its own crafting system

Edit: Actual TL;DR - There is none. It's a complicated issue and I'm hoping you will take the time to read the post if you want to engage in the discussion. That's why the post is tagged 'discussion'.
I made a lengthy comment after reading this post yesterday. What a crazy helmet! But it was the top comment chain in that thread that caught my attention, particularly this comment:

Annoyance leads to a group that is willing to put up with it getting all the rewards but hating the game because it's annoying and a second group that doesn't put up with it but hates that they're missing out on the stuff the first group is getting. Everyone loses.

My thoughts on this subject probably merit its own discussion thread, so here it is.
This reminds me of Grod's Law:

Grod's Law: You cannot and should not balance bad mechanics by making them annoying to use

Years ago on the Giant in the Playground forums (a community for the D&D 3.5 edition tabletop roleplaying game), an argument broke out when a user recommended balancing the absurd power of magic using classes by making them meticulously track their material components for each spell.
For those unaware, material costs for spells that didn't have an explicit monetary cost listed were generally just flavorful; holdovers from Gary Gygax's day at the helm, basically little Easter eggs in the game. Like Detect Thoughts required you to use 2 copper pieces to cast, e.g. 'penny for your thoughts?', and Fireball required you to use bat guano (known to be high in sulfur content) and saltpeter (chemically combined they create an exothermic reaction IRL).
Anyway, your wizard or whatever was expected to buy a spell component pouch for a few gold and that pouch was assumed to have all the basic material components they'd need for most spells in limitless quantity. Spells in D&D can be incredibly powerful and versatile in their use, and the most powerful builds in the game all involve casting magic. Well, this user suggested balancing those spells by making wizards have to spend time gathering their individual material components. Want to cast Fireball? Spend a few days scraping bat shit off the cave floor, etc.
The problem with this rationale is that it doesn't really solve any problems. Wizards are still just as powerful, but now the player has to go out of their way, detracting from the campaign and story, so they can scrape their spell juice off the dungeon floor. Grod argued the following:

The disruptive munchkin ignores it, argues it, or forces the rest of the group to suffer through it. His power remains the same, and he gets more annoying to play with.
The inappropriate powergamer figures out how to circumvent the restriction. His power remains the same.
The reasonable player either figures out how to circumvent the restriction (rendering it moot), avoids the class (turning it into a ban) or suffers through it. His power remains the same and/or his enjoyment goes down.
The new player avoids the class or suffers through it. His enjoyment goes down.

Tie this back into PoE already!

Yes, sorry. Thanks for putting up with my rambling.
I kinda feel like harvest is like this - A terrible implementation of a mechanic that GGG (i.e. Chris Wilson) hates (i.e. thinks is 'bad' for the game). It highlights a massive problem with itemization and crafting in this game.
Way too much character power is tied up in gear as compared to skills and passives. And Harvest crafts are so powerful because other crafting tools in PoE are are way too random, but the power creep in items over the years has made it way too appealing (various influence mods for example). Crafting most items is a gamble, plain and simple. Gambling is just not appealing to many people, and it can get expensive very fast. It's layers upon layers of RNG for even the chance of getting a decent item, some of which can be build-enabling, and there are very few deterministic methods of getting what you want. It's far easier to just buy a powerful item like that from someone else. Of course, that can't be done for SSF players, but even in trade league it can be problematic when GGG balances the game around meta-builds (supply and demand means you might not get to enjoy playing your build because upgrades are too expensive).
GGG wants the game to be like this. They want you to engage in the skinner box of gambling RNG they've designed. Harvest just doesn't jive with how they want you to build your character, but it's immensely popular for anyone who hates gambling and wants to build their character in a predictable and targeted way. Their solution was to leave it in the game but make it as cumbersome and obnoxious to engage with as possible, so it becomes a massive opportunity cost to do so.
You find a grove in a map. Cue 20 to 30 minutes of reviewing your stash and gear for possible upgrades and reviewing craft options for valuable ones that might be sold on TFT, etc. It completely disrupts the flow of the game and you can barely save enough valuable crafts for one or two side builds. When you finally do get one of the few good craft options, you might not even have something to use it on! Ultimately it's far more time-efficient to sell your good crafts (using 3rd party mechanisms, of course) and just keep playing the game.

How does this affect me, SaneExile?

The system affects the game exactly how Grod proposes:

The inappropriate powergamer figures out how to circumvent the restriction. His power remains the same.

PoE isn't a collaborative tabletop game like D&D, so "inappropriate powergamer" is, well, an inappropriate name for this group. Optimizing gameplay in PoE is perfectly reasonable and encouraged. But people who trade crafts in large volume on TFT or are in massive guilds throwing around thousands of exalts are not your average optimizer, and are not affected by this cumbersome barrier to entry. They find the optimal solution and just incorporate it into their gameplay and profit off it massively.

The reasonable player either figures out how to circumvent the restriction (rendering it moot), avoids the class (turning it into a ban) or suffers through it. His power remains the same and/or his enjoyment goes down.

Reasonable player -> average PoE player. The distinction between these two groups can get fuzzy, but it's hard to argue that someone playing 40 hours per week and someone playing 10 hours per week can achieve the same levels of effectiveness. Practice makes perfect, and practice takes time. Those in large communities are, likewise, not really playing the same game as the solo players (e.g. aura-bots, trade groups, etc.). For some, efficiency is measured in chaos per hour. For a few, it can be exalts per hour. This group is very much the former.

The new player avoids the class or suffers through it. His enjoyment goes down.

Class -> game mechanic. In this case, I'm sure a lot of people just pretend the Sacred Grove doesn't exist. Harvest is a thing that other people do. And if they do choose to engage with it, its cumbersomeness and complexity means their overall enjoyment of PoE is diminished. I couldn't even begin to explain the system to someone new to the game, at least in a reasonable manner that doesn't sound like a college economics lecture.

Conclusions

So, average people either suffer through harvest's implementation because it's so damn useful, or they avoid it and suffer FOMO or other gambling-induced psychological issues because the power-players in the community are cranking out incredibly OP gear on the trading market. Lose-Lose. This isn't unique to harvest, it's just the most obvious with this crafting system in the game. Crafting in general is fucked up, when you really consider how it's designed to prey on gambling addiction.
This might not be a problem in the short term (obviously you don't need the helmet posted above to make specters work), but in the long term it throws off the balance of the game through power creep. The Raise Specters gem was meganerfed this league, but it's definitely still playable, and with items like this, it's not even that much weaker than before. Essentially, the power of the skill was offloaded from the gem to PoE's itemization system, and the barrier to OPness is that much higher. The rich get richer and the average market has one less meta build.
GGG really fucked up Harvest, but it's only because Harvest highlighted just how fucked up crafting in this game is. Super powerful crafts have always been something only the PoE rich engage with regularly and with any significant profit. Harvest, for its league at least, let more casual players engage with that system. And the power creep ended up being so massive that they hamstrung it every chance they got.
Ultimately, GGG's implementation ends up hurting the whole game because of Grod's Law - the benefits of it are minimized while the annoyance is maximized. It's possible we can benefit from some stopgap solutions, like more horticrafting station space, tradeable crafts (like beasts), etc., but many of these come with their own host of issues. They're just bandaids on the crafting mechanic as a whole, which is a product of the itemization design.
TL;DR, thanks for coming to my TEDTalk. General disclaimer that this is my personal opinion of the state of the game, one that I've put way too much time into. It's still fun in a lot of ways, but the more I play the more I see problematic design features creeping their way into the game.
Edit: Well this took off. I've been trying to address arguments from you all as best I can, but there's one I noticed in particular keeps coming up and I think my main post didn't clarify my stance as well as it could've:
I'm not against the idea of RNG. Randomness in itself is not a problem for this genre or most games in general. I am however very much against the argument that, 'well the entire game is randomness so more randomness is fine.' I've tried to address that in this comment, which I'll link instead of reiterating.

CBS Article: Why MLB teams might start changing how they value high-contact hitters (McNeil mentioned)

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/why-mlb-teams-might-start-changing-how-they-value-high-contact-hitters/
Is a high-average renaissance coming in baseball? By Matt Snyder
"Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game" was published in 2003. Michael Lewis' book was then turned into a movie that was released in 2011. And yet, in 2021, there are still so many people out there with the misconception that playing "Moneyball" was about a specific stat ("Moneyball is on-base percentage!" the ignorant will cry out) or even some sort of "sabermetrics" revolution to make people hate the stats they long held near and dear in favor of "newfangled" stuff.
I'll pause for laughter.
No, it's actually about finding market inefficiencies. That is, what skillsets are other teams undervaluing and how can we acquire players -- mostly cheaply -- to exploit this for our gain. There have been several iterations since the initial movement from average to OBP and slugging. Defense is certainly up there, a combination of shifting/positioning and getting undervalued defensive players. Things have obviously been done on the pitching side, such as shortening the game with super bullpens and using openers, among other things.
In light of where things are headed right now in baseball, I'm wondering if we're coming full circle very soon with what type of hitter is undervalued.
That is to say, while the initial "Moneyball" movement set baseball on a path, where average was less important than the other two main rate stats (meaning more emphasis was put on drawing walks -- and, in related matters, working deep counts -- and hitting for power). In the process, we have seen a great shift toward the so-called Three True Outcomes (home runs, walks, strikeouts).
As a result, who got left a bit behind? The high-average, high-contact hitters, possibly with low power.
I said I'm wondering if we're about to come full circle because not only do I believe there's a chance at a market inefficiency in there, I also think the forces of the game are swinging toward this type of hitter being undervalued.
Strikeouts continue to rise. More and more, it seems like whichever team each game hits "the big home run" is the one that goes on to win. Here are the lowest batting averages in MLB since World War I:
1968: .237 1967: .242 1972: .244 2020: .245 If we're wondering about the small sample or want to blame the pandemic, the 2019 average was .252 and the league hit .248 in 2018.
If some of those years above jumped out, it's for good reason. After 1967-68, the pitcher's mound was lowered. After 1972, the American League added the DH.
Meanwhile, in 2020, strikeouts per team game actually dropped -- to the second-most all-time -- from 2019, but 2020 marked the first year it wasn't a new strikeouts per game record since 2007.
It's gotten to the point that it isn't just a small subset fans or curmudgeon broadcasters whining. Many baseball fans acknowledge the game needs more on-field action. At this point, pretty open-minded and even-keel people are discussing that something has to change. Home runs are great. Walks were far too long an underappreciated part of the game. Big strikeouts are excellent to watch. It's just that we should have more than those things along with groundballs and fly balls going right at nearly perfectly positioned defenders.
On one hand, the pitchers and defense are very good. On another, maybe the shift in philosophy left too many different types of hitters behind. Maybe things should tilt back a bit the other way?
After stepping down from his perch as Cubs president, Theo Epstein took a job with the commissioner's office and said something along these lines (emphasis mine).
"As the game evolves, we all have an interest in ensuring the changes we see on the field make the game as entertaining and action-packed as possible for the fans, while preserving all that makes baseball so special. I look forward to working with interested parties throughout the industry to help us collectively navigate toward the very best version of our game."
He had recently sort of lamented his own role in shaping the game, too. Via The Athletic:
"There are some threats to it because of the way the game is evolving," Epstein said. "I take some responsibility for that. Executives like me who have spent a lot of time using analytics and other measures to try to optimize individual and team performance have unwittingly had a negative impact on the aesthetic value of the game and the entertainment value of the game in some respects."
The hunch here is Epstein will have commissioner Rob Manfred's ear pretty strongly in the next few years. We've also already seen Manfred discussing things like either banning or limiting the shift along with something to curtail strikeouts, such as lowering and/or moving back the mound.
Zeroing in on the possibility of shifts going away, and low-strikeout guys become even more valuable. It doesn't take an Epstein-savvy front office member to figure out the chances of finding a hole without the defense perfectly crafted to a spray chart increase.
Further, after seeing so many strikeouts in huge spots with runners on base over the past several years, I can't help but think that even if a hitter that sits something like .230/.340/.500 can be valuable, evening that out with a high-average contact hitter to keep the line moving at times would be beneficial in creating a more well-rounded lineup.
The poster boy here is D.J. LeMahieu. Believe it or not, Epstein actually inherited him with the Cubs, but traded him away his first offseason with Tyler Colvin for Ian Stewart and Casey Weathers. Stewart looked like the high-walk, high-power guy teams coveted at the time (important update: He wasn't). Despite winning a batting title, winning three Gold Gloves and making two All-Star teams, LeMahieu only got a two-year, $24 million deal with the Yankees after the 2018 season as mostly an afterthought in a huge offseason. He went on to finish fourth in AL MVP voting. Then he finished third last season, leading the majors with a .364 average while also pacing the AL in OBP, OPS and OPS+.
Finally heavily sought after, LeMahieu got six years and $90 million to stay with the Yankees this offseason. Yes, he's developed his power, but he only struck out 90 times in 655 plate appearances in 2019 and 21 times in 195 plate appearances in 2020.
With everything conspiring in this direction anyway, I think LeMahieu is starting a wave.
Here are some others (in a non-exhaustive list) who could become increasingly valuable moving forward into the next decade of baseball evolution.
Tommy La Stella - A broken leg cost La Stella half the 2019 season in what looked like his career year. He already had 16 homers, yet had still only struck out 28 times in 321 plate appearances. Last year, he had the lowest strikeout percentage in baseball while hitting .281 with a .370 OBP.
Ketel Marte - Pay too much attention to the loss of power in just 45 games last year at your peril. He still hit .287 and was tough to strikeout. I'm not expecting a full bounce-back to MVP-caliber levels of 2019, but his bat-on-ball skills have pretty steadily improved for five years straight.
David Fletcher - He's improved all three years in all three rate stats and sports a career .292 average with just 123 strikeouts in 1,190 plate appearances. He also ranks near the very bottom of the league in stuff like barrel percentage, exit velocity and hard-hit percentage. Sending some conventional 2019 people running for the hills is a good trait for someone to have when looking for market inefficiency, right?
Jeff McNeil - Why pick between McNeil and a Pete Alonso type when you have both? McNeil in 248 career games is a .319 hitter with only 123 strikeouts in 1,024 plate appearances. Like Fletcher, his "batted ball profile" leaves a lot to be desired, too.
Trea Turner - We've seen former Turner teammates Bryce Harper and Anthony Rendon strike it very rich in free agency while his current teammate Juan Soto rightfully will garner a ton more attention here in the short term. Just don't forget about Trea. His strikeout percentages aren't excessive -- remember, as a leadoff man he takes tons of plate appearances -- and he's a career .296 hitter. He makes consistent contact, has some power and can fly.
Kevin Newman - Newman had a dreadful 2020 season, but it was only 45 games in the middle of a pandemic. I'm not going to harp on that when we've got 130 games of a .308 hitter in 2019 who only struck out 62 times in 531 plate appearances. Don't sleep on him.
Jean Segura - Segura became a different hitter in 2020. His strikeout percentage jumped from 11.8 to 20.7. Along with it went his previously high average. But he walked a lot more and his OBP went up. It was weird. Regardless, keep in mind what a fluky season 2020 was. Segura was in the top five percent of toughest hitters to strikeout in 2018 and 2019 while topping a .300 average 2016-18. He's 30. I have faith in him being productive with a good average and lower strikeout rate in 2021. And hey, maybe he'll even keep walking. I never said it was bad.
Jake Cronenworth - As a rookie last year, Cronenworth put together a season in which he would've struck out around 90 times in a full year while hitting .285. His minor-league and amateur profile has long shown someone with good contact skills capable of a higher average. He was never a top-100 prospect in the minors, but he now heads into territory where he can have an impact simply by being differently valuable than the 2010s prototype.
To be clear, this premise isn't even remotely saying teams should load up on only these types of players. The best lineups are the most well-rounded. Get you a few of these types to pair with some big boppers and things would be looking pretty damn nice. The conditions are ripe for a bit of a sea change in how hitters are valued in these next few years. Watch LeMahieu, La Stella and company for a guide while someone like Cronenworth carries the torch to the next generation.

A comprehensive list of books that will help you think clearly

A comprehensive list of books that might be of interest to people that want to read something that would improve their thinking or some friends?
I have not read many of these, thus I can not personally vouch for all of them or recommend one over the other.
I'm not affiliated with Goodreads, but linked to them since I wanted to include the ratings and they have links to several different sources including libraries if you want to borrow or acquire any one of these, and often some quality reviews.
The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths
by Michael Shermer 3.93 · Rating details · 6,985 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9754534-the-believing-brain
The Believing Brain is bestselling author Michael Shermer's comprehensive and provocative theory on how beliefs are born, formed, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished.
In this work synthesizing thirty years of research, psychologist, historian of science, and the world's best-known skeptic Michael Shermer upends the traditional thinking about how humans form beliefs about the world. Simply put, beliefs come first and explanations for beliefs follow. The brain, Shermer argues, is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the senses, the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. Our brains connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen, and these patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive-feedback loop of belief confirmation. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our beliefs as truths.
Interlaced with his theory of belief, Shermer provides countless real-world examples of how this process operates, from politics, economics, and religion to conspiracy theories, the supernatural, and the paranormal. Ultimately, he demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine whether or not a belief matches reality.
Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life
by Richard Paul, Linda Elder
3.93 · Rating details · 1,082 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17296839-critical-thinking
Critical Thinking is about becoming a better thinker in every aspect of your life: in your career, and as a consumer, citizen, friend, parent, and lover.
Discover the core skills of effective thinking; then analyze your own thought processes, identify weaknesses, and overcome them. Learn how to translate more effective thinking into better decisions, less frustration, more wealth Ñ and above all, greater confidence to pursue and achieve your most important goals in life.
The Thinker's Guide to Analytic Thinking by Linda Elder,Richard Paul
3.89 · Rating details · 163 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19227921-the-thinker-s-guide-to-analytic-thinking
This guide focuses on the intellectual skills that enable one to analyze anything one might think about - questions, problems, disciplines, subjects, etc. It provides the common denominator between all forms of analysis.
It is based on the assumption that all reasoning can be taken apart and analyzed for quality.
This guide introduces the elements of reasoning as implicit in all reasoning. It begins with this idea - that whenever we think, we think for a purpose, within a point of view, based on assumptions, leading to implications and consequences. We use data, facts and experiences (information), to make inferences and judgments,based on concepts and theories to answer a question or solve a problem. Thus the elements of thought are: purpose, questions, information, inferences, assumptions, concepts, implications and point of view. In this guide, authors Linda Elder and Richard Paul explain, exemplify and contextualize these elements or structures of thought, showing the importance of analyzing reasoning in every part of human life. This guide can be used as a supplement to any text or course at the college level; and it may be used for improving thinking in personal and professional life.
The Thinker's Guide to Intellectual Standards by Linda Elder, Richard Paul
4.19 · Rating details · 16 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19017637-the-thinker-s-guide-to-intellectual-standards
Humans routinely assess thinking – their own thinking, and that of others, and yet they don’t necessarily use standards for thought that are reasonable, rational, sound.
To think well, people need to routinely meet intellectual standards, standards of clarity, precision, accuracy, relevance, depth, logic, fairness, significance, and so forth.
In this guide authors Elder and Paul offer a brief analysis of some of the most important intellectual standards in the English language. They look at the opposites of these standards. They argue for their contextualization within subjects and disciplines. And, they call attention to the forces that undermine their skilled use in thinking well. At present intellectual standards tend to be either taught implicitly, or ignored in instruction. Yet because they are essential to high quality reasoning in every part of human life, they should be explicitly taught and explicitly understood.
The Truth Seeker’s Handbook: A Science-Based Guide by Gleb Tsipursky (Goodreads Author) 4.24 · Rating details · 63 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36800752-the-truth-seeker-s-handbook
How do you know whether something is true? How do you convince others to believe the facts?
Research shows that the human mind is prone to making thinking errors - predictable mistakes that cause us to believe comfortable lies over inconvenient truths. These errors leave us vulnerable to making decisions based on false beliefs, leading to disastrous consequences for our personal lives, relationships, careers, civic and political engagement, and for our society as a whole.
Fortunately, cognitive and behavioral scientists have uncovered many useful strategies for overcoming our mental flaws.
This book presents a variety of research-based tools for ensuring that our beliefs are aligned with reality.
With examples from daily life and an engaging style, the book will provide you with the skills to avoid thinking errors and help others to do so, preventing disasters and facilitating success for yourself, those you care about, and our society.
On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not
by Robert A. Burton 3.90 · Rating details · 2,165 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2740964-on-being-certain
You recognize when you know something for certain, right? You "know" the sky is blue, or that the traffic light had turned green, or where you were on the morning of September 11, 2001--you know these things, well, because you just do. In On Being Certain, neurologist Robert Burton challenges the notions of how we think about what we know.
He shows that the feeling of certainty we have when we "know" something comes from sources beyond our control and knowledge.
In fact, certainty is a mental sensation, rather than evidence of fact.
Because this "feeling of knowing" seems like confirmation of knowledge, we tend to think of it as a product of reason.
But an increasing body of evidence suggests that feelings such as certainty stem from primitive areas of the brain, and are independent of active, conscious reflection and reasoning. The feeling of knowing happens to us; we cannot make it happen. Bringing together cutting edge neuroscience, experimental data, and fascinating anecdotes, Robert Burton explores the inconsistent and sometimes paradoxical relationship between our thoughts and what we actually know.
Provocative and groundbreaking, On Being Certain, will challenge what you know (or think you know) about the mind, knowledge, and reason.
The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
by Christopher Chabris,Daniel Simons 3.91 · Rating details · 13,537 ratings · 704 reviews
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7783191-the-invisible-gorilla
Reading this book will make you less sure of yourself—and that’s a good thing. In The Invisible Gorilla, Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, creators of one of psychology’s most famous experiments, use remarkable stories and counterintuitive scientific findings to demonstrate an important truth: Our minds don’t work the way we think they do. We think we see ourselves and the world as they really are, but we’re actually missing a whole lot.
Again and again, we think we experience and understand the world as it is, but our thoughts are beset by everyday illusions. We write traffic laws and build criminal cases on the assumption that people will notice when something unusual happens right in front of them. We’re sure we know where we were on 9/11, falsely believing that vivid memories are seared into our minds with perfect fidelity. And as a society, we spend billions on devices to train our brains because we’re continually tempted by the lure of quick fixes and effortless self-improvement.
The Invisible Gorilla reveals the myriad ways that our intuitions can deceive us, but it’s much more than a catalog of human failings. Chabris and Simons explain why we succumb to these everyday illusions and what we can do to inoculate ourselves against their effects. Ultimately, the book provides a kind of x-ray vision into our own minds, making it possible to pierce the veil of illusions that clouds our thoughts and to think clearly for perhaps the first time.
Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking
by M. Neil Browne, Stuart M. Keeley
3.94 · Rating details · 1,290 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/394398.Asking_the_Right_Questions
The habits and attitudes associated with critical thinking are transferable to consumer, medical, legal, and general ethical choices. When our surgeon says surgery is needed, it can be life sustaining to seek answers to the critical questions encouraged in Asking the Right Questions This popular book helps bridge the gap between simply memorizing or blindly accepting information, and the greater challenge of critical analysing the things we are told and read. It gives strategies for responding to alternative points of view and will help readers develop a solid foundation for making personal choices about what to accept and what to reject.
On Truth by Simon Blackburn 3.60 · Rating details · 62 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36722220-on-truth
Truth is not just a recent topic of contention. Arguments about it have gone on for centuries. Why is the truth important? Who decides what the truth is? Is there such a thing as objective, eternal truth, or is truth simply a matter of perspective, of linguistic or cultural vantage point?
In this concise book Simon Blackburn provides an accessible explanation of what truth is and how we might think about it.
The first half of the book details several main approaches to how we should think about, and decide, what is true.
These are philosophical theories of truth such as the correspondence theory, the coherence theory, deflationism, and others.
He then examines how those approaches relate to truth in several contentious domains: art, ethics, reasoning, religion, and the interpretation of texts.
Blackburn's overall message is that truth is often best thought of not as a product or an end point that is 'finally' achieved, but--as the American pragmatist thinkers thought of it--as an ongoing process of inquiry. The result is an accessible and tour through some of the deepest and thorniest questions philosophy has ever tackled
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
4.16 · Rating details · 317,352 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11468377-thinking-fast-and-slow?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=ZNhf1bAIxd&rank=1
In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.
Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking.
He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking.
Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do by John A. Bargh (Goodreads Author)
3.97 · Rating details · 788 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35011639-before-you-know-it
Dr. John Bargh, the world’s leading expert on the unconscious mind, presents a “brilliant and convincing book” (Malcolm Gladwell) cited as an outstanding read of 2017 by Business Insider and The Financial Times—giving us an entirely new understanding of the hidden mental processes that secretly govern every aspect of our behavior.
For more than three decades, Dr. John Bargh has conducted revolutionary research into the unconscious mind, research featured in bestsellers like Blink and Thinking Fast and Slow. Now, in what Dr. John Gottman said was “the most important and exciting book in psychology that has been written in the past twenty years,” Dr. Bargh takes us on an entertaining and enlightening tour of the forces that affect everyday behavior while transforming our understanding of ourselves in profound ways.
Dr. Bargh takes us into his labs at New York University and Yale—where he and his colleagues have discovered how the unconscious guides our behavior, goals, and motivations in areas like race relations, parenting, business, consumer behavior, and addiction.
With infectious enthusiasm he reveals what science now knows about the pervasive influence of the unconscious mind in who we choose to date or vote for, what we buy, where we live, how we perform on tests and in job interviews, and much more.
Because the unconscious works in ways we are completely unaware of, Before You Know It is full of surprising and entertaining revelations as well as useful tricks to help you remember items on your to-do list, to shop smarter, and to sleep better.
Before You Know It is “a fascinating compendium of landmark social-psychology research” (Publishers Weekly) and an introduction to a fabulous world that exists below the surface of your awareness and yet is the key to knowing yourself and unlocking new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38315.Fooled_by_Randomness
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb 4.07 · Rating details · 49,010 ratings
Fooled by Randomness is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand.
Philosophy books
Epistemology by Richard Feldman 3.84 · Rating details · 182 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/387295.Epistemology
Sophisticated yet accessible and easy to read, this introduction to contemporary philosophical questions about knowledge and rationality goes beyond the usual bland survey of the major current views to show that there is argument involved. Throughout, the author provides a fair and balanced blending of the standard positions on epistemology with his own carefully reasoned positions or stances into the analysis of each concept. KEY TOPICS: Epistemological Questions. The Traditional Analysis of Knowledge. Modifying the Traditional Analysis of Knowledge. Evidentialist Theories of Justification. Non-evidentialist Theories of Knowledge and Justification. Skepticism. Epistemology and Science. Relativism.
Problems of Knowledge: A Critical Introduction to Epistemology by Michael J. Williams
3.79 · Rating details · 86 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/477904.Problems_of_Knowledge
"What is epistemology or 'the theory of knowledge'? Why does it matter? What makes theorizing about knowledge 'philosophical'? And why do some philosophers argue that epistemology - perhaps even philosophy itself - is dead?" "
In this introduction, Michael Williams answers these questions, showing how epistemological theorizing is sensitive to a range of questions about the nature, limits, methods, and value of knowing.
He pays special attention to the challenge of philosophical scepticism: does our 'knowledge' rest on brute assumptions? Does the rational outlook undermine itself?"
Williams explains and criticizes all the main contemporary philosophical perspectives on human knowledge, such as foundationalism, the coherence theory, and 'naturalistic' theories. As an alternative to all of them, he defends his distinctive contextualist approach.
As well as providing an accessible introduction for any reader approaching the subject for the first time, this book incorporates Williams's own ideas which will be of interest to all philosophers concerned with the theory of knowledge.
Philosophy: The Basics
by Nigel Warburton 3.84 · Rating details · 1,928 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31854.Philosophy
Now in its fourth edition, Nigel Warburton's best-selling book gently eases the reader into the world of philosophy. Each chapter considers a key area of philosophy, explaining and exploring the basic ideas and themes.
What is philosophy? Can you prove God exists? Is there an afterlife? How do we know right from wrong? Should you ever break the law? Is the world really the way you think it is? How should we define Freedom of Speech? Do you know how science works? Is your mind different from your body? Can you define art? For the fourth edition, Warburton has added new sections to several chapters, revised others and brought the further reading sections up to date. If you've ever asked what is philosophy, or whether the world is really the way you think it is, then this is the book for you.
The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14829260-the-oxford-handbook-of-thinking-and-reasoning
by Keith J. Holyoak (Editor), Robert G. Morrison (Editor)
4.08 · Rating details · 12 ratings
Thinking and reasoning, long the academic province of philosophy, have over the past century emerged as core topics of empirical investigation and theoretical analysis in the modern fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience. Formerly seen as too complicated and amorphous to be included in early textbooks on the science of cognition, the study of thinking and reasoning has since taken off, brancing off in a distinct direction from the field from which it originated.
The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning is a comprehensive and authoritative handbook covering all the core topics of the field of thinking and reasoning.
Written by the foremost experts from cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience, individual chapters summarize basic concepts and findings for a major topic, sketch its history, and give a sense of the directions in which research is currently heading.
Chapters include introductions to foundational issues and methods of study in the field, as well as treatment of specific types of thinking and reasoning and their application in a broad range of fields including business, education, law, medicine, music, and science.
The volume will be of interest to scholars and students working in developmental, social and clinical psychology, philosophy, economics, artificial intelligence, education, and linguistics.
Feminist Epistemologies
(Thinking Gender) by Linda Martín Alcoff, Elizabeth Potter 4.14 · Rating details · 43 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/477960.Feminist_Epistemologies
Noticed this review by an evangelical:
"I have found this an immensely suggestive book, collecting as it does essays from both prominent and rising figures in feminist philosophy of knowledge--albeit from about two decades ago. I am struck by how little impact feminist thought, even of this high and generally temperate quality, has had on evangelical theology, to the shame of my guild."
-John
The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves by Dan Ariely 3.94 · Rating details · 13,620 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13426114-the-honest-truth-about-dishonesty
The New York Times bestselling author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality returns with thought-provoking work to challenge our preconceptions about dishonesty and urge us to take an honest look at ourselves.
Does the chance of getting caught affect how likely we are to cheat? How do companies pave the way for dishonesty? Does collaboration make us more honest or less so? Does religion improve our honesty?
Most of us think of ourselves as honest, but, in fact, we all cheat.
From Washington to Wall Street, the classroom to the workplace, unethical behavior is everywhere. None of us is immune, whether it's the white lie to head off trouble or padding our expense reports. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, award-winning, bestselling author Dan Ariely turns his unique insight and innovative research to the question of dishonesty.
Generally, we assume that cheating, like most other decisions, is based on a rational cost-benefit analysis.
But Ariely argues, and then demonstrates, that it's actually the irrational forces that we don't take into account that often determine whether we behave ethically or not.
For every Enron or political bribe, there are countless puffed résumés, hidden commissions, and knockoff purses. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, Ariely shows why some things are easier to lie about; how getting caught matters less than we think; and how business practices pave the way for unethical behavior, both intentionally and unintentionally. Ariely explores how unethical behavior works in the personal, professional, and political worlds, and how it affects all of us, even as we think of ourselves as having high moral standards.
But all is not lost. Ariely also identifies what keeps us honest, pointing the way for achieving higher ethics in our everyday lives. With compelling personal and academic findings, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty will change the way we see ourselves, our actions, and others.
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (Goodreads Author)
4.27 · Rating details · 59,893 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17349.The_Demon_Haunted_World
How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions.
Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.
What Is the Name of This Book?
by Raymond M. Smullyan
4.24 · Rating details · 757 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/493576.What_Is_the_Name_of_This_Book_
If you're intrigued by puzzles and paradoxes, these 200 mind-bending logic puzzles, riddles, and diversions will thrill you with challenges to your powers of reason and common sense. Raymond M. Smullyan — a celebrated mathematician, logician, magician, and author — presents a logical labyrinth of more than 200 increasingly complex problems. The puzzles delve into Gödel’s undecidability theorem and other examples of the deepest paradoxes of logic and set theory. Detailed solutions follow each puzzle
The Art of Logic in an Illogical World
by Eugenia Cheng 3.55 · Rating details · 740 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38400400-the-art-of-logic-in-an-illogical-world
How both logical and emotional reasoning can help us live better in our post-truth world
In a world where fake news stories change election outcomes, has rationality become futile? In The Art of Logic in an Illogical World, Eugenia Cheng throws a lifeline to readers drowning in the illogic of contemporary life. Cheng is a mathematician, so she knows how to make an airtight argument. But even for her, logic sometimes falls prey to emotion, which is why she still fears flying and eats more cookies than she should. If a mathematician can't be logical, what are we to do? In this book, Cheng reveals the inner workings and limitations of logic, and explains why alogic--for example, emotion--is vital to how we think and communicate. Cheng shows us how to use logic and alogic together to navigate a world awash in bigotry, mansplaining, and manipulative memes. Insightful, useful, and funny, this essential book is for anyone who wants to think more clearly.
How to Think about Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age
by Theodore Schick Jr. Lewis Vaughn, Martin Gardner (Foreword)
4.00 · Rating details · 530 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41756.How_to_Think_about_Weird_Things
This text serves well as a supplemental text in:

critical thinking
logic
introduction to philosophy
philosophy of science
epistemology
metaphysics
introduction to psychology
anomalistic psychology
perception and cognition

as well as any introductory science course.
It has been used in all of the courses mentioned above as well as introductory biology, introductory physics, and introductory chemistry courses. It could also serve as a main text for courses in evaluation of the paranormal, philosophical implications of the paranormal, occult beliefs, and pseudoscience.
Popular Statistics
Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data
by Charles Wheelan 3.94 · Rating details · 10,367 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17986418-naked-statistics
Once considered tedious, the field of statistics is rapidly evolving into a discipline Hal Varian, chief economist at Google, has actually called “sexy.” From batting averages and political polls to game shows and medical research, the real-world application of statistics continues to grow by leaps and bounds. How can we catch schools that cheat on standardized tests? How does Netflix know which movies you’ll like? What is causing the rising incidence of autism? As best-selling author Charles Wheelan shows us in Naked Statistics, the right data and a few well-chosen statistical tools can help us answer these questions and more. For those who slept through Stats 101, this book is a lifesaver. Wheelan strips away the arcane and technical details and focuses on the underlying intuition that drives statistical analysis. He clarifies key concepts such as inference, correlation, and regression analysis, reveals how biased or careless parties can manipulate or misrepresent data, and shows us how brilliant and creative researchers are exploiting the valuable data from natural experiments to tackle thorny questions.
And in Wheelan’s trademark style, there’s not a dull page in sight. You’ll encounter clever Schlitz Beer marketers leveraging basic probability, an International Sausage Festival illuminating the tenets of the central limit theorem, and a head-scratching choice from the famous game show Let’s Make a Deal—and you’ll come away with insights each time. With the wit, accessibility, and sheer fun that turned Naked Economics into a bestseller, Wheelan defies the odds yet again by bringing another essential, formerly unglamorous discipline to life.
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't by Nate Silver
3.98 · Rating details · 43,804 ratings · 3,049 reviews
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13588394-the-signal-and-the-noise
One of Wall Street Journal's Best Ten Works of Nonfiction in 2012
New York Times Bestseller
"Not so different in spirit from the way public intellectuals like John Kenneth Galbraith once shaped discussions of economic policy and public figures like Walter Cronkite helped sway opinion on the Vietnam War…could turn out to be one of the more momentous books of the decade." -New York Times Book Review
"Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise is The Soul of a New Machine for the 21st century." -Rachel Maddow, author of Drift
"A serious treatise about the craft of prediction-without academic mathematics-cheerily aimed at lay readers. Silver's coverage is polymathic, ranging from poker and earthquakes to climate change and terrorism." -New York Review of Books
Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair's breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger-all by the time he was thirty. He solidified his standing as the nation's foremost political forecaster with his near perfect prediction of the 2012 election. Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight.com.
Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty. Both experts and laypeople mistake more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the reason for failure. If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can get better too. This is the "prediction paradox": The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future.
In keeping with his own aim to seek truth from data, Silver visits the most successful forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball, from the poker table to the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA. He explains and evaluates how these forecasters think and what bonds they share. What lies behind their success? Are they good-or just lucky? What patterns have they unraveled? And are their forecasts really right? He explores unanticipated commonalities and exposes unexpected juxtapositions. And sometimes, it is not so much how good a prediction is in an absolute sense that matters but how good it is relative to the competition. In other cases, prediction is still a very rudimentary-and dangerous-science.
Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters tend to have a superior command of probability, and they tend to be both humble and hardworking. They distinguish the predictable from the unpredictable, and they notice a thousand little details that lead them closer to the truth. Because of their appreciation of probability, they can distinguish the signal from the noise.
With everything from the health of the global economy to our ability to fight terrorism dependent on the quality of our predictions, Nate Silver's insights are an essential read.
Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way: Understanding Statistics and Probability with Star Wars, Lego, and Rubber Ducks
by Will Kurt 4.20 · Rating details · 126 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41392893-bayesian-statistics-the-fun-way
Fun guide to learning Bayesian statistics and probability through unusual and illustrative examples.
Probability and statistics are increasingly important in a huge range of professions. But many people use data in ways they don't even understand, meaning they aren't getting the most from it. Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way will change that.
This book will give you a complete understanding of Bayesian statistics through simple explanations and un-boring examples. Find out the probability of UFOs landing in your garden, how likely Han Solo is to survive a flight through an asteroid shower, how to win an argument about conspiracy theories, and whether a burglary really was a burglary, to name a few examples.
By using these off-the-beaten-track examples, the author actually makes learning statistics fun. And you'll learn real skills, like how to:

How to measure your own level of uncertainty in a conclusion or belief
Calculate Bayes theorem and understand what it's useful for
Find the posterior, likelihood, and prior to check the accuracy of your conclusions
Calculate distributions to see the range of your data
Compare hypotheses and draw reliable conclusions from them

Next time you find yourself with a sheaf of survey results and no idea what to do with them, turn to Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way to get the most value from your data.
Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions
by Brian Christian (Goodreads Author), Tom Griffiths (Goodreads Author)
4.15 · Rating details · 19,580 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25666050-algorithms-to-live-by
A fascinating exploration of how insights from computer algorithms can be applied to our everyday lives, helping to solve common decision-making problems and illuminate the workings of the human mind
All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems. What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of new activities and familiar favorites is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not: computers, too, face the same constraints, so computer scientists have been grappling with their version of such issues for decades. And the solutions they've found have much to teach us.
In a dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, acclaimed author Brian Christian and cognitive scientist Tom Griffiths show how the algorithms used by computers can also untangle very human questions. They explain how to have better hunches and when to leave things to chance, how to deal with overwhelming choices and how best to connect with others. From finding a spouse to finding a parking spot, from organizing one's inbox to understanding the workings of memory, Algorithms to Live By transforms the wisdom of computer science into strategies for human living.
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
by David Deutsch 4.12 · Rating details · 5,026 ratings
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10483171-the-beginning-of-infinity
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
In this book David Deutsch argue that all progress, both theoretical and practical, has resulted from a single human activity: the quest for what I call good explanations. Though this quest is uniquely human, its effectiveness is also a fundamental fact about reality at the most impersonal cosmic level – namely that it conforms to universal laws of nature that are indeed good explanations. This simple relationship between the cosmic and the human is a hint of a central role of people in the cosmic scheme of things.

A stroke of genious from Reiji

Since I was too hasty and made this post within 24 hours of the newest chapter it was taken down, fairly I might add, so now I'm reposting it in case someone missed it :)
This is not much of a prediction/foreshadowing, more a foundation of solid data/evidence that some people might find useful for their own theories and in general, an appreciation of Reiji’s solid work put into this series. If you suspect HUGE revealing foreshadowing I’ll disappoint you right away. I do not have the brain capacity nor IQ skills for that
Reposting some of my first thoughts from the Discord server, with additional info after literally spending hours on google maps fleshing out some of the brilliant things Reiji does to make this manga seem more real. Most of this got kick-started by Aqua already posting earlier in Discord in regards to how Reiji uses some real life locations, and I thought to myself ‘I wonder what other nuggets are hiding in plain sight.’ I’ll put each link at the bottom of a section so you never miss a link and it doesn’t stand out in the middle of the reading.
Pinpointing the exact seating Kazuya and Chizuru was sitting in for their ‘date’ was relatively easy. Since some of the groundwork have already been laid out + we had an actual location to go by, it was not too much of a chore to backtrack and find various places from C170 to reassure people that this is actually where we are. As seen in these poorly paint edited SC’s we have railings, floor tiles and various signs, and, we can all but reassure ourselves we are in the dead center of the action, relatively close to the Itabashi ward.Link 1: https://imgur.com/dQUrefpLink 2: https://imgur.com/cS9Y4XuLink 3: https://imgur.com/BqQmWKQ
Then a thought prickled at the back of my head. Itabashi sounded rather familiar and after some quick re-reading the hospital that more or less started this entire charade, is named Itabashi No. 3 Hospital. Now after frantically spending 6 hours on GMaps searching for a hospital that resembled this, I had to give up and say nothing came even remotely close to what where being drawn in the manga. The best guess I could come up with was, see link, but this presented a huge problem, which I will highlight later on.Link 4: https://imgur.com/xdjLdOF
Itabashi seems like a place from where Reiji drew a lot of inspiration for some of the scenery and since I was already 6 hours into GMaps, I might as well find something more to add on top of this. I will not take credit for this as Aqua already stated that Shakujii River is close by, but I did find the bridge where Chizuru and Kazuya are standing on from the cover art Reiji did. It is not a perfect match but some of the key marks does hit the spot and thus I’d say with artistic freedom in mind and Reiji most likely not adapting everything 100% it’s a fair and well established guess.
The railing is the same, although not pictured well since GMaps only had a poor image of this. There is a LOT of Prunus Serrulata, cherry blossom trees, along the water on the same side as Chizuru is standing on. The small increase of height in the road in the cover art, matches that of the real world as well, slightly raising before the end. If you want to believe it, it is the place. Surely.Link 5: https://imgur.com/u5gldemThe arrow on the map represent the ‘date’ place in C170+C171 FYI.Even though I was unable to find the correct hospital at the initial search process, I had different ideas swirling about, that some things would have to be close by to the hospital for Chizuru to: A. Being able to swing a bat with Kazuya before visiting Sayuri in C57. B. Being close to a shrine when she ran to pray for her grandfather’s good health after the accident in C101.Starting with A did not take nearly as long as I thought it would and was actually relatively easy to ‘confirm’. Some of the more easy things to instantaneous notice is the batter sign and the bottom of the telephone number. Both being almost perfect replicas in the manga, I say it is fair to assume that the batting cage in question is Kagusa-Cho Batting. This will be slightly interesting later on.Link 6: https://imgur.com/eMYc3zF
The shrine proved to be a more difficult task. The shrine had a few ‘demands’ to fulfill as well as the batting cage placement. It had to be relatively close by to the hospital, thus also the batting cage, since Chizuru and Kazuya most likely walked from the batting cage to the hospital. What eased my task a bit was realizing Itabashi No. 3 Hospital was the same place Sayuri and Katsuhito was hospitalized in for both C57+C101. Small note also: Sunshine Aqauriam in 1st chapter is within 30 mins walking distance of the Itabashi prefect. And since Chizuru and Kazuya got there pretty fast after she collapsed, well. You get the point.I found something that looked very similar to the shrine from C101. Sharing striking resemblance between the real place and the manga, although with some minor differences, I would place my money on this being the place Chizuru went to pray. Furthermore, a hospital is placed within a 10 min walk/run from the shrine. Now some problems starts to occur. The hospital in question is not called Itabashi No.3 Hospital and the design of it differs greatly from what is visualized in the manga. This being a poor comparison to a set of doors, is not going to cut it for this Discord Server, nor being worthy of it, so while being madly annoyed at the fact that all my work started to slowly crumble I was saved.Link 7: https://imgur.com/tkSbazeLink 8: https://imgur.com/hkyyMLV <-- 10 min walk.Link 9: https://imgur.com/J4alRqh
Remember when I said that the hospital I DID find presented a problematic issue? The issue being that it is a one hour walk, from that hospital in question to the shrine I found and furthermore a good 1,5 hour walk to the batting cage. Luckily, LewdKiddy granted me an article. The author had already done what I’ve been doing as well and pinpointed some of the real life places from the KanoKari series, and at the bottom of the article it states that after searching 30-40 large hospitals in the Itabashi and Nerima ward nothing came close. Since I’ve been doing the same thing for 6 hours in GMaps I concluded this is the one of few times where Reiji did not follow the real life placement one for one, and I’ll stick to my gut with the hospital I mentioned being near the shrine to be the one in C57+C101. Or at least he placed it in the series somewhere around the shrine. The actual hospital in the series does not exist in the manga. Link 10: https://note.com/chronos_pokemon/n/n6c49954300da#XfGce
But this presents another small problem.The batting cage is without a doubt the one I presented before, since the author from the article found the same place as I did, the Kagusa-Cho batting center. This is a 40-45 min walk from the Batting Center to the hospital. Walking a good 40-45 min for Kazuya and Chizuru before they arrive at the Hospital in 57 is a stretch, but I have a decent explanation as how this could be feasible.Link 11: https://imgur.com/jhk7AG2Kazuya’s workplace thanks to the article I have mentioned before was, found relatively easy. There are some differences between the real life place and the manga, but in the manga if memory serves me right, the front sign even changes from one of the chapters. If we stick with the idea that Karaoke Ban Ban, カラオケBanBan成増店, is Kazuyas workplace a few good things happens for the further writing of this entire wall’o’text.Link 12: https://imgur.com/bNAttR0
It is a good 40-45 min. walk directly from Kazuya’s workplace to the batting cage. However as we know Kazuya and Chizuru goes on a date beforehand at a café/dinner by the looks of the sign outside. Now after spending a good agonizing 3 hours on GMaps searching for said café/diner I had to give it up. But from the railing along the pavement seen in the panels in C56P11 I believe it is fair to surmise that we are within the vicinity of Kazuya’s workplace. I did find a café that had somewhat similar chairs outside as pictured in the manga, and the café is neatly placed along the line from Kazuya’s workplace following along the periphery of a circle of ‘40-45 mins walk’ from the batting center. But the café had too many differences in total so maybe Reiji just drew some parallels.Link 13: https://imgur.com/hFOhBrNLink 14: https://imgur.com/lRczLOLLink 15: https://imgur.com/wL1AMZB - Ignore the time of the walk, just to clarify the line of railing.
I’m fairly sure that Kazuya leaves his work right before meeting up with Chizuru based on the bottom of C56P5. We see a black edge around his neck and the shape of said piece of cloth is somewhat visible in the 2nd panel on P5 as well. Taking a look at P8 bottom panel, we see the same shade of black, hence the same clothing. Kazuya left work and went straight to meet Chizuru for their date.Link 16: https://mangadex.org/chapte450304/5Link 17: https://mangadex.org/chapte450304/8
As I’ve tried to mark out on the map above, Link15 , along this ENTIRE road the railing from C56 is present. If the café indeed is placed along this periphery, as I mentioned before, the walk from the Café towards the Batting Center does not decrease, nor increase, significantly and I’d estimate a good 40-45 mins of walking is needed still for them to arrive there. Which would bring them to the batting cage at around 18:00 at the latest with a direct route. We’re treading ‘strechy waters’ but bear with me for a bit. The batting center closes at 22:00 but seeing as the moon is placed low on the night sky by the time Chizuru is playing I’d say we’re still in ‘early’ evening.
By they time the decide to leave it’s higher up since no buildings are present. Having to find moonset/moonrise was a pain since I had to figure out the time of the year. Spring break is over in the start of C56, and spring break happens from around end March to start April. Having at least the months nailed down I started researching for the average moonrise timing in late March, start April, and depending on the day it seems to differ a lot.
It would not be unfair to assume the moon would be up around 18:00ish and since the official date ended at 17:00, while it was still somewhat sunny and having to walk to the Batting Center, could be plausible for the sake of the rest of this discussion. By the time they actually arrive, it IS already dark. Spending an hour batting would not be impossible for Chizuru I’d say but that leaves us at 19:00 before she says she has one more place in mind. This presents a minor problem. The hospital next to the shrine I have ‘chosen’ closes visiting hours at 21:00. But since we’ve already established the hospital doesn’t exist, per say, and after looking at the other 30-40 hospitals in the area, and noted most visiting hours stop at 20:00 – 21:00, I’ll let this slide.
We determine the visiting hours to stop at around 20:00 By the time they arrive at the hospital she says it is 15 mins. until visiting hours stop. The batting center and the hospital is 40-45 minutes apart give or take, and if they stopped batting at 19:00 that would make the time 19:45 giving 15 minutes of visiting. Perfect!Link 18: https://imgur.com/jhk7AG2They arrive home from the date at around 22:00 - 22:10 since the time is clearly stated in C59P10, so that would mean 2 hours from the hospital closing hours, unless they extended it a bit.Link 19: https://mangadex.org/chapte460974/10
Disclaimer - I was unable to see for how long you could bat at the center, but an hour to let steam off as Chizuru called it would not be impossible. Furthermore, the moon raised quite a bit before they left, so it is not unlikely they spend a good amount of time there. If you do not find this plausible then fair enough it is a stretch
So. Where the fook am I, going with all of this ?Literally nowhere.
I wanted to lay some proper ground foundation before I went into the next bit. This server is not worthy of some half-assed analysis so I wanted a solid base to start off from. I’m not the big brainer here with ‘what can/will happened’ but I can provide solid data that others may use for their predictions!All of the events I’ve talked about now happens within the vicinity of each other. I’ll refrain from making predictions, but what is interesting is this: https://imgur.com/K40uYJVThis is what I was getting at I guess. EDIT: It’s chap 101 obviously.
They are relatively close to some of the more major and important moment in their relationship. Everything from first time she broke ‘conduit’ and spent time together after their date at the batting center, to Chizuru’s desperate prayer for her grandfather and lastly the hospital that she knows all too well at this point.
Is this a coincidence them being near the Shrine, Hospital, and the Batting Center or is Reiji pulling another huge move on us is left to be seen. #InReijiWeMaybeTrust Are we gonna see the shrine in play? Are we going to see the bridge in play? Seeing as C171 was a bit of a ‘stand-alone’ just being in this place right now, with all of these small ‘monuments’ of their relationship progressing could bear some meaning.
Another interesting note why go all the way out here, basically to hand back some money?What are your thoughts? Are we going to see the shrine in play or is that not for now. I think I’ve rambled on for long enough. Pick and choose what you find solid, discard the rest and just enjoy this amazing series!

Better Know the Ones Left Off the Ballot #14: Randy Wolf

Sup. You might be wondering what this is. In short, the Hall of Fame ballot doesn't include everyone who qualifies for it. Some dudes cut off names they don't like or remember to make it shorter. This is where I talk about the guys who got cut. I've done this 13 other times if you couldn't tell by the number and they're at the bottom if you want to read them after this one. Now to this one.

Randy Wolf

Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor: 6
Career bWAR (16 years): 22.8 (19.5 w/o batting)
Stats: 133-125, 4.24 ERA, 99 ERA+, 379 GS, 2328.1 IP, 831 BB, 1814 K, 1.349 WHIP
League Leading Stats: Games Started (34, 2009)
Awards: All-Star (2003)
Teams Played For: Phillies (1999-2006), Dodgers (2007, 2009), Padres (2008), Astros (2008), Brewers (2010-12), Orioles (2012), Marlins (2014), Tigers (2015)
Famed poet Lucille Clifton once wrote, "There is a girl inside. She is randy as a wolf. She will not walk away and leave these bones to an old woman." Seemed as good an opening as any to talk about the person that poem was clearly referencing, Randy Asa Wolf. (Please ignore the part where his middle name is actually Christopher) Wolf was a left-handed starting pitcher for 16 years, played on several teams, did pretty well sometimes, not so well some other times, and retired. Generally, pitchers like him are remembered in the hearts and minds of fans of the teams he pitched for, but not by an appearance on the ballot. Players like Steve Trachsel, Kevin Tapani, and Ismael Valdez suffered a similar fate. And so it was for Randy. All the same, he did a fair amount during his career. Certainly didn't walk away and leave those bones to an old woman.
When Randy Wolf was but a Randy Pup, he was drafted in the 25th round of the 1994 draft out of high school. He went to Pepperdine instead, and did so well that in 1997, the Phillies chose him with their 2nd round pick. He'd end up being their highest signed draft choice because J.D. Drew elected not to sign with them after being selected second overall. Much like wolf pups acclimate to the outside world in just a couple months, it didn't take very long for Randy to get used to the baseball world. His 5-0 record and 1.80 ERA in seven lower-A starts showed he was 100% worth the Phillies' high pick. The next year, before he'd even turned 22, Randy was starting games at the triple-A level, and doing very well. In roughly the same time it takes a wolf to reach full maturity, two years after he was drafted, Randy Canis Lupus was on a Major League roster. For his first appearance, he'd be starting a game versus the Toronto Blue Jays. A Blue Jays team whose heart of the lineup was Shawn Green, Carlos Delgado, and Tony Fernandez was held to only six hits and one run in 5.2 innings from Randy Wolf. After he'd captured a win in 5 of his first 7 starts, his spot in the rotation became permanent. Especially noteworthy considering he had competition like Chad Ogea and Carlton Loewer, who are recognized in several circles as "Who Now" and "Should I Know Him." Wolf's year ended on a sour note, both as a pitcher and a member of the Phillies. After that 5-0 start, Wolf would start 14 more games, and go 1-9 in them with a 6.90 ERA throughout. Likewise, Philadelphia, who were 67-59 a week before September started, went 1-16 over their next 17 games, and limped into the offseason at 77-85. While Wolf's 6-9, 5.55 ERA year was definitely worse than he'd wanted, it was still worth 0.3 bWAR. After all, this was the late 90s, and balanced breakfasts of testosterone and HGH were all the rage. He also struck out 116 so that helped too. The positives of his time starting games, coupled with the fact he was only 23 at season's end, all but glued his name to a rotation spot for the next year.
Much in the way that wolves stick together, Randy Wolf would remain a fixture in the Phillies rotation for the next seven years. He'd start 169 games, going 63-51 with a 4.06 ERA, 855 strikeouts, 367 walks, a 1.303 WHIP, and a 105 ERA+. He had his share of highs and lows with the team. And there were many highs, and many lows.

In 2000, he held the Brewers at bay with a quality start in early July, and gave the 38-44 Phillies a glimmer of hope that they could turn the season around. Then he watched the team trade staff ace Curt Schilling three weeks later, and despite Wolf’s 11-9 record and 3.0 bWAR, Philadelphia ended up losing 97 games.
In 2001, he had the best start of the Phillies' year in late September: a 1H, 1BB, 8K shutout of the Cincinnati Reds. He faced only 28 batters, and almost singlehandedly kept the team in the playoff hunt that day. Then Philadelphia finished at 86-76, losing the division race to the Braves with just three games left. 10-11 and a 3.70 ERA with 152 strikeouts in 25 starts was all Wolf could give, but it wasn't quite enough.
In 2002, Wolf took his turn as the staff ace, putting up the lowest ERA, the lowest WHIP, and the most strikeouts of any regular Phillies pitcher that year. Over a four-start stretch between August 16th and September 5th, Wolf pitched three complete games and 35 total innings, allowed only one run, struck out 30, and sent the Wolf Pack, his special cheering section, into a frenzy. He pitched those games, and another 8-inning 1-hit 2-walk no-run 11-strikeout masterpiece a week later, in memory of a member of that cheering section who tragically lost his life earlier that year. He also only got the Phillies just above .500 with those games, at a time when the wild card was all but out of reach. They'd finish at 80-81, 21.5 games behind the Braves, and 15 games behind the wild-card Giants.
In 2003, Kevin Millwood was acquired in the offseason, meaning Wolf, thankfully, would no longer be expected to be the staff ace. Nevertheless, after his first 17 starts, he was 9-3 with 100 third strikes. On the back of his record, and the unexpected success of the Phillies who were in a wild card spot at that point, he was voted into the All-Star game for the first time in his career. He slowed down toward the end of September, but was still good, finishing at 16-10 with a 4.23 ERA and a career best 177 strikeouts. The Phillies were within a game of the wild card with just five games left in the season. A three-game sweep by the team ahead of them, the Florida Marlins, ended their playoff hopes prematurely, with Wolf allowing four runs in four innings to lose the last of the series, and the wild card clincher, in Miami.
From 2004 to 2006 Wolf went 15-12 over the three-year stretch. His team would go from 86-76 to 88-74 to 85-77 over that time. He'd strike out 198 in his 48 starts, and while his 4.58 ERA was just good enough for a 99 ERA+, the Wolf Pack wouldn't let up. He even hit two home runs when he was facing the Rockies. Game was in Philadelphia, if you can believe it. And yet, he had injury problems that caused him to miss the majority of both June and September in 2004. Then after he hadn’t missed a start in 2005, he was diagnosed with a torn UCL right before the All-Star break and would require Tommy John surgery, shutting him down until the last week of July, 2006. His team was good during that time, but would also miss the playoffs all three years, and even if they hadn't, Wolf wouldn't have been able to pitch in any of them.

Finally, after the season when he turned 30 ended with a 5.56 ERA, the Phillies thanked him for his contributions, and made him a lone Wolf. Where might a pitcher find work having just started his fourth decade of life?
Not a month into free agency, as they often do, the lone Wolf found new territory far away from his previous home. Randy signed a 1-year, $7.5 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers. This was a pack that had gone to the playoffs the previous year after some serious retooling, particularly in the pitching department. 36-year-old Aaron Sele and 40-year-old Greg Maddux had made serious impacts despite their AARP cards. Knowing that wasn't sustainable, the Dodgers' plan for Wolf was to inject some comparative youth into the rotation, try him out for one year, and leave the door open with a second-year option. He did okay to start out, with 6 of his first 11 Dodgers starts being Quality Starts, including a particularly good 7 innings of no-run 4-hit 11-strikeout stuff against the Cincinnati Reds. He finished May at 6-3 with a 3.41 ERA and 71 strikeouts. June wasn't as good, as he emerged at the end of the month with a 9-6 record and a 4.33 ERA after allowing at least 3 runs in each of his 6 starts. Then on July 3rd, after a particularly bad 3-inning 6-run outing, the Wolf began to hobble. His throwing shoulder was bothering him, and after electing to have surgery on it, his season was over. So was his time as a member of the Dodgers, who turned him loose that offseason. The Wolf found temporary shelter in a monastery as the Padres gave him a 1-year $5 million contract. In just his third start, against the Rockies, Randy was close to making that contract monumentally good. He had thrown 6 shutout, no-hit innings, which is generally not super noteworthy, but the San Diego Padres had never had a no-hitter in their history. Alas, it would stay that way, as person-who-dislikes-fun Brad Hawpe singled in the 7th, and Wolf was pulled after he finished the inning. It seemed to throw off his game as well, as after only allowing three runs through his first three starts combined for an ERA of 1.42, by mid-July, Randy had caused it to rise to 4.74. Pair that with a 6-10 record and a trend toward his worst career ERA+, and things weren't looking good. San Diego, who had already lost 60 games by that point, decided to save some money, and traded Wolf's $5 million to the Houston Astros for the league minimum of 26-year-old Chad Reineke. Apparently the Astros knew what they were doing, because, much like the constellation 9Lupus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupus_(constellation\)), when Wolf joined the stars, he shined. In 12 starts, he went 6-2, lowered his ERA on the season to 4.30, and struck out 57. Houston, who was 8 games below .500 when they acquired him, got as close as 2 games out of the Wild Card spot before finishing the year 86-75, an admirable turnaround. The next season would provide intrigue into whether they could keep that up. They would have to do it without Randy Wolf, who was once again granted permission to the pastures of free agency. At 32 years old, was there any chance this old dog still had some new tricks?
Despite being named the 27th best free agent available by MLB Trade Rumors and being one of the catalysts for a rather successful team down the stretch, Wolf swam the rivers of free agency for a good three months before finally being offered a contract to come back to the Dodgers. Yet another 1-year, $5 million contract, but it was far better than being left to fend for himself in that harsh wilderness. Unlike the 2007 Dodgers he was familiar with, who would go on to miss the playoffs after Wolf injured himself, the 2009 Dodgers were coming off a run to the NLCS. A recent foreign signing that paid off in Hiroki Kuroda, a proven young arm in Chad Billingsley, and a 21-year-old wild card named Clayton Kershaw were all ready to anchor a starting rotation. Wolf was brought on for his experience, and maybe if he could pitch here and there that'd be nice too. Well, he did that and more. At the age of 32, Randy Wolf had his best season in seven years. His record of 11-7 was his best since the year he was an All-Star. His 3.23 ERA was his best since the year he was the Phillies' ace. His 1.101 WHIP was his lowest in his career. He started 34 games, the first time he'd ever hit that high a number in a single season. Same goes for his 214.1 innings pitched. While Clayton Kershaw doubtless had the better mechanics, clearly exhibited in his lower peripherals in almost every pitcher vs. hitter metric, people who didn't care about all that stathead mumbo-jumbo saw Randy Wolf return to the mantle of staff ace. To top it all off, the Dodgers offense was exemplary. The outfield had a collective OPS above .825, and only two regular starters, Russell Martin the catcher and Rafael Furcal the shortstop, put up an OPS+ below 100. All that, plus a great bullpen, added up to a 95-67 record, and their second straight NL West division crown. Their quick dispatch of the Cardinals in an NLDS sweep was kicked off by Game 1 starter Randy Wolf, who earned a no-decision that day. He showed up again as the starter of Game 4 of the NLCS played against his old team in Philadelphia. Game 4 would end with Jonathan Broxton allowing a walkoff two-run double to Jimmy Rollins, who was teammates with Randy for six years. The Dodgers lost Game 4, then the decisive Game 5, and ended up watching the Phillies lose the World Series to the Yankees. Randy Wolf, on the other hand, was set to hunt for a team in the wooded country of free agency another time. Would this hunt fare any better?
Randy Wolf had the good fortune of being among a particularly lean crop of free agents, and having just had a year where he could be argued as the staff ace of a 95-win team, his value was as high as it ever had been. MLB Trade Rumors, therefore, rated him as the 5th best free agent available. The four names ahead of him, Matt Holliday, John Lackey, Jason Bay, and Chone Figgins, show just how weak this class was. Perfect prey for a wolf to pounce upon to gain ground. Monetarily, of course. And that he did, signing a 3-year, $29.75 million dollar contract with the Milwaukee Brewers. This contract was roughly equivalent to double what he'd earned over the past three years. It pays to be aggressive when it matters, whether you are prowling for food in the forest or prowling for a contract in the MLB. While Randy Wolf was certainly still crafty, the Brewers were giving a three-year contract with seven zeroes on it to a pitcher not named Randy Johnson or Nolan Ryan who would be 36 before it was over. Would the risk pay off? Well, old dogs can often still go in for the kill. In his first two years, Wolf went 26-22 in 67 starts. His 3.93 ERA and ERA+ of 101 was commendable, his total of 276 strikeouts was above average, and his 1839 batters faced were the most he'd ever endured over any two-year stretch of his career. Randy was even privy to some playoff action in 2011, when he allowed seven runs in a possible NLDS series-clincher against Arizona, but made up for it with a Quality Start and eventual Win in Game 4 of the NLCS. The Brewers won the series where he sucked, and lost the series where he was good. Wolf may have taken the wrong idea, because the next year he began sucking a lot more. By mid-August, he was 3-10 with a 5.69 ERA, but contrary to the previous experiment, Milwaukee was not doing well, and by this time was all but out of the playoff picture. On August 22, 2012, Randy Wolf was released by Milwaukee on what just so happened to be his 36th birthday. Told you his contract wouldn't end before then. A pity deal from the Baltimore Orioles led to two more starts and three more appearances, but didn't translate into an appearance on their playoff roster on account of another UCL tear that meant he would miss an entire year, this time not sandwiched between two seasons of play, but for the whole calendar year of 2013. Some might think that a 37-year-old coming off of his second Tommy John surgery would decide it was time to hang up his cleats and retire. Randy Wolf, not one to settle for easy meat, did not do that.
On Febraury 13th, 2014, after completing his rehab, Wolf signed a minor league contract with the Seattle Mariners. Then he got released after refusing to sign a waiver. Long story. A couple weeks later, he signed another minor league contract with the Arizona Diamondbacks. Despite a 5-1 record over 6 AAA starts, the Snakes didn't want to keep him, and he was released again. That same day, he was picked up by the Marlins on another minor league contract. One month and 25.2 MLB innings of 5.26 ERA ball and a 1-3 record later, he was released again, only to be scooped up five days later on another minor league contract with the Baltimore Orioles. Four lackluster weeks of triple-A baseball later, Wolf was released again only for two weeks to pass before he was offered another minor league contract from the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. ARE YOU STILL WITH ME?!? Good. The Angels kept him on their AAA squad for the remainder of the year. His previous season, he'd gone 6-2 with a 4.57 ERA in 19 triple-A games spread across three different organizations, and that sluggish performance in Miami was the only time he put on an MLB jersey during the regular season. Remember kids, someday signing a waiver might mean you don’t have to move house four times in one year. Anyway, the next spring training, Wolf signed a minor league contract with the Blue Jays OH NO IT'S HAPPENING AGAIN. Except this time, the Blue Jays kept him on their triple-A squad for four months of the regular season. He went 9-2 with a 2.58 ERA in 23 starts. The Detroit Tigers saw that, said "what's the worst that could happen?" and in mid-August, traded their up-and-coming prospect Cash Considerations for Randy Wolf. He thanked them by going 0-5 in 7 starts, allowing 24 earned runs in 34.2 innings for a 6.23 ERA, and getting released that offseason. At long last, the Wolf saw that his final days were upon him, and signed a one-day contract with the Phillies to retire as a member of his original Wolf Pack. Is this the part where he cries to the blue corn moon?
To say Randy Wolf's career was one-of-a-kind would be a stretch. There are plenty of other lefties that have gone on to have similar careers, Floyd Bannister for one. Did Randy deserve to be on the ballot? That's a question that doesn't have an easy answer. Sure, he pitched for a long time, won more games than he lost, and was relatively good over a fairly lengthy stretch. He even places 116th on the all-time strikeouts list with 1814, right ahead of Hall-of-Famer and 350-game winner Pud Galvin. Heck, Ron Darling had similar stats across the board, and he even showed up on a ballot. And yet, to me there's just something about him that just says "he didn't belong there." Perhaps it's the fact that he was only the definitive staff ace on one team that only won 80 games. Perhaps it's the fact he only had four full seasons with an ERA below 4.00. It might even be the fact that after he came back despite the odds, he didn't do very well, and that's poisoning my thoughts on him. I don't know. I do know he wasn't on the ballot, and that's that. [Put another stupid wolf thing here]
Randy Wolf would visit the Hall of Fame in a Phillies cap for his 69-60 record, 971 strikeouts, and one All-Star selection with the club. While there he would let out a quiet but distinct howl when passing by Greg "Mad Dog" Maddux's plaque.
RIP Tommy Lasorda
#1: Randy Choate
#2: Kevin Gregg
#3: Dan Uggla
#4: Josh Hamilton
#5: Delmon Young
#6: Willie Bloomquist
#7: Grady Sizemore
#8: Kevin Correia
#9: David DeJesus
#10: Rafael Betancourt
#11: Clint Barmes
#12: Adam LaRoche
#13: Grant Balfour

Better Know the Ones Left Off the Ballot #3: Dan Uggla

And we're back. 2 down, 37 (jeez) to go. To help with that, and to celebrate the symposium, I'm considering posting two of these tomorrow. Randy Choate and Kevin Gregg have been given their due, now onto our next vict- person of interest.

Dan Uggla

Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor: 35 Career bWAR (10 years): 18.2 Stats: .241/.336/.447, 107 OPS+, 1149 H, 235 HR, 491 XBH, 706 RBI, 759 R League Leading Stats: Walks (94, 2012), Errors committed as 2B 2x (18, 2010 | 15, 2011) Awards: All-Star 3x (2006, 2008, 2012), Silver Slugger (2010), 2006 June NL Rookie of the Month, 2011 August NL Player of the Month Teams Played For: Marlins (2006-10), Braves (2011-14), Giants (2014), Nationals (2015)
Daniel Cooley Uggla. An unusual name for an unusual player. His career was simultaneously totally ignorable and definitely abnormal. As a result, his name couldn't be more appropriate. Daniel is as run-of-the-mill a man's name as you can get, while Uggla is a quite uncommon Swedish noble family name, meaning "owl." Bet if you met a guy named Timmy Penguin you wouldn't forget that moniker anytime soon. But just how uncommon was his career? Well, only 16 second basemen have over 200 career home runs. Some Hall-of-Famers got there just by playing for a long time, like Joe Morgan, Roberto Alomar, and Craig Biggio. Hall members with a bit of pop like Ryne Sandberg and Bobby Doerr got there by consistently putting up dingers. Same is true of non-Hall members like Jeff Kent and Robby Cano. And then, in 12th place on the all-time leaderboard, above 15 people with plaques, there's Owlboy. How did he get there?
Following an impressive career at the University of Memphis, the Arizona Diamondbacks drafted Dan Uggla in the 11th round of the 2001 draft. His next three years would be spent bouncing between A and A+, going from 5 homers and a .608 OPS in his first full season to 23 homers and a .859 OPS in his second. Birdman finally put it all together in 2004 where he was slashing .336/.422/.600 after 37 games in A+, and got promoted to AA, where he cooled off to finish the year with an OPS of .774 across both leagues. In 2005, his first full season in AA, he'd be much more productive, as he socked 21 dingers and slashed .297/.378/.502. This caused buzz, and led some to believe he might be a top 10 Dbacks prospect despite his 25 years of age. That December was the Rule 5 Draft, where teams are allowed to select any minor league player with more than 4 years experience not on a Major League team's 40-man roster. The Diamondbacks made the mistake of leaving Uggla exposed after his 4th year in the minors, and with the 8th pick, the Florida Marlins snatched him up like he was a mouse in the dead of night. Good news for Uggla: the team had to keep him on their 25-man roster for the entire year or he'd go back to Arizona. Bad news: This was the Florida Marlins in the midst of a market correction.
For those of you familiar, the 2005 offseason was not a good time to be a Marlins fan. Before Derek Jeter retired and moved to Florida, the owner of the baseball team bearing the state's name was a man by the name of Jeffrey Loria. Well, I say "man," but "selfish hobgoblin" would probably be more accurate. The end of the 2005 season saw his team tragically go from 78-67 and a wild card spot to 83-79 and out of the playoffs. Upon the conclusion of that season, Loria made his fiendishly egocentric intentions clear: he wanted a new stadium. For as long as the Marlins had existed, they had shared a stadium with the Miami Dolphins. Loria didn't like sharing, so he gave a mandate to the local government: use tax dollars to build my stadium, or next year, the team will suck. If there was no stadium deal, he would begin to eviscerate the team's payroll, trading big names for no-names. In case you didn't know, stadiums are expensive, and the city didn't have a spare $150 million lying around, so they said no. Loria kept his promise. Carlos Delgado, one year removed from signing the largest contract in team history and recent top-5 MVP vote getter, was shipped to the Mets for pennies on the dollar. Starting catcher Paul Lo Duca joined him shortly thereafter. Stalwart rotation arm Josh Beckett and dependable third baseman Mike Lowell shipped off to Boston. Juan Pierre was dealt to the Cubs. Luis Castillo got a ticket to Minnesota. Nine players who all contributed to the team that was in a playoff spot within twenty games of the season's end were effectively shown the door when they didn't receive arbitration offers. When asked if these actions constituted a fire sale, Loria said he preferred to think of it as a "market correction." He was wrong. This was not a valuation adjustment of his baseball team. This was a billionaire throwing a fit because the city wouldn't give him his own sandbox where he could play with his toys. And so, if one toddler couldn't play where he wanted, nobody got to play at all. When the flames died down, the total payroll for Loria's team's entire roster was $21 million. That was less money than Alex Rodriguez would be making that year by himself. Starting pitchers Dontrelle Willis and Brian Moehler were the only two Marlins whose paychecks required a second comma. The only meaningful names left on the team were Willis and Miguel Cabrera. Florida's 2006 Opening Day lineup had 6 players who had played in 83 MLB games combined prior to that day. No, not their Opening Day roster, their Opening Day lineup. And who do you think might be starting at second base, batting sixth? Why, it's a little 26-year-old Rule 5 draft pick with a funny looking last name.
Uggla's MLB debut saw him go 0-for-2 with a walk and a strikeout. I mean, can you really say you expect more from a guy who just got supplanted from AA? His first hit came in the next game, and his first home run came in game number eight against Dewon Brazelton. Sidenote, Dan Uggla no longer has the funniest name in this post. Great Horned Daniel did all right for himself after that slow start, batting .305/.362/.467 after the first month and a half of the season. Problem was, everyone else on the team did all wrong for themselves. The Marlins were 11-31. And really, given what they were working with, can you blame them? The next month after that start, though, saw Uggla wake himself and the rest of the team up. Florida went 19-6 in their next 25 games, and Uggla contributed massively over that span, batting .327/.374/.643 with 7 homers, 22 RBIs, and 20 runs. Despite missing 8 games following that run, given that hitting line, it shouldn't surprise anyone that he was voted June's NL Rookie of the Month. Better yet, his excellent hitting at a position where Chase Utley was considered a power bat got our owly friend selected to the All-Star game as a reserve. Uggla didn't end up playing in the game, and cooled off a bit after that, but didn't ever go entirely cold. In fact, in a game on September 11 against the Mets, he had 5 hits, one home run, and saw his team win 16-5. That win brought the Marlins to a record of 73-71. They had successfully gone from 20 games under .500 to a winning record in a single season, the first MLB team to ever accomplish such a feat. Sadly, Florida would once again have a season-ending slump, losing 13 of their last 18 in an eerily similar streak to 2005. However, the 78-84 record where they ended the season had so much more poured into it than the final result could ever tell. Our nocturnal feathered Dan did more than his share, hitting .282/.339/.480 with 27 home runs and 90 RBIs on the year. Uggla deservedly received 6 first-place votes for NL Rookie of the Year, ultimately losing to his teammate Hanley Ramirez, and finishing ahead of his other teammates Josh Johnson, Scott Olsen, Anibal Sanchez, and Josh Willingham. Six players from a single team all getting votes for Rookie of the Year is almost certainly never going to happen again, so congrats to Hootie and the Swordfish for making history. All the success aside, questions arose about how effective he'd be in the long-term. Could Uggla keep it up, or had the clock struck midnight on this Rule 5 pick's Cinderowla story? Here's a hint: even if the clock's struck midnight, owls are nocturnal.
The next four years, Uggla retained the Marlins' starting second base position, and showed the first season was far from a fluke. 27 homers, the most he'd ever hit in a season up to that point, turned out to be the lowest number he'd have in Florida. 2007 through 2009 saw Uggla sock 31, 32, and 31 dingers. The lowest OPS he'd have over that span was .805, and his lowest RBI total was 88. Both came in 2007, when he was the number 2 hitter, but a move down the lineup to number 5 the next year saw him flourish. He was so good in 2008, he got another trip to the All-Star Game! And he actually played in this one! We don't have to talk about how he did, do we? Can we ignore the record he set with three errors in that game and the three strikeouts and GIDP he had at the plate? Cool thanks moving on. As for his time in Florida, 2010 was definitely the peak for Dan for Owl Seasons (Shakespeare pun, might be reaching). While he may not have been voted to the All-Star game, he more than made up for it, slashing .287/.369/.508, with 105 RBIs, and a 131 OPS+. All of those stats were career highs. Not satisfied with only five of those happening that year, he tacked on one more: 33 home runs. That number did several things for him. It put him atop the Marlins' career home run leaderboard with 154. It made him the first second baseman in Major League history to hit 30 or more home runs in four straight seasons. It notched him that year's Silver Slugger. It got him onto more than a couple NL MVP ballots. What it also did, though, was make him valuable. He rejected a 4-year, $48-million extension from the Marlins, who had just finished the season 80-82, out of playoff contention for the seventh straight year. Despite his fantastic batting numbers, Owld Dang Syne had never played in a playoff game. Perhaps that was part of his motivation for rejecting the largest contract the Marlins had ever offered to a second baseman. And so, the offseason after his best season in the Majors, Dan Uggla was traded to the Atlanta Braves for utility player Omar Infante and left-handed reliever Mike Dunn. In defiance of his avian peers, that winter saw this Owl fly north.
Once Uggla was perched upon the position of second base in Atlanta, that necessitated a move for Martin Prado, an All-Star the previous year who finished above Uggla in MVP voting. An interesting choice, certainly, but Prado had shown range at other defensive positions that Uggla hadn't. The thing was, even then, Uggla wasn't exactly the best fielder at second either. In 2010, the same year he set a bunch of career bests at the plate, Owlfred Dannyworth led the league in Errors with 18. And instead of regularly great shortstop Hanley Ramirez, this year he'd be paired with 34-year-old Alex Gonzalez. How did that turn out? Could've been better. Uggla did achieve a new high for home runs with 36, incidentally making him the only second baseman to hit 30 home runs in five straight seasons. Everything else, not so much. A season after Uggla's average, on-base, and slugging had all reached new career highs, all of them hit new career lows, with .233/.311/.453. Not awful, but definitely not what was expected of him at this point. That was bolstered by a fantastic August, where he hit .340/.405/.670 with 10 home runs en route to his second NL Player of the Month award. Thing is, he led the league in errors again and had a career low -1.2 dWAR. And he was turning 32 next season. Did I mention the Braves had just signed him for 5 years and $62 million? Because... uh oh. Things began to look up the next year, as the first half saw Owl Pacino garner some newfound fielding skills, and his hitting seemed to be improving, peaking at .276/.384/.492 in early June. He earned his third trip to the All-Star game, which didn't go nearly as bad as his last outing. He actually started the game this time! Nice going Dan! Good sign of things to come! Right? Well, offensively, 2012 turned out to be one of Uggla's worst seasons yet. He struggled late into the season, finishing at .220/.348/.384. While those are new career lows in average and slugging, the on-base is helped by a league-leading 94 walks. This marked the first time Uggla finished a season with fewer than 20 home runs (19), an OPS+ below 100 (98), and fewer than 250 total bases (201). There was one good thing that happened to Pasta Owl Dan-te: his team reached the playoffs! His Braves were a wild card team! And it was 2012! And the infield fly rule existed! Oh... wait... let's move on. The rest of his time in Atlanta went about as well as that playoff run did. The next year, his batting average spent a total of about three weeks above the Mendoza line. Even with 22 home runs that's just not okay. Combine that with a return to normalcy in the field, two more career low years for on-base and slugging, and a tied career high strikeout total at 171, and you have what we call a bad season. How's that contract looking now? Two more years? Sounds great! After the first couple months of 2014 saw Uggla's numbers headed for the fourth straight year of new career worsts in every hitting category, the Braves began to explore other options at second base. When Tommy La Stella began showing promise in the middle of the summer, Atlanta decided to cut their losses, and let the Owl fly free on July 18th. Dan Uggla was now 34 years old, coming off a steady decline in production that showed no signs of slowing, and was named Dan Uggla. How would he get out of this one?
While there may have been a significant downturn in I'm-running-out-of-owl-puns's production as of late, he still played second base okay. One team that needed someone who could do that in late July of 2014 was the San Francisco Giants. After the great Marco Scutaro went down with an injury early in the year, band-aids like Ehire Adrianza and Brandon Hicks just hadn't been cutting it. Rookie Joe Panik had come up in the last month, but his bat didn't look amazing. And so, at the time, it made sense for them to pick up someone like Uggla, with a proven track record and history of a nice bat as a 2B. And so, on July 21, the Nocturnal Flying Animal (I'm running on fumes here) signed a minor league deal, and three days later, joined the Giants dugout. After going 0-for-12 with one walk at the plate and committing two errors in the field in his next four games, The Giants realized they'd made a mistake, and cut [insert owl joke here] from the roster. They stuck with Panik for the rest of the year, and whataya know they won the World Series, leading to half the comments on this post reading simply "World Series Champion Dan Uggla." Congrats on the ring man! Er, owl! (Help.) His last year of Major League play was spent as a Washington Nationowl, (please tell me we're almost done) where he served primarily as a pinch-hitter and backup second baseman behind Danny Espinosa. He played in only 67 games, batted .183/.298/.300, and said his farewell that offseason at the age of 36. His last at-bat, on October 3rd, was a home run. The game was against the New York Mets, and happened to be the same game where Max Scherzer tossed a 17-strikeout 0-walk no-hitter. And frankly, if that's not the best way for this Owl to fly the coop, I don't know what is.
Dan Uggla's career really is unique. Maybe if Brian Dozier sticks around he could contest that fact, but other than him, there isn't really anyone. His journey to the MLB was unusual, his time there was unusual, the way he got his World Series ring was unusual, and in case you can't tell I've run out of owl puns so I'm pretty much cooked. The man had a weird career, what else can I say. His place on the ballot would have been similar to that of Adam Dunn's, but given that he was only unusual and not a freak outlier, I can see why they left him off. Oh, and in case it wasn't clear, Giancarlo Stanton broke his Marlins home run record, though he's the only second baseman save Rogers Hornsby to lead a franchise in homers for that long in the history of Major League Baseb-owl (okay that was truly awful I really need to stop).
Dan Uggla would visit the Hall of Fame in a Marlins cap for his two All-Star selections, 154 home runs, and 15.7 bWAR with them. I would make an owl pun here but as previously mentioned I don't have any more.

batting above average meaning video

[count] baseball : a number that shows how often a batter gets a base hit an excellent hitter with a batting average above .300 a low/high batting average — sometimes used figuratively a movie director with a high batting average Urban Dictionary: Batting Above His Average. When a male picks up a female substantially more attractive than all his previous efforts in women. (Derived from the English gentleman’s sport of Cricket) When a male picks up a female substantially more attractive than all his previous efforts in women. (Derived from the English gentleman’s sport of A batting average is simply the number of hits a player has divided by the number of at-bats he has had during the season, according to The Internet Hitting Coach. The simplest way to calculate... average meaning. Meaning and Definition of average. Synonyms, Antonyms, Derived Terms, Anagrams and senses of average. What is average? Batting Merrins. An expression meaning 'batting above your average' or 'punching above your weight'. (Dating or trying to date someone who may be considered a lot more attractive.) Most likely coined by Matt from the most recent season of My Kitchen Rules. Matt: "Amy is batting Merrins ." Get a Batting Merrins mug for your Facebook friend Jovana. "Batting above [ones] average" has it's origins in the game of cricket. It basically means someone who is better than average at batting the ball (in cricket). Idiomatically it is also used for someone who is (or is doing something) better than average. Similar words: moving average, operating leverage, average earnings, average rate, batting, average, general average, on average. Meaning: n. 1. (baseball) the percentage of times a batter gets a hit; number of base hits divided by the number of times at bat 2. (an extension of the baseball term) the proportion of times some effort succeeds. Origin. Batting average was created as a measure to judge the success of a hitter. For one season, in 1887, walks counted as hits as well. But after that season, it was determined that batting batting average - (baseball) a measure of a batter's performance; the number of base hits divided by the number of official times at bat; "Ted Williams once had a batting average above .400" hitting average The higher the batting average, the better. The highest number possible average would be 100%, meaning the manager outperformed the benchmark every single period. In contrast, a batting average of

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What Do Batting Averages Mean? | Healthy Living

batting above average meaning

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Anthony Santander has the same WAR as Mancini despite half as many at bats and worse hitting stats due to Macini's abismal -1.3 defensive WAR, and Santander's above average .3 defensive WAR. Santander's -1.4 baserunning runs compared with his above average speed mean he can become a good baserunner.

[International Cricket] How a new style of bowling caused a major diplomatic rift between England and Australia