Some select college football scores as reported in the October 4, 1908 NYT (home team first):

Lehigh, 5; Stephens Institute 0
Nebraska 43; Doan 0
Wooster University 8; Ohio State 0
Minnesota, 6; Lawrence, 0
Chicago 39; Purdue 0
Vermont 5; Holy Cross 0
Illinois 17; Monmouth 6
Oberlin 32; Hiram 2;
Tennessee 12; North Carolina 0
Bowdoin 15; New Hampshire 0
Dennison 35; Heldelberg 5
Georgetown 15; Gallaudet 0
Georgia Tech 32; Gordon Institute 0
West Virginia 22; Westminster 0

The Oct. 4, 1908 reports on a debate concerning artificial aids in sports, and an unexpected PED:

Dr. Leonard Hill, F.R.S., whose experiments with oxygen in athletics first drew attention to this subject, which aroused considerable discussion on both sides of the Atlantic, has this week stated the case strongly but temperately...

Montague Holbein...denounced the use of oxygen...as unsportsmanlike. Dr. Hill's rejoinder is this:

"Oxygen is not a stimulant. To the perfectly trained runner or race horse oxygen will do nothing if given before a sprint. The trained man or horse has got enough in him for a spring, and an excess has no effect. It is to the tired or untrained man or the man fatigued by prolonged effort that oxygen does so much...

"Almost the whole of modern sport is conducted with artificial aids. The record feats of to-day are too often not sport, but deadly, earnest business. Either, I say, limit sport to reasonable feats of endurance or else add oxygen to the other artificial aids now employed in breaking records, and so diminish the harm done the athlete's body."

Not everybody is convinced by Dr. Hill's contentions. For instance, Lord Lonsdale declares that the use of oxygen is unsportsmanlike and un-English...

From the October 3, 1908 NYT:

Billiards are dying out - in France, at least. According to statistics of taxes, while there were 94,123 billiard tables in France in 1892. In 1906 there were only 89,939. It is probably to the success of outdoor sports and of motoring that is due this loss of affection for a game which has had famous votaries.

The Oct. 2, 1908 NYT reports on Arthur Brides's re-instatement to the Yale football team:

A boom for yale Varsity stock was evident this afternoon when the Faculty of the Yale Medical School declared Arthur Brides, guard and half back for two years, eligible for the eleven. Brides has finally removed every scholarship technicality, adn this afternoon reported for practice.

Only a few days ago the word was Mr. Brides would have a hard time overcoming his academic issues.

Ben Powell and I bagged Grays Peak (14278') and Torreys Peak (14267') after we attended a Liberty Fund symposium last weekend in Denver.

Grays (L) and Torreys (R) from the trailhead:

On the Summit of Grays:

The Sept. 29, 1908 NYT reports on academic eligibility at Yale:

The chances are slim for Arthur Brides, Yale's all-around football star, wearing a uniform this season. Brides was to-day definitely notified that he cannot join the eleven unless he removes the deficiencies in his studies. There is little chance that Brides can fill the demand, but he will pluckily try to do so before the big games. He will not report with the team for weeks, and the football coaches say that they regard him as out of the competition.

Fairly impressive, although it is Yale after all, that before the NCAA promulgated rules concerning academic eligibility, at least one case of enforcement of standards could be found. Likely this is the problem: the fact that Brides's story was such big news indicates that such academic enforcement wasn't that common and thus, eventually, the NCAA will enact its own rules.

1. Fayetteville was really nice. I had a great time on Friday meeting with members of the economics faculty and presenting Charles Courtemanche's and my paper on Wal-Mart and obesity, and I enjoyed hanging out with Patrick and Sonia Gill (friends from college who just moved to Fayetteville) Friday night and Saturday before, during, and after the game. Next presentations of the Wal-Mart paper: UAB this Friday and West Virginia next Friday. Next live college football game: West Virginia-Rutgers.

2. Alabama is a legitimate contender for the SEC title. p(Alabama is a national title contender|Alabama beats Georgia on Saturday) = 1. p(Alabama beats Georgia) = 0.4.

3. That said, I think that if the Big 12 champion, the SEC champion, and USC go unbeaten, USC has the toughest case to make for inclusion in the title game. That blowout win over OSU might get less and less impressive with every passing week, and there are four SEC teams and four Big 12 teams in the top 10 while the Pac-10 looks like a one-team wonder (the Pac-10 proved last week that it's no Mountain West Conference; this past weekend, Boise State's win at Oregon proved that the Pac-10 is probably no WAC, either). It will be fun to watch.

4. That said, there's always a lot of talk every year about how a playoff would not only ensure a "real" champion, it would make more money. If this is true, though, I wonder which transaction costs prevent efficient Coasean bargains.

5. College sports illustrates a hard-to-measure-but-nonetheless-real improvement in standards of living: the enormous increases in the ornateness and complexity of college football tailgate parties. It seems like every tailgate party has a tent, comfortable camping chairs, mountains of really good food, a giant plastic blow-up mascot, and a flat-screen TV with a satellite hookup. And with only a few exceptions, everybody is pretty friendly mo matter who they're pulling for. It's a great way to spend a beautiful Autumn Saturday.

There are a couple of minutes left in the first half and the Alabama-Western Kentucky game is turning into a beatdown. I now believe "Alabama is a serious contender for the SEC title" with p = 0.85. The ease with which the Tide is beating the Hilltoppers is only part of the story: the fact that Tulane almost beat the VT- and WVU-vanquishing East Carolina Pirates makes last week's uninspired showing against the Green Wave look a lot better.

It's halftime. On tap after Jacob finishes his bottle: a family outing to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the rest of this game and a handful of others.

I'm in Tokyo for the Mont Pelerin Society meetings. Myron Scholes has given the most enlightening talk so far. But I've also learned something about Japanese pro baseball. I knew that the Nippon Ham Fighters are not "Ham Fighters" but rather "Fighters" sponsored by Nippon Ham, but it's news that all the teams are sponsor-branded. Seibu Lions are sponsored by Seibu, a major private railway company [correction: department store]. The funniest is Yakult Swallows. I thought they were only named after the bird (which is their emblem), but it's also a play on words: coin-op drink machines reveal that Yakult is a beverage company. Swallows, get it? Well, at least I hope it's an intentional play.

Here's some more brand equity. Bob, his student Kate Sheehan, and I just had a paper analyzing David Beckham's affect on MLS attendance accepted for publication; here's the abstract:

In January 2007, Major League Soccer (MLS) announced that international soccer sensation David Beckham would be joining the league playing for the LA Galaxy. This paper examines Beckham’s effect on MLS ticket sales for the 2007 season. Depending on specification, our results indicate that Beckham increased ticket sales as a share of stadium capacity by about 55 percentage points. We then use these results to evaluate MLS’s Designated Player Rule and to perform a back-of-the-envelope calculation of Beckham’s benefit to the LA Galaxy.

Basically Beckham's playing fills a stadium that would otherwise be roughly half full. The $400k MLS contribution to his salary doesn't come close to covering his spillover benefit for other teams. Even at something like $10m per year from the Galaxy, hiring Beckham looks to have been a shrewd move by the Galaxy.

Fun project--thanks to Kate for a cool idea and to Bob and Kate for inviting me to join in.

Stephen Dubner points out that they get more comments when they offer schwag. Their latest contest: pick the score of tomorrow's LSU-App State game. My guess: LSU 45, ASU 3. My guess is just barely non-random. All I'm really sure about is that LSU won't let themselves get caught overlooking ASU. I'll be keeping up with the LSU-ASU score--and the Alabama-Clemson score--from the stands at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, where I'll be taking in the Ole Miss-Memphis game with a couple of friends.

From the WaPo:

Sentiment among NFL leaders to reduce the preseason to two or three games per team and lengthen the regular season to 17 or 18 games, up from the current 16, is growing, and it seems generally accepted that such an adjustment likely will be made within the next few years.

"I think it would be a positive," New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft said this week, "and I do think it will happen."

Goodell and the owners already were studying the issue before the defending Super Bowl champions, the New York Giants, lost standout defensive end Osi Umenyiora to a season-ending knee injury in a preseason game against the New York Jets on Saturday night, and before the Redskins had to fret that Jason Taylor's knee injury the same night would end his season.

And while they regret having their product diminished by injuries to players in games that don't count in the regular season standings, the real impetus for Goodell and the owners to act on the issue is economic.

More regular season games would mean more revenue in television rights fees, which are worth about $3.7 billion per season in the current deals with NBC, Fox, CBS, ESPN and DirecTV.

"The players' view can be really simple: If I get paid for two extra games, I'll play two more games," former San Francisco 49ers offensive lineman Randy Cross said. "The fans' view is: More of the real stuff is better. The realistic view is: It's a way to generate more revenues."

Players aren't paid during the preseason; instead, they're paid in 17 installments during the regular season. The owners make big money by charging regular season ticket prices for preseason games, but still could come out ahead if the additional regular season games boost TV rights fees considerably.

The drawbacks to adding games would be diluting the product, and limiting chances for younger players.

From Forbes:

But they're no Texas Rangers fans who flock to the Arlington ballpark through last place finishes and playoff runs alike. The Ranger faithful don't care if the team trades away its best players or spends $252 million to sign an MVP-caliber batter like Alex Rodriguez. No team's attendance is less tied to its on the field performance than the Rangers', and nowhere else in the country do fans peel off at a slower rate when the club has thin years.

(Of course, had owner Tom Hicks studied the attendance numbers a little closer back in 2001, he might not have offered what has come to be known as the worst contract in baseball history.)

Two things going on here. First, the primary focus of the article is measuring fan sensitivity to winning and proclaiming the franchise whose attendance is least sensitive to winning to have the most loyal fans. (BTW, the Tigers and the Angels are rated as having the least loyal fans.) Neat idea, though one might raise questions about methodology. (The authors give some but not complete detail.) For example, I wonder if the sample period of 1991 to present isn't problematic b/c some franchises have been good throughout (Atlanta) and others have been crummy throughout (KC). That is, there may not be sufficient variation in team winning percentages over time to get a strong estimate of the relationship between winning and attendance.

Second is the aside about the ARod contract. The authors might be on ok ground if they mean that it was a bad contract because with very loyal fans the Rangers didn't need to sign more talent in order to win more games to draw more fans. On the other hand, the authors are off base if they are merely commenting on the size of the contract or trying to say something about ARod's performance. Yes, ARod got a large contract but he has also performed at a very high level over the past decade. Comparing pay and performance, his contract nowhere near as bad as those signed by, say, Carl Pavano, Mike Hampton, or (it appears) Barry Zito. I'll leave comments open for a day or so if readers want to offer other candidates for the worst contract in baseball history.

What's Chinese for Milli Vanilli?

The unquestioned star of the Opening Ceremony was a little girl who performed "Hymn to the Motherland" in front of the entire world. I remember watching her and thinking how adorable and talented she was, the "poster child for all of China." Well, it turns out that she wasn't as talented as we all thought. It was in fact, a seven year old singing to the whole world on a pre-recorded tape, not the cute, pig-tailed Lin Miaoke, whom we all came to know and love according to a report from The Telegraph.

"This was a last-minute question, a choice we had to make," the ceremony's musical designer, Chen Qigang, said. "Our rehearsals had already been vetted several times - they were all very strict. When we had the dress rehearsals, there were spectators from various divisions, including above all a member of the politburo who gave us his verdict: we had to make the swap."

A "grueling competition" had been waged to choose the performer, but at the last minute the "swap" was made because the seven year old girl simply did not portray the image that the Chinese wanted to convey to the world, she had buck teeth according to the story.

That's George Will on the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics:

This year's August upheaval coincides, probably not coincidentally, with the world's preoccupation with that charade of international comity, the Olympics. For only the third time in 72 years (Berlin 1936, Moscow 1980), the games are being hosted by a tyrannical regime, the mind of which was displayed in the opening ceremony featuring thousands of drummers, each face contorted with the same grotesquely frozen grin. It was a tableau of the miniaturization of the individual and the subordination of individuality to the collective. Not since the Nazi's 1934 Nuremberg rally, which Leni Riefenstahl turned into the film "Triumph of the Will," has tyranny been so brazenly tarted up as art.

ESPN reports:

A former University of Toledo basketball player has been charged with fixing games in the latest development in a nearly two-year federal gambling probe.

I don't know what's more surprising, that his occurred or that anyone cares enough to bet on MAC basketball games.

Question for thought: Should point shaving be a crime?

You could argue that the player violated the contract he has with the NCAA not to engage in such activities, but we don't usually criminalize simple contract violations. How is a point shaver different than a player who simply dogs it? As far as the betters are concerned, if the line setters have done their job right, half the betters should be on one side of the line and the other half on the other side of the line. An effective point shaver would change which half won, but I can't see any reason why I should care about one side over the other side. The whole thing was a coin toss anyway.

Would Walter Block defend this undefendable?

Here's a list of 10 including Britney Spears Baby Safety Night, Jose Canseco Juice Box Night, and Terrell Owens Unappreciation Night (featuring 81 cent hot dogs).

The [Augusta, GA] GreenJackets will make fun of the retired, maybe now un-retired, quarterback legend, by giving away flip flops in honor of the flip flopper.

The first 100 fans through the gates for the team's August 4th game against the Savannah Sand Gnats will receive a pair of flip flops.

But that's not all. The GreenJackets plan on retiring Favre's jersey number (4), only to reinstate it the next day. Luckily, the team doesn't currently have a player wearing that number.

The idea for the night is still in development, but other events planned include seat upgrades to anyone wearing a Favre jersey. Fans wearing a "cheesehead" will also receive a free brat at the concession stand. The team will also be hosting contests including the "Lambeau Leap" and the "Strahan Sack." Though we're not exactly sure how the latter would work. Who could do the best fake?

Story here; HT to Skip Sauer.

The July 24, 1908 NYT reports on a deal between the Cleveland and Washington baseball teams:

It was announced today that the Cleveland American League Baseball Club has purchased the release of Pitcher Falkenberg and Third Baseman Altizer from the Washington club. The consideration is said to have been $10,000. The two men named will, it is expected, join the Cleveland Club at once.

Baseball-referenc.com reports Mr. Altizer's statistics for the 1908 season were not steller (indeed for his entire career): .224 batting average with Washington and a .213 BA with Cleveland; .274 on base percentage with Washington, .278 OBP with Cleveland, and so forth. Altizer moves on to the White Sox in the next year.

What about Falkenberg? He plays for Cleveland through the 1913 season with an ERA below 3 (except for 1911 when he had an ERA of 3.11) and he wins 23 games in 1913 before moving on to Indianapolis in the Federal League (oops).

The July 21, 1908 NYT reports on the London Olympics. One event which is no longer on the agenda was tug-of-war. This day's issue reports on a potential figurative casus bella:

The City of London policemen, who won the Olympic tug-of-war, as issued a challenge for a match with the American team, the members of both teams to be in their stocking feet or in any way the Americans prefer, and the match to be for love or any charity.

Congrats to my good friend Rita Barnes who just completed the Badwater Ultramarathon (135 miles starting in Death Valley and finishing at the Mt. Whitney trailhead) with a time of 42:21:13.

Wow.

Earlier this evening on ESPN's "Baseball Tonight" program, Peter Gammons was asked to comment on the possibility of the Braves trading first baseman Mark Teixeira. Gammons stated (this quote may not be exact; I'm typing from memory) "that the Braves have to decide if they can get back as much as they gave up for Teixeira last year" when they acquired him and pitcher Ron Mahay for five prospects.

This is decidedly not the problem the Braves face. The five prospects sent to Texas are a sunk cost since, unfortunately for Braves fans, there's no indication that the Rangers would reverse the trade and send the prospects back to the Braves.

Instead, the decision now is based on comparing the costs and benefits of keeping Teixeira vs. trading him. Some of the costs and benefits can be thought of in terms of financial gains or losses and while other come in the form of talent gains and losses (which, of course, have financial implications since they affect winning and fan attendance).

For example, if the Braves keep Teixeira the benefits include having him on the roster for the rest of the year thereby giving them larger (though still remote) odds of making the playoffs and larger attendance (both from winning more games with Teixeira's formidable bat in the lineup and from not appearing to concede the race to other teams). The benefits also include getting two compensatory draft picks for him when he leaves at the end of the year as a free agent.

By contrast, the costs of keeping Teixeira include his salary for the remainder of the season (perhaps $4-5m) and the cost of signing two high draft choices (approx. $1m each).

The Braves choice is to compare the net gain from keeping Teixeira to the value of the talent they can acquire for him. If trade rumors are to be believed, there are no teams offering substantial talent for Teixeira (this can, of course, change between now and the July 31 trade deadline). There would be two advantages to trading him for prospects rather than waiting for draft choices. One, as noted above, is that draft choices require signing bonuses. The other is acquiring prospects who have already played, say, 2-3 seasons of minor league baseball gives (for both the Braves and the trading team) a better read on whether they will turn out to be bona fide major league talent. That is, prospects with minor league experience are less risky than newly drafted players who have not yet begun the transition from high school or college to pro baseball.

BTW, my prediction is the Braves will keep Teixeira because, as noted above, there doesn't seem to be strong market for him. I think there's also a behavioral reason--the Braves management would take a lot of heat for trading Teixeira for much less than they traded away to get him.

*See JC Bradbury and Dennis Coates for interesting discussions of "what is sports economics?".

Here's an example of sports crowding out other economic activity*:

The renowned Vienna State Opera canceled one performance and complained about dismal attendance at another, blaming the European soccer championship being played in the Austrian capital.

Performances are usually nearly sold out, but the opera house said 29 percent of its seats went unsold for its most recent event, Verdi's "La forza del destino." The opera house also said it had decided to cancel a ballet evening June 29, the day when the final is played in Vienna.

Officials said in a statement Tuesday that would-be visitors fear negotiating through masses of soccer fans in downtown Vienna.

I'm betting that if an economic impact study of the European soccer tournament was done it didn't net out lower opera attendance and canceled opera performances.

*I think this idea is attributed to Phil Porter.

The June 9, 1908 NYT reports that the U.S. Olympic team had been selected the day before in New York City:

Seventy-six athletes were selected yesterday to represent the United States at the Olympic games in London next month. A supplemental list of fifty-eight men has been added to the regular list, and it is probably that many of these will be added before the team sails. The committee wrestled with the selection problem for nearly ten hours at the Astor House before a decision was reached.

How much was it expected to cost for each Olympian?

The minimum subscription which will be accepted to defray the expenses of sending any one entrant to the games was fixed at $325.

In 2006 dollars, this comes to $7,345.

In 2000, the United States spent approximately $400m (in total) for Olympic sports. I haven't been able to track down exactly how much is spent on taking the team to the Olympics, but my guess is that it is considerably more than $7,300 per athlete.

An interesting tidbit is the amount of lobbying by the US Olympic Committee reported by OpenSecrets:

Notice the up-tick in lobbying efforts the year before an Olympics, most noticable before a summer Olympics.

Mariah Carey's first pitch:

Not as bad as the Cincinnati Mayor's last year:

The St. Paul Saints will give away 2,500 "bobble foot" dolls before Sunday's game at Midway Stadium.

The baseball team says the promotion, which coincides with National Tap Dance Day, is "in tribute to all their toe-tapping friends and fans from around the nation who may ever have set foot in Minneapolis-St. Paul… even for just a change of planes. The one-of-a-kind collector’s item depicts a restroom stall and a bobble foot peaking out from underneath."

Source.

"Do I have a gambling problem? Yeah, I do have a gambling problem," Barkley said. "But I don't consider it a problem because I can afford to gamble."

That is the inimitable Charles Barkeley, quoted in May 2006 by ESPN. Today the Wynn Las Vegas went public trying to collect a 7-month old $400,000 gambling debt.

The April 21, 1908 NYT reports:

T.P. Morrissey of the Mercury Athletic Club, New York City, [yesterday] won the twelfth annual renewal of the Boston Athletic Association marathon road race, covering the twenty five mile from Ashland to the finish mark in 2:25:43 1-5...

The weather conditions were ideal for the first time when the contentstants, 120 in number, lined up in Ashland, ready to start on their journey of a trifle more than twenty-five miles to Boston.

The 2007 winner, Robert Cheboror, Kenya finished in 2:06:23. That's a 13.3% reduction in the finishing time over the past 100 years. This, despite the fact that the race in 1908 was 4.8% shorter than this year's race. This reflects an improvement in training and equipment but also, perhaps, incentives.

This year's Boston Marathon has 25,000 entrants and the potential pay off to winning would seem greater today than 100 years ago. The Gould hypothesis would suggest that over time runners are getting better and the long-tail approach would predict the right tail of 25,000 entrants to be faster than the right tail of 120 entrants.

I wonder about sample selection, however. My immediate thought is that sample selection was a bigger issue in the past, but that is probably debatable.

I'm off to Boston this weekend to run Monday's 112th Boston Marathon. This will be my second Boston and I'm hoping for a much better run than last year's disappointing 3:29. Also running this year is Beloit College's Scott Beaulier* who qualified to run Boston last year in Gainesville FL with an impressive 3:11.

Are there any other economists running?

Read More »

It's that time of year: March Madness. I've watched parts of two NCAA games this year (UT-Memphis and Duke-UNC), but that hasn't stopped me from joining James Hamilton's Econbrowser group at ESPN.com's Tournament Challenge or from creating a Division of Labour Group. The DoL is limited only by the extent of the market, so all are welcome.

Update: I'm told the DOL bracket link doesn't work. Here's the long way around. Register for an ESPN.com account and search the group directory for "Division of Labour."

You knew this was coming:

The Macon Music announced today that the team will host “Eliot Spitzer” Night on Friday, June 13th 2008 when the Music play host to the Aiken Foxhounds.

During “Eliot Spitzer” Night, the following elements will exist:

1. The Music have extended an invitation for former New York Governor Spitzer to be on hand and throw out the first pitch
2. The team will give away a New York Vacation including a one night stay at the MayFlower Hotel
3. Client #9 (or fan #9) will receive a free Music prize pack
4. Any fan with the name Eliot, Spitzer, or “Kristen” along with any fan from New York will receive $1 off admission
5. The Music will play Frank Sinatra music throughout the evening in honor of New York
6. Wire Taps will be placed throughout the ballpark this evening
7. ATMs will be available for cash withdrawals not to exceed $5,000 per hour
8. Any fan who has resigned their position will be given $1 off admission
9. The 871 fan will receive a gift certificate for the Macon Music Team store.

Here and here are previous examples of wacky promos.

... this part of Allen Sanderson's essay on incentives:

For example, given that the Chicago Bears can sell out Soldier Field constantly, and the National Football League (NFL) shares its television revenues equally across members of the cartel, it is not surprising that the owner of the Bears is willing to do without a costly high-quality quarterback—payroll would rise but any effect on revenues would be shared with all the other teams.

True enough, but what if a better quarterback (which means almost anyone since the imcumbent is Rex Grossman) allowed the Bears to charge higher ticket prices while selling out Soldier Field? This source indicates that stadium "gate" revenue is spilt 60-40 between the home and visiting teams, respectively. Thus, even a team could reap a large, though not complete, share of revenue generated by a QB upgrade.

My friend Scott and I ran an official 3:34:51 yesterday at Last Chance for Boston Marathon Last Chance is so named because this is the last weekend you can qualify for this year's Boston Marathon. (I qualified back in September though so this was just a tune-up run.) The course is a one-mile loop which would seem boring except that it has the feel of a big race because everybody is compressed on the course so there's a lot of people around you all the time.

We ran with a pretty even pace throughout except for a 15:25(!!) last mile (mile lap times below). You see we screwed up at the end. They weren't calling out lap counts (at least not for us) and we lost track. We stopped after the 25th lap thinking we were finished, got the medal, turned in the timing chip, started to walk to the car and everything. But then we got to thinking that our "time" seemed a bit too good for our pace. "Shoot, we better check..." Sure enough we were short a lap. So we had to go collect our chips out of the bucket, run the last lap (clutching medal in hand), and finish. We would have had a 3:27 or so had we not stopped for all this time.

I am a bit perturbed at the organization for not calling out everyone's laps (like they did last year) and several other people I talked to complained about this too. Oh well. 3:27...3:34...it really doesn't matter I guess. All in all we had a nice tune-up marathon for Boston.

50 334 Robert Lawson 40 M Bexley OH 3:34:51
1: 10:22 10:22
2: 7:49 18:11
3: 7:52 26:02
4: 7:43 33:45
5: 7:51 41:35
6: 7:51 49:25
7: 7:44 57:09
8: 7:55 1:05:03
9: 7:50 1:12:53
10: 7:59 1:20:51
11: 7:51 1:28:42
12: 7:51 1:36:32
13: 7:50 1:44:21
14: 8:34 1:52:55
15: 7:53 2:00:47
16: 7:56 2:08:43
17: 7:48 2:16:31
18: 7:59 2:24:29
19: 8:00 2:32:28
20: 8:01 2:40:29
21: 7:40 2:48:08
22: 7:33 2:55:41
23: 7:55 3:03:35
24: 7:50 3:11:25
25: 8:02 3:19:26
26: 15:25 3:34:51

Not yet, unfortunately, but I have a guest post on Sabernomics. I compare the Macon Braves move to Rome in 2003 to the upcoming move of the Richmond Braves to Gwinnett County.

Speaking of Sabernomics, the paperback edition of JC's book is will be out on February 26.

A few years ago one of my favorite students came in to ask me to sign off on his early (December instead of May) graduation form. I began to launch into my "why the heck would you want to leave college early--don't you know the real world sucks" lecture, but he stopped me short by saying he wanted to hike the 2175 mile Appalachian Trail and needed to start in March. Oh. Now that's a good reason to graduate early! I signed his form eagerly. He completed the hike and then moved to "do good" work in Oregon.

Now he wants to hike the 2650 mile Pacific Crest Trail that runs from the Mexico border through California, Oregon, and Washington. Here's a section from his letter to friends:

If only I had been mature enough to listen to my advisor Dr. Lawson, and pursue a Master /PH.D in Economics and trust that my faith would always be there for me to explore later. Yet, my naive ears did not listen. As many of you know I left Capital for the wonders of the world, exploring the east coast as I hiked the entire Appalachian Trail the summer after my graduation... I joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corp and worked for joy and love, having all my material needs provided for through this program and given a monthly stipend of $80.00.

He's trying to raise $2650 ($1 per mile) for charity along the way.

Who am I to say he chose wrong? He sounds plenty wealthy to me.

In today's AJC, JC Bradbury takes on the Gwinnett Braves deal. Well done JC!

A previous post on the Gwinnett give away is here.

When the Mt. Washington avalanche risk is 'HIGH' do not go hiking in Huntington Ravine.

Lance Armstrong is running the Boston Marathon this year, and unlike most people running for charity, he actually qualified the old fashioned way.

BOSTON - Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong plans to run the Boston Marathon in April to raise money for his foundation.

Armstrong, 36, qualified for Boston by finishing the 2007 New York City Marathon in two minutes hours 46 minutes 43 seconds, good for 214th place. The Boston qualifying time is 3:15 for men between the ages of 35 and 39.

From the Jan. 19, 1908 NYT we learn that football was king in Michigan even back then:

At the annual Michigan Athletic Association today it was shown that the total receipts of the last fiscal year were $33,894 [$776,000 in 2006 dollars]. Of this ammount, football brought in $25,894 [$580,000 in 2006 dollars and 76% of total revenue]. The baseball games lost $800 and track athletics $2,666. The management put $18,000 into the Ferry Field improvement fund and has a balance of $7,816. Last year the balance carried over was $10,545.

In 2006, football at the University of Michigan generated $50.982 million in revenues, approximately 83% of all athletics related revenue (Equity in Athletics data here).

We know that Michigan football is worth more today than one hundred years ago, but it is interesting to see that Michigan football is worth more today relative to the other sports on campus.

From an AJC article on Atlanta's AAA baseball team moving from Richmond to a $38m taxpayer funded stadium in Gwinnett County GA:

Last July, a consultant reported building a stadium with 5,500 permanent seats and grass seating for another 1,500 would cost $25 million to $30 million. Such a stadium also would include 16 private suites, 300 club seats and 2,300 parking spaces within walking distance of the stadium.

Convention, Sports & Leisure International, the Minnesota-based consulting firm hired by the Gwinnett Convention & Visitors Bureau, found that building and operating such a stadium could create hundreds of jobs, generate up to $7 million in consumer spending every year and generate as much as $12 million in tax revenue over a 30-year period.

The firm's study concluded that Gwinnett County provides "one of the strongest markets in the country to support a minor-league baseball team."

News reports in Richmond say community leaders are angry over the minor league team's departure from their community after more than four decades.

But at least one sports industry figure there says the loss is more emotional than financial.

"I dont think the direct economic impact of the Braves being here or not is that great," said John Lugbill, executive director of the Metropolitan Richmond Sports Backers, a public-private sports commisson partially funded by tax dollars. "But the positive attributes to the community are important."

See also Skip Sauer's post at The Sports Economist; be sure to read Rod Fort's comment on the post.

Background: Rome has been selected to host the 2008 and 2009 NAIA national championship football games. Local officials estimate a $1-1.5 million local economic impact.

Just how bad was basketball in the early days? The Dec. 22, 1907 NYT reports on the Penn-Army basketball game from the night before:

By a score of 22 to 21 the University of Pennsylvania defeated the cadet basket ball team here to-day. With five seconds to play and only one goal needed to give the soldiers the lead, the excitement was intense, both teams playing frantically.

In the first half McNicholl made three goals and Fitzpatrick added a point from the foul line. The half ended with the score 7 to 10 in favor of West Point.

How painful was that to watch? How painful would it be to watch a game like that today?

Earlier this week I posted on shoddy inference based on the Mitchell Report. Today's NYT has a column from Jonathan Cole and Stephen Stigler:

An examination of the data on the players featured in the Mitchell report suggests that in most cases the drugs had either little or a negative effect.

For pitchers identified by the report, we looked at the annual earned run average for their major league careers. For hitters we examined batting averages, home runs and slugging percentages. We then compared each player’s yearly performance before and after he is accused of having started using performance-enhancing drugs. After excluding those with insufficient information for a comparison, we were left with 48 batters and 23 pitchers.

For pitchers there was no net gain in performance and, indeed, some loss. Of the 23, seven showed improvement after they supposedly began taking drugs (lower E.R.A.’s), but 16 showed deterioration (higher E.R.A.’s). Over all, the E.R.A.’s rose by 0.5 earned runs per game. Roger Clemens is a case in point: a great pitcher before 1998, a great (if increasingly fragile) pitcher after he is supposed to have received treatment. But when we compared Clemens’s E.R.A. through 1997 with his E.R.A. from 1998 on, it was worse by 0.32 in the later period.

Hitters didn’t fare much better. For the 48 batters we studied, the average change in home runs per year “before” and “after” was a decrease of 0.246. The average batting average decreased by 0.004. The average slugging percentage increased by 0.019 — only a marginal difference. So while some batters increased their totals, an equal number had falloffs. Most showed no consistent improvement, several showed variable performance and some may have extended the years they played at a high level, although that is a difficult question to answer.

Some players improved and some declined. But the pattern for the individuals’ averages was consistent, and the variability of players (with the exception of home run counts) was low. There is no example of a mediocre player breaking away from the middle of the pack and achieving stardom with the aid of drugs.

They do offer a caveat:

It is possible (but not addressable by these data) that one effect of drugs is to help players compensate for decline as they age, and thus to extend their careers. But there is no evidence in these data for performance enhancement above previous levels.

HT: JC Bradbury

From the Dec. 21, 1907 NYT:

Intercollegiate football, which has been barred from the Northwestern University two years, will be resumed at the opening of the season of 1908. The decision of the Trustees was read to-day by President Harris in the presence of 1,500 students, and was greated with cheers. The annual football contests, however, are to be limited to three intercollegiate games.

Northwestern's record in 1908? 0-2 in the Western Conference, tied for dead last with Iowa, and 2-2 overall.

In the ensuing years (1908-2004), Northwestern amassed an overall winning percentage of 0.391 (900 games, 340 wins, 536 losses, 24 ties).

The Freakonomics blog links to a chart (published by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) which reports that 46 of the players named in the Mitchell Report improved their performance in one or both of the two years after they supposedly started taking steriods. There are a lot of issues that can be raised here--is the Mitchell Report correct? what if these players were taking roids before the date cited by Mitchell? wouldn't some of the players improve because they had not yet hit the peak age of 28 or so? isn't it a stretch to claim that the juice helped some players in the second year after they started using but not in the first?--but here's a more fundamental issue: The Mitchell Report named 86 players so finding 46 (a mere 54%) that improved might well nothing more than random chance. Indeed, 46 is less than one standard deviation (4.6) away from 43 for a binomial distribution with n=86 and p=.5. Could it be that the Freakonomics guys have been, ahem, fooled by randomness?

From the Dec. 17, 1907 NYT:

It is announced in Washington that the fans there will not have a chance to see the Senators in uniform until the opening game of the season, which should be a matter of satisfaction to National Capital fandom. Manager Cantillon will again lead his troupe of alleged players to Galveston, where he will sift out their baseball knowledge for a month and then play minor league clubs on the return trip to Washington.

Ouch, with love like that it's a wonder it took the team another 53 years to relocate (ultimately to Minneapolis, MN in 1961).

Representative of the shady dealings before the era of free-agency began (again) in 1976:

Chicago White Sox say they were double crossed in a deal for Ira Thomas, one of the Yankees catchers, who was obtained by Detroit. They fail, however, to say how the double crossing was accomplished.

This year, for the first time, the average earnings of the 120 major-college football coaches hit $1 million, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

I'm sure the sports econ guys are already all over this, but for a casual observer like me, this is really neat.

USA Today has a detailed report on college head football coach compensation. My buddy Ravi writes, "Hit the "Click Here" near the top of the article for an interactive spreadsheet with salaries AND CONTRACTS for all the Division I-A college football coaches. Lots of surprises - who'd have guessed Joe Pa would be on the bottom end of the list?" (Note: requires Macromedia Flash.) Stoops is on top, of course, at $3.62m. Auburn's Tubberville is way up there, too, and that's before his recent extension. A&M's new hire, Mike Sherman, will be at $1.8m. There is an option for dollars per win, too.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your regressions.

From the Dec. 3, 1907 NYT:

Walter Camp, Yale's athletic adviser, to-day came out against the present rule in a statement in the Yale Daily News, in which he said:

"The American collegian, whether spectator or player, does not care for a game in which the element of chance is paramount. He likes to see or play a game where hard work counts and a game where definite planning secures well appreciated results. For this reason he does not care for the unlimited forward pass, which can now be tried without severe penalty on first and second down. Throwing the ball around indiscriminately may be the last resort of a weak or inferior team, and, as such, is unsatisfactory.

Thus, even legends have bad ideas from time to time.

On the other hand, the current BCS format seems to include an "element of chance" and evidently folks outside of Ohio and Louisiana aren't satisfied.

Disclaimer below the fold.

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The Dec. 1, 1907 NYT reports:

NAVY TRIUMPHS OVER ARMY, 6-0;

CROWNING OF FOOTBALL SEASON.

30,000 Enthusiastic Persons See the Sturdy Naval and Military Youngsters Fight Their Annual Football Battle at Philadelphia.

On Dec. 1, 2007, Navy beats Army 38-3.

I am sad today. Joe Nuxhall, The Ol' Lefthander, has died.

Joe Nuxhall, who became the youngest player in modern major league history when he pitched in one game for the 1944 Reds at age 15, then went on to spend more than half a century with Cincinnati as a pitcher and broadcaster, died Thursday in Fairfield, Ohio, outside Cincinnati. He was 79.

I am really sad today.

Like most of the the DoL crew (Josh, Frank, Craig, Tim, Ed, and Mike D.), I'll be at the Southern Economic Association meeting in New Orleans next week (Saturday-Wednesday).

Aside from the conference itself, I'm looking forward to a couple of meals at Mr. B's on Royal Street, my favorite restaurant on earth. You haven't lived until you've eaten the barbecued shrimp there. Of course the butter in the recipe (1.5 sticks per serving) may just kill you!

Anyway, here are a few items from the grab bag.

1. Wired magazine reports on some nasty malware that hackers have embedded in web ads on sites like the Economist,

The worst-case scenario used to be that online ads are pesky, memory-draining distractions. But a new batch of banner ads is much more sinister: They hijack personal computers and bully users until they agree to buy antivirus software.

And the ads do their dirty work even if you don't click on them.

[HT: Dave.]

(2) Looking for a good workout regime? Consider the daily workouts offered up by navyseals.com. Muy loco.

(3) I'll be running the Ole Man River Half Marathon Sunday in New Orleans. I've never run a half before as such. My fastest split time in a full marathon was 1:31 so I'm hoping to run this in around 1:28 (6:43 pace). Last week's Forestry Preserve Trail Run 5k in Auburn, Alabama was a good warmup race as I came in 3rd overall with a time of 20:30 on a pretty tough course.

In a weird "history repeating itself" story from the November 14, 1907 NYT:

"Hurry Up" Yost is coaching Michigan football teams for the last season this Fall, and will retire at its end and be succeeded by McGuigan, the former crack Michigan player, who is now with Vanderbilt....

Yost has had a remarkable career on the football field. His unbroken record of victories with Michigan raised him to a place of prominence second to no coach in the country before Michigan fell before Chicago in the memorable game on Marshall Field. that defeat broke a five years' string of successes in which there were two years that Michigan was not scored on. He built up a wonderfully fast scoring machine, and rolled up enormous totals during the season by his ability to instill swift play into the Michigan eleven.

But that was before the reform movement hit the conference colleges, and in the days of the old style game. When the new style of play was introduced Yost pooh-poohed it, but he found later that the old scheme would not go and his teams had not been taught the new...

Sounds a lot like the current Michigan coach.

Diana Nyad, the business of sports commentator for "Stateplace," offered some thoughts about MLB's revenue growth on this morning's program.

Diana Nyad: It is totally surprising. In the last four years, the NFL has grown by about 25 percent a year, which sounds right. Baseball's grown by 50 percent a year. ...

And attendance at an all-time high. One of the reasons is that they're starting to build these, you know, urban ballparks -- St. Louis and San Diego are great examples. You know, there are these beautiful retail stores. You go out for the experience, not just the ball game itself.

Two franchises out of 28 get new ballparks and that somehow makes's the industry's revenues grow 50% per year for four years. Doubtful. Revenue generated by MLB Advanced Media is more likely (HT to JC Bradbury for the link).

[Nyad:] And what's happened is that that kind of money by the big teams, you know, was forced a few years ago into revenue sharing. And that's why this year, we've seen the intent of that revenue sharing come to life. Just as a . . . you know, I'm not a huge baseball follower, but it was great for me, and I think a lot of people, to see the Diamondbacks, the Cleveland Indians and the Colorado Rockies instead of the perennial big-money teams. So like, the whole country now has some reason to hope that their Pittsburgh Pirates, their Baltimore Orioles, their Seattle Mariners, might make it up to the big show.

It's not at all clear that competitive balance has increased and, if so, that revenue sharing is responsible. See John Palmer on The Sports Economist.

Jagow: [B]aseball's economic health is pretty good right now. Are the managers going to see any of it? Because we hear about Joe Torre signing a big contract with the Dodgers, but I understand that the salaries for other baseball managers are quite low compared to other sports.

Nyad: You're right. I was actually shocked, I had no idea -- half of the managers out there make less than $1 million a year.

I bet managers have relatively low MRP. Few fans probably come to see a specific manager. Although they are frequently fired for team performance, managers probably have small effects on the number of games a team wins. I'm not even sure how much difference there is in strategy across managers. Managers' biggest effects may be in how they manage players' egos and personalities.

[Nyad:] Now, we might say, "Well, that's a lot of money. Good, that's what they should be making, not these $10 million a year, give me a break."

She doesn't use the word players, but I assume that's the $10 million dollar a year reference. Demand for players is a derived demand; player salaries are driven by team revenues (see above).

[Nyad:] But the truth is, the baseball managers, they work like dogs. I mean, from the day the season ends, they're over in Japan recruiting, they're getting ready to bid for those free agents, which'll start next Tuesday.

Really? I've never heard that managers recruit a la college basketball coaches. I think she's confused managers with general managers, though I'm not even sure how much time they spend scouting and recruiting in Japan.

[Nyad:] And you know, Ozzy Guillen of the White Sox says, "We are grossly underpaid."

Boo hoo.

[Nyad:] I think a huge reason is the college game. There's no Major League manager who's looking to say, "Eh, I think I might go manage Arizona State next year." There's no crossover at all with the college game ...

A reasonable point, at the margin.

Man, I just can’t wait to see what happens to A Rod! Will he sign with the Yankees or go free agent?! It's all so very exciting!

Hey, is there any other news in baseball this week?

My how times have changed. Here's a Texas A&M fan (me) all excited about pre-season basketball rankings. (Thanks for nothing Fran!).

A&M is #14. A Durant-less t.u. is #16. Kentucky is #22. Full rankings here.

Of course, pre-season rankings are meaningless and sportswriter polls are filled with biases. Here's Noel Campbell on football polls and televised games.

And here's another Lopez getting suspended for skipping classes.

From the October 25, 1907 NYT:

Early indications do not point to a victory for Cornell over the Quakers [Pennsylvania] this Fall.

The two games which will be of the most interest this week are those in which Cornell meets Princeton at Ithaca and Pennsylvania plays the Indians at Philadelphia.

Chicago started well into its schedule of big games, beating Illinois 42 to 6. Michigan had a hard time winning from Wabash, 22 to 0.

The Dartmouth team, after its showing against Maine, is confident that it can defeat Amherst. This is Dartmouth's only big game besides that with Harvard on Nov. 16

My how things have changed.

the 1907 World Series is underway in early-mid October, with the Chicago Cubs beating the Detroit Tigers on Oct. 11, 1907 to take a commanding 3-0 lead in the best of seven series. Tigers fans are deflated that their team was unable to grab a victory in Game 3 and the Oct. 12, 1907 NYT reports on many aspects of the event:

Detroit carried off premier honors for enthusiasm. Purchasers of admission tickets began streaming out toward Bennet Park before 7 o'clock. Two hours later there were four long lines waiting for the ticket windows to open.

Baseball fanatics of Blue Island, a distant suburb of Chicago, resorted to carrier pigeons to carry the news of the game by innings. A pigeon fancier, accompanied by Major Gobel and a number of fans, took forty pigeons to the ball park and turned them loose after each inning to carry the news of the game to Blue Island.

Detroit yesterday witnessed the first world's championship contest in twenty years. In 887 Detroit, then a National League team, with it's famous "Big Four" in its line-up won the title, defeating St. Louis eleven game to four.

The official attendance was announced as 11,306, which is a record for Detroit, but a poor second to the Chicago crowds.

From the NYT:

IN her prime, Joan Benoit Samuelson, one of the best female distance runners, should have been faster than Alberto Salazar, one of the best male distance runners.

Ms. Samuelson’s running was beautifully smooth. Mr. Salazar’s was not.

Yesterday I ran the Indian Run 60k in the Hocking Hills (OH). My final time was 6:31:02--13th overall out of 36, 12th out of 32 men, and 3rd out of 4 men in my 40-44 age group.

To answer your questions:

Yes, I know this is insane.
Yes, I know about Art DeVany 's view that running marathons (or ultra marathons) is bad for you.
No, I don't agree with him.
No, I don't think this is bad for my knees.
No, I am not "running from" something, at least nothing I can think of.

Many articles on the Belichick/video camera kerfuffle contain references to the 1951 NY Giants who, in a recent book, were said to be stealing signs using a telescope located in the outfield and a buzzer for communication. For example:

The Patriots' three Super Bowl wins will now always be suspect thanks to a coach who not only refuses to play by the rules but also refuses to acknowledge he did anything to break them. But how about the pennant won by the 1951 New York Giants, who were using a telescope-and-buzzer system to steal signs at the Polo Grounds where Bobby Thomson hit the “Shot Heard 'Round The World?”

Although there is no way to prove that the Giants' sign stealing didn't affect the 1951 pennant race, I have a forthcoming paper showing that most of the Giants' improvement after they started stealing signs came from better pitching not better hitting. Indeed, the Giants scored nearly a run less (0.85) in home games after July 20 than in home games before July 20. (July 20 is the day the sign stealing scheme started according to Prager.)

This is not to say that Belichick was not stealing signs or that his sign stealing had no effect. (Yesterday's results--Patriot blowout of a good San Diego team and another Jet loss--suggest stolen signs had little to do with the Pats thumping of the Jets.) It does mean that writers should think twice about asserting that the Giants stole the pennant in 1951.

ADDENDUM: An astute reader asks if my results for the 1951 Giants might reflect a general trend of improving pitching over the course of a season. Two answers. First, my analysis of Giant hitting controls for the quality of the opposing team's starting pitcher. (I use ERA, but I also tried more sabermetric measures like HR rate and BB rate.) Second, the trend in 1951 might have been different, but the current trend is for pitching to deteriorate over the course of the season (here; scroll down to the section labeled "Months").

According to ESPN, the NHL will soon announce that a regular-season game will be played in an outdoor venue on January 1, 2008. Outdoor hockey? But won't the ice melt? One guess which city they picked.

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- Get ready for an NHL big chill on New Year's Day: Penguins at Sabres in an outdoor game at Ralph Wilson Stadium.

The league is set to announce next week that the Buffalo Sabres will host the Pittsburgh Penguins, a person familiar with the event told The Associated Press, in what would be the NHL's second outdoor game.

Buffalo is considered an ideal location to host the game, and not only because of its reputation for cold, bitter winters. The Sabres' attendance has risen dramatically: last season's Presidents' Trophy-winning team sold out all of its 41 regular-season games.

HT: Mitch Mitchell for the title phrase.

I ran the Erie Marathon today. It rained either hard or very hard the entire way, but I managed to run a nice time: 3:14:40 (about 7:25/mile pace). This is about a minute off my PR (Personal Record) but is good enough for a BQ (Boston Qualifying time). :-)

I've never felt so awful immediately after a marathon as today, but I feel pretty good now after several hours (of course that could be the celebratory beers talking!)

Times below the fold (for running nerds):

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Ben Powell (Suffolk University) and Ed Lopez (SJSU and Liberty Fund) and I hiked up Charleston Peak (11,918') outside of Las Vegas in July. We lucked out with beautiful clear skies and warm temps (it can be quite cold even in July). There was no snow at all unlike the last time I hiked it (aslo in July).

Odds of winning the PGA championship before the tournament started on Thursday:
Tiger Woods 5/2
Field (all others) 9/5

Odds this morning, after Tiger shot a 63 on Friday:
Tiger Woods 1/5
Field (all others) 5/1

(USA TODAY) -- What's the French phrase for "doping debacle"? VICTORY BEFORE DEFEAT: Rasmussen wins stage before removal from Tour

Rasmussen, 33, had claimed to be in Mexico his wife is Mexican but was actually in Italy, working with an unidentified physician. The ruse was discovered when a former pro racer saw him training in the Italian Dolomites June 13 and 14 and gave that information to a Danish TV station on Wednesday.

Rasmussen missed four mandatory tests in the last 18 months and is also under investigation for shipping banned blood products in 2002.

"We did all we could do to get rid of him," Tour director Christian Prudhomme told Agence France-Presse.

Rasmussen wasn't the first rider to be ousted Wednesday. Italian Cristian Moreni, who was part of a riders' anti-doping protest at the start of Wednesday's stage, was taken into custody at the finish line because his urine sample from the July 19 stage tested positive for testosterone. He admitted his guilt, and his French Cofidis team left the race.

Prerace favorite Alexandre Vinokourov of Kazakhstan and his Astana team were expelled Tuesday after he tested positive for blood doping after his July 21 time trial win.

Yikes. Sad. I was really impressed with Rasmussen's poise throughout the Tour. Yesterday's stage win was truly impressive.

I break lines with a lot of my libertarian friends when it comes to doping. Though like any self-respecting libertarian, I think such drugs should be legal, I strongly support the bans imposed by the sports authorities governing the various sports. I notice that a lot of my libertarian friends disagree and support Barry Bonds and others accused of doping. But rules are rules boys. (As a libertarian I'm opposed to government not governance.*)

What I found really odd was how the Versus TV announcers made no mention yesterday of Vinokourov's ouster (ok I could have missed it but I watched almost the whole stage last night on tape). This after singing his praises for two weeks.

*It is a fair question to ask if the sports' bans on doping would continue if the state ended its jihad against drugs.

From USA Today comes this example of sports economics:

The escapees in Tuesday's stage were out front for more than six hours and 145 miles, only to be absorbed with the finish line in sight. If they hadn't taken a roadside restroom stop early on, they might have kept overall leader Fabian Cancellara of Team CSC from taking a surprise stage win.

There was a method to their breakaway madness: Frenchmen Nicolas Vogondy of the Agritubel team and Matthieu Ladagnous of Franзaise des Jeux got more American TV time Tuesday than French President Nicolas Sarkozy gets in a month.

Tour teams are financed by corporate sponsors, so think of breakaways as commercials with wheels. Most of Tuesday's stage was an extended infomercial for Agritubel's cattle-restraint devices and FDJ's French national lottery.

Agritubel, a non-ProTour team that got a wild-card spot in the event, has been especially aggressive about getting riders out front. It was Cedric Hervй on Monday. Look for Nicolas Jalabert today.

ADDENDUM (7/18): Co-blogger Bob points me a similar instance in this year's Boston Marathon:

At yesterday's 111th Boston Marathon, two Kenyan athletes with slim credentials appeared to be trying to steal the race, when in fact they were simply stealing television time, promoting a running shoe ...

Kudos and a big ol' shout out to my college roommate, former DoLer, and Ashland University history professor, John Moser for his fantastic performance as Howard Cosell last night at the Ashland (Ohio) Sports and Society Chautauqua. Well done John!

If you're in the area, there's still three more nights left with performances of Bobby Jones, Alta Weiss, and Joe Louis still to come.

Fort Myers, Fla. — A minor league baseball team will poke fun at the University of Florida coach who backed out of his deal with the Orlando Magic when the Fort Myers Miracle host "Billy Donovan Night" on June 20.

Just like Donovan escaped his five-year, $27.5 million contract with the Magic, fans can try to negotiate their way out of their ticket purchase.

The contract, in this case, is the ticket. Fans will have up to the first three innings to restructure their deal, but even that's negotiable.

The price of the ticket, the seat location and even a buyout can be arranged. Part of the negotiating process will involve making a free throw.

The Miracle will have Fort Myers defense attorney Michael Hornung on site to negotiate settlements. Hornung attended the same high school — St. Agnes on Long Island, N.Y. — as Donovan.

A Fort Myers man who shares the coach's name is scheduled to throw out the first pitch. After that, waffles — to poke fun at the coach's "waffling" — will be served. And hair gel, mocking Donovan's slick look, will be handed out.

Story here.

Colleague Mike Ward and ex-colleague Carolyn Dehring and myself have recently submitted the second of potentially three papers concerning the November 2004 Cowboys Stadium referendum in Arlington. The second paper available here at SSRN focuses on the impact of the potential stadium on local property values and how those impacts influenced precinct-level support for the stadium vote.

We find fairly compelling evidence that precincts in which property values increased with the probability that the stadium would be built in Arlington provided more support for the stadium referendum - what we claim is a direct test of the so-called Homevoter Hypothesis.

Here are the details:

A Direct Test of the Homevoter Hypothesis

We propose a methodology that facilitates a direct test of the homevoter hypothesis, which posits that homeowner/voter support for a public good project is positively related to the project’s expected effect on property values. First, we estimate how events that indicate an increasing probability that the public good project will be undertaken impact local residential property values before the referendum is held. These pre-vote impacts are considered noisy signals to homeowners about the market’s assessment of the net marginal benefits of the project. Second, we aggregate these market signals to the precinct level and relate them to precinct-level voting results concerning the proposed project. We apply this method to the 2004 referendum in Arlington, Texas, concerning a publicly subsidized stadium to host the NFL Dallas Cowboys. The analysis supports the homevoter hypothesis and establishes a possible methodology for future evaluations in this small but growing empirical literature.

The first paper available here investigates the impact of the pending stadium referendum on property values in Arlington relative to the surrounding areas.

Cross posted at Heavy Lifting

Baseball fans seem to be of two minds when it comes to Barry Bonds nearing (and ultimately breaking) the homerun record of Hank Aaron. What should not be lost, however, is that one of these days there will be newspaper headlines around the country mentioning Barry Bonds and the record. In the distant future people might be somewhat jealous that we were living at the time.

Consider this example from the May 25, 1907 NYT:

Cy Young Blanks the Browns

ST. LOUIS, May 24 - Boston defeated St. Louis today 4 to 0. Powell was hit freely, while the locals were unable to hit Young. Powell fielded poorly, and two errors by him materially assisted the visitors in scoring.

St. Louis had five hits to Boston's nine, and St. Louis had three errors to Boston's none.

Strike outs: Powell 5, Young 1.

Time of Game: One hour and twenty-six minutes.

Those reading the headline 100 years ago likely had no idea that today we would be jealous of seeing Cy Young. Regardless of one's opinion about Barry Bonds, we should remember that others will be jealous of us one day.

Update on racial bias in NBA foul calling. You might recall Penn economist Justin Wolfers and co-author making NYT's front page for their preliminary work concluding that referees were more likely to call fouls on players of different race. The NBA counter-argued that the Wolfers study didn't have data on individual referees' race. After some back and forth, the league has now shared its referee race data with Wolfers, who has re-run some regressions. And ESPN hired a third party economist, Thomas Miles at Chicago law, to weigh in. Miles likes the Wolfers story better.

Seldom do preliminary results get so much attention, right? And seldom do arcane econometrics get such detailed discussion in the news.

New ESPN write up here.

The May 2, 1907 NYT reports from Albany, NY:

A decision of interest to baseball magnates and players was handed down yesterday by the Court of Appeals against the New York Baseball Club of the National League and in favor of Fred Pfeffer. Pfeffer was under contract by which he claimed he was to receive $2,400 a year and $600 additional for playing to the best of his ability. He claimed to have been suspended unjustly, it being charged he was not in playing condition. He sued for $800 and interest. His claim was afterward assigned to Frank Russell, who has finally won after a long litigation.

Fred Pfeffer played professional baseball from 1882 through 1897. In 1896 he played four games with the New York Giants (the NL team) and had 14 at bats with 2 hits. Later that year he was traded or resigned with the Chicago Cubs and played 94 games with 88 hits in 360 at bats (a batting average of .244 - not great but not terrible).

Thus, the salary in question was from the 1896 season. The story doesn't report on the total amount of interest involved, but assuming an interest rate of 5% (high or low?), the entire award would amount to approximately $1300. If Russell took a thirty percent contingency fee (high or low? I admit I don't know what the norm was back then), this would leave Pfeffer with $871.

If we assume the $800 represents the economic damages incurred for being fired, and the base salary was $2,400, this would imply that Pfeffer's reservation wage (essentially the value of his best alternative to baseball for the NY Giants) was around $1,600. His reservation wage might have been considerably lower than this, which would have implied a larger claim in the law suit, but he might have chosen the amount for which to sue in a strategic fashion. *

Nevertheless, I find this little tidbit of data of interest because we have very little information on particular player salaries from the early days of baseball. I have a working paper with former UTA Masters student Jennifer Ashcraft analyzing unique salary data I discovered from the 1880s (available here) and there are some aggregate numbers (mainly average salaries) that have been revealed during various law suits over the years, but during the early days of professional baseball salaries were not revealed as openly as today.

One more player observation on baseball salaries doesn't help a whole lot, but let's take a crack at "robust inference on one observation" (my forthcoming Nobel-winning magnum opus).

Fred Pfeffer was an average hitter, especially as he primarily played second base and shortstop (positions that historically weren't expected to generate above-average batting numbers). Pfeffer's career statistics were a .255 batting average, a .312 on base percentage, and a .369 slugging percentage; all fair-to-middling' numbers. If the salary for an average player like Pfeffer was $2,400 but Pfeffer's reservation wage was somewhere in the area of $1,600, perhaps Pfeffer (and other players?) had more negotiating power under the reserve clause than is generally believed.**

The negotiated wage between Pfeffer and the Giants fell between Pfeffer's reservation wage and Pfeffer's marginal revenue product. What was his MRP? My work with Ashcraft suggested that the average ratio of MRP to wages amongst the best players in the game during the 1880s averaged 2.5. Thus, the so-called contract zone might have had a lower bound of $1,600 and an upper bound of $6,000. This would suggest that Pfeffer was able to negotiate about 18% of the $4,400 difference between his MRP and reservation wage, with the team keeping the rest of the difference.

This would seem to be back-of-the-envelope-consistent with the numbers in the Ashcraft-Depken piece.

How cool is that.

* HT to colleague Mike Ward for ealier discussion that led to this post.

** [tongue-in-cheek] My magnum opus titled "Robust Inference on One Observation - How to Win Every Argument Every Time" is replete with sentences filled with parentheticals, and hypotheticals. Unfortunately, publishers (okay, one) have taken a dim view of my work from which I can only conclude that all publishers are idiots.

Cross posted at Heavy Lifting

The May 2, 1907 NYT reports from Princeton, N.J.:

George R. Murray, the general athletic Treasurer for Princeton University, to-day gave out the statement of the baseball association for the half year ended Jan. 1, 1907. The report shows a net profit of $11,78.34 for the season. The heaviest expenses being the coaches' salaries, $4,844.92, and training table, $3,159.11.

Princeton baseball coaches were paid 103,865 2005 CPI adjusted dollars. That's considerably lower than coaches today are paid (en masse). The Department of Education and the NCAA gather data on athletic department budgets, primarily for Title IX concerns. In 2003, the last year public data are available, Princeton paid the average men's head coach $77,550 and the average men's assistant coach $56,200.

If the men's baseball team had 1 head coach and three assistant coaches. I don't have access to the actual salaries of these four individuals, but if they are paid the average at Princeton, total coaching salaries would total $246,000.

Are coaches today worth twice (in real terms) as they were 100 years ago, assuming Princeton coaches are paid the average salaries at Princeton? This would imply a growth rate in coaches real salaries of approximately 1.4% per year. I might believe that growth rate, after all has the marginal productivity of a good baseball coach changed all that much over the past 100 years? Moreover, as baseball is rarely a revenue generating sport (and it doesn't seem to be at Princeton), the value of marginal product is likely changing very little.

Granted, if the Princeton coaches are paid more than the average, then the growth rate would be a bit higher. However, the increase in coaches salaries have been greatest in football and basketball (both men's and women's) where the greatest amount of rents are gathering and with the players not being paid those rents are being distributed (to some extent) to the coaches of those particular sports.

Whether there is any largess for the coaches of non-revenue generating sports (where coaches likely have lower opportunity costs, lower productivity gains, and lower amounts of rent-generation) is an interesting empirical question. I am not sure if the data to answer that question are readily available, but it would prove an interesting dissertation topic.

I think the best writing in newspapers is often found on the sports pages, but this line from Saturday's Columbus Dispatch by writer Jim Massie was a real groaner:

CINCINNATI --With two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, the Reds looked more uncomfortable lost than a polar bear up to its white, furry haunches in a Sahara Desert sand dune."

I hope Jim was drinking when he came up with that one!

Thanks to everyone for your e-mails about the marathon. I had three goals going in:

(1) Requalify for Boston with a 3:20.
(2) Beat my bib number (6252)
(3) Have fun!

I ran a 3:29:20 so I failed to requalify, but I did beat my bib number coming in 5363 out of 20038, and I also had lots of fun. The fans in Boston are simply the best (a special nod to the gals at Wellesley College!). As Meatloaf said, two out of three ain't bad. Oh yea, the weather wasn't nearly as bad as the media made it sound. We had light rain in the beginning and only occasional gusts of wind and it got better throughout the day.

Split times (unofficial) are below the fold for you running geeks.

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The April 17, 1907 NYT reports the following:

Max Spitzner, who won the National gymnastic championship in several events in the contests at the Madison Square Garden last year, to-day lost his left arm.

It was torn away by machinery in a camera factory in which he was employed. Spitzner was the champion gymnast of Connecticut.

Weather Advisory - 2007 Boston Marathon:

FORECAST:
The most up-to-date weather forecast calls for a predicted Spring storm on Monday, including heavy rains (potentially 3 to 5 inches), with the start temperatures in the mid to upper 30's. Wind will likely be East (in the face of