The SoapBoxers

Tears streamed down the face of Beth Page, smearing her carefully applied makeup.  She stood by the side of her husband’s grave, the very picture of the grieving widow (although perhaps her black dress was a wee bit too low-cut for the occasion).

It was no surprise that she was convincing in her grief.  After all, she had practice.  This was the third husband she had buried.  With each death, a few more dollars had gone into her coffers.  The trick, of course, was to make the death appear accidental.

The death of her first husband, Zach, nearly was accidental.  Beth and Zach college sweethearts.  On their honeymoon, they decided to go scuba diving off the coast of Florida.  The couple were accomplished divers, and they took turns inspecting the equipment before each dive.  On the fateful day, it was Beth’s  turn to check the equipment.  She noticed a problem with Zach’s gear.  She very nearly pointed it out, but she was still a bit upset over a comment he had made the night before, so she kept her mouth shut.  Zach’s oxygen tank malfunctioned, and Poseidon claimed another victim.  The life insurance had been more than generous.  Even after paying Zach’s funeral expenses, Beth had a sizable pot of money to work with.  Beth kept a low profile for a year, before telling her friends and Zach’s family that she was going to pull up stakes and move back to the midwest, where her family lived.  Boston simply had too many memories of Zach, and she was overwhelmed with emotion.  That was her story, in any case.

Instead of going back to her non-existent family in the midwest, Beth spent the next few years lying on the beach, getting a tan, reading Danielle Steele novels, and flirting with cabana boys.  She also invested some of the insurance money in herself, using an augmentation to increase her cup size.

The breast enlargement turned out to be a rather profitable investment, netting her a second husband, Phil.  Phil was a Manhattan investment banker.  Beth had tired of Phil within a few weeks of meeting him, but she was intrigued by his collection of art, as well as his portfolio of stocks.  Her lust for his riches made it tolerable for her to consummate the marriage.  Soon after they were married, Beth began plotting against her husband.  In the end, it was not terribly difficult to kill him off.  The man was a slave to his cell phone, and she made a habit of calling him when she knew he would be jaywalking across busy streets.  She would intentionally draw him into arguments until her actions eventually had the intended effect.  A taxi cab hit a distracted Phil as it drag raced with another car, efficiently separating him from his precious cell phone and ending his life.

Beth spent another year among grieving family and friends before once again declaring that she was moving back home to be near her own family.  This time she had enough money for Maui.  Beth was carefully stalking her third victim within hours of landing in Hawaii.  Eldrick had more money than Zach or Phil – perhaps enough money to allow Beth to sustain a pampered lifestyle.

The bodies were starting to mount, so Beth had to excercise caution when killing off Eldrick.  This had to appear as an obvious accident.  She couldn’t risk a clumsy attempt such as cutting the brake lines in his car.  She eventually decided to engage an accomplice.  Beth ensured herself of an alibi by heading out to a night on the town with her friends at the same time that Eldrick was heading off to the course for a solo round of twilight golf.  It was the next morning when they found his body on the 9th green.  His death was ruled a cerebral hemorrhage.  The impact mark on his head indicated that he had been struck by a Titleist ball moving at a very high rate of speed.  Someone had neglected to yell “fore”.

The Mind of Bill James: How a Complete Outsider Changed Baseball by Scott Gray

A few chapters into this book, I noticed that I was a bit disappointed. I quickly realized the problem – as a big fan of Bill James, I had simply built up too much internal hype. Additionally, I probably had more familiarity with the life of Bill James than the typical reader. I took a step back and took a slightly different approach when reading the rest of the book – and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Many of you are probably clueless as to who the heck Bill James is. Bill James is the father of sabermetrics. There you go – you have your answer.

OK, OK. Let’s go a bit deeper into Bill James and sabermetrics.

The story really begins with the history of how baseball teams evaluate talent. For decades, scouts (using the “eyeball test” for a decent portion of their analysis) have been a cornerstone of talent evaluation, aided by historical stats such as batting average (for hitters) and earned run average (for pitchers).

While working as a security guard at the Stokely Van Camp plant (guarding the Pork ‘n Beans) James began writing a series of essays that took a closer look at various aspects of baseball. Sometimes James would take viewpoints that were contrary to prevailing theories; other times he would focus on things that simply hadn’t been studied in any great detail before. James sold a few copies of his first book. Writer Daniel Okrent read a copy and helped push James toward the mainstream. Today, many in the baseball establishment bristle at his name, but James has a large legion of followers. Other writers have followed in his footsteps, and today sabermetrics is well respected in many baseball clubhouses.

James’ analysis exposed some of the traditional statistics as being poor judges of a player’s talent, or of the player’s value to the team. Fielding percentage had long been used to determine the defensive value of a player. However, a player’s range can be considerably more important, as a player with good range can take away a lot of hits – and hit minimization is the true defensive goal in baseball. James also showed that, many times, a player who steals a lot of bases can be counter-productive – if he gets caught a lot.

James also point out the importance on context with statistics. A ballpark can have a considerable impact on a player’s statistics. James also developed major league equivalent, a formula for taking a minor league player’s statistics, adjusting for park factors and level of competition, and determining what the player could have accomplished in the major leagues.

One of the more interesting concepts of James’ work is the “relief ace”. It is his belief than many teams make inefficient use of their best relief pitcher by using him to close out games in the 9th innings. James would prefer that teams use their best reliever (which he refers to as a “relief ace”) a bit earlier, in a critical point in the game. He notes that each run saved in a tie game has eight times the impact of a run saved in a game with a three run game. In spite of this, many teams keep their closer on the bench in the 7th inning of a tie game, but bring him into the 9th inning of the next game with a three run lead in order to close the game. The relief ace concept makes a lot of sense to me – but it doesn’t seem to be taking hold in Major League Baseball.

This book tells us more about Bill James – showing us the living, breathing human being behind the formulae – with anecdotes from family life, college, the army (as a college educated dog handler), and the Stokely plant. Interestingly, it also shows us that James isn’t a guy who believes that numbers are the complete solution. Instead, the gist of his philosophy seem to be in keeping an open mind to new ideas, as well as taking a fresh look at old ideas to determine if they are still relevant today (if, indeed, they were ever relevant).

The appendix has some of James’ research (scratching the surface a bit), and Gray mentions several of James’ books during the course of this book. This book won’t make you an expert sabermetrician, but it will give you a good understanding of the origins of sabermetrics. The book is essentially one part Bill James biography and one part sabermetrics primer. The book has a good flow and is an easy read.

Scott Gray The Mind of Bill James

I have a bunch of topics that I want to discuss today, but none of them really warrants an entire article, so I’ll bounce around a bit.  The segues are going to be rough, so hang on for the ride.

First of all, Kosmo is growing a goatee!  Why?  Not because I think it looks cool.  Not because I need facial hair for an upcoming 80’s party (like a certain Casual Observer reader).  Nah, I’m just a bit lazy and really hate to shave, especially the goatee zone.  We’ll see how long this lasts.

Baker at ManVsDebt (a personal finance blog) talks about his ongoing trip to Australia.  The plan is for the Baker family to set down some Australian roots for a while.  His article talks about the flight to Australia and the first few days in the country.  It’s a good read.

Two time NFL MVP and genuinely good guy Kurt Warner is back in his home town of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, this week, working with Habitat for Humanity to build homes for those who were displaced by last year’s flooding.  Cedar Rapids (where I work) and Iowa City (where I live) were devastated by flooding last June, and much work still needs to be done in the recovery effort.  Warner and fellow local god Zach Johnson (2007 Masters  champion) routinely make trips back home to do good things, as do many other athletes and entertainers (ok, we basically just have Ashton Kutcher) from the state.

My beloved Colorado Rockies have climbed into wild card contention with an 11 game winning streak (which, alas, ended on Tuesday).  The firing of former manager Clint Hurdle and the promotion of Jim Tracy to interim manager seems to have marked a turning point in the season.  Shortstop Troy Tulowitzki seems to have shaken off the cobwebs with a strong June.  His 2009 OPS is in line with his career mark – he is hitting for a lower average this year, but is compensating with more walks.

Many Rockies draft picks have signed contracts and will be reporting to the minor league affiliate in Casper, Wyoming before long.  The Casper team was formerly known as a the Casper Rockies.  On October 31, 2007, they changed their team name.  They are now known as … the Casper Ghosts.  The equipment manager was quite happy with the change.  Whenever the team gets a new player, the equipment manager just grabs a new sheets, cuts a couple of eye holes, and the uniform is finished!  (Yes, I’m joking about that part – but the Casper team REALLY is called the ghosts!)

Bryce Harper is in line to become the youngest draft pick in baseball history.  The 16 year old catcher (who also pitches and plays a few other positions) will take his GED and enroll in a junior college for the 2009-2010 academic year.  Harper has been a man among boys when playing high school competition, and will most likely be the #1 overall pick in 2010.  The Washington Nationals are by far the worst team in baseball and are in line to hold the #1 pick.  They could conceivably get Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper in consecutive drafts.

On Mother’s Day 2004, the Oakland A’s had a 5K run to fight breast cancer, free mammograms for women, and a free hat to the first 7500 female customers.  A male lawyer from San Diego decided that this was discrimination and decided to sue.  Incredibly, a $500,000 settlement has been reached – half going to the lawyers and half going to the victims of the travesty.  For decades, baseball teams have tailored certain giveaways to males, females, adults, or kids.  The giveaways are not part of the price of the ticket (and in fact often feature advertising from a sponsor).  If these sorts of lawsuits become commonplace, expect teams to take the easy route and simply halt the giveaways entirely.  (Thanks to Rick Reilly of ESPN for the heads-up on this)

Cheese is the latest victim of shrinking portion sizes.  I noticed that Kraft has been changing the design on their packaging.  On Saturday, I noticed that their 8 ounce blocks of cheese were fatter and shorter than the previous iteration.  And the “8 ounce” block now contains just 7 ounces.  Be wary, beer drinkers – the “5 pack” is just around the corner.

I’ve never been a huge fan of red “licorice”, preferring instead to indulge in true (black) licorice.  However, my interest has been piqued by Fire Twizzlers.  Red, yes, but with the extra zing that comes with the flavor of fire.  I’m a fan of fire – I gulp atomic fireballs and love fire Jolly Ranchers.  By the way, if you’re ever looking for cheap thrills, toss a few fire ranchers into a bowl of cherry or strawberry ones and watch for the reactions of your victims.  Ah, good clean fun.

Here’s a tip to squeeze a bit more light out of a light fixture.  Replace the bulbs with a compact flourescent bulb.  For example, a 13 watt compact flourescent bulb has the same amount of lumens (i.e. light) as a 60 watt incandescent (it will probably say “use in place of 60 watt bulb” – but if you look closely, the package will show the true wattage).  If you pop in a 20 watt CF bulb, you’ll see a nice improvement in the amount of light you get – while still using less energy and producing less heat than the 60w incandescent.  Do you have a fixture that indicates that you can only use a bulb of X wattage?  Well, according to knowledgeable people I have spoekn with, this refers to the true wattage.  If it has a 60 watt limit, you could use a 60 watt CF bulb (which could put out a ton of light) – you wouldn’t be limited to the 13 watt.  Note that you might want to double check this before going hog wild – I’m definitely not a certified lighting expert!

This weekend marks the toughest challenge in professional golf. The 109th United States Open Championship. The United States Golf Association is always known to set up the US Open venue brutally difficult, and this year is sure to be no exception.

Bethpage Black – located in Bethpage Park in New York will host the event for the second time since 2002. Tiger Woods was the winner that year and many feel this year will be no different.

Bethpage is a very difficult and very long course. It is among just a few recent courses that have hosted US Opens that are accessible to the public to play. By now you have all read countless stories of die hard golfers sleeping in their cars overnight to play this golf course.

I am one of the biggest fans of golf I know, but I can’t imagine sleeping in the FJ Cruiser overnight in order to play this place. It is long, somewhat scenic, but we aren’t talking Augusta, St Andrews, Sandhills, Merion, or a bunch of other courses that would be much more enjoyable to play….

but I digress….

This course is just flat out difficult. Which alone will probably eliminate about 80% of the field from a chance at winning. In order to win most U.S. Opens you have to hit fairways, have a great short game, and play conservative yet aggressive. Here at Bethpage you also have to hit it a country mile as the course will play much the same as it did seven years ago.

Here are my favorites to contend this week.

1) Eldrick Tont Woods – Any reason to not take Tiger? Hmmm…#1 in the world, just coming off a win at the Memorial with one of his best Fairways Hit rounds in forever, and the last time they played here he was the only golfer under par for the tournament. I’ll play with the house money in this shocking pick.

2) Phil Mickelson – Sentimental favorite for three reasons. First of all, he has been close in the Open a couple of times. Second, his Wife Amy will start cancer treatments soon, and a lot of people would love to see lefty pull this rabbit out of the hat. Third, New Yahkaas Love Lefty!. Will undoubtedly be the favorite of the crown and one of the few that has the game to do it.

3) Jim Furyk – Furyk has a game suited for all U.S. Open venues. Drives it well, plays smart, good short game..Length here may hurt him a bit. He is also playing very well this year, good enough to win.

4) Geoff Oglivy – Stole the Open a few years back at Winged foot when Montgomerie and Mickelson spewed oil and threw gears on the finishing holes. Has been hot or cold this year but has the type of game that should succeed here.

5) Sergio Garcia – It pains me to pick him however you cannot discredit his ball striking abilities. He has the length to contend at this track. Biggest question with Sergio is will the locals remember the antics of 2002 and bring the heat on Sergio again in 2009. I for one am betting they don not forget and the crowd might just be the reason he is NOT around on Sunday.

Now that only leaves about 151 golfers I am not picking, so sit back this weekend, and enjoy another great installment of our National Championship.
Happy Fathers Day this weekend to all you dads out there!

Digital Transition

The digital TV era officially began at midnight Friday/Saturday, as analog TV signals ended.  The FCC received 300,000 calls on Friday.  I can fully understand any confusion about the transition, since it came upon us suddenly, with very little information from to the government.  Perhaps the government could have delayed the transition, forced TV stations to have messages about the transition on the bottom of the screen every day for an incredibly long amount of time, and given away coupons for a discount on the converter boxes.  If they had taken all those steps, perhaps there would not have been as much confusion.

(sigh)

Many of the calls were questions about how to set up the converter box.  Just a thought, but maybe it would have been a good idea to get the box set up a week or two before the transition date?  I really have a hard time feeling sympathetic for these people.  I’m not sure how anyone could have been unaware of the transition.

Holocaust museum killing

On Wednesday, 88 year old  James von Brunn shot and killed security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.  Other security guards returned fire, and von Brunn was shot and remains in critical condition.  von Brunn is a white supremacist who denies the existence of the holocaust and spreads anti-semitic messages on his web site and in his book.

von Brunn served six years in prison after attempting to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board in 1981 as a protest of the high intest rates rates of that time.  I guess he didn’t mellow as he got older.

The holocaust occured.  I’m really not sure how people can argue against it.

I’m always a little surprised that so many people pour so much time into spreading hatred.  It seems like such a poor use of the limited resource of time.  “Spreading hatred” doesn’t crack my list of  favorite things to do in my spare time.

Cat killer

18 year old Tyler Weinman has been arrested for killing 19 cats in south Florida.  Weiman was also charged with 4 counts of burglary – apparently the result of break-ins on his canapping expeditions.  Residents ofthe area have been fearing for the safety of their cats, as cats have been found stolen and have later turned up dead, with their bodies mutilated.  Police have indicated that there are multiple suspects, so we may see other arrests in this case.

I’m not much of a cat person, but nonetheless I find this very appalling.  These cats were harmless pets and did not deserve the die in this manner.

It’s also worth noting that many serial killers tortured animals when they were younger, and they escalated to violence against humans.  This is not to suggest that Mr. Weiman was destined to become a serial killer, as the vast majority of people who torture animals do NOT escalate their activity to homocide.  However, because of the animal cruelty, there is a greater possibility that he would have escalated his activity – particularly since Weiman apparentlt stalked some of the cats.  Needless to say, it’s much better to put a halt to the activity in the earlier stages.

Another bankruptcy filing

Six Flags has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy.  Six Flags does not expect its visitors to see any changes as it seeks to reorganize its debt load.  Six Flags is attempting to reduce its debt from $1.8 billion to $600 million.  Six Flags  operates 20 theme parks in the US, Canada, and Mexico.  It recorded record profits last year, but has been unable to refinance its debt.  My guess is that there will be a debt-for-equity swap with some creditors.

I really hope that they are able to reach a quick resolution.  Nothing would be sadder than a roller coaster sitting idle.

We take you back to math class in today’s edition of The Soap Boxers, as we discuss probability.

First of all, if someone tells you that you have a million to one odds of winning a lottery, they are wrong.  Your odds are actually a million to one AGAINST you winning.  Another way to phrase this is that you have a one IN 1,000,001 chance of winning.  But we’re being too picky, so let’s get down to the nitty gritty.

Let’s examine the multi-state Powerball game.  Powerball chooses 5 winning white balls from a group of 59 white balls, and then one red ball (Powerball) from a separate set of 39 red balls.  To win the jackpot, you must match all 5 white balls (in any order) plus the Powerball.

To eliminate confusions, I will refer to the numbers on your tickets as “numbers” and the winning numbered balls as “ball”.  Let’s use an example winning combination of 04, 18, 26, 31, 50 with a Powerball of 17.

• First number: The first number on your ticket has a 5 in 59 chance of matching one of the winning white balls.  There are 5 winning white balls and 59 total balls.  It isn’t necessary to match the white balls in order, so matching any winning white balls is sufficient.  Let’s say that the first number on the ticket is 26.
• Second number: The odds of a match drops to 4 in 58.  Why the change in odds?  Because the first number on the ticket was 26 – the second number can’t duplicate this!  We reduce the number of possible winning numbers to 4 possibilities (they are 04, 18, 31, 50) and the total number of balls remaining to 58 – because there are actually only 58 balls remaining in the selection pool.  The basic lesson is that the selection of the white balls are not independent events – the selection of each balls affects the pool of balls that are used for subsequent selections.
• Third number: The odds are 3 in 57, as there are two fewer balls in the hopper than when we began, and two fewer winning possibilities.
• Fourth number: Odds are 2 in 56
• Fifth number: Odds are 1 in 55
• Powerball:  The Powerball is completely independent from the other balls.  The odds are 1 in 39.

OK, we have the odds; what do we do with them?  We multiply them:

5/59 * 4/58 * 3/57 * 2/56 * 1/55 *  1/39

or

120/23,429,886,480

or

1/ 195,249,054

If you want to get really fancy, crack out factorials:

5!/((59! / 54!) * 39)

This article is about plugins for the WordPress blogging platform.  If you aren’t a blogger, this article may not be very interesting to you – you might wish to browse the archives instead (there is a link to the archives in the blue bar toward the top of the screen).

When I began blogging, I was using Blogger.com.  A friend quickly convinced me to move to a self-hosted WordPress solution.  I was a bit of a leap of faith, as I needed to do a decent amount of work to get the same look and feel I had on Blogger.  However, a few months later, I am very happy with WordPress.  The best thing about WordPress is its flexibility.  Plug-ins are a big part of this.  Today, I share some of my favorite plugins.

Comments

• CommentLuv– This is  my favorite plugin.  When a visitor leaves a comment, they can select one of their recent posts, and a link to this post will be appended to their comment.  The goal of Comment Luv is that subsequent readers will visit the commenter’s blog.  I’ve stumbled across some great blogs simply by clicking on the Comment Luv links.
• Comment Author Count–  This plugin displays the number of comments that a particular comment author has left over the time the blog has been active.  A rather simple idea, but still cool!
• Do Follow–  By default, WordPress appends a “no follow” tag to URLs within comments.  The effect of this is that the URLs are links are not counted by search engines such as Google.  The reason for this was the prevent spammers from leaving comments with bunches of URLs in an effort to boost the Google rank of their sites.  This hasn’t been proven to prevent spam (and, in fact, anti-spam plugins are probably a better option) and “do follow” negates the “no follow” tag.  So if you’re linking to things in your comments, Google knows about the links!

Look and feel

• WP-PageNavi–  I wasn’t impressed with the default page navigation in my theme (text hyperlinks).  Page Navi adds clickable buttons to quickly allows someone to navigate to particular pages.  Note: if you are viewing this article as the result of a search engine or receiving a direct link, you’re not going to see this in action.  Go to to front page to view the newest articles, and you’ll bump into Page Navi at the bottom.  I apologize to my RSS subscribers – there’s really not a good way for you to see this.
• Bunny’s Print CSS– If you have printed many blog articles, you may have noticed that the printed copies often suck worse than the Washington Nationals.  Garbage from the header, footer, and sidebars get printed, doubling the number of pages that get printed.  There are other plugins that allow you to present a printer-friendly version of articles to your viewer, but this can cause problems with search engine optimization.  Bunny’s Print CSS allows you to create a CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) that defines exactly what you wanted printing.  A few minutes editing the plugin’s default Print CSS, and I had de-crapified my printouts to a large extent.  I can still improve things, but they look a lot better.

Archives

Smart Archives– The nifty archives page that you can access view the navigation bar at the top of the screen is a product of the Smart Archives plugin, which rebuilds the page ever time a new article is posted.  For Smart Archives to work, yu must first enable the ability to write PHP code in your “pages” – use Exec-PHP for that.

Collapse

You may have notice the collapsing archives and categories widget in the left column.  You can easily browse articles by date or publication or by category.  If you want to simply read all my baseball articles, just click the box next to “baseball” and you’ll see a complete list, in reverse chronological order (newest first)

Ads

Ozh’ Who Sees Ads– At times, you may want to change the behavior of your ads, so that they are only show to certain subsets of your traffic (search engine traffic vs. repeat visitors, for example).  Who Sees Ads can do that – in fact, you can use it to optionally execute all kinds of code.  I plan to use it to restrict access to a giveaway that I am planning for Julyish.

Spam

Akizmet and  Spam Karma 2team up to fight spam in my blog.  So far, not a single spam comment has been posted to the site, and very few legitimate comments have been flagged incorrectly as spam.

This is not a comprehensive list of the plugins I use – but it’s definitely a list of some of the best!  Which plugins are your favorite?

If you’re a brand new blogger, you might want to check out my article, “10 Tips for Novice Bloggers”.  I ‘m fairly new to the game myself, but I hope I’ve learned a few things that can be useful to you.

This is a bit different from my other stories, lacking the “edge” that I typically try to include.

Of all the benefits offered by his company, Andrew found that he valued one benefit much more than any other – the presence of his co-worker, the lovely Charisse.  Not only was Charisse a very attractive girl, but she was smart, had a great personality, and had a laugh that Andrew could listen to all day.  On days when Charisse wore a short skirt, Andrew’s concentration would go completely down the drain, and his productivity would be nearly worthless.  Unfortunately, Andrew was painfully shy, so he adored Charisse from afar.

Charisse enjoyed her job.  Most of all, she enjoyed working with Andrew.  Andrew was a smart guy who was often able to find a creative solution to difficult problems.  He also went out of his way to compliment the works of other members of the team, unlike many of the corporate ladder climbers who were more than happy to stab someone in the back to get to the next level.  Andrew was a great guy – Charisse kept waiting for him to ask her out.

Charisse had no shortage of men asking her for a date.  At first, she declined, in hopes that Andrew would ask her out.  Eventually, it became clear to her that this was not going to happen.  It appeared that Andrew thought of her only as a friend.  Charisse began saying “yes” when men asked her out.  Charisse had enjoyable evenings with a several of the guys, and had a few second dates.  She had been dating George for the last month.  George was a great guy, but there just wasn’t the spark that she was hoping for.  Charisse was trying to find a way to let George down gently.

At work, it seemed that Andrew and Charisse were spending every moment together.  They had a great working relationship, and their manager was smart enough to take advantage of this synergy by having them work together on projects.  They had many working lunches together, and often Andrew would run out and bring back a pizza to share during a late night work session at the office.  Sometimes, they would even hang out after work.  However, to the dismay of both of them, neither of them showed outward interest in taking their friendship to the next level.

On a Friday in May, Andrew and Charisse had finished up a long day and were headed out to the parking lot.  They jumped into the elevator for the trip down to the main floor.  As they chatted about their plans for the weekend, the elevator started downward, then lurched to a stop.  The light inside the elevator flickered and went out.   Darkness enveloped them.

At the moment that the light bulb went off in the elevator, a bulb went on in Charisse’s mind.  She could “accidentally” bump up against Andrew so that they were face to face.  If Andrew didn’t return the kiss, Charisse could simply claim that the collision was an accident.  At the moment that Charisse was finalizing the thought, she felt Andrews lips upon hers – the exact idea had come to him.  For a moment, Charisse’s heart was stuck in her throat.  Then she returned her kiss with the passion that had been building inside her.  She clung tight to Andrew in the darkness of the elevator.

A moment later, Andrew and Charisse felt the earth move.  More accurately, the elevator resumed its downward motion.  They reach the bottom, exited the building, and walked outside into the beautiful spring day and toward a new life together.

There are a couple of non-fiction subjects that I study in great detail.  One of them, not surprisingly, is baseball.  The other is true crime and forensics.  This might seem like an odd combination, but the great baseball historian and analyst Bill James also has a fascination with crime.  Today, I’ll begin a multi-part series where I introduce you to some serial killers from the past.

Ted Bundy

Ted Bundy had a confusing childhood.  He was raised by his maternal grandparents, not realizing until later that his “sister” was actually his mother.  Bundy studied psychology at the University of Washington.  At one point, he worked on a suicide hotline.  Bundy was eventually accepted into law school, although he eventually dropped out.

From the late 1960s through the mid 1970s, Ted Bundy murdered dozens of young, attractive females.  In 1975, Bundy was arrested for an attack that he had committed in 1974 (the victim fought back and survived).  In 1977, Bundy managed to escape from custody twice in a span of six months.  After the second escape, he traveled from Colorado to Florida.  On January 15, 1978, Bundy killed two women and injured two others in a sorority house at Florida State University, using a wooden club as a weapon.  Unfortunately for Bundy, he left behind a bite mark on the buttock of one of the women, Lisa Levy.  A month, Bundy was arrested for driving a stolen car.  A search warrant was obtained allowing authorities to obtain an impression of Bundy’s teeth.  Experts were able to match the impression to the bite mark left of Levy’s body.  Bundy was found guilty of murder in 1978 and died in Florida’s electric chair in 1989.

The Nightstalker

In 1984, the Nightstalker began to terrorize Los Angeles.  The Nightstalker would cut phone lines, break into he house, and immeditately kill any adult males.  He would then rape any women and children (boy and girls).  At one murder scene in 1985, he used lipstick to draw a pentagram on the thigh on one victim, as well as on the wall.  This led police to believe that the killer may believe that Satan was telling him to kill.

The police caught a break when one of the Nightstalker’s victims was able get the license plate number from his getaway car.  The car was stolen, of course, but police were able to lift a partial fingerprint.  Unfortunately, Los Angeles had only begun to  computerize their fingerprint records.  The fingerprint records for most criminals were still on paper.  Only criminals born in 1960 or later were in the computerized system.  The computer found a hit – Richard Ramirez, born in February 1960 – just making the cutoff to have his prints in the computerized system.

The photo of Ramirez was soon all over the television.  Unfortunately for him, he was out of town.  When he came back into town and stopped at a convenience store, the other  customers immediately recognized him.  They were in a predominantly hispanic area, and the hispanic population was very upset at the negative publicity that Ramirez was bring upon their community.  Several citizens attempted to stop Ramirez as he tried to flee, eventually inflicting a pretty decent beating upon Ramirez.

Ramirez ended up going to trial three times.  During the first trial, a juror fell asleep.  During the second trial, a juror was murder – in a completely unrelated crime.  Finally, Ramirez was convicted during his third trial, which was interrupted by frequent bursts of satanic comments from the accused.

It wasn’t all bad news for Ramirez, though.  Ramirez exchanged leters with many people after his capture.  One of them ended up marrying him.

Wikipedia and The Casebook of Forensic Detection (Colin Evans) were sources for this article.

No.

There has been speculation that Raul’s dream season at age 37 is due to performance enhancing drugs.  This really makes no sense at all.  If Ibanez was going to do steroids, wouldn’t he have done them last year, since he was a free agent last off-season?  This would have maximized the money he could have made as a free agent.  It doesn’t make much sense to do the steroids AFTER signing the free agent deal.

So why is Ibanez on the best home run pace of his career?

Perhaps it’s his 20.7% HR/FB rate (that is, 20% of the fly balls he hits are home runs).  This is largely a luck-driven number that would be expected to regress toward the mean (around 10%) at some point.  My guess is that he’ll end the season around 14% HR/FB.  Basically, Ibanez is just on a hot streak.

Cheating?  Nah.

A bit lucky?  Probably.

Scroll down to read the main article for today – a recap of day 1 of the baseball draft!