A Referendum On What Now?

Posted 4 November 2009 by Jonah
Categories: Random commentary

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In every aspect of life, people have a tendency to look for patterns where none exist. Life is too random for most people to handle. If we don’t try to make sense of even the smallest occurrences, some of us will go mad. This is especially true when the subject at hand involves something serious or tragic, like a child getting diagnosed with cancer, or a random, fatal car accident.

It’s difficult to accept the fact that sometimes, stuff just happens. On the plus side, many have admirably tried to convey that message. You could fill a bookshelf with the number of books written on humans’ misguided attempts to find patterns where none exist, from Gladwell to Gilovich and beyond.

Rarely do we see people try to extrapolate big themes and flashy projections from small sample sizes and random data points more than in sports. Probably half the words I’ve ever written about sports have, in one way or another, been aimed at debunking this line of thinking. Alex Rodriguez isn’t a choker if he struggles in 20 postseason at-bats. Tuffy Rhodes’ three Opening Day homers shouldn’t suggest he’s going to hit 50 home runs in one major league season (in Japan, sure). A hot start by the New York Jets and their apparently bullet-proof defense doesn’t ensure that they’re bound for Super Bowl glory (see, I’m guilty of doing this too!).

If there’s one field that might breed this kind of misguided thinking more than sports, though, it’s politics. The field in general is inundated with analysis, some of it great, but most of it awful. Not two seconds had gone by after Barack Obama won last year’s presidential election that we were drowned in a flood of WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?! stories. In that case, the army of talking heads was justified: Even the world’s biggest cynic would grudgingly admit that Obama rising to office meant something – the public wasn’t happy with the Bush years, people craved change, America was ready for a mixed-race president, America wanted someone in the White House who could hit the open 15-foot jumper, whatever.

But the furor over last night’s odd-year elections was merely a stark reminder of how desperate the 24-hour cable news networks are to find actual news, and how we’re once again guilty of trying to make sweeping statements out of very limited results. The GOP in particular are all too eager to make a huge deal out of last night’s results. As they should be. Any kind of advocacy group should be spinning as hard as possible whenever something goes their way; to have two governorships change hands from Democrats to Republicans certainly qualifies as spinable for the GOP base (never mind that the special election in the NY-23 district went against their man Doug Hoffman, a Tea Party advocate who has less charisma than the orange juice I just slugged down).

But while the GOP has every right to play up last night’s results and make sweeping statements about it, why should the mainstream media follow suit? New Jersey voters in particular made their preference clear: They didn’t like incumbent Democrat Governor Jon Corzine’s track record, and they appreciated the more local and less national approach taken by challenger Chris Christie in his campaign. Meanwhile in New York City, the victory by hybrid Republican/Independent incumbent Mike Bloomberg was a win for going with the devil you know and going against the guy who wanted to turn all of New York City into the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

How the media could extrapolate a couple of mayoral races, a couple of governor races and a handful of secondary elections as a devastating blow to the Obama White House and a sign that cats and dogs are now living together is beyond me. Wait, no it’s not. If you report that the apocalypse is coming, you’re more likely to generate ratings and attract eyeballs. The same philosophy that drove the media to cheerlead for the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars (wars = ratings!!!) is also in play when Chazy, New York is suddenly transformed into the epicenter of the political universe, and not some Canada-bordering village where cops like to stop folks going 7 miles an hour over the speed limit near the start of an eight-hour drive (I hate you, Chazy, New York).

All of this is a long lead-in to the economic analysis that’s come out of yesterday’s elections. ABC News Polling Director Gary Langer tells us that these elections reflected voters’ discontent with the current state of the economy. Sure, that makes sense. The latest unemployment figures, due out Friday, are expected to show 9.9% of Americans filing jobless claims. That number’s higher in New Jersey. Double-digit unemployment is going to make people clamor for change, no matter what else is going on. “It’s the economy, stupid” has always been a driving factor of elections.

But apparently it’s not enough to analyze what happened last night. We need to know how a tiny number of elections now is going to impact a much larger number of Congressional races a year from now. And Mr. Langer apparently has a crystal ball on his desk.

Vast economic discontent marked the mood of Tuesday’s off-year voters, portending potential trouble for incumbents generally and Democrats in particular in 2010.

Is that what it portends? How do we know the economy won’t be on the upswing by this time next year? The most recent GDP results showed 3.5% growth. One could (and I would agree, should) be at least somewhat skeptical about those results, since much of that growth came from one-time stimulus spending and other near-term events. Still, by definition, the U.S. is now out of the recession that plagued the country since late 2007, with initial signs of decline starting a year or more before that, as the housing market peaked. Corporate earnings are on the upswing, thanks to a combination of both cost-cutting in some cases (of both jobs and inventory) and real revenue growth in others. The housing market has bottomed, and is now showing tentative signs of a recovery. Whatever one thinks of the government’s steps to prevent a banking industry meltdown, the fact of the matter is that said meltdown was avoided, and the surviving companies are back to turning hefty profits.

Given those conditions, how can anyone predict with any kind of certainty that Americans will be wildly disenchanted with the economy a full year from now, and that as a result, Democrats will get crushed in mid-term elections? Wouldn’t a more prudent analytical approach be to acknowledge the conditions that led to yesterday’s election results, note that the number of elections was a drop in the bucket compared with what’s to come, note that a lot could change between now and November 2010, and that we’ll just have to wait and see what happens?

Well, sure. But prudent, somber analysis is so boring. Better to go out on a limb and be spectacularly wrong than to be intellectually honest and not make predictions rooted in guesswork and speculation.

UPDATE: Make it three Nate Silver links in one post, as this fivethirtyeight.com entry notes the media’s inability to properly analyze the race, beyond the equivalent of “the Yankees beat the Phillies in Game 6 of the World Series because they scored more runs.”

Dameshek Podcast – World Series, Goalie Masks + Pie vs. Cake

Posted 3 November 2009 by Jonah
Categories: Podcast

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Back on with podcast maven Dave Dameshek. We talk baseball, puck, baked goods and more. Click here to check it out.

WSJ World Series Game 5 Liveblog

Posted 2 November 2009 by Jonah
Categories: Wall Street Journal

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Click here to join the liveblog fun. Or submit questions/comments to Sports@WSJ.com.

Expos Nostalgia

Posted 2 November 2009 by Jonah
Categories: Random commentary

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Audio slideshow, with legendary Expos broadcaster Dave Van Horne discussing the club’s history, as a voiceover to some great pictures from the Expos’ 1969-2004 existence.

The Pedro I Know

Posted 29 October 2009 by Jonah
Categories: Random commentary

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When Pedro Martinez takes the mound to start tonight’s Game 2 of the World Series for the Phillies, Joe Buck, Tim McCarver and many other observers will probably take the narrow view. They’ll focus on Pedro’s history of baiting Yankee fans, of Yankee fans’ own chants of “Who’s Your Daddy,” and of Pedro’s mixed track record at Yankee Stadium. If we’re lucky, they might briefly mention his resurrection as a pitcher this season, from out of baseball to starting on the world’s biggest stage in a span of just a few months.

This is not the Pedro I Know.

PedroNearPerfecto

The Pedro I Know made his first impression in 1993. The smaller, skinnier brother of already rail-thin older brother Ramon, 1993 Pedro did a pretty good impression of 1996 Mariano Rivera: 107 IP (almost entirely in relief), 119 K, just 76 H and 5 HR allowed. Still, there were whispers. Tommy Lasorda wasn’t sure if Pedro’s supposedly frail body could withstand the rigors of 200-inning seasons as a starter. That seed of doubt spread, to the point where people lost sight of just how dominant Pedro had been as a 21-year-old rookie.

The Pedro I Know soon became a Montreal Expo. Expos GM Dan Duquette loved the skinny Dominican kid, and was willing to trade bright young second baseman Delino Deshields, an on-base hound and swiper of 187 bases in his first four seasons who was so good so fast that he had cheeky high school kids carrying signs that read “Delino Deshields Derookie of Deyear” to the ballpark. Expos fans’ reaction to the Pedro deal was the same one we had when Duquette traded fun but erratic first baseman Andres Galarraga to St. Louis for a right-hander named Ken Hill. Ken Hill? We were all just stunned that the Expos hadn’t sold the farm to the Cardinals for ability-impaired French Canadian lefty Rheal Cormier. Likewise, we’d heard only a little about this Pedro kid, but didn’t know what to make of the trade. Here was a proven yet still young commodity going west in exchange for this talented but still unknown quantity. Would this work? Could this work?

The Pedro I Know, along with Hill, John Wetteland, Larry Walker, Marquis Grissom, Moises Alou and others, blossomed the next season, forming the core of one of the best teams of a generation. Blessed with knockout stuff, this was the year that Pedro started to rein in his talents and electrify the league. Given a spot in the starting rotation, but with some pressure off as he pitched behind veterans Hill and Jeff Fassero (Jeff Fassero used to be really good, seriously), Pedro slashed his walk rate, and more broadly, ramped up his command. Suddenly batters weren’t just contending with Pedro’s mid-to-high 90s heat. They were flinching at his breaking stuff, and downright terrified of his change-up, which along with Randy Johnson’s slider and Rivera’s cutter, is the best pitch I’ve ever seen.

The Pedro I Know was ready to make history with that change-up in 1995. My friend Mark Armour, co-author of one of the best and most underrated baseball books of the decade, “Paths To Glory”, recently sent me a DVD of a long-forgotten game, dateline June 3, 1995. I wasn’t at that game. But my wife, the esteemed Dr. Fauchier, was. With her mom. They sat in the bleachers. And she kept score. On lined paper. AND PEDRO THREW A PERFECT GAME. Or at least he did for nine innings, setting down the first 27 Padres he faced, before the pesky Bip Roberts broke up the perfect game, and the no-no, with a double to start the 10th. If you ever come over to my house, there’s a 100% chance I will make you watch this game. Watch Pedro spin his killer change-up against Tony Gwynn, turning one of the greatest hitters in baseball history into a chronic producer of lazy flyballs and weak groundouts. Watch Pedro blow high heat by Ken Caminiti, striking out one of the best power hitters of the mid-90s three times with untouchable stuff. See Pedro so thoroughly confound the Padres and dazzle the crowd that the fans at Jack Murphy Stadium start cheering lustily for him…even in a scoreless tie. This didn’t go in the record books as an official perfect game, or even a no-hitter. But the game wasn’t entirely forgotten either. When Dr. Fauchier and I went to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown the next summer, we found a little display, tucked into the corner of the museum, showing every no-hitter in MLB history, with a little summary and picture of that day’s pitcher next to each game. The two pitchers memorialized in 1995? Pedro Martinez, and his big brother Ramon.

The Pedro I Know only got better as memories of that great 1994 team faded and its star players spread to the four corners of MLB, jettisoned for pennies on the dollar after the catastrophic labor stoppage of ‘94 wiped out the franchise’s best chance at a World Series. In 1996, Pedro made his first All-Star Game, going on to strike out 222 batters that year and nearly leading the undermanned Expos to one of the most unlikely playoff berths in recent history. The next year, Pedro was even better. 1997 was the year I finished college and started my glamorous career as a community news reporter, covering city planning meetings in Reston, Virginia for the cool sum of $18K a year. I spent every minute of free time before leaving town that summer at the Big O, watching Pedro work his magic. By this point the Expos were severely depleted, with Vladimir Guerrero just getting his sea legs and most of the ‘94 team long gone (though they still had the great Darrin Fletcher!). But there was Pedro, demolishing the league and claiming his rightful place alongside Greg Maddux as the class of the National League. The numbers were astonishing: 17-8, 1.90 ERA, 305 strikeouts, 13 complete games. But as was always the case with Pedro, you didn’t need numbers to tell you how great he was. Pedro was a force of nature, a cross between Tyson and Ali in their primes, knocking you out with devastating blows, then tantalizing you with amazing finesse.

The Pedro I Know wasn’t a headhunter. But he was treated like one. The wussification of baseball was in full effect by the time Pedro threw his first big league pitch, the memories of Bob Gibson, Nolan Ryan and other inside-fastball pitchers washed away by league overreaction and the encroaching limits slapped on pitchers, all because fans supposedly dug the longball. Pedro spat on baseball’s unwritten rules. He owned the inside corner, and a bunch of inches further inside to boot. He wanted to reclaim that part of the plate and prevent batters from diving out and launching opposite-field home runs, as was becoming all too common by then. He wanted to send a message when one was needed. He even wanted, on occasion, to intimidate. But Pedro wasn’t out to hurt anyone. This was the skinny kid reminding the bigger kids that he would not be pushed around, that he was in control.

Hitters hated him for it too. On April 13, 1994, when Pedro was just starting to establish himself as one of the top young pitchers in the league, he set down the first 22 Cincinnati Reds he faced. As was usually the case in those days, I was at the game, watching in awe as this little guy mowed down batter after batter with little effort. Then, with five outs to go for a perfect game, Pedro came inside on Reggie Sanders — and plunked him. We all groaned, knowing how close he’d come to baseball immortality. Reggie Sanders didn’t. Sanders sprinted toward the mound, intent on beating up the impudent little guy who had the nerve to hit him. He failed to land any blows, and order was soon restored. This was typical stuff at the time, the league fighting against Pedro, trying to kill the beast before he reached the height of his powers. Reggie Sanders, even then, was afraid. He, along with many of his cohorts, no doubt went to bed the night before a Pedro start secretly hoping to catch a case of the sniffles. Or leprosy. Anything to avoid playing the next day. Pedro made you look bad, and he scared you. And he delighted in doing it.

We’re now 12 years removed from that final Expos season. We’re 12 years removed from Duquette again stealing Pedro away, this time for Tony Armas Jr. and Carl Freaking Pavano (for whatever other moves he made, Dan Duquette will always be a wildly underrated GM, just for his ability to twice trade for a first-ballot Hall of Fame pitcher, the same guy both times). We’re years removed from Bill Simmons and the rest of Red Sox Nation falling in love with Pedro, revering him in a way that modern-day Boston fans only had with one other athlete, Larry Bird (maybe Bobby Orr, if you want to go back a little further). When Simmons (still the Boston Sports Guy at this point) started writing love notes to Pedro during his unimaginable 1999-2000 peak, I nodded right along. The rest of the world was discovering what we’d known for years: That Pedro was a mad little SOB, that he’d rip a hitter’s heart out and eat it for breakfast, and that he took immense joy in doing it.

Pedro’s reputation has been walloped again and again since then. It started with little injuries here and there. Then he lost a tick off his fastball. Started grousing about having to share the spotlight with talented teammates like Curt Schilling. Eventually the injuries piled up, Pedro’s ability slipped, and the world was ready to bury him. Hitters were all too happy to whack the guy while he was down. That’s baseball. You take opportunities wherever you can find them, and you take extra pleasure in beating up on the schoolyard bully, even when the bully weighs a buck-sixty, soaking wet. The media joined in. They called Pedro sullen and mouthy, saw him as an entitled grump who made big money and never seemed satisfied.

But Pedro’s critics forgot that this was a man who’d never really changed. In his prime, he wanted to knock Babe Ruth on his ass, the same way he wanted to knock National League hitters on their ass when he was 21, the same way he wants to do the same against today’s opponents, even in the twilight of his career. Pedro has always, even if it’s in the back of his mind, seen himself as the skinny kid from the Dominican, the little brother of a 20-game winner, the guy who couldn’t do enough to impress Tommy Lasorda, who needed to go to Major League Baseball’s Outpost Of The Damned to make his bones, who needed to fight for years to exorcise another franchise’s ghosts, who needed to prove himself against talented rivals, even talented teammates.

When word started filtering out of the Dominican this spring that Pedro was working out, I didn’t think much of it. How much could he have left, after so many arm injuries, so much disappointment with the Mets, so much time away from elite competition? Scouts came down to watch. The Rays, a team as resourceful and daring and shrewd as any in baseball for their ability to spot undervalued talent, saw Pedro pitch. They didn’t want him. No one wanted him. He was struggling to hit the mid-80s with his fastball. When word came that the Phillies had signed him, the move reeked of Willie Mays with the Mets, of OJ Simpson with the 49ers, of all the once-proud athletes reduced to stumbling on the field before getting punted for good.

And then something amazing happened. Pedro started dropping little hints that he wasn’t done. He couldn’t dial his fastball up to 97 anymore. But he could still blow one by an unsuspecting hitter. He could still paint the corners. And yes, he still had that change-up. In Game 2 of the NLCS, Pedro jumped into his DeLorean and took us back a decade, embarrassing Dodgers hitters with an array of perplexing stuff, strutting around the mound like the BMOC of the league, looking like the Chicken Hawk of Bugs Bunny cartoons, smaller than everyone else, kicking ass and taking names.

The baseball world is talking today about Pedro’s Yankee Stadium ghosts, about Joe Girardi, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard, Nick Swisher and Jerry Hairston, Jorge Posada and Jose Molina. It’ll all make for compelling theater.

But I’ll be watching for something else. I’ll pull the Reggie Sanders voodoo doll out of my closet, crank up the volume, and root for Pedro. The Pedro I Know.

California: Legalize It

Posted 29 October 2009 by Jonah
Categories: Random commentary

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What do you do when you’re a state faced with crippling financial problems and a populace smart enough to support legalizing recreational marijuana use? You take steps to legalize marijuana for recreational use!

From the New York Times:

Tax officials estimate the legislation could bring the struggling state about $1.4 billion a year, and though the bill’s fate in the Legislature is uncertain, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has indicated he would be open to a “robust debate” on the issue.

The Governator has made a bunch of mistakes during his time in Sacramento. But the man is more pragmatic than most politicians.

I’ve discussed both the harmful effects of the War On Drugs and the potential financial windfall available upon legalization many times at JonahKeri.com.

Kudos to California for making significant strides. Recent legislation tells us that the state wasn’t quite ready to become a gay-loving commune of hippie love just yet. That’s unfortunate.

But it could soon become a pot-smoking commune of hippie love. And that’s a great start for civil liberties lovers.

World Series Game 1 Liveblog at WSJ.com

Posted 28 October 2009 by Jonah
Categories: Wall Street Journal

Tags: , , ,

I’ll be liveblogging just about the entire World Series for WSJ.com.

Here’s the link for Game 1. You can also submit questions to: Sports@WSJ.com.

Phillies In 6

Posted 28 October 2009 by Jonah
Categories: Random commentary

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Given my track record of lousy predictions, you should now go bet the farm on the Yankees.

2-Part Dameshek Podcast, NBA, World Series + Hot Dogs

Posted 27 October 2009 by Jonah
Categories: Podcast

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Chock full of sports talk, stadium food debates, tackle football in the snow, plus various and sundry nonsense.

Here’s Part 1.

Here’s Part 2.

On Franchise Loyalty, and Storytelling

Posted 27 October 2009 by Jonah
Categories: Random commentary

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A friendly hello to new readers at HuffingtonPost.com, where this post is cross-posted. Thanks for riding along.

In the weeks and months leading into this fall, ESPN did a great job building buzz around its “30 for 30″ documentary series. The idea was simple enough: Make 30 documentaries covering the 30 years ESPN has been on the air. The hook was in the how: The Worldwide Leader planned to turn the keys over to accomplished filmmakers, give them total autonomy, and let them pick topics that interested them. This was an encouraging departure from some of ESPN’s past self-congratulatory ventures, from their 25th anniversary blowout to their infamous “Next” Series.

Between writing my book, advocating for a hostile takeover of Planet Earth (or at least Major League Baseball) by robots, and the relentless but thrilling time suck that is caring for newborn twins, it’s been tough enough to find time to shower, let alone sit down and watch 60 minutes of uninterrupted TV.

I finally found some free time to watch this weekend, though. My first viewing: Barry Levinson’s “The Band That Wouldn’t Die”, the story of the Baltimore Colts marching band.

The film hit me in two ways. The first was the vivid description of the heartache that fans suffer when their hometown team gets ripped away.

Levinson takes a complex issue — Robert Irsay wresting the Colts from Baltimore in the dead of night and dropping them in Indianapolis — and boils it down to a simple main theme, the Colts marching band. It’s an approach that hits you on a visceral level. As a lifelong Montreal Expos fan, I related to the pain suffered by these Colts die-hards, the band that kept playing the Colts fight song, often well beyond Baltimore’s city limits.

Carrying water for a defunct or transplanted sports team, to an outside observer, might seem the height of intellectual folly. Most players and coaches won’t dwell on the matter, collecting themselves and cashing checks in greener pastures. The league commissioner won’t object, since he’s the one approving the move, either through tacit approval by way of lack of disapproval (as was the case with NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle on the Colts), or by orchestrating a series of shady moves himself (as was the case with MLB Commissioner Bud Selig and the gifts he handed Expos turned Marlins Owner Jeffrey Loria…sorry…JEFFREY FUCKING LORIA…and Marlins turned Red Sox Owner John Henry).

And of course the owner certainly won’t care — he’s the one agitating for an exodus in the first place. In a way, it’s tough to blame the owner too. If Microsoft suddenly decides it’s better for business to relocate corporate headquarters to another city, it’s certainly going to hit the city of Seattle hard. But Microsoft also has a responsibility to its shareholder to make the fattest profits possible.

In the case of private sports team ownership, the interests are inherently more selfish, since it’s one’s personal fortune, and not those of shareholders, at stake. If Peter Karmanos wants to move the Hartford Whalers or Art Modell wants to move the Cleveland Browns to make more money elsewhere, it stinks, but it’s well within their rights. Building new stadiums for multi-millionaires/billionaires on the public dime remains one of the most ridiculous practices the sports world has ever foisted on us. But if some other city wants to foolishly write a blank check, why would any reasonable businessman say no?

All that aside, as jilted fans we feel only sadness and bitterness toward those who took our team away. As Baltimore native and current Baltimore Ravens Owner Steve Bisciotti put it:

It was kind of surreal to not have a team. I remember thinking back then, what it was like to be a city without a football team. To watch games, and have no rooting interest…It was just something that I had never experienced, and didn’t know until you did experience it how tough it was to view the NFL as a world that you weren’t really a part of.

The second aspect of “The Band That Wouldn’t Die” that struck a chord was the amazing storytelling involved. The true test of a good storyteller, be it a writer, a filmmaker or just a buddy spinning a yarn, is his ability to capture the attention of his audience without the crutch of a universally appealing subject. If you’re writing about JFK or World War II or the Moon Landing or Michael Jordan, you’ve got both plenty of great material with which to tell your story, as well as a captive audience.

In “The Band That Wouldn’t Die,” Levinson offers an orgy of consumable material for older Baltimore natives. If you loved “Diner”, you’ll flip for this documentary. In one hour, Levinson ticks off the big Ballmer standbys: Johnny Unitas, the glory days of the Colts, Mayflower moving vans, the unique character of the city, and the band that everyone loved. All he needed was Tom Waits intro music, Bodie and Poot slinging on the corners and a token love note to Cal Ripken and you’d have covered the gamut for the city.

But this story hits you even if you’re too young to remember the pre-Indy Colts, too skeptical to buy the marriage quiz in “Diner” and too reputation-obsessed to have ever set foot in Baltimore. Levinson tugs at your heart strings when he describes the suffering loyal Colts fans felt when their team left — like they lost their best friend. He makes us laugh when the Colts band tells of the trickery they performed to hide their trademark uniforms. He makes us think when he notes the conflict Baltimore fans felt when they finally got a team back, with that team being poached from the fine folks of Cleveland.

And Levinson makes us want to toss our TVs off a cliff every time he presents the image of Robert Irsay, the drunken, despotic former owner of the Colts who didn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone but himself.

It’s not your ball team. It’s not our ball team. It’s my family’s ball team. I paid for it and I worked for it.

This is what Michael Lewis did in “Liar’s Poker”, taking a subject that might seem interesting to only a small segment of people (bond trading) and making it into a rollicking read. It’s what Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner did in “Freakonomics” and “SuperFreakonomics”, showing the world that the reach economics has goes way beyond that boring macro class you took as a freshman. It’s what I hope to do in my upcoming book about the Tampa Bay Rays, a team that would seem to lack appeal beyond the Gulf Coast (and possibly Hazleton, PA); you dig for the interesting nuggets, you present a story people can get behind, and eventually the subject becomes far less relevant than the message, and the journey.

Many of the other topics ESPN plans to cover in “30 for 30″, such as the USFL and Terry Fox, would seem to only appeal to small audiences. But if the storytelling in those flicks rivals the job Levinson did in this case, the WWL will quickly win big numbers and much acclaim for its efforts. At the very least, ESPN has already earned one loyal viewer.