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MADE IN AMERICA

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« COVID-19: Balancing Short-Term Solutions and Long-Term Effects. Are There Lessons from 1918?
Asteroidal Change or Glacial Change? Peering Over the Covid-19 Horizon »

Opening Day Under Covid-19: Do Fans Matter?

April 24, 2020 by Claude Fischer

Around this time of the year, I write a post to celebrate the arrival of baseball, the national pastime. This year the pastime has not arrived on time; it may not arrive at all.

Its absence is far from the saddest story of Covid-19–though sad enough for the unemployed beer vendors, ticket-takers, and security guards, as well as the hot prospects who were going to break into the big leagues this year and the fading veterans who were going to resurrect their careers for just one more turn. Yet, true fans still yearn. We read the latest stories that baseball writers have scrounged from the recycle bins of their laptops, such as features on the best second-string left fielders who played on the teams west of Mississippi in 1977 or on the meals that the local team’s bullpen catcher is whipping up for his kids during confinement. Meanwhile, TV provides reruns of games that local nine never lose. empty ballpark trimmed

What will MLB do with the season? One idea being pitched and batted around, semi-endorsed by Dr. Anthony Fauci himself, is to play the games in stadiums scattered in a restricted locale–the Phoenix region is often mentioned–with the players effectively quarantined together (think of a cruise ship berthed in Scottsdale) and no fans in the stands, just tv cameras. What would baseball be like without the fans?

Athletes almost always publicly credit the fans, calling them the 6th man in basketball, the 10th man in baseball, the 12th man in football–really, the 6th, 10th, 12th person. Winning teams thank their fans for the support without which victory would have been impossible, losing teams praise them for their faith and loyalty through hard times. But, do fans really matter (besides paying the fare)?

I did a quick literature search on the topic.

Home Advantage

Home teams win more often than do visiting teams, although that is least true for baseball among the top team sports. It happens 55% of the time, worth about 4 extra wins a season. (For soccer it is 67%.) Fans tend to think that the home team edge is because of fans: they spur the home team to better performance and harass the visitors into worse performance.

But researchers are skeptical. They have focused on four major explanations for home field advantage: The fatigue of traveling; visitors’ unfamiliarity with the field (especially important in baseball where fields can be so different–say the Green Monster in Fenway, Triples Alley in Oracle, and the wind conditions in Wrigley); differential performance by the players, as the fans’ theory suggests; and favorable referee or umpire calls. Baseball is also distinct in that batting last would seem to confer a strategic advantage to the home team, but that does not seem to matter.

The most important factor, it appears, is referee or umpire judgment. For baseball, in particular, home teams get the benefit of the doubt on close ball and strike calls. One estimate is that the home-visitor difference in those calls accounts for 70% of the home field advantage. (Other sports: soccer; basketball and football.)  Travel fatigue may matter a bit, on-field performance a bit, and field familiarity a bit, especially for really distinct venues like mile-high Coors Field. One might imagine that professional athletes, who have played since childhood in front of both friendly and hostile crowds and who are, after all, performing their jobs, would not be heavily influenced, no matter what they say. Yet, umpires are. Umps could lean ever so slightly toward the home team for various reasons, but researchers assume it’s unconscious conformity to the crowd. If so, presumably, the bigger the crowd, the bigger the push.

One analysis calculates that going from a half-filled stadium to a three-quarters-filled stadium increases the chances of the home team winning by over 5 percent, basically accounting for the home advantage; it also adds about one more home-team home run a week. Another analysis suggests that a big crowd adds 2 or 3 victories a season over a small crowd.

What does this imply for 2020 baseball without fans? We should expect a very small, if any, home advantage.

But what about the quality of play itself? “You don’t realize the little bit of oomph, the little extra effort, the focus you get when you’ve got fans in the stands,” said one sidelined player. I haven’t found a study of whether fans add a couple of miles to a fastball or more torque to a swing. I’m sure that’s coming

I close with a picture of Willie Mays. Why? Why not? A leading baseball writer for The Athletic recently did a countdown of the 100 greatest baseball players of all time. Willie was, of course, number 1. (BTW, the outfield stands seem to be empty; no matter.)

mays slide

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged baseball, Covid-19, fans |

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  • Previous Posts

    • How Red v. Blue Became Me v. You: Polarization, Part I
    • The Covid Experience Reveals How Weird America Is
    • Americans Continue to Associate. For What Cause?
    • Slavery, Capitalism, and Reparations
    • Opening Day, 2022: Still Unresolved
    • No Peace, No Justice
    • The Right’s Reaction to Americans’ Leftward Shift: A Supreme Example
    • The Culture Has Moved Left… So the Right has Mobilized
    • Overcoming Distance and Embracing Place: Personal Ties in the Age of Persistent and Pervasive Communication
    • The Death Surge Before Covid-19: Who, What, and Why.
    • Women Rising: Life Stories from the Last Century
    • Whither Big Tech, or When Novelties Become (Regulated) Necessities
    • Opening Day, 2021: Baseball’s Crises
    • First Takes on the Election #2: What About the Polls?
    • The Political Census
    • First Takes on the Election: #1, What Happened?
    • Now for Something Different: Is Sex Wilting?
    • Explaining Trump: The Next-to-Last Time (I Hope)
    • Covid-19: Exceptionalism with a Vengeance
    • Is Left Cancel Culture Cancelling Left Culture?
    • BLM Protests: Surprisingly Successful… So Far. Why?
    • White Liberals’ Political Correctness Could Help Trump Get Re-Elected
    • Asteroidal Change or Glacial Change? Peering Over the Covid-19 Horizon
    • Opening Day Under Covid-19: Do Fans Matter?
    • COVID-19: Balancing Short-Term Solutions and Long-Term Effects. Are There Lessons from 1918?
    • Bernie: The Left is Still Waiting for the Proletariat Vote
    • AG Barr says attacks on religion are loosening the hounds of hell. Are they?
    • One Year Down, One to Go: Still Explaining Trump
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    • [Bracket] Political Commentary [End Bracket]
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    • Brain Twisting, or How We Evolved
    • Opening Day, 2019: Data-Crunching, Inequality, and Baseball
    • Fixing Inequality: More Opportunity is Not the Answer
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    • Loneliness Scare Again… and Again… and…
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    • Opening Day, 2018: Politics, Race, and Baseball
    • Local Cultures
    • Chain Migration
    • Explaining Trump Some More
    • “Okie from Muskogee” a Half-Century On
    • Reversing American Voluntarism
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    • ***** Hiatus *****
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    • Can Sociability Blunt Political Polarization?
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    • Magazines: 19th Century Internet
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    • A Tony by Any Other Name…
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    • A Street Divided
    • A History of Health and Health Inequalities
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    • The Marriage Contract
    • Attaining Adulthood
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    • Censor This, Political Correctness
    • Opening Day 2015
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    • Building the Natural Market
    • Dressing Down
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    • Ferguson and Social Media
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    • Women in Politics 1780-2014
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    • Persistence of Race, 2014
    • Selfishness or Self-Awareness?
    • Virtuous Debt
    • Work Hours and the Pay Gap
    • Life in Public, Then and Now
    • Mourning 9/11 Victorian Style
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    • Old Days, Fast Times
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    • Eco-Puritanism
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    • Pastime – Opening Day 2014
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    • Risk-Sharing
    • Folktales of the Policy Elites
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    • Artful History
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    • You Call That a Shutdown?
    • More Inequality Updates
    • Political Responses to the Crash
    • Child Labors
    • Word Counts and What Counts
    • Loss of Economic Exceptionalism
    • Learning Sympathy
    • Respecting the Science
    • Economic Equality, 1774 and Beyond
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    • Inequality Hits Home
    • The Supreme Court Ducks Immutability
    • Postcard from Paris
    • America’s Religious Market
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    • Novel Data: Promise and Perils
    • Immigrants and Historical Amnesia
    • Inequality Update
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    • Race in the Eye of the Beholder
    • Getting Smarter
    • Suicide Boom?
    • Tweedledee-Tweedledum Nostalgia
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    • Is the Gender Revolution Over?
    • Writerly Baseball – Opening Day 2013
    • Back Home
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    • How Material Are We?
    • Unholy Alliance: Laissez Faire and the Church
    • The ’60s Turn 50
    • The Left’s Religion Problem
    • Paying Attention to the Kids
    • We’re # Last!
    • Risk Taking
    • The Elderly and Their Children
    • Guns
    • A Modern “Antebellum Puzzle”?
    • Makes One Anxious
    • Psychological Labeling … and Enabling?
    • The Giving Nation? Philanthropy’s Problems
    • Religion, Politics, and the Sunday Mail
    • The Happiness Boom
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    • A Cost of Inequality: Growth
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    • Choose Your Choice
    • To the Poorhouse
    • The Polarizing Political Paradox Redux
    • The 47% Charge in U.S. History
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    • Competitive Intelligence
    • Execution Songs
    • Spiritual and/or Religious
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    • Meeting, Mating, and the Web
    • Live Long and Prosper — and Plan
    • Voting Violence
    • Sex and the American Car
    • The Assets Gap
    • Differences Under the Differences
    • Why Americans Don’t Vacation
    • Virtuous Voting
    • Clothes Make the Common Man
    • Driving Blind
    • Geography of Inequality
    • Slavery’s Heavy Hand
    • Gay Vows
    • Explaining Poverty (Again)
    • Out- and Insourcing
    • Still Under God
    • The Loneliness Scare is Back
    • Sunday Pleasures, Private Faith
    • Between Dole and Market
    • Opening Day 2012 – Worldwide
    • Tolerating Americans
    • What’s the Common in the Common Good?
    • End Times and Presidents
    • The Abortion Puzzle
    • The Army of Black Liberation
    • The South Has Risen
    • Can’t Believe It
    • Marrying — Up, Down, Sideways
    • Occupy 2012: Another 1968?
    • Over-Impacted
    • How Bad is “European”?
    • Unique, Sovereign, American
    • The Working Class’s Party
    • Reconstructing Memory
    • Make-Your-Own Religion
    • Consume This
    • Self-Absorbed: Emerson & Thoreau
    • What Works? Votes.
    • Stumbling in the Dark
    • More on Occupy
    • Occupy! Now What?
    • Lost Children
    • Cheerful Yanks?
    • Tolerating Ambiguity
    • New News, Old News
    • Unequal Denial
    • Timing is (Not?) Everything
    • Breastfeeding History
    • What’s a Life Worth?
    • Homesick Blues
    • Summer Break
    • Spinsters No More
    • Missing Tramps
    • City Crime; Country Crime
    • Living Togetherness
    • Naturally Clean
    • Women Graduating
    • Home Owning Dreams
    • Technology and Fundamentals
    • Protected Class
    • Faith Endures
    • American Exceptionalism
    • Buying a Head Start
    • A. Lincoln, Socialist?
    • Opening Day 2011
    • Shaken but Secure
    • Jobs Go and Come
    • Heavy Hand
    • The Big Change
    • American Ties (III)
    • Money and Character
    • Going Out–or Home?
    • Degree Inequality
    • American Ties (II)
    • Ugly or Needy
    • 18th-Century Twitterfeed
    • American Ties (I)
    • Grammar Rules
    • Christmas Struggle
    • Ancestor Worship
    • Was Slavery, Is Slavery
    • Hanukkah or Vanish?
    • Pilgrims, Puritans, Americans?
    • Return on Investment
    • Solidarity, Soldiers, and Baseball
    • Win Stay, Lose Change
    • Why Vote?
    • We’re All Geniuses
    • Caring More or Less
    • Life Begins
    • Equal Visions
    • No Dinner Invitations?
    • Depressing Comparisons
    • Labor’s Laboring Efforts
    • Multiculturalism Lite and Right
    • Who Has Your Back
    • A Natural Romance
    • Alone or Lonely?
    • Sentimental Journey
    • LeBron & the 10th
    • We’re #1 !
    • A Fragmenting America? – Pt. 2
    • A Fragmenting America? – Pt. 1
    • Fighting for the 4th
    • Gentrified Memories
    • Juneteenth: Race? Slavery?
    • Boomer Blues
    • No Longer the Tall American
    • A Crime Puzzle
    • Memorial-izing Day
    • Angry Old White Men
    • Sisters Take the Streets
    • Brooks, Policy, and History
    • Tongue-Tied to America
    • Happiness Happy
    • Inventing Friendship
    • American Individualism – Really?
    • Tax Day: The Government-Enterprise System
    • Opening Day 2010
    • Did “Consumerism” Blow Up the Economy?
    • A Christian America? What History Shows
    • The Myth that Never Moves
    • Good Health, Long Life, and Big Government
    • Announcing the “Made in America” Site

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