The Life of Ukrainian Baseball
The Head coach of Ukrainian national baseball team, Boiko O.M, suggested to send him lists of the best players and candidates on the post of coaches.
It is widely believed statistics shows best of all who is the best player. In terms of Ukrainian baseball reality it almost clearly forms the national team. It is because there are only the best players in it.
Oleg Boiko tells how it works in fact. He offered coaches to send lists of their candidates to gather teams for upcoming year. These are U18 (juniors), U23 (youth) and adults teams. In this case coaches recommend best players and as a result take responsibility for agreement and desire of players to take part in the selection and training for the European Championship.
About Statistic
More than a century ago it was witty noticed about three kinds of lie: the first is untruth, the second is a blatant lie and finally the last one – statistic, which is the most terrible lie. Oleg Boiko has been being in baseball for more than two decades in a row. He believes statistic is really a big advantage for this kind of sport. Earlier Oleg Boiko was a football coach. As a result of his football past he could unconsciously comment towards the baseball game using terms which were understandable only for him. But in baseball there is a clear statistic with understandable to all terms and meanings: AVG, ERA, RBI.
However, at the beginning of this century the new science has been developed which is called sabermetrics. It absolutely put aside validity and information content of previous classical terms. Instead it represents some new ones: wOBA, WAR, UZR and others.
Ukrainian statistics
Probably not all only a few people know two years ago it was a hot discussion between the Major League Baseball management towards the issue of number of teams reducing. And that was not about a business or lack of fans. The main reason was a lack of talented players to complete 30 teams. In other words the main intrigue of the league cannot be keep and it is obvious who will be the winner in particular games. Today the main reason not in favor of blind usage of Ukrainian statistic is clear – during many years in most games (more than 50%) there is no such question. The League is uneven and practically all victories are predictable. Moreover the teams are not on the same level and it means their trainings are different and it undermines the unification to record the events. If one team has hit it means that another one will have out. Baseball fields are so different that it can be easy to conduct hit on the one field, and out on another. Home run on one field can be boring fly on another. And other important thing statistics experts keep in silence – if coach knows team will probably loose players feel it and as a result they is no interesting fighting on the playing field. And if there is no fight on the field there will not be rates and interesting statistics as well.
I`m not really into sport and baseball. But once, I saw movie “Moneyball” with Bradley Pitt. Truly saying, I was watching only because of him. I adore this actor. So there, this movie is about these statistics.Quote from the movie: “It’saboutgettingthingsdowntoonenumber. Usingstatstorereadthem, we’llfindthevalueofplayersthatnobodyelsecansee. Peopleareoverlookedfor a varietyofbiasedreasonsandperceivedflaws. Age, appearance, personality. BillJamesandMathematicscutsstraightthroughthat. Billy, ofthetwentythousandknowableplayersforustoconsider, I believethatthere’s a championshipteamoftwentyfivepeoplethatwecanafford. Becauseeveryoneelseinbaseballundervaluesthem. Likeandislandofmisfittoys”. But in general it`s a whole science!
When I was in Ukraine for work, I went to a baseball game once. Paid like 5 dollars for a ticket and spent as much time getting food, eating food and looking at the many stores selling merchandise. I have t-shirt I bought still hidden away in the back of my closest. Funny though, it seemed as if all the locals did the same. Pretty chill sport apparently.
Well, I’m glad that the ball being given a bit more life. But still It’s a pity baseball isn’t more popular in Europe. Over the summer I was taking a cab to a baseball game after work and the game started while I was on my way and my cab driver was European and new to our city and had the game on the radio and was trying to learn about baseball because it’s a huge part of our cities culture. The game had just started and he spent the whole time asking me about various rules and terms and stuff and it wasn’t until I was trying to explain the game to an adult who had no knowledge of it how insane baseball must sound to an outsider who didn’t grow up with it.