Since we’re on the subject of predictions...

I have SI’s March 31st issue, their baseball preview issue, and of course they include their predictions for the coming season. Not sure when this became de rigueur for publications. Growing up in the ‘70s, I don’t remember reading how the experts predicted the coming season in, say, the March issue of Baseball Digest. Were we more of a history-based culture then? This is where we’ve been, who knows where we’ll go? Now we ignore the past, are jittery in the present, pull the future towards us like Al Pacino pulling the fax out of the fax machine in The Insider. Haven’t seen it? See it.

Anyway, SI. Six divisions in baseball and they picked only two division winners correctly: Cubs and Angels. I know. Who knew the Rays would rise, the Tigers and Rockies would tank, the Mets would repeat last year’s September slide? They also correctly picked the bottom-dwellers only twice: Orioles and Pirates. They figured the Yankees would have the best record in baseball (94-68) while the O’s would have the worst (64-98), when it turned out to be Angels (100-62) and Nationals (59-102). They had the Mariners second-place in the West, five games out, rather than last place and 39 games out. They had the Twins in last place in the Central rather than playing the White Sox for the title in a one-game playoff.

None of the four teams remaining (Rays vs. Red Sox, Dodgers vs. Phillies) are the four teams they predicted (Tigers vs. Yankees, Cubs vs. Rockies). Their World Series is a classic matchup of Tigers vs. Cubs, with the Tigers winning. Reality? The Tigers finished the season in last place in the A.L. Central. Yeah, worse than the Royals.

But at least SI's predictions were from last March when 30 teams were in play. ESPN.com’s team of 18 experts made their postseason predictions on October 1 and after just one round only five World Series winners are left. Seven experts predicted the Angels would win it all while five gave it to the Cubs. Poof.

Yes, I know, predictions are fun, but we do too much of it. We predict and events play out, and we predict and events play out, and we never own up. I’m reminded — again — of Ron Suskind’s 2004 interview with an official in the Bush administration:

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” ... “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out.

Is it too easy to say, now, particularly now, that that's not the way things have sorted out?

Posted at 10:21 AM on Sat. Oct 11, 2008 in category Baseball, Culture  

« How to Predict: Follow the Numbers   |   Home   |   Letters from Norman »

All previous entries

Movies
IMDb.com
Box Office Mojo
Rotten Tomatoes
Jeffrey Wells
The Film Experience
Roger Ebert
Large Ass Movie Blogs
Rob Neyer
Joe Posnanski
Cardboard Gods
Andrew Sullivan
Alex Pareene
Hendrik Hertzberg
Cloud Five Comics
Copy Curmudgeon
Deb Ellis
Andrew Engelson
Jerry Grillo
Tim Harrison
Eric Hanson
Ben Stocking
Jim Walsh