Tuesday, 05 July 2011
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Zach McAllister gets eighth victory as Columbus Clippers top Toledo Mud Hens: Minor League Report
Akron and Mahoning Valley also get victories on Tuesday night.
View full sizeClippers pitcher Zach McAllister.AAA Columbus Clippers
Clippers 4, Mud Hens 3 1B Shelley Duncan (.250) hit a three-run homer, LF Jerad Head also homered and RH Zach McAllister (8-2, 2.82 ERA) allowed one earned run in seven innings in host Columbus' International League win against Toledo. Clippers SS Jason Donald (.300) doubled, singled and scored a run.
AA Akron Aeros
Aeros 10, Mets 8 1B Beau Mills (.296) had a two-run double and RF Matt McBride (.279) a two-run single during a six-run eighth as Akron rallied for an Eastern League win in Binghamton, N.Y. Aeros C Juan Apodaca (.188) had a run-scoring double and CF Jordan Henry (.250) a bases-loaded walk in the eighth. Mills drove in three runs and Apodaca two for Akron. 3B Kyle Bellows (.184) and LF Tim Fedroff (.349) each knocked in one. McBride had three hits for the Aeros. Akron RH Joseph Gardner (4.07 ERA) allowed five runs -- four earned -- in 5 1/3 innings.
A Lake County CaptainsWest 8, East 3 Captains 2B Argenis Martinez had a run-scoring single for the East, but the West won the Midwest League All-Star Game in Davenport, Iowa.
A Mahoning Valley Scrappers
Scrappers 2, Muckdogs 0 3B Kevin Fontanez and RF Bryson Myles each drove in a run, and three pitchers combined on a five-hit shutout for host Mahoning Valley in a New York-Penn League victory against Batavia (N.Y.). Scrappers LH Daniel Jimenez (1.50) allowed four hits and two walks in 31/3 innings, RH Cody Allen (0.00) had six strikeouts in 3 perfect innings of relief, and RH Bryce Stowell (0.00) gave up one hit and one walk in two innings. Myles (.250) and CF Cody Elliott (.316) had two hits each.
Independent Lake Erie Crushers
ThunderBolts 5, Crushers 1 Windy City (Ill.) starting pitcher Dustin Williams did not allow a hit until Patrick Norris' single in the seventh inning as host Lake Erie lost a Frontier League game.
Source: http://www.cleveland.com/tribe/index.ssf/2011/06/zach_mcallister_gets_eighth_vi.html
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Simon Kelner out as Independent editor
Simon Kelner is leaving his position as editor of the Independent.
The Jewish writer has edited the paper for 13 years and oversaw the decision to introduce a cheaper daily edition last year, the ipaper.
Mr Kelner will remain as editor-in-chief of the Independent, but day-to-day responsibility for the paper and its Sunday title will go to Chris Blackhurst, an Evening Standard journalist.
Mr Kelner has been named GQ magazine's editor of the year twice.
This week he was forced to defend his paper's columnist Johann Hari, who was criticised for passing off comments made at another time by Israeli writer Gideon Levy as part of an interview with him.
Source: http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/51070/simon-kelner-out-independent-editor
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Until GAA accept stats, we're all just bluffing it
Brendan O'Brien
AFTER years of watching it gather dust on the bookshelf, Michael Lewis’ ‘Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game” was finally, reluctantly, prised open in the O’Brien household last week.
Nothing to do with Lewis, an author par excellence and the man who brought us reads like ‘The Blind Side’, about young football player Michael Oher and ‘Liar’s Poker’, a semi-autobiographical account of life as a bond salesman on Wall Street.
No, resistance was rooted in the thoughts of devoting rare free time to a treatise on baseball, a sport that has consistently failed to muscle its way into the affections and one that dives head first into the worm hole that is baseball statistics.
Being honest, it all sounded a bit too much like work, like a book that any self-respecting sportswriter should read as opposed to one you would want to read over a cup of tea and chocolate biscuit.
Superb as it was, there were large tracts that demanded reservoirs of concentration, passages devoted to the science of sabermetrics which has guided franchises like the Oakland A’s and Boston Red Sox to bigger and better things.
For all the romance associated with a sport long-acknowledged as ‘America’s Game’ – Joe DiMaggio, Yankee Stadium, the seventh inning stretch – it is a pastime tailor-made for anoraks and statisticians.
The Wikipedia page on baseball stats lists over a hundred of them divided up into pitching, fielding, batting, base-running and those of a more general variety, all with acronyms like BABIP, FPOM and – my personal favourite — pNERD.
A Phd in mathematics isn’t essential, but it would help.
Compare all that with what we have in the GAA. Pretty much every inter-county team makes use of a statistician these days and companies such as Avenir in Galway have provided more in-depth synopses to sides like the Kerry footballers and Tipperary hurlers.
It’s a start but only that and, with so little hard evidence at our fingers, the fact is that players, managers, pundits and public are making judgements on performances – individual and collective – from a position of ignorance.
We are, to all intents and purposes, winging it. All of us.
One obvious point to make here is that baseball is a stop-start sport, one that is tailor-made for detailed analysis, but the same attention to the nitty gritty is par for the course in Aussie Rules, a code that is a distant cousin of Gaelic football.
If time allows, log on to the official AFL website and click on to any of the most recent match reports at the top of the homepage. There waiting for you will be a comprehensive player-by-player analysis that is broken down into 24 different sub-sections.
Take a player’s possessions, for example. These aren’t just recorded en bloc, they are dissected into contested and uncontested sub-sections and an ability to dispose of the ball in an effective manner is rounded off into percentages.
With other skills like tackles, bounces and marks all listed as well, there is no hiding place in the AFL. If you aren’t doing the business, your bosses can print off reams of A4 paper and present you with hard evidence of the fact.
Sooner or later, it will be the norm here too.Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/o8O45h0ycyY/post.aspx
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Monday, 04 July 2011
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We should be free to debate
There's an old Jewish joke: "Two Jews, three opinions." As Jews, we pride ourselves on our long history of debate. We dispute everything, from the merits of Carmelli's and Daniel's challah to the finer points of Jewish law. Virtually every page of the Talmud contains halakhic disagreement. Midrash Tehillim (Psalms 12.4), refers to Rabbi Yehoshua who said "Even children living in the days of Shaul and David [?] knew those subtle distinctions of the law which elaborate 49 arguments by which a thing may be proven clean, and 49 other arguments by which it may be proven unclean."
Yet my experience over the past fortnight suggests a gulf between the way we like to see ourselves and the way we actually are.
I co-authored a piece with a fellow doctoral student at Oxford in the Guardian's law section ('Time to ban male circumcision?') which drew attention from people of many backgrounds and faiths.
Shortly after the JC reported the piece, the chairman of my family synagogue rescinded my appointment as an Under-35 Observer to the Board of Deputies.
The JC then ran a follow-up report last week, along with a very hostile column by Geoffrey Alderman.
All these articles misrepresent the substance of the original piece and my views.
They said I called for circumcision to be banned. I did not.
Rather, we asked whether the differences between male and female circumcision are so straightforward as to justify a distinction in the law.
The reports failed to mention that our article was part of an open debate with our friend Adam Wagner, who wrote the response, 'Ban male circumcision? No, scientific evidence of harm is not strong enough'.
The articles also reported other views attributed to me that were immaterial to the debate about circumcision but seemed intended to discredit me.
They alleged that I described shechita as "awful." I did not. I said stories of stressed-out, upside down animals are awful.
They alleged that I criticised the Board's support of shechita. This is false. I asked for clarification about laws concerning religious slaughter.
They claimed I appeared sympathetic towards calls for boycotts of Israel when in fact I am sympathetic towards free speech, not BDS.
Geoffrey Alderman's article added that I am an "anti-Jewish Jew of the younger generation." Such accusations are not only upsetting and inaccurate but also make it harder for Jews to debate in a fair and reasoned way. What does it mean to be an anti-Jewish Jew? Are those Jews who wrestle with the implications of contemporary human rights values for Jewish tradition and law anti-Jewish?
Why can he not acknowledge the honesty and integrity of those who critically reflect on these traditions and sometimes draw different conclusions?
I joined the Under-35s because I want to contribute to debates as a fellow member of the Jewish community. It remains my hope to participate in the Board of Deputies and other Jewish forums. However, more needs to be done to include women and young people, given that less than 25% of deputies are women and less than 10% are under-35.
But this is not just a matter of improving representation on the basis of gender and age. The episode raises the question of whether bodies that speak in our names as British Jews have the will and the ability to reflect the true spectrum of views - on identity, community and Israel - or are merely an echo chamber for people who agree with each other.
Jews must continue to follow the tradition of constantly questioning and seeking truth to find answers to difficult questions. As it says in Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers, 5:17), "any dispute that is for the sake of Heaven is destined to endure."
Two Jews, three opinions is not a joke. It is a proud and ancient tradition at the core of what it means to be Jewish.
Source: http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/comment/51143/we-should-be-free-debate
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