It's the regional flagship (why I'm buying and reading it) and this makes the front page?
"In sports, there really is no place like home; Research finds calls likely behind effect" September 03, 2011|By Beth Teitell, Globe Staff
As he headed into Fenway Park to watch Wednesday night’s game between the Red Sox and Yankees, Walter Brickowski identified what his team is truly battling for. “They don’t want to play game seven at Yankee Stadium,’’ he said.
At this point in the season, Boston and New York are so far ahead of the rest of the field that both teams are almost sure to make the playoffs. That leaves them fighting for essentially one thing: first place, and the home field advantage in postseason play that goes with it.
It’s a big deal. Statistics show that Major League Baseball teams win 54 percent of their home games. The benefit is even higher in other sports, according to the economist who compiled the figures. In the NHL the home teams win 57 percent of the time, in the NFL it’s 58 percent, and in the NBA it’s 62 percent.
What’s so great about being at home?
Tobias J. Moskowitz, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, ran decades of numbers in an effort to explain the well-known phenomenon, and he concluded that the single biggest contributor is - get ready to start booing - officiating bias by umpires and referees, unintentional though it may be.
“There’s this very strong tendency for officials to call things the home team’s way,’’ said Moskowitz, co-author of “Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports are Played and Games are Won,’’ which was published in January. “No one likes to be booed.’’
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Moskowitz and his coauthor came to their conclusion by looking at various explanations for home field advantage and then trying one-by-one to verify or eliminate them. They examined weather and found no effect if a cold-weather team played a hot-weather team in cold conditions and vice versa. They looked at player performance and in baseball found that pitchers and batters threw or hit equally well at home and on the road.
I'm so glad the AmeriKan media and academia are investigating such crucial and vital issues, aren't you?
To cite one of his many examples: Home and away basketball players shoot free throws with identical accuracy. “This is a nice example, because a free throw is an isolated incident between the player and the crowd,’’ he e-mailed. “At home the player is treated to silence to concentrate on the shot. On the road the player is abused with thunderstix [and] comments about the chastity of his sister or mother.’’
They also turned their attention to the referees and found that officiating errors-as determined by measuring an official’s call against instant replay or other objective information - tended to favor the home team....
Moskowitz and his co-author, L. Jon Wertheim, a senior writer with Sports Illustrated, have their critics, among those a retired longtime Major League umpire who called the theory “pure garbage.’’
Not only do umpires not mind being booed said Jim Evans, a veteran of four World Series, including the 1986 Series between the Red Sox and Mets, but it can make for a good day. “In many cases, [booing] is an affirmation that you are doing your job well. You are administering justice in a hostile environment. Genuine satisfaction can be derived from that.’’
That's what I am doing here blogging, although I hardly find anger satisfying.
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Also see: Putting Away the Boston Globe
Looks like a double bogey to me.
