"As we consider a future without fans in the stands, what does that mean for athletes?" by Adam Himmelsbach Globe Staff, May 24, 2020
No one knows exactly when professional sports will return after being shuttered because of COVID-19, or what they will look like when they do, but there is near-unanimous agreement that when the games do resume, there will be no fans there to watch them — not until this crisis is past.
In sports-crazed Boston, the absences figure to be more glaring than many other cities. The Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins routinely sell out their venues, and the supporters there routinely lose their voices. For a time, it appears, home-court and home-field advantages will be, well, silenced.
Tobias Moskowitz, an economist and Yale professor of finance, co-authored “Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won.” Among other topics, Moskowitz studied the influence home-court advantage has on a game’s outcomes. He looked at variables such as fan support, travel, and familiarity with venues.
“What we found was none of that really mattered,” Moskowitz said. “The main impact on the home-court advantage is really the fans’ impact on the referees. What you find is the referees kind of see things the home team’s way, especially on the really close calls that are hard to determine. It comes from psychology, the desire to relieve social pressure from people yelling at you.
“The obvious calls they don’t bias toward the home team. It’s really the ones where you could have called it either way, and so when 20,000 fans see it one way and you’re not sure what the right call is, it tends to influence your perspective.”
Kostas Pelechrinis, an associate professor at the School of Computing and Information at the University of Pittsburgh, said road teams can be negatively affected by travel, but also concluded that the fans’ effect on the officials appears to have the greatest consequences. Now, of course, that variable will likely be gone.
“I think it will be interesting,” said Pelechrinis, who has presented at MIT’s Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. “I expect it to reduce the impact of officiating. The officiating will be more fair, if we think it’s a little unfair now, but if, for example, the NBA puts everyone in a neutral setting, then you’re losing the traveling impact. So when you’re losing that and the referees’ [being swayed by fans], maybe it’ll be a more fair competition.”
So that is what is the Globe tattoo!
Pelechrinis acknowledged there are no concrete ways to measure the psychological effects fans have on players, but players certainly gush about them quite often, if that can be considered an anecdotal metric.
Brian Scalabrine, who played in the NBA for 11 seasons and now calls Celtics games for NBC Sports Boston, believes player performance is affected by crowds. He said some players are rattled by lively road environments, and some need the support that comes at home to truly thrive, especially in the playoffs. He said he has no idea how this new fan-less world might change things.
“This might sound a little crazy and be an overreach,” Scalabrine said, “but I think everything we know about what we’ve seen from teams this season, we could have to throw that out the window. We might have to reevaluate all teams based on how they play without fans.”
Scalabrine said that the Bucks, for example, thrive with a high-energy style that seems to feed off of crowds. Maybe they won’t have the same energy and zip now. There are no data points for this.
“There might be some insignificant player that’s all of the sudden just going to be the man, and we have no idea who that is,” Scalabrine said.
Regardless of the impact this odd setting has on players, there is no doubt that it’s all going to look and sound sort of weird. Teams might have to go to greater lengths to disguise play calls in the quiet environment, and television viewers might hear more in-game chatter on television.
Not if you are NOT WATCHING!
When the Taiwan Baseball League restarted this month, there were mannequins and cardboard cutouts in the seats instead of people, and a five-man robot band played music. Don’t expect Bill Belichick to sign off on anything like that.
It's hard to tell the difference sometimes.
“Obviously, not having fans would be different,” Patriots fullback Danny Vitale said. “Do you throw in crowd noise, whatever it is? I don’t know.”
I sure as hell hope not.
BOOOOOOOO!
One company would like to try. Brad Roberts, who oversees international sales for the MyApplause app, said the company has already had discussions with several NBA teams about utilizing its software next season.
Currently, users can sign into a televised game and pick their allegiance, and when they tap certain buttons to cheer or boo or chant, the sounds are shared in real time with other fans who are logged in. Roberts said the hope is to make it a truly interactive platform that pipes the fan interactions into stadiums and arenas, both for players and television viewers to hear.
F**k the damn MATRIX!
Moskowitz said he is eager to eventually have a new wealth of information to comb through after a sustained period of fan-less sporting events. Maybe the effects will be immense, or maybe they’ll hardly be noticeable.
They are NEVER OPENING the GATES AGAIN, fans!
“As a researcher, it gives us so much to look at, and I think the data will be interesting,” Moskowitz said, “but I’m a fan, first and foremost. I’d love to see us get back to normal.”
I no longer love $ports, so who gives a flying fu..... ?
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Related:
Baseball owners and players are letting the nation down
I balked at reading that article.
Having no fans in the stands won’t be all bad
This is what sports broadcasts will look like:
"Should the NFL season begin on time, Joe Buck — Fox Sports' lead play-by-play announcer for football — believes we might be looking at a campaign without fans in the stands. In an interview with SiriusXM's Andy Cohen, Buck said that Fox is exploring a few routes to provide for a more normal viewing experience should these fan-less games come to pass. "There's probably going to be a season in doing games with no fans, which will be difficult," Buck said. "I think Fox and these networks have to put crowd noise under us to make it a normal viewing experience at home. When pressed by Cohen, Buck said he was certain crowd noise will be added to potential broadcasts without fans, and went as far as to say "I know they'll do it" and that it's "pretty much a done deal." Buck also said the network is looking into ways to at least simulate a packed house for viewers at home. "On top of that, they're looking at ways to put virtual fans in the stands, so when you see a wide shot it looks like the stadium is jam-packed and in fact it'll be empty," Buck said....."
I'll pass on that.
Taking a closer look at the NFL’s new normal
You might want to take some notes because I'm told the virus could lead more states to OK online sports betting, and the Globe has provided you with the 5 scariest ways scammers are trying to rip us off because odds-makers are more savvy than ever so here’s how to protect yourself and your money:
Appeals for calm as sprawling protests threaten to spiral out of control
The riots are being allowed to spiral out of control, and if the photograph is any indication, the New York Times is now a Black Nationalist jew$paper.
An America where some breathe free, and some can’t breathe at all
Has nothing at all to do with the humiliating and counterproductive pressure to wear a submissive mask.
The virus’s tale....
(flip to below fold)
.... Track the coronavirus pandemic in Massachusetts to its roots and you find a story driven by heroics, ingenuity, error, pain, and a hard question: How could a state famous for health care excellence have suffered such a vast loss of human life?
No one is saying Baker's strategy failed, either.
All Trump's fault, right, Globe?
"Coronavirus death toll rises without a national remembrance — or a consoler-in-chief in the White House" by Jess Bidgood and Liz Goodwin Globe Staff, May 30, 2020
Must be time to dump Trump, and before turning into the article I will show you what front-page article was right next door:
Star surgeon accused of murdering estranged wife
Related:
"The first homicide in 25 years in Dover has shaken the town’s police chief, who said his officers pursued domestic violence charges against Dr. Ingolf A. Tuerk but they could not stop him from allegedly manipulating his wife, Kathleen McLean, into removing legal protections before she was killed....."
He had made a sincere commitment to improve his behavior, but the photos say otherwise as virus deaths hit 100,000 and US funeral businesses are in trouble after the funeral parade fueled by love.
It's one of the few deaths they are not attributing to COVID -- even though it is a direct consequence of the quarantine -- and the Globe is arguing that a ‘he must have completely fallen apart’ after a long pattern of abuse (once again, gender takes a back seat to race):
Junk forensics gets its day(s) in court
The case involves the brutal rape and murder of 75-year-old woman in 1979, and a crucial piece of physical evidence — two bite marks on the elderly woman.
It's a shame that she wasn't in a home where all the staff has been tested and where “the worst of this surge has passed for now."
The National Guard was deployed to Quincy to assist nursing homes with COVID-19 testing in early April (Stan Grossfeld/ Globe Staff/file).
Oh, remember the nurses?
They’re still on the front lines and they still need protection:
Even while celebrated as heroes, health care workers are exhausted and struggling with burnout
That was after these nurses held their patients’ hands and erected a critical bridge to loved ones now heartbreakingly out of reach.
Health care workers cited gear shortages into May
"Even as new COVID-19 cases in Massachusetts have begun to decline and public focus has shifted to the economy’s reopening, the personal protective equipment that front-line workers rely upon to safely treat patients remains in short supply, but nurses unions in Massachusetts and nationally have balked at reusing masks cleaned by the decontamination system produced by the Ohio defense contractor Battelle, citing the lack of independent research backing up Battelle’s claims. Though limited governmental testing recently determined that treated masks could be safely reused a few times, the testing stopped well short of Battelle’s assertion that N95 masks — which are designed to be worn only once — can safely be put through 20 decontamination cycles. Concerns about the machine took on added weight after an NBC News report detailed the questionable means by which the decontamination system was granted emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration, as well as the exorbitant amount the federal government is paying for its use. The machine, which Partners HealthCare arranged to bring to the Boston area in April, has been sharply criticized by some health care workers, with one group saying it treats nurses “like guinea pigs in an experiment.”
How ungrateful after the nurses watched a flyover in Boston that consisted of a quartet of F-15 fighter jets that swooped through Boston to show support for medical workers who are on the front lines of the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
I $uppo$e they are $imply jealou$ becau$e they are not doctors with a lab.
Turning into the paper I find these:
Even with years of complaints, police forces are slow to change
The New York Times is trying to help them.
Minneapolis restaurateur prioritizes justice for George Floyd
That is while others bemoan the damage, according to the Washington Compost, and the "others" would be conservative white folk:
"What top conservatives are saying about George Floyd and police brutality" by Michael M. Grynbaum, Annie Karni and Jeremy W. Peters New York Times, May 30, 2020
The chilling circumstances of George Floyd’s death — particularly the graphic, indisputable video of his arrest — have, at least for now, posed a political quandary among some conservative politicians, media stars, and President Trump, whose usual instinct is to focus on blaming liberals for promoting lawlessness.
Floyd is the "Black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer ignored his pleas and pinned him to the ground during a routine stop," and the timing of the event and video is far from indisputable.
The ongoing protests in Minneapolis and around the country may still alter conservative views. On Fox News on Friday night, Tucker Carlson began his show with a graphic calling the Minnesota protesters “Criminal Mobs” and wondered aloud why Republicans were not reacting more intensely against the violence in Minneapolis. Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham condemned the demonstrators for, in Hannity’s words, “exploiting” Floyd’s death.
What happened to the lockdowns?
The law enforcement community is one of Trump’s most loyal constituencies, and he and his allies are in uncharted territory as they weigh expressions of solidarity with the nation’s police forces against grappling with the horror of Floyd’s death.
Casting itself as the upholder of law and order has been a perennial Republican Party strategy in times of racial disharmony and social unrest, from the 1967 riots in Detroit and Newark, N.J., to Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, but the stark footage of a white police officer kneeling on the neck of Floyd as he pleaded and moaned “I can’t breathe” produced an unusual moment when those on either side of the nation’s split-screen politics were, publicly at least, evincing a common cause.
They criticized Israel's treatment of Palestinians?
I only ask because they get that all the time over there.
The moment may be fleeting.
In an appearance on Fox News on Friday evening, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas faced tough questions from Carlson — one of Trump’s favorite anchors — about why the senator was quick to denounce Floyd’s death as “a horrific act of police brutality.”
“In this instance, we have a video of the incident,” Cruz said. “What we saw was wrong.”
Carlson pushed back, asking Cruz if he believed it was fair to bring a murder charge against the officer who arrested Floyd.
“Why doesn’t anybody stand up for the rest of us, for civilization?” Carlson asked.....
Once again, the NYT stands with Black Nationalists.
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So THAT is why they leave white in lower case while capitalizing all other ethnic groups now. The NYT is trying to instigate a race war after COVID flopped. No thanks.
By page A12 one realizes that COVID has now taken a back seat to agenda-pushing racial strife.
My B-section lead:
Ten arrested, four officers injured during Boston protests in support of George Floyd, police say
Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins plans to put them on the fast track to prosecution, and there are more protest planned for the coming days (Walsh is praying they do not).
Other protests were submerged in the Globe's coverage, raising as many questions as it answers.
Thousands protest in Providence over death of George Floyd
A largely peaceful rally drew a diverse crowd demanding an end to police brutality, and the fact that they are no big deal to the authorities means they are approved!
The governor should have kept the state under lockdown, but “the name of the game is containing the virus, [because they] can’t stop it, they can only hope to contain it with an app that would “protect people’s privacy and data in an ironclad way.”
Of course, the ACLU is warning against the devices that check for fevers that make eating outdoors at a R.I. restaurant familiar but strange because at O’Rourke’s Bar & Grill, the ambiance is the same, but everything else is different (plastic knives, salt packets, masks).
Hopefully, the business wasn't defrauded via the loan program, and even though Rhode Island’s nursing homes thought they were prepared for the coronavirus, they weren’t.
We can only hope that Rhode Island’s June 2 presidential primary will not suffer the same ill effects.
Police HQ in Manchester, N.H., closed for several hours amid protest
The two men were charged with felony riot and felony criminal threatening had nothing to do with racial injustice, but the police headquarters in Manchester closed for several hours Saturday after about a 100 people from a Black Lives Matter protest gathered in front of the building and two men in a truck showed up with a gun.
That was after they were dying to reopen in New Hampshire:
"For a few hours Saturday afternoon, pre-pandemic life seemed within reach. Sure, most of the people spread far apart in the parking lot of the Tupelo Music Hall were wearing masks. So were the orange-vested attendants directing concert-goers to their “seats," which in this case consisted of two parking spots each — one for the car, and one for whatever lawn chairs patrons pulled out of their trunks. There was no concession stand or beer tent, but you could order a big juicy burger or other fare online with your phone, and a blue golf cart would zip over and deposit it at the edge of your spot, no contact needed. There was also occasional sun, a nice breeze, other people around — at a safe distance, of course — and live music. “This is going to be the new normal, I think, for quite a while,” Kevin Mach, who drove from Fairhaven, Mass., said from behind a black face mask. “I’m just thrilled that someone, anyone is doing something to create a scenario in which people can experience things that are almost, almost normal again.”
They gave us what, a week?
Turning back to the A section tells me who is to blame for it all:
WASHINGTON — “A president is expected to bring some combination of hope, healing and help,” said David Kusnet, a speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, “to convey some sense that there’s some larger meaning to this all.”
Is that what he was bringing to all the women and girls?
In 1986, with TV footage of the Challenger explosion playing constantly to a nation reeling in shock, president Ronald Reagan delayed his State of the Union address and instead gave a short speech evoking the hope symbolized by seven astronauts boarding the space shuttle.
“We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God,” he said.
Reagan had the advantage of being in $how bu$ine$$ so he could really read a script, 'er, speech.
In 1995, Clinton traveled to Oklahoma City after the bombing of a federal building there killed 168 people, and promised that the country would stand with the victims’ families for “as many tomorrows as it takes.”
The dignity and emotional eloquence of that speech ended up helping boost Clinton’s popularity after Democrats took a beating in the 1994 midterm elections, a reminder that the “mourner in chief” role can come with potential benefits as well as pitfalls.
OKC was the first in what has become a long line of false flag events to advance certain agendas and goals.
George W. Bush was widely praised for taking a bullhorn at Manhattan’s Ground Zero after 9/11 and ad-libbing when someone in the crowd of first responders yelled they couldn’t hear him. “I can hear you,” Bush said, “the rest of the world hears you.” His popularity soared in the aftermath of the terrorist attack, but later in his presidency, he was criticized for failing to respond quickly or empathetically enough to the disaster unfolding during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, which killed nearly 2,000 people.
That fateful September morning has led to so many evils, with the invasion of Iraq being the first.
President Barack Obama came across as stoic and unemotional at times, but he consoled the nation with empathetic speeches again and again after the mass shootings that occurred while he was president. Valerie Jarrett, a close adviser, said that when she and Obama heard the news of the 2012 slaughter of first-graders and educators in Newtown, Conn., they immediately thought of their own children. Obama also wrote his remarks for the memorial service by hand, and spent hours meeting individually with families of the victims. “You have to be able to let your heart take you to that place in order to feel empathy, and then imagine what you would want said to you,” Jarrett said.
Every single mass casualty event they cite tips their hand as to its staged and scripted, crisis drill gone live, false flag quality.
One of the most lasting images of Obama as the “mourner in chief” came in Charleston, S.C., in 2015 when he sang “Amazing Grace” at the service for the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, who was among nine black churchgoers killed in that city by a white supremacist. It was something he only decided to do as he traveled to Charleston that day. “He thought it would be an opportunity for us to feel as one,” Jarrett said. “He knew that if he started to sing, everyone would join.”
Is it possible that shooting was another in a long list of hoaxes?
President Trump’s approach has been starkly different. Sometimes, when he does nod to the coronavirus tragedy, he has a way of bringing up his own political disputes and rivalries. When meeting at the White House in April with people who had recovered from the disease, Trump steered the discussion to his own reelection, and while he sent condolences to family members of the dead on Twitter on Thursday — “I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy & love for everything that these great people stood for & represent,“ he wrote — he also spent the days leading up to the milestone spreading a conspiracy theory about an MSNBC host, sharing a video of a man saying the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat, and boosting a post calling Hillary Clinton a “skank.”
We all know he is narcissistic as hell; however, the New York Times' claim that Trump’s tweets cause collateral damage for families already in pain is simply meant to forestall any search for truth, and to say that "rarely has an American family, all private citizens, had to endure having their personal pain weaponized by someone with the unchecked bully pulpit of the president of the United States" because Trump called the dead woman's body found in Joe Scarborough's congressional office an “‘unsolved mystery’” that is allegedly neither unsolved nor a mystery because her death was ruled an accident is disingenuous.
In other words, never question the official version of anything!
“For whatever reason, he’s been unable to find his voice and to serve as the mourner-in-chief, people have been left to mourn on their own,” said David Gergen, a former adviser to several presidents, including Reagan and Clinton.
UGH!
Why did they have to turn to that disgusting prick for expert analysis?
A White House official who did not want to be named said Trump had shared many “tender moments” over his years in office, including his speech at Normandy to commemorate D-Day, personal interactions with veterans, and visits to factories, but as a lifelong salesman who used to routinely exaggerate the height of his buildings and the extent of his wealth, the president is more comfortable making the rosy pitch, not providing a shoulder to cry on.
Tony Schwartz, who worked with Trump for two years in the 1980s while he ghost-wrote Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal,” said the real estate developer did not show much capacity for empathy, contrition, or sorrow in his experience. “I don’t think grief was in his vocabulary,” he said. “I don’t think he’s ever felt any grief about anything.”
Not even in regards to the death of his brother?
That seems to have had an effect on him.
In contrast, former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee who is set to challenge Trump in the fall’s election and who often speaks of his personal grief, posted a somber two-and-a-half-minute video to Twitter on Wednesday to mark the grim milestone.
“I think I know what you’re feeling,” said Biden, who has mourned his first wife and two of his children, and spoke at multiple memorials while he was vice president. “You feel like you’re being sucked into a black hole in the middle of your chest, suffocating, your heart is broken; there’s nothing but a feeling of emptiness for you.”
No wonder he is always in such a black mood.
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The Globe reporters began their journey by talking to Michael Steinbruck of Franklin Township, N.J. before blasting off to places beyond:
Would a Biden presidency bring a substantial change to US foreign policy?
Unfortunately, Trump has hijacked the debate on the Internet with a tantrum in the Oval Office.
