The Science Of Baseball: What Is The Fastest A Pitcher Can Throw?
The Science Of Baseball: What Is The Farthest Home Run (And Did Mickey Mantle Hit It)?
Does A Curveball In Baseball Really Break?
Yankee Stadium - The House That Bernoulli Built
Baseball Debate Solved - The Head-First Slide Is Quicker
Baseball Heresy - A Purist Mathematically Argues For The Unthinkable; More Playoffs
or all these if you are interested in the science of baseball. I got nothin' for helping Barry Zito.
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In San Francisco Friday night for the Giants versus Braves playoff game (see Science Of Baseball Playoffs: Giants To Win LDS, But Don't Bet The House for predictions) I went up the escalator toward a level I had never been before - heck, I didn't even know it existed - and a boisterous group near me was joking around in that funny way drunk people do, where everything makes them laugh, and a young lady with huge hair looked at me and said "Hey, you look like Barry Zito."
Well, I look nothing like Barry Zito and if you're going to confuse me with someone on the Giants, at least make it someone who is on the post-season roster and not the second or third worst contract on the team ($18 million this year, but he eats up innings - Aaron Rowand is $12 million a year and can barely pinch hit, so he is the worst, though Jose Guillen isn't on the playoff roster either, also at $12 million). But he is younger, so that was okay.
Still, I had to wonder what they were thinking. I asked how they could think I looked like Zito and the young lady replied 'I am in sales, so I will say you look like Zito's older brother. If I wasn't, I would say you look like his dad."
Ummm, ouch?
At the top of the escalator, they saw a young man with wild hair in the Tim Lincecum style - and he did look like Lincecum in the way all young, thin men with the same hairstyle look alike. This was too much coincidence for the fans so they got a picture with the two of us. No, I don't have a copy and, like most digital pictures, it will be stored somewhere and never seen again until a hard drive crashes and it will be gone forever, but after I sat down I posted an update on Facebook saying drunk people thought I looked like Barry Zito and Paul Shin replied, "how drunk were they??"
Well, that was a good question so I decided to gather some data by asking people around me as the game progressed (11 innings!) and slyly clocking their alcohol intake and their responses. First, a baseline for those of you who were not there, though admittedly it isn't very good. Zito wears baseball caps to work and I was wearing one at the game so I did my best to match the two up below, which wasn't easy, because I have no intention of spending more than 30 minutes on an article this ridiculous.
Not really similar but this was a few weeks ago so my hair is a little shorter and his is a little longer. These are the best I could find with same angle, wearing hats.
So what did my analysis show?
Well, the drunk girl with Troy Polamalu hair may have been onto something. With the data I got, as we started off with no beers, people around me think I look like, unsurprisingly, me, but as people reached the 4 beer level and, since we were at a baseball game, I looked as much like Barry Zito as I possibly could - then it gradually descended through Bruce Campbell in "Army of Darkness" and finally ended up at Alessandra Ambrosio because, to men, everyone looks like Alessandra Ambrosio after 8 beers and there were no women near me at that point; they were all undulating their puffy, white stomachs in the aisles by then.
I didn't have any beer at the game so my opinion was not factored in - I didn't leave my seat for four hours and for no reason I can figure out, the roving vendors were only selling ice cream and lemonade despite it being 50 degrees, nighttime, and foggy in San Francisco - which is pretty much the same as daytime there so trying to sell ice cream in AT&T Park must be the worst job ever.
Good luck to San Francisco today!
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