The Residue of Design

Yesterday was my birthday, so I needed to be at my family’s disposal.  So I had to let my family let me win my first ever game of foot golf in Tacoma, Washington.

Foot golf turns out to be fun.  You kick a soccer ball around an 18-hole course interwoven with nine regular golf holes.  Half the time you sort of share the regular tee box, but your holes are less than half as far away, 21″ across, and cut off to the side near a fairway or tucked a little way off from the regular greens.

There are fewer variables to manage than regular golf, since club selection is eliminated and the lie of the ball is less of an issue.  But you still have to manage both distance and direction, putting is a delicate task, inability to strike the ball as intended causes frustration, and wind and terrain can either play havoc with your score or be tamed to help you make better shots.

After the front nine, Ben and Melanie had given up keeping score.  I was in last place with 52 strokes (18 over par) to Ryan’s 50 and Sam’s 47. (Yes, Sam won’t turn 13 for two more weeks but he is a star soccer player and was the pre-game favorite.)  But then I started to get the hang of things. Beginning at hole ten I went bogie, birdie, par, par, bogie, par, bringing me to within two strokes of Sam and one ahead of Ryan.  On the 110-yard, par 4 16th hole I hit the longest drive.  With my competitors standing near the pin after their second shots, I carefully planned where my approach should land — just on the back of a little rise 20 yards away so it could kick a little to the left and roll the other 30 yards toward the hole, taking into account the breeze blowing from front left to back right.

I kicked and realized immediately the ball was going to land exactly where I planned. I yelled, exultant, “Just like I designed it!” then watched it bounce and roll right toward the pin. “Oh, too hard!” I said, disappointed, then watched it smack into the pin and disappear into the hole for the longest holed shot of the day — an eagle 2, the first eagle I have ever recorded on a non-miniature golf course.  Sam and Ryan both birdied the hole with excellent puts, but Sam collapsed on 17 (a quintuple-bogie 8) and Ryan finished birdie-bogie to my bogie-birdie, and I WON — 86 to Ryan’s 88 and Sam’s 89, having played the back nine in a one-under par 34.

Later Ryan, believing I might be bragging a little too much about that shot, pointed out that it was just luck.  I protested. “You heard me say I’d hit it just like I designed it before it rolled into the hole.”

“Yes,” said Ryan, “but it was still pure luck. What were the chances that you could make the ball do what you decided it needed to do?”

Ah! Such a cruel thing to say to one’s father on his 59th birthday!  As if intent and result had no correlation.

Luck is the residue of design. Ryan was arguing luck is unrelated to design, at least for those whose skills are, er, unpolished.  According to Ryan, if any part of an effort is dominated by chance, the outcome is entirely luck.

But the outcome of every athletic endeavor is affected by chance. If I were to kick 1000 soccer balls toward a target, the ball’s landing places  would not be spread entirely at random around the part of the planet within my range.  They would describe a three-dimensional bell curve around a central point.  That point might not be the target if it is too far away or my technique skewed my shots, but the results would indeed have a center point, and would be distributed around that point in an orderly bell curve.

The difference between me and a pro foot golfer is this:  the center point of the results of her 1000 kicks would be closer to the hole, and the results would be clustered far more tightly around that center point with a steeper and narrower bell curve.

If I had kicked that ball without any plan, its odds of going in might have been one in ten thousand.  Of the similar shots where I actually visualized my effort beforehand, I made one in about a dozen.  That sample size is too small, but it feels like I could do it again within two or three hundred tries. A pro could probably do it once in fifty attempts. In every case you could say, if you wanted, that the result was lucky.  But in only the first could you say it was pure luck.  Improving one’s odds from 1/10,000 to 1/200 is a huge and wonderfully meaningful jump, made possible at my level of skill only by exceptionally good design.

Now if I could only design an EFL-winning roster. Come on, Preller, trade Justin Upton for something really good.

 

Haviland:  W 3, L 2;  18 – 19. .244, .293, .350;  37.7 ip, 15 er.  Suddenly hit with five games in three days, and saddled with mediocre hitting, the Dragons’ Chris Archer and Carlos Carrasco combined for 16 ip, 1 er, 18 so, 5 walks, and only 1 walk to prevent Haviland from possibly losing its grip on first place. Given Haviland’s dumpload of games lately, objects in the Dragons’ rearview mirror are probably further than they appear today.

Old Detroit: W 2, L 1; 15 – 5.  .277, .322, .445;  43.3 ip, 13 er.  Who said the Wolverines’ roster was randomly assembled?  Wade Miley was the only crummy W pitcher the last three days (5.7 ip, 7 er) and he’s allocated at 0%  leaving 37.7 ip, 6 er for everyone else (1.43 ERA).

Pittsburgh:  W 2, L 1; 22 – 13.  .314, .376, .524;  27.7 ip, 14 er.  Dexter Fowler (6 for 10 with a double, homer and three walks) and Jung-Ho Kang (5 for 11 with two homers and a HBP) led the Allegheny offense as Pittsburgh crept to within 6 games of first place. Pitching results were spottier with Noah Syndergaard’s 8 shutout innings helping to balance the 14 er surrendered in 16.3 ip by Hisashi Iwakuma, Shelby Miller and Jerome Williams.

Peshastin:  W 1, L 1; 13 – 10.  .288, .345, .530; 18 ip, 8 er. Have I mentioned how much former Wolverine Welington Castillo is getting under my skin these days?  Wednesday we were at Safeco to see King Felix, but before we’d reached our seats Castillo had hit a two-run homer to put the D-backs up 4 – 0 in the top of the first. The next time up he hit another two-run homer, then he walked, then he reached on Kyle Seager’s error, then he was hit by a pitch for a .667, .800, 2.667 batting line on the day. The W’s would be in first place today had they kept Castillo… but he was washed up when we let him go two months back. As for the Pears — the ostensible subject of this paragraph — Chris Sale’s 7 er in 5 ip prevented the Pears from at least keeping pace with the Alleghenys as they advance on the league leaders.

Cottage:  W 1, L 2; 6 – 14. .187, .244, .320;  28.3 ip, 12 er. Drew Pomeranz infinitely chulked with 3 er in 0 ip to take some of the shine off Sonny Gray’s 3 hit, 9 so, 1 walk complete game shutout.  Ben Zobrist, clearly shaken by being dumped by both the Oakland Athletics and the Cottage Cheese, went 0 for 4, leaving the heavy lifting to struggling stars Yasiel Puig and Pablo Sandoval  (both 2 for 7 with a homer) and youngster Johnathan Schoop ( 2 for 6 with a homer).

Flint Hill:  W 2, L 1; 16 -13. .269, .293, .435; 23.3 ip, 10 er. Chris Davis blasted 3 homers in three days, and Jason Heyward fell a homer short of the cycle in 8 ab (adding 2 extra singles and 2 walks) to lead the Tornado through a successful three-game stretch.  Collin McHugh struggled (5 ip, 5 er) but all six of the other Tornado hurlers pitched like true Tornados: briefly but very effectively.

Kaline:  W 2, L 3;  25 – 25. .287, .368, .475;  15.7 ip, 7 er. Geovany Soto went 2 for 2 (2b and hr) and walked 3 time in another case of a disappointing catcher blossoming as soon as it’s shown a little love by someone who understands him.  Tom Koehler (6 ip, 5 er) struggled, preventing the Drive from enjoying a three-win day,

Canberra:  W 1, L 2;  23 – 36.  .343, .387, .556;  6 ip, 16 er. Poor Jason Kipnis.  Yesterday Ryan summed up his team as “one fantastic player surrounded by crummy ones.”  Mr. Fantastic was his expected self the last three days (5 for 10 with a double, two homers and two walks) but Kipnis goes unnoticed ably playing his season-long role of superhero sidekick (7 for 13 with two doubles and a hit-by-pitch).  And what about super-closer Aroldis Chapman (2  scoreless innings)? Especially by contrast with the other Kangaroo pitchers — every one of whom chulked!  (Porcello: 2 ip, 5 er, a double-and-a-half chulk; Shane Greene, 1 ip, 3 er for a triple chulk; and Martin Perez, 1 ip, 8 er for an awesome octuple chulk).  The result: the Kangaroos made a long-distance precision shot to land exactly on 600.0 runs allowed this season.  See, Ryan?  Not everything spectacular is pure luck.  Spectacle can also be the residue of design.

Portland:  W (-1), L 3; 3 – 15.  .22o, .248, .320; 30.3 ip, 21 er.  A rough stretch for the Rosebuds. Temperature in Portland soared over 100 degrees again, and will repeat the feat today, and the ‘Buds are wilting. Wandy Rodriguez septuple chulked (1 ip, 7 er).  If it’s any consolation, the Commissioner is praying for cooler weather — something that is (frankly) beyond human design.