Recently in Sports Category
Just after Fox ended its coverage of the Red Sox victory in Game 7 of the ALCS last night, a Nike ad aired in which a fan in the seats ages from 1919 all the way through 2004 as the years tick by below the frame.
The ad, which will strike a chord with many Red Sox fans, can be viewed or downloaded at Nike.com.
In a clever visual gesture on the page containing the ad, some Morse code appears in the frame surrounding the viewing area. This is a reference to the scoreboard on the Green Monster at Fenway, which renders the initials of former team owners Thomas A. Yawkey and Jean R. Yawkey in Morse Code.
But, as you might expect, the Nike page goes a step further. The Morse code in the frame does not represent the Yawkey's initials.
Here are the two codes:
.--- ..- ... -
-.. --- .. -
I took a second to decode it. You can probably guess what the code says:
.--- ..- ... -
J U S T
-.. --- .. -
D O I T
ps. You'll notice in the last few sequences of the ad, the fan is wearing a Red Sox jacket with a Nike logo on it.
Resource: Morse code alphabet
I created a spreadsheet that shows the current winning percentages of 26 Major League Baseball teams, alongside their rank in terms of total 2004 payroll. This allows you to easily determine any correlation between payroll amount and winning percentage.
Your choice of formats:
- If you have Internet Explorer, try the interactive version that lets you sort, filter, etc. (It might work.)
- If that doesn't work, try the Excel-generated "plain" HTML file that isn't very fancy but conveys the same information.
I am not enough of a statistician to draw many conclusions about what the data proves -- I'll leave that up to you -- but I can say that the Minnesota Twins appear to be the best bargain (4th in winning percentage, 19th in payroll), whereas Seattle and the Mets seem to be the worst bargains. I'm sure there is a simple mathematical formula to better quantify that, but I have no idea what it is.* Post a comment if you do.
*Soon after writing this, I realized the rather obvious point that such a formula is payroll/wins. Now that the season is over, I will update this post shortly to include this formula.
