Books! Actual books!
"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... his comic timing never fails"
-- The Wall Street Journal
"Pulls you in like a good sports story"
-- The New York Times Book Review
"Endearingly frank... jubilant... lighthearted and fast-paced"
-- New York Newsday
"A surprisingly touching memoir"
-- Entertainment Weekly
"Snappy and informative"
-- Associated Press
"Effortlessly funny and informative... tender, human, and very wise... A must for anyone who loves Jeopardy!, or has ever seen it, or is breathing."
-- Joss Whedon, creator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
"I haven't seen Jeopardy! since I was a kid, and yet I was charmed and amused by Bob Harris's fascinating and surprisingly suspenseful book. Through sheer force of personality, he takes this brainy TV show and makes it funny and easy to relate to."
-- Ira Glass, creator and host, This American Life
"A surprisingly intimate, entertaining book."
-- Orson Scott Card, 4-time Hugo Award winner, author of Ender's Game
"Funny, enlightening -- and just might help you win a million bucks on Jeopardy!"
-- A. J. Jacobs, author of The Know-It-All
"A masterful job of describing the feel of Jeopardy! in the heat of battle... I knew Bob was a great guy and a fantastic Jeopardy! player. Now I've found that he's also a wonderful writer. I think I'm starting to hate him."
-- Brad Rutter, top money-winner in Jeopardy! history
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“Revelatory... Harris's sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating... witty, horrific, and necessary.”
— Boston Globe
"Brave... irreverent... charges into the thick of the globe's myriad simmering wars... hilariously relaxed."
— New York Observer
"Only Bob could make a user’s guide to our increasingly hostile world this absorbing, this breezy, and—ultimately—this hopeful.”
— Ken Jennings, author of Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs
“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING. A gimlet-eyed look at the world we endure that’s also suitable for enjoying with a gimlet.”
— John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise
and correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
"All three [presidential] candidates should read all three of these [recommended] books, but McCain gets first crack at Bob Harris's "Who Hates Whom“... a lighthearted overview of the insurrections and civil wars in the world today."
— Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought, in the New York Times Book Review
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Main
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Sport
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Monday, 07 July 2008 |
I'm in a fantasy baseball league. I am a geek. Shocking, I realize.
I've never won. But his year, I'm trying a new strategy: trying to win by making all the other teams better, too, one by one. Strangely, it seems to work.
 Here's the deal: by early May, my team ("The Fighting Pudu") was already struggling in last place. I'd had a bunch of injuries, plus I'd drafted both Victor Martinez and Troy Tulowitzki, possibly this year's two most impressive flops. It already looked like winning would be a longshot.
And then came an epiphany.
Trades in this game tend to be infrequent, partly because people can be reluctant to give up players of value, and partly because people sometimes ask for a little more than they're giving up. Basic stuff. Nothing surprising there.
But if you're in a league with ten other teams (which I am), and you make ten trades, one with each team, each of which benefits both parties equally, win-win — totally fair transactions, where you give up some major all-star the other guy needs, in exchange for some good player at a different position that you want, so both teams get better — that's essential — eventually, you're probably going to win.
The math is thuddingly obvious: in the hypothetical example, your team improves ten times; if other people aren't trading generously, everybody else's team improves just once. Eventually, the team with ten improvements will rise — precisely by finding ways to make everyone else better.
The outcome seems so inevitable (at least in this closed system) that I think you can actually afford deals more advantageous to the other guy, over and over and over — as long as your own team keeps improving, little by little, and you keep rotating partners.
It's like a strange Zen arithmetic of cumulative generosity.
This thought had philosophical appeal, so I've been pursuing it ever since, just to see what happens. So far I've managed to ship off Chipper Jones, Edinson Volquez, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, and Matt Holliday — five All-Stars, including last year's NL MVP.
That's no way to win, is it? But the Pudu started charging up the standings immediately.
(In exchange, I got Joe Mauer, Alfonso Soriano, John Lackey, Johan Santana, and Prince Fielder, if you're curious. There were a few thrown-ins each way, but both teams benefitted in every deal.)
At the moment, pretty much half my team is on the trading block — and the Pudu have been in first place for weeks now, by a margin that just keeps getting bigger.
I'm sure there are other factors involved, too, of course. And maybe I've just suddenly lucked out for months. Maybe I'll be in last place again by fall. But dang, so far, the logic is holding up.
Weird, huh? Make everyone else better, and you win. But the math seems obvious, once you get it. Then it almost feels like they should teach it in Sunday school. (Although it's so self-interested it almost feels more like business school.)
The best thought: this would have worked whether or not I'd understood the math. Being friendly and interested in what everyone else needs would be rewarded — inevitably, as a function of very simple arithmetic — even if you had no idea how.
I wonder how often we find ourselves in other situations like this and we never realize it. Maybe a lot.
Maybe even some big ones.
That's pretty wonderful to think about.
As to the Fighting Pudu, I'm no longer worried about a particular roster spot or injury; now I'm just worried about the other players getting wise to the tactic and trying to out-nice each other, all at once.
But that would be pretty cool, too.
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Stuff I like
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Thursday, 03 July 2008 |
Frequent visitors may remember that I recently spent some time in Mexico City as Asesor de Producción (Production Advisor) to the writers and producers on the second season of El Pantera, Televisa's big action-drama. (The credits here are a gas — my name has never looked quite this gringoey.)
 Televisa is trying to create stuff beyond the telenovela format, and I was hired to dive in and facilitate as best I could. The gig basically involved trying to help create the show's stories with half as many writers and about a fifth of the time usually allotted in the US, while training everybody in some conventions of American TV drama — without even realizing how many things I'd always been taught were "right" were just cultural narrative assumptions I'd never thought to question.
I'm not sure the seat of my pants ever worked harder in my life.
In addition to the creative challenge, this was a linguistic and cultural experience I'll treasure forever. Man, I loved that job. And I loved the people. I consider everyone I worked with to be my friends, and I think of them often.
I was on a plane back to El Norte before the new shows began filming, so I haven't seen any of the actual episodes yet — but I just got an email telling me that the premier was a huge hit.
Hurray!
So my hearty congrats to Rodolfo, Fredy, Enrique, Esther, Melissa, Juan Pablo, y todo el mundo de El Pantera. ¡Estoy muy contento con esta noticia! Voy siempre deseo continuos éxitos para ustedes, y espero que la tercera temporada estará un éxito aún mayor! Muchas gracias para la oportunidad a encontrarse y ayudarse un poco.
Incidentally, if you're curious, the first season (which was before my arrival) currently airs in the US on Sunday nights on Univison. I'm eager to see the second season.
PS: I've also heard that the show's lead actress is on the cover of this month's issue of Maxim en Español. So it's a teeeeeeny bit possible that the show is succeeding for reasons that have nothing to do with my work whatsoever. Just maybe. |
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The Lunatic Right
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Thursday, 03 July 2008 |
The sports section of this morning's L.A. Times reports that the content filters at a "Christian" website had a wee problem in reporting how a sprinter named Tyson Gay performed at the U.S. Olympic trials:
"Tyson Homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has. . . . Homosexual qualified for his first Summer Games team and served notice he's certainly someone to watch in Beijing."
"It means a lot to me," the 25-year-old Homosexual said. "I'm glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me."
Genius. Apparently they still don't like the word "gay" as slang for "homosexual" (their preferred word), since this is unfair to... um... words.
Fair enough — which is why I've placed "Christian" in quotes here.
There's not one word in the Gospels criticizing homosexuality. Not one. There are two bits in the Old Testament (Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13) predating Christ by a few gazillion years, right where eating shellfish is condemned just as harshly. If these "Christians" really cared about their own holy book, they'd also be protesting outside of Red Lobster.
Complicating things, the original Hebrew in Leviticus 18:22 is unclear. There's nothing close to an agreed-upon translation, and for anyone to proclaim that they know exactly what the words mean (not even to mention postulating them as the unquestionable word of a deity) is simply dishonest.
On the other hand, Leviticus 25:44-46 heartily endorses slavery, in terms way less ambiguous than other stuff. And Exodus 21:20-21 explicitly says it's OK to beat the crap out of your slaves so badly they can't work for a couple of days, as long as you don't kill them.
Oy. |
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Pudu
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Friday, 20 June 2008 |
Not a pudu, but related. One morning last May, a Texan named Mike came across a newborn fawn whose mother had just been killed by a car. He couldn't leave the fawn to die, and with no better idea, he just scooped it up, took it home, and he and his wife have been caring for it ever since.
If you need to say "awwwww" and feel overwhelmed with the tiny, I urge you to click over and take in the whole story.
I have the same concerns you do about how this all turns out, but the couple seem to have been in frequent touch with wildlife professionals, and they're gonna do their best to help prepare the little guy survive in the wild when the time comes.
Link found via CuteOverload. |
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Sport
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Thursday, 19 June 2008 |
Indians lose again. I blow off steam.
 Before the season started, as I explained on this here site:
• C.C. Sabathia, their best starting pitcher, probably wouldn't be as good this year. (Update: he's 5-8 so far.)
• Fausto Carmona, their second-best pitcher, was at risk of injury from overuse; the manager and general manager were simply asking him to throw too many innings at too young an age. (He's currently on the disabled list with a hip strain injury, which commonly results from overuse.)
• Joe Borowski would be horrible at closer, despite leading the league in saves last year, and would lose the job to Rafael Betancourt. (Borowski's current ERA is 8.18, so yep, he lost the gig to Betancourt by May — until Betancourt sucked so mightily that Borowski now has it back for a while.)
• Second baseman Asdrubal Cabrera would be no more than ordinary. (Currently batting .184.)
• Travis Hafner was nowhere near returning to all-star form. (Currently batting .217.)
• The left-field platoon of Dellucci and Michaels was idiotic, and the job should have been given to minor-league batting champion Ben Francisco, who was instead sent back to the minors. (Dellucci is hitting .225, and Michaels batted just .207 until being sold to the Pirates for, I dunno, twenty bucks and a dead squirrel. Francisco was finally given the job in May, and he's hitting .304, settling in as one of the team's best hitters.)
• The Indians would be average or a little above average, tops, but no more, with not much chance of winning the division, and that the other teams in the division had done a lot more to improve themselves. (The Indians are currently 33-39, in fourth place out of five teams.)
If all this is obvious in advance from my kitchen table thousands of miles away, before the season even starts, why can't the people who actually get paid to run the team see it?
Aaaaarggh.
This got me wondering: does the Indians general manager even realize how much he sucks? And the Indians used to have a pretty well-stocked organization. Just how many good players did they give up in order to get this bad?
Let's compare the current team to a team made up of players the Indians had and let go.
EXHIBIT A — REAL TEAM: Here's an actual Indians starting lineup from last week, along with each player's OPS+, an oversimplified but useful stat roughly measuring overall offensive output, including power, speed, park effects, etc. 100 would be an average major leaguer; 125 or more would be worth considering for an all-star team. I use it here just for simplicity's sake; it's a fair first approximation of offensive value, but that's all.
CF Sizemore - 136
LF Francisco -112
C Martinez - 80
1B Garko - 100
SS Peralta - 82
DH Dellucci - 97
3B Blake - 106
RF Gutierrez - 83
2B Carroll - 90
Avg OPS+: 98
So: that's one all-star, one promising youngster, one perennial all-star (Martinez) struggling with nagging injuries, and... um... six OK-to-marginal guys whose stats would belong in the high minors in some organizations. (Gutierrez is a disappointment. His minor league stats indicate he should be much better than this. Otherwise, blegh.)
Baseball is a game of repeated trials — flipping a coin, over and over and over — and while surprises are constant, long-term, baseball generally obeys the laws of repeated trials. A career .300 hitter usually gets more hits the next year than a career .280 hitter, and nearly always more hits than a .250 hitter, and so on. Period.
Statistically, these nine guys — or any players of this caliber Indians management may switch in — have virtually no chance of success over the long haul. The Indians have a lot of this-caliber guys.
EXHIBIT B — BIZARRO WORLD INDIANS: found in the universe where the Indians have actually kept the good players they already had. Here's a lineup of current players the Indians have let go, OPS+ stats all taken as of the same night, along with the manner of their departure:
SS Vazquez - 150 (released as a free agent in 2006)
CF Ludwick - 175 (released as a free agent in 2005)
LF Ramirez - 149 (released as a free agent in 2000; too expensive to pay)
DH Bradley - 193 (traded to Dodgers for Gutierrez after Bradley argued with the manager, 2004)
2B Phillips - 107 (traded to Reds for minor leaguer Jeffery Stevens, 2006; hit 30 HR, 2007)
1B Thome - 110 (released as a free agent in 2002; too expensive to pay)
RF Gerut - 99 (traded to Cubs for minor leaguer Jason Dubois, 2005)
3B Kouzmanoff - 88 (traded to Padres for minor leaguer Josh Barfield, 2006)
C Bard - 49 (sent to Red Sox in 7-player deal, 2005)
Avg OPS+: 124
No getting around it: that's an eye-poppingly better team. Way better batting average, better on-base percentage, tons more power. Bizarro Indians would kick the real Indians' ass. But of course, in the Bizarro universe, the general manager keeps the good players and drops the bad ones. What a crazy idea.
At least four (Ludwick, Ramirez, Bradley, Phillips) belong in the all-star game this year. Of course, Vazquez probably isn't really this good, Thome is on the downside of a Hall of Fame career, Kouzmanoff has a ton of promise not yet fulfilled, and Gerut and Bard are included here just to fill out a team.
Bradley, you could argue, is a head case and tough on the clubhouse. Yep. But look it up -- he has also been a solidly above average and usually exceptional player every year since 2003 -- and when the Indians dumped him, he was their best offensive player by a mile. Genius.
By my half-cocked back-of-the-envelope Bill James-style math, the Bizarro Indians would score enough runs to typically generate an additional 20 wins per year, plus or minus. (Wow. Can that be right? My calculator thinks so, anyway.) Which would translate, at the current moment of mid-June, into 8 more wins and first place in the division.
And that entire team of guys, you notice, was dumped — for exactly one current Indians starter (currently batting .243), some cash, and a few benchwarmers and minor leaguers in return. Nice work, front office.
Apologists will argue that a small-market team simply can't afford guys like Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome. Probably true. The entire payroll of the Indians example, above, is only slightly more than what Manny Ramirez currently gets paid all by himself. Fair enough. (The decision to let Manny go wasn't the current GM's decision, anyway.)
Then again, Indians management is currently paying $10 million to Jake Westbrook, who has had a couple of good years between various struggles, but that's all; 8 million to Travis Hafner, who has been on a steady decline for two years; 6 million to the ordinary Casey Blake at third; 4 million to firestarting closer Joe Borowski; 4 million to .225 hitter David Dellucci; and even 2 million to journeyman Jamey Carroll, who could be replaced by a dozen AAA minor leaguers I could name (none of them in the Indians system, unfortunately).
That's $34 million down a hole to six players, only one of whom (Hafner) has ever been truly special. So the Indians can't argue they're spending what money they do have all that wisely.
They don't have much help coming from fresh faces in the minors, either. In AAA, Adam Miller has a shot to become a good starter, and veteran Rick Bauer is turning into a possible closer option. In AA, Wes Hodges is the Indians 3B of the future, and catcher Chris Jimenez is interesting. Pitchers David Huff, Randy Newsom, and Jeffrey Stevens all look pretty good. (Stevens has dominating strikeout numbers, the sort of thing that tells you a kid has a real shot. He was acquired in the Brandon Phillips trade, so that may not look so horrible in a few years. Maybe.) In A ball, there are two relievers in Kinston and four or five pitchers in Lake County to write home about.
And that's it. Note the near-complete lack of promising position players. Baseball America's top-rated Indians prospect, Beau Mills, is still hitting just .259 down in A ball with no speed, little power, and 105 strikeouts in 127 games. Yeesh. By comparison, Jay Bruce, the Cincinnati Reds' top prospect, is eight months younger — and he's already hitting over .300 with speed and power for... um... the actual Cincinnati Reds.
So that guy hitting .259 in Kinston, North Carolina is the best thing some analysts see in the Indians' future? OK, then. Not holding my breath. At least as long as the current management has their jobs.
How would the Indians look right now with Ryan Ludwick in the OF with Francisco and Sizemore, Brandon Phillips at 2B, Bradley at DH, and Kouzmanoff at 3B? They'd look pretty damn good for the next few years, that's what. They'd definitely have a better shot at the playoffs, which is to say more than none.
They coulda been a contender.
They could been somebody.
Instead of a bum, which is what they are, let's face it.
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