Foul Territory

Janet and I took in a ballgame on Saturday night here in the Triangle. I was able to get some free tickets in the field level seating down the first base line, so we had a good view of the action, though we had to remain vigilant, should an errant foul ball come sailing our way. The game in question was between the Durham Bulls (of movie fame) and the Charlotte Knights. It was a good time, once the game actually started after a 90 minute rain delay. We were afraid we wouldn't be watching baseball that night, but the sky cleared, and we had ourselves a game. There was only one problem with this game, and that was the other people who came to watch it. I'm sure most of the fans were there to watch baseball, but we seemed to be surrounded by people who would have enjoyed themselves whether there was a game or not, as long as the concession stand was open. First there was the woman sitting to our left who got up and came back over and over again. One time, she apologized and said she wasn't very good at sitting. This of course begs the question of why she came to a baseball game, but I didn't get the chance to ask her. The worst, though, were the four people in front of us. Between the four of them, they must have eaten one of everything served at Durham Bulls Athletic Park. This wouldn't have been so bad, but they never, ever got up or came back during the break after a half inning. They always got up and came back in the middle of the action. This was punctuated by the guy in front of us spending the last three innings spitting tobacco juice into his empty beer cup. Gross. We were hoping for one of those errant foul balls that I mentioned, but we had no luck there. The game itself was enjoyable, and I hope to go again, but I hope to not be anywhere near these people the next time I make the trip.

I also was thinking about recruiting for a Division III college. How do you know who to target, and how do you convince someone to drop between 15 and 25 grand per year on a college education when you can't offer a cent of a scholarship? This brought my thinking to the bestselling book Moneyball by Michael Lewis. He wrote this book about the Oakland A's and the challenge of competing with the NY Yankees of the world (I've heard it said that rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for the house in a casino, but alas, that's another post). The goal is to change your evaluation techniques to figure out what is undervalued by everyone else. That way, you can get it on the cheap. In baseball, on base percentage has been historically undervalued, while batting average has been overvalued. The general thinking is changing, but that's not the point here. If you'll remember, the point is trying to recruit for a Division III wrestling team. I came up with at least one solution. This solution is to look for guys with high ceilings that haven't realized most of their potential yet. Basically, you want guys that are going to get a lot better than they are when they first get to your team. To me, this means guys who don't have a lot of experience, but have had more success than most people with similar experience. You're looking for state qualifiers who maybe didn't start wrestling until high school as well as state placewinners who maybe didn't start until junior high. Of course, this only counts for big wrestling states like Ohio, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. For places like Massachusetts, you aim for top four and up. As an example of what we're looking for, consider the following three examples, Harry, Mike, and Andy. Harry has been wrestling since he was 9 years old, he won four state titles in Ohio, and threw in a Junior National championship to go along with it. Division III coaches don't go after these guys. It's just a waste of time when every Big X and Big XII school out there is ready to give them a free ride. Andy started wrestling at an early age, and did finally win that state title his senior year. He didn't get the scholarship offers, so a small school looks ok to him. Every coach needs to have a few guys like Andy on the radar. These are more long shots than other guys, but worth the effort. Most of the high placewinners in DIII are guys like Andy. Then there's Mike. Mike didn't have a lot of experience, but he was able to qualify for the tough NY state tournament. There's obviously some potential, but he's still raw. If Andy and Mike wrestled before college, Andy would stomp all over him. However, Mike's ceiling is high, and he just started to climb the ladder. Through hard work and more hard work and good coaching, he develops himself into a Division III national champion. Not everyone like Mike will have that much success, but you want to try to find guys like him as much as possible, since, in their minds, your school is about the level they're at. Essentially, it comes down to the Andys and Mikes of wrestling. That's where you want to have your focus. You still have to fill a team, however, so you can't be focusing on just the Mikes and Andys because there frankly aren't as many of them as there are of the guys who have wrestled for a while and had good, but not great, success, or the newer wrestlers without the potential of a Mike. It's a delicate balance, since only a few schools sport stars at every weight class, so you have to use your recruiting resources wisely.

I was thinking about Tim Claypool for some reason yesterday. I don't have the foggiest idea what brought him to mind, but the story is rather entertaining, at least for me and people who like wrestling. Maybe you'll like it, too. Tim came late to wrestling. He didn't start the sport until his junior year of high school. He was a pretty agreeable fellow, though, and picked it up fairly quickly. Now, he had nothing like what you would call a good career in high school, but that's the amusing part of the story. One year, I don't remember which, Tim managed to have a record with exactly as many wins and losses. 11 times his hand was raised, and 11 times the referee raised his opponent's. This is not altogether odd. The odd part was that he went an entire season without ever getting all the way to the end of the match. That's correct, of his 11 wins, all 11 came by pin. Of his 11 losses, all of those came by pin as well. I have no idea what happened to Tim, but he'll always be my teammate with the most unique record.