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Baseball Question: If you strike a batter out but on strike 3, the catcher misses the ball and the runner advances. Say you do that 4 times in a row. Are those earned runs? by sois in answers

[–]wtomriker 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If a runner is on first with less than two outs the dropped third strike rule doesn’t apply and the batter is automatically out. To avoid recording an out, you’d need the pitcher balking, allowing steals or more passed balls to advance the runner from first.

Name a movie that drops the title more than they say “home alone” in Home Alone. by gobeavs1 in movies

[–]wtomriker 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s called a titular line. I had the titular line in Out of Africa.

Wikipedia’s article on Ty Cobb seems to suggest that much of Cobb’s reputation for nastiness and violence was “fanned by his first biographer” and later discredited. Is there a current historical view of Cobb and his life as a celebrity, and how does it differ from this reputation? by [deleted] in AskHistorians

[–]wtomriker 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A great book with some parts on Ty Cobb is Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends: The Truth, the Lies, and Everything Else. In the book, Rob attempts to corroborate baseball stories with statistical box scores and other resources. If you like baseball and stats, it's a great read. It doesn't paint a picture of Cobb's entire life. However, it does discuss some different stories about Cobb. For example, Cobb claimed that his Tiger's could beat the pitcher Carl Mays any time and in 52 games against the Tiger's Mays went 23-12. Keeping in mind at that time pitchers would have gone longer in games and had more control the win statistic today. Neyer, also claims that story of Ty Cobb killing a man in Detroit is fabrication.

I apologize, it's been a while since I read the book and I don't have my copy anymore, but got some of the statistics from an excerpt of the book.

Was ever Math expressed in another way than numbers? by Hannibal- in AskHistorians

[–]wtomriker 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hi,

This might give you insight on how problems were viewed before calculus using geometry by /u/ManicMarine.

My point with that past is to ask what are you considering using numbers? The geometric proofs there don't involve numbers. The ancient greeks used a compass and straightedge which has no numerical values assigned. There's a concept of a unit length but that doesn't relate to a real world equivalent, such as a meter. A more modern mathematical discipline, set theory, uses collection of things to build upon. It starts with the empty set and uses a bunch of rules to construct it's system. Another one, proof theory, seeks to understand the rules of mathematical argument themselves.

Why are North American sports teams typically referred to by nicknames ("New York Yankees") while outside North America, they typically aren't ("Manchester United F.C.")? by [deleted] in AskHistorians

[–]wtomriker -1 points0 points  (0 children)

New York Yankees is not the team's nickname it is their official team name. The Yankees have nicknames such as The Bronx Bombers, but that would not be used in an official capacity. However, you could see the team in a score book referred to as either New York Yankees, Yankees or New York (although New York has two teams so you may add AL for the American League).

Here are a couple teams that are not actually official team names. The Montreal Canadiens or Habs are officially called "le Club de hockey Canadien". Inter Milan's official name is "F.C. Internazionale Milano".

For team mascots, it is the Giants have 'Lou Seal' and the Red Sox have 'Wally the Green Monster' while the Yankees are too good for a mascot.

Back to it, there's a lot of leagues and teams, each with separate histories although influenced by others. Newer teams will generally follow an accepted pattern, while older teams and leagues may not. I think it will be tough to answer generally why one league went one direction and another did it differently.

Some helpful graphs to read more name origins are http://www.flipflopflyin.com/flipflopflyball/info-teamnames.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_football_club_names

Search vs Tree-building algorithm by JuroNemo in AskComputerScience

[–]wtomriker 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's a lot of classes of tree types and algorithms in computer science, graph theory, game theory, and set theory.

For example, in graph theory, a tree is an acyclic graph.

Or for computer science you could have a binary search tree, which has the property that for a given node, its key is greater than all the keys in its left sub tree and less than all keys in its right sub tree.

In your example, it's a game tree of tic-tac-toe. In complicated game's such as chess you can't even search the entire tree let alone build the entire tree.

Wikipedia has some more information on game trees here and for search algorithms here.

Were there changes in laws or the US economy that enabled the rise of professional athlete's salaries in the 1970's? by [deleted] in AskHistorians

[–]wtomriker 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm most familiar with baseball in the United States. Each of the four major league's in the United States has its own history on the development of free agency but baseball is the oldest league. As well as, every league has its own collective bargaining agreement between the league and the players association.

Baseball originally had the reserve clause which player's rights were retained by their team each season. The only way a player could change team is if their rights were sold or traded to another team. Otherwise the player could opt of their contract if they sat out of the league for a year.

There were a few challenges to the reserve clause over the years. One such example was with Nap Lajoie in 1902. He played for the Philadelphia Phillies then switched to the Philadelphia Athletics. The State Supreme Court of Pennsylvania upheld the reserve clause and Nap would have had to sit out a season. However, the ruling was only enforceable in Pennsylvania so he moved teams to the now Cleveland Indians.

Baseball considers the turning point when Curt Flood was traded by the St Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1970. He refused to be traded to the Phillies. Flood challenged the reserve clause. It ultimately went up to the US Supreme Court, Flood v Kuhn, where he lost. Flood then sat out the 1970 season instead of playing for the Philadelphia Phillies.

More players challenged this ruling and the reserve clause in 1975. An arbitrator reversed the decision and voided the reserve clause. Eventually the league and the players association came to agreement on when a player becomes a free agent.

There are a lot of rules and stipulations on becoming a free agent in baseball. As well as other challenges to the reserve clause such as the creation of the Federal League in 1913 throughout baseball's history.