[Siv]

The beauty of baseball is that we see and feel differnet things. I am in an industry that feeds off these same type of situations (slot machines).

In the slot machine industry machines have to pay back a certain percentage (85-95% typically) over the course of "the machine life cycle". This life cycle is 10 million handle pulls.

The average gamer cannot play a machine for 10 million handle pulls as they are don't have enough money or time to sit on that one machine to do this. The machine doesn't know what it's last handle pull was, it just has the formula's stored in it's memory and the random number determines the result. Nor does the machine store any of it's results for consultation later.

In the first 1000 handle pulls the variance to payback is 50%. But if a player hits a jackpot on that machine in 100 handle pulls their perception is that this is a great machine. As the machine gets more handle pulls the variance gets tighter. At 10000 handle pulls the variance is 30% from it's payback. 1 million it is at 10% and finally at 10 million games it is within half a percent.

This whole time a varied group of customers are playing this machine and are perceving different results from a lucky machine to a tight one.

This i believe is similar to a baseball player and it's fans. With only 600 AB's a season, one cannot capture all the variables that go into the "life cycle" of a baseball player, but the fans have a perception they believe to be true. Thus you take to heart how great or pooer this player is and many times what they have done in "critical" games and situations because as the fan you experienced these results in a live format and felt all the anticipation and excitement that goes with it.

Now that the fan or customer has that set it there mind, their expectations will be further jaded and thus not allowed to take in the big picture!

With that said the feeling and analytical parts of a fan will always out weigh what a baseball player will be able to do based on not having enough opportunities to complete his life cycle in a particular season. Even 12000 AB's in a career isn't enough to normalize the variables that go into a baseball players career to give any idea of an anticipated result.

A player is still within the 20-30% variable which is the best we can see in his 20 year career. We will have a good idea, but since every session (game) we see of a player is only 4-5 AB's it further strews our belief in what they can do and coats our memeory with inaccuracies that we will keep forever.

It is no wonder that baseball players like gambler's are supersticious and always believe that they will hit the big one or win the game. It is probably why I enjoy baseball so much, because no matter when, where or how; there is always a chance to win.