Sam Arkwright Diary
September 28th, 2022
I decided to stick to my original itinerary and fly to Boston out of DC instead of making a last second trip to Toronto to watch Aaron Judge. Lucky for me, Judge didn’t hit #61, meaning the A.L. home run record still stands. Judge didn’t even register an official at bat, walking in all five plate appearances. Every record chaser from Maris to Bonds has faced a similar situation. No pitcher wants to be known as the guy who gave up the record homer.
While Judge was getting free passes to first, I got a free pass to Fenway Park. John W. Henry is the principal owner of the Red Sox (among other things), and our paths have actually crossed before. We first met in 2003, when I started developing a software program to simulate real-world racing. The program launched the next year under the name “iRacing.” The program and its subscription service remain wildly popular among racing enthusiasts and diehards to this very day. Ironically, I found that the video game simulation just wasn’t enough to fuel my need for speed, and that’s when I got into the world of open wheel racing, first as a driver and eventually as an owner.
Our paths crossed again several years later when I started looking at Victorville, California as a potential site for one of our first franchises in the Red Rock League. John is something of a celebrity in Victor Valley. His parents were soybean farmers, and they moved to Apple Valley from the Midwest when John was 15. He graduated from Victor Valley High a few years later, and then attended Victor Valley College. After that he started trading soybean and corn futures on the market, and later developed a system to follow market trends. The system laid the groundwork for his first business, John W. Henry & Company, in 1981. By 2006, the company’s assets were an estimated $2.6 billion.
Not bad for a farmer’s son.
John got involved with MLB ownership, first with a small stake in the Mets in the early 1990’s, then outright ownership of the Marlins in 1999. He then flipped the Marlins so he could lead the purchase of the Boston Red Sox in 2002. Think about that. He just kept flipping baseball teams, basically turning a Dwight Gooden rookie card into a Honus Wagner T-206. Genius.
John has certainly made his mark in Boston, hiring famed sabermetrics pioneer Bill James to head up his analytics department. The Red Sox have had a renaissance under John Henry’s stewardship, racking up World Series Championships in 2004, 2007, 2013, and, most recently, 2018.
The man is a visionary.
Lucky for me, John knows me well enough that I didn’t have to bother asking him if I could record our conversation when he met me on Landowne Street, in the shadow of the Green Monster.
Quote:
[Begin Transcription, 5:54pm Eastern, September 27, 2022]
Henry: Long time.
Arkwright: Too long.
Henry: So tell me about this new program you wrote.
Arkwright: Out of the Park Baseball?
Henry: Is that what you’re calling it?
Arkwright: Yeah. What’s the matter? Don’t like it?
Henry: A little long. Needs an acronym.
Arkwright: O.O.T.P.
Henry: Now I definitely don’t like it.
(Laughter)
Henry: What do you have so far?
Arkwright: At this point, just rosters and stats for every Major League and Minor League team. Ballpark dimensions and factors influencing batting average, doubles, triples, home runs for left and right-handed batters, accounting for altitude, prevailing winds, and atmospheric pressure. Historical records dating back to 1876. I’m currently working on data for the Negro Leagues, piecing together some old journals.
Henry: Anything I can help with?
Arkwright: How about raw scouting data for every Major League player and Minor League prospect in the country?
Henry: Oh, is that all?
Arkwright: Asking too much?
Henry: You could say it’s “out of the park.”
Arkwright: …
Henry: Too soon?
Arkwright: Too soon.
Henry: You know, if it was anyone else asking, I’d tell you you’re crazy.
Arkwright: But…
Henry: …but I kind of owe you one. You really did me a solid on iRacing. You put in a ton of work on it. And you never asked for anything in return.
Arkwright: You let me use that as a framework to work on a simulator for my racing team. I consider us square on that.
Henry: You and I both know that’s not true. Do you have any idea what kind of subscription fees my company is pulling in every month?
Arkwright: I don’t want to know.
Henry: I owe you. Seriously. I can’t give you my scouting department’s data, but what I can give you are basic reports pulled from league-wide scouting services.
Arkwright: Majors and Minors?
Henry: The whole shebang.
Arkwright: Much appreciated.
Henry: Don't mention it. So does this mean you’re buying a Major League Baseball team?
Arkwright: That’s the plan.
[End Transcription]
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John took me into Fenway as I told him about my grand plan to bring Major League Baseball to Las Vegas. It’s still a work in progress. There are still so many pieces in play. John Fisher. Peter Carlino. Rob Manfred. Major League owners. And a wild card or two.
John and I had so much to catch up on. I told him about the new
“Ark Reality” hardware and software I’m developing. About a planned expansion to my theme park in Boulder City. John told me all about the Red Sox. And his soccer team (sorry, football club) in Liverpool. And his NASCAR team.
We did all of this as we watched the game from pretty much every vantage point possible. Even though there were 30,000-plus crammed into the park, we still managed to find our way to every seat imaginable. Perks of hanging out with the owner. We sat the first inning in the perch above the Monster in left. Saw Ryan Mountcastle put the Orioles on the board with an RBI triple. Moved behind home plate in the second to see Triston Casas hit a homer for Boston in the 2nd. Finally, we settled into the front row in right to watch the Red Sox score six runs in the 3rd, and five more in the 4th.
All in all, a perfect night at Fenway. A wild 13-9 win for the Sox. A great time with a good friend. And a thumb drive loaded with scouting reports on every MLB and MiLB player on the planet.
What could possibly top that?
Pictured: Fenway Park