It’s the greatest sports weekend of the year: baseball and the Final Four.
On Math and Musings today? Final four.
Tune in next week for baseball.
Duh.
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I don’t often do this, but stop reading this post.
Stop and go to YouTube, because there’s something you must watch immediately.
From the damn-I-wish-I’d-thought-of-that series, there is Last Comiskey. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at the final season of Comiskey Park, home of the Chicago White Sox. It’s divided into three segments of about 35-40 minutes each, all available for free on YouTube.
That’s the greatest thing about Last Comiskey. It’s not put together by an army of producers and technicians employed by Netflix or Amazon or PBS. It’s basically some guy in his basement who had the idea one day to put a story together about the final year at Comiskey Park. An amateur version of The Last Dance, which featured the ’90s-era Chicago Bulls, this one goes to the South Side to follow the White Sox and their surprisingly successful 1990 season in which they were expected to finish dead last.
The brainchild of Chicago native Matt Flesch, it’s more or less scenes from his childhood. (I can relate.) A “passion project” that turned into something much bigger, I’d put it up there against Ken Burns, 30 for 30, or the most highbrow offering on the BBC. Damn it’s great, and even though most of the interviews are just straight up Zoom calls with celebrities in their pajamas it all plays. Seamlessly and professionally. Guy who never made a movie before in his life just decided one day he could do it. I aspire.
I can’t tell you anything else about Matt Flesch other than he’s my new hero.
But damn I wish I’d thought of this first.
Two weeks ago if you had asked me to guess the participating teams in this year’s Final Four I probably would have selected a few #1 seeds, and maybe a 2 or a 3.
Had you replied, No, I have knowledge of the future and those are wrong, but I’ll let you guess again, I would probably make the same mistake a second time.
And a third. And a fourth. And attempts into the double and triple digits.
Somewhere into the quadrillions or quintillions I’d select the right combination of San Diego St., UConn, Miami, and Florida Atlantic. Not exactly the bluebloods of the sport. Remember last year when it was Duke, Carolina, Kansas, and Villanova?
First off, this weekend featured some of the greatest games I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been watching sports, specifically this tournament, for more than 30 years. That I had no preferred outcomes, really, made it that much more interesting just to watch good games.
I’m going to have the same thing this weekend.
About the best I can do, for a tenuous link to any of the teams, is the University of Miami, star of whose basketball team is from my home county and went to both high school and college ’round these parts. Yeah, Jordan Miller, Mr. Perfect from yesterday’s game, went to high school about 20 minutes west of me and college 20 minutes east before transferring to the U two years ago. Seems like it was a good choice.
Speaking of neighbors, should I be rooting for a Miami-FAU final? At the risk of imposing the Math and Musings jinx, I support it!
We started with 68 teams and now it’s 12. No doubt at least one of those 56 teams eliminated you wanted to move on, or thought they would move on. If your bracket is no longer perfect, you’re in good company. Like, 100% of your friends are there too.
Don’t feel too bad you didn’t pick a perfect bracket this year. The odds of doing such? I usually begin March by having my students try to guess. One out of a thousand? One out of a million?
More like one out of a million… then one out of a million… then one out of a million.
(Pause for effect.)
Yeah, that’s actually a pretty good estimate. Well, no, the real answer is almost 10 times as unlikely but you get the idea. It’s one out of 9.2 quintillion, give or take. That’s a 9 with 18 zeros.
Well, a little more than that, actually.
The number of possible bracket combinations is 10 times as big as the number of square inches on Earth. If an alien were firing a laser beam at random toward our planet he’d be 10 times as likely to hit a square inch I chose than arrive with a perfect bracket.
Still think you can do this some day?
Consider this.
Let’s say there were a lottery among every human on the planet. Your name was chosen at random.
But there was more to it.
To win you also had to correctly guess a random number.
Between one and a billion.
Actually that’s still lower than the number of perfect brackets, but it’s pretty close.
Kinda puts that Purdue loss in perspective, eh?
To hear more, check out today’s episode of Math and Musings.
This past weekend I had the pleasure of seeing Monty Alexander at Keystone Korner in Baltimore. To say Monty is still bringing it at age 78 is the understatement of the century. The man brings it like no other, and seeing him play live is kind of like a religious experience. I mean an experience like an early Dead show, no Electric Kool-Aid necessary.
I’ve written before about Keystone Korner, the only legit old-school jazz club in the DMV. Seeing anyone there is a treat; seeing the best is, well… the best. I’d seen Mr. Alexander there before, a year and a half ago, and you can listen to my review here. Saturday’s show was similar, but like all great performers, it’s never exactly the same. One highlight: an impromptu audience sing-along, encouraged by the man himself, as Monty and his trio launched into an instrumental version of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” Yeah, an instrumental version of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” If you can make that work, you’re worth seeing.
And Monty Alexander is the greatest performer I’ve ever seen. There. I wanted that documented. There’s a reason Sinatra went to see this guy play, and a reason Frank told his club-owning buddy, Jilly Rizzo, to hire him.
Born in Jamaica, Alexander came to the United States as a young man and has played everywhere with everyone. A lifetime of making music. Among other things he played with the what I consider the greatest jazz band of all time, Count Basie Orchestra. Like, played the piano for them, in the Count’s seat after he passed away. This is like sitting in for God.
At the risk of spouting more cliches, Monty Alexander transcends “jazz,” bringing the intensity of a rock concert and the joy of a pop concert to the world of uneven eighths. There’s a “ta-da!” finish to every tune, brought out with the flourish and flair of a symphony conductor. It’s got the glitz of late-period Elvis, but not in a bad or tacky way.
And if Elvis had gone to Julliard.
Go out and buy every Monty Alexander record you can, though it won’t be the same as seeing him live. Like a Phish studio album it only scratches the surface.
Just counting the days until he’s back at the Korner. I’ll be there.
Yesterday I made the pilgrimage all Northern Virginians must now undertake, a journey to Nova Wild in Reston. Formerly the Reston Zoo, Nova Wild is the 21st century version of going to the zoo, an immersive experience that makes the old zoo look like a junk heap of boomboxes and flip phones.
For the past few years I’ve figured traditional zoos would go the way of plastic straws and Sea Worlds and disappear in a cloud of woke. Locking up animals so we could gawk at them? Okay, Boomer.
I’ll admit Nova Wild does have a few traditional animal displays. Traditional displays, not traditional animals. If you’re looking for a giraffe or an elephant you’d better head to Africa. Or take out your phone and search up a pic. The folks at Nova Wild know you’ve seen the usual suspects already. It’s 2023. You want to see an axolotl or a red ruffed lemur? You’ve come to the right place.
A zoo in 2023 is not just the animals. It’s animal welfare, education, and conservation. Accredited by the Zoological Association of America and certified by American Humane.
Wow, did these guys do their homework or what?
Topping it all off, of course, is the drive-thru safari.
You read that correctly.
You do not go to this part of the zoo. The zoo comes to you.
Picture Jurassic Park, but instead of dinosaurs it’s alpacas and reindeer coming up to your car. Or a bison. Or an emu.
Did I mention you are the one driving your car? Yeah, your car. They give you a bowl of food to feed the animals. Stick your hand out the car window and feed a buffalo.
I swear to God I am not making this up.
It’s, well… wild. There is no false advertising here.
Nova Wild has been open for a few weeks now and I imagine soon everyone in the DMV will have paid a visit. One of them, no doubt, will decide to fight the peacock or outrun the cheetah. I’ve seen Jurassic Park and I know these great ideas have a way of going south. Oh, it won’t be the animals’ fault. Not the animals on display anyway, but rather the so-called noble savages driving the cars.
I just hope it makes a good story when we show up on CNN.
All the best to the folks running Nova Wild. “Planned” as a “non-profit venture” makes the business model sort of a mystery, but like the potential lawsuit when someone gets hurt, I’m not going to think about it.
Personally I just saved like 20 grand on an African safari so I’m feelin’ pretty good right now.
The last two weeks on Math and Musings I’ve discussed Jim Boeheim and Patrick Ewing, legendary basketball men now reduced to playing golf, I suppose, or whatever one does when no longer coaching.
Yup, I’m the new Sports Illustrated cover jinx, with Boeheim and Ewing let go from Syracuse and Georgetown respectively days after their profiles on MAM.
I considered testing the jinx today with an episode describing how I never win the lottery or get a letter from Hogwarts, but decided to go with a chronicle of St. Patrick’s Day instead.
Don’t think they’re going to get rid of that one any time soon, but you never know.
The brackets are out and the stats sheets are being studied, but in classic O’Connell fashion I’m about 40 years behind the times, engaged in a book now about the “old” Big East conference of Ewing, Thompson, Boeheim, et al. The book is Dana O’Neil’s The Big East: Inside the Most Entertaining and Influential Conference in College Basketball History. Official publication date is 2021, but somehow I missed it for a year and a half. I’m making up for it now.
On the cover is a young Patrick Ewing, Hoya Destroya from Georgetown’s glory days. Until recently he was back at his alma mater as head coach, and yeah, he was busy in between D.C. gigs too. Legendary center for my childhood team, the New York Knicks, discussed at length on last Friday’s podcast. Basically he brought Big East basketball to the NBA, and specifically the brawling Eastern Conference.
Perhaps former University of Connecticut coach (and three-time National Champion) Jim Calhoun said it best:
“It was Camelot. Camelot with bad language.”
Well said.
Oscar winners announced on the same night as NCAA Tournament selections? What a delicious juxtaposition.
Other than Top Gun: Maverick I hadn’t seen a single Oscar-winning film, but then, I hadn’t seen a million college basketball games this year either.
But in the next three weeks, I’m going to watch 67.
And zero Oscar-winning films.
It’s been 50 years since they won a title, but the New York Knicks have always been a hot ticket, even when the team ain’t been so great.
One of those tickets was mine in April of 1990, when I saw my first–and amazingly only–NBA game.
To hear more about my first time, tune in to today’s episode of Math and Musings.