Mike O'Connell

Today on Math and Musings, my three favorite things: baseball, talking about baseball, and telling stories of my youth.

You’re welcome.

On Friday’s episode of Math and Musings I described my lack of surprise that neither the Houston Cougars nor Texas Longhorns made the Final Four. These are kids playing a game, and one of the things kids do is look past something important to something fanciful. Like looking past the “easy” game that sets up the pretty one.

Case in point: prospect of an all-Florida final pitting two schools separated by just 45 miles.

Yeah, it woulda been cool, but both teams are watching tonight’s game from the bleachers.

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.

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.

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.