Mike O'Connell

Nineties redux continues at the O’Connell household, no trouble for my wife and me (who lived through the era), but sometimes a challenge for my son. Who was born in 2014.

Video games have brought him to the last century. My son is a ’90s video game juggernaut, and yes, I’ll take most of the credit on that. Okay, Super Mario Bros. 2 for the NES actually came out in ’88, but I started playing it in the ’90s. Actually played it through the ’90s and, well, still play it today, 30 years on.

Yesterday afternoon my son suggested I try to “jump down” at the beginning of World 3-1. Certain death, I assured him. No, no, Daddy, he said; just try it and see what happens.

Secret warp to World 5.

Mind blown.

My boy.

Nineties kid.

Anyone else think “the start of the baseball” season is beginning to feel a little like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown?

(If I could draw this is where I’d place a picture of Lucy bent down holding a baseball for Charlie Brown to grab. Cue Charlie’s AAAAAUGH!)

Those who take time to measure such things tell me today is the last day of spring. I say good riddance. Spring 2020 was probably the worst season I’d ever experienced (through no fault of my own I might add), and who among us can say much different? Did you winter in Stalingrad in 1943? Spend autumn right here in Virginia… in 1864? Date and place of the last plague, right?

Yeah, I’m ready for something else.

My whole life (so far) I’ve read travelogues and vacation guidebooks in a sort of Walter Mitty fashion, having no intention of actually undertaking any of the journeys described. I’ve always felt kind of guilty about that.

Not anymore of course!

Thanks, coronavirus, for this unforeseen benefit.

It’s the last day of school, ’round these parts, but as we know learning never really stops.

Case in point, the NBA this week announced that the league would be “using winning percentage” to determine who would qualify for this year’s playoffs.

What the heck was it using before?

The NBA was founded in 1946, and though the exact playoff format has changed through the years it has always followed one pretty basic principle: the teams are ranked based on their wins and losses.

When teams all play the exact same number of games, yes, it is easier to see who has a better record. A team that wins 50 out of 82 games has a higher percentage of wins than a team that wins 49 out of 82. But what if the team that had won 49 only played 80 games? What then?

The thing you see every day labeled “Pct.” in the standings will give you an answer. This is “winning percentage,” all though I’ve always enjoyed pointing out that when it’s carried out to its standard three decimal places you’re no longer looking at a percentage (which is out of 100) but a fraction of 1,000. (You never hear that Ted Williams was the last 40 percent hitter.) In our above case, 49 of 80 is 0.613 (rounded to the nearest thousandth) and 50 of 82 is 0.610 (also rounded). Better record? Forty-nine out of 80. (Think of it this way–the team that went 50 for 82 went 49 out of 80, then went one out of two. One for two is only 50%, a “worse” percentage.)

With the coronavirus interruption to the 2019-20 season, teams have played and will end up playing differing numbers of games.

Time to break out the calculators!

See, you love doing math in the summer.