Back in 2015, I attended one of two historic professional baseball game between the San Rafael Pacifics and the Vallejo Admirals in which balls and strikes were determined by the advanced, multi-camera system called PitchF/X instead of a human umpire. I wrote about the game in a post and, every now and then, I’m intrigued to see headlines about potentially replacing or assisting home plate umpires with these challenging calls.
Fangraphs’s Roger Cheng published a two-part series in October 2018 on applying machine learning techniques to ball/strike calls. I look forward to reading the articles and I’ll write about them ASAP. My first reaction is that I don’t know what there is to “teach” when the PitchF/X approach has unambigously the information needed. That said, I’ll reserve judgment until I finish the articles.
This is not a book review, yet it’s related to books. My wife and I have accumulated a lot of books over the years. Three rooms with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves full of books acquired through schooling, second-hand stores, roadside boxes marked ‘Free’, airport kiosks and can’t-miss gifts from family and friends. I’m in my 40s now and I realize that a time is coming when we must downsize our book collection significantly because of our growing family (a child’s room is not an appropriate place to store old college textbooks) and general aesthetic decorum.
Yet, I’m finding it incredibly difficult to part with books. I can’t part with old or new books alike. I agreed that we needed to reduce the book collection, but I asked my wife to run all to-be-discarded books by me first. The typical result: A pile of 10 or so books is reduced to one or two, so progress has been a tad slow. Why is this so hard? I’m a relentless minimalist is other areas of life. I’m quick to part with stuff and my wardrobe is bafflingly small. But for some reason, books are tethered to my psyche.
I’ve thought about this a lot recently and I think it’s a symptom of middle age. First, my school days don’t feel that far in the past, so my affection for my undergraduate and graduate textbooks is still present. In a sense, they represent my younger self during a time when I truly loved the ocean of ideas I swam in. The information in those books is now two decades old. Is it still relevant? Have the ideas and data held up? I can’t be certain but knowing those old ideas, I feel, could still be valuable. The path of ideas through time is always imperfect, tossed around and shaken like panning for gold that, I would argue, often loses some nuggets because the filter is too narrow. When I see my old textbooks, I often think, “Huh, I bet there is something in there that’s applicable to me and my work today.” What have I forgotten? What would inspire me? It’s a bit neurotic, but honestly, when I place a book in a recycling bin or pack it into a box for charity, I have a momentary image of that book being shredded. For older books, that image is almost unbearable. It’s a step closer to extinction for that literary species, and when it’s gone, you likely can’t bring it back. It will be lost to history, lost to study, and lost to humanity. IBM’s Watson database is restricted to sources like PubMed, which only goes back to the late 1940s. The scientists and theorists not represented there were still awfully smart people who thought deeply about their subjects. How much has been lost? Il n’y a de nouveau que ce qui est oublié.
Second, I’m still young enough to think that I’ll one day read the many, many intriguing books on our shelves. I know this is absurd; at the rate I’m going (maybe 10 books a year), I’ll never get through them all, and that’s if I stopped accumulating more books, which is equally absurd. I’ve read Tim Urban’s sobering Wait But Why post that visualizes a lifetime remaining. But which book will the future me pick up and when are open-ended questions that I can’t answer. In a way, the books we hope to read are a reflection of who we hope to become. In another twenty years, I would think that I will more easily give up my academic materials and the thought of years and years of future reading.
The last reason I cannot discard books is that I love being surrounded by them. I love seeing them. Their spines are short visual cues that trigger memories and ideas. I’d hate to lose that in favor of tidiness. Also, I want my young children to grow up surrounded by lots of books too, so they can see the planents of the literary universe close by. The books are a constant reminder that you are free to explore new worlds of characters and ideas. The house I grew up in had perhaps two shelves of books in a den room. You had to seek them out, they were not present. As a result, I’m sure I read much less than I could have as a child. (The first books I remember truly loving were Duane Decker’s young adult baseball fiction and the Doc Savage adventure series – not exactly contemporary stuff in the 1980s. I was anachronistic even back then. ) I’ve never been a hardcore e-book reader. Perhaps it’s a generational thing, but I suspect that it has more to do with my desire to have physical reminders of the places my mind has traveled.
Today I discarded four books: Three old textbooks and a bland novel. I think I need a decision tree to help me with this but the only rule I’ve decided on is: Is the book yours? You can’t toss your wife’s books, that’s for sure.
Reading Cal Newport’s book, Deep Work, was a revelation. My copy is now scribbled over and destined to be returned to over and over in the future. I hadn’t heard of the author before reading the book. In fact, in retrospect, I can’t remember why I bought it in the first place, other than to assume that it’s one of many self-help books I have picked in moments of inspiration while browsing. This is a habit I’ve had for years, and I’m not ashamed of it. Have I ever made major transformations to my life, like lost 50 pounds or gotten rich quick? Of course not, but in my view, the constant desire to improve is worth something since it reflects a future optimism that I hope I never lose. Even the sobering reality in the data of our lives hasn’t fully reset my expectations on what I can and cannot (or will never) do. I absolutely subscribe to the view that our books shelves are a physical reflection of our psyche; self-help books are, I hope, the part of me that honestly wants to be better tomorrow than I am today.
Newport’s book concerns our professional selves and the uniquely modern challenge of focusing on important, value-creating work, however that looks in one’s line of work. Like Newport, who is a university professor, I fall into the category of “knowledge worker”. That is, I’m paid to use my brain, to process and analyze lots of information in a specialized field. Or, as a hiking guide quipped to me years ago, I drive a desk for work. As I see it, basically any white-collar job has the strong aroma of knowledge worker, so I suspect many readers will see aspects of their work lives in Newport’s book. I certainly did, which is one of the reasons I quickly became engrossed. Many, many times did I harrumphed in agreement when Newport discussed counterproductive trends, such as open-plan office spaces or the awful sinkholes that many meetings or email practices represent. Several times I jotted “Yes! Exactly!” on the margin, dog-earing the page for future reference.
Newport’s book is the first I’ve read that offers both a rationale and a plan of action to reclaim my mental life. It’s given me the hope that I can do more of the fulfilling, scholarly work that I enjoyed as a graduate student and postdoc. If you wish for the quiet thoughtfulness of Maria Popova and yet revere the productive efficiency of Tim Ferriss, then you will find Cal Newport’s book giving voice to your inner feelings, addressing your common work-life battles, and giving you strategies for a counterstrike. Whereas Steven Pressfield’s War of Art is a drill sergeant’s boot kicking you in the behind, Newport’s Deep Work is the captain of the debate team who not only wins your loyalty but also pulls you aside and says, “here’s how I do it…”
The book is divided into two parts; Part 1 argues for the importance of deep work in our lives while Part 2 puts forth rules and strategies to increase the ability to engage in deep work. I confess that I skipped straight to Part 2 after reading the introduction. I didn’t need convincing. I needed help.
In 2003, before I purchased my first cell phone, a close friend of mine convinced me that a mobile phone would “turn down time into productive time”. This was the era before true smartphones, so in that context, what he meant was that he could make calls while in the car, waiting in line, etc. The rapid yet incremental evolution of tech in our lives has chipped away at more and more of our down time, to the point that we fill the spaces with, in my opinion, lots of meaningless distractions. Yes, I often complain to my colleagues that meetings are the illusion of work. True, I never joined Facebook, but in that case, what started as laziness turned into a moral stance borne more from privacy concerns than time management. I also gave up Twitter late last year, largely because the unavoidable vulgarity of American politics made it unusable for me. I’ve always agreed with whoever said that you didn’t need to read the newspaper because, when big news happened, you heard about it anyway. I don’t think I’ve missed much. I haven’t been a regular TV watcher since middle school, and though I occasionally watch a movie with my wife, the only media I regularly consume in large volume are podcasts and streamed radio broadcasts of Yankees baseball games. Also, to my credit, I’m generally quite good about not working while at home or on weekends. Yes, I absolutely want to spend quality time with my toddler son and wonderful wife, but I can’t deny the fact that I’m often so drained by my daily computer work that I can’t muster the enthusiasm to flip open my laptop afterhours and stare at another screen. (And because so many of the hobby projects that I want to do, like writing or learning new skills, are greatly aided by using a computer, I never make any progress on them, further sinking my spirits.) Thus, I came into Newport’s book a very motivated pupil.
I loved Newport’s book but this post won’t be much of a formal review. These are my personal Dopplenotes of my takeaways. I’m determined to adopt the DW mindset.
Quick changes I’ve already made:
I created a sender filter email that I hope to automatically use to reset expectations on when and how I respond to email requests.
I deleted a bunch of social media apps. I rarely used them anyway, but I didn’t want to even see them on my phone anymore for fear that they’d tempt me. I’d argue that Newport’s criticisms of the “any-benefit” approach to social media and networking tools are applicable to e-commerce service as well.
I created some custom shortcut keystrokes within Outlook so make the SW of processing emails more efficient. Why I didn’t think to do this before, I have no idea. By the way, I’m now all the way around to the idea that filing emails into distinct folders is pointless. A friend of mine who works at Google told me that their research indicates that email users fall into two categories – filers and pilers. With broad, flexible searching functions, why file away when you can search everything? Evernote users know this, I loved using the now-defunct Google Desktop, and I’m a Gmail user so I should know this too having simply “archived” tens of thousands of email messages. Yet for some reason, I believed that my professional email account had to be organized. A shallow, repetitive task if there ever was one. (Note: yet hard to break, apparently. The compulsion to sort some type of emails persists)
Some of the key changes I plan to make:
Spend some time strategizing on what goals and associated tasks should be the focus of my DW. I’ve started thinking about this issue, and it’s pretty tricky actually. What’s the most important work I could do to be successful and for my company to be successful? Between the obvious DW and SW, there’s a lot of gray area. Doing some meta-work and seeking the advice of my work colleagues will be critical here. This applies to my leisure time too, because as Newport points out, one really should have a framework for getting the most out of personal projects as well.
Maintain a much higher DW/SW ratio by budgeting SW to no more than 30% of my time. (I did some back of the envelope calculations and my initial daily schedule will include almost 40% SW, so I predict that my colleagues will notice little, if any, change. If my email reduction strategies work, then I should be able to tip the DW/SW balance further in favor of DW. This would make me an aspiring adherent of Newport’s rhythmic philosophy of DW.
Sub-goal #1 – Maintain a visual representation of the number of hours in DW, e.g., a print out of a blank month to X out and/or tally each day’s DW total.
Sub-goal #2 – Experiment with Newport’s “Rooseveltian dashes” to accomplish some DW goals. [This blog point began as a dash, so it seemed to work!]
Adopt the fixed-schedule productivity approach, in which I plan in advance, the full daily schedules of each working day. This will take a monumental effort on my part; I’m a poor planner! But I realize that is at the heart of the problem. I’m habitually, continually at the mercy of whatever attention-grabbing SW happens to flow across my desk (my inbox, actually). In addition to better prioritization of tasks, I see the fixed-schedule productivity approach as having another benefit. Combined with the strict SW budget, it creates an incredible validated excuse to decline unwanted intrusions. For example, when a colleague interrupts me with an unscheduled request to join a meeting, I will have a demonstrable written evidence to say that I simply don’t have time in my schedule.
Reduce email burden by:
Limiting the number of responses, which should be helped by the sender filter I mentioned above as well as renouncing the obligation to always respond to inbound inquiries. This applies to my co-workers as much as it does to folks outside my company. In fact, I bought copies of Deep Work for everyone in the office; I hope they find benefit in it as I have, but I also want them to understand the rationale for the changes I’m making.
Adopt the process-centric approach to email responses. This will take some effort because it’s natural for me to informal in email exchanges. But I see that it’s incredibly important. The examples Newport gives made me exult in the certitude that I will avoid so many future email traps.
Re-organize my office, my desk in particular, to reduce the clutter and prevent distractions. This is more than just Feng Shui. It’s about reducing the number of factors impinging on my limited attentional resources, and as Newport describes, train myself to quickly engage in DW.
Spouse-willing, try out the monastic philosophy of DW, perhaps with a Grand Gesture. I’d argue that taking the time and effort to separate oneself and commit to engaging in DW is no different from the time and effort spent going to corporate retreats or professional conferences. Only, I’m willing to bet that a monastic retreat to inhale new ideas and synthesize the learnings is a hell of a lot more valuable than either of the two aforementioned practices, especially for us knowledge workers. And yet, in today’s corporate world, the Think Weeks that Bill Gates is known for are as universally-supported and minimally-practiced as midday napping. I’d like to change that, and I’m absolutely willing to extend the opportunity to my office colleagues.
To read Newport’s book is to understand that embracing DW is a lifestyle choice. It’s a continuous process of refining your work habits and improving your mental discipline (avoid the tempting infotainment sites, combat distractibility by developing sustained attention, etc.). There are many parallels with mindfulness meditation in that it’s both very difficult and requires lots of practice. Yet, like meditation, the practitioner benefits from the practice itself. For me, I don’t want to simply go on an SW diet, like the internet sabbaticals that Newport describes. Rather, I want a healthier DW lifestyle, so I don’t have to resort to crash SW diets to stay sane. But at the outset, when does a diet maintained become a lifestyle? How long will it take? We’ll see. Wish me luck!
My friend alerted me a recent article by Noah Davis and Michael Lopez on improvements in umpiring published at fivethirtyeight.com. I’ll comment on the article more in a moment, but reading it gave reminded me that I wanted to write about a related topic: the historical event last month in which a computerized camera system called balls and strikes in a professional baseball game. The two tie together, as you will see.
As reported by CSN Bay Area, an independent league team called the San Rafael Pacifics played two games using the Pitch F/X system to call balls and strikes instead of a human umpire. Even the casual fan know Pitch F/X, even if they don’t recognize the name. That little square in the bottom corner of the TV broadcast depicting the placement of hte pitch in relation to the strike zone? That’s Pitch F/X. If you’ve played around with the the gameday functions within the inimitable MLB At-Bat app, you might have come across data on velocity and trajectory of individual pitches. That’s also Pitch F/X. As the above-referenced article notes, MLB installed Pitch F/X into every stadium in 2008. I think of Pitch F/X as a bunch of high speed cameras and some software that does physics calculations.
I don’t know why, but when I first heard about these Pitch F/X ump games, I immediately assumed that these would be the first professional games ever without a home plate ump. But I was wrong on that point, as there was still a home plate ump present, because obviously, there are still calls to be made besides pitch placement, such as plays at the plate, check swings, batter time outs, etc. More importantly, however, I knew they would be the first games to run the incredible experiment of having a completely accurate, impartial, and unwavering strike zone for every pitcher and batter. Wonderful baseball podcaster Paul Sullivan has discussed this fantasy on at least one occasion. I’m paraphrasing him when I say that, as instant replay has made the game better, the prospect of eliminating the subjective, biased strike zone would make it better still. And the technology exists to do it.
PitchF/X was employed Tuesday and Wednesday, July 28th and 29th, 2015 in two games between the San Rafael Pacifics and the Vallejo Admirals. The games were fundraising events spearheaded by former MLB OF (and very cool guy) Eric Byrnes. (I tend to associate Byrnes with his years crashing into outfield walls with the Oakland A’s and to his post-retirement stint playing softball for the Dutch Goose in Menlo Park, CA. I was at Stanford at the time, so I knew the bar and thought this was incredibly cool. Now, of course, copy cats like Yankee great Hideki Matsui play softball too.) The goal was to raise money for the Pat Tillman Foundation and, as I learned during the game, Byrnes donated hundreds of dollars for each strike out, which added up to a sizable donation. Kudos to him. But I was there for the Pitch F/X experiment as were many other baseball nerds and journalists in the crowd, easily identifiable among the crowd with laptops open wide.
It was my first time attending a Pacific Association game, so first a few thoughts about overall experience. It was great. The drive was a reasonable 20-25 min from San Francisco, though one will likely hit evening commuter traffic on a week night, as I did. The ball park, Albert Park, sits snugly within a larger community park, and it reminded me of a few Single-A parks I’ve been to. It probably sits around 2,500 fans and there is premium on-field seating that allows fans to essentially share space with the players. There are no proper dugouts; the players sat on plastic lawn shares in the vicinity of the on-deck circles like a classroom of restless pupils. There are no bad seats in the house and I loved the small town, family atmosphere of the game, i.e., the local business advertisements, young folks working the refreshment stands, the local girl who sang the national anthem, and the players being within arm’s reach of fans and kids. I bought a general admission ticket and settled in a few rows up from behind home plate. Personally, I didn’t love the protective netting that spans the entire grand stand because it’s visually disturbing for me to constantly look through it. That said, I do recognize its value for fan safety.
The quality of play was pleasingly good. I didn’t look them all up, but clearly the players were guys who played college ball or were drafted and played in the minor leagues. I saw hard hit balls, a home run, and some acrobatic plays in the field. A couple notable names for you aficionados: Admiral’s 1B was Lydell Moseby, son of the great OF Lloyd Moseby. The Admiral’s DH was PJ Phillips, brother to current Reds 2B, Brandon Phillips. Phillips was one of the older players, but he made solid contact and anchored the Admirals order.
OK, what was like to have PitchF/X call balls and strikes? It was surprisingly unobtrusive. It didn’t disrupt the pace or even the feel of the game. Here’s how it worked: Before each pitch, the umpire crouched behind the catcher as usual. Byrnes sat in the stands with a monitor in front of him with a simulcast showing the pitch placement, just like one sees watching a television broadcast. As the pitch arrives, Byrnes would simply speak the call into a microphone for all to hear – ball or strike. There was the ump, but Byrnes was called the “arbiter”. It was simple, even as implemented in such as technologically-deprived setting as Albert Park. Imagine what a Major League park could do with their Jumbotrons and secondary scoreboards placed around the stadium.
I went to the game thinking what a neat experiment I would see, never believing in a million years that MLB would ever adopt such a system. Now, having seen it in action in an understandably crude form, I feel differently. I could easily see a Pitch F/X system working in a MLB game. After an inning or two, I more or less forgot it was there.
Here’s an video example of how the system worked:
Early in the game, the home plate ump would instinctively make a pitch call. It was fantastic because, playing to the crowd, Byrnes would say over the PA, “Do you think you were right?……Barely!” A whoop from the crowd. Other times, when a batter struck out looking, or took a strike, Byrnes would make the call and tell the batter exactly where the pitch was. He also did this to the pitcher when he didn’t get a call; “Sorry, man, that was about three inches outside.” It was fantastic. Not only would this system essentially make strike zone dispute go extinct, it could also be used as an incredible teaching tool. Batters and pitchers could sharpen there perception of the strike zone, either in real-time during game as in summary form after specific games or many games.
The arbiter’s view of the PitchF/X feed.
Want proof? Because Pitch F/X data have made human umpires better. That’s the main takeaway from the article by Davis and Lopez I mentioned at the start of this post. Since 2008, with feedback on performance using Pitch F/X data, umpires have shown steady improvement in the ability to accurately call balls and strikes. Well, actually, the data show accuracy improvements on strike call, while ball calls have stayed fairly steady. Importantly, while there is considerable variability across umpires in their performance accuracy, all umps appear to show an improvement. That is, the best have gotten better and the worst have better too (at calling strikes accurately).
BUT….. even so, the very best umpire, Lance Barksdale, calls pitches accurately at just under 90% of the time. As Noah and Lopez point out,
“The difference between Barksdale and a league average ump is about five correct calls per game; the difference between Barksdale and the league’s worst umpire is closer to 10 calls a game. On average, that’s about one judgment call per inning that a good ump is getting right and a bad ump is getting wrong. That might not sound like much, but if once every six outs a batter gets another swing after a third strike that wasn’t or a pitcher strikes a hitter out on a pitch that’s actually a ball, you can start to see the impact.”
What Davis and Lopez are getting at is the benefit of having the best ump versus a league average ump (5 call improvement) or versus the league worst ump (10 call improvement). But how big would the improvement be if we compared the best ump, Barksdale, with Pitch F/X? Well, we’d capture that extra 10% that he is still missing, which if my numbers are current, is about 15 pitches across a 9 inning game. (The average number of pitches thrown per game, which according to this post sits around 300 per game (150 x 2). I haven’t been able to find the breakdown between “called pitches” vs “swinging pitches”, i.e., either put in play, fouled off, or swung at and missed. But lets say that 50% of pitches require the home plate ump to make a ball-strike determination. That would mean 150 pitches across both teams. Even with Barksdale behind the plate, 10% of pitches, or 15 pitches, would be called inaccurately.) I agree with Davis and Lopez’s argument that the performance gap of 5-10 pitches per game between umps strongly suggests that the best umps, e.g., most accurate, should be given preferred assignments in big games, like playoffs. But if you believe that, then I hope you will be compelled by the possibility of an even larger improvement in pitch calling accuracy by adopting a Pitch F/X system.
But what about the umpire’s union? Surely they’d never go for this, right? Well, I actually spoke with the home plate ump after the Pacifics game to get his impression on what it was like to be relieved of his pitch calling duties. His answers? A little odd due to force of habit, but it was fun and he could get used to it. There is still lots to do as umpire to earn your paycheck. Maybe this really could happen, I thought to myself………
One other note about the game:
Around the 4th inning, something occurred to me: there were no defensive shifts. It didn’t matter who was batting, the defensive positioning was straight away. How rare in today’s game?! If you follow MLB as closely as I do, you know that defensive shifts have become a regular, accepted part of the game (which is fine with me – it’s evolution baby!) To see teams not shifting now seems odd. But for the four teams of the Pacific Association, how could it be any other way? Sure, they see each other a lot, but they must rely on “traditional” scouting reports, perhaps limited data, and definitely in-game experience. Not enough to support defensive shifts.
Update on this old post:
MIT Technology Review recently published a brief article entitled, Baseball players want robots to be their umps. The article notes that Chicago Cubs super-utilityman Ben Zobrist is a “vocal supporter” of automated balls and strikes calls.
“That’s why we want an electronic strike zone.”
—Zobrist, shortly before getting his first career ejection
This is the first time I’ve heard of an MLB player explicitly stating a desire to move away from human umpires on this issues. Now three years since I wrote my initial post, I’d say that it’s inevitable that human umpires will not call balls and strikes in the not-so-distant future. Instant replay in baseball is nearly 10 years old now, having been expanded to cover more of the game’s trickier situations (close calls at bases, fair/foul, etc). Frankly, it’s made the game better. Self-driving cars are the natural culmination of the progression of automation in car driving that’s been going on for decades. I predict that “robot umps” will be the culmination of technological progression in baseball, with the fringe edge cases still requiring human review.
Sentiment: As I mentioned at the end of my last Sneaker Project post, I was left high and dry on my order for more pairs of Nike Lunarglide+4s. An order for two back-ordered pairs was taking way too lung to fill (and still hasn’t, 1.5 months after by purchase), so I had to go out a real brick-and-mortar store and buy a new pair.
Naturally, my goal was to find a shoe in the same category as the Lunarglide+s, which I would but in the Neutral category, though they are sometimes listed under Stability. Ultimately, I went with the new Saucony Triumph ISOs. They seem to have very lightweight uppers, which fit like a snug sock on your foot. I believe they have the same ~9mm drop that I was looking for.
My first run, roughly 7.5 miles, revealed the shoe to be very stable during my stride. Very light shoes. The laces are long, which compelled me to loop through the topmost, offset eyelet (Does that one have a name?). The toe box feels roomy yet my big toes seemed to lose some sensation during the back half of the run. I’ve experienced before with new shoes; it eventually goes away as the shoes break in. So far, no issues with the cuffs at the back of the ankles. Can’t wait to see how they feel over time…..
Spring Chicken: Stay Young Forever (or Die Trying) by Bill Gifford
I can’t say precisely when I began to shift my reading preferences strongly towards non-fiction, but I suspect it was in graduate school. It was during that period in my life that, perhaps unwittingly, became more productivity-focused and began a habit of reading to learn. reading several hours a day wasn’t entirely new based on my undergraduate experiences, but the regularity of that pace in graduate school was new. Reading A LOT became a part of daily life, a part that I can still happily re-enact into if the pieces of my current life fall, or rather be forcibly pressed, into place. My reading as graduate student was nearly entirely a part of my overall studies, and the goal of my studies was to learn new ideas and information. I guess I’ve shaken the habit of purposeful reading. I’m guilty of skipping over the short story in nearly every issue of the New Yorker magazine for the past ten years, yet I have surely read hundreds of articles on many topics essentially irrelevant to my life. A first hand account of the Arab Spring? Interesting! A new short story by Zadie Smith? Mmmm….only if I run out of reading material on this cross-country flight.
But Bill Gifford’s new book Spring Chicken falls squarely in the middle of that beautiful Venn diagram of book preferences in my head: non-fiction? Check! Science-related? Check! Science I am personally very interested in? Check!
True story: Even as a boy, I made it a goal to live to 100 years. During sporting events in high school and college, I would crack the joke that I was training for the Senior Olympics; that is, 50 years in advance, which I guess doesn’t sound so funny now that I’m rapidly approaching middle age and the youngest age bracket is 50 (!) years or older. My father’s side of the family has a great track record for longevity: three of the last four deaths were in the early to mid 90’s. My mother’s side is not so stellar, with early deaths due to heart disease (OK, that’s something I can prevent) and acute myeloid leukemia (ugh, that’s NOT something I can do much about). But by and large, I have always believed that my good genes plus an active, healthy style (what other generation started exercising and eating right as early as I did?) would certainly get me to the land of centenarians.
My takeaways from the book:
Environment/lifestyle can get you to 80 years old, but genetics gets you to 100 years – This insight, based on research on centenarians, was a major bummer to me. As I described above, I’ve wanted to life to 100 since I was a kid, and I thought/think I’ve done all the right things. I have harbored this feeling that no generation in history had the information I did about human physiology or would have avoided vices, ate as well or exercised as regularly as early on as I have. But if data like GWAS data bears out, and barring any future intervention (such as gene therapy or epigenetic modification), it might mean nothing, and I’ll circle the drain in my 9th decade like so many of my predecessors.
The Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging – I’d love to be a part of this! Gifford offers some very funny commentary on his interactions with other participants of “BLAST”, as he refers to it. I’m definitely inclined to the Quantified Self end of the spectrum, so I’m sure I’d find it fascinating to learn about my own cognition and physiology in great detail. That said, one downside of QS sleuthing is the repeated blows leveled against one’s inner sense of exceptionalism; that is, we all feel special on the inside, that we matter so much, that we must be unique in some way. Sadly, I have learned my lesson over and over again that I have the same foibles and deficiencies that all people do. I’m part of the same normal distribution and not a outlier (at least on any measure that I’ve discovered). Nonetheless, QS thinking to me is an aspect of self-actualization, allowing me to understand who I am, how I’m built, and what makes me tick. Traveling to NIH from California every three years seems like an incredible opportunity to enhance that process
Better lipid profiling – In Chapter 6, Gifford discusses cholesterol and lipid profiling. Like most men of a certain age, I’ve done the standard lipid panel performed. But Gifford went one step further, and had a lipidologist perform a “Boston Heart panel” on him, which provided much more granularity on his lipid profile, especially with regards to HDL and LDL particle size. I looked this up, and found that Boston Heart is a company and they offer multiple tests. I assume Gifford was referring to the Boston Heart HDL Map test. I’ve reached out to my physician and I hope to take this test myself. As Gifford describes, LDL particle size is influenced by variations in the gene for cholesteryl ester transfer protein,or CTEP. Though Gifford didn’t explicitly state it, I assume that the genetic variant he sought is one that results in lower CTEP activity/affinity, which results in the larger LDL particle size, which appear to be advantageous for cardiovascular health and aging. I assume this because I know that several pharmaceutical companies have tried to develop or are development CTEP inhibitors for high cholesterol and metabolic disease. Now that I think about it, it wouldn’t take me long to see if there is a SNP for CTEP variants and check my raw data from 23andMe to see where I stand.
We should be thinking about fat and muscle as “endocrine organs” and not as inert, structural parts of our anatomy. This area of research is fascinating and, at least with regards to the paradoxical IL-6 discovery that Gifford describes, is bound to keep biologists busy for many years and hold many surprises.
The important role that attitude plays in health span. Perhaps not surprisingly, an optimistic, can-do attitude appears to have a multiplicative effect on several important aspects of aging, such as levels of physical activity, approach to social life, and staying intellectually curious. Even if it doesn’t lengthen life span per se, maintaining a positive attitude I would argue simply makes life better. The key question for me is: What strategies can we employ to supplement our baseline temperament to buffer us from the inevitable setbacks and losses in life? Happy marriage? Meditation? Practicing gratitude?
The Biosphere experiment of the early 1990’s – I vaguely remember this from when I was young, so it was very fun to read Gifford’s account of it. One of his key points, which was new to me, was that it turned out to be a long-term, involuntary experiment of caloric restriction in humans. However, while the health outcomes were quite poor, seemingly contradicting the many animal studies showing health benefits, the experiment was ultimately confounded by the exposure of the Biosphere inhabitants to abnormally high carbon monoxide levels. Yikes! At any rate, Gifford’s account of the episode compelled me to put Jane Poynter’s book The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2 on my reading list.
The inherent challenges of simple hormonal replacement therapy, especially testosterone in men – Gifford did a great job recounting the long history of attempts to recapture youth by replacing reintroducing something young into someone old. I’ve long assumed, intuitively, that simple long-term administration of supplemental testosterone isn’t a good idea. First, there are hormonally-driven, androgen-dependent cancers, notably reproductive cancers like prostate cancer. Second, Mother Nature always engineers in feedback mechanisms to maintain homeostasis. Jacking up testosterone levels seems like it would lead to both a decrease in androgen synthesis and decrease in androgen receptors, both of which would lead you worse off (if “low T” is really you’re problem). Knowing what I know, which isn’t very much, I do wonder if short term use or late life use of androgen precursors, to boost production (think L-dopa for dopamine), would have a better risk/benefit profile. If I’m, say, 80 or 85 years old, the risk of dying from prostate cancer is low (it’s a rather indolent disease, until it becomes “castration-resistant” and metastasizes to bone) and the benefit in increased muscle mass and vitality would be high. Then again, the first drugs targeting the myostatin pathway will soon be approved, so there will certainly be other means of opposing atrophy of muscles at least. Also
Also in this vein is Gifford’s discussion of the miraculous parabiosis studies recently reported by groups at Harvard and Stanford. These are incredibly exciting, yet I must mention that experiments that identified the purported age-reversing plasma factor, GDF11, have been called into question since Gifford’s book was published.
Days of Life App – This app calculates (crudely) the number of days you have left to live and will send you a notification each day of the number of days you have left. Gifford hated it. I love it. To him it was morbid. To me, it’s a reminder of carpe diem or, if you prefer, momento mori. The inimitable Kevin Kelly has written about a similar life countdown clock. I considered having a similar one built as a gift to myself for my 40th birthday, my official crossing into middle age. The app is a simpler alternative, though as I mentioned above, the days remaining calculation is very simplistic. It’s based solely on your sex, the year you were born, and where you live.
There were a few topics that Gifford didn’t touch on. For example, in a recent podcast, Peter Diamandis, founder of Human Longevity, Inc., stated that VO2Max and flossing are correlated with lifespan. The flossing, as a proxy for oral hygiene, doesn’t surprise me at all. But VO2Max? I hadn’t heard that before, and yet I know that altering VO2Max is very difficult. Gifford didn’t mention the correlation, though say that the BLAST study had determined the VO2Max and maximum heart rate during exercise decrease steadily with age. Perhaps the atrophy and hardening, the loss of “elasticity” that Gifford describes, is related to Diamandis’s assertion. This sound like a job for PubMed…..
The tread on my Nike Lunarglide4+s after ~330 miles of running.
Date Retired: June 5, 2015 (estimated)
Accumulated mileage: 332 mi ( as of 5-24-15)
90% road miles, 10% trail miles
Sentiment: I loved this shoe about as much as I’ve loved any running shoe in recent memory. A big reason is that this was my first pair after a brief period running in Mizuno Wave Rider 17s which, inexplicably, caused me persistent plantar fasciitis in my right foot. I’ve been a consistent 15-25 mi per week runner for 15 years and I’ve never had problems with plantar fasciitis. (Except this one time in 1998 after I ran the New Haven Road Race. I still see those side-laced Nikes in my head, which I’ll try to track down.) But I was bracing myself for the possibility that, as I approach my 40s, that plantar fasciitis could be an aging-related phenomenon. But hallelujah! A change in shoes to the Lunarglide+ 4s and I’ve been pain free for months.
The shoe is incredibly light-weight with breathable, reflective uppers. The cushion still feels pretty decent even as I’ve pushed past the 300 mi mark. Several reviews I’ve read have complained about the amount of “mechanical weathering” that wears down the sole , and I can see from the photo that indeed the sole has lost a lot of its original tread. in terms of performance, it hasn’t been a big deal for me.
Historically, I’ve had no shoe loyalty, bouncing around from brand and style to brand and style. I’m still cost-conscious; I figure that at my level of running, most shoes in the neutral or cushion range will work. But I liked running in the Lunarglide+4 so much that I ordered two additional pairs. They’re cheaper nowadays because Nike has moved onto the Lunarglide+5s and now Lunarglide+6s. But reading about the design changes in those models got me a little nervous that I wouldn’t like them as much. So while I’m sure I’ll run in a variety of shoes in the future, just as I always have, for the near future, I’ll be in Lunarglide+4s.
Update: I’m sorry to say that my order for two additional pairs of Nike Lunarglide+4s hasn’t been filled and likely won’t be filled. They’re back ordered apparently. I’m a little miffed that the online retailer didn’t mention this. So, I have credit there now (I assume) and I went out and bought a new, different pair, which I’ll write about soon.
I’m sitting in a Starbucks near the Boston Back Bay train station. It’s a Monday morning, and I have an hour or so before my train to New York City.
I’ve been in Boston for nearly four days, the trip centered around a set of baseball tickets I “won” in an auction. I italicize the word “won” because no one else bid on the item, which is a bit like taking the gold medal when there are no other competitors. The ticket package was a set of tickets for two to three games between the Yankees and Red Sox at Fenway Park. I’ve long hoped to visit Fenway Park, and I’m turning 40 this year, so I thought I would treat myself with this trip. My sweetheart joined me for a good part of it, and it was a great weekend to be a Yankees fan, as they swept the Red Sox over the three games; 3-2 on Friday, 4-2 on Saturday, and 8-5 on Sunday.
Thoughts on Fenway Park
The Stadium – For some reason, the park didn’t feel as old as it is, in the way that Wrigley Field felt old (and wonderful) when I first visited it last year. I’m not ashamed to admit that when I first emerged from the tunnel at Wrigley and took in my first view of the field, the flags, the famous scoreboard and ivy, I had genuine tears in my eyes. I don’t know why it happened – I was excited and giddy when I approached the stadium, not weepy or emotional. I have no special connection to Chicago, the Cubs or Wrigley Field. In retrospect, the best explanation I have is that gazing out from the stands at Wrigley made me feels as if I stepped inside one of my favorite movies, Robert Redford’s The Natural. Whatever the reason, I definitely sensed that the stadium was old, a classic, a landmark, a shrine.
I didn’t feel the same way inside Fenway Park.
Walking the stadium, I looked closely at the brick facade, and over the course of three straight games, I read as many plaques and momentos as I could. Settling into our seats (on a cold, cold Friday night – sorry, babe!), the stadium felt nicely-sized, but not elderly. Present are all the modern accoutrements – three large Jumbotrons with tastefully-styled projects to match the look and feel of the scoreboard on the Green Monster. But the Green Monster itself, to me at least, did not seem old; it looked freshly painted, adorned with a new set of logos for this year’s advertisers. In my mind, I envisioned a wall with the wear and tear of decades of baseball, with innumerable dents and scars. If those blemishes still exist, they have been covered up with considerable make-up.
We sat close to the field, halfway between Pesky’s Pole and the visitor’s bullpen. I would not have purchased these seats myself, but we did not know the ticket locations prior to bidding on them. (Short digression: Here’s another lesson in the perils of making assumptions. I assumed the seat would be these incredible box seats, perhaps even catered (!) because the auction listing claimed the 6 tickets had a total value of $1,200. I bid $500, which was the starting bid price. At that point, I’m thinking to myself, “I’m going to get some incredible tickets at a great price!” In fact, the tickets had a face value of $70 each; I overpaid. This is Yankees – Red Sox 2015, not 2003, so one cannot argue that the face value is way below market rate.) The vantage point from the seats took some getting used to, as we were essentially straight down the first base foul line. My sweetheart had trouble with this. She repeatedly missed the action at home plate because she thought the on-deck batter was the actual batter. Even I had trouble gauging the trajectory of batted balls, and making a fair/foul call down the left field like was impossible.
But over the course of three games, I grew accustomed to the vantage point, and began instinctively turning my head to the main Jumbotron scoreboards to catch the replay (which is shown after every play, which is great) or glancing to the auxiliary scoreboard along the grandstand or the classic red and green lights at the base of the Green Monster to check the count. I like being close to the Yankees bullpen, our sight line being directly behind the pitcher to the catcher. I believe it was the first time my sweetheart had ever seen the break of curveball.
A few things I found odd or disturbing about Fenway:
The odd: I never saw where, on which scoreboard, the official scorer’s play call was displayed. For example, when a pitch got past the catcher, I never saw where the official scorer’s decision of passed ball or wild pitch was displayed. The same went for errors and stolen bases. At other MLB parks I’ve visited, the scorer’s call is prominently displayed on the main scoreboard soon after the play in question. That definitely wasn’t the case at Fenway.
The disturbing: The ushers do very little policing of fan seating, seat switching, or unruly behavior. My experience at Fenway was, by and large, absolutely fine in terms of fan experience. Perhaps it was my particular section, which was in the outfield and not the luxury seats. That said, I saw undesirable fan behaviors at Fenway that I’ve never seen at other parks, and that includes Oakland Coliseum, old and new Yankees Stadium, and many others. First, yes, the usher gladly helped you find your seat, and if other fans were seated there, they would move. But I’ve never seen such relentless seat switching. Fans were constantly dropping into vacant seats near us, watching an inning or two, and then leaving. Second, the ushers did zero traffic control of fan movements to reduce disturbances. At AT&T Park, for example, the ushers will hold back fans returning to their seats until a break in the action occurs, generally after an at-bat. Fenway Park ushers do not so this, so there were innumerable stand ups/sit downs and blocked views while watching the game. Lastly, I was personally heckled a few times during the Sunday night game. It wasn’t a big deal, and I realize that every section of the stands has its own cast of characters, its minor soap operas. But in the nearly 100 MLB games that I’ve attended across 14 ball parks, I’ve never been heckled by nearby fans for keeping score on a scorecard, which I generally do. (“You know, the ESPN app will do that automatically for you?” “What an idiot! The guy is keeping score on paper.” “Get in the 21st century!” “Hey, did you get that?” “Hey, how did they make the first two outs this inning?”) Yes, it was a couple of young guys drinking beer, and no, it didn’t really bother me because I simply ignored them and that’s no fun. But they did it a couple of times, and ultimately I felt a bit uncomfortable turning my head to look at one of the scoreboards, lest I draw the attention of one of the hecklers seating in that direction. So, following the lead of so many other Fenway fans, I simply got up and moved to much better seats in the 7th inning.
Singing Sweet Caroline during the 8th inning is peculiar and has seemingly nothing to do with baseball or the circumstances of the game. But I’m not so much of a grouch that I didn’t eventually come to enjoy it. The words are uplifting; the “so good, so good, so good” chant. It’s no more unusual than the SF Giants playing Lights by Journey every night. If you know me, you know that one thing I absolutely love about the game of baseball is the tradition of singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame during the 7th inning stretch. And I loved the chanting and singing I witnessed at the professional ball games I went to in Asia, specifically a Doosan Bears game in Seoul, Korea and a Yomiuri Giants game in Tokyo, Japan. So, if I liked those traditions, I should like the adoption of Barry Manilow at Fenway.
This was one of my favorite trips to Boston. My sweetheart and I sampled many coffee shops around Harvard, MIT, and BU. (I love being around students. It reminds me of my graduate student and post-doctoral days. I easily slip into reveries with big projects and future plans taking shape.) We strolled down Newbury Street. We biked around using the Hubway bike share, which was incredibly efficient and fun, taking us from Back Bay to Somerville and everywhere in between. We went jogging along the Charles River. We made love in the afternoon. We reflected on our beautiful son.
I’ve called this site “Doppelnotes” because I want it to be an place online where I can capture and store my thoughts, preferences, goals, lists, worries, and whatever else I think of. To this point in my life, I’ve stored these tidbits in my head, forgetting and adulterating them over time. So this site will serve as my duplicates, my copies, my ‘double notes’ or, as my poor German language skills would have me say, my Doppelnotes.
brick-and-mortar store and buy a new pair.
7.5 miles, revealed the shoe to be very stable during my stride. Very light shoes. The laces are long, which compelled me to loop through the topmost, offset eyelet (Does that one have a name?). The toe box feels roomy yet my big toes seemed to lose some sensation during the back half of the run. I’ve experienced before with new shoes; it eventually goes away as the shoes break in. So far, no issues with the cuffs at the back of the ankles. Can’t wait to see how they feel over time…..
