This is the third in a multi-part series of short insights that occur to me when I take a look at my life from a statistical point of view.
The Statistic: As a life-long fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers, I am, nevertheless, a harbinger of bad luck for them; they lost the first twelve games I attended in person, and, over the course of my life, their record while I am in attendance at the ballpark is well below .500.
How Weird Is That? At first glance, it might not seem that weird. Those first twelve games came between 1999-2002, four seasons in which the Dodgers did not make the postseason – so maybe it was just a case of bad luck.
However, if we dig a little deeper, the statistics get weirder. Considering that the Dodgers were a little above .500 for that period, this is the equivalent of a coin flip coming up the same way 12 times.
If we do consider this a coin flip (which, given the Dodgers record over those years, is a reasonable approximation), the odds are 1 in 4096, or 0.02%.
Those are pretty low odds for any event to come up the same way 12 times in a row. Now again, obviously there are many, many more elements in play here; the caliber of opponent that they were facing, what time of year they were playing (if they were out of the playoffs, they’d be likely to use younger, less talented players), and so on. But still, this rough-and-dirty analysis suggests that this is at least moderately unlikely.
What Does It Mean? Ultimately, very little. I still attend at least a couple of games a season, although those are as much for social interaction as much as for the love of the Dodgers. I understand that it is highly unlikely that my presence has any demonstrable impact on the team or how they play, although as fans, we do tend to believe that we matter, somehow.*
What Have I Learned? Very little, other than that I managed to live through a statistically odd four years. Oh, and to top it off, I’ll share the following story:
In 2004, the Dodgers made the playoffs for the first time since 1996 (and also the first time since I had moved to Los Angeles).
I was ecstatic. The team wasn’t really good enough to get very far – the pitching was suspect (the rotation still included Odalis Perez). Still, just making the postseason was exciting.
My friends and I woke up very early to jump online and get tickets. Frantically working our way through Ticketmaster’s multi-layered ticket purchasing system of doom, we managed to secure tickets to Games 3 and 4 of the NLDS, against the St. Louis Cardinals.
At the time, I was working for a large, possibly evil corporation (hint: their name rhymes with “Schmelectronic Farts”), and the project I was working on was nearing completion, which meant that we were spending a lot of time in the office. And I mean a lot of time. I had a shift once that was 26 hours. And then I had to work the next day.
Anyway. We were working a lot on this almost complete (and incredibly mediocre) project. But the games were on the weekend. Certainly I wouldn’t have to work the weekend, right?
Wrong. At 5:50 PM, Friday afternoon, my boss called a team meeting and gave us the Full Lumbergh, informing us that we’d all be working on Saturday, October 9th. And so, instead of going to the first playoff game of my life with several of my closest friends, I was at work, listening to the broadcast over the internet, as I continued to work on what was, I cannot stress enough, a mind-numbingly mediocre game.
What ended up transpiring on the field that day is what is now known as “The Lima Game”, where Jose Lima** threw a 4 hit, complete game shutout. By all accounts, it was a beautiful game to see. My ticket went to a friend of mine who had never been to a baseball game before; she proclaimed the day “fun.”
My boss, an overworked but not unkind man (and a fan of the Dodgers himself), told me as we were wrapping up work that night that although everyone was going to be in again the next day, I should take Sunday off and go watch the Dodgers play the next day.
I’m pretty sure I was out the door before he finished the sentence.
So, Sunday, October 10th, 2004. My first playoff game! I was happy to be there, happy to have a day off, happy to be a Dodgers fan.
For about twenty minutes.
It started off innocently enough; Dodgers got out of the first inning without giving up any runs, although Odalis Perez did not look great on the mound. Jayson Werth hit a solo home run to put the Dodgers in front. But the wheels quickly came off, and the Dodgers ended up losing 6-2, in a game that ultimately wasn’t close.
I ultimately left the stadium with my friends, tired and disappointed by what had transpired. In addition, I had lost out on quite a bit of overtime pay by not going to work, which just made things worse.
It would be four more years until I had the pleasure of watching the Dodgers win a postseason game live.
*Monday night, I started watching the Los Angeles Kings play against the St. Louis Blues. The Blues went up 2-0 very quickly, at which point I turned the TV off, because I hadn’t watched the Game 3 game when the Kings won (I had been out at a party). The Kings came back to win the game, 4-3. Did my turning the TV off change the course of the game? It’s hard to prove causality in this case, but the evidence is there for you to draw your own conclusions.
**For those of you who don’t know, Jose Lima was a boisterous pitcher who always played with high energy and celebrated like a little kid, whose appearances were often dubbed “Lima Time.” Although he didn’t have a particularly notable career (other than two pretty good seasons with Houston in the late ’90s), his larger-than-life personality and seemingly genuine joy for the game was infectious. I saw him pitch in 2004 against the Cubs, where he replaced an ineffective Hideo Nomo in the second inning with the Dodgers down 6-0, and went 5 2/3 innings, essentially saving the arms of about four bullpen pitchers. The Dodgers lost the game 7-3, but everyone’s spirits lifted when Lima charged in from the bullpen – he seemed happy to be in the game, and we were happy to see him. It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had at a game where the Dodgers lost, and that is a direct result of Jose Lima’s appearance that day.
Lima died of a heart attack in 2010, at the age of 37. Some personalities are just too big for their mortal coils.
