23 October 2008

The curse of Al Polaneczky

The little-known curse of Al Polaneczky. Apparently the Phillies' 1964 collapse (they were six and a half games up with twelve to play, lost ten in a row, and ended up finishing in a tie for second place) can be blamed on Al Polaneczky, a statistician at the Franklin Institute, who used the institute's computers to determine the odds of the Phillies winning the pennant that year.

Of course, by that logic, all baseball teams are cursed now, because people are crunching numbers constantly. Maybe all the curses cancel out.

1 comment:

Sean Henderson said...

I think I should point out here that maybe there's some truth to this. A while ago you predicted (via highest probability) that the Phillies 10,000th loss would be I think mid-June on the West Coast vs. the Dodgers. BUT, they sucked it up from then on and actually got their 10,000th about a week early in St. Louis. Just an observation