Game of Nerds: Difference between revisions

On Super Bowl Sunday he curls up with ''The Confessions of St. Augustine''. During March Madness he passes his time at Shakespeare in the Park performances. He thinks college football is an abomination that completely ruins the academic system. He scoffs at sports.

 

 

Our nerd (or "seamhead", as he may proudly label himself) adores America's pastime. He can tell you who led the Federal League in on-base percentage in 1915 (Benny Kauff). He can quote Bob Gibson's 1968 ERA (1.12). He can name the entire starting lineup of the 1995 Atlanta Braves team that won the World Series.<ref>Marquis Grissom, center field; Jeff Blauser, shortstop; Chipper Jones, 3rd base; Fred McGriff, 1st base; David Justice, right field; Javy Lopez, catcher; Mike Kelly, left field; Mark Lemke, 2nd base.</ref> This nerd likely has a massive baseball card collection and surrounds himself with books on the game.

In England, Australia, and many other former British colonies, [[Cricket]] performs the same function. Uncoincidentally, a major part of the original inspiration for the rules of baseball was cricket.

 

 

* In the [[Marvel Universe]], Reed Richards has mused on how the Baseball team that is better statistically (even within one game) doesn't always win.

 

* Terrence Mann in ''[[Field of Dreams]]''.

* Averted in [[Kevin Smith|Kevin Smith's]] films; his characters talk about [[Star Wars]] and Comics, but the only sport they seem to care about is Hockey.

* In the film ''Moneyball'', based on a popular true-story baseball book, Oakland general manager Billy Beane relies on a method devised by baseball nerd Peter Brandt to make a winning team using statistics.

* In ''[[A Few Good Men]]'' (written by future ''[[Moneyball]]'' screenwriter Aaron Sorkin), Lt. Kaffee is shown watching baseball on TV in two different scenes.

 

* Bobby Thomson's pennant-winning home run ball from the 1951 Giants/Dodgers playoff series (when both teams were based in New York) serves as a [[MacGuffin]] in Don Deliilo's novel ''Underworld''. Delillo also wrote an early novel about football, ''End Zone''.

 

** William Petersen puts a lot of himself into the role of Gil Grissom, including his own love of baseball (He is a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, and has sung the 7th inning stretch on at least a couple of occasions, and has thrown out the first pitch at least once.

** Averted in the case of Charlie, who is a professor of mathematics and a mean basketball player.

** Don was also an accomplished player, although not quite good enough for the pros, before joining the FBI. Charlie also played Little League at one point but wasn't quite as good as his brother.

** He reveals that he and his sister used to play baseball when they were children.

** [[Chris Carter]], incidentally, is a Real Life trope example, to the point where he named the character of Dana Scully after long-time Dodgers announcer Vin Scully.

* In ''[[Kagaku Sentai Dynaman]]'', all the (Texas?) rangers are scientists of some sort. Their costumes are designed to resemble baseball uniforms, [[What Could Have Been|though according to background on the series, this is because the show was originally much more sports-themed in the planning stages]].

* Inverted on ''[[Eureka]]'', where non-nerd Jack Carter is the baseball nut, and his attempt to start a town baseball team is not initially popular. They wind up starting a VR Baseball league instead.

 

* [[Jonathan Coulton]] did a song about Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who was America's first baseball commissioner (and, according to Coulton, a [[Memetic Badass]].)

* Terry Cashman did several baseball-themed songs in the '80s, including "Talkin' Baseball (Willie, Mickey, and the Duke)" and "Play-by-Play (I Saw It on the Radio)".

 

* Stan the Statistician from ''The Coodabeen Champions'' is a cricket fan example.

 

 

* Dmitri in ''[[Backyard Sports]]'' is the embodiment of this trope. He seems to know a lot about soccer as well as baseball, but not much about football, hockey, or basketball, and ''especially'' not about skateboarding.

 

 

** Partly averted in the case of the late Carl Sagan, who expressed an appreciation for sports in general in several of his books and who was partial to both playing and watching basketball in particular.

** Gould once dedicated a large chunk of a book to explaining statistics with reference to .400 hitting in baseball.

** Olbermann's former MSNBC colleague [[Rachel Maddow]] is also a huge baseball fan, and the two have a friendly rivalry (he is a Yankees fan and she a fan of the Red Sox).

* Bespectacled, bow-tied conservative commentator George Will is a huge baseball nut and has frequently written about the game, including the books ''Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball'' and ''Bunts''. He also owns (or, at least, once owned) a minority share of the Baltimore Orioles, and served on a couple "blue ribbon commissions" for MLB.

** Heck, when you consider it, his baseball models are doing politics: he ''started off'' doing baseball stuff, and ''then'' moved to political analysis when he realized that he had a talent and taste for it.

** In fact, his statistical model for predicting performance by players and teams in MLB (called PECOTA), which he developed for the annual book (and associated [http://www.baseballprospectus.com/ website]) ''Baseball Prospectus'', is the most accurate in the business.

** [[Hillary Clinton]] is another nerdy politico who identifies as a baseball fan, having rooted for the Cubs (while growing up in suburban Chicago) and Yankees (since becoming a U.S. Senator from New York).

* [[Mark Twain]] was a huge baseball fan.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Truth in Television]]

[[Category:Intelligence Tropes]]