Can We Unplug Our Kids? - Part II: Mea Culpa

Introduction

I just read a very distressing New Yorker article, “Has Social Media Fuelled a Teen-Suicide Crisis?” which made me remember an essay I posted here a few months back. In “Can We Unplug Our Kids?” I referenced a new book about the epidemic of mental illness among teens, which cited social media as a main cause, and then I made the case that ahead of any societal interventions to protect teens on social media, parents can help fight the tide by setting appropriate boundaries. I cited my own family’s experience to support this position. Looking back, I realize that my post—by focusing only on my own history—neglected to consider how thorny the issue really is across the spectrum of American families. Now I have a sheepish feeling that my essay, if not outright smug, was naïve and incomplete, with air about it of “let them eat cake.” So I’m revisiting the topic here, to do it better justice.

A bit of background

Having just trashed my first post a bit, I won’t expect you to go (re-)read it now. To summarize, I explained how I guessed that some parents are somewhat complicit in teens’ dependence on smartphones, since the parents can use them as digital leash (i.e., keep tabs on their kids). In return the kids get basically unfettered access to everything these phones bring, including a steady stream of social one-upmanship and algorithm-driven news and gossip. Meanwhile, I asserted, parents themselves often set a poor example with these devices, erring on the side of embracing the always-online culture for fear of missing out. Then I explained the draconian online policies my wife and I enforced to good effect, such as no social media, no gaming, no phone until high school, no smartphone until college, and limits on video streaming and time online. My post explained how this kept my kids from getting sucked too far into the online world, and had the added (and unexpected) benefit of possibly making them more autonomous and resilient as young adults.

Looking back, and especially in light of the recent New Yorker article, I realize my focus was too much on parents and what they can control, without enough examination of the size and complexity of the challenge they’re up against. Sure, my family was up to the challenge, but I didn’t fully grasp how much my own privilege and luck played into that. I hope to shed more light on the larger problem, so that parents who happen to read this can a) cut themselves some slack, and b) understand how important it is that society better regulate this profit-driven online world to take some of the burden off of parents.

Privilege

It’s embarrassing mistaking one’s own privilege for a just, merit-based society. Decades ago I applied for a job and the branch director, who had the final say in hiring me, was the last to interview me. He stood about six-foot-five, and the first thing he said to me was, “You’re tall … I like that!” Obviously he was joking, and I took the joke as a harmless ice-breaker, but over time I’ve come to appreciate that affinity bias is a big deal, and the fact that this director and I could laugh about it really underscored how unfair it was. If I’d been short and he’d joked, “You’re short, but I’ll try to look past that,” I wouldn’t have found it funny at all. I’m reminded of a great New Yorker cartoon (click here and advance to cartoon 10) where a small fish is thinking, “There is no justice in the world,” and a larger fish about to eat him is thinking, “There is some justice in the world,” and an even larger fish, about to eat him, is thinking, “The world is just.”

The ability my wife and I had to set limits on our kids’ online life had everything to do with privilege. If these girls were raised by, say, a single mother working two jobs to make ends meet, they wouldn’t have benefited from nearly as much oversight. My wife was able to stay home with the kids, and thus have all kinds of time and energy to build rapport with them, and read to them, and never needed to use a TV or computer as a babysitter.

Meanwhile, I worked from home part of the time, so I could help set the right example, and have more time with the kids, and (since our one shared family laptop lived down in the home office) could even supervise them somewhat. I had the luxury of requiring them to log, on paper, their online time, and could police this. Moreover, through my job I had a solid understanding of how tech companies market online services, and how concepts like page views, dwell time, and share/forward metrics are used in designing and “improving” their products. I also had enterprise-grade firewall and WiFi equipment, and the know-how to use it, which made it possible to shape and limit my kids’ Internet access.

Obviously not every family enjoys this kind of privilege. This really hit home for me when I read, in the recent New Yorker article, about a couple who lost a daughter to suicide after her torturous experience online, culminating in Instagram’s algorithm sending her suicide-related content. Her mother lamented:

“In the Black community, low-income, where I teach, parents are not educated enough on any type of technology … We [parents] thought we were two well-educated people. I want to educate the parents first and then the students: What’s an algorithm? What do these sites do?”

Here’s an analogy. Suppose the sidewalk between your home and your kids’ school were littered with broken glass, razor blades, and used syringe needles. If you have the time to walk your kids to school, you’d see this for yourself and would take immediate action. If you don’t walk your kid to school, but you’re a connected and concerned parent, perhaps you’d hear about this problem from other parents. Meanwhile, even a totally overworked parent who doesn’t have time to talk to other parents would benefit from the overall community’s awareness of the problem. But social media, unlike my simplistic sidewalk scenario, features threats that are invisible. Addictiveness is built into these products by design, for profit; the algorithms driving teens’ behavior are opaque to anyone outside the industry; and these algorithms care only about increasing dwell time and shares, even if this means sending suicide-themed videos to depressed kids, instead of the phone number for a suicide hotline. How could a typical parent grasp this threat? It is a sad state of affairs that only a parent who has a background in tech, and who has time to read news articles like the one in The New Yorker, knows he needs to inculcate his kid practically from birth on the downside of the online world.

Luck

In my previous post on this topic I also failed to appreciate the role that blind luck played in my family’s navigation of the Internet and social media. For one thing, we got an early start, simply because my brother has kids a fair bit older than mine and I got to learn from their experience. One incident comes immediately to mind. Decades ago, because I wanted personal email with no ads, I bought a service with at least a dozen mailboxes on my own private domain. I used this for my own address, my wife’s, my mom’s, and my mother-in-law’s, and offered it to my brothers and their kids. One of them eventually came to me asking to be set up because, to her great anguish, Google had abruptly shut off her Gmail, deleting her address book and all her stored emails, because they decided nobody under the age of thirteen should have it. (This was probably because of their AdSense context-based ads.) The wrinkle was that Google never know any user’s age until and unless that user tried to sign up for Google+, their fledgling (and ultimately unsuccessful) social media platform that featured an age limit, hence the suddenness of the Gmail lock-out. This abrupt change caused quite a stir on the Internet, and I read—with fascination—the comments that parents put below one of the articles. One outraged parent, lamenting the disruption this caused his daughter, ranted, “My daughter practically lives online!” I couldn’t detect any irony in this statement, so I guess he saw no problem with her behavior, and I found this more than a little spooky.

I was also surprised, although I perhaps shouldn’t have been, that my young niece would blithely sign up for a social media account without thinking to ask her parents, and that if Google+ had accepted her, her parents might not have even known she had the account. This episode got me thinking generally about the ramifications of kids being online, before my own kids were even old enough to participate, which was a really helpful head start. Had I happened to be the firstborn instead of the last, I’d have been blindsided like so many parents.

I also got lucky, as a parent, based on my own approach to popularity and the regard of my peers. My parents were oddballs, and we grew up largely without TV, and my father in particular had an air of superiority which unfortunately rubbed off on me, the upshot being that in elementary school I was nerdy and mostly shy but also a bit arrogant. For example, I was outspoken about hating football, and pooh-poohed other kids for wearing sweatbands on their wrists like their favorite players and for collecting little toy NFL helmets. My shy-plus-slightly-arrogant personality came across as total arrogance, which (in combination with my nerdiness) irritated people and made me an obvious target for bullying. Being a pariah, and then rising above it when I was older, taught me a lot. More than other kids, I think, I realized how tenuous and ultimately pointless popularity was and is, the result being that instead of suffering from FOMO (fear of missing out) like a lot of adults, I have FONMO (fear of not missing out) or perhaps, as one of my nieces puts it, FOFI (fear of fitting in). Thus, I was able to easily model opt-out behaviors for my daughters; my strict policies would have chafed a lot more if I hadn’t walked the walk.

But wait, there’s more. It likely wasn’t just circumstance that biased me against putting very little stock in the feedback loop of social media. I’ve been reading lately about inborn differences in personality around how people respond to social rewards. As detailed here, reward dependence (RD) has been correlated with very specific neurotransmitter system, and “individuals with high RD personalities have a disposition to recognize salient social cues which in turn facilitates effective communication, warm social relations, and their genuine care for others, but these individuals are then disadvantaged in being excessively socially dependent.” My wife self-identifies as being very low-RD, and experience bears that out; she dislikes being the center of attention to the extent that I had to practically beg her even to have a wedding. I’m not much different (for example, I’m perfectly content to labor over this blog even though I receive very little indication that people are even reading, much less enjoying, my posts). So by random chance, we both appear to be predisposed by our brain chemistry to avoid online likes and smileys, which has given us a concerted parenting approach that includes, for example, disallowing social media on our WiFi. Many high-RD parents might naturally assume that the positive feedback their kids get online could be an unalloyed good thing.

On top of all this, reward dependence is thought to be innate and moderately heritable, and indeed my kids strike me as fairly low in RD, just like my wife and me. Thus, the success we’ve had with our restrictive policies may have as much to do with genetic traits as it does with our ability to explain and justify our position on phones and social media. Other parents, with higher-RD kids, might not have it so easy.

My final examination of luck involves the love my wife and I have for reading. We both have had a lifelong appreciation of books that so far nothing—not Netflix, YouTube, podcasts, or social media—has been able to compete with. This made parenting easier because we could enjoy, right alongside our kids, the books that had to stand in for other forms of entertainment. I can honestly and sincerely tell you that I enjoyed all the books I read to my kids, even the earliest ones made of fabric so the hapless kid couldn’t accidently whack himself with it and dent his forehead. It is without exaggeration that I can say I actually looked forward to reading Clifford’s Bathtime —a board book so basic and simple I had it memorized after only like the twentieth reading—every time one of my daughters asked for it. I combed the online used bookstores to buy up the books I’d enjoyed as a boy, like Cowboy Sam, the Moomintroll books, and the William Pène du Bois Otto books, so I could relive them with my kids. While other dads were watching sports on TV or manning the grill, I was sitting in the La-Z-Boy with one or both kids reading Bridget and the Gray Wolves or Hepcat. I realize this behavior is not normal, and in fact (though I probably shouldn’t admit this), half the reason I even wanted kids was to get to read to them from whatever book struck their fancy. I look forward to having grandkids for this very reason, and in the meantime here’s a recent photo of me reading to my great-niece.

In contrast, I once saw a dad reading to his kid in a doctor’s office waiting room, and he was skipping words and even entire sentences, apparently figuring his kid couldn’t tell the difference so why not get through the book faster? I was scandalized and my impulse was to drag the guy outside and beat him. And yet I realize not all parents are that into books, especially kids’ books, and thus they may have a harder time keeping their kids entertained without resorting to laptops, tablets, or a phone. What a random gift, this love of reading. I highly suspect that the sting of a non-digital life was made easier to bear for my children when they could curl up in my lap for a dose of not just dopamine but serotonin, or (later in their childhood) a good discussion of dramatic irony, or a debate about which translation of Nikolai Gogol is superior.

In conclusion

I hope you, too, love reading, since I admittedly rambled a bit just now. Suffice to say, if you are a parent struggling to compete with the endless barrage of images, videos, and messages flooding your kid(s) through their devices, and with this nonstop virtual party they’re attending that you weren’t invited to, just do your best. And, as a voter and a concerned citizen, please also do what you can to help reign in these tech companies who clearly are putting profit above any sense of social responsibility. I realize now that not all parents are in the same position I have been to impose strict limits on their kids’ activities online, and I apologize if my earlier post implied that it all comes down to responsible parenting. The problem is much, much larger than that.

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From the Archives - The CarbonTech Debate

Introduction

I just read a profile in The New Yorker about Grant Petersen, the founder of Rivendell Bicycle Works, a company which makes retro steel bike frames with touring-type geometry, which are built up (generally) with upright handlebars and puffy tires. They’re the kind of bike that you’d put a big weird Brooks saddle on, from which you’d hang a hand-tooled leather bag containing perhaps an old fashioned tobacco pipe, a silk handkerchief, a pince-nez, some hand-tied fishing flies, a leather-bound book, and maybe even a beautifully crafted letter opener. You’d dress up in flannel and loafers and ride this bike to the brewpub or coffee shop where crumbs would get stuck in your beard. Myself, being someone who (somewhat) recently advocated in these pages for modern aerodynamic wheels—the better to cheat nature and ageing with—I can’t really relate to the vision of low-speed, low-intensity, woolly hipsters on kinda heavy, needlessly lugged bicycles that cost $2-5K but aren’t much faster than my $265 1981 Miyata 310 … just a lot more elegant.

All that being said, I do respect Petersen’s ethos, and bristle a bit at wealthy wannbes on excessively high-performance racing bikes wearing skintight $200 Rapha jerseys. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that these guys are supporting the bike industry, and it’s their money to spend on whatever they want (and better this than a jet ski or a $1K bottle of wine), but the sport starts to look a bit silly when it tips too far into this high-end poseur realm, and the Lycra is stretched over a pot belly. Wool both hides that belly better and excuses it, because nobody is pretending to be a pro racer.

I’ll also admit that I sometimes get a bit nostalgic for an era when cycling was more affordable, and more Euro, and cyclists were more like outlaws, or at least outcasts. Many years ago I even sent an essay of my own to the Rivendell Reader, which they were nice enough to print (and which you can read here). This push-pull between tradition and tech has been with me for decades and today I offer you the below dialogue among a couple of college racing pals and myself, which had originally circulated among our bike club. I won’t share the entire thread, but here is the gist: one friend, T—, had asked about stripping the paint off of his beloved carbon fiber Miyata CarbonTech 7000 so he could repaint it. Another friend, R—, pooh-poohed the idea, saying that sentimental value notwithstanding, the expense of restoring the Miyata (hundreds of dollars) would be silly, and it would be better to buy a new, superior frame. This touched a nerve with both T— and me.

Here’s a picture of the bike in question, from the catalog, with the laughable thou-doth-protest-too-much opening line, “Put any misgivings about the reliability of carbon fiber out of your mind.”

The CarbonTech Debate – October, 2007

On October 23, 2007, at 6:33 PM, T— wrote:

Yeah, but your so-called “new far-superior modern” frames are fugly and not worth the price. Watching the peloton these days is like watching the detritus from a McDonald’s garbage can blowing down the street in a wind of eau de cologne.

And repainting the Miyata certainly isn’t silly for a few hundred, or even twice that, frankly. I know this bike rides well, damn well, because I raced it for two years, to quite a few significant victories (a few of which I believe you were taking up space as pack filler [sorry guys, this what R— likes to bring out in me, thus his use of the words “silly” and “modern,” and I am sure he is giggling near-uncontrollably (there are innocents reading this one R—, so behave ourself)]).

Are you telling me I can find a decent frame for $3-500 that will ride as well? In an industry that is increasingly pre-fabbed and preoccupied with production costs and experimental methods, where riders are more likely to be listening to 50 Cent than anything else, where frames are offered in S, M and L, and with bad angles, I doubt there is much out there that would fit the bill without breaking my little bank. In fact, triple that amount and I might only be getting close to something in steel, and double it again to get something close in carbon.

Also, R—, what “modern” bikes today capture the imagination like the ones mentioned in the recent exchanges? Sorry, rhetorical question, but you knew that.

T—

On Oct 23, 2007, at 11:58 PM, Dana Albert wrote:

Well, I don’t know about the rest of y’all (though I can guess), but I for one am giggling like crazy. Sizzling stuff. If I had a “pleasure vein” in my forehead like Dr. Shimano (aka G—, cc’d herein) it would be ready to burst. Naturally I couldn’t stay away from such a delightfully bombastic fray.

Can you really strip a cawbun fibuh frame? I thought it would damage its fontanel or something.

Given the most impressive of T—’s victories on that Miyata (national collegiate road race in ‘90, for those on this distro who weren’t there), I would personally have the frame bronzed if it (and that achievement) were mine, except that the bronzing process is almost sure to damage cawbun fibuh. Sentimental value is too rare these days, especially with regard to bikes. And as I’m about to get to, only the irrational, emotional part of our minds could conscionably champion the modern bikes.

To love a modern bike is to abandon your senses as would a fool-for-love. Why? Because they’re just whores, that’s why. First of all, you can’t count on them. They’re not designed to last, because the pros they’re designed for all have multiple bikes they jettison at the end of the season, if not mid-season. These bikes are not designed to withstand crashes, because that’s what the spare bike on the team car is for. Remember stage 17 of last year’s Tour [de France], when ‘Roid Landis soloed, and flatted at one point? He dismounted the bike and just dropped it on the ground like a piece of trash. I didn’t necessarily expect him to set it down carefully or hand it to his mechanic, but he could have at least winced or something.

And yet ... I did love my Orbeas. Both of them [though actually I ended up having—and breaking—four before I gave up]. To the very end, each time, I was just smitten. I’d be working in the home office down here and glance over at Fava [my late Orbea] leaning there against the wall, and I would sigh. Why? Sheer good looks? Well, it did look cool. And had flair. But no, it was more because I’d immediately remember what it’s like to ride that bike. Man. T—, you really would have to ride a modern bike to appreciate what R— is talking about. They’re amazing. That first ride on Spentje [my nickname for my first Orbea]... I’ll never forget it. I swept up Spruce two minutes faster than I ever had before. Two minutes! All I could think was oh my GOD, I can’t believe this! It was like having a 40 mph tailwind or something. And then on the basically flat section of Wildcat before South Park? Man, the bike just accelerated like nobody’s bidness, and those modern wheels, you feel like you’re just slicing through the air like, well, like a Ginsu steak knife or something. (T—, I know you’ve had some pretty trick time trial wheels, so maybe that part wouldn’t be quite as noticeable to you.) And on the downhill? More plush than any steel bike I ever had. As far as the riding experience goes, they’re simply better in every single category—except that you can’t get attached to them.

Because they break! What a drag that is! Going back to my old steel bike, Full Slab, after each Orbea broke and I had to wait for a warranty replacement ... those were dark, dark days. And Full Slab was full Dura-Ace, hollow crank, hollow BB, titanium here and there—not like some ancient thing (other than that godawful frame). Even with the modern wheels, I was miserable. Just miserable. It was like salsa made in New Jersey, or wearing a beige shirt to a bank robbery, or trying to get good tech support from some offshore guy making his developing country’s paltry minimum wage. You might as well just bag it. Now, I’m not saying your Miyata CarbonTech 7000 would be like that, but it would be on that side of the coin. (My backup bike, an aluminum/carbon Salsa, is very much of the modern era. It’s fast, really fast, kind of O-Thank-God-fast after Full Slab, that wretched thing of evil.)

But these modern bikes ... they break! It’s ridiculous. I didn’t even get 10,000 miles or two years out of either bike. They break for no other reason than they’re not made to last. Now R—, I know what you’re going to say—it’s just Orbeas that break. Bah. The only reason you don’t hear of other bikes breaking is because the modern riders treat them like the whores that they are, discarding them out of boredom before they ever have a chance to break. The modern cyclist has the fickleness that only wealth can bring, like an investment banker who trades in his wife every few years for a younger, hotter model. Nobody wants to keep a bike long enough to get attached to it (people don’t even name their bikes anymore!). Modern bike consumers are like junkies building up a tolerance—they can’t wait to have that exhilarating feeling again, the one I described a couple paragraphs ago, and they’ll buy and buy and buy to try to get more of it. They’ll never get it again, of course; you can only jump bike eras once every decade or so. They’ll shave off a few ounces each time, but they won’t drop five pounds while picking up extra stiffness and yet comfort. They’re just tinkering, at that point, and if they ever quit doing that and tried to love the same bike year after year, that bike would give out like a faulty boob job, quickfastinahurry, I don’t care what company made it (or, rather, had it made under the auspices of their brand).

Now, you make a pretty good point, T—, about bad angles in the modern frames. I assume you’re talking about the compact geometry, that makes an expensive road bike look like a BMX bike, with two feet of seatpost showing and a stem with all that rise (and/or gobs of headset spacers). But even beyond the aesthetics, I have a problem with the epidemic of cawbun fibuh frames out there (or “plastic bikes” as my pal P— calls them). What’s wrong with cawbun? As a material, nothing—I think we owe most of the comfort of a modern bike to cawbun. But you don’t get to pick your geometry anymore! And let’s face it, the stock geometry for the American market is about as reasonable as the stock ingredients in an American deli sandwich. All these short top tubes, steep seat angles, ultra-short chainstays, high bottom brackets—it’s garbage, pure garbage. Specialized made a big to-do this spring about how they spent all these millions (!) to get Tom Boonen a longer top tube, because the poor guy was having all these back problems. S, M, and L indeed. Straight-up pure garbage. And you get these new Time bikes (I think it is) where the seatpost comes built-in, and you gotta cut the top off to fit. Well, what if you guessed wrong? Or decided you hated your saddle (and who wouldn’t, these new things with the big valley down the middle, for paranoid stockbrokers whose prostates are shrunken by bad living, with so little leather you couldn’t make a child’s coin purse out of it) and bought a new (or better yet, old) one with taller or shorter rails? Screwed, simply screwed—go drop another three grand. For all that money, you get stock geometry ... somebody forgot about ergonomics somewhere along the way. It’s like buying a suit at the factory outlet store and they won’t tailor it for you. That’s my gripe with full cawbun. Certain modern frames, Cyfac and Orbea among them, offer custom geometry because they’re made out of metal tubes that can be cut to the perfect size by a human who knows what he’s doing, instead of you having to settle for a frame that seems to have been extruded somehow, like a giant robot taking a dump.

[This is the frame geometry I came up with for my Orbeas, which was absolutely perfect, but which is why the warranty replacements took so long. The name “Fava” refers to a joke I made to T— once about compact geometry … I said of it, “I think of it kind of how I think of lima beans. They have a right to exist, but I don’t know why anybody would want them.” After my first Orbea, the company adjusted my design to be semi-compact, as you see below. All the important characteristics were maintained with an only slightly sloping top tube. I told T—, “I wouldn’t call it a lima bean. A fava bean, maybe.” Click the image to study it at length.]

Oh, Lord, who needs caffeine? I’m ready to brawl! Against whom? Anybody! Everybody! Like D— W— rushing onto the soccer field because a fight had broken out ... did he know who started it? Did he care? No! He just started swinging! Full of the spirit, like when he won that sprint in training, sat up, and yelled “FUCK!” (By the way, T—, that’s what it’s like to ride a modern bike, if I haven’t made that clear enough.)

The question is, what is the bike for? To appreciate aesthetically, as a connoisseur? Or to go as fast as you can, to defy the ageing process and deny that your glorious youth is behind you? Both are worthwhile pursuits. Spiritually speaking, though, this dichotomy is worthless. Now, I’m not sure if rhetorical questions are ever supposed to be answered, but I’ll take a crack at your last one, T—, about which modern bikes capture the imagination like the glorious bikes of yore. My answer is, precious few. I hear people rave about Cervelos. Meh. And Felt ... that’s not even a real bike company, that’s somebody’s silly made-up brand. Scott? Please. A marketing company trading on their good reputation for skis. Skis! I’m offended. What else? R—, I know you love the way Treks ride and I’m quite sure they’re brilliant. But let’s face it, they’re the Dell Computer of the bike world. Next. Ridley? Ugly and terrible. And what’s with these pro teams riding Cannondales? Have they no shame? Nuff said on that sad topic. Man, I’m actually starting to get depressed. Even Orbeas, that weird Spanish brand we’re probably mispronouncing, are starting to get a bit trite. I can only hope the ugliness of their cawbun versions scares off the new enthusiasts by the time I get my new [aluminum] one, if I’m even that lucky.

Okay then. Needless to say I have more I could say, in response to the other excellent points made in this long and growing email chain, but it’s waaaaaay past my bedtime.

Dana

P.S. I’m not going to proof this thing and I’m sure it’s riddled with clumsy mistakes. I grant you permission to heckle me one time, in aggregate, for all the mistakes.

Epilogue

In case you’re wondering, my lengthy tirade about modern bikes ended up being kind of a last gasp. My best friend rides a Cervelo, with hydraulic brakes and electronic shifting no less, and it hasn’t even occurred to me to give him a hard time about it. I myself have—and love—a carbon fiber Scott mountain bike. I rented a Felt for a week of cycling in the French Alps and liked it just fine. The modern, carbon frame I have now is a Giant (the second-best-selling brand in America) and has lasted for over ten years and about 50,000 miles. On top of all this, T— himself, unable to elegantly repair a knackered rear dropout on the Miyata, eventually succumbed and has a carbon Trek that he bought from R—. Oh well … at least we put up a fight.

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Major League Baseball FAQ - A Guide for Foreigners

Introduction

I am no expert on Major League baseball. That might make me seem like a poor authority to consult about the sport, but most Americans are far too steeped in its lore to be of much help to a foreigner. Ask almost any baseball fan what “the count” means, and you’ll get an answer like, “Oh, it’s simple. If it’s like, 3 & 0, that’s ahead of the count, and 0 & 2 would be behind the count. Very basic.”

I recently attended an MLB game with a variety of family members including my Dutch nieces and nephew, and it occurred to me that this seemingly simple game is actually pretty complicated. As a service to foreigners trying to wrap their brains around our national pastime, and for native-born Americans who could use a chuckle, I offer this guide.

Major League Baseball Frequently Asked Questions

Is baseball modeled after cricket?

No, baseball and cricked both descended (or, you might say, ascended) from other games, and though the history is murky, the sports of “rounders” and “stoolball” are the most direct antecedents. “Stoolball” holds the distinction of being the most disgusting name ever applied to a sport.

I get that the point is to hit a ball and try to run around the bases, which seems straightforward enough. But why does the language of the game have to be so complicated?

I don’t know what you mean.

Come on. When the batter swings at a pitch and misses, such that there is absolutely no contact between the bat and the ball, that’s called a “strike.” And when the batter just stands there doing nothing, it’s called a “ball,” even though the baseball is involved throughout every activity of the game including a hit. How is that not confusing?

Gosh, I guess you got me there. I guess it’s only perplexing if you haven’t been immersed in the culture of the game since childhood. I’d speculate that the weird terminology serves as a shibboleth. We like it better because we’re in on it.

How come the batter can get a strike called against him when he doesn’t even swing?

That is an excellent question, and I learned the answer the hard way. I was playing baseball in elementary school gym class, and was absolutely terrified of striking out because in those days, at least in my hometown of Boulder, Colorado, mercilessly mocking a fellow student was not only tolerated by the gym teacher, but expected and even encouraged, as part of our education. I figured as long as I didn’t swing, I couldn’t strike out and be teased about it, and walking to first after four balls seemed entirely civilized. And yet the umpire, who was not the gym teacher but my regular teacher (whose very attendance during gym class was a mystery to me) kept calling strikes. I thought I wasn’t holding the bat still enough, and concentrated harder and harder on holding it absolutely still. My teacher kept yelling at me, with unconcealed disgust, “What is your problem? That was a home run pitch!” It would have been helpful if she’d explained the strike zone. It’s the area of space above home plate, at a reasonable elevation, meaning the batter has no valid excuse not to swing. If batters weren’t required to swing at pitches in the strike zone, I suppose the game could get pretty boring because lousy batters could just walk all the time. Like I’d dreamed of doing.

I gather a foul ball counts as a strike, but if a batter has two strikes already he can apparently hit as many fouls as he likes. What gives?

There is a special rule about this: you cannot strike out on a foul ball. As with the strike zone, I had to be corrected on this. A bunch of us kids were playing baseball in the street, and David K— hit a foul after two strikes and I declared him “out.” He protested, and we argued, and I told him not to be a baby, and he ran home literally crying to his mom. She stormed up the street in her apron and her horn-rimmed glasses and gave me a good scolding. “You can’t strike out on a foul ball!” she shouted. “Everybody knows that! What’s wrong with you?!”

(Was David’s father similarly supportive? Well, sort of. He did frequently host pickup baseball games for all the neighborhood kids at a nearby park, so his son could get extra practice, but Mr. K— also had a “house rule” that it was permissible to get D— (and only D—) out by throwing the ball at him like in kickball. This looked painful, and one time D— started bawling, and his dad gathered everyone around the poor kid and said, “Who wants to see a crybaby?” That was Boulder in the ‘70s.)

What exactly is stealing a base? How does a player decide to do it?

Normally, a runner can only advance to the next base after the batter has hit a non-foul ball or a pop fly that has been caught. But when the pitcher has started the wind-up to his pitch (and is committed to it such that he can’t change his mind and throw to a base), the runner can try to run to the next base because it takes time (though not much!) for the pitch to reach the catcher, who will throw the ball where needed to try to get the runner out.

You mentioned a “pop fly” just now as though I had any idea what that is.  So … what is it?

A pop fly, also called a pop-up, is a ball that goes really high and really far but isn’t that hard to catch, and has so much hang time any player in the outfield is allowed to catch it. The runner has to “tag up” (i.e., return to the base to tap it if he’d advanced a few feet beyond it, which is called “leading off” and is legal), and can do so only after the pop fly is caught. Interestingly, advancing on a pop fly isn’t technically stealing.

This is so terribly arcane. How am I supposed to know and keep track of all this?

You’re not. It’s really not that important. The real point of the game is that these players can hit and throw a baseball incredible distances, and that fans in the stands can sometimes catch (and keep!) the ball, and there’s food and beer and it’s all very pleasant in a distinctly American way that other sports, like soccer, are not.

What is the World Series?

This series of games (the number of which depends on how things unfold) determines which MLB team is the world champion for the season.

Is it like the Olympics where the best players in each country play for their national team?

No, it’s the normal league trade teams competing. It wouldn’t work to have national teams because all the teams playing are American.

You mean other countries never qualify? How is that possible?

Actually, they simply aren’t invited. Our national pastime, our rules.

Have foreign teams ever participated?

Yes, the Toronto (Canada) Blue Jays played in 1992 and 1993.

How did they do?

They won, both times.

Did they ever qualify again?

No. (Which I find a bit fishy.)

Cuba has won more Olympic medals for baseball than any other country but they have never played in the World Series. How can MLB baseball call it this the “World” Series?

Because America.

What is the seventh inning stretch?

This is when all the fans in the stadium stand together and stretch, since they’ve been sitting so long on those uncomfortable bleachers.

So it’s like yoga or Tai Chi?

No, just stretching out your arms a bit, and singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

Is it always the same song, across the nation?

No, in Boston they sing “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond.

Why Boston? Why don’t they sing “Sweet Caroline” in North or South Carolina?

Nobody knows. That is to say, I don’t know.

Why are the benches called bleachers?

According to Wikipedia, the uncovered wooden boards that traditionally comprised these benches were so named because they got bleached by the sun.

What is the “nosebleed section” of the stadium?

These are the bleachers that are so high up and so far from the action, you can barely see anything. The nickname derives from how mountain climbers can get nosebleeds at very high altitudes.

Why would anybody want to sit that far from the action?

Because it’s cheap. MLB baseball is actually a sport that you can afford to watch live, for as little as $4 for a whole game (which lasts, on average, over two and a half hours). This sets it apart from, say, football, which is far pricier (averaging about $150 a game).

Do baseball fans look down on other sports?

I don’t know for sure, being only a cycling fan (whom the fans of other sports all look down on). But at a Colorado Rockies baseball game I attended recently, I happened to wear (along with my brothers, as shown above) a University of Colorado (CU) Buffaloes t-shirt. (The Buffs are a football team.) Lots of people called out to us (“Go Buffs!” etc.) and made some hand gesture resembling horns. It was as though our modest show of support for a local football team elevated us somehow, even at a baseball game. Maybe it was the beer talking.

Speaking of which, are there baseball hooligans?

Violence at baseball games isn’t nearly as common as at soccer games in Europe. Maybe it’s due to the different energy in general. Baseball games don’t seem nearly as intense as soccer (or even American football), perhaps because there are so many games, and so many opportunities to score points. I almost get the impression that the spectators aren’t actually that focused on the game.

Seriously?

Yes. At the game I attended, I had a nice conversation with my niece’s husband about our fathers’ deaths, while watching the Rockies pitcher strike out several Cubs batters. Having something to focus my gaze on made it a lot easier to have this dialogue than if we were, say, across a table having coffee.

Are you suggesting that most baseball fans are just using the game as a foil to have deep heart-to-hearts?

No, I am not saying that. Honestly, I’m not really a fan and really have no idea what most fans do.

Is baseball cooler than soccer?

Hard to say. Soccer requires more physical stamina, but then it has the problem of flopping, which is disgraceful.

Is there doping in Major League baseball?

Yes, of course. There have been many highly publicized cases of steroid use. Even more prominent is the use of chewing tobacco, a known stimulant, which—though it’s legal, and not technically doping—is completely disgusting.

Is Major League baseball as dangerous to players as pro football?

No, not at all. There’s no tackling, and each player kind of has his own territory, so other than getting beaned by the ball or accidentally colliding with another player, there’s not much risk of major injury.

Is “bean” a technical term?

Actually, yes. The verb “bean,” and its noun form “beanball,” refer to the pitcher deliberately throwing the baseball at the batter’s head.

Wow! Does the pitcher get arrested and booked for assault?

No. As with hockey, the rules of the game supersede the law of the land. In all cases, the batter who’s been beaned is allowed to proceed to first base, to punish the pitcher’s team. In egregious cases, the pitcher can be ejected from the game. But the assault is not treated as though it were criminal.

Why do baseball uniforms have belts? Surely these teams can afford trousers that fit?

There is a rule stipulating this, which goes all the way back to 1882. It’s not clear that this rule is still in effect, but I guess these traditions die hard.

Given how hideously ugly modern cycling helmets are, particularly those worn in time trials, couldn’t it be said that baseball is actually far more elegant and tasteful, in its adherence to tradition over whatever-works?

Yes, it could be said.

What is a switch hitter?

Baseball players are typically expected to do two things well: 1) whatever position they play on defense, and ) batting. Some players suck at batting, so they get to have somebody else hit the ball for them. As a former bike racer, I find this ridiculous. Cyclists have to be good at pretty much everything: climbing, descending, sprinting, cornering, and tactics. Imagine if a rider with poor bike handling skills could just tag in a teammate for a descent, or if a pure sprinter could have somebody else tackle the big climbs for him. It would be a mockery of the sport.

So it could be said that you’re more elitist than the baseball fans who openly celebrate the CU Buffs football team?

Guilty as charged.

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Biased Blow-By-Blow - 2024 Vuelta a España Stage 20

Introduction

Perhaps you don’t have time to watch the Vuelta a España. Or maybe you don’t want to pay for coverage. Maybe the sport isn’t entertaining enough for you unless somebody mouths off a lot. Well, that would be me. Read on for my no-punches-pulled report on a bunch of starved Lycra-clad athletes bashing themselves against giant mountains and trying to destroy each other, for money.

Vuelta a Espana Stage 20 – Villarcayo to Picón Blanco

As I join, they’ve got just over a kilometer to go on the third-to-last climb, the Portillo de la Sia, a Category 2. It looks like Mark Soler (UAE Team Emirates) is solo, or maybe chasing the break. It’s hard to tell. My morning is in disarray – all out of ground coffee, had to grind some beans by hand, then somehow poured boiling water on my hand. So I’m suffering more than these riders, believe me. Adding insult to injury, Peacock is showing a commercial now. Let me go get some ice.

Okay, I’m back and it’s definitely Soler in the lead. I don’t think this is so much a let’s-win-this-stage kind of break as a let’s-get-all-the-KOM-points break. Soler has the KOM jersey but it looks like his teammate Jay Vine picked up some points earlier because they’re now tied in the virtual standing. Here’s Vine, all bandaged up from a terrible crash last week, hanging on the back of the group.

As a new feature of this blog, today I have a man on the ground in Spain, giving me live updates.

He sends this nice shot of Soler leading the race.

My correspondent predicts that the GC group, only 1:20 behind the breakaway, will overtake them on the last climb, so the penultimate climb will decide the KOM. He also gave me some Lotto numbers but I’m keeping those to myself, thank you very much.

Here’s a cool photo of one of the climbs, courtesy of my man on the ground. Not shown: Don Quixote, tilting.

In the GC group, a teammate of Richard Carapaz (EF Education - Easypost) makes a sweet move to launch his leader into a stage-winning move. Alas, this guy apparently never told Carapaz of the plan, or Carapaz forgot, because he’s several riders back staring at his thumbnail and man, this is just embarrassing.

The announcers are saying that some of race leader Primoz Roglic’s Red Bull – Bora Hansgrohe teammates are sick. I’m not getting very specific info, though. The riders I see look okay to me. Maybe they’re homesick, or lovesick. Not sure how that might affect Roglic’s GC bid. I mean, homesick isn’t that big a deal, but if the lovesickness is, like, chlamydia, that could be serious.

Speaking of the GC, Roglic has chased the red leader’s jersey for almost three weeks and only yesterday finally took it off of the back of Ben O’Connor (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team) and now leads him by almost two minutes, which is kind of a lot since Roglic has been riding better than O’Connor for most of this Vuelta and has won it three times before. But victory is not assured, as noted by this Roleur article which helpfully points out, “Roglic still has to stay on his bike, a non-flippant comment rooted in the fact he falls on average once every 18 race days.”

Well, I guess I spoke too soon, or maybe too late … Roglic is now past the last real descent, so things should be fairly safe for him for the remaining 37 kilometers which are mostly uphill.

The breakaway comprises Soler, Vine, Pablo Castrillo (Kern Pharma), Clément Berthet (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team), and Marco Frigo (Israel – Premier Tech).

Wow, Soler has looked pretty good on the front but now totally detonates!

Within seconds, he’s way off the back!

Now it’s all up to Vine. Not sure how deep the points go for the next KOM opportunity, but Vine might end up winning the overall KOM with this ride (and I guess it’s possible they could stay off and win the stage but that’s almost no more likely than my correspondent’s Lotto numbers winning big for me).

O’Connor’s team has changed its uniforms so many times over the years, I have a bit of trouble spotting him in the group now that he’s not in the red jersey any more. Isn’t it weird how we don’t generally translate “maglia rosa” or “maillot jaune,” but we always use the English phrase “red jersey”? Have you ever heard it called the “camisa roja”? The Vuelta gets no respect, I tell you.

The chat with my on-the-ground correspondent is a bit confusing because there’s some other guy in the texting group only identified by his phone number. I assume it’s a mutual friend or a guy on my road team, but it’s a little odd that he keeps asking for my credit card number. Anyway, he asks, “Will [Vine] make it or will the peloton catch?” I reply, “Peloton will catch, I predict. And my Visa is 4388-4972-2949-7732, exp. 02/26.”

Vine has dropped everyone but Berthet.

Okay, this is sad. My little cat was trying to get my attention and did that thing where she reaches up and hooks a claw into my leg, but the claw got stuck and now she’s kind of hanging there while I try to unhook the claw. Poor little beast!

And in the time it took for that little maneuver, the GC group has suddenly closed their 20-second gap and catches the remaining duo from the breakaway.

With about 4 kilometers left in this climb there’s a hellacious attack!

It’s Pavel Sivakov (UAE Team Emirates), who sits tenth on GC, about 7 minutes down. So Roglic’s team wouldn’t exactly be panicking about this.

Sivakov’s move is pretty cool, whether or not he can make it all the way to the finish solo … at least it takes any pressure of Vine, who I hope can hang tough in this group for the rest of the climb and maybe get those KOM points.

You’ll be happy to know that my cat has recovered from the snagged-claw episode and is now comfortably situated on my lap.

Enric Mas (Movistar Team) takes the summit of the Puerto de Los Tornos, which causes commentator Bob Roll to giggle and wonder aloud why Mas would want KOM points. His fellow commentator Christian Vande Velde patiently points out that there were bonus seconds available as well, which could help Mas in the GC. Just to catch you up since my last post, O’Connor trails Roglic by 1:54, Mas sits third just 26 seconds behind O’Connor, Carapaz is another 34 seconds further back, and David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ) rounds out the top five 4:33 behind Roglic.

Vine picked up a KOM point or two on that last summit, so he has the KOM lead and, with just one climb left in this Vuelta, unless something dramatic happens he’ll wear the jersey into Paris.

Here’s an aerial view of the final climb, the dreaded Picón Blanco.

Mikel Landa (T-Rex – Quick-Step) attacks, sort of. His attacks are more like little jabs, and one of Roglic’s teammates easily chases him down, practically yawning with boredom. This is kind of hard to watch because once again, Landa’s teammates did a lot of work to set him up for this. They’re like Little League parents shouting at their children out on the diamond, to no effect.

Sivakov is riding really well, taking his lead out to about a minute. But man, this upcoming final climb is kind of a beast, 7.9 kilometers at 9.1% average grade.

With 14 kilometers to go, Sivakov now has 1:13. Perhaps his chances of a stage will win depend on whether, this far into the Vuelta, anybody has enough energy left to mount a real attack on Roglic.

Sivakov’s shoulders look a little tense. I get accused of this. My wife tells me I need to do yoga or some such shit, but honestly I think it’s just the stress of middle age. Imagine how much tension Sivakov will carry in his body when he’s in his fifties, running a bike shop or tour group or something to try to fund his remaining years. Damn, I’m getting depressed now and he hasn’t even been caught yet!

Okay, this is noteworthy. I have two separate chat threads going and both of them include a doctor who is at work right now and hungry for updates. What does that say about cycling fans? Probably nothing, though I would like to think most football fans work at, like, accounting firms. Does that make me a snob? No, probably more like a wannabe snob. I am not myself a doctor, after all.

I would love to see Carapaz launch a hellacious attack and take three minutes out of Roglic on this climb. And then a geisha would bring me a platter of lasagne, and my kids would phone.

Sivakov is starting to show his age. Well, actually, he’s a young buck, just 27 years old … maybe he’s starting to show my age. His lead has dropped to just 38 seconds in a matter of a couple kilometers.

Some guy attacks and nobody cares. It’s Eddie Dunbar (Team Jayco Alula).

Everyone just sits there, as if Dunbar didn’t matter. He’s just rolling away. He doesn’t even look like he cares. It’s like they’ve forgotten where they are, maybe they think they’re at a roller rink or something.

The GC group just pedals away as though this were a sightseeing jaunt. Roglic, finally frustrated at his teammates’ pace, now takes the front as if to say, “Damn it … let me do it.”

Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates), who won a stage solo earlier in this Vuelta, is dropped. I’m okay with this. Yates looks just a bit goofy on the bike. I can’t tell what it is. It’s like his body is pointed uphill like a hyena’s. Does that make any sense?

Sivakov is hanging tough, holding on to his slender lead for now. Even his shoulders look a little more relaxed … maybe his sports director gave him some advice through his earpiece. “C’mon Sivvy, you’ve got this, you’re the best, eh, lower those shoulders, remember what we talked about, breathe like a kettle now, relax that jaw, Namaste.”

In the GC group Roglic goes to the front and drops the hammer again, Mas glued to his wheel. Now Gaudu pulls through pretty forcefully and you can see Ben O’Connor going out the back, paced by his super-domestique Felix Gall.

Now Gaudu flat-out attacks, and so far only Carapaz can respond!

Up the road, Dunbar (remember him?) catches Sivakov.

Gaudu has a decent gap on the GC group.

And now Dunbar drops Sivakov. Sivakov vanishes from my screen, just straight-up gone, like he was levitated away by a UFO or sucked into a sinkhole. Dunbar is now solo but perhaps Gaudu is gaining?

Dunbar looks really disassociated, like his mind is somewhere else. He almost seems bored. It’s strange.

Roglic is smashing the pedals going after Dunbar, surely wanting yet another stage win. Even so, Mas goes to the front and drives the pace even higher. Mas is having the best grand tour of his life, he’s been en fuego practically every day. They overhaul Gaudu.

Behind, Gall is doing a great job helping O’Connor to limit his losses.

OMG! In the final 500 meters, Dunbar is dying! And the GC group isn’t far behind! C’mon, man! Go go go!

And now Landa attacks again, this time for reals!

Was that photo even worth posting? Look, I’m sorry about the shockingly poor quality of these images. Peacock blocks screen captures because, you know, every time somebody saves a still shot from Peacock’s footage (which by my calculation totals something like half a million frames), God kills a kitten.

But Landa’s attack is like all Landa’s attacks, it accomplishes nothing. It’s actually starting to look like Dunbar could hang on for a win!

Wow, Roglic actually just doesn’t have it! He never launches the cruel final move that usually dooms a humble breakaway rider! In fact, Mas is distancing him! And now, Dunbar is out of the saddle, grunting his bike along, totally dying but still going kind of fast, and the meters click by, 50 to go, 25 to go, still no sign of the chasers and—he’s got the win!

That is as close to a smile as I was able to get, even with my camera’s burst mode. Dunbar looks satisfied, perhaps, but not exactly elated.

Surprisingly enough, the next rider across is Mas, with a pretty good gap back to Roglic.

Gall is a baller. He brings O’Connor home with only a handful of seconds lost to Roglic, and more importantly to those who would knock him off the podium.

Here is the stage result.

And here is the new GC.

Not much change … Mas took nine seconds total out of Roglic (seven at the finish and the two bonus seconds), which won’t exactly jeopardize Roglic’s chances since he’s the better time trialist anyway. The big loser was Carlos Rodriguez (Ineos Grenadiers), who came in 2:34 back today and drops from seventh to tenth overall. Last year’s winner, the American Sepp Kuss (Visma – Lease A Bike), had a bad day today and drops from 11th to 13th overall.

They’re interviewing Dunbar.

INTERVIEWER: You’re practically smiling, which I find unusual. What’s going on?

DUNBAR: Well, I never expected to win a grand tour stage, and now I’ve won two.

INTERVIEWER: Do they have Pop Rocks action candy in Ireland?

DUNBAR: I felt pretty good, and I knew this climb from 2020, I knew it leveled out in places which isn’t shown in the profile, so I’d have a chance to rest here and there and go harder on the steep bits.

INTERVIEWER: You didn’t answer my question about the Pop Rocks.

DUNBAR: When Sivakov went, nobody reacted, so I figured no point wasting bullets on a climb like this. I’m a ways down on GC, so I knew I’d get a bit of leeway.

INTERVIEWER: “Wasting bullets” … what does that even mean?

DUNBAR: I want to thank my team for this. The guys did good keeping me out of trouble over the last few days.

INTERVIEWER: What kind of trouble, can you elaborate?

DUNBAR: We were at the salad bar, and the guys were like dude, don’t eat the marshmallow-and-Mandarin-orange salad, it’s looking really manky. I was totally gonna eat it, too, before they spoke up. And just look at what happened to those [Red Bull] Bora-Hansgrohe guys. They ate the salad and then blew chunks all last night, I could hear it through the wall.

INTERVIEWER: Thank you for finally answering one of my questions. That’s what I was getting at, with the Pop rocks thing. The way they fizz is similar to how fermented fruit feels on the tongue, which could have tipped you off.

DUNBAR: Yes. Except, like I said, my teammates had my back. I never even tasted that salad. Nor your silly “action candy.”

INTERVIEW: Touché.

If this is your first albertnet blow-by-blow, I should come clean about something: I don’t try very hard to record these interviews accurately. Much of what I “quoted” from Dunbar above was real, but I freestyled the rest of the exchange. That is a service to you, because these interviews can be really dull.

Speaking of which, now they’re interviewing Roglic.

INTERVIEWER: This had to be a stressful stage, with your teammates projectile vomiting all last night.

ROGLIC: Yeah, I mean uh, anyway, yeah, uh, luckily  I am quite fine for the moment, so uh, yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Eddie [Dunbar] was saying it was the Mandarin-orange-and-marshmallow salad that poisoned your teammates, is that correct?

ROGLIC: Uh, yeah, uh, maybe it was that, I thought, uh, yeah, maybe really the pineapple-and-cottage-cheese salad, so, uh, I ate neither, and yeah, maybe that’s why I’m good.

INTERVIEWER: These salads sound disgusting, what a crappy hotel you guys must have been at. I mean, what kind of salad bar is so badly maintained that it has riders puking their guts out and shitting like minks all night before the queen stage of the Vuelta?

ROGLIC: Yeah, well, I am not so sure, and uh, I don’t know much about minks, whether they really shit like this, so, uh, yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Are you starting to believe that you can actually hang on and win your fourth Vuelta?

ROGLIC: Well you know we uh you know, uh, I am one day closer but tomorrow, it’s another GC day.

INTERVIEWER: Come on, man, I was just taking the piss, you’ve gotta know you got this race in the bag.

ROGLIC: Uh, taking the piss? Whose piss? You mean doping control? Blood bags?

INTERVIEWER: Has anyone ever told you you’re the most boring rider to interview in the entire peloton?

ROGLIC: Yeah, a couple of times, so, uh, yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Well, anyway I want to thank you for not shaming the race, and the sport, by being absolutely dominant like [Tadej] Pogacar or [Chris] Froome. The times you’ve faltered in this Vuelta, like losing time to Mas today, showed us you’re still human, which made the race worth watching, and that’s a nice change. So … thanks.

ROGLIC: Uh ... you’re welcome?

Several words from that transcript were faithful to the actual interview, including “uh,” “yeah,” “so,” and “one day closer.” I stole “shitting like a mink” from the late Anthony Bourdain. The interviewer’s final sentiment is 100% my own opinion.

Well, that’s about it for this Vuelta. Tomorrow’s final stage, a short, flat time trial, will be totally boring and probably won’t change much about the GC. Check back next April because the next race I cover will probably be Paris-Roubaix.

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