World Series Research Articles

Time-Motion and Technical-Tactical Aspects of Glory World Series Matches in the Male Middle-Heavy-Weight Category.

To characterize the time structure of K1 kickboxing matches of Glory World Series (Glory)and to determine potential differences between winners and losers. Seventeen matches of Glory 2019 (17 first rounds, 13 second rounds, and 8 third rounds) were video-analyzed to quantify (1)the time expended in high-and low-intensity activity and pauses, (2)the number and pattern of attacks, and (3)the number of effective attacks. Fighters were professional male athletes (age27.9 [2.7] y) of the middle-weight category (85kg). The number and the pattern of attacks and the number of effective attacks were compared between winners and losers. The mean times expended in high-and low-intensity activity and pauses were 234.6 (133.9)seconds, 97.4 (60.1)seconds, and 36.0 (19.9)seconds, respectively, resulting in an effort-to-pause ratio of ∼1.8:1. Compared with losers, winners presented (1)a greater number of attacks in the second round (P = .004) and entire match (P = .009), (2)a greater number of attacks containing 3 attacks in sequence in the second round (P = .001) and attacks containing >3 attacks in the third round (P = .049), and (3)a greater number of effective attacks in the second round (P = .011) and entire match (P = .008). The findings of the present study indicate that K1 kickboxing in Glory matches presents a ∼1.8:1 effort-to-pause ratio and that winners perform more attacks, effective attacks, and attacks in sequence. These data provide useful insights to improve the training specificity of kickboxing athletes.

Increased Utilization of Pitchers in NCAA Women’s Softball Compared to Men’s Baseball

BACKGROUND: Pitch count and rest time guidelines are widely employed in youth baseball to mitigate injury risk among pitchers. Similar recommendations are lacking in youth softball, despite evidence of potential overuse injuries from the underhand windmill pitching motion. This disparity in regulation may heighten injury susceptibility. Additionally, the composition of collegiate softball and baseball rosters differs significantly, with softball teams typically featuring fewer pitchers. This discrepancy may lead to increased pitching demands for individual softball pitchers, potentially exacerbating injury risks. Therefore, understanding the relationship between the number of pitchers, game appearances, and injury incidence is crucial for informing injury prevention strategies in both baseball and softball. We hypothesize that individual softball pitchers will have significantly more game appearances per season and pitch more innings per game and season as compared to baseball pitchers, and that softball rosters will average significantly fewer pitchers per team than baseball rosters. METHODS: A retrospective analysis was conducted of National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I softball and baseball College World Series teams from 2016 to 2021. Individual data consisting of game appearances and season innings pitched facilitated calculations for innings per game. Team data included the number of athletes and pitchers per team. Statistical analysis comparing baseball and softball team continuous variables utilized Student’s t-test. Individual data, characterized by non-normal distribution, was evaluated with the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney Test. A significance level of p < 0.05 was applied to all analyses. RESULTS: Softball pitchers had a significantly greater number of innings pitched per season (median 84.1 (21.0-143.2) vs 29.2 (10.0-56.1) p<0.0001), game appearances per season (median 23.0 (10.0-32.0) vs 16.0 (9.0-21.0), p<0.0001), and innings pitched per game (median 3.6 (2.2-4.7) vs 1.6 (1.1-2.8), p<0.0001). Baseball rosters averaged significantly more total players (35.7 ± 3.9 vs 21.5 ± 2.8, p<0.0001), more pitchers (15.7 ± 2.3 vs 4.5 ± 1.1, p<0.0001), and a greater percentage of their roster was made up of pitchers (44.2% ± 6.4% vs 21.0% ± 4.4%, p<0.0001). CONCLUSION: This study highlights a notable difference in collegiate softball pitcher utilization compared to baseball pitchers. Fewer pitchers on softball teams led to a higher cumulative workload per pitcher, with increased innings pitched per season, per game, and more game appearances. While the relationship between pitch count and injury risk is established in baseball, further research is needed to understand its implications for softball pitchers.

Memories of the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake

Abstract The 17 October 1989 M 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake was the most significant earthquake to impact the San Francisco Bay region since 1906. It occurred 26 min before the scheduled start of the third game of the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and their across-the-bay rivals, the Oakland A’s. Those watching the pregame TV broadcasts from north of San Francisco saw the impacts of the strong shaking at Candlestick Park well before the shaking hit them—a clear demonstration of the physics underlying earthquake early warning systems: electromagnetic transmission is about 100,000 times faster than the propagation of seismic waves through the earth. Every earthquake is different, with unique features, and the Loma Prieta earthquake was unique in many respects. This article describes some of those unique aspects from the perspective of the Seismology Branch of the U.S. Geological Survey, located in Menlo Park, California, roughly midway between the epicenter and Candlestick Park.

Sabermetrics by the sea: Evaluating college players with the Cape Cod Baseball League

From the dawn of the “Moneyball” system of searching for players with undervalued skills, an increasing proportion of players chosen in the Major League draft has come from the collegiate ranks, and while every professional team has an analytics department, the draft remains the last frontier for identifying and acquiring the best prospective players. Thus, it has become more important in recent years to evaluate college players properly, and while players’ statistics during the college season can vary wildly due to differing levels of competition, it is necessary to find a more objective metric for measuring college players’ skills. We propose that the most effective metric for doing so comes from observing players’ performances during the summer, when the variable of strength of schedule can be directly controlled, as players of the same skill level compete against each other. Our study focuses on the Cape Cod Baseball League (CCBL), a prestigious summer league that attracts the most talented college players, from which many players are drafted into the Majors every year. Our reasons for choosing the CCBL are the aforementioned homogeneity of talent; the lack of effects of travel fatigue, as the teams all play in a concentrated geographical area; and the league’s built-in replacement level, as temporary players often fill roster spots for players who had been selected the previous autumn, but whose college teams have advanced to the College World Series or who play on a national team during part of the CCBL season. This replacement level is used to calculate a metric of Wins Above Replacement, which we call cWAR.1

The Mustache Gang Battles the Big Red Machine: The 1972 World Series by John G. Robertson and Carl T. Madden (review)

The Mustache Gang Battles the Big Red Machine: The 1972 World Series by John G. Robertson and Carl T. Madden (review)

Champions

Baseball fans express disappointment in the 2023 postseason, where the World Series featured mid-tier teams. Here, playoff systems are analyzed, and a focus on overcoming quality opponents is suggested. A statistical approach, Wins Above Average, and historical playoff data are presented.

Lara Dodds and Michelle M. Dowd, eds. Feminist Formalisms and Early Modern Women's Writing: Readings, Conversations, Pedagogies. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World Series. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022. Pp. 304. $60.00 (cloth).

Lara Dodds and Michelle M. Dowd, eds. Feminist Formalisms and Early Modern Women's Writing: Readings, Conversations, Pedagogies. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World Series. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022. Pp. 304. $60.00 (cloth).

In searching for perfect blood substitute. Creation and application of perftorane

The article is devoted to historiography of perfluorocarbons, as well as discoverers of perftorane and their discoveries. There would be no national priority in transfusiology without these discoveries. Perftorane is the only one of the world series of perfluorocarbon emulsion drugs that has passed all phases of clinical trials. Perftorane has been used in clinical medicine for 30 years.

More Questions About Excellencism, Perfectionism, and Attitudes Toward Cheating in Professional Baseball: A Look at Potential Mediators and Doping Attitudes.

The Model of Excellencism and Perfectionism has been proposed to differentiate the pursuit of high but realistic standards (excellencism) from the pursuit of perfectionistic standards. In a recent study, perfectionistic standards were positively linked to bottom-line mentality, moral disengagement, and tolerance toward electronic sign stealing (cheating) in professional baseball. In this follow-up study, we investigated the reactions of sports fans when the Houston Astros qualified for the 2021 World Series of Baseball 2years after being found guilty of cheating. We found that fans of the Astros (n = 202) displayed a higher tolerance toward cheating than those of the Atlanta Braves (n = 265). Results of multiple regression (controlling for in-group vs. out-group status) showed higher tolerance toward cheating and doping in perfection strivers compared with excellence strivers. A winning-at-all-cost mentality and moral disengagement mediated the relationships between perfectionism and cheating attitudes.

The effects of emotion on retrospective duration memory using virtual reality.

Our memories for temporal duration may be colored by the emotions we experience during an event. While emotion generally enhances some aspects of memory, temporal duration has been shown to be particularly susceptible to emotion-induced distortions. However, prior work has faced difficulty when studying this phenomenon, having to make some trade-offs on ecological validity or experimental control. Here, we sought to bridge this gap by studying the effects of emotion on temporal duration memory using virtual reality. In the present study, a final sample of 69 participants experienced a series of negative-emotional and neutral worlds within virtual reality. Following this, participants provided ratings of emotionality (arousal, valence, pleasantness) and retrospective duration estimates (i.e., remembered time). We hypothesized that negative events would be recalled as having a greater duration than neutral events (H1). We additionally hypothesized that negative, but not neutral, events would be recalled as being longer than the true duration (H2). The results supported H1 while failing to provide evidence in support of H2. Together, the results bolster the importance of emotion, especially negative emotion, in shaping how we remember the temporal unfolding of the past.

Authors, Books, and Beyond: A Conversation with Traci Sorell About Contenders: Two Native Baseball Players, One World Series

Authors, Books, and Beyond: A Conversation with Traci Sorell About Contenders: Two Native Baseball Players, One World Series

Does Pool Performance of Elite Triathletes Predict Open-Water Performance?

The capacity of laboratory tests to predict competition performance has been broadly researched across several endurance sports. The aim of the present study was to analyse how pool swimming performance can predict the result of the swimming segment in triathlon competitions and compare predictability differences based on competition level and distance. Eighteen male triathletes participated in the study. Three were ranked world-class, ten elite/international level, and five highly trained/national level. A total of sixty-one graded multi-stage swimming tests were conducted. Blood lactate was measured to calculate the following hypothetical predictor variables: speed at lactate threshold 1 (LT1), speed at lactate threshold 2 (LT2), and speed in the last repetition of the test (SL200). The following data were collected for a total of 75 races: time in the swimming leg (TSL); position after the swimming leg (PSL); time difference with the first triathlete after the swimming leg (DFT); and final race position. The race levels were divided according to participant levels as follows: world series (WS) (n = 22); World Cup (WC) (n = 22); Continental Cup (CC) (n = 19); national championship (N) (n = 5); and local race (L) (n = 5). Based on distance, they were divided into Olympic distance (OD) (n = 37) and sprint distance (SD) (n = 38). A moderate to strong positive association was found between LT1, LT2, SL200 and PSL and TSl at all race levels except for the SD CC, SD WC, and OD CC races, where no or weak-to-moderate correlations were found. The present study demonstrated that performance measured in a graded multi-stage pool lactate test can predict performance in a triathlon swimming segment. This finding is highly useful for coaches as it can help them to obtain a reliable measure of the triathlete's specific capabilities in the swimming leg.

How Changes in Team Performance Impact Team Identity

Abstract: Despite a wealth of team identification research, little scholarship has focused on how considerable changes to a team’s performance may impact the meaning of the team identity (as such a meaning is understood/ exposited by in-group members). To this end, we examined fans of a historically poor-performing team that had reversed course, becoming a winner. We conducted semi-structured interviews with supporters of Major League Baseball’s (MLB’s) Chicago Cubs to explore how the team’s 2016 World Series (i.e., championship) win had impacted supporters’ identification with the team. We noted two primary themes defining how the team identity had changed: (1) different expectations for performance following the championship; and (2) the team’s new success representing a threat to interviewees’ understanding of the team identity meaning. We also observed constants in the composition of the team identity, factors unchanged by the success. We make our primary contribution by addressing the role of considerable team performance changes in the meaning of team identity.

Cross-Culture Communication of Japanese Animated Films in China Within the New Media Context

Compared to traditional media, new media is characterized by openness, personalization, segmentation, and cost-effective global communication. It provides a wider platform for films and enables individuals to explore cultural identity within a vast digital community. This paper focuses on cross-cultural communication of Japanese animated films in China, specifically analyzing Sezume directed by Makoto Shinkai. By examining distribution channels, promotional strategies, and narrative elements, the study first illustrates how new media offers opportunities and challenges for cross-cultural film communication. Furthermore, it explores how Sezume skillfully utilizes cultural context to reduce cultural misunderstanding, then apply linguistic symbols and non-linguistic symbols to integrate the world series narrative framework with universal thematic expression. Finally, the paper presents recommendations for the cross-cultural communication of animated films: adopt all-age positioning and harmonize global appeal with Japanese tradition and feature; value fans and make long-term commitments with them; collaborate with local agencies in target audience countries; maintain distinctive artistic style and convey universal themes.

Research and development of a cross-platform application for watching movies and TV series with Chat GPT AI integration

The article presents the results of the research and development of a cross-platform application for watching movies and TV series with Chat GPT AI integration. In today's world, choosing movies and TV series is becoming increasingly difficult due to the huge amount of content available. Users are looking for tools that will help them find and enjoy interesting films and TV series. The main contribution of this article is the presentation of a developed cross-platform application that combines the ability to watch movies and TV series with ChatGPT artificial intelligence. The app provides unique features including powerful search and content filtering, personalized recommendations based on user preferences, and the ability to interact with ChatGPT for recommendations and communication. We take an in-depth look at key aspects of the app, including its functionality and user interface, and provide technical details and solutions used in development. Particular attention is paid to machine learning technologies and algorithms used to improve the quality of recommendations and enrich the user experience. This article not only introduces the entertainment aspect, but also demonstrates how combining entertainment and artificial intelligence can make the user experience in the world of streaming content more interesting and satisfying. We invite readers to review the research details and technological aspects of this innovative project.

‘God Bless Joan Payson’: The Surprising Coverage of the First Woman to Buy a Sports Team

Joan Whitney Payson developed an extraordinary relationship with the press after becoming the first woman to buy a sports team in North America. As owner of the New York Mets from their inception in 1962 until her death in 1975, Payson made baseball writers feel appreciated, inviting them to help choose the team’s name, hiring a manager they loved, acquiring players they knew, and presenting them with World Series rings. One reporter who treated Payson well ended up on the Whitney payroll, hired by Joan’s brother, the publisher of the New York Herald Tribune. For half a century, Payson’s habit of downplaying her role with the team has produced an inaccurate public image of an uninvolved figurehead. This paper consults the Whitney family papers, period coverage, and original oral history interviews with players and sportswriters to reveal previously uncovered factors that prompted flattering coverage of ‘the mother of the Mets’.

Placing ‘moderns’ in a ‘classic’ series: the case of J. M. Dent’s Everyman’s Library

AbstractThis study offers a reappraisal of Everyman’s Library, the mass-market series of world 'classics' launched by the British publisher J. M. Dent & Sons in 1906. The collection’s reliance on the 1842 and 1911 Copyright Acts has fostered a misconception within literary studies: namely, that reprint series were ‘impervious to novelty’. Conversely, I argue that ‘liveliness’ and ‘timeliness’—being in line with current trends and (re)printed at the right moment—became fundamental ‘classic’ attributes during the interwar years. Everyman advanced a rhetoric of the ‘new’ besides a rhetoric of the ‘old’, based on the idea that what consecrated both terms was only the passage of time, a gaze from the future. When Dent’s series started featuring more contemporaneous authors, the American Modern Library (1917), formally considered its modern(ist) alter ego, began including more ‘classic’ literature instead. Both series exploited the tension between ancients and moderns as profitable: Confucius and Horace were advertised as ‘the classics which are still modern: the modern works which have become classics’. Exploring the blurry boundaries between ‘classic’ and ‘modern’ as marketing categories, this paper draws on the J. M. Dent & Sons Records, Chapel Hill to bridge the gap between modernism and mass production.

Poster 370: Pitcher Utilization Patterns in NCAA Softball as Compared to Baseball

Objectives: Pitch counts have become a hot topic in baseball over the past two decades since being linked with injury risk. While the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has yet to enforce a pitch count rule for participating baseball teams, multiple organizations including the MLB’s Pitch Smart provide age-based guidelines for limiting risk of injury in baseball pitchers through utilization of pitch count limits and rest time. These are generally enforced for youth and high school baseball players. No such recommendations exist for softball despite evidence showing that the underhand windmill pitching motion is not nearly as physiologically benign as once thought. The aims of this study were to compare the patterns of pitcher utilization between elite collegiate baseball and softball teams. Methods: Data was collected from the publicly available websites of baseball and softball teams which participated in the NCAA Division I softball and baseball College World Series from the years 2016 through 2021. The year 2020 was excluded due to a shortened season related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Team data collected included total number of athletes and pitchers per team, including only those pitchers listed as having >0 innings pitched for the season. Data collected for each individual pitcher included the season total number of innings pitched and total number of game appearances. Total pitch counts were not available on a majority of publicly available team websites for both softball and baseball. Unpaired student’s t test was used to compare normally distributed data, and a Wilcoxon- Mann-Whitney Test was used for non-normally distributed data. A P value <0.05 was considered statistically significant for all calculations. Results: Forty softball teams and forty baseball teams, with 158 softball pitchers and 612 baseball pitchers were included. Baseball team rosters averaged significantly more total players, more pitchers, and a greater percentage of their roster was made up of pitchers as compared to softball teams, as summarized in table 1. The range of pitchers per team is notable, with baseball teams listing 12 to 24 pitchers as compared to softball with 3 to 7 pitchers per team. The average percentage of baseball rosters comprised of pitchers is more than twice that seen in softball. On an individual level, it is apparent that softball pitchers see considerably more playing time than their baseball counterparts, with significantly more innings pitched and appearances per season, and greater innings pitched per game as summarized in table 2. Again the range within these data points is striking, with a maximum of 134.2 innings pitched in a season by baseball pitchers as compared to a maximum of 287.0 innings in softball. Only 7.35% of baseball pitchers threw more than 100 innings in a season as compared to 43.70% of softball pitchers. Conclusions: This analysis of elite collegiate baseball and softball teams highlights a significant discrepancy in the physical expectations of their respective pitchers. Due to the significantly lesser representation of pitchers on softball rosters as compared to baseball, each individual pitcher sees a higher pitch count overall and per game, and by playing in more total games, sees less recovery time as well. The tie between pitch count and injury risk is well established and respected within baseball, and further injury-based research should be conducted to consider support of similar limitations for softball pitchers. [Table: see text][Table: see text]

Analysis of the Tampa Bay Rays Sister City Plan based on Urban Catalysts Theory

In MLB, small market teams have fewer fans and relatively less access to resources, and even less opportunity to gain exposure. Whether it's the fan base, the team's financial resources, the size of the market or the size of the benefits received, small market teams can't compete with big market teams. In this environment, the Tampa Bay Rays have managed to bounce back. Since 2008, the Rays have made the playoffs six times in 14 years, and two trips to the World Series. However, such a strong team has a sluggish ball market that does not match the booming sports atmosphere. Therefore, in order for the team to further expand its popularity, attract more fans, and thus gain more economic benefits and tap into the huge market potential, the Tampa Bay Rays propose a sister-city plan and has caused widespread controversy. This study attempts to discuss the future development direction of the team through the theory of urban catalyst, from the two aspects of team development and urban promotion, and put forward the best interests of the future development of the Tampa Bay Rays.

Stolen Dreams: The 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars and Little League Baseball’s Civil War by Chris Lamb

Reviewed by: Stolen Dreams: The 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars and Little League Baseball’s Civil War by Chris Lamb Robert Greene II Stolen Dreams: The 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars and Little League Baseball’s Civil War. By Chris Lamb. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022. Pp. xxii, 344. $34.95, ISBN 978-1-4962-1945-9.) The history of sport in American life has long been an important place to explore how race, sectionalism, and politics collide. While books such as Jules Tygiel’s Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy (New York, 1983) and Adrian Burgos Jr.’s Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line (Berkeley, 2007) showcase the interplay of sport, cultural, and political histories, Stolen Dreams: The 1955 Cannon Street All-Stars and Little League Baseball’s Civil War offers another excellent example of this approach. For Chris Lamb, the story of the Cannon Street All-Stars is a stand-in for the larger story of the civil rights struggle in South Carolina. Describing this story of young Black boys who were not allowed to compete in South Carolina’s Little League tournament due to Jim Crow segregation as “inextricably linked to postwar Charleston,” Lamb has written an important history of a Little League ball club and a narrative of Charleston’s long and vexed history of racism (p. 3). The civil rights movement’s history was partially shaped by Jackie Robinson’s 1947 desegregation of Major League Baseball. Whether one argues for a “long civil rights movement” thesis or posits that the civil rights movement as we know it began in the mid-1950s, it is clear that Robinson’s symbolism was a crucial marker for Black American activists and their white liberal allies. The story of the Cannon Street All-Stars, like the slow desegregation of the majors after Robinson’s arrival, illustrates the halting pace of desegregation across American society in the 1950s and 1960s. As Lamb points out, the Cannon Street All-Stars were denied the right to play against white teams in South Carolina just a year after the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision. In another historical irony, the team traveled to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to accept an invitation to watch the Little League World Series—after being denied a chance to play for it—the same week that Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi. One of the strengths of Lamb’s work is his ability to tie the earlier history of Charleston as a slave port and a flashpoint during Reconstruction to the plight of the Cannon Street All-Stars. For instance, Lamb highlights the Charleston Baseball Riot of 1869. Sparked by a confrontation on a baseball diamond between Black baseball fans and Charleston police, it became both a moment when the Reconstruction-era dreams of Black Americans were confronted with the reality of powerful support for white supremacy and an example of how much baseball was intertwined with American political struggles during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Lamb does an exemplary job of showing how the Cannon Street All-Stars served as a nexus of both change and continuity in South Carolina’s history of racism. For example, he reminds the reader that the white teams’ refusal to play the Cannon Street All-Stars led to the creation of Dixie Youth Baseball, a segregated youth league that “didn’t become integrated” until after its founder’s death, and that continues to play tournaments today (p. 197). He also points out that the Cannon Street All-Stars became an example of how the public [End Page 382] memory of the past is actively shaped by the public. Lamb tells the story of researcher Augustus Holt, whose investigation into why Dixie Youth players (including his son) wore Confederate flags on their uniforms in the early 1990s led to his becoming a prominent voice for greater recognition of the All-Stars in Charleston. Stolen Dreams works as a history told at the intersection of sports, civil rights, and southern memory, reminding readers of how often those fields are closely woven together. Robert Greene II Claflin University Copyright © 2023 Southern Historical Association