THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I’ve had many people explain it to me, but I still can’t really see why this is a particularly interesting story.  Athlete marries trophy wife, athlete cheats on said wife, athlete gives phony sounding apologies when he gets caught.  That sounds to me about one step above dog bites man.  Yes, I know Tiger had a squeaky clean image, but I would have thought we knew enough by now to not really give that kind of thing any credence.

This isn’t to say, of course, that Tiger isn’t a jerk.  Of course he’s a jerk.  It just seems like he’s a jerk in a fairly mundane way.

Leaving all the politically correct bullshit aside...I don’t understand why at this point, he is trying to double-back over a burning bridge. Obviously he prefers a certain lifestyle. The conditions he will have to meet to save his marriage will undoubtedly be punishing. Why subject yourself to a decade of misery? For what?

Just admit to yourself and everyone else that maybe you aren’t the family type and get on with it.

I just don’t understand why people are so interested in this.  I like to watch Tiger Woods golf - I’ve never seen a better golfer.  This isn’t a story about golf, though.  What Tiger does outside of golf...well, that’s his life.  I don’t know the guy, have never even been within 10 miles of him as far as I know.  It doesn’t affect me or anyone I know...someone let me know the next time Tiger plays golf.  Thanks.

Brian/2: right, exactly.  Some people have to lie and cheat because circumstances put them in such a position that they think that’s the best way they could live their life.  Maybe they’re not happy with their spouse, but neither do they want to rock the boat and so if life could be better.  They “settled” for the best deal they could get.

Tiger however had the whole world as his oyster.  He could literally pick and choose the best spouse he could have hoped for.  He had no reason to cheat and lie.

And yet, he still did.  And the reason is because he’s a grade A assh-le.  That is who he is.  And now he’s going to “change”?  Only exceptional people change.  Tiger is nowhere close to that level of human being.

I was waiting for a “non sports” post concerning this exact topic for the past month.  And to tell you the truth I was expecting the worst.  I was expecting a post that would spin Tiger as the victim or make some attempt at defending Tiger Woods.  I was expecting the Serena Williams blog entry, or the Henry Louis Gates blog entry… but I am so very happy to read that the mods nailed this one to a “T”.  Good job!
vr, Xei

Good job Tango.  Way to make sure that you were expressing the right views.

What I don’t get is how this became such a huge issue.  I was discussing it with some non-sports-fans over the weekend, and I was able to completely eliminate their shock just by having them google the following names:

- Kobe Bryant
- Magic Johnson
- Shawn Kemp
- Steve Garvey
- Dan Quinn
- Marv Albert

Obviously, I could go on (and did).  Pro athletes have always had a girlfriend in every major-league city plus prospects in expansion cities.  They’ve often presented very squeaky-clean images a la Garvey.

Seriously.  Other than provide me with a slightly entertaining joke ("What’s the difference between Tiger Woods and Santa Claus?” “Santa stops after the 3rd ho"), who cares?  Like others have said, is it a surprise?  It’s funny, the only people who I know who care about this don’t know a thing about sports; they’re girls who watch the MTV reality TV garbage. 

Honestly I could give a crap about what an athlete, rock star, or president does in his personal life.  Can he still swing a golf club?  That should be the only thing that matters. 

Does he deserve to pay a price?  Sure, his family life is ruined and he will lose hundreds of millions of dollars in sponsorship deals (and possibly in the divorce settlement).  I’d argue he didn’t deserve that money in the first place, because only fools will buy something because a famous person is paid millions of dollars to endorse it.

Anyway, this is between him and his wife, and I wish people who had nothing to do with it didn’t care, so there would be no story for the reporters and paparazzi.

I don’t get why Tiger Woods got married in the first place.

Exactly.  Derek Jeter has been able to stay out of this only because he never married.

On your conception of one’s values, are they properties that arise out of the way one behaves?  It does not require much additional charity to assume that “I have not been true to my values” means that he holds certain ethical principles and did not act in accordance with them.  I’m not sure I see anything mystifying here.  He could certainly hold true the claim that “fidelity to one’s spouse is morally obligatory” but, due to weakness of the will, fail to act in accordance with his belief.

Socrates held that one will always act in accordance with one’s conception of the good - so evil is a matter of ignorance about what the good actually is.  Aristotle pointed out that this fails to account for akrasia, or weakness of the will.  We often know what the right thing to do is, and fail to do it.  Tiger’s apology seems like a fairly straightforward acknowledgement of that.

Jon/8: As I said in my first post, I basically feel the same way you do.  however, I think President’s are fair game for that kind of thing.  They’re in a position where it’s important to act ethically and responsibly - so for the voting public, it does matter what they do in their personal life, because that does reflect their values as a person, which is important for their job, in my opinion.

Also, it might be true that only fools make conscious decisions to buy products endorsed by someone like Tiger just because they endorse it, but marketing isn’t effective because of the conscious impact it has - it’s effective because of the subconscious impact it has on consumers…

As for why he’d go through all this baloney to stay married… well, it seems perfectly reasonable to me that his wife is worth it.  She seems like quite a caring woman, very attractive of course, and given that she was a nanny before becoming married, is probably a pretty good mom to their kids.  So maybe another 50 years of hooking up with the 3rd best looking woman at a club, or whatever his strategy was in accumulating that lineup, just doesn’t seem as appealing as 50 years with his wife.

On the other hand, Elin married a future billionaire pro athlete.  We talk about regressing to the mean all the time on this site.  What is the probability of cheating, among the population of professional athletes?  I’m not saying she should have whipped out a graphing calculator before saying “I do”, but if 90% of professional athletes in Tiger’s level of fame/stature/money end up cheating on their wives, can she really claim to be surprised by this?  Can we really claim to be surprised by this?

As I said to a coworker the other day… the biggest thing I take out of this whole story is the following: Tiger Woods is one of the most well-disciplined people on the planet.  He is married to someone that is perhaps near his equal in terms of percentile of attractiveness as a partner… I mean, they’re both like 99.999999th percentile, right?  If there was anyone out there who had no reason to cheat, or who was strong-willed enough to avoid cheating, it would be him.

So if he still cheats… what does that tell us about how we as a whole are wired?  What does that tell us about what we might do, if we were presented with the opportunities that he was?

Forgive me for a dissenting opinion, but now who is playing the part of the Holy Writers laying down judgment?  If this was France, where the mistress of the former head of state attends his funeral right next to his wife, would this be an issue?  You are always accusing America of being backwards and intolerant, until this time.

And do you think Bill Gates wouldn’t stoop down to pick up $1000 lying on the street just because he has billions?  Walk a mile in his shoes, my friends.

And while I’m at it, I’m reminded of the skit from Eddie Murphy’s “Raw” where he says he’s going to get a wife from the African savannah, but after this woman has a taste of America and talks to American women, she wants half of what he owns.  “HALF!” Elin was a nanny before she met Tiger, and now she has a mansion in Sweden accessible by private boat, and is in the process of trying to get hundreds of millions more, just so she can go after him with a golf club again?

jm/11: “but, due to weakness of the will, fail to act in accordance with his belief”

Do as I believe, not as I behave.

***

Dude: it’s one thing to have one liason one time.  But, c’mon dude.  You may as well use the same defense for any person anywhere in the world.  How about f-cking a woman right in front of his wife?  What if he did that?  You can use the same excuse.

His actions tell us what he actually believes.

***

Jim/14: my “judgement” is calling Tiger out as a fraud, taht having sex a few hundred times with several women that are not his wife is not some “lapse” in judgement.  It establishes exactly his values as a person. I’m saying it establishes exactly who he is.  Instead of accepting it, he somehow tries to do more spin.

That’s the same process I have with the Holy Writers: they are not who they say they are.  The Holy Writers are people like you and me, and yet, they think they have a higher calling to protect something.

I’m not the one who is trying to pass judgemetn on these people.  I’m the one to call them out that they should stop being so full of themselves.

10: i dislike derek jeter for many things but i do have to give him credit for having at least half a brain when it comes to this type of thing.

deadspin had a pretty interesting look at the alleged super rich and the road beef cottage industry they support. http://tinyurl.com/ygq2mbk

link has racy photos and may be not safe for work but no nudity etc.

so tiger is a big POS, no argument from me, but does the public humiliation suffered by ellin give her the right to bash his head in with a 3-iron?  if the roles were reversed i think there would be a little more attention paid to that.  also doesnt that just bring more attention to what i’m presuming she’d rather not be out in the open.

Not trying to speculate, but if the confessions (from the adulteress’s mouth) are true, then Woods knowingly and repeatedly has sexual intercourse with at least one woman without using protection. Nobody knows if this was the pattern of behavior, but I don’t know why he would use protection with some and not others. Assuming he is not a complete moron and knows the serious, potential dangers involved with being very promiscuous and very unprotected, it speaks volumes about his character.  Having unprotected sex with that many “loose” women (assuming there were more than one) is like playing Russian Roulette with himself, the mistresses, and his wife.

#17.  So true… and add Tigers kids to that list.  He could’ve easily given HIV to his wife and unborn kid(s).

To me, he cheated on not only his wife, but also his kids.  Different kind of cheating obviously.
vr, Xei

Frank@17:

“He could’ve easily given HIV to his wife and unborn kid(s).”

He could have given his wife herpes, and probably did; HIV, not so much.  The rate of HIV infection among heterosexual women in the 1st world, even skanky ones, is incredibly low. 

Also, mother-to-child HIV transmission is mostly preventable in the US - once you determine that the mother has HIV (which would happen early on in her pregnancy), there’s a whole course of treatment, the cost of which would be inconsequential to a guy like Tiger.

"The rate of HIV infection among heterosexual women in the 1st world, even skanky ones, is incredibly low.”

This is true, but is it worth taking that risk?

seems to me his mistake was getting married in the first place.  I see nothing wrong with his lifestyle—heck, I’d love to go after women like that all the time too—but why the heck did he get married and get tied down.  I’ll be Jeter is as free-wheeling as Tiger, if not more so, but Jeter is smarter in that he didn’t promise anything to one woman (in terms of a ring).

@20 - would I take that chance?  No f-ing way.  But there are plenty of people who do. 

But the odds are pretty low.  The HIV prevalence among non-IV drug-using white women in the US is approximately 0.005% (I believe the women were all white?) So sleeping with 12 women regularly leaves him with a 0.06% chance of getting HIV.  This is an overestimate by at least an order of magnitude because it includes prostitutes.

On the other hand, with herpes infection rates at approximately 25% among American women, he has a greater than 50% chance of having picked it up (it’s relatively tough to transmit female-to-male).

I think that if you have sex with an HIV infected woman, your chances of contracting it are still quite low, so that it is actually a lot less than .06%.  In fact, according to this web site:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/895/what-are-the-odds-of-getting-aids-from-ordinary-heterosexual-sex

Your odds of contracting AIDS from sleeping one time with an HIV infected hetero partner are 1 in 500. And that might if the man is HIV infected. If the woman is HIV infected it may be a lot less.

So if you sleep with 12 low risk white women once each, your chance of being infected with HIV are .00014%.  If you do that say 20 times (sex 120 times all together), it is:

.003% or 1 in 33,000.

MGL, I think you are going backwards.  If it’s 1 chance in 500 of being infected, then it’s 499/500 of not being infected.

You take THAT number, raise it to the power of 120, and you get 78.6% of not getting infected.

Or 22.4% chance of getting infected.

21.4

What do you guys make of the HGH allegations?  I feel like there’s not a lot of value added to using HGH for a golfer.  The amount of strength training they are doing is at a level where it should be relative simple to become “strong enough” without using any of the big bad supplements.

#26. Quicker recovery from injury?
vr, Xei

When are you “strong enough”?  If you can drive the ball 310, you want to drive it 320.  If you can drive it 320, you want to drive it 330.

You can say there’s not a lot of benefit of it… maybe slightly longer drives, maybe slightly quicker recovery time (golf does put a lot of stress on the legs and joints as well).  But I’d argue, there’s not a lot of reason NOT to.  Golf only recently began testing for anything, and I think they’re still relatively in the dark ages about these things.

If I were forced at gunpoint to lay a line as to the likelihood that Tiger used HGH or steroids, I’d say 80% chance he did/does.

I would suggest that there are definite diminishing returns to strengthening in golf.  At some point the only way to get stronger is to add bulk and eventually that bulk is going to inhibit golfing skills. 

Of course, I’m thinking about this from my own perspective, in my early college years I think I was probably at the maximum balance between strength and flexibility needed for golf.  I did that using chocolate milk as my recovery drink and eating a diet that was healthier than my peers but by no means rigorous.  The risk/reward doesn’t look right to me.  The recovery time is a fair point that I overlooked.

You take THAT number, raise it to the power of 120, and you get 78.6% of not getting infected.

Or 22.4% chance of getting infected.

That’s only if they’re all infected.  Really, it’s a .005% chance of them being HIV positive, multiplied by a .2% chance of you contracting it from them if they are…

Tango, I did it the right way.  I assumed that the women had a .005% chance of being infected (according to Hawerchuck) and that if they were infected, that Tiger had a 1 in 500 chance of getting infected per sexual encounter (according to the website I referenced).

Arguing whether HGH or steroids are useful in golf is about as fruitful as arguing whether they are useful in baseball.  I play tons of golf.  As in baseball, strength and flexibility are important. Lots of golfers work out in the gym these days. If HGH or steroids can cause you to hit the ball a little further without sacrificing much of anything else, it is a big advantage.  Obviously if they can help you recover from injury more quickly, it is also an advantage.

i know very well that there are some men who are just flat out male sluts.

ok

but what i do NOT understand is, if you are the kind of man who likes to screw hundreds of women, and can get what he wants, why on earth get married?

or IF you want to get married so that you can project a certain image, why on earth not marry a woman and make it a business arrangement? i mean, tell her it is strictly a business deal and have an actual contract.

that way, you can have all the ***** you want without worrying about what is the “wife” gonna think?

if you want kids, pay for a surrogate (like sarah jessica parker and michael jackson did) and then hire the nanny to take care of them. you don’t have to give half your money to a wife you don’t want in the first place.

i don’t completely buy the - need a wife for The Perfect Image: tiger woods was endorsing everything in sight BEFORE he got married. he didn’t need a wife to maintain any sort of image.

i actually think that most (male) sports fans LIKE the fact that their athlete heroes marry the hot chick (hopefully, a stripper, blond with enormous youknowwhats) and then have all they want on the side. they want to identify with that lifestyle, especially if they don’t have the money, looks or charisma to carry it off themselves and they are stuck with the fat, nagging shrew and their screaming kids.

i notice that baseball players who are squeaky clean and marry a not particularly attractive woman and are faithful to her and their kids (and also have the effrontery to belong to a christian church) are not particularly popular with fans (see lance berkman and albert pujols.)

as for elin hitting her s***head husby doo with a golf club,

all i can say is
hehhehheh.

beats (hahahaha) the heck out of the old frying pan.

as for the AIDS thing, i sure do love stat guys talking about it…

Right.  John-john got married when he was nearly 36.  Jerry Seinfeld was 45.  George Clooney got married when he was 28 and divorced a few years later (before E.R.), realizing that it’s better for him not to be married.  And Derek Jeter.

The problem is committing yourself, and then being a lying douche-bag about it.

Shaq for example (who doesn’t love Shaq?) admits that he’s 99% faithful.  I love that he said it.

It’s the phoney-baloney bullsh!t from Tiger Woods that’s the problem.

"What do you guys make of the HGH allegations?”

I’m not an expert on the subject, so someone feel free to step in if they can correct me or know more about it, but from what I’ve seen it appears the research doesn’t support the notion that HGH actually makes you stronger.  Anabolic steroids obviously do, but HGH does not....

B

there is exactly ZERO evidence anywhere that an athlete in HIS early 30s who takes HGH has ANY change in ANYTHING except the size of hands/feet/jaw from shooting up.

why on earth it has this rep as some sort of performance enhancer i do NOT know