Month: October 2003

Several of my friends have written me this morning about the Cubs’ insane collapse last night. I avoided mentioning the fan who tried to catch a foul ball and ended up interfering with Moises Alou’s catch. Had Alou caught the ball, there would’ve been two outs on the Marlins. That’s no guarantee that Chicago would have been able to get that third out before the floodgates opened, but it would’ve made it tougher for Florida to come back. The commentators suggested that the fan deserved to be torn to shreds by Maenads, but never got around to mentioning that the Marlins still would’ve had 4 outs remaining in the game, and no one on the Cubs’ pitching staff was capable of getting an out.

If anything, the error on a grounder to the shortstop was more damaging than the fan’s interference. But it’s easier for commentators to sneer at the irrationality and enthusiasm of a guy in the stands (and the others near him who tried catching the ball) than to criticize a player who completely failed to handle a routine play. It sorta reminds me of a New Yorker article a few years ago on the psychology of the choke-job (by Mal Gladwell, I seem to recall, and focusing on Jana Novotna’s epic and heartbreaking collapse at Wimbledon, where she ended up crying on the shoulder of the Duchess of Windsor). Anyway, on to the morning’s missives:

Tom writes:

“I called Florida [to win the series] when the Cubs went up 3 games to 1, by the way. It’s inevitable. Florida’s too solid of a team top to bottom — a little power, a little fielding, a little pitching, a little speed — so they’re not going to beat themselves and the Cubs weren’t going to maintain their ungodly hitting and relief pitching for more than a few games. The Cubs just aren’t any good, and it’s amazing they got this close.

“But the best part is the fan interference. The Cubs is the ultimate wannabe know-nothing fan’s team, so having a fan act that incredibly stupidly is totally, totally perfect. If that had been the White Sox, even, they would have cleared out. Hysterical.”

(While you’re here, why don’t you buy Tom’s new book?)

My buddy Adam Taxin writes:

“Supposedly, according to the spin of Harold Reynolds, etc., any fan would do the same thing, to get a souvenir. As if Wrigley Field did not invent the phenomenon of throwing the balls with which the opposing team hits home runs back onto the field!”

(Adam doesn’t have a book out. But if he did, I bet it’d be a fun read.)

Over the years, my more intellectual friends have wondered why I watch sports. I’m a pretty devoted NBA fan, despite the low quality of play nowadays. On the first day of the playoffs last spring, the Phoenix Suns pulled off a mind-blowing upset of a win against the San Antonio Spurs (who would triumph in the series and go on to win the NBA championship). I thought, “It’s stuff like this that makes me tune in again and again.”

Now, here’s something else you should know about me: I will watch a playoff-game 7 in ANY sport. Even hockey, in which I have no interest whatsoever. There’s something about the double-elimination game that’s absolutely compelling. You might just get what happened to the Portland Trail Blazers in the 2000 NBA playoffs. Winning by SEVENTEEN points with less than 15 minutes to go, Portland put on one of the greatest exhibitions of choke-artistry ever witnessed. You could argue that the team never recovered from that loss.

And then there’s what happened to the Cubs tonight, in game 6 of their National League Championship Series. They were 5 outs away from reaching the World Series for the first time since 1945, with one of the best pitchers in baseball throwing lights-out all evening, riding a 3-0 lead. The crowd was in a state of rapture, ready to watch their team finally return to the Big Dance.

And in the span of 5 minutes, the roof caved in. The Florida Marlins dropped an astonishing EIGHT runs on the Cubs in the inning, and went on to win the game, forcing a game 7. It was a meltdown of monumental proportions. Can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like it. There’ve been implosions before (most notably game 6 of the 1986 World Series), but this one carried the weight of all that Cubbie futility.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow night. I’d still like to see the Cubs get through to the Series. That way, after my Yankees dash the dreams of Red Sox fans tomorrow afternoon, they can thrash Chicago around and incur the enmity of all those fans for generations to come.

(And, as much as I love game 7s, I’m REALLY hoping the Yankees finish off Boston in 6…)

From the October issue of my magazine:

The Monkeys (Don’t) Pause

The last two October From the Editor pages have been dominated by my 9.11 musings. I spent this year’s anniversary at home rather than the city, basically meditating and tending to my yard (puts me in mind of Candide, a little). While I believe it’s important that we hold onto the memory of that day, and try to keep snapshots of each of our worlds as they existed before and after, I understand that there’s also a strong impulse to move on to normalcy. That’s why I’d like to use this month’s column to write about another subject that’s important to me: monkeys on speed.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins recently had to retract the results of their hastily published experiments involving the effects of methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, a.k.a. ecstasy) on monkeys and baboons. The researchers found evidence of massive dopamine-linked neuron damage, leading to death or Parkinson’s syndrome-like symptoms in many of the subjects. Making a big splash in the War On Drugs, the lab published its results in Science magazine. Many teeth were gnashed as the media latched onto the story of how ecstasy use was going to leave our youth brain damaged, shaking with Parkinsonian tremors.

After all, the experiment–intended to measure the results of three “modest” doses of the drug–led to two of the 10 monkeys dying shortly after their second or third dose of the drug, and two others growing too sick to take the third dose. Six weeks later, dopamine levels in the surviving animals were still down 65%. The subjects, in short, were wrecked.

Faced with such chilling results, ecstasy advocates and some scientists pondered how the results could possibly mesh with real-world experience, given that we’ve yet to see an epidemic of this syndrome among hardcore ravers, casual users, or at my alma mater (see my Jan/Feb 2002 From the Editor column).

And that’s when the scientific method came into play. It turns out the researchers were unable to replicate their results in two subsequent experiments (oral dosage and IV), throwing their findings into question. An investigation revealed that the MDMA sample was mislabeled. Rather than injecting the monkeys with ecstasy, the scientists injected them with methamphetamine (a.k.a. speed). “Oops,” is right. The dosages employed, coupled with intravenous delivery, made the results a lot more explicable.

To its credit, the research team published a retraction of its findings. Still, the swiftness with which they reported their initial results has triggered a mini-firestorm about the political implications of the study (and, of course, its government financing). Why the results of the experiments were published before they could be replicated is certainly something to ponder. In fact, it all feels like a postscript (or prescript, given the location in the magazine) to this month’s Issue by Issue column by contributing editor Wayne Koberstein (Pharma Science Feels Outside Forces, pp. 32-36). Were the researchers more interested in science or anti-drug propaganda? It’s an issue that I fear we’re going to face more frequently in the future.

Another contributing editor, Derek Lowe, wondered about the practical aspects of this drug study on his blog:

I’m really taken aback to learn that they hadn’t looked at the original monkeys for MDMA levels before now. Getting blood samples from monkeys is no easy task, but why wait until there’s a problem to do the post-mortem brain levels? Those numbers really would have helped to shore up the original results–and would have immediately shown that there was a problem, long before the paper was even published. I don’t like to sound this way, but it’s true: in the drug industry, we consider pharmacokinetic data like this to be essential when interpreting an animal study.

My own objections to the results may be more observationally based. Now, perhaps these researchers didn’t have too much experience around recreational drug users, but it would seem to me that you could tell pretty easily whether a creature that so closely parallels human behavior was on ecstasy or on speed. It would probably be as easy as seeing if the monkeys were all touchy-feely or if they were jabbering around a mile-a-minute about their theory on how to square the circle.

Gil Roth
Editor

This morning, I helped change the fuser kit on the color laser printer at the office. The new one emitted this terrible burnt-plastic smell.

“Wow!” I said. “It smells like an action figure just farted!”

That is all.