Baseball, The New York Times, Amy Coney Barrett discussed on Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast

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I think chasms is a better. I mean, it doesn't really sound quite right. It has weird mouth feels a word, but casmus. I get jammed up with purposely because it sounds to my ear as if someone is saying that they mean the opposite they're saying without purpose, purpose, less anyway. Here we are. I'm a professional editor. It's fine. Last thing I wanted to mention, my friend and colleague from the ringer Zach cram tipped me off to The New York Times's quiz of like faces that their readers recognized from 2021. It's the do you recognize these notable people of 2021 quiz? And so it is various famous people who were the subjects of stories in 2021 for one reason or another. This was posted on December 16th. And so it has the results. So it's just a whole lot of public figures from various fields. And Shohei Ohtani is one of these faces and figures. Would you care to guess what percentage? Now this is just a times readers who voted in this poll. I mean, you don't necessarily need to be a subscriber. It's just anyone who saw this New York Times quiz, which you care to guess what percentage identified, shohei Otani from his head shot. This is going to bum me out, isn't it? Possibly. Can I ask a question? You can tell me if this gives too much away. What was the average rate of identification? Do we know? Don't know. I know that at the high end, I mean, you had Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Leading the way at 94%. And then at 2%, you had playwright, Jeremy O Harris, and 3% and actress from squid game. So it really runs the gamut. I don't know exactly what the average is. But there's a wide range that they use the whole scale. It's not like the scouting scale, where you have 80s or 20s. I'm gonna guess 36%. You overshot that. No. Multiple of three. Really? 12%. Recognized. Show how tiny. Yeah. Shohei, who I just saw. Is he in uniform? See, that's the thing. You can only see his head, but his head is sporting an angel's cap. So he's wearing a baseball cap, which you think would probably help. Baseball cap, baseball player, even if you don't know the angels insignia. You think that might be a clue, but it's tough. Just today before we started recording, I saw that when The Associated Press's male athlete of the year award, which was an award, I totally knew existed before today. But I think LeBron won it in 2020 and now show you a tiny one. So he's like, clearly a crossover figure. I mean, the fact that he's on this quiz at all, I guess is a bit of a victory for baseball because I would guess that in many years or most years notable baseball people as far as like The New York Times readership is concerned. I do think that this is probably a reflection of the voting pool here as much as it is of Otani. I mean, I don't know that the percentage in the general population would be dramatically different from this, but I would guess that in the general population you would not have say 5 times as many people recognizing Amy Coney Barrett as showing like I don't think I think that's probably has something to do with The New York Times readership and the people who are coming to the times for sports coverage as opposed to news and politics and such. So I'm going to guess that Amy Coney Barrett being at 63 in Ottawa being at 12 doesn't necessarily reflect the American population as a whole, but it is sort of depressing and that I want everyone to be aware of show hirotani and to be able to recognize him. But I'm going to chalk this up partly to the medium here. Yeah, I imagine that your average ESPN viewer probably has a better sense of Otani, right? Because he was just such a huge story in sports. And so while the times has a sports section, which is quite good, you know, if that's not what you're going there for, you know, if you're going for political news and to figure out how to make a galette, then you're perhaps not as in tune with the sport page. But yeah, I would imagine that if you're asking the general population and that population watches sports TV and some capacity, especially the panel shows that they would have a sense of who Otani is. And you wonder, you know, how do the other athletes do? Were there other athletes? So there were other athletes, the most recognizable according to this quiz Simone Biles was up at 79. And of course, you know, she was a big story, not just because of the Olympics and her performance there, but also her deciding not to perform in some events and the whole conversation. That sparked, then you had Aaron Rodgers at 42 and he also has other reasons maybe white people are aware of him. Not only is he a big NFL star, but he also guest hosted jeopardy and then became the subject of a whole COVID controversy as well. So you had that. And then Sunni Lee, the gymnast was at 20. So you had an NFL player and two gymnasts were the most recognizable. Now, here's I guess if you want to look at this from a baseball supporter perspective and be heartened. So I don't know whether this is encouraging or discouraging, but there was a three way tie at 12% or at least if you don't go out to other decimal places or Tony was at the top of the 12% heap tied in a virtual tie at least with Doja Cat and virtual app low. So wrapper slash singer and fashion designer who passed away this year. So I don't know if that helps you calibrate things. But then maybe somewhat surprising at 11%, so just below Otani is Yanis onto the and you might think, well, NBA MVP who won a championship and was the subject of a bestselling biography by one of my colleagues at the ringer would be more name recognition. And again, I don't know if there is something like xenophobic aspect to this, possibly, or not even like xenophobic, but just people being more aware of people who are from certain places or look certain ways, let us say. But it could also be market size. I mean, you have a Milwaukee Bucks star, maybe not as visible as on some big Easter West Coast team. With a tiny you could say, well, he wasn't in the playoffs and the angels weren't good. Obviously, with Yanis, you can't say that, but maybe you say small market, something like that or maybe he kind of broke out in a big way and hadn't been as huge a star for years and years and years. So still, though, you would think that generally NBA player like you always hear of the NBA to star driven league, whereas MLP is not. And so you would probably expect the big basketball start to be above the big baseball star, and so I guess, in a way, that is kind of encouraging, but also not really, because more people should know about both of those guys..

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