This is rather interesting for several reasons:
The ability to predict how players’ bodies will fare is a holy
grail. With an actuarial approach, [Dodgers’ trainer Stan] Conte seems
to have a head start in the pursuit. He is trying to build a formula
that will give teams a competitive advantage and help them avoid
players who spend their days in the training room and not on the field.
Interesting because, obviously, if there’s any merit to the research, it could revolutionize the game.
Interesting because Conte makes a big point that he’s coming up with
this formula “on his own time,” rather than during business hours,
which suggests to me that he’s going to try and make a buck off it
himself someday rather than have it be the intellectual property of the
Los Angeles Dodgers. As your attorney, Mr. Conte, I advise you not to
put any down payments on phat real estate yet, because the law has a
very different idea of what belongs to you and what belongs to your
employer in such situations.
Interesting because, if it works and benefits the Dodgers, it will
necessarily harm their division rival, the Giants. Why is that
interesting? Because Conte was the Giants’ trainer back in the Barry
Bonds years. Moreover, Conte was famously undercut by his boss Brian Sabean
when Conte went to him complaining about drug dealers hanging out in
the locker room back in 2000. Basically, he asked Sabean if it were OK
to kick Greg Anderson out of the locker room because he was a known
steroids dealer. Sabean didn’t object. But then Conte, no idiot, asked
Sabean if he’d have Conte’s back if Barry Bonds got angry about it and
tried to have him fired. According to the Mitchell Report, Sabean
basically told Conte that he was on his own if that happened. You don’t
have to be genius to see that Sabean’s baloney in this regard set up
Conte as a potential scapegoat in the event someone ever raised a
ruckus about the Giants’ tolerance of Anderson, Bonds and steroids (“I
told the trainer to do what was necessary. If he didn’t . . . “). It is
for trying to throw his own people under the bus, more than any dumb
trade he’s ever made, that everyone should loathe Brian Sabean, and it
is for that reason that I hope Conte’s little formula works and ends up
killing the Giants.
Finally, it’s interesting in that, no matter how good this ends up
being, it’s going to be of somewhat limited utility because of the
prevalence of sheer dumb chance and freak accidents.
Speaking of which, check out the kid on the far right of this picture
laughing at Ryan Dempster breaking his toe. I wonder if Conte can
figure out a formula that calculates the severity of the beatings he’ll
take from the kids at school once the pic starts circulating.
