Updated.
Numbers guy Nate Silver has apologized for trying to meme-slam the Red Sox over the Apple-Watch spying thing with a photo that he didn't realize included Henry Richard, the brother of Martin Richard, who was murdered during the 2013 Marathon bombings.
Silver deleted the lame meme, sort of based on that distracted boyfriend meme, only using a photo from Opening Day at Fenway Park this year that included Bill Belichick, Tom Brady (you can see where this is going) and Henry Richard and wrote:
My sincere apologies to the Richard family - I didn't know the story of the fan in the Boston jersey & I've donated to teammr8.org
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Maybe
By Fwiw
Tue, 09/05/2017 - 10:36pm
Maybe he didn't know the Martin connection when he posted the photo. I saw the original tweet and had no idea that's who was featured in the photo.
Bombing aside, what's wrong with calling out people who get caught attempting to cheat? Local team or not, they knew it was wrong.
But aside from that, how was the play?
By adamg
Tue, 09/05/2017 - 11:13pm
You're right - there's nothing wrong with calling out cheating, if that's what it was (I mean, stealing signs is a time honored baseball tradition), and the New York Times certainly did just that in ripping the lid of those seamy business, or something.
And nothing wrong with trying to riff on that. It's just that the way Silver did it was, well, not good.
Seriously do not understand
By anon
Tue, 09/05/2017 - 11:58pm
Seriously do not understand how this is cheating. I don't care about sportsball in any way but if you're waving your fingers around and making assumptions about line of sight, that sounds like a personal problem.
Is there a specific rule disallowing opposing teams from taking hand signals into account? No? Then this is stupid.
The rule is NOT that you can't take the opposing team's
By roadman
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 7:59am
hand signals into account. You just can't use devices (such as Apple watches or even binoculars) that assist you in reading those signals.
It's niggling rules like this one (and yes ALL organized sports have them) that add NO value to the game and should be abolished.
The lens and electronics rule has existed since time immorial
By anon
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 8:27am
The Giants stole signs at the Polo Grounds over the last two months of the season in 1951(ish!) to come back from over a dozen games back to beat the Dodgers. They did it with a telescope.
The Sox stole signs with the help of electronics. Everyone in baseball knows that's against the rules. Nate Silver is right to call out Boston's recent, ahem, tradition of cheating with electronics and video.
Niggling rules vs All-Drug olympics
By Gary C
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 8:57am
You need SOME rules or you end up with this:
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/updat...
If you got rid
By SamWack
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 3:53pm
of all the funny little rules in baseball, you'd have very little left. It's a quirky and peculiar game. That's why it's so great. Hooray for the infield fly rule! It was a balk, I swear, a balk!
I can't fault the guy
By Waquiot
Tue, 09/05/2017 - 10:54pm
I'd take off odds that he only knew 2 of the 3 people in the photograph. He messed up. Hopefully he'll throw a mea cupla the way of Boston and go on from there.
Sometimes people do stupid things not knowing how stupid they are.
On the other hand, he left it
By riggs not logged in
Tue, 09/05/2017 - 11:17pm
On the other hand, he left it up for hours after being scathingly called out for it.
Twitter
By BostonDog
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 6:57am
Not everyone spends every minute glued to their twitter feed. (Unlike the current President.) Sometimes people actually go a few hours without looking at their phone.
Agree
By Bugs Bunny
Tue, 09/05/2017 - 11:17pm
Outside of family/friends no one would know who that kid is without a caption. Just an honest mistake.
He owned it
By anon
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 9:46am
He massively owned it. Now its "not fast enough".
Maybe a flight to Puerto Rico will clear your head about what is important.
Did the Globe apologize for using the Richard family?
By O-FISH-L
Tue, 09/05/2017 - 11:51pm
Did the Boston Globe or their columnist Kevin Cullen ever apologize for writing that little Martin Richard died, having just run out to the Marathon finish line to congratulate his father on finishing the race? Cullen boasting that his well cultivated BFD sources shared this info over drinks with him after the race.
Of course, the father had not run the race and Martin had not run onto the finish line, but the Globe accepted the Pulitzer anyway, with no correction or apology to my knowledge. At the earliest stages of their grief, the Richard family was forced to send out a spokesman saying that (contrary to the Globe) Bill Richard hadn't run, making the Globe's dramatic story false.
No excuses for Nate Silver but at least he deleted the tweet.
Silver didn't make any excuses
By anon
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 9:48am
So WTF is your issue with The Globe, again? Blah blah TRUMP FRONT PAGE blah NICE LADY PHILIPPINES FAKE PIDGIN ENGLISH blah.
(why don't you repost that Trump Front Page - some of us are keeping score like a bingo care)
You know what, Fish
By anon
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 9:53am
NOBODY CARES
Least of all the Richard Family - and they have been asked.
Shouldn't you be headed to Florida for that special weekend Mar A Lago security detail? Trump is counting on your blowhardiness!
Funny, on election day,most
By anon
Tue, 09/05/2017 - 11:54pm
Funny, on election day,most of us figured he should stick to sports.
Maybe he's just a privileged, pampered clod who got lucky once and never deserved the deference he's received afterwards.
Silver
By BostonDog
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 9:38am
Silver gave Trump a 30% chance of winning compared with others who gave him a 1-5%. Silver also frequently wrote about how Clinton wasn't in as strong of a electoral position as others assumed.
Nate Silver is still one of the best stat analysts working today. 538 is one of the better news sites.
And
By Irma la Douce
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 10:37am
Throughout the campaign, even when Silver had Trump with lower poll percentages he always took care to say that longshot is not the same as no shot, and caution about the lack of quality or recent polling in states like Michigan.
Post updated
By adamg
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 12:09am
Silver's posted an apology.
I've got to believe that he
By ZachAndTired
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 12:16am
I've got to believe that he didn't know that was Martin Richard's brother (I didn't). I've followed Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight fairly closely over the last 5 or 6 years and something like that seems really out of character.
Also, this is totally pedantic, but 538 doesn't do any polling.
True, it's more meta polling
By adamg
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 7:42am
They look at what other people's polls mean.
If Nate Silver weren't a
By anon
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 8:51am
If Nate Silver weren't a liberal darling he would have been fired.
Fired
By ElizaLeila
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 9:03am
From his own company?
I mean technically they are
By ZachAndTired
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 9:28am
I mean technically they are owned by ESPN/Disney, but these people saying that he should be fired for this and comparing him to Curt Schilling have a screw loose. Curt Schilling was like somebody's racist uncle posting 20 offensive (and factually inaccurate if not nonsensical) memes a day on Facebook. That's a false equivalence if there ever was one. Firing somebody for one screw-up that seems to be a genuine accident would be overkill in my opinion. Plus, if you fire Nate Silver from FiveThirtyEight, you might as well just get rid of FiveThirtyEight. The website has many more writers than just him, but he's the founder and the figurehead.
Also, it's funny to me that doing empirical research and data-driven journalism makes somebody a "liberal darling." Kind of goes to show you where the other side is coming from.
He's such a liberal darling that he messed up the Bernie surge
By anon
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 9:51am
Yep. Had to go back and see why his Clinton sycophancy wasn't working ... and found exactly the issue that I messaged him about: weighting polls according to voter age and voters from prior elections was a mistake when Bernie was bringing in voter registrations.
He then stopped using the rules from the last election and was one of the closer predictors of the Trump Disaster.
Oh, but using facts, science and stats makes you a "liberal darling", eh? I used to follow him when he was a Republican.
are you kidding me?
By Roztonian
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 9:03am
The fact that Silver (a professional poller/researcher) didn't take the time to figure out who the kid was in the picture is rediculous. Note to Nate - generally, young kids aren't up at the mound for the first pitch unless there is some significant back story.
Breaking - New poll numbers just in - it's confirmed, Nate Silver is in fact, a moron.
God Bless the Richard Family.
Dudgeon on Behalf of the Richard Family
By anon
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 11:06am
Give it a rest. The family asked people to stop that years ago.
They can speak for themselves. Jesus.
Perhaps the kid was
By Waquiot
Wed, 09/06/2017 - 3:22pm
An All Scholastic baseball player.
Some kid who saved a toddler from drowning.
BLS' valedictorian.
In short, he could have been any kid. Why would Silver do deep research on a photo he was throwing up with some meme?
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