Romancing the agate page

The Amazonian gods and UPS smiled upon me today with gifts of knowledge. While I'm sure the kind and timid UPS lady is completely unaware, she is delivering me from ignorance.

Just three pages into "Reading the Sports Page: A Guide to Understanding Sports Statistics," I am armed with new jargon. Such as, the agate page, which prior to was just a looming spread of figures that has mocked me since junior high. A mess of numbers from which I could only distill the most basic information- wins and losses.

A challenge since junior high, my friend Steven Kirby, once waved the agate page under my nose and proclaimed, "Just look at this game!" While he could hardly contain his excitement, I could hardly contain the blush of embarrassment rushing over my cheeks. My eyes feverishly searched the numbers for any tangible salvation, at best I discovered Kirby's favorite high school baseball team won and it was a close game; obviously, not the depth of observation my friend was hoping for. Thankfully, Kirby, mistook my blush and bewilderment for excitement and awe. With a sweeping "Wow Kirby, looks exciting! Tell me about the game," I lured all the information from Kirby that I could not from the gloating page of numbers.

After receiving the play-by-play and some side information, I was captivated. Those sprawling numbers expressed much more than I thought possible. So I challenged Kirby, "You didn't really expect me to get that much information from those tiny numbers, did you?" His response shocked me, everything but the smell of the field is in those numbers. My disbelief got the better of me and I challenged Kirby to recreate a game for me from the numbers in the corner, a game I was sure Kirby had not seen. Kirby overcame my challenge brilliantly, he even spackled in holes with the colorful information sports fans collect- such as, Johnson's a fast pitcher but what really shakes the batter is his towering presence on the mound.

Since then, I have always been fascinated by the collection of numbers falling across the page. Unfortunately, I have lacked the ability to decode the numbers, and while a vast number of my friends and acquaintances are profound at translating them, somehow their skill just hasn't transferred. They assure me, however, that "It's so easy!" (Condescending jerks! Shame I can't replace them with one click shopping. ;-) But thanks to Amazon and the UPS lady, I will in the future be writing stat infused sports stories that venture past my previous superficial knowledge. Wish me luck.