Giving the ball back?

[BuckeyeGuy]

OK, but isn't it odd that you don't have a competing theory, or that no other competing theory has been presented?

Not even a little odd. It is not necessary to have an alternate explanation to be skeptical about a belief, or even conclusions drawn from facts.

Initial question/observation: cats eat, I wonder why?
Prediction: cats will eat when they are hungry.
Hypothesis: cats attempt to obtain food at times when their body metabolism is in need of caloric input.
Null: cats eat at any time for no particular reason.
Experimental design: dunno, not a cat behavoirist
Collect data: (cats eat when hungry, and eat when they are bored)
Analyze data: (simple ANOVA?) cats eat more often when hungry, but the variance is not significant (p>0.05)
Present conclusions: Cats do eat when they are hungry, but we fail to reject the null hypothesis.

In this case, what everyone believes is actually ambiguous. The point is that we cannot know until we know, and that there's a difference between believing a thing to be so, and knowing it is so.

Running way afield here lol!

A response from tOSU:

"Hi Ray, I received your question from Tyler. Typically the team is allotted a certain number of game balls per game/series. In order to keep the game rolling along and avoid not having any balls to use in the field of play, we collect all of the foul ball as well as home run balls. It is common practice at most college softball and baseball games."

I followed up by asking if it's a money/budget issue, as well as to suggest offering a trinket to the little ones to encourage the practice. I doubt I'll get a response, but will post it if I do. From the above response, money does not appear to be the sole motivating factor.

 

[chinamigarden]

Not even a little odd. It is not necessary to have an alternate explanation to be skeptical about a belief, or even conclusions drawn from facts.

Initial question/observation: cats eat, I wonder why?
Prediction: cats will eat when they are hungry.
Hypothesis: cats attempt to obtain food at times when their body metabolism is in need of caloric input.
Null: cats eat at any time for no particular reason.
Experimental design: dunno, not a cat behavoirist
Collect data: (cats eat when hungry, and eat when they are bored)
Analyze data: (simple ANOVA?) cats eat more often when hungry, but the variance is not significant (p>0.05)
Present conclusions: Cats do eat when they are hungry, but we fail to reject the null hypothesis.

In this case, what everyone believes is actually ambiguous. The point is that we cannot know until we know, and that there's a difference between believing a thing to be so, and knowing it is so.

Running way afield here lol!

A response from tOSU:

"Hi Ray, I received your question from Tyler. Typically the team is allotted a certain number of game balls per game/series. In order to keep the game rolling along and avoid not having any balls to use in the field of play, we collect all of the foul ball as well as home run balls. It is common practice at most college softball and baseball games."

I followed up by asking if it's a money/budget issue, as well as to suggest offering a trinket to the little ones to encourage the practice. I doubt I'll get a response, but will post it if I do. From the above response, money does not appear to be the sole motivating factor.

The way I read it money appears in the second sentence. Typically the team is allotted..... Who does the allotting and why? My bet, The athletic department and because of costs.

 

[BuckeyeGuy]

The way I read it money appears in the second sentence. Typically the team is allotted..... Who does the allotting and why? My bet, The athletic department and because of costs.

And again, you're guessing. There is no mention of money, only an alotted number of balls. He could have said that they have and alotted amount of money to buy balls, but he didn't. You might be right, but we cannot know from the information given. We can infer, guess,

I will modify my previous statement that the statement from the school makes it appear that money is not the only factor:

It might be that "In order to keep the game rolling along..." means there are factors outside of money, but if the slowing of the game is due to missing balls, and the return policy is budget/money based, then that is simply a consequence and not a factor.

 

[Lenski]

So, you go from your dd would be crushed if she had to give back a ball because to them, they view it as much more than just a ball.......to suggesting offering a trinket for a returned foul ball? What happened to being crushed if they had to return the ball? Obviously getting a little micro Brutus or a temporary tattoo will not take away the crushed feeling of having to give the ball back, right?

 

[riseball]

If giving away a few balls every home game will make or break a program I submit that they have much bigger issues to contend with in order to be successful.

 

[chinamigarden]

This conversation is starting to take on a does a rise ball rise type of feel.

 

[BuckeyeGuy]

So, you go from your dd would be crushed if she had to give back a ball because to them, they view it as much more than just a ball.......to suggesting offering a trinket for a returned foul ball? What happened to being crushed if they had to return the ball? Obviously getting a little micro Brutus or a temporary tattoo will not take away the crushed feeling of having to give the ball back, right?

If my DD caught a foul ball and had to give it back, she'd be kinda crushed...

You say that like you think one cancels the other. It doesn't. I never said, nor did I imply that a trinket in exchange would remove the disappointment DD would feel. It might reduce the disappointment, but it would be unlikely to remove the feeling entirely (mainly because we've been to a lot of minor league BB games and have been close to catching a few fouls and HR's - the idea of keeping the ball is in her head because of me). In fact, the reason I even suggested it was to try and get a response form the school on whether or not the policy is money based. A little subterfuge, if you will.

New email from the school:
"I believe it is budget driven. You could easily lose $100 or more per game just on balls. We give out face tattoos for each foul ball returned as well."

So, still no difinitive answer, only beliefs, but a belief from a source at the school. I concede that it is likely a money thing, though I agree with riseball that that amount shouldn't be a program breaker.

I didn't see the face tatoo place, probably just missed it.

 

[Softball_2]

Sources? Or just guessing? 20 balls/game? I saw maybe 5 that went out of play foul (not going to mention how many TTUN hit over the fence), 3 into the stands last game I was at.

I know that in 2011 OSU had a $126 MILLION budget for athletics (How Profitable is Ohio State University Athletics Department? -). $7,000 is 0.0055% of that. I cannot find the athletic line item budget used there, so I don't know what % $7,000 is of the softball budget. Nor am I convionced that the school pays what I do for the balls, but I have no data to back that up. So I'll use $7,000 as an arbitrary number, but I don't believe it's that much.

As for the uni's, nothing is free. If Reebok is donating uniforms, then they can take that cost and apply it to buying some balls.

Not convinced it's about the money until I see numbers not pulled out of thin air.

As for the uniforms, some things ARE free, especially if your athletic department's football team is one of the best in the country and play all of their games for a national television audience. They have an athletic department-wide Nike contract. I don't work for OSU, so I can't speak to specifics, but typically the revenue generating sports are getting free uniforms and the non-revenue generating sports are getting theirs at wholesale. If the Softball division of Nike has chosen OSU as one of their marquee teams (which I'm sure they have not) then they, too, would be getting free uniforms. Like Oregon. Or Alabama.

Perhaps I overestimated the amount of balls used in a game, but I likely severely underestimated the amount used in practices/camps for the year, so $7000 is probably a fair enough estimate. My educated guess is that OSU softball operates within a budget that separates their travel expenses, recruiting expenses, and equipment expenses and does not allow overlap. So if they don't choose to spend $2500 on a recruiting weekend at ESPN Disney, they can't instead buy 29 dozen balls. (Scholarship dollars are always an entirely separate entity, so that does not need to be considered.) They are likely able to outfit their team and staff in head to toe annual travel gear, practice gear, etc. for $15,000-$20,000/year with their Nike wholesale agreement and coaches allotment. I couldn't tell you what their equipment operating budget is, but they have annual costs for bats, catcher's gear, balls, screens, machines, updating video equipment and software, protective gear, equipment refurbishing, travel bags, bat bags, etc.

Softball is an expensive sport, equipment-wise. And this answer has been given in every which way over the past six pages and to include the athletic department representative who responded to your email. They ask for the foul balls to be returned because balls cost money, and so does everything else, and they'd rather spend it on everything else.

 

[CoogansBluff]

New email from the school:
"I believe it is budget driven. You could easily lose $100 or more per game just on balls. We give out face tattoos for each foul ball returned as well."

So, still no difinitive answer, only beliefs.

Now the cat says he's hungry. But that's just his opinion.

Everything you've said is entirely logical and well thought-out, so no offense intended at all. But this has been a fun thread.

 

[BuckeyeGuy]

Now the cat says he's hungry. But that's just his opinion.

Everything you've said is entirely logical and well thought-out, so no offense intended at all. But this has been a fun thread.

More accurately, the cat said he believes he's hungry. But I'm willing to concede that p>0.5 (and q<0.5) is that money is the driver. Still seems odd to me, and I'd like to see a college softball line item budget.