Retirement Conference for Colin Please

Unfortunately, I just checked and I am still COVID positive, so regrettably I will be missing the retirement conference and party for my Oxford colleague Colin Please. (Alhough I am far from perfect, I feel well enough to have attended if I weren't still testing positive. I may chat with some people during a break outside and from a safe distance.)

A more general thing to point out, and it relates to the fact that I already interacted with Colin several years before he joined the Oxford faculty — I wonder if he remembers my antics during the 'mock tutorial' part of his Oxford interview? — is that I have always admired and enjoyed just how tightly know the British applied-mathematics community is. People across some many of the institutions know each other really well and often "randomly" show up at events in nearby cities even when their affiliations are different. I miss that.

Congratulations to Colin on his retirement!

Mathematican–Footballer John Urschel Retires Abruptly

Mathematical and National Football League (NFL) player John Urschel has retired abruptly after the release of the latest chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) study.

It's too bad that he won't continue pursuing both careers, but I have to say that I feel warm and fuzzy about passion for mathematics being such an important facet of his decision. (And his publication record for somebody at his career stage is very impressive even before considering the fact that he's simultaneously been playing pro football, which then makes it astounding.)

"I think it hurt my ability to think well mathematically," Urschel said. "It took me about three weeks before I was football-ready. It took me a little bit longer before my high-level visualizations ability came back."

(Tip of the cap to Eric Eager.

Congratulations to Hall Daily on his Retirement!

Hall Daily, Caltech's Director for Government Relations, is retiring after a long tenure on the job.

Back in my undergrad era, Hall Daily was also the advisor for The California Tech (our student newspaper), of which I was a writer and co-editor. I learned a ton about journalism from Hall. He too someone who was someone who Autumn Looijen and I purposely earmarked as getting one of our free copies of Legends of Caltech III. He was an awesome advisor, and I owe a lot to him for my communication and journalistic skills. My experience with The Tech was probably more important for my career than any math or science class I ever took.

Some Tributes to Vin Scully

Vin Scully is retiring at the end of the 2016 regular season, his 67th year of broadcasting Dodger games. I have listened to Vin all of my life (ever since I can remember), and that covers only a bit more than half of Vin Scully's career. (He's had the longest career of any broadcaster in any professional sport.) Wow! And Vin is the best of all time.

As Vin's career winds down, I have (especially in the last couple of days) seen various tributes on my Facebook feed, so I am going to put some links to some of these here—partly just so that I can have a few of them in one place. I should have compiled a few I saw over the last couple of weeks, and I'll add some of those when I see those links again.

Here is are stories compiled by Jayson Stark.

Here is a video from Baseball Tonight.

Baseball-reference.com has posted a discussion with a statistical trip through Vin Scully's career.

Update (9/23/16): I hadn't caught this before, but Vin has broadcast more than half of the games that the Dodgers have ever played. Wow! (I am listening to the live presentation of the presentation at Dodger stadium honoring Vin Scully.)

Update (9/23/16): Here is a rank-ordered list of the "top 20" Vin Scully calls of all time. As I write this, numbers 1 and 2 haven't yet been listed, but they are not at all surprising: number 2 is the end of Sandy Koufax's perfect game, and number 1 is (obviously) Gibson's home run. The reason I put "top 20" in quotes is that fans were given a list of 20 moments and then voted among the given list of 20. That's a bit cheesy, though some of my favorite moments and a few other obvious ones are among the memorable 20.

Update (9/24/16): Here is an article about the tribute to Scully. Also, I happened to notice that #vinscullyday was trending on Twitter yesterday.

Update (9/26/16, about 1:03 am): The Dodger players have Vin Scully a great tribute during today's game, which we won in the 10th inning on a walk-off homer to win the National League West for the fourth year in a row. I haven't yet gotten my cable tv working in LA, so I listened on the radio, although for most of the game I couldn't hear much because my friends and I were busy building my furniture for my apartment. I'll need to catch some video clips of the game.

Update (10/01/16): Here is an article in the New York Times about the "archive of oddities" that Vin Scully leaves behind.

Update (10/02/16): Vin's final broadcast finished a little while ago. You can see my comments about it in this blog entry, where I also link to a few other goodbyes.

Prince Fielder's Baseball Career is Over

While Prince Fielder hasn't technically officially retired, he has announced that his playing career is over because medically he will never be able to play again.

As this graphic illustrates, Fielder finishes his career with very similar statistics (including the same number of home runs) as his father Cecil. I guess it's the circle of life. This is pretty cool, and they are the same type of player. I do like how Prince makes Cecil look positively sleek with this pair of pictures.

Also, because of their defensive "value", the two Fielders (despite their monicker) also both have "high" ranks among the players with the lowest Wins Above Replacement (WAR) for all Major League players with 300+ home runs.

Several other notable sluggers are also finishing off their Major League careers. Alex Rodriguez is playing his last game this coming Friday, Mark Teixeira is retiring at the end of the year, and David Ortiz has been doing a retirement victory lap all season. Of these sluggers, only Ortiz is going out on top of his game.

More Retiring Baseball Players

Recently, I blogged about Adam Dunn's likely retirement. Understandably, Derek Jeter's retirement tour has gotten most of the major headlines --- and deservedly so. And as much as I can't stand the Yankees (and sometimes get annoyed by all of the jeterating), Jeter deserves immense respect, will make the Hall of Fame in a first-ballot landslide, and I love it that his last game at Yankee stadium had a storybook ending. I'm also not surprised that the The Onion has had a series of articles during the last week poking fun at Jeter. (They have a history of doing that, like the time that I discussed in this blog entry.) I also want to bring up Paul Konerko, who has also has had an excellent career. (When Konerko was a prospect, the Dodgers traded him for Jeff Shaw. Sigh.)

"Mathematical Genealogy and Department Prestige"

Here is my latest winning entry in Chaos's Nonlinear Science Gallery. It's also apparently my final one, as (sadly) the competition has been discontinued.

My coauthors on this paper are Sean Myers and Peter Mucha.

Also, I'd like to give a special shout out to Chaos staff member Janis Bennett, who is retiring in a couple of days and with whom I have corresponded about numerous of my papers since I submitted my first paper to Chaos in 1999. That paper was the first scientific paper that I ever published (the final version came out in 2000). [Previously, I had submitted a paper from my undergraduate research to a couple of places, but it got rejected.] People like Janis, who need to put up with people like me, don't get enough credit for their hard work.

(Several means something like a dozen, by the way.)

Tony LaRussa has Retired

Wow, I didn't see this one coming: Tony LaRussa announced his retirement today. He goes out on top, as he just managed the St. Louis Cardinals to a World Championship. Next stop: Cooperstown.

(Tip of the cap to my brother Adam, who sent me an e-mail about the news while I was busy tutoring.)

So Much for my American League "Comeback Player of the Year" Prediction

Some of you might remember that I recently predicted that Manny Ramirez will win the American League Comeback Player of the Year award. Well, never mind.

As it turns out, Manny seems to have run afoul of Major League Baseball's drug policy again and has decided to screw it and retire as an active player.

It looks like my preseason baseball predictions are well on their aware to being an epic failure.

Oh, and for those of you familiar with certain happenings back in the day at Beverly High, maybe the most appropriate one-line comment is: "Where have you gone, Rico Brogna"? (Most of you won't understand this comment, but a select few will.)

Trevor Hoffman Has Retired

Trevor Hoffman announced his retirement today. He is the all-time Major League Baseball saves leader, though Mariano Rivera will eventually pass him. Hoffman has a very good chance to make the Hall of Fame someday, but it's usually iffy when it comes to relief pitchers. (Rivera is in a class by himself and will make it easily.)

Ken Griffey Jr. has retired

Ken Griffey Jr. has announced his retirement, effective immediately. He's going to baseball's Hall of Fame, but he's a shell of his former self and it was past time that he retire. See you in Cooperstown!