Highs and Loes

Kucks and books

For many years I’ve wondered whether Billy Loes or Johnny Kucks was the stupidest man in professional baseball, and now it turns out that all along it was I. [fn 1]

I thought that if an institution said that it would “reduce its operating budget” it would mean that in a future fiscal period total expenditures would be less than they were in a previous fiscal period.

How stupid could I be?

When an institution says that it will “reduce its operating budget” it actually means that the institution has “a target on a subset” of its “overall institutional budget plan.” [fn 2]

Of course, how could anything be more obvious?

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[1] I would like to thank Princeton for the “I” at the end of that sentence, but the credit actually goes to my mother.

[2] A quotation from the long-awaited answer to my letter to Princeton’s financial triumvirate (see “Anyone in there?”, 7-3-10 post).

Anyone in there?

Polo Grounds scoreboard

Long rectangular, black-and-white scoreboards hung from the upperdeck facades in right and left field at the Polo Grounds. Being completely manual, they were tall enough and thick enough to accomodate a scorekeeper and a supply of numbered insert-boards (and lettered boards as well, with abbreviated team names). I speak primarily of the left field scoreboard. I don’t know if I ever saw the one in right field, as we always sat below it, in the $1.10 grandstand seats behind Mandrake. I can see, or imagine seeing, a head looking out from an open half-inning frame in the left field scoreboard. When an event occurred the keeper pulled out the blank, black board and replaced it with a number—for instance, a zero for a half-inning shutout or a “4” at 3:58 p.m. on October 3, 1951. I wonder if the scoreboard keeper ever posted that “4”, or if he just pulled out a random board, stuck his head out, and watched the madness, along with the rest of us.

The information on those scoreboards was as timely as it needed to be. New boards were inserted whenever there was a run, a hit, or an error, and, even from out-of-town, within a few minutes after Dressen pulled Erskine in the fifth at Wrigley we could see the pitching change on that scoreboard in left field.

Now we have real-time electronics and video. In the palm of our hand on Coogan’s Bluff we could see Erskine’s face as Dressen walked to the mound in Chicago, but it has taken Princeton’s three highest-ranking financial officers a month (and counting) to answer (more accurately, not answer, or even acknowledge) the simplest of questions—to post the score for a half-inning that ended fifteen months ago.

On June 5, 2010, I sent this letter to Carolyn Ainsley (Treasurer), Christopher Eisgruber (Provost and Chairman of PRICOM), and Mark Burstein (Executive Vice President):

“More than a year ago, in April, 2009, President Tilghman announced that the university would reduce its operating budget by $170 million by the academic year 2010-2011, which begins in a few weeks.

I have been trying to determine the base from which the ‘reduction’ is being made. I would appreciate it if you would check one of the following possibilities and then return this letter to me:

· the actual operating expenses for the fiscal year 2008-09: $____;
· the 1-15-09 PRICOM projection of 2009-10 operating budget: $__;
· the 1-15-09 PRICOM projection of 2010-11 operating budget: $__;
· other; namely:___________________: $___.

Thank you.”

Hello, hanging out in left field, is anyone in there? [fn 1]

[1] I am not suggesting that the financial triumvirate is slow or dense, rather I am regretting the Branca that I have become in the eyes of my alma mater.