Browsing by Subject "Baseball"
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Item Addressing the lack of Baseball Consumption amongst African Americans(2013-08-06) Brown, Brandon LeighThe African American consumer represents a valuable market segment in the United States. This target market possesses both substantial purchasing power and future growth potential. Yet, baseball marketers have failed to secure the African American target market as a viable consumer base. As such, marketers should understand what factors encourage African Americans to consume sport, and what factors deter African Americans from consuming baseball. Thus, the purpose of my study was to advance the literature by investigating the factors influencing African American baseball consumption. African American participants were surveyed in order to ascertain the motivational aspects they perceived to be present (or absent) in both a favorite sport and baseball. Results suggest that African American participants believed baseball failed to contain the following motivational factors: skill, drama, aesthetic value, group entertainment, family value, escape, and cultural affiliation. Still, of the factors measured, results suggest that the factors, ?skill? and ?drama? were the two most influential factors motivating participants to consume sport. The current study utilized a set of focus group interviews to identify what factors, if any, deterred baseball consumption amongst African Americans. Results suggest two broad categories best represent the reasoning for a lack of baseball consumption: perception of baseball and socio-cultural dynamics. Within these two categories, six general dimensions were found that best characterized the reasons for not consuming baseball: A perceived lack of excitement in baseball, a perceived lack of skill in baseball, a distaste towards baseball?s structure, a lack of access for young African Americans, African American player representation, and African American players in pop-culture. The current study examined African American attitudes towards baseball consumption by investigating the role of perceived fit and its association with the theory of reasoned action. The study utilized an experimental design to investigate if racial identification and identifiable motivational factors would influence perceived fit. Results from the study indicate that advertisement setting (i.e., advertisements containing identifiable motivational factors) was not influential upon perceived fit; yet, endorser race did moderate the relationship between advertisement setting and perceived fit. Subsequently, perceived fit was found to be influential upon attitudes and subjective norms. Furthermore, these factors ? attitudes and subjective norms ? were significantly related to intentions to consume baseball.Item Analysis of covariance: the treatment of subjects as groups in an illustrative application with a baseball model(Texas Tech University, 1979-12) Williams, Larry RobertKim and Kohout (19 75) have noted that most texts devoted to a discussion of analysis of variance and/or covariance routinely assume that the collected data are experimental in nature and employ random assignment. However, social and behavioral scientists are increasingly dealing with variables which are nonmanipulative and designs which are observational rather than experimental. Wildt and Ahtola (1978) have proposed that analysis of covariance has numerous potential applications for behavioral research even though it has not been frequently utilized for problems in the various social science disciplines. Therefore, the major motivation behind this study was directed toward broadening the social scientist's currently restricted range of utilized methodologies and encouraging opportunistic and creative exploitation of unique measurement possibilities, especially with regard to the statistical technique of analysis of covariance.Item Comparison of prediction methods for batter-pitcher matchups(2016-05) Thakur, Siddhartha; Bickel, J. Eric; Hasenbein, John J.Baseball is full of confrontations and these confrontations between a batter and the pitcher is what makes the game. If a formula would be able to predict the probability of the outcome correctly, when they meet, wouldn’t it instill confidence in the minds of the head coach (or you if you are playing the fantasy) to select someone who would be on the winning end? We would like to know for sure, which of our batters are good, and what out of the small amount of possible outcomes, will be the result when he faces this other good pitcher from the team you face next. It seems the past performance of the batter against this pitcher can be a good indicator, and that is what presumably the methods currently used utilize. But the utility of the Batter vs. Pitcher data in predicting the future outcome is a debate going on for quite a time now. The reason for this debate stems from the fact that the sample size of this data is so small that it becomes hard to comprehend when to prefer information you get from a sample size of thousands of atbats against all pitchers vs. maybe a few dozen against specific individuals. The report will discuss one of the famous methods, called Log5 [1] that has been utilized so far when it comes to measuring the outcomes of these confrontations. It also discusses the other methods like logistic regression based on the past data and the new and upcoming Morey-Z. [3]Item Dogging it at work : developing and performing organizational routines as a minor league baseball mascot(2015-05) Birdsell, Jeffrey LaVerne; Browning, Larry D.; Berkelaar, Brenda L; Streeck, Jürgen; Brummett, Barry; Green, B. ChristineReferring to an employee as “the face” of an organization suggests that an individual worker’s actions may transmit information about the kind of organization they represent. Mascots in a baseball stadium make that metaphor material by wearing an organizationally prescribed mask and performing in the name of the organization (Keller & Richey, 2006; MacNeill, 2009). This study investigated how one baseball mascot, Spike of the Round Rock Express, embodied his team’s identity through the activation of organizational routines by analyzing video recordings, autoethnographic field notes, and stories (Heath & Luff, 2013). Recognizing the highly symbolic work of a mascot work has implications for the performer, audience members, and organizations who rely on mascots to enhance the stadium experience. Additionally, this research provides suggestions for future mascot performers on how they might come to “know your role and play it to the hilt” (Devantier & Turkington, 2006). Organizational routines combine three recursive dimensions: the ostensive, understandings an employee brings to his or her work, the performative, actions an employee takes while doing his or her work, and the artifactual, material objects an employee uses or creates in order to facilitate work tasks (Feldman & Pentland, 2003). This research begins with an exploration of how I developed occupational and organizational role expectations. In order to know my role, I had to learn Spike’s identity: what he must do, may do, and can do (Strauss, 1959; Enfield, 2011). I specifically recognize the ways I came to understand my role as someone who embodies the mission of the organization through the preparation of artifacts for performance and protection of the audience for whom I am performing. The performative dimension is explored by identifying instances when my performance challenged established understandings of Spike’s identity, specifically in instances where I was unprepared for a scenario or chose to protect one group’s interest over another’s. In these unanticipated moments, I often found myself turning other participants in the stadium event, like fans and coworkers, into co-performers and relied on their improvisational offerings to inform my ongoing performance (Eisenberg, 1990; Meyer, Frost, & Weick, 1998).Item A game within the game : an ethnographic study of culture and student-athlete recruitment at a Division I university(2010-12) Stephens, James Edwin, 1977-; Maxwell, Madeline M.; McGlone, Matthew; Dailey, Rene; Browning, Blair; Pfiester, AbigailThe success of a college coach to develop winning teams and a winning culture in any sport largely depends on his/her ability to recruit and strengthen the skill levels of his/her student-athletes. The following ethnography of the Eastern Hawks baseball coaches seeks to describe the culture of this organization during two consecutive seasons including the recruitment of student-athletes and the management of the current players on the roster, and to also detail the coaches’ use of compliance gaining and aspects of communication in their interaction with the recruits and their families. To investigate these issues, an ethnographic study was performed with a Division I baseball team called Eastern University. Numerous individual interviews were conducted with the staff and later transcribed. Team functions, games, and events were also attended for data collection. Results indicate that the organizational culture of Eastern Hawks baseball was initially created through artifacts such as facility improvements, game rituals, and performance requirements. The observed culture is being negatively influenced by espoused values and basic assumptions that run contrary to stated and desired goals. Leader-member relationships were regarded as predominantly low during this study accentuated by unfulfilled expectations of performance. The coaches used various compliance-gaining methods in recruiting student athletes but were most successful when targeting prospects who valued education, had parents who also valued education, and who believed they would fit in with the culture present at Eastern. The coaches implemented strategies that were pro-social and also reduced excessive apprehension. When competing against the professional draft, the staff provided metaphorical statements to prospects and their families that which sought to highlight social identity. Coaches compared the negative effects of turning pro early as opposed to developing personally and athletically at Eastern.Item Moving in Choctaw time : baseball and the archive in LeAnne Howe’s Miko Kings : An Indian Baseball Story(2012-05) Lederman, Emily Ann 1985-; Cox, James H. (James Howard), 1968-; Cvetkovich, AnnLeAnne Howe’s second novel, Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story (2007), brings together story, theory, performance, and document to create an archive that positions American Indians in the center and foundation of American culture, shifting the meaning of the “All-American Pastime” and reclaiming baseball’s American Indian history and pre-colonial existence. While a student at boarding school, Choctaw time theorist Ezol Day draws a picture of a tree with an eye at its base and six others floating around its seven branches, gazing in multiple directions. She refers to this tree as a part of herself that allows her to see patterns and develop theories of relativity based on Choctaw temporality. I read this image as indicating a particular depth of sight, representative of looking around, beyond, and through colonial archives and histories to form a Choctaw archive, an act that I argue is part of the project of Howe’s text. In this paper, I use the eye tree as a theoretical lens to examine how Choctaw storytelling and temporality can reframe colonial documents so that they tell a different history. Reading through colonial archives demonstrates their instability; in other words, using these documents to see American Indian histories renders clear the narrow construction of colonial narratives. The histories seen through this archive allow a reimagining of the past that impacts the present, as Howe’s novel suggests that engaging with these histories can strengthen a sense of Choctaw identity and nationhood. Miko Kings presents archiving as an active process of creation that has far-reaching implications across time and space.Item Retrocession, partition and sporting communities in fractured societies : baseball in Taiwan and Gaelic games in Ireland, 1884-1968(2011-12) Harney, John James; Li, Huaiyin; Chang, Yvonne; Hsu, Madeline Y.; Metzler, Mark; Oppenheim, Robert; Traphagan, JohnThis dissertation examines the roles of popular sports baseball and Gaelic Games in Taiwanese and Irish society respectively between the years 1884 and 1968. During this period, the spread of each sport in popularity and the subsequent increased profile in the public realm highlighted similar challenges faced by the societies of each territory as inhabitants of minor players in a global political system dominated by major powers. The development of Taiwanese baseball and its spread in popularity during the colonial period reveals the extent to which divisions between colonial Japanese and local Taiwanese blurred beyond the parameters of governmental efforts at coexistence and assimilation. Two teams in particular, the Nenggao team of 1924-25 and the KANO team of 1931, give evidence of a colonial Taiwanese sporting culture that featured strengthening connections with sporting culture in Japan. In both cases, baseball displayed potential as an integrating force in colonial Taiwanese society between social groups resident on the island rather than as a source for opposition to colonial rule. This is in direct contrast to Irish society, where the resurgence in popularity of Gaelic Games occurred within the political context of exclusivist nationalism. Gaelic Games existed as cultural markers of an Irish culture defined by a Gaelic ethnic identity and political commitment to an Irish nation state, choosing to ignore the realities of partition and the existence of a sizable Loyalist community in the north of the country. This viewpoint persisted until the late 1960s, when the eruption of paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland irrevocably changed the terms of Irish political participation. At the same time, Taiwanese baseball transitioned from a shared cultural form between Taiwan and Japan to a potent avenue for emerging Taiwanese political voices in 1968 with the widely celebrated success of the Hongye schoolboy baseball team. Baseball’s popularity had persisted in the face of ambivalent attitudes among ruling Guomindang officials following retrocession, but the Hongye victory marked the introduction of specific political overtones to Taiwanese baseball, bringing an end to decades of the sport’s primary role as an act of public participation with limited political connotations.Item Selected Safety Factors: Impact and Transmission of Impact Provided by Baseball Batting Helmets(Texas Tech University, 1973-08) Young, George CliftonNot Available.Item Strength and its relationship to throwing a baseball for distance and accuracy(Texas Tech University, 1969-08) Saunders, MarkThe purpose of this study was to determine if actual strength in the hand, the arm, and the shoulder when compared with strength in the lower portion of the body contributed significantly to the performance of throwing maximum distances and to throwing accuracy from various distances. Thirty varsity baseball players, participating in organized high school baseball at Coronado High School, Lubbock, Texas, v/ere divided into three groups of ten. Each group consisted of varsity players who ranged in ages from 15 to 18 years. The groups were formed as follows: The participants were placed into groups by conducting a throwing test for distance. The players were ranked from one through thirty and were arbitrarily chosen 1, 2, 3, and 1, 2, 3 until the thirty subjects were placed in their respective groups. Group I (N=10) participated in all baseball fundamental drills such as hitting, fielding, throwing, and running. This practice session covered a duration of approximately one and one-half hours. Thirty minutes running and lower body weight training followed. Each individual was required to run five 50-yard sprints. This group also did ten repetitions of knee bends with gradual addition of weights, leg lifts with gradual addition of weights, and Jump rope (20 second intervals). Group II, however, dedicated thirty minutes to throwing weighted baseballs (10 ounces) and to conducting wristrolls, forearm curls, bench presses, and push-ups with progressive weight addition. Ten repetitions of each were performed each day of the training program. Subjects followed their respective programs for two months, three times weekly. Group III participated only in the daily baseball workout with no special training afterwards. All subjects were given a throwing test at the beginning and at the end of the two months period. Ten throws were made at each of the three distances to a target three feet in diameter placed four feet above the ground. The three distances were 75j 90, and 105 feet, and the target was of a circular shape. A total of thirty throws was made by each participant. The three-foot target size was decided upon because an average player can cover this area to fulfill a catch. Each of the members of the three groups also threw three times for distance, and the longest of the three throws was used in cybernation. There were no restrictions on how the ball was to be thrown in relation to form. Each of the balls thrown in accuracy testing and distance testing was retrieved from the ground in order to fulfill the act of throwing after fielding a batted baseball. The findings were as follows: 1. The effects of lower body weight training for eight weeks did not yield statistically significant differences in increase of throwing distance and accuracy within the group. 2. The effects of the upper body weight training for eight weeks did not yield statistically significant differences in increase of throwing for distance and accuracy within the group. 3. The effects of the control group with no training for eight weeks did not yield significant differences in increase of throwing for distance and accuracy within the group. 4. There was no statistically significant difference between the groups in the improvement of throwing distances. 5. There was no statistically significant difference between the groups in the improvement of accuracy from 75^ 90, and 105 feet. The following conclusions were reached from the findings of this study: 1. There was no statistically significant difference between any of the three groups tested in this study (lower body weight training, upper body weight training, and control group). 2. There would seem to be no Justification for conducting weight training programs to improve throwing accuracy and distance during the course of a season in basesball.Item A summer wildfire : how the greatest debut in baseball history peaked and dwindled over the course of three months(2011-05) Reynolds, Colin Thomas; Dahlby, Tracy; Minutaglio, Bill; Sheinin, DaveThe narrative itself is an ageless one, a fundamental Shakespearean tragedy in its progression. A young man is deemed invaluable and exalted by the public. The hero is cast into the spotlight and bestowed with insurmountable expectations. But the acclamations and pressures are burdensome and the invented savior fails to fulfill the prospects once imagined by the public. He is cast aside, disregarded as a symbol of failure or one deserving of pity. It’s the quintessential tragedy of a fallen hero. The protagonist of this report is Washington Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg, who enjoyed a phenomenal rookie season before it ended abruptly due to a severe elbow injury. But from a broader perspective, this report considers the current state of baseball in American society. The immense anticipation of Strasburg’s debut in early June of 2010 was unprecedented and his success sparked the public’s interest. But the 21-year-old failed to seize our adoration and his injury left many disappointed and disengaged. During a time when the casual baseball fan was disinterested and even the devoted felt disenchanted, Strasburg provided a brief reprieve from the controversies and allegations. Americans could connect with their beleaguered National Pastime once more. Although Strasburg is the driving force, his role as “savior” could have been bestowed upon anyone. Nothing about his personality or looks or charisma garnered him such high esteem, but just his uncanny ability to throw a baseball. On the surface he is just a young prodigy in a long line of highly touted successes and failures – and he certainly won’t be the last. In essence, the star alone does not compose the story, but rather it’s the ideology surrounding him. Lastly, Strasburg’s narrative is still unfinished. As in any tragic tale comes the hope of redemption. This unknown conclusion is fitting for a baseball narrative where every year begins afresh and endless possibilities emerge. As essayist Alexander Pope once noted, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” The same is true in baseball.Item The relationship between peak performance and motivation in college and high school baseball players(Texas Tech University, 1996-12) Magers, Jason GrantThe purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between peak performance and motivation. Subjects for this study consisted of 40 baseball players (21 high school & 19 college). Each subject completed the Sport Motivation Scale (SMS), followed by the Experience Questionnaire dhected towards an average performance, and finally, the Experience Questionnaire directed towards their best performance. Based on the difference score on the Experience Questionnaire directed towards their best performance and their average performance subjects were categorized as peak or nonpeak performers. For both high school and college basebaU players scores from the SMS, for intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and scores from the Experience Questionnaire for the best performance for peak performers and non-peak performers were correlated. This resulted in four correlations for each group; the four correlation scores were (1) peak perfomiers best performance score and intrinsic motivation, (2) peak performers best performance score and extrinsic motivation, (3) non-peak performers best performance score and mtrinsic motivation, and (4) non-peak performers best performance score and extrinsic motivation. Finally, a coefficient of determination was calculated to determine to what extent the motivation scores influence performance scores. Results suggest that controlling and informational aspects of motivation such as scholarships, and skill level may play a role m the relationship between peak performance and motivation.