Your Brain on Cubs: Inside the Heads of Players and Fans
edited by Dan Gordon
Dana Press, 2008 eISBN: 978-1-932594-47-8 | Cloth: 978-1-932594-28-7 Library of Congress Classification GV875.C6Y68 2008 Dewey Decimal Classification 796.357640977311
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | EXCERPT
ABOUT THIS BOOK
White Sox fans were overcome with euphoria when their beloved team won after eighty-eight years of failure, and the long-suffering Red Sox Nation finally received their vindication in 2004. Now the Cubs are the only “cursed” team left: The team has repeatedly made the playoffs without ever winning the World Series for the last ninety-nine years, and yet thousands who bleed Cubbie blue pack Wrigley Field for every game. The reasons why ardent sports fans in Chicago and around the world buy expensive game tickets and memorabilia, fill stadiums, and live and die by their team’s fortunes is the subject of Your Brain on Cubs, an engaging study that delves into why sports engender such passionate emotions in us all.
A group of today’s leading science writers and neuroscientists explore here the ways that our brain functions when we participate in sports as fans, athletes, and coaches, taking baseball as the quintessential sport for all three perspectives. The contributors tackle such questions as: How does a player hit a ninety-mile-per-hour fastball when he barely has time to visually register it? Why do fans remain devotedly loyal year after year? And what allows them to believe in superstitions, such as a curse? Other topics investigated in the book include how a ballplayer’s brain changes as he gains experience and expertise, why there are a higher percentage of left-handers in the major leagues compared to the general population, and the ethical implications of neurological performance enhancement.
An expertly written and thought-provoking read, Your Brain on Cubs challenges us to reevaluate the nature of the sports fan and the athlete, revealing the scientific complexity underlying the seemingly black-and-white world of wins and losses.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Dan Gordon is managing editor of Dana Press in Washington, D.C. A native of Normal, Illinois, he has been a Cubs fan since age six.
REVIEWS
“Dan Gordon and the many contributors to Your Brain on Cubs have truly accomplished something rare in our society today. That is, combining solid science and intellectual pursuits with fun and games. The two certainly do not have to be mutually exclusive, and in our sports-crazed society, it is desirable, commendable, and entertaining to link intellectual achievement and fun together. Readers of this book will learn much and be entertained.”--Ben Carson, Sr., MD, Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery, Professor of Neurological Surgery, Oncology, Plastic Surgery, and Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
— Ben Carson, Sr., MD
“Your Brain on Cubs is a home run to deep center field! It illuminates the game from the perspectives of both fans and players.”—Bruce C. Ladd, Jr., founder, Emil Verban Memorial Society (Chicago Cubs Fan Club of Washington, D.C.)
— Bruce C. Ladd, Jr.
"It’s about time the Cubs and their fans had their heads examined. This volume explores how baseball looks through the lens of brain science and vice versa. It makes for fun and provocative reading for fans of brains and baseball alike."—Carl F. Craver, Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program,Washington University in St. Louis
— Carl F. Craver
“This book inspires me to imagine some kind of boutique neurosurgery to heal my brain, fatigued as it is by my team’s struggles. Who knows what other ideas it might spawn? Your Brain on Cubs is a great read.”—Aryeh Routtenberg, Departments of Psychology and Neurobiology, Northwestern University, and Department of Physiology, Feinberg School of Medicine
— Aryeh Routtenberg
“You do not need to be a Cubs fan to like this book. It has a delightful mix of baseball lore and information about the brain.…These insights are interesting for all of us who try to acquire new skills, and many apply to experts in other skill domains, such as musical performance.”—Ann M. Graybiel, Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Neuroscience and Investigator, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
— Ann M. Graybiel
"The title, implying a focus on the Cubs, may limit interest in a book that really embraces much more. It does look at devoted Cubs fans—and all baseball fans—and their 'brainy' obsession with the game, including their brains' ways of reckoning with loss. The essays are by neuroscientists and two or three informed journalists, and they are accessible to all interested readers. . . . This is for all curious readers intrigued by the intersection of baseball and the sciences and in exploring old topics in new ways."—Library Journal
— Library Journal
"With their frustrating ups and downs, and nearly 100 years without a World Series win, the Chicago Cubs have been messing with the minds of their loyal fans for a long time, making that club the perfect topic for a book about the relationship between baseball and the human brain. Each of the essays in this off-beat collection explores a different aspect of baseball through the prism of neurology, and each piece relates, at least tangentially, back to the Cubs. . . . The essays are straightforward, entertaining and likely to provoke many barroom debates."—Publishers Weekly
— Publishers Weekly
“It is not nice to joke about a neurological affliction. Fortunately, we can now comprehend the condition, thanks to a new book, ‘Your Brain on Cubs: Inside the Heads of Players and Fans,’ a collection of essays by doctors and others knowledgeable about neuroscience and brain disorders associated with rooting for a team that last won the World Series a century ago.”—George Will, Newsweek
— George Will, Newsweek
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
1. The Depths of Loyalty: Exploring the Brain of a Die-hard Fan
Jordan Grafman, National Institutes of Health
2. Developing Talent: Expertise and the Brain
Scott Grafton, University of California-Santa Barbara
3. Why Did Casey Strike Out? The Neuroscience of Hitting
John Milton, Claremont Colleges; Ana Solodkin and Steven Small, University of Chicago
4. Curses!
Tom Valeo, science writer, and Lindsay Beyerstein, journalist
5. Risks and Asterisks: Neurological Enhancements in Baseball
Bennett Foddy, Princeton University
6. Baseball and Handedness
Kenneth M. Heilman, University of Florida
7. It Isn't Whether You Win or Lose, It's Whether You Win: Agony and Ecstasy in the Brain
Kelli Whitlock Burton, science writer, and Hillary R. Rodman, Emory University
EXCERPT From Chapter One:
A fan’s dedication to a chronically losing baseball team involves a number of social-cognitive processes that allow him to accept his fate. ... In the case of a losing team, a fan has to be prepared to delay gratification for years, decades, and occasionally a century (the latter case involves handing down the delayed gratification to subsequent generation of family fans, entrusting them to appreciate the long road to the ultimate victory). ... There is some evidence that being in the majority (everyone loves a winner) reduces reflective thinking, whereas being in the minority (rooting for a loser) increases reflection. Perhaps that reflection is rewarding in itself and helps motivate fans to root for a losing team (in that sense it is the chase that is important rather than the ultimate victory). ... Sitting with friends at the game, hearing or discussing the game with the fans around you, or listening to it on the radio or watching it on TV allows for bonding with others. Such bonding activates the septum and the subgenual prefrontal cortex, which then release chemicals such as oxytocin that signal the degree of pleasure of the bonding....The prefrontal cortex is also an essential brain region for mediating our notion of self. For example, watching a baseball team play may activate memories of playing baseball in our youth. Neuroscientists have identified so-called mirror neurons in our brain that are activated whether we engage in playing a sport or watch others play.
From Chapter Two:
Your child likes to play and is happy with her teammates. But will her talent last more than a season?....This tension between what kids are born with and what they gain from practice is at the core of understanding what it takes to become an expert. It is also at the center of understanding how neuroscientists approach the question of defining what the brain of an expert looks like and how it might function differently compared to the merely competent....expertise is explained in part by higher cortical efficiency. The expert uses much less brain activity to do the practiced activity. The implication is that many years of practice may lead to a neural network that is efficient at using the fewest numbers of synapses to get a behavior accomplished....Even though developing expertise requires lots of practice, does extensive practice guarantee that one will become an expert? Not necessarily....The consequences of smart practice compared to exercise alone are beginning to be found in the brain....There is emerging evidence that too much thinking during practice can actually interfere with learning motor skills that are better left to unconscious control.
From Chapter Three:
Here we view the batter-pitcher dual from the point of view of the neural networks involved in making the motor program that enable the batter to swing the bat. We show that there is more to hitting a baseball than meets the eye.....In fact, deciding and planning begin even before the ball leaves the pitche’s hand....What is the nature of the information that the batter uses to make decision about swinging his bat? Recent research emphasizes that athletes in fast-ball sports anticipate where the ball will be based on kinematically relevant source of information. In baseball, this information is gathered before the ball is thrown: a batter may note the movements the pitcher makes during windup, remember his past experiences with this pitcher, and pick up clues from watching the pitcher face previous batters. A clear relationship exists between the skill level of the batter and the type of information that is extracted in this pre-swing period.....In order to successfully hit the pitched ball, the hitter’s brain must be involved in two tasks: (1) preparing the neuronal program for the movement involved in swinging the bat and (2) interpreting the movement of the pitcher in order to predict where the pitched ball will go. Although it is quite likely that these two tasks occur simultaneously, we will describe what is known about them separately. Modern methods of brain imaging, particularly functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), have made it possible to peer inside an athlete’s brain while he is preparing to swing a bat.
From Chapter Four:
Cubs fans are well aware of the "Curse of the Billy Goat," which is just one among many supposed curses befalling professional sports teams around the world....In addition, athletes wear lucky socks, avoid unlucky numbers, and engage in other forms of magical thinking intended to give them a competitive edge. There’s just one catch: No scientific evidence exists for these sports-ready superstitions--or others we are wont to believe....What, then makes our brains liable to accept that these superstitions are real? Science does offer some answers to this question....Cognitive neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga’s studies in split-brain patients--people who have had the corpus calosum, which connects the brain’s hemispheres, severed as a treatment for epilepsy--have provided hard evidence for the idea that the brain must come up with an explanation for everything, and it will make up stories to cope with phenomena that it cannot otherwise account for...Gazzaniga writes that a particular part of the brain’s left hemisphere, which he call the interpreter, is responsible for composing a continuing narrative about our beliefs and how we perceive ourselves.....Some psychologists maintain that even outright superstitions may still produce benefit through one of the brain’s most mysterious quirks: the placebo effect.
From Chapter Five:
The soul of sport is the enhancement of human athletic performance--through practice, and through training. But the story of sport for the past three decades has been a story of performance enhancement drugs.....Neurological enhancement sounds far-fetched, like something from a science-fiction novel. But human beings have long been ingesting substances that improve their neurological function....Stimulants are perhaps the most obvious type of neurological enhancement that could be used in a skill-based sport such as baseball. Stimulants, broadly, increase activity in the brain by increasing the availability of neurotransmitters, which in turn increase the rate of brain’s functioning as well as other neurologically mediated functions such as heart rate....For a ballplayer, one of the most useful effects of a stimulant is that can reduce the time it takes for him to read and react to a pitch....If a stimulant can shave mere milliseconds off a player’s reaction times, this decision interval could be substantially increased....In baseball, ironically, the best example of such a win-win technology is the one medical drug that is currently banned in the major leagues--anabolic steroids. Steroids can make a batter run faster or make a pitcher throw the ball faster. But they also can aid players in recovering from injury and training....Neurological enhancements are legal in baseball for the most part but do not help players to recuperate like steroids do. To assess whether a particular drug is good or bad from a spectator’s point of view, we need to know where the value lies for the spectator
Your Brain on Cubs: Inside the Heads of Players and Fans
edited by Dan Gordon
Dana Press, 2008 eISBN: 978-1-932594-47-8 Cloth: 978-1-932594-28-7
White Sox fans were overcome with euphoria when their beloved team won after eighty-eight years of failure, and the long-suffering Red Sox Nation finally received their vindication in 2004. Now the Cubs are the only “cursed” team left: The team has repeatedly made the playoffs without ever winning the World Series for the last ninety-nine years, and yet thousands who bleed Cubbie blue pack Wrigley Field for every game. The reasons why ardent sports fans in Chicago and around the world buy expensive game tickets and memorabilia, fill stadiums, and live and die by their team’s fortunes is the subject of Your Brain on Cubs, an engaging study that delves into why sports engender such passionate emotions in us all.
A group of today’s leading science writers and neuroscientists explore here the ways that our brain functions when we participate in sports as fans, athletes, and coaches, taking baseball as the quintessential sport for all three perspectives. The contributors tackle such questions as: How does a player hit a ninety-mile-per-hour fastball when he barely has time to visually register it? Why do fans remain devotedly loyal year after year? And what allows them to believe in superstitions, such as a curse? Other topics investigated in the book include how a ballplayer’s brain changes as he gains experience and expertise, why there are a higher percentage of left-handers in the major leagues compared to the general population, and the ethical implications of neurological performance enhancement.
An expertly written and thought-provoking read, Your Brain on Cubs challenges us to reevaluate the nature of the sports fan and the athlete, revealing the scientific complexity underlying the seemingly black-and-white world of wins and losses.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Dan Gordon is managing editor of Dana Press in Washington, D.C. A native of Normal, Illinois, he has been a Cubs fan since age six.
REVIEWS
“Dan Gordon and the many contributors to Your Brain on Cubs have truly accomplished something rare in our society today. That is, combining solid science and intellectual pursuits with fun and games. The two certainly do not have to be mutually exclusive, and in our sports-crazed society, it is desirable, commendable, and entertaining to link intellectual achievement and fun together. Readers of this book will learn much and be entertained.”--Ben Carson, Sr., MD, Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery, Professor of Neurological Surgery, Oncology, Plastic Surgery, and Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
— Ben Carson, Sr., MD
“Your Brain on Cubs is a home run to deep center field! It illuminates the game from the perspectives of both fans and players.”—Bruce C. Ladd, Jr., founder, Emil Verban Memorial Society (Chicago Cubs Fan Club of Washington, D.C.)
— Bruce C. Ladd, Jr.
"It’s about time the Cubs and their fans had their heads examined. This volume explores how baseball looks through the lens of brain science and vice versa. It makes for fun and provocative reading for fans of brains and baseball alike."—Carl F. Craver, Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program,Washington University in St. Louis
— Carl F. Craver
“This book inspires me to imagine some kind of boutique neurosurgery to heal my brain, fatigued as it is by my team’s struggles. Who knows what other ideas it might spawn? Your Brain on Cubs is a great read.”—Aryeh Routtenberg, Departments of Psychology and Neurobiology, Northwestern University, and Department of Physiology, Feinberg School of Medicine
— Aryeh Routtenberg
“You do not need to be a Cubs fan to like this book. It has a delightful mix of baseball lore and information about the brain.…These insights are interesting for all of us who try to acquire new skills, and many apply to experts in other skill domains, such as musical performance.”—Ann M. Graybiel, Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Neuroscience and Investigator, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
— Ann M. Graybiel
"The title, implying a focus on the Cubs, may limit interest in a book that really embraces much more. It does look at devoted Cubs fans—and all baseball fans—and their 'brainy' obsession with the game, including their brains' ways of reckoning with loss. The essays are by neuroscientists and two or three informed journalists, and they are accessible to all interested readers. . . . This is for all curious readers intrigued by the intersection of baseball and the sciences and in exploring old topics in new ways."—Library Journal
— Library Journal
"With their frustrating ups and downs, and nearly 100 years without a World Series win, the Chicago Cubs have been messing with the minds of their loyal fans for a long time, making that club the perfect topic for a book about the relationship between baseball and the human brain. Each of the essays in this off-beat collection explores a different aspect of baseball through the prism of neurology, and each piece relates, at least tangentially, back to the Cubs. . . . The essays are straightforward, entertaining and likely to provoke many barroom debates."—Publishers Weekly
— Publishers Weekly
“It is not nice to joke about a neurological affliction. Fortunately, we can now comprehend the condition, thanks to a new book, ‘Your Brain on Cubs: Inside the Heads of Players and Fans,’ a collection of essays by doctors and others knowledgeable about neuroscience and brain disorders associated with rooting for a team that last won the World Series a century ago.”—George Will, Newsweek
— George Will, Newsweek
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
1. The Depths of Loyalty: Exploring the Brain of a Die-hard Fan
Jordan Grafman, National Institutes of Health
2. Developing Talent: Expertise and the Brain
Scott Grafton, University of California-Santa Barbara
3. Why Did Casey Strike Out? The Neuroscience of Hitting
John Milton, Claremont Colleges; Ana Solodkin and Steven Small, University of Chicago
4. Curses!
Tom Valeo, science writer, and Lindsay Beyerstein, journalist
5. Risks and Asterisks: Neurological Enhancements in Baseball
Bennett Foddy, Princeton University
6. Baseball and Handedness
Kenneth M. Heilman, University of Florida
7. It Isn't Whether You Win or Lose, It's Whether You Win: Agony and Ecstasy in the Brain
Kelli Whitlock Burton, science writer, and Hillary R. Rodman, Emory University
EXCERPT From Chapter One:
A fan’s dedication to a chronically losing baseball team involves a number of social-cognitive processes that allow him to accept his fate. ... In the case of a losing team, a fan has to be prepared to delay gratification for years, decades, and occasionally a century (the latter case involves handing down the delayed gratification to subsequent generation of family fans, entrusting them to appreciate the long road to the ultimate victory). ... There is some evidence that being in the majority (everyone loves a winner) reduces reflective thinking, whereas being in the minority (rooting for a loser) increases reflection. Perhaps that reflection is rewarding in itself and helps motivate fans to root for a losing team (in that sense it is the chase that is important rather than the ultimate victory). ... Sitting with friends at the game, hearing or discussing the game with the fans around you, or listening to it on the radio or watching it on TV allows for bonding with others. Such bonding activates the septum and the subgenual prefrontal cortex, which then release chemicals such as oxytocin that signal the degree of pleasure of the bonding....The prefrontal cortex is also an essential brain region for mediating our notion of self. For example, watching a baseball team play may activate memories of playing baseball in our youth. Neuroscientists have identified so-called mirror neurons in our brain that are activated whether we engage in playing a sport or watch others play.
From Chapter Two:
Your child likes to play and is happy with her teammates. But will her talent last more than a season?....This tension between what kids are born with and what they gain from practice is at the core of understanding what it takes to become an expert. It is also at the center of understanding how neuroscientists approach the question of defining what the brain of an expert looks like and how it might function differently compared to the merely competent....expertise is explained in part by higher cortical efficiency. The expert uses much less brain activity to do the practiced activity. The implication is that many years of practice may lead to a neural network that is efficient at using the fewest numbers of synapses to get a behavior accomplished....Even though developing expertise requires lots of practice, does extensive practice guarantee that one will become an expert? Not necessarily....The consequences of smart practice compared to exercise alone are beginning to be found in the brain....There is emerging evidence that too much thinking during practice can actually interfere with learning motor skills that are better left to unconscious control.
From Chapter Three:
Here we view the batter-pitcher dual from the point of view of the neural networks involved in making the motor program that enable the batter to swing the bat. We show that there is more to hitting a baseball than meets the eye.....In fact, deciding and planning begin even before the ball leaves the pitche’s hand....What is the nature of the information that the batter uses to make decision about swinging his bat? Recent research emphasizes that athletes in fast-ball sports anticipate where the ball will be based on kinematically relevant source of information. In baseball, this information is gathered before the ball is thrown: a batter may note the movements the pitcher makes during windup, remember his past experiences with this pitcher, and pick up clues from watching the pitcher face previous batters. A clear relationship exists between the skill level of the batter and the type of information that is extracted in this pre-swing period.....In order to successfully hit the pitched ball, the hitter’s brain must be involved in two tasks: (1) preparing the neuronal program for the movement involved in swinging the bat and (2) interpreting the movement of the pitcher in order to predict where the pitched ball will go. Although it is quite likely that these two tasks occur simultaneously, we will describe what is known about them separately. Modern methods of brain imaging, particularly functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), have made it possible to peer inside an athlete’s brain while he is preparing to swing a bat.
From Chapter Four:
Cubs fans are well aware of the "Curse of the Billy Goat," which is just one among many supposed curses befalling professional sports teams around the world....In addition, athletes wear lucky socks, avoid unlucky numbers, and engage in other forms of magical thinking intended to give them a competitive edge. There’s just one catch: No scientific evidence exists for these sports-ready superstitions--or others we are wont to believe....What, then makes our brains liable to accept that these superstitions are real? Science does offer some answers to this question....Cognitive neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga’s studies in split-brain patients--people who have had the corpus calosum, which connects the brain’s hemispheres, severed as a treatment for epilepsy--have provided hard evidence for the idea that the brain must come up with an explanation for everything, and it will make up stories to cope with phenomena that it cannot otherwise account for...Gazzaniga writes that a particular part of the brain’s left hemisphere, which he call the interpreter, is responsible for composing a continuing narrative about our beliefs and how we perceive ourselves.....Some psychologists maintain that even outright superstitions may still produce benefit through one of the brain’s most mysterious quirks: the placebo effect.
From Chapter Five:
The soul of sport is the enhancement of human athletic performance--through practice, and through training. But the story of sport for the past three decades has been a story of performance enhancement drugs.....Neurological enhancement sounds far-fetched, like something from a science-fiction novel. But human beings have long been ingesting substances that improve their neurological function....Stimulants are perhaps the most obvious type of neurological enhancement that could be used in a skill-based sport such as baseball. Stimulants, broadly, increase activity in the brain by increasing the availability of neurotransmitters, which in turn increase the rate of brain’s functioning as well as other neurologically mediated functions such as heart rate....For a ballplayer, one of the most useful effects of a stimulant is that can reduce the time it takes for him to read and react to a pitch....If a stimulant can shave mere milliseconds off a player’s reaction times, this decision interval could be substantially increased....In baseball, ironically, the best example of such a win-win technology is the one medical drug that is currently banned in the major leagues--anabolic steroids. Steroids can make a batter run faster or make a pitcher throw the ball faster. But they also can aid players in recovering from injury and training....Neurological enhancements are legal in baseball for the most part but do not help players to recuperate like steroids do. To assess whether a particular drug is good or bad from a spectator’s point of view, we need to know where the value lies for the spectator
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | EXCERPT