"Kind of Strange"

“I’ve never worried really much about the inflation or the certain number of pounds of inflation. I thought it was kind of strange that Brady knew he liked his ball at 12.5 pounds of pressure in the ball. . . That’s the minimum number that you can have, that seemed kind of strange to me.”

Eli Manning

"The Storm of the Century's a Bust"

The Storm of the Century's a bust
She hardly managed a gust
The City was shuttered
The People were fluttered
The unmanly Governor cussed.
January 27, 2015

"Didn't Make Any Sense"

"What he said didn't make any sense. Rubbing the football, I don't think you can change the pressure. To really change the pressure, what you really need to change the pressure is one of these – the inflation needle."

Bill Nye "The Science Guy"

Blinding Us With Science

SNL Skewers Pats

The Quarterback's Idea

“That’s something that wouldn’t be driven by a coach or just the equipment guy. Nobody, not even the head coach, would do anything to a football unilaterally, such as adjust the amount of pressure in a ball, without the quarterback not knowing. It would have to be the quarterback’s idea.”

John Madden

"Nothing Positive"

"You can’t play the way we played today and think we’ll win a game this season. There’s nothing positive to take away from the things we were doing."

Tom Brady, quarterback Patriots

Understanding the "The Curse of the Bambino"

"The Great Bambino"

To figure out "The Curse of the Bambino", consider the source. Babe "The Great Bambino" Ruth himself provides the key to understanding the collapse of Red Sox success after New York purchased his contract in 1920 — but not because of any mystical "curse". 

Ruth was both a great left-handed hitter and left-handed pitcher. Boston would never see these traits in one package, again, and would find it hard to attract either side of the equation to their team.

Great left-handed pitchers don't generally want to squander their careers at Fenway Park where home runs are so easy for right-handed hitters — whom they would inevitably be "platooned" to face — due to that "Green Monster" in left.

Left-handed hitters, meanwhile, are at a distinct disadvantage to their right-handed counterparts in Boston, as the distance to the fence in right field is considerably greater. To add to all this, Red Sox owners tended toward filling the hitting line-up with righties to maximize crowd enjoyment (and get bums in the seats).

That's great for the home field, but what about when the team goes on the road? Without a good mix of both righties and lefties on the mound and at the plate the team can't do the proper "platooning"* to compete well in away games. 

What happened when the Red Sox convinced a sufficient number of pitching aces and great left-handed hitters to join the team?** 

They won the World Series. 

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*any baseball team has a mix of right- and left- hitters and hurlers. This is partly natural and partly strategic: hitters often have better luck against opposite-handed pitchers — for a number of reasons — and certain defensive positions favor one wing or the other.
**being relatively small, and located downtown, the limited number of seats in Fenway Park has historically restricted ticket sale revenues needed to attract the sort of talent the Red Sox need to compete at home and on the road. As ticket prices soared across baseball, leading to the creative addition of seats, and new sources of revenue arose — cable, internet-driven, merchandising — Boston was better able to convince such talent to sign.