Makoto Yamaguchi
University of Tokyo, Japan
Citation
Yamaguchi, M. (2010). Baseball managers, no need to worry about players’ initials Comment on Nelson and Simmons (2007). International Journal of Sport Psychology, 41(2), 195-198.
Abstract
In 2007 a very surprising report appeared. Nelson and Simmons reported that peoples’ initials negatively affect their various performances. As their first data set is publicly available, reanalysis was conducted. Their first data set was Major League Baseball statistics. They claimed that players with the 1st or last initial K (which means strikeout) strike out more than those with other initials. Their data included 6397 players in total, and the difference was statistically highly significant (p = .002). Their results were also reported on popular media. However, some researchers may be skeptical about it, and laypeople also expressed skepticism. Inconceivable as it sounds, however, given its very small p value, one should not deny it outright. The first thing that comes to the mind of researchers is the problem of multiple comparisons. There are dozens of baseball statistics, and strikeout is only one of them. But many of them, like HR (homeruns), are not a single letter, so only several major statistics remain, such as H (hits), E (errors), and W (win). Even considering unreported multiple comparisons, the small p value remains mysterious.
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