Tennis, like any other practice, undergoes challenges and revisions to its nature. A number of technical and technological innovations have recently been implemented and/or suggested by a variety of interested parties including the introduction of shorter sets and tie-breaker sets, and a revised tennis seeding structure. These innovations, if adopted, will represent a new instantiation of the game. Thus, determining how decisions concerning the future development of the game ought to be made and who ought to make those decisions is of great importance in terms of how fair the decision-making process is and whether the decisions are good for the game itself. In response to these problems we develop a normative account of "fair play" from Macintyre's (1985) nee-Aristotelian position, emphasising the importance of the internal goods, practices, and traditions of tennis, and that decisions ought to be made by those who have relevant experience or knowledge of the practice of elite male tennis. This account, however, fails to provide a decision-making method and is vulnerable to the criticism that it is inherently conservative. We consider three theses that might fill this lacunae and from which a rational decision-making method to evaluate technical and technological innovations in elite male tennis could be developed. First, we consider Rawls's (1971) method of "reflective equilibrium" which allows us to clarify issues, and is both systematic and democratic, but it is too far removed from actual sporting practices, their ethos, histories and traditions to have any normative force. Secondly, we consider Rawls's (1987) "overlapping consensus" model which is conscious of the political situatedness of decision-making but it is inadequate since the consensuses which it reaches might be based on criteria external to the norms of sporting practices. In order to ensure that the consensus reached is based on a critical consensus of the internal norms of sporting practices, we consider Walzer's (1983) thesis that cultural spheres have internal norms which must be respected and which are the basis for normative judgements about justice or goodness within that practice. This thesis is sympathetic to, yet critical of, the internal goods, practice, and traditions of elite male tennis, and that decisions ought to be made by those who have experience or knowledge of the practice of elite male tennis. We conclude the thesis by presenting a tradition-practice bound decision-making model that can be used to evaluate technical and technological innovations in elite male tennis which is transparent, democratic, and respectful of the traditions and internal norms of tennis.

abstract: In baseball, the difference between a win and loss can come down to a single call, such as when an umpire judges force outs at first base by typically comparing competing auditory and visual inputs of the ball-mitt sound and the foot-on-base sight. Yet, because the speed of sound in air only travels about 1100 feet per second, fans observing from several hundred feet away will receive auditory cues that are delayed a significant portion of a second, and thus conceivably could systematically differ in judgments compared to the nearby umpire. The current research examines two questions. 1. How reliably and with what biases do observers judge the order of visual versus auditory events? 2. Do observers making such order judgments from far away systematically compensate for delays due to the slow speed of sound? It is hypothesized that if any temporal bias occurs it is in the direction consistent with observers not accounting for the sound delay, such that increasing viewing distance will increase the bias to assume the sound occurred later. It was found that nearby observers are relatively accurate at judging if a sound occurred before or after a simple visual event (a flash), but exhibit a systematic bias to favor visual stimuli occurring first (by about 30 msec). In contrast, distant observers did not compensate for the delay of the speed of sound such that they systematically favored the visual cue occurring earlier as a function of viewing distance. When observers judged simple visual stimuli in motion relative to the same sound burst, the distance effect occurred as a function of the visual clarity of the ball arriving. In the baseball setting, using a large screen projection of baserunner, a diminished distance effect occurred due to the additional visual cues. In summary, observers generally do not account for the delay of sound due to distance. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2017

abstract: Baseball is the quintessential American game. To understand the country one must also understand the role baseball played in the nation's maturation process. Embedded in baseball's history are (among other things) the stories of America's struggles with issues of race, gender, immigration, organized labor, drug abuse, and rampant consumerism. Over the better part of two centuries, the national pastime both reflected changes to American culture and helped shape them as well. Documenting these changes and packaging them for consumption is the responsibility of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Founded as a tourist attraction promoting largely patriotic values, in recent decades the Baseball Hall of Fame made a concerted effort to transform itself into a respected member of the history museum community--dedicated to displaying American history through the lens of baseball. This dissertation explores the evolution of the Baseball Hall of Fame from celebratory shrine to history museum through an analysis of public history practice within the museum. In particular, this study examines the ways the Hall both reflected and reinforced changes to American values and ideologies through the evolution of public history practice in the museum. The primary focus of this study is the museum's exhibits and analyzing what their content and presentation convey about the social climate during the various stages of the Baseball Hall of Fame's evolution. The principal resources utilized to identify these stages include promotional materials, exhibit reviews, periodicals, and photographic records, as well as interviews with past and present Hall-of-Fame staff. What this research uncovers is the story of an institution in the midst of a slow transition. Throughout the past half century, the Hall of Fame staff struggled with a variety of obstacles to change (including the museum's traditionally conservative roots, the unquestioning devotion Americans display for baseball and its mythology, and the Hall of Fame's idyllic setting in a quaint corner of small-town America) that undermined their efforts to become the type of socially relevant institution many envisioned. Contending with these challenges continues to characterize much of the museum's operations today. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. History 2013

In this thesis, I sought to determine whether frequency bands in the human electroencephalogram could be used to predict baseball batting performance. Past electroencephalographic (EEG) studies have found that alpha power in the human electroencephalogram predicts subsequent performance. Specifically, Mathewson and colleagues (2012) found that background brain activity, in particular, frontal alpha, had a direct correlation with one’s ability to learn a video game. Here, we decided to see if a similar result would hold true for baseball batting performance. We used a portable electroencephalographic (EEG) data collection system to record EEG data prior to batting practice. Participants sat quietly in a room with the portable EEG unit affixed to their head. Participants then stared in silence at a fixation cross in the center of a computer screen for 30 seconds and then counted backwards from 1000 by 7’s for 30 seconds as a masking task while background EEG was recorded. Player’s were then immediately given live batting practice and with performance judged by three different coaches on four different criteria. The four criteria were: batting mechanics, power, contact, and the batter’s ability to recognize good and bad pitches. Post-hoc, a frequency decomposition was performed on each participant’s EEG data to obtain power in all frequency bands. A correlation analysis of EEG power and batting performance showed that beta power and not alpha power predicted the subsequent performance of the batter. Importantly, a high correlation and significance show that predicting a batter’s performance with a portable EEG system, specifically the MUSE Headband, is highly plausible. / Graduate / 2018-08-09

INTRODUCTION: Muscle activity and timing of the swing phases may contribute to the differences we see in athletes at different skill levels. The purpose of this study is to analyze the differences between mean muscle activity, peak muscle active and time to peak muscle activity for select muscles in the lower extremity as well as the differences between start times for swing phases and bat velocity prior to impact for a skilled and recreational group. METHODS: Twelve healthy subjects were split into two groups based on competitive level and analyzed hitting off of a tee. RESULTS: No significant differences were seen between muscle activity or the start time for the landing and swinging between groups. The skilled group did have a faster time to peak muscle activation for the front leg biceps femoris (p = 0.024), start the shifting (p = 0.12) and stepping (p = 0.11) phases significantly earlier as well as had a higher bat velocity prior to ball contact (p = 0.42) than the recreational group. CONCLUSION: Mean and peak muscle activity trends to be lower for skilled hitters than recreational hitters. Evidence of the skilled group starting the shifting and stepping phase earlier as well as having a higher bat velocity prior to impact could be important in separating hitters into skill level.

The aim of this diploma thesis is to analyze the efficiency of teams that have participated in the last season of Major League of Baseball. To measure this efficiency Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models are used. Theoretic part is focused on explanation of basic definitions related to DEA. The emphasis in this part is concentrated on basic models which are applied in the second part of the thesis. Application study is focused on computation of attack and defence efficiency using BCC a CCR model. In the end the efficiency given by DEA models is compared to the position of teams in the final table.

The purpose of this thesis was concerned with the identification of the nature and content of the pre performance affective experience of the rugby union performer, and the subsequent measurement of the efficacy of a psychological intervention strategy to enhance the precompetitive mental state. Study 1 of the thesis conducted a preliminary investigation into the overall experience of sports performers' precompetitive affect (i.e., negative/positive) and the relationship with symptoms associated with competitive anxiety through the employment of trait self-report measures. The findings highlighted the importance of maintaining favourable perceptions of anxiety in the experience of positive affect. In order to describe the nature of this positive affective state, a sport specific self-report scale was designed and validated in Study 2 within a population of competitive athletes. Study 3 used the scale to examine the content of the pre performance affective experience and the relationship with interpretations of symptoms associated with competitive anxiety. The findings identified the existence of competitive anxiety symptoms. In order to derive a comprehensive understanding of the precompetitive experience a qualitative perspective was employed in Study 4. In-depth interviews were conducted with 12 international, male, rugby union players. Appropriate pre performance mental states were identified with symptoms associated with mental, physical, and technical readiness. Inappropriate pre performance mental states were symptomatic of a lack of mental, physical and technical readiness and negative experiences associated with competitive anxiety symptoms. The study also established the influence of significant others upon an individual's mental preparation for competition within the context of the team sport. A final purpose of Study 4 was to describe the psychological strategies employed by performers to achieve appropriate pre performance mental states. The study identified the employment of task-specific imagery in order to facilitate appropriate pre performance mental states. Utilising these findings, the final study of the thesis adopted a single-case design to investigate the efficacy of a task-specific imagery strategy in enhancing appropriate mental readiness for performance in 4 sub-elite rugby union players. The findings demonstrated enhancement in pre performance mental readiness across all participants. Specifically, increases in the level of mental preparation and self-confidence were identified, whilst a lower level of competitive anxiety symptoms were reported. The overall findings of the thesis have facilitated a greater understanding of the affective experiences and psychological strategies of competitive athletes prior to performing. Practical recommendations are proposed in order to facilitate the enhancement and achievement of ideal precompetitive mental states in sports performers. These outline the importance of employing structured task-specific imagery to facilitate appropriate activation states and the need to establish structured mental 'warm up' periods in the preparation for competition.

Baseball has often been seen as America’s Pastime, etched into the cultural landscape of the United States for over 100 years. However, recent shifts both in cultural landscape and the sport industry puts this moniker into question. Whether Americans consider baseball the national pastime is currently up for debate. The crux of that debate for individuals may be influenced by their emotional attachment to the sport or an emotional attachment to competing sports.

Against biblical odds, the baseball version of a stage mom and her grifting ex road trip their kids’ baseball team across the midwest in the name of life, liberty, and the little league world series.

Stearns County, Minnesota is the number-one dairy-producing county in the number-one dairy-producing region--the Midwest--in the country. The area has been home to German-Catholic immigrants from the Rheinland region of Germany since the mid- to late-1850s, when they traveled across Canada and the northeastern United States before finally settling on homesteads in Central Minnesota. 150 years later, the descendants of these settlers still live and farm the same area. Through it all, these farmers have kept a similar schedule: six days of fieldwork, Sunday for rest. And, nearly since the day they arrived in the area, that day of rest has featured one sacred leisure activity: baseball. The state of Minnesota boasts over 250 amateur baseball teams, the most of any state in the country. In the summer of 2012, I moved to Spring Hill, Minnesota, a town of 85, to play for the Spring Hill Chargers and work on the farm. My thesis lies at the intersection of farming and baseball, showing the reader both how little and how much has changed for these men who still farm their land of their forebears and still play America's game. A Summer in the Land of Milk tells my story of living and working in a rural area where the past hangs like a shadow and the future is frighteningly uncertain.