Tidbits from the Times

See the ball, hit the ball
Your Brain on Baseball, David Brooks, The Times: But baseball has accomplished another, more important feat. It has developed a series of habits and standards of behavior to keep the conscious mind from interfering with the automatic mind.

Baseball is one of those activities in which the harder you try, the worse you do. The more a pitcher aims the ball, the wilder he becomes. The more a batter tenses, the slower and more tentative his muscles become.

Over the generations, baseball people have developed an infinity of tics and habits to distract and sedate the conscious mind. Managers encourage a preternaturally calm way of being — especially after failure. In the game I happened to see here on Tuesday, Detroit Tigers pitcher Nate Robertson threw poorly, but strutted off the mound as if he’d just slain Achilles. Second baseman Kevin Hooper waved pathetically at a third struck fastball, but walked back to the dugout wearing an expression of utter nonchalance.

This sort of body language helps players remain steady amid humiliation, so they’ll do better next time.

Believe me, the people involved in the sport have no theory of the human mind, but under the pressure of competition, they’ve come up with a set of practices that embody a few key truths.

First, habits and etiquette shape the brain. Or as Timothy Wilson puts it, “One of the most enduring lessons of social psychology is that behavior change often precedes changes in attitudes and feelings."

Cutting words
Inside the Book Review, Dwight Garner, The Times Book Review: When Robert Stone’s third novel, “A Flag for Sunrise,” was published in the fall of 1981, he made a $5 bet with his publicist that the book would not make the Times best-seller list. But lo, it came to pass. On Nov. 22, 1981, “A Flag for Sunrise” stood at No. 9 on the hardcover fiction list — the first time one of Stone’s books had appeared here. (It was sandwiched between Martin Cruz Smith’s “Gorky Park” and Paul Erdman’s “Last Days of America.”) Stone never had to cough up the $5, however. In the next issue of the Book Review, the following note ran under the best-seller rankings: “Last week Robert Stone’s ‘A Flag for Sunrise’ was reported in ninth place on the hardcover fiction list. This was the result of a computer error. The actual sales of the novel placed it quite far off the list.” Quite far off the list — did they have to rub it in? “Well,” Stone told me earlier this month, “I got to be on top of the world for a week.”

White's the default?
Guns and Yoga, Patton Oswalt in the Times Magazine: The people I took the introductory gun course with were an interesting bunch: two guys hoping to become armed security guards, an indie-music-store-looking black guy, a dad and his two teenage sons and a guy who claimed to be an actor researching a role.

Such matters as--religion?
For Yale’s Money Man, a Higher Calling , Geraldine Fabrikant in the Times: Other investors describe [David] Swensen as an “extremely rational” contrarian. “He tries to think through what is the best opportunity,” Mr. Greenberg says. “He doesn’t care about being popular. And he is not afraid to go where other people don’t.”

Mr. Swensen considers trying to time the market a “fool’s errand.” Other managers say that his primary expertise involves spotting growth sectors in the economy and finding the best people to manage Yale’s investment in those sectors.

It is work that he loves. “You get to choose those investments that are the right fit,” he says. “I think Warren Buffett said it: It is like playing baseball when they don’t call the balls and strikes. You can wait and wait until it is a pitch you want to hit.”

Like Mr. Buffett, Mr. Swensen has developed a following. “In the endowment world, going to see David for advice is like going to the pope,” says a board member of an Ivy League university who insisted on anonymity because his board does not want him to comment on such matters publicly.