Paul Sullivan Has A Problem, Pt. 378,946,986

Robots are coming to take his job and there’s a 100% chance that they will do it better. Sportswriting has long played host to some of the most glorious, along with the most cliché-ridden, exercises in journalism. As anybody on a sports beat can tell you, making game stories interesting day in and day out can be a brutal challenge, but for those with lesser ambitions, it can be something that you do in your sleep. Now some kids at the Intelligent Information Laboratory at Northwestern University are suggesting that an average game day story can be bolted together without human intervention. Crawlers, using tried and true language, bolt in language and quotes automatically and before you know it, a story is, um, written. The project, called Stats Monkey, might have some sportswriters reaching for the bottle of Tums at a time when newspapers are reluctant to send reporters on the road to cover a team. The premise, from Stats Monkey: Imagine that you could push a button, and magically create a story about a baseball game. That’s what the Stats Monkey system does. Given information commonly available online about many games — the box score and the play-by-play — the system automatically generates the text of a story about that game that captures the overall dynamic of the game and highlights the key plays and key players. The story includes an appropriate headline and a photo of the most important player in the game. There’s a sample on the NYT page, but here’s the beginning of it for you lazy people who don’t like clicking on links: BOSTON — Things looked bleak for the Angels when they trailed by two runs in the ninth inning, but Los Angeles recovered thanks to a key single from Vladimir Guerrero to pull out a 7-6 victory over the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park on Sunday. Guerrero drove in two Angels runners. He went 2-4 at the plate. “When it comes down to honoring Nick Adenhart, and what happened in April in Anaheim, yes, it probably was the biggest hit (of my career),” Guerrero said. “Because I’m dedicating that to a former teammate, a guy that passed away.” Guerrero has been good at the plate all season, especially in day games. During day games Guerrero has a .794 OPS. He has hit five home runs and driven in 13 runners in 26 games in day games. I’m pretty sure the robots would be incapable of favoring certain players and I’m also pretty sure they wouldn’t come up with +/- systems like Phil Rogers did. They also wouldn’t admit on air and in print that they give positive coverage to those who aren’t mean to them. For a long time now, Paul Sullivan has been able to boast that he could do his job better than robots could. He can no longer do that. (h/t to ccd)