Quote:
Originally Posted by ChaosTheory
People also often don't take into consideration the butterfly effect.
If you lose a game by 2 points ...... people point to that first quarter field-goal miss as the reason why you lost the game.
In reality, if you had made that field goal, all subsequent series of events would be different. You actually might have lost the game by 14 points had you made the field goal ...... or you might have won by 10 points ...... we don't know.
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o
Excellent citation of the cause-and-effect phenomenon.
The same is true of baseball (and pretty much almost every other sport.) When a base-runner gets caught stealing and the batter then hits a solo home run immediately afterward, many fans will say that he would have hit a 2-run homer if the base-runner had stayed put ...... but if the base-runner had stayed put, the pitcher would have been pitching from the stretch (as opposed to a full windup) and likely would have thrown a different pitch than the one in which produced the home run. And the batter may have been looking for a different pitch than the one in which he homered off of.
So if the runner had stayed at first base, the batter might have hit a 2-run home run ...... or he might have hit an RBI-triple into the gap ...... or he might have grounded into a double play.
o