Bits & Pieces

The Oracle

By Kim J. Harmon

Remember that dumb Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon thing a lot of Hollywood people did years ago – you know, trying to find someone who worked with someone who worked with someone who worked with Kevin Bacon?

A couple of years ago, armed with a Baseball Encyclopedia, I tried to adapt that to baseball and find a link between Babe Ruth and myself. For instance, Babe Ruth played with so and so, who played with so and so, who played with so and so, who played with Rico Brogna of Watertown, whom I interviewed.

Yeah, that sort of thing.

It wasn’t easy, but I was able to link myself to Babe Ruth within six steps.

But just the other day, while looking up some stats at www.baseball-reference.com I discovered a new program called Oracle. The infrastructure for the application was written by Patrick Reynolds, who also maintains the so-called Oracle of Bacon, a similar application for actors and movies.

With Oracle, anyone with some extra time on their hands can find the shortest possible link between any two ballplayers in the history of the major leagues. Not only is Oracle completely and utterly useless, it is a whole lot of fun.

So I tried it. I typed in two guys who were separated by more than 140 years of baseball history – George Wright (the founder of the Cincinnati Red Stockings and of professional baseball) and added Jose Reyes (a shortstop of the New York Mets).

This is what I got –

George Wright played with Deacon White for the 1874 Boston Red Stockings … Deacon White played with Jake Beckley for the 1889 Pittsburgh Alleghenys … Jake Beckley played with Babe Adams for the 1906 St. Louis Cardinals … Babe Adams played with Paul Waner for the 1926 Pittsburgh Pirates … Paul Waner played with Warren Spahn for the 1942 Boston Braves … Warren Spahn played with Phil Niekro for the 1964 Milwaukee Braves … Phil Niekro played with Tom Glavine for the 1987 Atlanta Braves … Tom Glavine played with Jose Reyes for the 2003 New York Mets.

That’s it, eight steps.

So then I tried to link Roger Connor (a Hall of Famer from Waterbury, Connecticut who has a newly-restored gravesite) with Rico Brogna – and, thus, to myself – and was kind of pleased to discover it only took seven steps for this:

Roger Connor played with Sam Thompson for the 1892 Philadelphia Phillies … Sam Thompson played with Ty Cobb for the 1906 Detroit Tigers … Ty Cobb played with Al Simmons for the 1927 Philadelphia Athletics … Al Simmons played with Elmer Valo for the 1941 Philadelphia Athletics … Elmer Valo played with Ron Fairly for the 1958 Los Angeles Dodgers … Ron Fairly played with Frank Tanana for the 1978 California Angels … Frank Tanana played with Rico Brogna for the 1992 Detroit Tigers.

Ty Cobb … Al Simmons – those are two of the greatest hitters the game has ever known. And then there is Elmer Valo, an entirely mediocre player who played for 20 years with the Philadelphia/Kansas City Athletics, Philadelphia Phillies, Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, Cleveland Indians, New York Yankees, and the Washington Senators/Minnesota Twins (1940-1961) and batted .282 with 58 homers.

So, if you have any time to waste, why not check out Oracle.