A Surprising Question

November 1, 2011

NADII: Yashin
Club Deportivo Zacatepec v Racing Club Haïtien, Estadio Agustín “Coruco” Diaz
Zacatepec 1 (Juan Carlos Alonso 37) – Racing Club 0
MoM: Alonso (7.4) Best Old Lion: Jimmy McNulty (7.1)
Attendance: 12,983. Referee: Mark Williams.

November 9, 2011

NADII: Yashin
Tivoli Gardens Football Club v Racing Club Haïtien, Edward Seaga Stadium
Tivoli Gardens 2 (Sean Barrett 5, Salim Bullen 36) – Racing Club 1 (Ishmael Butler 27)
MoM: Bullen (8.2) Best Old Lion: Butler (7.5)
Attendance: 1414. Referee: Jonathan Sullivan.

November 10, 2011

Olivier’s wasn’t full, but it was a Thursday night so it was really just us regulars. Dayán and I were well into our fifth round, maybe sixth, and the mood was a little somber.

“You ever take statistics, David?”

It was a surprising question. I eyed Dayán suspiciously over the rim of my bottle. “Statistics?”

“Statistics. Maths, numbers, you know.” I shook my head and he rolled his eyes. “You do know I have a, what would it be, a masters.”

I raised my eyebrows. “A masters? Seriously?”

“Six years.” He nodded out the window, towards somewhere in Port-au-Prince. “At the GOC.”

“Six years? In statistics?”

Dayán nodded. “Well, not just. Applied. Theoretical. The whole lot.”

“When was this?”

Dayán took a long drink of beer. “A long time ago.” And another. “Early 90’s.”

“Why aren’t you, I dunno, teaching, or somewhere with a real job that pays real money?”

Dayán smiled. “And give up all this?”

“Dayán.”

He stretched and shrugged. “Game’s inside me. Always has been, always will be. And the only jobs were. Well. Not in Haiti.”

I studied him for a while, but his face was frozen, expressionless, his eyes focused carefully on the label on his beer bottle. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“You never asked.”

“I never …” I shook my head slowly. “I really am just another stupid blan, aren’t I?”

Dayán shrugged. “That’s what Ayida says.”

“She what?” I saw his laughter and stopped myself. “OK. We’ll come back to your being smarter than anyone else I know later. You had asked me about statistics. Why?”

Dayán frowned. “Because what we’re doing right now, there’s a word for it.”

“Getting drunk?”

He closed his eyes, but I could see him struggling not to smile before he said softly, “Regression to the mean.”

“What?”

His eyes opened and he leaned forward. “Regression to the mean. There are a couple different definitions, but in sports it means that, over time, streaks tend to fade and teams eventually perform in accordance with their abilities.”

I looked at him, puzzled. “You’re saying we weren’t this good all year, so we should expect to lose from here on out?”

Dayán shook his head. “Of course not. Just that, at some point, we had to expect it.”

“Expect what? Nothing this year has been expected. We were supposed to be at the bottom of the pack, we’re just outside the playoffs instead. And suddenly we’re back to losing games that are winnable.”

“That’s exactly it, David. Nothing’s changed. Nothing’s changed in how we’re playing—we got a couple results earlier, now we didn’t. Doesn’t change who we are, doesn’t change how Butterfly, Frederick, Azor, the rest are playing.”

“Doesn’t change?” I leaned back and stretched, running the back of my hands against the rough concrete of Olivier’s tobacco-stained walls, thinking over the past two games, my disappointment, the conversations in the locker room and on the training fields. “So you’re saying I was too hard on them.”

Dayán grinned, flashing rows of bright teeth. “Maybe.”

“And you couldn’t just say that? You had to talk about regressives and means?”

“Regression to the mean. And part of my job is to try to educate whatever foreigners Santos brings in. You know that.”

I drained my bottle and added it to the pyramid in front of me. “Another?” He nodded. “Alright. But no math talk, okay? Makes my damn head spin.”