Month: May 2019

If your Capstone project was on how technology has affected baseball where would you go for a required Site Visit? Also did I mention that it can’t be more than an hour from Scarsdale, New York because, your parents won’t take you. All I can say is if you thought of a place YOU’RE NOT HUMAN!!! Okay think about it even if you found a place you have get a time for your parents to take you. However maybe if I get good at convincing my parents and use my brain I can actually do this, I believe! Do you?

At first I started searching on Safari my searches were, “Places to go to learn about baseball” and, “Places to go to learn about technology.” After this I thought I found a place to go to! The place is The Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown New York. There’s only one problem 🙁 remember rule number 2? “It can’t be more than an hour from Scarsdale, New York because, your parents won’t take you.” Yeah so guess how far Cooperstown is from my house. 4 Hours! So as you can guess my mom’s answer was a hard no. I was stumped there was no places that I could go to. I mean I had one idea but I can’t drive 8 hours back and forth just for an hour tour!
Two weeks went bye, still no site visit! 5 days still my site visit is due, still nothing! Then all of a sudden it hit me, and at that moment I felt so stupid why don’t I just go to a Mets game. I know you guys are probably thinking, “Duh Gavin, that is what I thought of right away.” All I can say is why did you not tell me this sooner then! On Sunday I went to the Mets game against the Tigers. One thing I comfirmed was how Statcast affects baseball. I did this by seeing that the Tigers coach was looking at the stats on the paper that he printed out of Statcast to tell his players what the mets normally do. Like where to stand because a certain player normally hits it to the left side…

All in all I did not learn as much as I did from my interview but, it was still something.

If you want to see some of the pictures I took here they are:

Blog Post #3

Have you ever got a chance to talk to a former Major League Baseball player? Well I have! As part of my research I had to do an interview, and if it is not obvious enough already I interviewed a former baseball player, which by the way is amazing! His name is Todd Zeile and guess what he is also on top of that an analyst for SNY. SNY is a company that partners with the Mets and broadcasts all their games.

My parents surprised me when I found out about the interview, when I got in my moms car she told me to look on my phone. After I looked I think people in New York city could hear me screaming! The day before the interview I looked Todd Zeile up on Safari so I could relate to him. I was so, so, so nervous, because before I did it he texted me, “Can I call you in fifteen minutes I just came off the air?” I thought to myself ” wow I am interviewing Todd Zelie right after he is on T.V.”When it started my heart felt like it was going to pop out of my chest! I am now actually happy that it was not in person because I don’t know how I could have got through it. However I somehow managed to do it over the phone.

I had to shorten it up a bit because I was told that he only had 20 minutes so I narrowed my questions down to my main 6. What really surprised me though was that as busy as a man that he is he still took his time and tried to think about his answers. What I mean by this is he did not try to keep it short and simple just to get it over with. This is what made the interview so great and is why I learned so much from it.

All in all my interview went great, I learned so much, and I think my final project will be so much better because of my interview. Come back to tomorrow to find out what happened at my site visit. Ps: it is at Citi Field.

Blog Post #2

By Gavin

This week has been very productive, but I was recently sick so I missed some of the process. This means that I can not go into grave detail about the process but, I can tell you what I did. First of all I came up with my main inquiry question, second I came up with sub questions. Also if you were wondering the Warriors beat the Rockets and now the series is 3-2.

What is a main inquiry question? Well a main inquiry question is the question I am going to solve across the whole six weeks. This question has to be something that cannot be answered by one Google search. My teacher Mrs. Cooper gave us a sheet that has examples of good inquiry questions and poor ones. I was getting really excited while I was thinking of my question because I was urging to start researching. However my teacher kept on saying slow down take it one step at a time but I just wanted to “Actually Start!” If you know what I mean. After a lot of thinking my inquiry question is how are baseball teams using technology to be more successful?

Now, that I came up with my inquiry question I started to come up with sub questions. A sub question is  the questions that I will need to research and answer as a step to answering my main inquiry question. You don’t have to read the following but, if you want to know my sub questions then don’t skip this. My first question is what is the shift? The second one is how does technology help coaches draft players? Next is how does technology help pitchers? Another one is what different technology do teams use, and lastly How does technology help batters?

All in all the next step of my project is to find reliable articles and sources. I don’t know what you think, but I my sub questions are really good. Don’t forget to come back to my blog next week for my “Capstone #3” blog post. I will keep you updated! 🙂

Blog Post #1

By Gavin

What would you do if your teacher told you to come up with a topic to research for six weeks? I know right, it’s hard! Six weeks is the same as a whole month and a half! I am only a fifth grader this is the biggest project I’ve had so far! (Ps if you can’t already tell I don’t know what to research.)

First I, decided to bounce off ideas with my dad, we got stuck. But also all we wanted to do was watch the Rockets Warriors, West Conference Semifinals Game 2. So we got nowhere however we do know that the Rockets won 126 to 121 in Overtime. So I think it’s not a loss.

 All in all after a lot of thinking (and basketball games) I decided to do my project on how baseball teams use technology.  I choose this topic because I watch baseball on TV and, in the last couple years some announcers were predicting the next pitches perfectly. They do this by depending on the batter the pitch count, and or the situation . This always fascinated me so I decided to learn more. I’m really excited and also one of my friends dads works for the Mets so maybe I can get an interview with someone there.