From an almost standing start at the beginning of the 1990s, the number of statues of U.S. baseball and English soccer heroes has risen inexorably. By 1st September 2011, 33 soccer players and 67 Major League Baseball (MLB) players were, or were soon to be, depicted by existing or commissioned subject specific statues inside or adjacent to the stadia they once performed in. Yet even amongst the very finest exponents of their sport, relatively few players are honored in this way.This paper investigates and compares the defining characteristics of stadium statue subjects in these two national sports. We first developed a shortlist of potential causal factors likely to influence subject selection by considering the motivations behind statue building. The MLB Hall of Fame and the English Football League “100 Legends” list were then used as samples of the best performers from each sport. Logistic regression models were built to test the effects of potential predictors for the selection of statue subjects; these included loyalty, locality, longevity, performance of the player and their team, national recognition, sympathy and the effect of nostalgia or memory (i.e., the era a player performed in).The optimal models for soccer and baseball correctly identified depiction or non-depiction for 87% and 90.6% of the respective samples, and their significant constituent effects indicated the importance of club loyalty and era. Players who played most or all of their careers at one club or franchise and those active in the 1950s and 1960s were most likely to be depicted. This latter finding in particular suggests that the role of a statue as a nostalgia/heritage marketing object impacts upon subject choice, which is thus dependent in part on the “chance” effect of birth era. Distinct characteristics of each sport, such as baseball franchise relocation and international soccer success, were also found to have a significant effect upon the probability of depiction. Predicted probabilities were calculated for players with statues who were not Football League “Legends” or MLB Hall of Famers; these confirm the viability of the model outside of the elite performers it was constructed upon.
Contents
- Article
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedModeling Stadium Statue Subject Choice in U.S. Baseball and English SoccerLicensedMarch 12, 2012
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedPredicting the Outcomes of NCAA Basketball Championship GamesLicensedMarch 12, 2012
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedComparing Team Selection and Seeding for the 2011 NCAA Men's Basketball TournamentLicensedMarch 12, 2012
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedAre the "Four Factors" Indicators of One Factor? An Application of Structural Equation Modeling Methodology to NBA Data in Prediction of Winning PercentageLicensedMarch 12, 2012
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedRandom Walk Picture of Basketball ScoringLicensedMarch 12, 2012
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedForeign Player Quota, Experience and Efficiency of Basketball PlayersLicensedMarch 12, 2012
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedSearching for Momentum in the NFLLicensedMarch 12, 2012
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedDid the Best Team Win? Analysis of the 2010 Major League Baseball Postseason Using Monte Carlo SimulationLicensedMarch 12, 2012
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedA Proposed Decision Rule for the Timing of Soccer SubstitutionsLicensedMarch 12, 2012
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedSolving the Problem of Inadequate Scoring Rules for Assessing Probabilistic Football Forecast ModelsLicensedMarch 12, 2012
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedCharacterisation of the Main Playing Variables Affecting the Service in High-Level Women's VolleyballLicensedMarch 12, 2012
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedCalculating Wins over Replacement Player (WORP) for NHL GoaltendersLicensedMarch 12, 2012
- Conference Paper
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedA Markov Model of Football: Using Stochastic Processes to Model a Football DriveLicensedMarch 12, 2012
- Letter from the Editor
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Requires Authentication UnlicensedLooking Ahead - a Bright Future for JQASLicensedMarch 12, 2012