ESPN polls, again

ESPN reader polls, unlike the ones on CN, give a state-by-stte map of the results. I’ve mentioned before that fascinating geographical patterns often result from certain responses that probably have some meaning hidden in them.

The one I just did was about Derek Jeter (N.Y. Yankees) apparently faking being hit by a ball in order to reach base. The question was whether this “cheating” by Jeter or “gamesmanship.”

Almost the whole country called it “gamesmanship.” But the exceptions were interesting.

*I think we can safely ignore the cluster containing Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Those aren’t sentimental truth tellers, those are Red Sox fans and Yankee haters.

*The international voters called it cheating (the globe isn’t broken down country by country on ESPN polls, but lumped together as one). I doubt this represents global moral superiority over the U.S., and would think instead that many of these votes are from people who don’t know the first think about baseball, and who are simply making an abstract response about cheating in general without being able to reflect on the game of baseball itself. Let’s ignore the internationals this time.

That leaves a pair of two-state clusters who thought it was cheating:

*Utah-Idaho

*Minnesota-North Dakota

I think you could draw an interesting little anthropological essay out of that, though the sample sizes on the data are probably too small at the moment.