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Sports

Short forChristinaMeet the former ChristopherKahrl, one of the best-knownfemale baseball experts inthe country.By Dave Hoekstra

On February 20 the Web siteBaseball Prospectus scoopedthe dailies by reporting that

Cubs starting pitcher Mark Prior washaving shoulder trouble. Cubs GMJim Hendry and manager DustyBaker initially denied the report. “Youcan’t believe a report unless it comesfrom us,” Baker told the media the dayafter the story appeared. “If it doesn’tcome from us, it doesn’t count.”

So on March 15, when the Cubsannounced Prior was indeed havingshoulder troubles (he remained on theDL at press time), Christina Kahrlcould have gloated a little. She’s themanaging editor of BaseballProspectus, which she founded withfour other stats-obsessed writers in1995, and tens of thousands of readers

knew they were right. But Kahrl wasmore philosophical about the Priorevent. “We’re not looking for scoops,”she says. “It’s more of a think-tankbusiness model, where we want to

talk about what’s going on and why.”Mark Prior was Baseball

Prospectus’s biggest story of the pastyear. The second biggest was Kahrlherself. When she was living in

Chicago, where she helped assemblethe Baseball Prospectus staff, shewas Christopher Kahrl. She moved tothe D.C. area in 2000 to work for a

[snip] “The idea that the United States is ‘an increasinglymobile society’ is an indestructible intellectual weed,”writes Alison Stein Wellner in Reason magazine. “In 2004 lessthan 14 percent of U.S. residents moved—the lowest figuresince the Census Bureau began collecting the data in 1948,when the moving rate was 20 percent.” Most moves are local,

and few are work related. Even the younger generation is moresettled, with 37 percent of twentysomethings moving in 1948,28 percent in 2004. “According to the historian StephanieCoontz . . . a person born today is more likely to remain near his birthplace than a person born in the 19th century.” —Harold Henderson | hhenderson@chicagoreader.comOur Town

Christina Kahrl

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CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 13

14 CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Our Town

sports-book publisher, and the fol-lowing year she decided to changegenders. Currently a preoperativetranssexual, she’s been living as awoman since 2003. She first wentpublic about her sex change inAugust, when she used her newbyline on a piece about the OaklandRaiders in Salon.

That didn’t go unnoticed amongthe stats geeks who pay close atten-tion to Baseball Prospectus’s hard-core numbers juggling. Bulletinboards and blogs picked up the news,but Kahrl, 38, would just as soonplay down its importance. “It isinteresting, but it isn’t important,”she says. “Readers are still readingthe same content. I’m still writingthe same content. I’m sure there’speople who say, ‘Well, you don’t seethat every day,’ and you don’t. But welive in a different world than the waythings were 50 years ago.”

Kahrl informed many of her col-leagues of her decision via e-mail in2003. “No one expected this kind ofrevelation,” says Rany Jazayerli, aNaperville-based senior writer. “AfterI got the e-mail, the first thing I didwas call her. It was not my positionto agree or disagree with what shedid. The best thing I can do as a col-league is to understand what she wasgoing through. The only concern weas a group had was, ‘How is thisgoing to affect us in baseball?’Baseball is a fairly insular sport andwe were becoming well-known in theindustry. What would people thinkwhen word got out?”

Nate Silver, who works out ofLincoln Park as BaseballProspectus’s executive vice presi-dent, had similar concerns. “I’m aliberal guy, but at first you questionyour own tolerance,” he says.“There’s a bit of a shock the firsttime you see a picture or read aboutit, but once you’re down talkingbaseball and working with someoneevery day, you don’t think about it.Once in a while I slip in ‘Chris’instead of ‘Christina,’ but apart fromthat it has been surprising to seehow tolerant people have become.”

“This is the one thing I needed toiron out,” Kahrl says. She notes that

her family was just as supportive asher colleagues. “If any family wasgoing to be open-minded, it wasprobably going to be mine,” she says.“My brothers have been great and sohave my parents. My grandmother’sline was, ‘Well, you’re the first one inmy family I know about—and I loveyou just the same.’”

In the early 90s Kahrl, who grewup near Sacramento, California, wasworking at the Oriental InstitutePublications Office on the Universityof Chicago campus (she has a BA inhistory from the U. of C. and a mas-ter’s in public history from Loyola).She posted regularly to therec.sport.baseball Usenet group.Impressed by their baseball knowl-edge and writing talent, baseballconsultant Gary Huckabay assem-bled Karhl, Jazayerli, and threeother regular posters in 1995 to cre-ate a baseball annual designed toreplace Bill James’s BaseballAbstract, the pioneering stats com-pendium that stopped publishing in1988. “We had all been without theAbstract,” Kahrl says. “We’re all onthe same page when it comes tousing objective knowledge to cometo concrete conclusions.”

The Baseball Prospectus site andthe first edition of the book bothappeared in 1996. This year’s bookcontains analysis of 1,600 players,including minor-leaguers, draftchoices, and in-depth chapters onevery major league team. BaseballProspectus annually ranks as one ofthe best-selling books during springtraining, and the site gets about27,000 unique visitors a daythroughout the season. Still, it’s notfor everyone—along with articlesand essays is an alphabet soup ofstats and acronyms, the best knownof which is arguably PECOTA(Player Empirical Comparison andOptimization Test Algorithm), astatistical system that projects aplayer’s performance using a data-base of players going back to WorldWar II. According to Silver, 28 ofthe 30 major league teams sub-scribe to the Web site; in her fore-word to the latest edition of thebook, Kahrl sends shout-outs to theGMs of the Seattle Mariners,

Toronto Blue Jays, and the Cubs. Kahrl is an Oakland A’s fan, but in

Chicago she attended between 20and 30 games at Comiskey Park anda half dozen more at Wrigley Field,each season. She still takes in Soxgames when she visits; last July sheand Silver took part in a U. of C.alumni trip to Sox Park, where they

spoke on Baseball Prospectus’s per-formance analysis method. “Webroiled in the sun watching [Jose]Contreras perform an homage toSteve Trachsel in terms of taking histime between pitches,” she says.

Kahrl and her cohorts strike asimilar tone in their pieces forBaseball Prospectus, including her

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What Are You Selling?

What the “Naked”People WearB ailiwick Repertory Theatre is the company that final-

ly closed Naked Boys Singing so they could openBarenaked Lads in the Great Outdoors—what kind ofa costume sale could they put on? A pretty good one,

it turns out. Besides cowboy hats, collars, cuffs, boots, andRobert Mitchum masks worn by the naked fellas, they got yourball gowns worn by the Spider Woman, your plastic conquista-dor helmets should you feel the need to invade Peru, your mil-itary uniforms, religious garb, and rainbow pride thongs, andlots of shoes and slippers. You can be only the second ownerof James Marsters’s doublet from Robespierre, We HardlyKnew Ye or the Lycra shorts Greg Louganis wore in LarryKramer’s Just Say No. And then there’s the wardrobe fromAnimal Farm, which Reader theater critic Albert Williamsdescribed as “clever costumes that use crutchlike attachments

to represent forelegs.” Props? Heck yeah. A 1940s typewriter,a microscope, ship’s wheels, and “paint, lumber, and assortedweapons,” according to a press release. Box office manager

Scott Deter says when possi-ble items will be marked withthe show they’re from, butadds that no one has a cluewhat the child-size hexagonalcoffin was used for. The com-pany’s also unloading furni-ture, books, TVs, computers,contemporary clothing, rope,

and “lots and lots of fabric.” Shoes start at $1, clothing at $2,and the prices go up from there based on the quality anduniqueness of the merchandise. —Patrick Daily

Bailiwick Costumeand Rummage Sale WHEN Sat 5/13, 10 AM-6 PMWHERE Bailiwick ArtsCenter, 1229 W. BelmontPRICE $1 donation to enterINFO 773-883-1090

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A sampling of the merch

CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 15

weekly column, “TransactionReport.” Regarding Red Sox pitcherDavid Wells’s recent move to theDL, Kahrl wrote: “I wouldn’t get tooworked up over Jumbo’s latestbreakdown. The man’s going to be43 in another month, he’s nevergoing to be light on his feet.”

“If you don’t do that, it would belike reading a fantasy baseball maga-zine or a corn futures report,” shesays. “That’s one reason I don’t likefantasy baseball. I understand we’retalking to a predominantly fantasymarket, but I’m interested in whatthe players are really worth to theirteams. I don’t care if he will help youwin a category. I guess I’m just moreinterested in real life.”

Baseball Prospectus has a staff of30, including three interns; only twowere women before Kahrl switchedgenders. She’s thought some abouther new status as a minority memberof the sports media. “In some sense Iam the singular member of theteam,” she says. “I would like to seemore. As a kid I remember GayleGardner [ESPN’s first female on-airstaffer] and how cool she was.” Silveradds that Kahrl’s gender might influ-ence the next generation of sports-writers. “Baseball is still somethingof an old boys network in the mediaand the industry itself,” he says. “Butwhen some old beat writer retires,you might have a 25-year-old takeover who has read our stuff or otherthings. They will come in with moreof an open mind.” v

Field & Street

Horto in UrbsThe first garden show ever for people with noroom to garden.By Harold Henderson

D ouglas Hoerr’s nightmare isthat one weekend you’lldecide to make over your

patch of backyard, buy a bunch ofplants, and squeeze them in howeveryou can—and later realize thatthey’re dying, running wild, or just inthe way. Then you’ll decide that gar-dening just isn’t your thing. Youwouldn’t redo your kitchen that way,says Hoerr, the principal of DouglasHoerr Landscape Architecture, andhe hopes that after you see Garden ina City—an eight-day show that’s allabout designing and planning beforeyou buy—you wouldn’t think of gar-dening that way either.

The show, of which Hoerr is thedesign chairman, is slickly present-ed. But it’s in a real gardening sea-son, not midwinter, when theplants on display have to be forced.It’s in a realistic place, Butler Field(at Columbus and Monroe, behindthe Art Institute, in the megatentsthat would have housed ArtChicago), where exhibitors can digtheir plants, shrubs, and trees right

into the ground rather than putthem in pots on a concrete floor.Most important—the reason it’sbeing billed as the first show of itskind—the 40-some exhibits are

designed for real urban spaces, par-ticularly those in Chicago: narrowparkways, tiny yards, gangways,decks, balconies. There are seven

[snip] Is the glass 28 percent full or 72 per-cent empty? Catalyst Chicago reports informa-tion from research by the schools watchdoggroup Designs for Change: “In 1996 and 1997,85 [Chicago Public] elementary schools were

placed on probation because fewer than 15 per-cent of their students scored at or abovenational norms in reading. By 2005, 28 percentof the students in the 68 schools that remainedopen scored at or above average.” —HH

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Garden in aCityWHEN Sat 5/13-Sun5/21, 10 AM-8 PM or6 PM SunWHERE Butler Field,Columbus andMonroePRICE $10 exceptMon ($5) and Sat-Sun ($12), $7 forteens and seniors,kids under 12 freeINFO 312-742-4817or gardeninacity.org

Douglas Hoerr and Grace Rappe in a plot of Hoerr's design

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Our Town

exhibits on garage roofs alone. “There are lots of places you can

go to see examples of how kitchensor living rooms can be set up in lim-ited space,” says Hoerr. “There’vebeen few that show how a small gar-den area can be designed.” How canyou screen your yard without alsoblocking the sun? Put a nativeprairie out front without offendingthe neighbors? Build that newgarage strong enough to support arooftop garden? Find plants thatcan survive even if neglected in apot on a 20th-floor balcony?

The answers will come from,among many others, Hoerr, MidwestGroundcovers, the Natural Garden,and Ball Horticultural Company, aninternational ornamental-plant

breeder based in suburban WestChicago (ballhort.com) that plans tobring more than 500 species. “We’vedeveloped varieties of what we callgoof-proof plants,” says Ball’s mar-keting director Jeff Gibson. Andthey’re not just conventional plantsused in conventional combinations:red geranium, dracaena spike, vincavine. He’s plugging alternatives likethe company’s new “Wave” petuniaand “Kong” coleus.

Even though spring is peak land-scaping season, twice as many pro-fessionals as originally expected aresetting up exhibits at the show,whose principal sponsor is Targetin partnership with the ParkDistrict. “We’re trying to give backto the city,” says Hoerr, “and to amayor who made what we do for a

living a valued part of the land-scape instead of the first thing toget value-engineered out.”

Garden in a City is intended tocomplement large-scale civic-green-ing projects, championing the ideathat it takes everyone tending his orher own small green space to greenthe whole city. Grace Rappe, whoworks with Hoerr, is particularlypleased that so much emphasis hasbeen put on sustainability and envi-ronmental issues—unlike at thePhiladelphia garden show sherecently visited. Exhibits will showhow to save water, use fewer or nochemicals, and deal with contami-nated soil. Hitchcock Design Group’sstreetscape, for example, will featurewater-efficient trees, native vegeta-tion, and permeable pavement in the

parking lane that allows rainwater tosoak into the ground rather thanpour into storm drains. “Peoplethink ‘sustainable’ is going to begray,” says Rappe. “It’s not, but it’sonly going to be popular if it’s madeappealing. It’s about living smallerand not having a lot of excess.” v

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Free Shit

freeshit@chicagoreader.com

Your mom will probably be happy with anything you do for her on Mother’s Day, be it fancy or fatty. On Sunday,

May 14, from 7 to 11:30 AM, U Lucky Dawg offers afree breakfast formoms, completewith long-stemmedrose. The menu’smore varied than

the venue would imply: the lady of honorhas her choice of pancakes, French toast,eggs, and bagels and lox. And if you madeyour Mother’s Day brunch reservation back whenthere was snow on the ground, don’t fret. You can takedad out on Father’s Day for almost the same deal—though he gets a mystery gift instead of a rose. —Megan Roberts

U Lucky Dawg6821 N. Western773-274-3652

Breakfast for Mom

CHICAGO READER | MAY 12, 2006 | SECTION ONE 17