Read an interesting piece in the Newsweek blog about how a person’s name affects their natural proclivity for certain items.

Examples: Chris Carpenter rehabs while dining on caviar, Placido Polanco jogs while listening to Paula Poundstone, Tom Trebelhorn totes around his toddler in a Toyota.

Alliteration in lieu of science, perhaps, but the article backs up its Sally-sells-seashells-science with baseball statistics.

…Based on data from 1913 through 2006, for the 6,397 players with at least 100 plate appearances, “batters whose names began with K struck out at a higher rate (in 18.8% of their plate appearances) than the remaining batters (17.2%),” the researchers find. The reason, they suggest, is that players whose first or last name starts with K like their initial so much that “even Karl ‘Koley’ Kolseth would find a strikeout aversive, but he might find it a little less aversive than players who do not share his initials, and therefore he might avoid striking out less enthusiastically.” Granted, 18.8% vs. 17.2% is not a huge difference, but it was statistically significant—that is, not likely to be due to chance.

Might want to bump up Kazmir and drop Kevin Kouzmanoff on your draft cheat sheet.