These RailCats are proof that baseball is a thinking man's game Kris Regas knows how some people look at guys who play a kid's game for a living. "There's the 'dumb jock' stereotype," said Regas, who's having a standout season in the RailCats' bullpen. "You see people that get surprised when they find out. 'Oh, you've got a master's degree? What are you talking about?'
"I guess it's kind of cool to have a stereotype and be able to knock it down."
Regas wrapped up his master's earlier this year at Minnesota State University-Mankato, where he's snagged a one-year appointment to teach math this offseason. He's one of several RailCats who knock down the idea that baseball players' interests don't go much past the sports page.
Shortstop Jay Pecci graduated from Stanford with a double major in philosophy and sociology, while outfielder/DH Steve Haake owns a history degree from Northwestern. If those facts surprise you, consider this: Regas, Pecci and Haake say they're far from unusual in the minor-league ranks.
"There's always some people willing to talk (about non-baseball topics)," Pecci said. "I talk to Haake a lot. We like to have stereotypical arguments like he's the Republican and I'm supposed to be the liberal because I'm coming from California and went to Stanford -- even though we don't necessarily believe everything we say.
"We just take the cliches and argue with each other about it."
How did Pecci wind up studying Kant and Descartes? Perhaps, surprisingly, because it tied into his athletic pursuits.
"Philosophy is kind of like the study of life," Pecci said. "You have to deal with certain things. Baseball is a microcosm of a lot of things that can happen. You go good sometimes, you go bad sometimes, you deal with pressure. You figure out your own views (to help) survive a long season."
Pecci remains interested in philosophy, though he's leaning more to the "pop" side these days. One of his rituals is to stop by the Lake County Library's main branch in Merrillville before the team heads out on a road trip. He'll pick up some Wayne Dyer, a little Tony Robbins and be set for a week or so.
Haake, like Pecci, didn't leave his intellectual curiosity behind when he picked up his degree. In fact, he's got his own personal book reviewer -- his brother Brett, who played three years in the minors before moving on to medical school -- passing along suggestions.
"He actually knows a lot more history than I do," said Haake, who recently checked out "America B.C.," by Harvard scholar Barry Fell.
"He linked all these ancient ... Native American languages to these ancient cultures over in Asia and the Middle East," said Haake, warming to the subject. "The assumption is that these people were in the New World and that Native Americans ... may have crossed over the Bering Strait -- some of these ancient cultures may have migrated over here.
"It's just a different theory you don't come across every day, and people think you're a little bit weird if you believe it."
Regas knows his way around a theory or two, having written a master's thesis on Newton's method, which Wolfram MathWorld defines as "a root-finding algorithm that uses the first few terms of the Taylor series of a function f (x) in the vicinity of a suspected root."
Got that?
While Pecci gravitated to philosophy because it gave him the opportunity to put his thoughts on paper, Regas prefers math for the opposite reason.
"I don't like writing," he said. "I do kind of like the finality of it, the fact that when you figure something out you know that you've figured it out. There's no question whether it's right or whether it's wrong."
Kind of like how there's no doubt that some baseball players are a lot smarter than you think.
Originally Published: Sunday, August 20, 2006 12:08 AM CDT | NWITimes.com thejobugroup.com |
In The News 
