The Schedule Makers

November 6, 2013 8:27 AM

A 30 for 30 short tells the story of the husband and wife team who created MLB's schedule every year for two decades, using only pencil and paper.
posted by Bulgaroktonos (8 comments total)

automatic playing video, just FYI.
posted by royalsong at 8:43 AM on November 6, 2013

This is wonderful - thanks for the post
posted by exogenous at 8:58 AM on November 6, 2013

I especially love this because my parents served this function at my school - they had a big grid and they used pencil with teacher initials and room numbers and so forth, trying to optimize the ability of every kid to take the exact combination of classes and electives they'd asked for. (This was, like, the early '80s, so you couldn't just feed it into a computer.) It was always a big challenge when somebody wanted to take an unusual combination like, say, very advanced calculus and first-year French, but they'd try to figure it out. Tiny little print in pencil in boxes, moving classes around ... ah, memories.
posted by Linda_Holmes at 9:03 AM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

The wife's face and tone when she says "The Pope won" is incredible.
posted by DynamiteToast at 10:01 AM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

I knew these folks when they lived in Staten Island. They worked hard to bring the National Lighthouse Museum to their borough. And although it hasn't been built yet, progress is being made.
posted by carmicha at 10:51 AM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

The 30 for 30 series has some of the best documentary storytelling anywhere.
posted by rocket88 at 11:00 AM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

I remember hearing about these two when I was in business school taking a linear programming course. The professor was praising the solving ability of Excel; particularly this widget he developed that was being used by FedEx for route planning. "Baseball schedules," he said "are too complex for a computer. You need nerds for that."

These are adorable nerds. Great film!
posted by bluejayway at 2:35 PM on November 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

Lovely.
posted by ph00dz at 7:38 PM on November 7, 2013