The Mendoza line

Because it's Sunday, and because that means that Dad may have listened to some Prairie Home Companion while studying the Sunday baseball stats and standings, let's dedicate today's column to a brief consideration of fatherhood and the Mendoza line.

What's that? You don't know what the Mendoza line is? Well, although there are various alleged origins of the term, it's universally agreed to refer to the meager annual batting average of the all-glove, no-bat Mario Mendoza, a 1970s ballplayer. Since Mendoza generally carried a meager average of around .200, players who were performing even worse then him were in real danger of being demoted. Hence the desire to hit above the Mendoza line.

But while statistics-heavy baseball lends itself to such statistical thresholds, fatherhood would seem - wouldn't it? - to resist easy numerical analysis. Nevertheless, in the recent avalanche of popular writings about fatherhood, there have been occasional similar efforts to measure and to articulate a satisfactory level of performance. Perhaps the most obvious example can be found in Michael Lewis' Home Game: in a draft of the book, Lewis estimated that he did roughly 29% of the parenting in his household, with his wife doing the (considerable) rest of the work. In his final version, he bumped his share up to 31%. Why the change? Well, Lewis is a big fan of baseball and statistics (an earlier book of his, Moneyball, detailed the value of a certain statistics in measuring player performance), and in baseball terms hitting 31%, or .310, is a lot better than carrying a more mundane .290 average. Through a slight editorial change, Lewis made himself into an All-star.

But, really, he probably didn't even have to massage the stats. Just a week ago, papers around the world carried the results of a recent study by an Oxford professor who found that fathers in America, Great Britain, and Scandinavia do more household work than men in any other society. Australians, bless their surfboards and their barbies, finished last.

I thought about crowing over the story to L. - until I realized that I was reading it online, while she was taking care of our daughter. And, when I paused to do a little analysis, I had to admit that while I feel like I'm pitching in, things are hardly even in our salmon-colored household. L.'s up twice in the middle of the night, providing a banquet for Cleo, and she does the lion's share of the parenting during the day, as well. I think we'd both say that the division of work has gone well, for the most part, over the first nine weeks, as I've been writing and working on classes in the cracks provided by L's dedication, and I will be doing double duty come September, but even so, I'm probably hitting about what Michael Adams hits.

Which means, I'll point out in concluding, that L. is hitting about .690. Better than Mays, better than Ichiro, better than the weirdly outsized kid in your local Little League. And steroid-free, on top of it. You go, girl.