From: John Yandell [videoten@isp.net] Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2000 10:10 AM To: jmargolies@tennisone.com Subject: Fwd: The Bat Cave: How James Brady Created an Electronic Brain for the U.S. Open Jay, Another very good piece from John. John >From: "Martin, John J." >To: "'videoten@isp.net'" >Subject: The Bat Cave: How James Brady Created an Electronic Brain for the >U.S. Open >Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2000 21:53:23 -0400 >X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2651.58) > > > > The Bat Cave: > How James Broder Created An Electronic Brain for the U.S. Open > > > > By John Martin > Copyright 2000 > >FLUSHING MEADOWS, NY --- It is Super Saturday of the 2000 U.S. Open. Marat >Safin and Todd Martin are stroking forehands, warming up for their semifinal >match. > >Deep inside the stands, beneath the seats of Arthur Ashe Stadium, a young >couple walks down a bare hallway. Without a glance, they pass a doorway >marked by a small blue sign in white letters: > > 1341 Stadium IBM > >Inside, spread on tables along two walls of a vast square room, more than a >dozen television monitors and computer screens flicker with images of tennis >players, stadium and grandstand courts, and streams of data. > >Nearly a dozen men and women, wearing white tennis shirts, khaki or denim >shorts, and red-bordered plastic ID tags, look up at the screens. >Occasionally, they move back and forth between tables, leaning to click >strokes on keyboards. > >This is the Bat Cave, the nerve center of a giant electronic brain created >to observe every U.S. Open tennis match played in the two weeks of >competition. > >"We can track every point of every match," says James Broder, the software >ringmaster of what amounts to a three-ring circus of tennis geekdom. "The >umpires," he says, "they're providing content." > >The Bat Cave feeds the 68 scoreboards across the grounds of the National >Tennis Center with point-by-point updates of every match in progress. > >It's a prodigious feat, so specialized and sophisticated that it has >propelled Broder, its software creator, into an entrepreneurship that now >spans an international sports world far beyond Grand Slam tennis, which also >includes the Australian Open and the ATP Tour Masters Series. > >Broder's scoring and timing universe now covers the Winter Goodwill Games >(ski racing, bobsled, luge), the bicycling Tour de France, the World >Equestrian Championships, World Cup velo (track cycling), World Junior Velo >Championships, Pro Beach Volleyball, Tag Heuer World Cup ski racing, and the >NASCAR race car circuit. > >Broder's Skunkware, as he calls it ("Radical Software that Shreds"), >supplies not only minute-by-minute scoring and timing for spectators on the >grounds of these events but also for millions of television viewers around >the globe. > >That James Broder should contribute to this triumph of computer technology >over the statistical blizzard generated by international sport is especially >astonishing, considering that in the early 1980s, the same James Broder was >a failing economics student facing dismissal from the Vanderbilt University >School of Business. > >"It was the statistics," he says, noting that as a Yale undergraduate he had >not used computers. "I had to get a handle on statistics and I realized that >computers were the way for me to tackle them." > >It was an epiphany. > >Within a few months, Broder, who had ranked 33d in the nation among >16-year-olds tennis players in 1976, wangled a $1,500-a-month summer >internship with the women's pro tour ("I was a grunt"). His new skills came >in handy. > >"They needed a new computer ranking system," he says. "It was a big problem. >They had a black box and a process so complicated nobody understood it." > >The year was 1983 and the unfathomable women's tour rankings were sowing >distrust among the players. > >"It was still the Cold War," says Broder, "and this was an American tour. >The Czech and Polish players and coaches were suspicious." > >One weird element of the WTA rankings raised the hackles of everyone, not >just the East Europeans: Tracy Austin was still ranked among the top five >players in the world 11 months after leaving the tour with injuries. > >"The answer," notes Broder, "was a 52-week weighted, moving average." That >meant finding a way to rank players not only on recent matches but also >continue counting older results. > >It was a juggling performance only a geek could love. But Broder swooned and >produced a system still in use today, creating software to take the measure >of the players' wins and losses at regular intervals. > >One of its earliest successes: Charting the ups and downs created by the >rivalry of Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova. > >After an experimental tryout, the system was approved by a vote of the WTA >in 1984. Broder was on his way. > >"I got calls from television production companies," he says. "They were >involved with sports which were not furnishing enough data." > >So television's voracious appetite for statistics had to be satisfied. That >meant learning the intricacies of sports he had never witnessed. > >Pro Beach Volleyball, with its Baywatch aspects, may have been easier to >watch and surely easier to comprehend than NASCAR scoring and timing. >Nevertheless, Broder plunged in. > >"We developed a collection software to put the data on the air," he says. It >was a breakthrough for promoters, TV producers, and, not least, a software >creator named Broder. > >Now, moving from event to event, Broder assembles teams of programmers, some >employed by his partners in sports technology: Phoenix Sports Technology of >Trexlertown, PA, which uses his V2 timing software for track cycling; >MatSport of Grenoble, France, his Tour de France partner; Precision Timing >of Montreal and Utah, which runs the Tag Heuer World Cup Ski Racing software >operation; and Informational & Display Systems of Jacksonville, which holds >the U.S. Open contract. > >"I really don't much like being general contractor," says Broder. "I prefer >to design and write software tools." > >The contracting teams handle organizational details, dividing duties, such >as monitoring "packets," the data traffic flowing into their control rooms, >looking for failures throughout the system. > >At Flushing Meadow, disaster can strike at any time. Cables can be damaged, >power losses can cripple signals, giant screens can flip images, the "rocket >launchers" used to load match information into the chair umpire's computers >can malfunction. > >Vandals can also play a worrisome role. Besides excessive heat, component >breakdown, and tears in video walls, his 50 scoreboard technicians must >contend with theft. > >"Somebody walked off with a flat-screen monitor worth $1,500," says Broder >as we sit at his desk in the cave. At this year's U.S. Open, no fewer than >16 laptops were stolen from outside trailers. > >"This tournament is a train wreck waiting to happen," Broder says, comparing >his team's work to "collecting garbage in New York City." Every bit of data >is being picked up. > >In Broder's world, no matter who is winning on the stadium court a few >hundred feet away, the Bat Cave is serving "clients" with a continuous >stream of data. > >Its biggest customers are 150 broadcast producers and tournament officials >armed with laptops. And the most vital components are the scoring devices >operated by 42 chair umpires across the National Tennis Center. > >Anchored in their docking stations atop the chairs, these hardback >book-sized computers are linked to the Bat Cave's 10 servers. > >On the scorekeepers' screens, like some multiple-choice exam, are the >outlines of half-a-dozen pressure points: Ace, Double-Fault, Forced-Error, >etc. > >When an umpire taps the screen to record a point, the signal changes the >scoreboard on court, and then travels to the Bat Cave, where it is flashed >across boards all across the complex. > >"The (score) boards on each of the match courts are (composed of) >electro-magnetic flip disks," says Broder. The big scoreboards, like the >giant screens atop the Ashe and Armstrong stadiums, use banks of lamps in >red, white, and yellow to flash their messages, including the colorful "Rain >Delay." > > Next year, Broder is switching the scorekeeping system to hand-held >devices. > > "Rather than using the relatively unwieldy IBM 4612 'wristwatch' >computers," Broder says, chair umpires will be issued PalmPilots "to drive >the entire Bat Cave system." > >Broder is optimistic: "It should be a neat application of Palmtop >technology." Not surprisingly, IBM will play a role. The hardware will be >IBM Workpads, using a PalmVX model. > >If it works, it will be a wireless wonder. If it fails, of course, it could >be a monumental disaster. > >That's because Broder's Skunkware presides over an orgy of information >gathering --- and transmitting. The servers contain drives that not only >keep score but provide closed-circuit video for the complex. > >Beyond that, Broder sends out a team of 24 professional statisticians to >take down the raw data courtside on virtually every important match: net >approaches, forehands, backhands, overheads, first-serve percentages. > >Both the statisticians and the umpires feed the cave dwellers a stream of >match statistics that are sifted, then reprocessed to create match data that >can be used by the USTA to serve the off-air press as well as broadcasters. > >Below the Ashe Stadium stands, USTA runners deposit sheets of these >statistics in rows of boxes at one side of a vast Media Room. > >>From here, reporters work in more than 250 cubicles equipped with >electricity, telephone lines, television monitor, and reams of fact >booklets. > >Thanks to Broder's team, the journalists continually dip into the boxes for >statistical comparisons it would take them hours, if not days, to amass on >their own. > >Why call it Skunkware? > >"I originally named it Broder's Skunkworks," he says, "in tribute to the >(secret) division of Lockheed, which built the SR71 spy plane." > >But Lockheed objected, warning Broder not to use the term and even going to >the trouble of suing a dictionary which defined the word without mentioning >the giant aerospace company. > >"After some legal exchanges, my attorney told me that Lockheed's brand mark >clearly extended only to aerospace products," he says, "and that should the >matter go to court, I would win in a slam dunk." > >Even so, with a potential legal bill of a quarter-million dollars to secure >his rights, Broder backed off. "I simply changed the name to 'Broder's >Skunkware'. I now own that brand mark, so Lockheed can kiss my ass." > > From above, the crowd's roar sinks into the recesses of the Ashe >Stadium structure, rolling down the corridors and blotting out the >keystrokes and conversations that might escape from the Bat Cave. > > "Years ago," says Broder, explaining the term, "we ran the U.S. Open >computer operations out of a tiny room under what used to be the Grandstand >Court (of Louis Armstrong Stadium). > > "It was hellish. The power blew out at least once a day, the air >conditioning never worked, the room flooded. It was a nightmare." > > Faced with those working conditions, Broder says he named it the Bat >Cave "because the room was so tiny and airless, yet it was crammed, >literally, to the ceiling with electronic gear." > >Now, with yards of space, the scene is different: > >As we wait for the Safin-Martin match to end, the Broder team kicks back. >Someone pulls out a football. With hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth >of equipment lining the playing field, they toss laterals and passes back >and forth. Quarterback Broder takes his turn. > >The cave dwellers are at rest -- and play. > > ###