LIKE MILLIONS of other kids, Charlie Young, CS+astronomy & statistics ’20, dreamed of being a big-league baseball player—and never made it past high school ball. "Fortunately, I was better at computer science." And by the time he reached Illinois in 2016, there happened to be an analytics revolution going on in the national pastime.
Less than a year out of Naperville North High School, the young Young was thrilled when the Chicago Cubs won the 2016 World Series. Poring over books on sabermetrics—the study of baseball data, named for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR)—he "kept seeing the name of renowned baseball physicist Alan Nathan, a U. of I. professor. He worked in the Loomis Physics Lab, which I could see from my dorm window!"
With Dr. Nathan as a mentor who became a friend, Young worked with the Illini baseball team, setting up a tripod behind the catcher during practices to capture spin rates, launch angles, and other data that MLB teams were using at the time. One favorite moment came when slick-fielding infielder Michael Massey, now with the Kansas City Royals, moved into a shift (three infielders on one side of the field) behind second base. "When the next ball was hit right to him—right into the shift—I thought, ‘This is really fun,’" he says.