Hi folks,

Roel Torres here.  Gonna try something a little different for me this time out.  In a departure from my usual essays, I want to take a moment to address a question that has popped up on the Reader Posts section of Bill James Online.  Borrowing the format from the Hey Bill section of this site, here is my first informal entry in the “Hey Roel” series.  Let’s see how it goes.

On August 16, 2008, in the Reader Posts section of this site and under the topic header “Weird Baseball Names and Coincidences,” Bill James Online member “sgoldleaf” wrote:

I’m obsessed by spectacularly unlikely pairings of baseball players’ names, and I thought I’d share some of the stranger twosomes I’ve thought of (and maybe learn some even wackier pairings of which I’m unaware).  The strangest pair, to me, is “Steve Ontiveros”

http://www.baseball-reference.com/o/ontivst01.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/o/ontivst02.shtml

I mean, how unlikely is it that even one person would have that combination of first name and last name? If I had to guess, I would say that maybe there are, what, a hundred people in the whole U.S. named “Ontiveros”—200, tops—and four or five would be named “Steve.”

In response, “jollydodger” said:

Actually, I'm surprised there isn't more of this. I think you're grossly underestimating how many Ontiveros there are in this country of over 300,000,000 people. Pick any obscure name, and I'll bet there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of people here with that name (including Mienkiewicz). (sic)

Interesting points from both guys.  I was intrigued.  So I figured I would do the research to determine how many people are named Ontiveros in the United States, and how many were named Steve.

Now I know that I’m not the resident stat guy around here.  I mean, we have Bill James and John Dewan regularly contributing statistical analysis to this site.  So I’m happy to let them take the wheel.  But it might surprise some of the people who’ve read my work to find out that I’m relatively comfortable with numbers.  In my day job, I work as a financial officer for the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University.

If you click on our mission statement, you find out that:

Our scientific mission is: (1) to create, and make widely accessible, statistical and analytical tools for the social and health sciences; and (2) to use these tools for understanding and solving major problems that affect society and the well-being of human populations.

Basically, I work in a place where a bunch of Harvard professors crunch numbers to try and solve major global problems.  It’s pretty cool.  And we can use some of the available resources to determine something far more frivolous, such as how many people are named Ontiveros in the United States.  One such handy resource is the website HowManyOfMe.com, which breaks down 1990 U.S. Census Bureau statistics by individual first and last names.  We can consult the search function and see what develops.

First, let’s take a moment to re-visit the original comment by “sgoldleaf”:

I would say that maybe there are, what, a hundred people in the whole U.S. named “Ontiveros”—200, tops—and four or five would be named “Steve.”

It’s a reasonable assumption, but the statistics say that he’s off by a couple orders of magnitude.  According to The 1990 U.S. Census Bureau statistics:

--There are 11,159 people in the U.S. with the last name Ontiveros.

--Statistically, Ontiveros is the 3,367th most popular last name in the country (out of at least 88,799 different last names.)

So reader “jollydodger” was right in pointing out Ontiveros is more popular than one might expect.  However, the assumption by “jollydodger” on the popularity of Mientkiewicz was actually off-base.  He stated:

Pick any obscure name, and I'll bet there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of people here with that name (including Mienkiewicz).(sic)

It turns out, there are not thousands of people named Mientkiewicz (and there are certainly not “tens of thousands” with that name.)  As a matter of fact, the number of people named  Mientkiewicz is so small, it is considered statistically insignificant.  Again, from The 1990 U.S. Census Bureau statistics:

--There are fewer than 335 people in the U.S. with the last name Mientkiewicz.

--The estimate for this name is not absolute. There may be fewer people with this name.

Well it seems that Doug Mientkiewiz is quite a rarity.  Good to know.  Just to finish up, let’s go ahead and figure out how many people in the country are named Steve Ontiveros.  If we take into consideration the possible variations of “Stephen, Steven and Steve” we find out that as of 1990:

-- There are 14 people in the U.S. named Steve Ontiveros.

-- There are 30 people in the U.S. named Stephen Ontiveros.

-- There are 44 people in the U.S. named Steven Ontiveros.

In total, out of the 304,890,155 in the United States, 88 of them would answer to the name “Steve Ontiveros.”

Okay.  Now that we have a solid number to work with, I would like to support the original point raised by “sgoldleaf”, which is this – it really is an unlikely coincidence that we have had two Major League players named Steve Ontiveros.  Even though his math was a little off, his point is valid.  We have a pool of 88 possible candidates, and two of them ended up with careers as Major League ballplayers.  That’s pretty cool.

I should mention, I have a particular interest in names.  Especially since there is another Roel Torres living in the United States who is a convicted incestuous pedophile, sentenced to serve twenty years in a Texas prison for having sexually molested his 13 year-old cousin.  This “Other Roel Torres” pops up on the front page of my Google searches from time to time, and probably doesn’t make it any easier on me when I’m trying to date someone new and they start doing internet background searches…

Okay.  Hope you enjoyed this little experiment on counting Steve Ontiveroses.  I’ll see you next week with another regularly scheduled meditative essay, this time contemplating the nature of death and baseball.  See you then!

If you have any thoughts you want to share, I would love to hear from you.  I can be contacted at roeltorres@post.harvard.edu.  Thank you.