Go ahead, take a chance

People continue to talk about the geometry of the steal, the windup of Yankee pitcher Andy Pettitte, the look on his face as Ellsbury trotted to the dugout.

Ellsbury had a lot to lose. The bases were loaded with two outs in the fifth inning. What he did was take an extraordinay risk. He had no sign to steal; he just did it. But the risk was calculated - both Pettitte and catcher Jorge Posada appeared to be in a fugue state.

Ellsbury later explained that the hardest part of the steal was marshalling the courage to try it. "I guess in that situation, bases loaded, you've got to make it," he said. "It could be one of the worst base-running mistakes if you don't make it, but I was pretty confident I could get in there and make it, so that's why I went." What I take away from the Ellsbury dash has less to do with baseball than it does the broader issue of risk. Today, we avoid risk as vampires do garlic. Risk has been bled from our culture, thanks to the smorgasbord of scary things out there.

We don't try to steal second anymore, let alone home. We live small, prudent lives these days. We look inward. We crave safety anywhere we can find it. We like to cash in our portfolios, even if we we sold our stocks way late.

We worry about our jobs. They really are in danger. We become more docile employees. There is, after all, the mortgage and college and the car with the floaty brakes. This is why we are so taken by Ellsbury's bracing words. My bet is that he would have been applauded even if he'd been called out. Why? Audacity. He was willing to take a chance.

Ellsbury provides us the risk fix we need. A base stealer is nothing if not a gambler. We watch him sprint and revel in his gifts and self-confidence. The point is, we are reduced to finding risk on television watching sports figures.

It turns out, though, that Ellsbury is a rarity among base runners, whom we learn are a conservative lot. Most are like the rest of us, "risk averse" or "loss averse," depending on your preference. In 2007, a man named Ross Roley published a paper called "Runners' Reluctance." What he found was a deep commitment among runners to play it safe.

Roley looked at former Atlanta Braves centerfielder Andruw Jones, known for his strong arm, during the 2006 season. It turns out he prevented a mere nine runners from advancing in 247 chances that year. "Why so low," asks Roley. "Is it because Jones doesn't have such a feared arm after all? Certainly not. Instead it appears base runners are incredibly reluctant to advance on anybody, basically only taking the risk when it's a sure thing."

Roley found that 61 percent of base runners didn't even try for an extra base with fewer than two outs. Of those who challenged the outfielder, only 3 percent got thrown out.

It's not just baseball. In 2003, Berkeley economist David Romer published an opaque paper, freighted with hallucinogenic equations, titled "It's Fourth Down and What Does the Bellman Equation Say?" In it, he found that football coaches harbor a reflexive aversion to go for it on the fourth down and punt instead, even when Romer's analysis shows it would be better on average to go for it. To wit: On 1,100 fourth downs in his sample, teams kicked 992 times.

So ballplayers are more like us, and we're not a nation of risk-takers, despite our own self-image. So says David Ropeik, former director of Risk Communication at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis who is writing a book on risk response due out next spring. "Humans are naturally risk averse, or loss averse. It is our default position in general.

"There is an extra emotional penalty to loss," he adds. "People hold on to their investments longer than they should in a falling market because to sell is to confirm the loss."

True, but let's give ourselves a little credit. We risked everything when we took on the Brits against overwhelming odds. So did the folks who moved west in covered wagons into the unknown. And risk has been an elemental force in American capitalism from the get-go.

But I know what Ropeik means. For all of those who went west, legions more stayed put in the east.

Question: Is risk to your health the same as risk in a steal? Not by a long shot. When Ellsbury stole home, his life was not at stake, for starters. He also had control over his risk. We are much less afraid if we have some control over it, says Ropeik. Lunatic pursuits like bungee-jumping radiate risk, but the berserk person involved makes the decisions.

Swine flu, in contrast, is an existential threat and we have no control over it. It produces the same reaction as someone who sees a snake, says Ropeik. Panic. "Swine flu has the same mechanics," he says. "The fear alert comes on first, then reason follows."

This is awfully heady stuff for the Observer. I take swine flu risk in stride. You do your best and live your life. But Jacoby Ellsbury's steal home is another story. He hasn't a shred of loss aversion in him. What he has in spades in something else - audacity - and we swoon.

Sam Allis can be reached at allis@globe.com