Was that the best single night of regular season baseball ever? I love that even Pavano and the Twins got into the act.
165 thoughts on “September 29, 2011: Singular”
That was an awesome, incredible night of baseball. I stayed up until the end of all of it, which for me is an extremely late night. I still can hardly believe it.
It's just too bad that the season ended just when the Twins were getting hot...
Huh, I guess I should have tried to stay up for all of that. A crying baby made it difficult, though.
A crying baby made it difficult to stay up? Moss usually finds that it is difficult to sleep through that!
Heh, that's some awful wording on my part. I meant she was crying, which wore me out and removed my desire to keep watching baseball when my wife got her to calm down. (I'm ill equipped for that task right now.)
yeah, i think jane gets a little annoyed sometimes when i hand Pete off to her. what the hell does she expect me to do?
And that matters to her how, hj?
They didn't lose the division, they just ran out of games.
The Red Sox, on the other hand, had too many.
Last night's game(s) log set a record for most LTEs.
Nothing says fan interest like the quest to avoid a 100th loss!
Didn't realize how awful Dan Johnson's stats on the year are. His home run brought his slugging all the way up to .202 on the season. Using Johnson to pinch hit would be like Gardy using Drew Butera to pinch hit. Actually, you could make a good case that Butera (24 OPS+) should pinch hit for Johnson (11 OPS+), if they played on the same team. And all Johnson did was hit a two-out, two-strike HR to tie a game in the ninth inning when it looked like a loss would end the Rays' season.
Isn't baseball incredible?
This kind of thing doesn't happen in any other major sport.
That's why I love it.
Drew Butera is too good to be a comparison. Fortunately the Twins have another catcher that's closer:
Dan Johnson hit .273/.382/.459 in AAA this year. Drew Butera's never hit that well at any level of professional baseball. Even if it gave you the platoon advantage, I'd never hit Butera for Johnson.
ubelmann! Good to see you. How's it going?
Hey, the Married Man reappears!!!11one11!!!!
Someone has to defend Dan Johnson!
ubes, why did you have to leave us and get a life? We miss you!
Thanks guys. Life is good, but busy. Finished grad school (dissertation and all), got married, went to France for a couple weeks on our honeymoon, got to my first game at Target Field (with family in tow)--I bet you didn't realize I was the reason for breaking the 11-game losing streak--and am now chained to my desk for a while. I had tickets to the Mariners game last night with my wife and a couple friends of ours, but our friends are Cardinals fans, so we wound up hanging out at a sports bar near the stadium watching the games that mattered. Good times, for sure.
Since we moved in early July--in the midst of three or so big projects--we never really got unpacked, and our apartment is pretty much a disaster zone right now. Not sure when the chaos will let up, but I still check in here from time to time.
And yes, any time a man has been wronged by a small sample size, I must stand up for him. 🙂
Woo! Hoo! You'll have to come back at the appropriate time and start reading about fatherhood, which reminds me, I owe the WGOM a column.
about that, we've kind of fallen off of our schedule (i haven't been keeping track either, honestly). i think i'm going to re-jigger the schedule, so why don't you hold off for a second on that.
I can hold off. Honestly, I'm not sure what I'm going to write about.
Sounds very busy. Glad everything is working out for you and the missus. Don't be a stranger.
What Magoo said. You've been missed, ubes.
I said a good case could be made, I didn't say I would argue for it.
I was saying that there's not a good case for Butera over Johnson. The whole argument against Johnson is that Johnson had a poor April and May, and then he didn't do anything with a week's worth of pinch hitting and one start in September. The argument in favor of Butera is that there is no argument in favor of Butera--he's been a terrible hitter his entire professional career.
Well i'm not goons let you get away with this completely. Dan Johnson has a career 98 OPS+. Clearly you wouldn't hit Butera for him, but its not like he's a good hitter.
What's the career OPS+ of the guy he actually, you know, pinch-hit for? 90. What the heck do you think you are "not goons let you get away with" here?
That the argument against Johnson was a bad start to the season. He's simply not a good hitter. But even then, I'm not saying I disagree with pinch hitting him.
Sure he's not a great hitter, but he's been league average and had a decent stint in AAA this summer, which is why he was with the team in the first place. Butera is barely, if at all, qualified to step to the plate.
If we're considering the exact situation in question, I think it made plenty of sense to put Johnson in for Fuld. With two outs and no one on, it's not a bad strategy to go with the guy who has the best chance to tie the game in one swing. Johnson has about 3.5 HR/100 PA compared to Fuld's 0.8 HR/100 PA, and they have similar career OBPs, so Johnson gives you more power without being more likely to make the final out. Sure Johnson hadn't had a whole lot of success in the majors this year, but given his success in AAA, I think Maddon wasn't sticking his neck out so far having a little faith in the guy, or at least more faith than he had in Sam Fuld.
Hola, Amigo!
end the season on a 2 game win streak. the last time the Twins won back to back games was Aug 31, Sept 1
I wish I could have stayed up for the baseball action, but I fell asleep before the Twins game ended. I flipped on SportsCenter this morning and literally did the 'rub ones eyes in disbelief/double take' thing when I saw what happened
The Twins were 1-18-1 in their previous 20 series before winning their final series. The one win came against the Tigers in Detroit and the one split came against the Rangers in Texas. The Twins went 3-18-2 in series in the second half (including the one-game "series" with the Yankees). Two of those series wins came against the Royals at Target Field.
Reading the recaps, I see that Papelboner blew the game after getting two outs..... did David Justice un-retire?
I have a good friend I used to work with who is a Red Sox fan, and not an obnoxious one (yes, they do exist outside of the laboratory). I'm trying to tread lightly.
Cardinals fans here are excited but realistic.
Cardinals fans here are excited but realistic.
Drawing the Yankmes Phillie$ in the first round will do that to a fanbase.
In news everyone saw coming, Bob Sanders is placed on injured reserve
In more news everyone saw coming, Milton Bradley is arrested for felony battery.
So when is an NBA player going to do something everyone saw coming? Or does this count?
The name change counts, I think.
I suppose the universe had to balance out the "bat-shit crazy, no one could have ever seen this coming" from last night
Were last night's results the best for society as a whole?
Okay, I'll shut up about that.
This is why baseball needs to focus on the entire league and not just a couple of franchises. Last night was so wonderful for fans of the game.
Last night was so wonderful for fans of the game.
Which, amazingly, the 4ltr has a better handle on this morning than Yahoo Sports.
I went over to Yahoo just to see if they had game times yet, since we're still trying to figure out when we'll need someone here to watch the girls. Their top story is, of course, focused solely on the Red Sox. Not one of the two teams that made the playoffs last night, or one of the eight teams in the playoffs period. Just a team (and one of two) that completed a collapse yesterday.
My neighbor wanted to see Cardinal news this morning; his complaint was that ESPN was all Red Sox. I wasn't surprised.
I guess I would have been surprised if it was anything else, which is pretty damning.
I boycott Sportscenter, so can't say what they were all like, but it was nice to see Longoria on the front page of the website.
That "Nation in Ruins" crap on Yahoo has them on my list.
I just keep thinking about all those "MLB Playoffs" billboards I've seen with the faces of each team playing in the post season...Cabrera, Granderson, and Gonzalez Longoria.
I always love when they blow those. A few years ago when the Yankees missed it, they were the primary focus of the commercial even when they were nearly statistically eliminated. They do that with the All-Star Game, too, routinely featuring guys who have a terrible year or who miss the game for injury. I don't envy the commercial producers because they have to get those things shot months in advance, but I still laugh and point.
The very first commercial on MLB Network after the Longo homerun was a playoff promo all about the Braves.
They seemed like such a safe bet!
The NBA and NFL are so good at that. There are "America's Teams" in both leagues, but fans of the sports will watch a wide variety of the games. It bugs me that MLB is so awful at that.
Salary cap and revenue sharing. Bud needs to get over his utilitarian view (X amount of total revenue! never mind that one franchise is making 15% or more of that) and start promoting the league itself and not just two or three teams to the fans in general. Get this: the National League has much better attendance than the American League. I wonder why? Could it be that more teams have hopes of winning the pennant?
The National League has much better attendance than the American League
Is that a per team average or total attendance? The National League does have two more teams than the American League.
EDIT: Your original point is spot on however.
NL average in 2011 is more than 200,000 more tickets sold per club than AL, which is almost 9% higher. Subtract the Yankees from the AL total and the difference is almost 14%.
Doesn't the NL have larger parks as well?
The problem isn't a lack of available tickets in most markets.
Put another way, the NL average is 2.54 million with a Stdev of 617K. The AL average is 2.34 million with a stdev of 733K.
the per-game average of averages in the AL (per B-R) was 28,789 with a std dev of 9,087.
The lows were Oakland (18,232) and Tampa (18,879), not much more than a std dev below the mean. The highs were NYY (45,102), Minn (39,113) and LAAAAAA (39,090).
So, really just one outlier there.
You take out that outlier and the difference per team is 300,000 AL to NL and the stdev is a lot closer. That's almost 14% attendance difference. The Yankees are really bad for the rest of the American League.
The Yankees are also a big reason why the AL has been superior to the NL for the last decade.
So the AL is superior, yet fewer fans are paying to go watch it. Is it better for a sports league to be talented or entertaining?
to be fair, ubes, I think sean just meant that the Yankmes have been a force in the World Series. Plenty of people are paying to see them.
It's funny that Yankee fans constantly remind the rest of us that it's a business, but an effective business would be better at bringing in money across the entire league and wouldn't allow a couple of teams to so completely be over the heads of the others that some teams have no hope year after year.
For the league as a whole, though, it seems highly inefficient for so many good players to be on one team. I would be in favor of a scenario where there was a cap--maybe even a hard cap at say $100M, but at least a soft cap with real teeth--but each team was allowed to have 3 designated players who didn't count against the cap, or only counted, say, $20M against the cap.
The Yankees could still spend $200M if they wanted to, but that would mean spending $160M on three players and having just $40M to assemble the rest of their roster. An arrangement like this would naturally distribute star talent throughout the league, making it easier for teams to market themselves to fans, and keeping a team like the Yankees from demoralizing most of their division for 15+ years. For that matter, the Phillies and Red Sox would also have had to make some difficult choices about which designated players to keep. Texas might still have Cliff Lee. Cleveland or Milwaukee might still have CC Sabathia. Burnett and Pavano probably wouldn't have gotten crazy money from the Yankees way back when.
So sure, plenty of people are paying money to see the Yankees, but with such a wide gap between the Yankees and the mid-to-bottom teams, there are a lot of games--a lot more than the Yankees play--which have been really devalued under the current system. I think they could make a lot more money overall with a broader fan base and more interest in more games.
a broader fan base and more interest in more games.
Which would translate into more eyeballs on the screen come playoffs.
I am not a fan of spending caps. It's a friggin' oligopoly -- share more of the damned revenue!
Yes, revenue-sharing is important, because no matter what you do, you can't smooth out differences in the relative size of markets. However, instituting a spending cap is the front office equivalent of testing for PEDs. Some owners will go significantly in the red ("do whatever it takes") to win (or at least a lot less in the black), even if that is not a good outcome for the league. The games between the players have rules and restrictions, and I think the games between the general managers should also have rules and restrictions.
So impose a salary cap to keep teams from going crazy, but then institute some kind of profit-sharing so that the owners aren't just keeping money from the players. I prefer some kind of profit-sharing scheme to instituting a spending floor, because teams do really crazy things when faced with a spending floor, it seems.
You take out that outlier and the difference per team is 300,000 AL to NL and the stdev is a lot closer. That's almost 14% attendance difference. The Yankees are really bad for the rest of the American League.
How much of the difference is market sizes?
The NL has teams in TV markets ranked 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 16, 18, 21, 23, 28, 34, 35
The AL has teams in TV markets ranked 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 26, 31, and Toronto, which would rank 15th in size (US markets as of 2009).
Seven of the bottom eight MLB franchises in attendance this year were AL teams (Sea, 14th largest market; Cle, 17th; Toronto; Bal, 26th; KC, 31st; Tampa, 13th; and Oak, 6th). One would think that playing in the same division with NYY and Boston would help attendance by drawing their fans to the park, but it didn't seem to help Toronto, Baltimore and Tampa on net.
Cleveland has had terrible attendance since 2002, finishing no better than 9th of 14 AL clubs during that stretch despite winning the division in 2007 and winning 93 games in 2005. Which is a bit odd, because they had oustanding attendance (1st or 2nd in the AL six times 1995-2000) in the 1990s. But if you put a consistent winner in Cleveland, the fans will come. Same with Seattle.
Toronto led the AL in attendance 7 times during 1987-94, but has struggled to draw even 2 million since 2000. Not coincidentally, they've struggled to win as well.
Baltimore similarly drew very well in the 1990s, but they have been the Ottoman Empire of the AL for years (not having had a winning record since 1997 and not even winning 70 since 2006).
Tampa has not drawn 2 million since their inaugural season, despite winning their division twice in the last four years. But finishing last in nine of their first 10 seasons surely had a lasting impact on their ability to draw fans.
KC hasn't drawn 2 million since 1991, which isn't surprising, given that they just completed their 17th losing season since then. If Baltimore is the Ottoman Empire, then KC must be Lebanon.
Oakland finished in the top 5 in AL attendance each year 1989-1992 but has been horrible at the gate since despite putting some decent teams on the field (8 winning seasons during 1993-2011, including 5 playoff appearances).
I can't really blame the Yankmes for Seattle, Cleveland or KC. Put a product on the field!
Oakland has a terrible stadium in a terrible area, in a market dominated by the Giants. They need to move, but SF claims jurisdiction over San Jose, the logical place for them to go. Sacramento is the 20th largest market (bigger than Stl, Pitt, Balt, SD, KC, Cincy and Milwaukee) and has strongly supported the River Cats. They really should move inland.
The harder cases are the AL East teams on the list. Have their fan bases become despondent about the Axis of Evil connecting Boston and NY? Perhaps.
I can't really blame the Yankmes for Seattle, Cleveland or KC. Put a product on the field!
I dunno. I don't think it's that simple. With a cap, or a cap with exemptions, Cleveland could still have Sabathia. They only traded him because they didn't think they could re-sign him. There's been some terrible management in Seattle, but again, there could be a lot more big-name free agents to help boost a team if they aren't all playing for New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. They've been spending money for the most part, but there's not always a lot to spend money on.
The other thing which could help some of the AL East teams is to balance the schedule a little more. If the Twins had 54 games against the Yankees, Rays, and Red Sox, they could easily have finished worse than the Astros.
So what you're saying is that the Red Sox should be moved to the NL?
It bugs me that MLB is so awful at that.
When your marketing people choose Dane Cook as the face of the postseason...
Oh, my GAWD. It's unbelievable that they still think he's a thing (we can argue that he was never a thing because he's always sucked to high heaven, but he was popular at one point, at least).
That was 2007, but the evidence stands.
Oh, I'm grateful. I assumed you meant that ESPN had brought him back.
nope it's Jason Bateman this year
NBC just bought a show from him!
I saw that. Always on the cutting edge, they are.
All they paid for was a development deal, so there's a lot of time for the project to fail, and for someone to point out to the guys that paid for the dev deal that Dane Cook stopped being a phenomenon a while ago. I wouldn't be surprised if it never went to series.
Of course, since something like 15-25% of pilots make it to series, I could safely say that about any show.
Is this where I would point out they failed to sell out last night? And a good many of the fans left before the eighth inning rally?
Wait, are you meaning to tell me that baseball fans left a game with their team down by seven runs with six outs left against the best team in the AL? On a weeknight? Shocking. When the Twins average 97 losses for ten straight years, I'll pretend I know what it's like to be a Rays fan.
K, and when the Twins average 92 wins over a four year stretch (again) I'll make sure to look back and be even more shocked how they averaged under 19 thousand in year four and didn't come close to selling out the season finale with everything on the line.
They had 2 games all year with attendance in excess of 30 K, meanwhile in Pittsburgh, they are so hungry for a winner, when it looked like the team maybe just maybe might have a winning record, they had 24 games in excess of 30 K.
You're never going to let this go I'm guessing. You are so fixated on attendance being the sole indicator of fan interest, I don't think any of the other numerous reasons for not attending games will ever get through to you.
Not the least of which is the Trop itself. Like a Home Depot with cheaper looking carpet
Do. Not. Feed. The. Trolls.
Sorry, my troll radar is a bit rusty.
Surely it's fair to compare a franchise that started in 1882 and has over 100 years of history and five World Series Championships with a franchise that started in 1998 and has zero World Series championships. In their 14th season, Pittsburgh only drew 2,806 per game. If we inexplicably ignore the years they spent as the Alleghenys, in their 14th season as the Pirates, a year after they had lost the World Series, they drew 4,367, good for only 5th of 8 in the NL. This despite 30-year-old Honus Wagner--likely better than anyone who will ever play for the Rays, relative to the era--having an epic season. (He led the league with 9 WAR and the next closest was Chance with 6.1 WAR.) It's truly hard to believe that those unappreciative fans managed to keep their franchise.
Has anyone said that we missed you?
Cool. Now compare them to the DBacks.
Your intellectually dishonest arguments fail to sway me. TB fans, all three dozen of them, don't deserve a team this great.
From an interview with Jeff Pearlman on Walter Payton:
SI.com: What is Walter's lasting legacy?
Pearlman: Mike Ditka told me this: You go to a Cleveland Browns game, you don't see many people wearing Jim Brown jerseys. You go to a Packers game, you don't see Paul Hornung jerseys. But if you go to a Bears game, you still see tons of people -- 12 years after he died -- wearing Walter Payton jerseys. That's not just because he was a great player. He was so good to the fans. That's why he's iconic. He treated people with dignity.
So, he writes a book and tells the world about his problems. Did Jeff Pearlman treat Walter Payton with dignity?
could it also be that Payton retired over 20 years later than the other two guys and people even as young as I remember watching him play and playing with him in video games?
I bet you see more Puckett than Killebrew jerseys too.
Where are all the Red Grange uniforms? Hmmm?
You can't tell from this angle, but Walter Payton jerseys became cool to little kids years ago.
Inconceivable!
Now, your daily "Is it Thursday?" update.
It is, and I remembered to get the trash out. Already a better day than yesterday.
I got my garbage out, too, which is always good.
Last night was terrific. I was out and saw Yankees fans rooting for the Rays only to say to themselves, I sure hope we don't face them in the ALCS.
Ahh, Yankees fans, you are the best.
So, it's Linds and I's anniversary. We decided to keep it relatively low key - just dinner and a movie.
The movie she wants to see? Moneyball.
I ask you... is this a trap?
Brad Pitt. Good reviews. I don't think so, but only you would know for sure.
My wife would never pick that movie, but she hates baseball with the fire of a thousand suns.
Linds actually sat down and watched the final minutes of the Twins game with me. She dislikes Parmelee (because "he'd better not take away Morneau's job!"), so she likes baseball (not nearly enough to watch the wild card madness that happened later, but that's expected). I'm hopeful.
At this point, Morneau should think about taking himself out of Morneau's job.
I've just got this bad feeling that he's never going to play the field more than a couple nights in a row again.
I agree, though I tell her otherwise. He's a primary reason she likes baseball now, I'd love if ends up being as simple as finding a new player, but who knows?
Yeah, he seems to be a physical mess. He could end up going the way of Koskie.
"I was wondering who was going to be the first guy to think I produced, wrote or directed this movie," Beane told this newspaper. "Now I have my answer. (Howe's) comments are completely misguided."
Billy's dumping of Art Howe always mystified me, but whatever.
As I recall the book more than suggested that Billy wanted a sock puppet to be his field manager, and from Howe's reaction I would hazard a guess that he was a bit too outspoken for Billy's taste.
Happy anniversary, nibbish. Mrs. Twayn and I are also celebrating our anniversary today, 21 years of marriage. Tonight will be low-key, but we're going to party it up downtown on Saturday.
Happy anniversary, Twayn. Truly a beautiful day for such a thing.
Happy anniversaries to the four of you!
And they said it wouldn't last! 😉 Well done
Hey that's right we share an anniversary. 21 years as well. I got the flowers in chocolate sitting on my desk waiting to be brought home. We have work and school meetings tonight but going to see Hamlet at the Jungle Theater on Saturday.
wgom mass wedding 21 years ago?
The computer here at work just said "Your password will expire in 10 days. Would you like to change it?" To which I replied with a resounding
I am playing with Chrome. What do I need to know? What apps/extensions do you recommend? Is there a NoScript equivalent?
apparently there is -- it's called NotScript. I've installed it and am testing it out. So far, so good.
besides the ad blocker, I leave it as-is
I saw ESPN's top 10 plays of the MLB season while I was on the treadmill this morning. Number 2 was Revere's leaping, over the should catch while running into the wall. Number 1 was Longoria's walk off from last night. I can't really argue with either of those.
I don't know which home run was more intense, Longoria's or Johnson's. I obviously don't have any problem with picking Longo's, but that Johnson home run ought to live forever.
I find Longoria's to be a bit more poetic though, since it happened so soon after the Red Sox lost and he had to have found out right before heading to either the on-deck circle or the batter's box.
I think he found out mid at-bat, based on his post-game interview, that the Red Sox had lost. He knew stepping in that they had tied. It was unbelievable.
The Red Sox lost during Upton's at bat while Longoria was on deck. There was an absolutely hilarious video of the pitch thrown right when the scoreboard showed the Red Sox lost. The crowd (and Rays dugout) went crazy and started screaming and Upton bailed on the pitch because he had no idea what was happening. It was really amusing.
Fans and media tend to love the winning walk-off HRs in playoff situations, but I think the ones when the teams are tied get overrated. Yes, it won the game, but if Johnson's pinch-hit, two-out, two-strike HR doesn't happen, the Rays lose and would have most likely (at the time) ended their season. If Longoria's HR doesn't happen, the teams just keep playing and the longer it goes, the more it favors the Rays anyways because the Yankees aren't going to keep their top players out there and won't use their best pitchers. The timing of Longoria's HR was insane, and his performance in that game will probably be viewed as the best ever in a big game (similar to Kirby's Game 6 for Twins fans), but Johnson's HR to me was far more dramatic.
The freaking tag play at third was awesome, and don't forget he jacked an Earl Weaver Special in the eighth.
No doubt. I watched some of the coverage while at the gym, and who boy, that tag was huge.
WPA agrees with your position on the two home runs, but not by a huge margin. (.49 WPA to .43 WPA)
Also, I want to believe that Scott Proctor was the last Yankees pitcher of the night, no matter how long it took. I guess maybe not if the Yankees got huge lead and DoctorProctor couldn't get outs. The Rays had a reason to tire out some bullpen arms, and I want to believe that Girardi has a grudge against Proctor and kept him out there because he couldn't kick him in the groin on national TV.
Not to re-ignite the Great Citation Debate, but I'm putting the finishing touches on my journal article v2.0, which is preliminarily accepted for publication in a new journal. The only thing is it uses a different style of citations, so I have to re-do them all*. And it's not as easy as clicking "Footnotes to endnotes" in Word. This require a lot of manual retyping, going from parenthetical to endnotes.
*I spend too much time online. Next week w/ limited access will be good for me. I so badly wanted to type "REDO ALL THE THINGS!"
Okay, I seem to be having all sorts of trouble with MLB.com's schedule for some reason -- do the Twins have a day game or a night game today?
Game #163 will be a midnight sun game in Alaska against the Astros.
I would pay quite a bit to see a midnight sun game between the Astros and Twins in Alaska in person.
Yeah, they're bad teams, but in attempting to create a prohibitive game I found one I really wish I could see.
Shouldn't that game be played somewhere the sun doesn't shine?
Tropicana Field.
Perfect!
Who said it. Hint: not Top Jimmy.
I never argue with people who say that baseball is boring, because baseball is boring. And then, suddenly, it isn’t. And that’s what makes it great.
More from Not Top Jimmy:
Then Longoria stepped to the plate with two outs and two on, and before he even swung the bat, baseball fans across America knew exactly what was going to follow. Of course, this feeling — hey this guy’s going to hit a home run — often hits baseball fans, and it’s often followed by harmless pop-ups into foul ground or ground balls to second and batting helmets flung to the dirt in disgust.
Um... spookied?
Okay, I'm giving it away.
Baseball, like life, revolves around anticlimax. That’s what you get most of the time. You stand in driver’s license lines, and watch Alfredo Aceves shake off signals, and sit through your children’s swim meets, and see bases-loaded rallies die, and fill up your car’s tires with air, and endure an inning with three pitching changes, a sacrifice bunt and an intentional walk.
But then, every now and again, something happens. Something memorable. Something magnificent. Something staggering. Your child wins the race. Your team rallies in the ninth. You get pulled over for speeding. And in that moment — awesome or lousy — you are living something that you will never forget, something that jumps out of the toneless roar of day-to-day life.
The Braves failed to score. Papelbon blew the lead. Longoria homered in the 12th. Elation. Sadness. Mayhem. Champagne. Sleepless fury. Never been a night like it. Funny, if I was trying to explain baseball to someone who had never heard of it, I wouldn’t tell them about Wednesday night. No, it seems to me that Wednesday night isn’t what makes baseball great. It’s all the years you spend waiting for Wednesday night that makes baseball great.
How special is Andrew Luck? When was the last time we knew in September who the No. 1 NFL draft choice was going to be the following April? Even the late, great Peyton Manning wasn't a sure pick over Ryan Leaf in the 1998 draft.
Maybe he was late for dinner.
From Fangraphs, a visual representation of the last 5 hours or so of the season with regards to the Red Sox and Rays percentages of winning the Wild Card.
that's pretty sweet, right there.
Hell, that could just as easily be graphing the entire season.
Yeah, definitely. The fact that's graphing such a small time frame is just nuts.
Fractals!!!!
so the rumors going around is that Terry Francona is going to get fired from the Red Sox. why? Does a couple bad months wipe out 2 World Series wins? Or is there something between him and the GM? I dont know it seems crazy to me
Seems like a knee-jerk reaction to a crushing day. Expectations were through the roof this year, but that's very...Steinbrenner of them.
Expect him to sign with the White Sox two days later.
In my dream world they fire Theo Epstein, and the Pohlads drive a truck full of cash money to his front door.
Moss just noticed that, while last nite was about the most exciting sports day in recent memory, today is possibly the slowest sports day in recent memory. None of the four major leagues has a regular season or playoff game. Not even the WNBA is in action tonite. There's NHL preseason, and it appears that there's two NCAA football games, one soccer match, and that's it.
Not that Moss is complaining. It's just strange...
that is strange. Its all right by me because Thursdays I watch the NBC Comedy Block and Its Always Sunny...
It could be no one wanted to risk going up against a Game 163, but then again, how often does that happen?
Everyone is in recovery mode.
Over at Casa de Leche, Zack won Spookymilk Survivor IX today (this was a season based around strategic games, rather than creative writing, if anyone's wondering; they now rotate that way).
Zack marks the fourth time in a row that the winner came from the WGOM. Give my flighty, lazy other friends a chance, dudes!
How about Survivor Werewolf? There are 14 creative writers, and 4 non-submitters, but nobody knows who's who.
We all submit anonymous stories, then people try to claim which ones they wrote. The person who does the worst job of claiming to have written a story gets voted out. This actually might be playable.
just a variation of Balderdash.
(and I love Beyond Balderdash)
yeah, I am only willing to play the sequel
Anniversary dinner at Texas Roadhouse tonight. Salad, sirloin and ribs, baked tater, and a Sam Adams Octoberfest on tap. I considered having a second, but I probably would have started nodding in our booth.
That was an awesome, incredible night of baseball. I stayed up until the end of all of it, which for me is an extremely late night. I still can hardly believe it.
It's just too bad that the season ended just when the Twins were getting hot...
Huh, I guess I should have tried to stay up for all of that. A crying baby made it difficult, though.
A crying baby made it difficult to stay up? Moss usually finds that it is difficult to sleep through that!
Heh, that's some awful wording on my part. I meant she was crying, which wore me out and removed my desire to keep watching baseball when my wife got her to calm down. (I'm ill equipped for that task right now.)
yeah, i think jane gets a little annoyed sometimes when i hand Pete off to her. what the hell does she expect me to do?
And that matters to her how, hj?
They didn't lose the division, they just ran out of games.
The Red Sox, on the other hand, had too many.
Last night's game(s) log set a record for most LTEs.
Nothing says fan interest like the quest to avoid a 100th loss!
Didn't realize how awful Dan Johnson's stats on the year are. His home run brought his slugging all the way up to .202 on the season. Using Johnson to pinch hit would be like Gardy using Drew Butera to pinch hit. Actually, you could make a good case that Butera (24 OPS+) should pinch hit for Johnson (11 OPS+), if they played on the same team. And all Johnson did was hit a two-out, two-strike HR to tie a game in the ninth inning when it looked like a loss would end the Rays' season.
Isn't baseball incredible?
This kind of thing doesn't happen in any other major sport.
That's why I love it.
Drew Butera is too good to be a comparison. Fortunately the Twins have another catcher that's closer:
Dan Johnson hit .273/.382/.459 in AAA this year. Drew Butera's never hit that well at any level of professional baseball. Even if it gave you the platoon advantage, I'd never hit Butera for Johnson.
ubelmann! Good to see you. How's it going?
Hey, the Married Man reappears!!!11one11!!!!
Someone has to defend Dan Johnson!
ubes, why did you have to leave us and get a life? We miss you!
Thanks guys. Life is good, but busy. Finished grad school (dissertation and all), got married, went to France for a couple weeks on our honeymoon, got to my first game at Target Field (with family in tow)--I bet you didn't realize I was the reason for breaking the 11-game losing streak--and am now chained to my desk for a while. I had tickets to the Mariners game last night with my wife and a couple friends of ours, but our friends are Cardinals fans, so we wound up hanging out at a sports bar near the stadium watching the games that mattered. Good times, for sure.
Since we moved in early July--in the midst of three or so big projects--we never really got unpacked, and our apartment is pretty much a disaster zone right now. Not sure when the chaos will let up, but I still check in here from time to time.
And yes, any time a man has been wronged by a small sample size, I must stand up for him. 🙂
Woo! Hoo! You'll have to come back at the appropriate time and start reading about fatherhood, which reminds me, I owe the WGOM a column.
about that, we've kind of fallen off of our schedule (i haven't been keeping track either, honestly). i think i'm going to re-jigger the schedule, so why don't you hold off for a second on that.
I can hold off. Honestly, I'm not sure what I'm going to write about.
Sounds very busy. Glad everything is working out for you and the missus. Don't be a stranger.
What Magoo said. You've been missed, ubes.
I said a good case could be made, I didn't say I would argue for it.
I was saying that there's not a good case for Butera over Johnson. The whole argument against Johnson is that Johnson had a poor April and May, and then he didn't do anything with a week's worth of pinch hitting and one start in September. The argument in favor of Butera is that there is no argument in favor of Butera--he's been a terrible hitter his entire professional career.
Well i'm not goons let you get away with this completely. Dan Johnson has a career 98 OPS+. Clearly you wouldn't hit Butera for him, but its not like he's a good hitter.
What's the career OPS+ of the guy he actually, you know, pinch-hit for? 90. What the heck do you think you are "not goons let you get away with" here?
That the argument against Johnson was a bad start to the season. He's simply not a good hitter. But even then, I'm not saying I disagree with pinch hitting him.
Sure he's not a great hitter, but he's been league average and had a decent stint in AAA this summer, which is why he was with the team in the first place. Butera is barely, if at all, qualified to step to the plate.
If we're considering the exact situation in question, I think it made plenty of sense to put Johnson in for Fuld. With two outs and no one on, it's not a bad strategy to go with the guy who has the best chance to tie the game in one swing. Johnson has about 3.5 HR/100 PA compared to Fuld's 0.8 HR/100 PA, and they have similar career OBPs, so Johnson gives you more power without being more likely to make the final out. Sure Johnson hadn't had a whole lot of success in the majors this year, but given his success in AAA, I think Maddon wasn't sticking his neck out so far having a little faith in the guy, or at least more faith than he had in Sam Fuld.
Hola, Amigo!
end the season on a 2 game win streak. the last time the Twins won back to back games was Aug 31, Sept 1
I wish I could have stayed up for the baseball action, but I fell asleep before the Twins game ended. I flipped on SportsCenter this morning and literally did the 'rub ones eyes in disbelief/double take' thing when I saw what happened
The Twins were 1-18-1 in their previous 20 series before winning their final series. The one win came against the Tigers in Detroit and the one split came against the Rangers in Texas. The Twins went 3-18-2 in series in the second half (including the one-game "series" with the Yankees). Two of those series wins came against the Royals at Target Field.
Reading the recaps, I see that Papelboner blew the game after getting two outs..... did David Justice un-retire?
I have a good friend I used to work with who is a Red Sox fan, and not an obnoxious one (yes, they do exist outside of the laboratory). I'm trying to tread lightly.
Cardinals fans here are excited but realistic.
Drawing the
YankmesPhillie$ in the first round will do that to a fanbase.In news everyone saw coming, Bob Sanders is placed on injured reserve
In more news everyone saw coming, Milton Bradley is arrested for felony battery.
So when is an NBA player going to do something everyone saw coming? Or does this count?
The name change counts, I think.
I suppose the universe had to balance out the "bat-shit crazy, no one could have ever seen this coming" from last night
Were last night's results the best for society as a whole?
Okay, I'll shut up about that.
This is why baseball needs to focus on the entire league and not just a couple of franchises. Last night was so wonderful for fans of the game.
Last night was so wonderful for fans of the game.
Which, amazingly, the 4ltr has a better handle on this morning than Yahoo Sports.
I went over to Yahoo just to see if they had game times yet, since we're still trying to figure out when we'll need someone here to watch the girls. Their top story is, of course, focused solely on the Red Sox. Not one of the two teams that made the playoffs last night, or one of the eight teams in the playoffs period. Just a team (and one of two) that completed a collapse yesterday.
My neighbor wanted to see Cardinal news this morning; his complaint was that ESPN was all Red Sox. I wasn't surprised.
I guess I would have been surprised if it was anything else, which is pretty damning.
I boycott Sportscenter, so can't say what they were all like, but it was nice to see Longoria on the front page of the website.
That "Nation in Ruins" crap on Yahoo has them on my list.
I just keep thinking about all those "MLB Playoffs" billboards I've seen with the faces of each team playing in the post season...Cabrera, Granderson, and
GonzalezLongoria.I always love when they blow those. A few years ago when the Yankees missed it, they were the primary focus of the commercial even when they were nearly statistically eliminated. They do that with the All-Star Game, too, routinely featuring guys who have a terrible year or who miss the game for injury. I don't envy the commercial producers because they have to get those things shot months in advance, but I still laugh and point.
The very first commercial on MLB Network after the Longo homerun was a playoff promo all about the Braves.
They seemed like such a safe bet!
The NBA and NFL are so good at that. There are "America's Teams" in both leagues, but fans of the sports will watch a wide variety of the games. It bugs me that MLB is so awful at that.
Salary cap and revenue sharing. Bud needs to get over his utilitarian view (X amount of total revenue! never mind that one franchise is making 15% or more of that) and start promoting the league itself and not just two or three teams to the fans in general. Get this: the National League has much better attendance than the American League. I wonder why? Could it be that more teams have hopes of winning the pennant?
The National League has much better attendance than the American League
Is that a per team average or total attendance? The National League does have two more teams than the American League.
EDIT: Your original point is spot on however.
NL average in 2011 is more than 200,000 more tickets sold per club than AL, which is almost 9% higher. Subtract the Yankees from the AL total and the difference is almost 14%.
Doesn't the NL have larger parks as well?
The problem isn't a lack of available tickets in most markets.
Put another way, the NL average is 2.54 million with a Stdev of 617K. The AL average is 2.34 million with a stdev of 733K.
the per-game average of averages in the AL (per B-R) was 28,789 with a std dev of 9,087.
The lows were Oakland (18,232) and Tampa (18,879), not much more than a std dev below the mean. The highs were NYY (45,102), Minn (39,113) and LAAAAAA (39,090).
So, really just one outlier there.
You take out that outlier and the difference per team is 300,000 AL to NL and the stdev is a lot closer. That's almost 14% attendance difference. The Yankees are really bad for the rest of the American League.
The Yankees are also a big reason why the AL has been superior to the NL for the last decade.
So the AL is superior, yet fewer fans are paying to go watch it. Is it better for a sports league to be talented or entertaining?
to be fair, ubes, I think sean just meant that the Yankmes have been a force in the World Series. Plenty of people are paying to see them.
It's funny that Yankee fans constantly remind the rest of us that it's a business, but an effective business would be better at bringing in money across the entire league and wouldn't allow a couple of teams to so completely be over the heads of the others that some teams have no hope year after year.
For the league as a whole, though, it seems highly inefficient for so many good players to be on one team. I would be in favor of a scenario where there was a cap--maybe even a hard cap at say $100M, but at least a soft cap with real teeth--but each team was allowed to have 3 designated players who didn't count against the cap, or only counted, say, $20M against the cap.
The Yankees could still spend $200M if they wanted to, but that would mean spending $160M on three players and having just $40M to assemble the rest of their roster. An arrangement like this would naturally distribute star talent throughout the league, making it easier for teams to market themselves to fans, and keeping a team like the Yankees from demoralizing most of their division for 15+ years. For that matter, the Phillies and Red Sox would also have had to make some difficult choices about which designated players to keep. Texas might still have Cliff Lee. Cleveland or Milwaukee might still have CC Sabathia. Burnett and Pavano probably wouldn't have gotten crazy money from the Yankees way back when.
So sure, plenty of people are paying money to see the Yankees, but with such a wide gap between the Yankees and the mid-to-bottom teams, there are a lot of games--a lot more than the Yankees play--which have been really devalued under the current system. I think they could make a lot more money overall with a broader fan base and more interest in more games.
a broader fan base and more interest in more games.
Which would translate into more eyeballs on the screen come playoffs.
I am not a fan of spending caps. It's a friggin' oligopoly -- share more of the damned revenue!
Yes, revenue-sharing is important, because no matter what you do, you can't smooth out differences in the relative size of markets. However, instituting a spending cap is the front office equivalent of testing for PEDs. Some owners will go significantly in the red ("do whatever it takes") to win (or at least a lot less in the black), even if that is not a good outcome for the league. The games between the players have rules and restrictions, and I think the games between the general managers should also have rules and restrictions.
So impose a salary cap to keep teams from going crazy, but then institute some kind of profit-sharing so that the owners aren't just keeping money from the players. I prefer some kind of profit-sharing scheme to instituting a spending floor, because teams do really crazy things when faced with a spending floor, it seems.
How much of the difference is market sizes?
The NL has teams in TV markets ranked 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 16, 18, 21, 23, 28, 34, 35
The AL has teams in TV markets ranked 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 26, 31, and Toronto, which would rank 15th in size (US markets as of 2009).
Seven of the bottom eight MLB franchises in attendance this year were AL teams (Sea, 14th largest market; Cle, 17th; Toronto; Bal, 26th; KC, 31st; Tampa, 13th; and Oak, 6th). One would think that playing in the same division with NYY and Boston would help attendance by drawing their fans to the park, but it didn't seem to help Toronto, Baltimore and Tampa on net.
Cleveland has had terrible attendance since 2002, finishing no better than 9th of 14 AL clubs during that stretch despite winning the division in 2007 and winning 93 games in 2005. Which is a bit odd, because they had oustanding attendance (1st or 2nd in the AL six times 1995-2000) in the 1990s. But if you put a consistent winner in Cleveland, the fans will come. Same with Seattle.
Toronto led the AL in attendance 7 times during 1987-94, but has struggled to draw even 2 million since 2000. Not coincidentally, they've struggled to win as well.
Baltimore similarly drew very well in the 1990s, but they have been the Ottoman Empire of the AL for years (not having had a winning record since 1997 and not even winning 70 since 2006).
Tampa has not drawn 2 million since their inaugural season, despite winning their division twice in the last four years. But finishing last in nine of their first 10 seasons surely had a lasting impact on their ability to draw fans.
KC hasn't drawn 2 million since 1991, which isn't surprising, given that they just completed their 17th losing season since then. If Baltimore is the Ottoman Empire, then KC must be Lebanon.
Oakland finished in the top 5 in AL attendance each year 1989-1992 but has been horrible at the gate since despite putting some decent teams on the field (8 winning seasons during 1993-2011, including 5 playoff appearances).
I can't really blame the Yankmes for Seattle, Cleveland or KC. Put a product on the field!
Oakland has a terrible stadium in a terrible area, in a market dominated by the Giants. They need to move, but SF claims jurisdiction over San Jose, the logical place for them to go. Sacramento is the 20th largest market (bigger than Stl, Pitt, Balt, SD, KC, Cincy and Milwaukee) and has strongly supported the River Cats. They really should move inland.
The harder cases are the AL East teams on the list. Have their fan bases become despondent about the Axis of Evil connecting Boston and NY? Perhaps.
I can't really blame the Yankmes for Seattle, Cleveland or KC. Put a product on the field!
I dunno. I don't think it's that simple. With a cap, or a cap with exemptions, Cleveland could still have Sabathia. They only traded him because they didn't think they could re-sign him. There's been some terrible management in Seattle, but again, there could be a lot more big-name free agents to help boost a team if they aren't all playing for New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. They've been spending money for the most part, but there's not always a lot to spend money on.
The other thing which could help some of the AL East teams is to balance the schedule a little more. If the Twins had 54 games against the Yankees, Rays, and Red Sox, they could easily have finished worse than the Astros.
So what you're saying is that the Red Sox should be moved to the NL?
It bugs me that MLB is so awful at that.
When your marketing people choose Dane Cook as the face of the postseason...
Oh, my GAWD. It's unbelievable that they still think he's a thing (we can argue that he was never a thing because he's always sucked to high heaven, but he was popular at one point, at least).
That was 2007, but the evidence stands.
Oh, I'm grateful. I assumed you meant that ESPN had brought him back.
nope it's Jason Bateman this year
NBC just bought a show from him!
I saw that. Always on the cutting edge, they are.
All they paid for was a development deal, so there's a lot of time for the project to fail, and for someone to point out to the guys that paid for the dev deal that Dane Cook stopped being a phenomenon a while ago. I wouldn't be surprised if it never went to series.
Of course, since something like 15-25% of pilots make it to series, I could safely say that about any show.
Is this where I would point out they failed to sell out last night? And a good many of the fans left before the eighth inning rally?
Wait, are you meaning to tell me that baseball fans left a game with their team down by seven runs with six outs left against the best team in the AL? On a weeknight? Shocking. When the Twins average 97 losses for ten straight years, I'll pretend I know what it's like to be a Rays fan.
K, and when the Twins average 92 wins over a four year stretch (again) I'll make sure to look back and be even more shocked how they averaged under 19 thousand in year four and didn't come close to selling out the season finale with everything on the line.
They had 2 games all year with attendance in excess of 30 K, meanwhile in Pittsburgh, they are so hungry for a winner, when it looked like the team maybe just maybe might have a winning record, they had 24 games in excess of 30 K.
You're never going to let this go I'm guessing. You are so fixated on attendance being the sole indicator of fan interest, I don't think any of the other numerous reasons for not attending games will ever get through to you.
Not the least of which is the Trop itself. Like a Home Depot with cheaper looking carpet
Do. Not. Feed. The. Trolls.
Sorry, my troll radar is a bit rusty.
Surely it's fair to compare a franchise that started in 1882 and has over 100 years of history and five World Series Championships with a franchise that started in 1998 and has zero World Series championships. In their 14th season, Pittsburgh only drew 2,806 per game. If we inexplicably ignore the years they spent as the Alleghenys, in their 14th season as the Pirates, a year after they had lost the World Series, they drew 4,367, good for only 5th of 8 in the NL. This despite 30-year-old Honus Wagner--likely better than anyone who will ever play for the Rays, relative to the era--having an epic season. (He led the league with 9 WAR and the next closest was Chance with 6.1 WAR.) It's truly hard to believe that those unappreciative fans managed to keep their franchise.
Has anyone said that we missed you?
Cool. Now compare them to the DBacks.
Your intellectually dishonest arguments fail to sway me. TB fans, all three dozen of them, don't deserve a team this great.
From an interview with Jeff Pearlman on Walter Payton:
So, he writes a book and tells the world about his problems. Did Jeff Pearlman treat Walter Payton with dignity?
could it also be that Payton retired over 20 years later than the other two guys and people even as young as I remember watching him play and playing with him in video games?
I bet you see more Puckett than Killebrew jerseys too.
Where are all the Red Grange uniforms? Hmmm?
You can't tell from this angle, but Walter Payton jerseys became cool to little kids years ago.
Inconceivable!
Now, your daily "Is it Thursday?" update.
It is, and I remembered to get the trash out. Already a better day than yesterday.
I got my garbage out, too, which is always good.
Last night was terrific. I was out and saw Yankees fans rooting for the Rays only to say to themselves, I sure hope we don't face them in the ALCS.
Ahh, Yankees fans, you are the best.
So, it's Linds and I's anniversary. We decided to keep it relatively low key - just dinner and a movie.
The movie she wants to see? Moneyball.
I ask you... is this a trap?
Brad Pitt. Good reviews. I don't think so, but only you would know for sure.
My wife would never pick that movie, but she hates baseball with the fire of a thousand suns.
Linds actually sat down and watched the final minutes of the Twins game with me. She dislikes Parmelee (because "he'd better not take away Morneau's job!"), so she likes baseball (not nearly enough to watch the wild card madness that happened later, but that's expected). I'm hopeful.
At this point, Morneau should think about taking himself out of Morneau's job.
I've just got this bad feeling that he's never going to play the field more than a couple nights in a row again.
I agree, though I tell her otherwise. He's a primary reason she likes baseball now, I'd love if ends up being as simple as finding a new player, but who knows?
Yeah, he seems to be a physical mess. He could end up going the way of Koskie.
Art Howe disagrees with those good reviews.
He got Bartmanned!
yikes.
And Billy responds.
Billy's dumping of Art Howe always mystified me, but whatever.
As I recall the book more than suggested that Billy wanted a sock puppet to be his field manager, and from Howe's reaction I would hazard a guess that he was a bit too outspoken for Billy's taste.
Happy anniversary, nibbish. Mrs. Twayn and I are also celebrating our anniversary today, 21 years of marriage. Tonight will be low-key, but we're going to party it up downtown on Saturday.
Happy anniversary, Twayn. Truly a beautiful day for such a thing.
Happy anniversaries to the four of you!
And they said it wouldn't last! 😉 Well done
Hey that's right we share an anniversary. 21 years as well. I got the flowers in chocolate sitting on my desk waiting to be brought home. We have work and school meetings tonight but going to see Hamlet at the Jungle Theater on Saturday.
wgom mass wedding 21 years ago?
The computer here at work just said "Your password will expire in 10 days. Would you like to change it?" To which I replied with a resounding
NOOOOPPPEEE
GIFSoup
I am playing with Chrome. What do I need to know? What apps/extensions do you recommend? Is there a NoScript equivalent?
apparently there is -- it's called NotScript. I've installed it and am testing it out. So far, so good.
besides the ad blocker, I leave it as-is
I saw ESPN's top 10 plays of the MLB season while I was on the treadmill this morning. Number 2 was Revere's leaping, over the should catch while running into the wall. Number 1 was Longoria's walk off from last night. I can't really argue with either of those.
I don't know which home run was more intense, Longoria's or Johnson's. I obviously don't have any problem with picking Longo's, but that Johnson home run ought to live forever.
I find Longoria's to be a bit more poetic though, since it happened so soon after the Red Sox lost and he had to have found out right before heading to either the on-deck circle or the batter's box.
I think he found out mid at-bat, based on his post-game interview, that the Red Sox had lost. He knew stepping in that they had tied. It was unbelievable.
The Red Sox lost during Upton's at bat while Longoria was on deck. There was an absolutely hilarious video of the pitch thrown right when the scoreboard showed the Red Sox lost. The crowd (and Rays dugout) went crazy and started screaming and Upton bailed on the pitch because he had no idea what was happening. It was really amusing.
Fans and media tend to love the winning walk-off HRs in playoff situations, but I think the ones when the teams are tied get overrated. Yes, it won the game, but if Johnson's pinch-hit, two-out, two-strike HR doesn't happen, the Rays lose and would have most likely (at the time) ended their season. If Longoria's HR doesn't happen, the teams just keep playing and the longer it goes, the more it favors the Rays anyways because the Yankees aren't going to keep their top players out there and won't use their best pitchers. The timing of Longoria's HR was insane, and his performance in that game will probably be viewed as the best ever in a big game (similar to Kirby's Game 6 for Twins fans), but Johnson's HR to me was far more dramatic.
The freaking tag play at third was awesome, and don't forget he jacked an Earl Weaver Special in the eighth.
No doubt. I watched some of the coverage while at the gym, and who boy, that tag was huge.
WPA agrees with your position on the two home runs, but not by a huge margin. (.49 WPA to .43 WPA)
Also, I want to believe that Scott Proctor was the last Yankees pitcher of the night, no matter how long it took. I guess maybe not if the Yankees got huge lead and DoctorProctor couldn't get outs. The Rays had a reason to tire out some bullpen arms, and I want to believe that Girardi has a grudge against Proctor and kept him out there because he couldn't kick him in the groin on national TV.
http://www.sportspickle.com/news/8157/steve-bartman-still-screwing-his-way-through-grateful-white-sox-and-cardinals-fans
Not to re-ignite the Great Citation Debate, but I'm putting the finishing touches on my journal article v2.0, which is preliminarily accepted for publication in a new journal. The only thing is it uses a different style of citations, so I have to re-do them all*. And it's not as easy as clicking "Footnotes to endnotes" in Word. This require a lot of manual retyping, going from parenthetical to endnotes.
*I spend too much time online. Next week w/ limited access will be good for me. I so badly wanted to type "REDO ALL THE THINGS!"
Okay, I seem to be having all sorts of trouble with MLB.com's schedule for some reason -- do the Twins have a day game or a night game today?
Game #163 will be a midnight sun game in Alaska against the Astros.
I would pay quite a bit to see a midnight sun game between the Astros and Twins in Alaska in person.
Yeah, they're bad teams, but in attempting to create a prohibitive game I found one I really wish I could see.
Shouldn't that game be played somewhere the sun doesn't shine?
Tropicana Field.
Perfect!
Who said it. Hint: not Top Jimmy.
More from Not Top Jimmy:
Um... spookied?
Okay, I'm giving it away.
I really liked that article.
I see nothing about Springsteen in there. WTF?
holy moley its friggin windy outside!
They've killed
KennyPeyton!Maybe he was late for dinner.
From Fangraphs, a visual representation of the last 5 hours or so of the season with regards to the Red Sox and Rays percentages of winning the Wild Card.
that's pretty sweet, right there.
Hell, that could just as easily be graphing the entire season.
Yeah, definitely. The fact that's graphing such a small time frame is just nuts.
Fractals!!!!
so the rumors going around is that Terry Francona is going to get fired from the Red Sox. why? Does a couple bad months wipe out 2 World Series wins? Or is there something between him and the GM? I dont know it seems crazy to me
Seems like a knee-jerk reaction to a crushing day. Expectations were through the roof this year, but that's very...Steinbrenner of them.
Expect him to sign with the White Sox two days later.
In my dream world they fire Theo Epstein, and the Pohlads drive a truck full of cash money to his front door.
Moss just noticed that, while last nite was about the most exciting sports day in recent memory, today is possibly the slowest sports day in recent memory. None of the four major leagues has a regular season or playoff game. Not even the WNBA is in action tonite. There's NHL preseason, and it appears that there's two NCAA football games, one soccer match, and that's it.
Not that Moss is complaining. It's just strange...
that is strange. Its all right by me because Thursdays I watch the NBC Comedy Block and Its Always Sunny...
It could be no one wanted to risk going up against a Game 163, but then again, how often does that happen?
Everyone is in recovery mode.
Over at Casa de Leche, Zack won Spookymilk Survivor IX today (this was a season based around strategic games, rather than creative writing, if anyone's wondering; they now rotate that way).
Zack marks the fourth time in a row that the winner came from the WGOM. Give my flighty, lazy other friends a chance, dudes!
How about Survivor Werewolf? There are 14 creative writers, and 4 non-submitters, but nobody knows who's who.
Perfect.
You crazy interweb kids...
Seems like they'd be easy to sniff out...
We all submit anonymous stories, then people try to claim which ones they wrote. The person who does the worst job of claiming to have written a story gets voted out. This actually might be playable.
just a variation of Balderdash.
(and I love Beyond Balderdash)
yeah, I am only willing to play the sequel
Anniversary dinner at Texas Roadhouse tonight. Salad, sirloin and ribs, baked tater, and a Sam Adams Octoberfest on tap. I considered having a second, but I probably would have started nodding in our booth.