89 thoughts on “July 31, 2012: Streak”

  1. so, White Sox fans are complaining that Span should have been out in the 9th inning for runner interference/running inside the baseline/being a Minnesota Twins player. classic.

      1. I enjoyed, "Stretch! Stretch! Dadgummit! You've got to be bleepin' me!"

      1. Right, I was trying to figure out what this was a reference to. Earlier this season? Last year? Some coming game they have forseen?

  2. Back to work. Yesterday was like the last day of summer vacation for me. I took a long bike ride through the city, ate a wickedly delicious bahn mi for lunch, drank a gnt in the afternoon, had gulf shrimp curry for dinner and hit the hay knowing the Twins won a ballgame. I didn't even have to use my AK.

      1. If you don't have kids to educate and you aren't worried about weather catastrophies it's not a bad place a'tall.

          1. Yeah, there is that. And the pollution. And the crumbling infrastructure. But otherwise it's great.

      1. Hey, hey wait a minute, fools. Stop that shit. What the f*** you thinkin' bout?

        Peace, quiet, and good order will be maintained in our city to the best of our ability. Riots, melees, and disturbances of the peace are against the interest of all our people, and therefore cannot be permitted.

            1. Ay-yup. Quite a bit of that too.

              Unrelated to the content - how do you set it up so the link opens in a new window?

              1. include target="_blank" as an attribute like so:

                <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/about/pt_103.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>

                the rel="nofollow" gets added automatically

                scroll down. The full quote is there from Nashville mayor Ben West.

                1. Thanks and thanks. Not to step over the line, but I'm still in awe at what was commonplace.

            2. Well shoot, I thought it actually had something to do with the Rodney King verdict riots. (Which is what the song is about. Based on album sequencing, I always read "Today Was a Good Day" as the ignorant bliss before the verdicts came down.)

              O'Shea (or Muggs?) digging into the history crate for that one.

  5. Jerome Williams gave up five runs last night and got a save. Nice. What's the record?

    The record for the most runs allowed in a save is eight. Minnesota’s Dave Goltz did that in the second game of a doubleheader in 1973.

    Rothsay, represent!

    2. Here's the box score. Goltz entered the game to start the seventh and the score was 9-1. He gave up 2 in the seventh, but the Twins got four in the top of the eighth. He gave up two more in the eighth and four in the ninth. Save!

      His WPA was -0.002.

      1. At least it was a road game so we know Reusse wasn't the official scorer who presided over that traveshamamockery. I hope the scorers realize that saves are not mandatory, but can be given based on discretion.

        Rule 10.20 in the Official Rule Book states:
        Credit a pitcher with a save when he meets all three of the following conditions:
        (1) He is the finishing pitcher in a game won by his club; and
        (2) He is not the winning pitcher; and
        (3) He qualifies under one of the following conditions:
        - (a) He enters the game with a lead of no more than three runs and pitches for at least one inning; or
        - (b) He enters the game, regardless of the count, with the potential tying run either on base, or at bat, or on deck (that is, the potential tying run is either already on base or is one of the first two batsmen he faces; or
        - (c) He pitches effectively for at least three innings. No more than one save may be credited in each game.

        1. I like that they add "No more than one save may be credited in each game." Since the very first criterion is that "He is the finishing pitcher in a game won by his club", by definition only one save at most can be credited. This renders that last sentence extraneous, kind of like the whole stat.

  6. I'm bummed that I'll be at work during the trade deadline...I'm crazy about this day. Count me among the dudes who liked the midnight deadline, too. Keep Willinghammer on the team for me, guys.

      1. I don't know. Hammer could bring in a lot of pitching. He is going to have his career high in home runs already and he is over 30.

        1. I understand that he's got a lot of trade value for the right team and that we have serious starting pitching needs, but I do so want to see a Twins player hit 40+ home runs in a year.

    2. regarding this i threw up a (quarter-baked) recap, and thought it could be a designated trade deadline talk spot to keep from clogging up the CoC.

    2. Wow, I would not have expected rings to be so costly (relatively speaking). I splurged on the engagement ring (thankfully, Sheenie's family "has a guy"), but we both went cheapsimple on the wedding rings. Looks like it was a great day.

      1. The cheapest is titanium or silver wedding bands for about $100-$200 with no stones or designs. We splurged a little. I got cobalt and she got white gold.

        1. Oh ok. Mine is titanium, but I bought Sheenie a plain white gold band. Again, probably a little cheaper for us because he used "the guy" who imports jewelry from around the world, so we didn't have to pay the mark-off costs.

          1. and I didn't buy her an engagement ring. We felt it was a silly tradition that was one-sided and only hurt our financial picture. Of course, it led to many inappropriate questions and dirty looks from people who thought I was going to be an awful husband because I didn't get her one.

        2. she got white gold, i went with tungsten.

          httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCIXnhjSnM8

        3. If you really want to save, skip the engagement ring. Philosofette and I have matching bands (white gold with a gold outer ring highlight). I gave her the band for the engagement, she bought me one too (yup, I had an engagement ring), and we just kept using them as the wedding bands. No diamond = happy groom (at least in this case.)

          Good read on the article. It's almost like she could be some sort of judge of writing quality or something...

          1. I never went to the mall without EAP (now EAR), didn't have a car, didn't have much cash, and couldn't think of a good way to figure out her ring size. I had made a ring out of duct and filament tapes and presented that. Then we each got silver rings at some mall shop for like $20 each. Then we repeated the process for wedding rings: just plain silver bands. Weight losses (we were both at local peaks when we got married) and gains led us to reshuffle from time to time: she bought a new one with a stone (still silver) just because people asked questions when she stopped wearing hers. I started wearing her plain one. Now I'm back to my original one. We've meant to get back to our priest (who has moved from NU) to have him bless our additional rings, but I can't figure out a decent way to Bird Island without boring the kids to tears.

              1. Between Hector and Renville, about fity mile from my old, old stomping grounds of Gaylord.

    3. Reading the article, I think EAR and I were under you & Lois' personal costs, but over by about $1000 when counting in parental contributions. But we did rent St. Kate's chapel and reception hall and had beer and snacks for about 100 people. That doesn't include EAR's uncle with his professional DJ set-up gratis. No idea how much that would have cost. He didn't have that much to do, other than run the lights and speakers, because we told him which songs we wanted and he burnt them to CD. So he just played the CDs as they were. Then he gave us the CDs for a gift a few months later.

      1. I went for the cliché diamond engagement ring. However, that and our honeymoon were perhaps 2/3 of our $3,000 wedding. Spent a week in a very nice studio cabin on Lake Superior.
        The wedding itself was in my sister-in-law's backyard, attended by about 25 people, and the reception (with the same 25 or so people) was at The Local back when it still had a room you could rent for that sort of thing. Extended family and friends came to a picnic the next day which cost us next to nothing to set up.

  9. To those of us old enough, just imagine this scenario. In 1972, someone comes up to you and says that in forty years, you will be really excited (almost giddy!) about how good the Russian Men's Basketball team looks in the Olympics.

    1. well, I'm not old enough, but even when I was a kid, USSR was evil incarnate. Then later I dated a girl from there. So that's kind of crazy.

    1. I saw pics of their red-striped kits. Those looked very nice. Beats the faded Vegas gold of a World Cup a few years ago. Now they just need blue shorts. (Not sure if that would look good.

  11. Argentina/France is coming down to the last couple of minutes in hoops.

  12. This trade deadline was like my job search... I just keep sitting around, waiting to hear news, and getting nothing. Which is to say that I still haven't heard, and am still going crazy.

    1. I'm supposed to hear one way or the other about my first interview tomorrow. Maybe we both get some good news tomorrow...

      1. I wished I had watched, but when I heard it ended with the crowd singing "Hey Jude", I thought, "Well at least I missed that!"

  14. NBC should have tried to pry away Gus Johnson for its basketball announcer for the Olympics.

    1. It's sad that such a forward-looking article is let down by the simple fact that the SunTimes' website doesn't have their stylesheet to format tables as such. Where as we have sean, I'll reproduce the relevant tables here:

      Average runs per inning

      Base situation Outs All Results Sac only Sac att.
      Runner on 1st 0 .905 .759 .713
      Runner on 2nd 0 1.152 1.088 1.025
      Runners on 1st and 2nd 0 1.513 1.588 1.425

      Chance of scoring one or more runs

      Base situation Outs All Results Sac only Sac att.
      Runner on 1st 0 .422 .415 .383
      Runner on 2nd 0 .625 .686 .635
      Runners on 1st and 2nd 0 .629 .715 .640

      1. So is the Minnesota Historical Society. They had an article in their spring magazine identifying pictures of old baseball stadiums in Minneapolis and St. Paul that was fantastic.

          1. It was an excellent article. From Minnesota History Quarterly Spring 2012, it was "The Mysterious “Base Ball Park Minneapolis” and Other Photos: Reading the Visual Evidence" by Kristin M. Anderson and Christopher W. Kimball. I guarantee you all would enjoy it. Issue available for purchase here.

    4. If you get hired and work at the downtown St. Paul building, we would be working on opposite ends of downtown St. Paul! If the Saints get their Lowertown park, then I would have to say my side is better.

    5. I have a friend who works there. It sounds like a great place to work, as long as you don't mind being the youngest one in the room by four decades.

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