Pick Ten

I was thinking the other day about music, musicians, and the ones I keep listening to over and over. It got me thinking about a hypothetical situation: if I had to choose ten artists/bands to listen to for the rest of my life, and I couldn’t listen to anyone else, who would I choose and… Read More »

Gordon B. Hinckley

My last draft that was sitting unpublished in my queue. Unlike the other two, one of which I had to finish and the other which was already done and ready to go, this one is both unfinished and unable to be finished. The stated goal was to get my feeling down while they were fresh,… Read More »

The iPod shuffle

As part of my new determination to start blogging more often, I am spending tonight clearing out a few of my unpublished drafts. The last one, about baseball stats, actually required me to finish writing it. This one appears to be done; the only reason I can come up with for not having published it… Read More »

The trouble with stats

I’m not gonna lie to you: I love baseball statistics. I find them fascinating and sometimes extremely useful. I think that, in general, well-used statistics paint an accurate picture of history and can be reasonably useful predictors of the future. But in the wrong hands, they can be very dangerous. A few thoughts about the… Read More »

Baseball with my kids

Yesterday evening, Roy Halladay threw a no-hitter in his first career postseason game. I turned the game on in the sixth inning, and when I saw that the Reds hadn’t scored yet, my first thought was, “I wonder if Halladay has given up any hits.” With Roy Halladay, that’s a logical thing to wonder. It… Read More »

I love homer blogs

In this blog entry about how the A’s blew it when they traded Andre Ethier for Milton Bradley, someone named “baseballgirl” says this: In contrast, Andre Ethier has been an absolute stud for the Dodgers the last four years; he is also the walk-off rival of Marco Scutaro, except with the career .294/.364/.495 line instead… Read More »

Andruw vs. A-Rod

Now that the Andruw Jones Era is over in Los Angeles, I thought I’d run down just how much the Dodgers are going to end up paying for his “services,” along with a comparison of what A-Rod would have been paid last year on an equivalent scale. At $36.2 million, Andruw Jones made: –$1,096,969 for… Read More »

All-Star ruminations

It seems like it’s the cool thing to rip on the All-Star game these days. A myriad of writers, both professional and mom’s-basement-dwelling, had criticisms of the selection process, or at least of some of the specific selections. One thing I have been pleased to see is that, at least among the things I have… Read More »

After Further Review…

It appears that Major League Baseball is going to implement instant replay, maybe even as early as August 1 of this year. This might say more about the things (and people) I read than anything else, but Joe Morgan is the only person I know of who is against it. (Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised… Read More »

For real, Richie?

That picture you see is Richie Sexson ducking out of the way of a fastball. (Sorry that it looks like it’s a YouTube video; I took the screenshot while watching a YouTube video.) You might notice, of course, that the pitch is, as the French say, over le plate. But did that stop Sexson from… Read More »