Libby Says...
Reminded by reading another baseball fan's thoughts on spring training, I had to check out how my boys are doing down in Kissimmee. As you know, pitchers and catchers reported to training, and we're at 44 days to opening day. Bagwell and Clemens are still question marks in the Astros lineup, but hopefully things will work out for the best. I don't know how I'll manage if Baggy is done -- I've only been a baseball fan for about a decade or so, and Bagwell and Biggio have been cornerstones of the Astros team that entire time. But, of course, as we all know... everything changes. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
To paraphrase Russ Hodges: The Astros win the pennant! The Astros win the pennant! The Astros win the pennant! For the first time in their history, the Astros are going the World Series (this is also the first time the World Series has EVER come to Texas). From a 15-30 record to NL Champions! What resilience! Biggio has been an Astro for 18 years; Bagwell for 15 years -- they completely deserve it! Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Go 'Stros! Yay! My Astros have just finished tying it up for the NLCS against the St. Louis Cardinals. I couldn't quite make myself go to bed as they battled out a very close game, winning it on Carlos Beltran's homer (his 8th of the playoffs) in the bottom of the 7th, which gave them their first lead of the game and held up for the win. I was recently chided gently for not being any more visibly (at least here on the blog) into the great games my Astros are playing -- have no fear -- I'm paying close attention, despite having to watch the NLCS games from Copenhagen via the Gameday java applet available from mlb.com... It's not the best way to watch a ballgame, but it's worth sitting up late for! I'll be crossing my fingers and wishing wholeheartedly as they go back to St. Louis with Backe taking the mound in Game 5 of the 2-2 series......... Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Oh, yes, and in other news, I sat in some great seats on Sunday afternoon to watch my Astros complete an amazing roller coaster of a season and win the Wild Card for the National League. They begin playing the Braves today for the National League Division Series (NLDS). More on this as it happens... Rocket Roger vs. former Padre Jaret Wright ... and the Stros try to break their post-season losing streak against the Braves. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
I am so lucky. I got to go to all three of the major All-Star events: the futures game/celebrity softball game; the home run derby; and the All-Star game itself. I also went to the Fan Fest (a cool exhibit there from the Hall of Fame museum) and a pre-game party. Too much fun. I made the mistake of not keeping score for the futures game, so it went by me a bit, but it was still interesting to watch the game. I have a friend who knows a lot about the minor league teams, but unfortunately he was out of town and unable to go with me that day. The celebrity softball tournament was mostly funny, although it was kind of cool to watch some big names of the past play. The home run derby was possibly the most fun. First, it was great to watch two players who were not supposed to be at the derby go to the finals (Berkman and Tejada), and that was made even more fun because Berkman was the home-town favorite. I think the other thing is that everyone seems to be able to really get into the home-run derby -- even people who aren't really baseball fans have fun with that event. If only the actual All-Star game had gone as well. We had a whole slew of home-town players at Minute Maid in Houston (as an aside, almost all of the actual "Minute Maid" signs were taken down or covered up during the All-Star events. Pepsi was a sponsor!) and almost all of them did badly. Clemens, who has been having an amazing season, gave up six runs in the first inning. Kent made an error at 2nd. None of the Astos got the runs/hits that would have helped make up for it. Still, even with the Astros and the entire NL doing so poorly, it was an exciting thing to be there. I expected to see more people keeping score, which you know that I do at every game, just because I expected to see more actual baseball fans there. Surprisingly, I only saw one other person scoring the actual All-Star game (which is, perhaps, somewhat understandable when you take into consideration just how many substitutions I had to try to squeeze on to a single little sheet!) and nobody else at all scoring the home run derby (which is little more than writing down how many home runs in each round. Ah well; I guess my geekiness is confirmed. The pre-game party had a lot of good food but some very very loud music. The very nice gift at the party was an actual all-star baseball in a lucite box -- nice souvenier from the game. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Finally, someone else is saying publicly what I've been getting made fun of for saying (via BaseballNews). This year is the Astros year. I will give full credit -- he does a great job outlining why they might do it this year, as well as a good overview of what the team has, needs, and should dump. One thing that I'm starting to believe that he's right about, although it doesn't make me very happy, is that the end of an Astros era is coming soon. Now that we've had our "draft" for our season tickets, I'm starting to get really excited. While we didn't manage to swing tickets to the All-Star game (to my complete disappointment), we did get tickets to games 2 & 3 (that is, Pettitte and Clemens first starts with the Astros), an entire series against the Cubs, who look to be the Astros biggest in-division competition, and a good variety of other games, including Anaheim, Texas, Mets, Padres, and SF. Note: A couple of other good Astros or baseball links: AstrosDaily.com Houston Astros official site Aaron's Baseball Blog Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
We interrupt our regularly scheduled frolic and fun to bring you the following excellent and exciting news: From CNN.com, this morning: Rocket Relaunched: Clemens shuns retirement, signs one-year deal with Astros We now have a starting rotation with four pitchers who would be aces on any other team (in my humble opinion): Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Roy Oswalt, and Wade Miller, with the competition for the 5th spot in the rotation to be equally interesting. I think that despite trading away Billy Wagner (which still makes me cranky, although at least we did something good with the money we saved), we have what could (finally) be a real contender for a team! Go 'Stros! What a great time for me to move back to Houston and resume a spot in a season ticket cartel! Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
I saw a link from one of the baseball blogs in my referrers the other day, so here's some of my current baseball thoughts: One of the brightest points about moving back to Houston is once again being able to see my beloved Astros in person, regularly. Now, I'm not really thrilled at some of their winter trades, while others have me bouncing up and down like a schoolgirl. First off, the news that the Astros traded Billy Wagner had me snarling and spitting. Nothing against Brandon Duckworth, and we really could use some additional solid starting pitching, but sheesh! Free agent signings and releasings were so-so, meaning I don't think Orlando Merced, Ron Villone, Rick White, and Brian Moehler will be that worely missed, despite Merced being a pretty reliable pinch-hitter. I was thrilled to hear that they had re-signed Brad Ausmus, since despite his not-so-stellar batting average, I like having him around. I think he's good for the team. The trade of Geoff Blum seems a fairly reasonable switch -- Ensberg should be able to take care of third base, and another mid-reliever (along with Lidge and Miceli) will be useful to have now that we don't have the closer of doom anymore. I'm thrilled to have Andy Pettitte join the Astros. I think he'll be a great starter for us. Thank goodness for the "family factor" (he lives in Houston) otherwise, I think he'd've stayed in NYC. Of course, the rumors that the Astros might successfully lure Roger Clemens out of retirement would make the Astros serious contenders in my book. Now I just have to see if I can get some of my season tickets back! Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
"Yankees suck" Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
I know I've been a bit quiet since Friday -- I've been in mourning. My poor Astros. Yes, the post season is here, but the Astros are not. Yes, the Cubs won and the Astros lost. If the Astros can't beat the Brewers, on the other hand, they don't deserve to go to the postseason. Let's not dwell on it -- there's always next season. As for who I'm rooting for in the postseason, I've decided that I'll root for the Cubs, simply based on the fact that I'd like to see a Cubs-Red Sox World Series. Of course, with all my travel, I probably won't actually get to watch the World Series (I think I'll be in Amsterdam), but hey... I also went to a really awful Padres game on Saturday night. Great seats -- on the field by the opposing team's dugout. But the Rockies, who are down there in the baseball basement, beat the Pads... The only good part (besides the seats) was the introduction of the some of the greats in Padres history -- they had folks like Tony Gwynn, Ken Caminitti, and Dave Winfield down on the field for part of the ceremonies for the last Saturday night in the Q. Pretty cool seeing them. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Thursday's Games: Houston 6, Milwaukee 1 Cubs 7, Reds 9 Result - Houston and Chicago tied for 1st in the Central and tied at 3 games back for the Wild Card Friday's Games: Houston vs. Milwaukee tonight Cubs vs. Pirates -- rained out Result - Always a good thing when the bad guys have to play a double-header. Even though the game won't be important, I am going to the last Saturday night game at the Q (Qualcomm stadium in SD) tomorrow night -- Padres vs. Colorado Rockies... We have great seats -- they're actually on the field. There's a box on the third base side, right in front of the visiting team's dugout and a friend of ours buys these tickets for one game every year. Tomorrow's game is it for this year. These seats are directly behind where the cameras are and have nothing in front of them, so you have to pay very close attention to any fouls that come off toward that side... so you can duck when necessary. To get to the seats, you actually do walk on the field -- so you definitely don't go to the bathroom during any important plays --- you can't! Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Ed posted this link in the comments recently and I thought I'd make sure you all saw it -- it gives joy to both my geek side and baseball side... We can look for 802.11B at the ballparks soon -- You can read about it at the Wi-Fi Networking News and from the Sacramento River Cats themselves. Hopefully major league teams will catch up to this quickly! Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Well, thanks for those of you who commented on Monday's blog, I guess. Most of you aren't helping me out though -- rooting for the Cards or Cubbies -- thanks a lot guys. Today finds the Cubs all alone out in first place -- they were a whole game up on my 'Stros as of this morning, but we beat the Giants 2-1 today, with Roy Oswalt pitching a one-hitter. Wagner also pitched for his 44th save, trying to come back from the agonizing 3-home run outing he had two days ago. Whew. So, going into their game today, Cubs have a .5 game lead. Lose, Cubbies, Lose! We're really down to the wire this season, with the "magic number" for the Cubs being 5 (meaning a combination of 5 wins for the Cubs and losses for the Astros for the Cubs to clinch the division). 5 is also the "elimination" number for the Astros -- meaning if the combination hits 5 losses for us and wins for them, we're out it. The elimination number for the Cards is only 2. Since we have to look at it this way for the moment, the Astros are also 2 1/2 games back for the Wild Card, behind Florida and Philadelphia. Cubs have two more games against Cincy and then their last three games are against the Pirates. They also get to play their last games at home in the friendly confines of Wrigley. The Cards play one more game against Milwaukee today, have a day off, and then play three against the Diamondbacks, in Arizona. One more thought about the race in the NL Central -- what would happen if for some wacko reason we ended up with a 3-way tie? Tom Verducci at Sports Illustrated addressed that question in a recent Baseball Mailbag column:
Wacky. Today's Wall Street Journal had a great article about how thankless a job scoring baseball games is on their front page today (apologies for the general link -- you have to pay to get to their articles). Coincidentally enough, the article centers around a guy who scores for the Astros and talks about a recent game between Houston and St. Louis, in which a ball hit by Jeff Kent fell in the outfield between Renteria and Edmonds. He ended up scoring it a single, even though either one of them could've gotten an error for the play. In this case, he probably didn't get any angry calls, but he has in many other situations, based on how the players' contracts are now written, so that their compensation is tied to hits or pitching or whatever... Of course, the story also talks about how little a scorer gets paid, just as the added benefit to his getting screamed at by players and managers -- the scorer in this story makes $125 per game and gets to see the games for free, although he sits in the press box and often wears headphones to keep from getting distracted. Clearly, a part-time second job that carries plenty of potential stress. Still, as a baseball scoring aficionado myself, I could probably put up with getting yelled at and getting paid a pittance to get to be a professional baseball scorer. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
As we get sooooo close to the end of the baseball season (Sunday is the last day of the regular season), it's time for some baseball blogging -- here are some links you might enjoy. The Baseball News Blog Aaron's Baseball Blog The Astros, Cubs, and Cardinals are still all in it in the NL Central -- I've gotta tell ya -- it's kiling me! Astros dropped two of three to the Cardinals (I don't want to hear a word from you, Mr. St. Louis) and then lost a heartbreaker tonight to the Giants. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
I flew to Houston on Saturday morning (go frequent flyer miles!) and it was the nicest early September weekend in Houston -- much less humidity than usual (down from 90+% to more like 40%) and not nearly as hot as usual (80s not 90s or 100s). Don't know quite how I did it, but everyone told me I'd brought SD weather with me when I arrived. Yay me! Sitting at a Starbucks to do my work today and thinking how very interesting the people watching is. Everyone here for about the last two hours was working -- it begins to look more like a "rent an office" setup -- people were having business meetings, doing interviews, working on laptops, studying... It's amazing how the culture of the coffee shop is less about relaxation, reading, chatting with friends and more about work, now that they have the t-mobile wireless hotspots. I'm not sure that's the only reason the culture exists as it does, but it seems at least partially responsible. I had a great conversation with my friend Paul yesterday about baseball scoring and scorecards. We were basically designing our ideal scorecard. It's kind of fun to know another baseball scoring geek -- especially since I've known Paul for almost 10 years and didn't know he was a baseball geek until yesterday. These are mockups -- what you're seeing here is that the batter had a single to left that resulted in an RBI (indicated by the dot). He moved to second base on a hit by the batter whose number is 15 (if you're an Astros fan, that's Richard Hidalgo). The boxes on the bottom would show balls and strikes. I like the version on the left better, but they both are fairly effective. Of course, we also had to talk about how many lines we'd leave for substitutions, how we'd track pitching info, etc... All in all, instead of an 8 1/2 x 11 scorecard, I'm starting to think it might need to be legal-size paper! I'm getting ready to head out to San Francisco in the morning. I'll be speaking at their user group meeting, talking about replication, certification, the magazine, and the future of Notes/Domino/Workplace... I may actually be doing that prz three or four times in the next few weeks -- I'm also speaking at the SD user group and possibly the Orange County group. Making me tired just thinking about it. ;-) Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
Vacation. Day 2. (I'm generously counting the day we traveled all day just because it makes me feel as though I'm getting a longer summer vacation...) Slept late today -- very late. As in 11 a.m. late. And only woke up then because housekeeping called to find out when we'd be getting out so they could clean the room. I guess I was a little behind on my sleep. Took the subway uptown to the Bronx for a Yankees game this afternoon. Yankees vs. Texas Rangers. Nosebleed seats, but very close to home plate. And the nice thing about stadiums that are only built for one thing is that they are fairly good about making sure the seats are all reasonable for watching the game. I hate stadiums where you have to buy a whole book just to get a scorecard -- what happened to the 1$ scorecard?!? Anyway, it threatened to rain the whole time, but only barely misted -- and of course, I had to buy a Yankees cap to keep the rain off my glasses, so I hardly noticed. After the game, we went to the TKTS line in Times Square to see what shows were available. We went to Man of La Mancha -- absolutely amazing. Brian Stokes Mitchell sings the title role and it was rousing and touching and inspiring. Since it was raining when we got out of the show, we stopped at the Virgin Megastore in Times Square -- it was $10 day -- all kinds of DVDs and CDs for $10. We partook. And, then we walked back to the hotel in the rain. My slacks are still drying out. Remind me not to share an umbrella, will you? Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
I got asked an interesting question in e-mail yesterday: "To help settle the know it alls of baseball facts. Infield pop-up with a runner on first nobody toches the ball it hits the ground, hit or error? " So, what we're talking about here is an infield fly (it sounds like) that drops -- and would the batter get a hit or would it be an error. First of all, let's assume that the umpire calls the infield fly rule. The batter is automatically out, so it's neither a hit or an error -- it's an out. In MLB rules, if it was obviously an infield fly and the umpire doesn't call it -- it's still probably an infield fly, so it's still an out for the batter. If the umpire doesn't call the infield fly rule, and it wasn't so obvious -- might be and might not be -- and the runner that was on first makes it to second safely and the batter/runner makes it to first safely -- then it becomes a judgement call on the part of the scorer. The pertinent item in the rules to help with this call is the phrase "ordinary effort" -- if it could have been caught with ordinary effort but wasn't, it's likely to be an error. If it would've taken an extraordinary effort (unlikely, but possible), it's probably neither an infield fly nor an error, but rather just a plain old hit. Agree? Disagree?
Rule 6.05 (The Batter) (l) An infielder intentionally drops a fair fly ball or line drive, with first, first and second, first and third, or first, second and third base occupied before two are out. The ball is dead and runner or runners shall return to their original base or bases; APPROVED RULING: In this situation, the batter is not out if the infielder permits the ball to drop untouched to the ground, except when the Infield Fly rule applies.
I don't think that the rules answer the question, really, but this discussion of the infield fly at eteamz.com has a bit more in the way of explanation. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link
One of the interesting things about reading people's 'blogs that you know in one context (i.e., Lotus and technology stuff) is finding out other things about them. I figure I'll have to talk about these things as time goes on, so I might as well get all my skeletons and shameful secrets out in the open early on. So. The first thing that most of you who haven't seen me between March and October don't know about me: I'm a huge, giant, immense, rabid, enthusiastic.... baseball fan. I didn't grow up liking baseball, or really any team sports. I swam competitively, so I watched swimming and diving on tv, but my dad wasn't a big sports fan, so I never really got into anything. I watched some basketball in high school, because my best friend Julieana played. I watched a lot of football in college, because my Houston Cougars were kicking some serious ass (Heisman winner and all, thank you very much). I didn't dislike sports -- I'd always watch whatever was on or what other people were interested in, but I just never got into it all that much. I did play some powderpuff/flag/mud football games in high school/college, but that's a different story. Then I went to a baseball game with a guy who kept score and knew enough about the game that he could answer questions as incessantly as I asked them. And I do ask a lot of questions. (How else are you going to get into something, if you don't understand it all?) He and my husband, Brian, taught me about baseball: how to keep score, the bastardization that is the designated hitter, the lingo... :-) And from that day on, I've been a big baseball fan. Most specifically, a huge Houston Astros fan (and especially the "killer Bs"), but I try to root for the Padres, now that I live in SD (unless they're actually playing the Astros, of course!). We went to spring training one year. I've dragged all my Colorado colleagues to Rockies games when I'm there, regardless of the weather. I keep score. I keep trying to bring the joy of keeping score to other people, including a whole passle of Loti with whom I saw a game in Oakland during last year's developerWorks LIVE show. I try to go to games in every city I visit... So far, I'm not doing all that great on collecting baseball cities, but... that just means there's more to see! Houston Dallas San Diego Anaheim Los Angeles Oakland Boston (I had such great seats to a game here last May... thanks Gary!) Chicago (Cubs) Colorado And of course, since it's spring training time, there's a small portion of my brain is revving back up that keeps track of batting averages, on base percentages, RBIs, slugging percentages, standings, pitching wins/losses, etc... So now you know, if we're in a restaurant or bar together from March to October, and I start looking intently somewhere over your left shoulder, I'm still listening to whatever you're saying, but I'm also probably riveted to the tv behind you, trying to make out the scores, highlights, and play of the day on ESPN. Permanent Link to this entry: Permanent Link |
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