Brightrock

Because of the number of games played and the breadth of statistics kept, baseball seems to lend itself to statistical analysis more readily than most sports.  The New York Times on Sunday published a rather sobering analysis of the playoff chances of each major league team (sobering, that is, if you're rooting for the Astros).  Can my home team really be that colse to elimination?

This kind of statistical analysis has been around for a long time.  As a kid, I use to play a Strat-o-Matic-style  baseball games (both card-based and computer-based) with my brother Charlie - which is kind of odd, because I really wasn't much of a baseball fan until my 20s (winning a trip to the 1989 World Series seems to have been a turning point in my interest in the sport). While the statistics make those games a bit more 'real,' it's nice to know that the real games will still be played.  Hopefully, the Astros will prove Twain (or was it Disraeli?) right, and the September Astros games for which I already have tickets will be meaningful games.  

Gary Matthews made one of the best catches that I've ever seen against the Astros the other day. These are the kinds of plays that make baseball exciting to watch. Click on the picture to launch a video of the play. (more…)

For the first time in months, I actually made it out to two Tuesday night skates in a row.  This week was a bit lighter than the last one, but we still did ~14.5 miles.  Anybody interested in joining us next week?  The group varies in size, but we usually have 10-20 skaters.  We try to get rolling by 8:00 and we're usually back to the parking lot around 10:30.  Good folks, good exercise, and a great way to learn the streets of the city a bit better. 

So, after not joining my regular Tuesday night skate group in way too long, I decided to get out and get moving.  As it turned out, Tuesday night turned into one of our longer skates.  Starting off at Texas Arts on Montrose, we skated down to Harrisburg and 80th (near the ship channel) and back.  According to a friend's GPS, we went 17.3 miles, although a couple of people think we went a bit farther than that and that the GPS was making some rounding errors as it occasionally lost its signal because of trees, buildings, etc.  Still, it felt like a pretty good accomplishment even if it was "only" 17.3 miles.  The round trip took about 2.5 hours, including a couple of rest stops.

Here is a link to a map showing our approximate route (we actually meandered through the neighborhoods a bit more than this route shows), in case anybody is interested: 

Map

(warning - it takes a while to load the map as Yahoo Maps recalculates the route and distances)

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I couldn't agree more with Mike's comments about the "Wave," the most annoying thing that happens at a professional sporting event (and with all of the competition for the "most-annoying" award, that's saying something).  Mike and I were at the game that he's talking about.  What kind of an idiot starts the "Wave" in the 6th inning of a potential no-hitter by the home team's pitcher?

m i k e h o n . c o m » Baseball Etiquette: The “Wave”