Here's a story that combines this blog's twin interets of space and baseball. There will be a total lunar exclipse during the World Series for the first time. Dig that.
A unique date in the annals of baseball history will be recorded Wednesday, Oct. 27 when for the first time a total lunar eclipse will occur during a World Series game.
Millions of Americans watching Game 4 will also be able to partake in one of nature's most beautiful sky shows, as Earth's shadow begins to cover the Moon during the early innings. Weather permitting, the eclipse will be visible to fans with a good line of site at Busch Memorial Stadium. And, if FOX television producers so choose, the potential exists for this to be the biggest audience ever to see a lunar eclipse televised live.
27th of October? Isn't that the birthdate of Chatswood High School alumnus and former Australian Test Cricket Captain Mark 'Tubby' Taylor? Not that he has anything to do with space or baseball...
Well heck, while we're at it, Happy Birthday to everybody born on that day. :)
Smoke On The Water
There's a guy with the handle Delta Socrates putting on a spirited defense of Derek Jeter's sacrifice bunt in game 5 over at the Baseball Think Factory:
I'm sorry, but I will disagree with a lot of the chatterers here on two points:
1. A-ROD clearly was flummoxed/flustered in this post-season. That doesn't mean he isn't a better player than Jeter, or that he will not bounce back (I think he's got to rip the AL next year), but it does mean that he was out of his element this year.
2. The Jeter bunt in game 5 was a very smart strategy considering the circumstances. The problem was that A-ROD could not get that 5th run in.There was no way of knowing that Flash Gordon was going to melt down in the bottom half of the 8th inning, but surely an extra run would have given the Yankees extra breathing room.Bunting is usually a fool's errand, but in extremely tight games in which a run could make all the difference in the world (with Flash Gordon and Mariano coming in to pitch the 8th and 9th inning), it can and does make sense.
It starts there, and he makes some pointed, excitingly good arguments about the post-season with which I agree. The thing is, he expresses it so much better than I can!
The problem with using regular season statistics to determine whether it made sense or not to bunt is that the post-season by definition is not the regular season.
This is the time of the year when (as Billy Beane says) "My #### doesn't work here".This is the time of the year when the Yankees collapse for 4 straight games after leading 3-0(which had never happened in any baseball post-season series).
This is the time of the year when the Yankees managed to come from behind and beat Arizona in games 4 and 5 of the ALCS by hitting improbable homers against Kim. THis is the time of the year when a fundamentally sound player like Miguel Tejada forgets to run out a play and gets tagged out at a crucial time (Game 5, 2003 ALDS).This is the time of the year when Randy Johnsons come into pitch in relief, when Mike Mussinas and Roy Oswalts relieve Roger Clemens and when every possible strange thing that can happen does.In short, this is the time of the year when you have to kill your enemy when you have him in your grasp (Mariano in game 4), because if not, statistically improbable things happen.Let me just pose one final comment.
It seemed statistically improbable for the BoSox to come back from 0-3 (which they did, against all odds). So why are we still using statistical analysis to evaluate a specific play in a specific game (which had an unlikely outcome, since nobody foresaw Boston tying in the bottom of the 8th) of a series whose outcome was improbable as they come?Boston deserved to win the ALCS, but I still hold that the Yankees and Red Sox are so evenly matched that it was nothing short of a miracle for them to due what they did and come back from 0-3 (do note that it made no sense that the Yankees were up 0-3, since those teams were clearly very evenly matched).
It's a hell of a read. I think Delta Socrates is great in this discussion.
- Art Neuro
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