Unlike the previous one, this “transcendent sports moment” is one I watched live on television. 13 October 2001, I was in San Francisco, and it happened not that far away, in Oakland[1].
It stands on its own merits, but has additional cultural relevance because it’s likely that without it the book Moneyball would never have been written.
[more...]
Crazy things happen in sports. What happened in baseball last Wednesday was a big bag of the insane, the dramatic, and the historic, strongly spiced with the unprecedented.
At the end of the baseball regular season, eight teams (of 32) qualify for the playoffs. The regular season is 162 games long, and usually those eight teams separate themselves from the rest quite a while before it’s over.
But not always. Sometimes every game matters for a team. Last Wednesday, four teams entered the final night of play facing critical games, and for two of those teams not only a playoff spot but the avoidance of an ignominious record was at stake.
It’s been described as the best night in regular season baseball history.
[more...]
I wasn’t going to write about this milestone, but the manner in which Jeter achieved it left me little choice.
[more...]
“Dear Mickey,
We thought it would be interesting to learn from you what you consider your outstanding event at Yankee Stadium.”
The Giants baseball franchise technically had five World Series titles before today: 1905, 1921, 1922, 1933, and 1954. However, while the franchise retained its name and history when it moved from New York to San Francisco in 1958, the truth is that San Francisco has never had a World Series title, as it didn’t have a team before 1958, and since then the team’s history has been one of frustration, especially in 2002, when it looked like the drought was finally over against the Angels in Game Six. No titles.
Until tonight.
Tonight, Tim Lincecum pitched eight innings of one-run, three-hit ball, and the Giants once again got to Cliff Lee, hanging three runs on him off a Renteria home run in the seventh, and Brian Wilson closed out the ninth to bring this city its first ever baseball championship.
[more...]
As everyone in San Francisco already knows, the Giants clinched their first World Series berth since 2002 last night, winning another squeaker over the Phillies, three–two. I couldn’t watch most of the game, but saw the last few pitches, huddled with other fans around a dodgy internet stream. The Giants of course made it “interesting”, allowing runners on first and second in the bottom of the ninth; closer Brian Wilson went to a full count against Ryan Howard with two outs before making a fantastic final pitch to end it, a slider that just clipped the bottom of the strike zone.
[more...]
Ugh. Painful. It wasn’t even a close game. The Rangers broke it open in the fifth, scoring four runs, and the Yankees got a single measly run—and even that was the result of an umpiring error.
The Yankee offense, which led the majors in scoring 859 runs this season, was mostly absent in their four losses, in which they scored two, zero, three, and one. The only close game was the first one, which the Yankees won with a terrific comeback, six–five, and which suggested that maybe they’d continue as they ended that game. Nope.
A shame. If it’d been a Giants–Yankees World Series, I would have been very tempted to get tickets. I’ll be rooting for the Giants, as I have been throughout, but it’s not the same.
This will only be of interest to baseball fans: heatmaps of Rivera’s pitches. The control on display is quite phenomenal.
I’m less impressed by the comparison between Rivera and the league than by the comparison between Rivera and the other AL closers. The number of pitches thrown by the entire league over a season is almost guaranteed to result in a distribution like the one shown. To see how Rivera works the edges in comparison to Feliz, Soria, and Soriano, however, is extremely telling. Greatest closer of all time. (Oh yeah: his postseason ERA is 0.72.)
San Francisco won the series tonight behind a strong pitching performance from Madison Bumgarner (clearly a starter for the NL’s all-name team), and the Giants advance to the NLCS for the first time since 2002. It was an extremely tense series, and while I’m glad the Giants won it, I wasn’t spectacularly impressed by the quality of the baseball. Or umpiring.
[more...]
After giving up the first two games of the series to the Padres, and hence extending the pennant race to the very last day of the season, the San Francisco Giants finally got a strong start behind Jonathan Sanchez and won 3–0. That win plus the Braves’ win today not only wins the division but eliminates the Padres—definitely good for San Francisco, whose record against San Diego was 6–12 this season.
[more...]
Aptly-named Yankees blog It’s About the Money has an excellent post up about luck and competitive balance in the baseball post-season. One of its key points concerns how likely a given team is to win a particular series, and how that translates into their odds of winning the whole thing.
[more...]
They beat the Philadelphia Phillies in six games, finishing it last night with a stellar performance from Hideki Matsui, a solid outing by Andy Pettitte, and the usual lethal efficiency from Mariano Rivera. 27 titles is by far the most in baseball, and is also the most in the “big four” US sports of baseball, football, basketball, and ice hockey (the Montreal Canadiens have 24).
[more...]
Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball has something of a cult following, and helped its main subject, Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane. The essential idea is that by focusing on non-traditional (in baseball terms) statistical analysis (called Sabermetrics), Beane could identify arbitrage opportunities in baseball markets.
[more...]
The new Yankee Stadium opened this year, and with it came a rather large increase in ticket prices. The most outrageously-priced seats are in the “Legends Suite”, and they go from about $500 to about $2500 each.
Reporter Wright Thompson got an assignment to write about what having one of those seats is like, and his article “Seats of Gold” is excellent. Included in it is a damning critique of Wall Street, because the corrupt culture of brokers inducing traders to buy things includes lavishing them with all kinds of entertainment, including prime Yankees tickets:
In exchange for tickets, the trader orders whatever the broker is selling. Everybody wins. The broker gets his sale. The trader gets his seat behind the dugout. Well, almost everybody. You, I’m afraid, get screwed with your pants on. Wall Street was not only trifling with our financial future but also driving up ticket prices.
—Wright Thompson. “Seats of Gold”. ESPN, 5 Oct 2009.
After not making it to the playoffs last year, the New York Yankees returned to their rightful spot atop the American League East. They clinched against the Red Sox, and hit the one hundred game mark for the first time since 2004. Their record gives them home field advantage throughout the playoffs.
[more...]
Following today’s loss to the Mets, the Yankees are now ten games behind the first-place Red Sox.
It wasn’t fun to type that.
[more...]
That’s what the bottom of the ninth was for the Giants in LA today. They had shut down the Dodgers for eight innings, leading 3–0. I watched it from the seventh on. And in the bottom of the ninth, the Giants: gave up a single, allowed a walk, struck out a batter (Alex Cora), allowed a walk, allowed a walk (3–1), gave up a single on an error (getting no outs from what could have been a double play) (3–2), gave up a single (3–3), gave up a home run (3–7). This in a game that they had to win to keep their postseason hopes alive—now they can only make it if the Astros lose tomorrow and the Giants win.