This Week In Milford: What Is Anyone Still Doing Here?

Milford must have had a ton of snow days because summer vacation is just starting now. I must say that the Occurrence at Funky Winkerbean Bridge is more interesting than this story about an alt-country pitcher who slightly resembles Tim Lincecum, but Batiuk moves as slow as an appellate judge. The writers at Gil Thorp Enterprise pace their stuff marginally quicker. Hopefully, Clambake or Von Haney show up in the annual summer story.

Trivia time: Do you know who the head coach/protagonist in this strip was named after? Once again, I am offering a ham sandwich to the first correct caller.

Hartford Mag: Play Ball!

More recent vintage base ball. I play in one of their leagues. If you are in the area, I'll be in a doubleheader topmorrow.

What's Pastime Is Prologue

For p: the SI Vault story on Pete Rose's free agency.

Daisuke Matsuzaka: Anti-Maranvillain

I haven't written about the concept of Maranvillains lately, but this Patrick Sullivan article brought to mind the antithesis of Rabbitt and his heirs: Dice-K.

Also, just like so many other Red Sox fans, Daisuke drives me nuts. He works slowly and walks way too many batters. In his final four seasons for the Seibu Lions, Matsuzaka averaged 2.3 walks issued per nine innings. For the Red Sox, his 162-game average BB/9 has jumped to 4.3. Combine the walks, his inefficiency and his unreliability from a health standpoint and it’s all just very maddening.

I'm not one who lives and dies with my favorite sports teams, but even I find him maddening. Some day I'll have to come up with a list of these guys. As frustrating as Matsuzaker (/Remdawg) might be, Steve Trachsel is probably worse.

Apartment 3G

Another single strip blog. How long has the current storyline been going on? It seems like forever. Does anyone read these soap strips in a non-ironic fashion?

WSJ: Innovative NFL Coach Favored Air Attack

Don Coryell's offensive-minded approach helped spark a passing revolution in professional football.

Mr. Coryell, who died Thursday at age 85, was the designer of the "Air Coryell" offense for the National Football League's San Diego Chargers. His teams never made it to the Super Bowl—a fact that may have kept Mr. Coryell out of the Pro Football Hall of Fame—but they exemplified a wide-open style of offense that fans loved.

"He helped give the game the entertainment value that it has today," said Kellen Winslow, a Charger tight end who played for Mr. Coryell. "Before that, the NFL was three yards and a cloud of dust."

I like the running game, but I did prefer Air Coryell to Bill Walsh's version of the West Coast Offense. Any pigskin experts here know what his legacy is? Do any teams still throw long as much as the Chargers did?

WSJ: Tennis Becomes A Numbers Game

Tennis sabermetrics. This is a sport I'd like to get into more someday.

Vintage Vintage Base Ball and The Best Year in Sports

I caught June 17, 1994 last month. It (among other things) inspired me to look up the issue of Sports Illustrated that covered that day. While looking through that issue, I stumbled upon this article about a vintage base ball team that had been playing in Ohio since 1981. I wonder if the baseball strike inspired these guys to get off the couch and play. Why not? The Cosmic Baseball Association was one of the offspring of the strike. I play vintage ball, but only started this year. So I'm a little hazy on the rules, but the ones they play by seem a little off. But they play using older rules than we do.

This morning, or last nite, I started thinking about what was the best year in sports history. It might be 2008. NPR makes that argument and mentions 1960 and 1969. Maybe it's 1969, if you are a New Yawker. What say you? I don't think a year necessarily has to be a calendar year. SI didn't think so, either. They would occasionally print a special issue retrospective in the late winter from around 1977 to 1984. I'm partial to this one because it includes the Miracle On Ice. That might be the biggest sports story in my living memory.

Will Carroll: Comments

I'm ... going to choose to agree to disagree with the famous medhead here. I welcome comments.

Comments, at their heart, are as much about pageviews as they are about the conversation.

I am not going to get enough pageviews for it to make a monetary difference. I do desire some feedback and appreciate the comments I do get. Craig Calcaterra once said words to the effect that blogging is a collaborative art form. I'm not sure if that's the case, but I look at this place like it's a sandbox. These posts are mainly rough drafts and I'd like to polish some of them up into something better. I've crystallized a few of these thoughts already, but sometimes a different set of eyes can see things more clearly than mine. If you feel more comfortable emailing, I'm cool with that, too. I didn't realize it, but I didn't have my address on the front page. It is jon 31768 at gmail dot com. Snail mail would be welcome if I had a publisher you could send stuff c/o.

EDITED TO ADD:

Will is also in a different situation than I am, so I can see his aversion to comments. He writes at BPro which is widely read. Widely read sites to get a lot of idiot comments. I haven't had any of those here. No birthers or truthers have made their digital mark here at Designated Sitter. Even the spammers haven't found me.

Wages of Win Journal: Joe Johnson and the Past Century of the Disconnect Between the Words and Deeds of Sports Owners

I'm not posting this because I have a Joe Johnson fetish. The postscript caught my eye.

P.S. Do you like the shorter posts? This was a topic discussed during the panel on sports and blogging at the Western Economic Association. Justin Wolfers says the posts at Freakonomics are supposed to be 400 words or shorter. I responded that I struggled with the 800 word limit at Huffington Post. Although this is true, I am going to start trying to make whatever point I am trying to make (as if I am always trying to make a point) a bit quicker. And one last note… I am now back in Cedar City. So all the stuff I promised to post might appear soon.

I'm firmly in the camp that short is beautiful when it comes to writing; especially on the web. I sometimes have moments of self-doubt about this; especially when I see popular writers like Bill Simmons or Aaron Gleeman write epic-length articles. But I do believe that style works better in print than online. How many of you read this during stolen moments at work? I bet it's the majority of you. And I don't think that multi-tasking is really conducive to retaining info from longer thinkpieces.

More Cowbell

Foghat and Blue Oyster Cult are coming to Enfield, CT next Saturday nite. I won't be around for this show, but I've seen both bands over the years. Foghat played Finnegan's in San Angelo, TX my last nite at Goodfellow AFB. One of my brothers and I went to Toad's Place in New Haven on the spur of the moment to see BOC. This was in the 90s and they had some dedicated fans. They sang along to stuff off a new album that maybe 400 people owned. This was well after the band's salad days. Anyways, when I think Jurassic Rock, "Slow Ride" is one of the first tunes that comes to my mind.

A Couple of Hanna-Barbera All-Star Teams

I got the idea for these from this post a couple of weeks back.

Jabberjaw

P Don Drydock
C Carlton Fish
1B Gill Hodges
2B Frankie Fish
3B Ken Calimari
SS Luis Aquaricio
LF Willie Starfish
CF Curt Flood
RF Tim Salmon

Flintstones

P Sandy Koufax
C Elstone Howard
1B Stony Perez
2B Ryne Sandstone
3B Brooks Rockinson
SS Cal Ripap
LF Rock Raines (Tom Tango will be pleased)
CF Mickey Mantle
RF Stony Gwynn

Dead Presidents #2

Thomas Jefferson is on the $2 bill. A certain gangster-owned legitimate business near me likes to hand them out as change for some reason. Jefferson was no fan of doctors. He would gaze upwards for a buzzard whenever he saw three physicians together. He especially distrusted the practice of bleeding and purging.

He had urinary problems in his last months, possibly from an enlarged prostate. But what most likely killed him dehydration resulting from amoebic dysentery.

Jefferson became comatose on July 2, 1826. On the third he awakened and asked his doctor, Robley Dunglison, "Is it the fourth?" He died 50 minutes into the next day, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a few hours before his onetime rival John Adams.

Jefferson was buried at Monticello. Monticello still stands today thanks to Uriah P. Levy, a Jewish Naval officer who admired Jefferson's contributions to religious liberty and who believed that Monticello should be preserved as a monument.

Cardboard Gods: Gil Flores

Outstanding entry by Josh.

Is Funky Winkerbean The New M*A*S*H?

TV Tropes discusses the Cerebus Syndrome where a lighthearted piece of art morphs (some would say jumps the shark) into serious drama. Who knows. Maybe Act III is more analogous to Trapper John M.D. of AfterM*A*SH.

I actually like the current car crash storyline, but it's moving like Quaaludes-laced molasses. I don't think Funky has given up the ghost. Masky McDeath hasn't shown up yet.

Tracers: Keith Hernandez Edition Part Deux

1. Chris Dial says that the score in that game on 6/14/1987 was 7-3. He's right. I forgot to fact-check that. Someone else commented on my blog that the game was inspired by this game. Said it was documented in Jeff Pearlman's book "The Bad Guys Won." I did read that book once when I had the notion to write about the 1986 Red Sox season, but I didn't recall that.

2. Devin McC is of the opinion that Seinfeld isn't part of the Tommy Westphall Universe. I agree. Parts of that universe like Murphy Brown were portrayed as TV shows in the Seinfeldverse. That said, the MLB on that show is slightly different. I haven't gone through the show with a fine-tooth comb, but there was no catcher ever by the name of Genderson. The closest real life one I could find was Rich Gedman. Last I checked, he was managing the Worcester Tornados in the Can-m League and not murdering dry-cleaners.

EDITED TO ADD:

3. 2nd Spitter to 2nd Shooter: Len Lesser (Uncle Leo) was in Kelly's Heroes with Donald Sutherland who was in JFK (Along with Kevin Bacon, natch.)

Fangraphs: Corresponding Points (with Drew Fairservice)

Carson Cistulli is at it again. Hi, Carson. (He ego-surfs, so he might see this.) He corresponds with Drew Fairservice whose writing appears at Ghostrunner on First and other points north. I corresponded with him myself a while back. I haven't really touched on Rabbit Maranville and his bastard children lately, but I got the idea from Free Darko. Fairservice is an acolyte of them:

Liberated fandom is something I first saw on Free Darko – the wildly successful and pretentious basketball site of some acclaim. I’ll never fully divorce myself from rooting for laundry but I refuse to shut myself off from Joy dressed as the enemy.

I have nothing but love and respect for Mariano Rivera and couldn’t possibly imagine a world in which Manny and Papi are villains. I couldn’t bring myself to cheer for David Eckstein during his time as a Jay because it just didn’t feel right.

Basically, my bastardized version says listen to your guts. Cast off the shackles of us versus them and embrace greatness in its every form. Appreciate and understand the team in the other dugout because the wins and losses fade over time. It isn’t too far from the “All Joy” concept, just with a wordier name.

I try, but I find it difficult to get pumped up for a non-Red Sox game. Curiosity has led me to check out some of Strasburg's outings, but that's my only extracirricular activity this year. Also, I think I'm more interested in uniqueness or entertainment value than greatness. Well, today is July 1st. I'll make a New Halfyear's resolution to try and watch more teams that don't play in Boston. The way that team's going, they need to call up Trapper John McIntyre.

Esquire: String Theory

I read this David Foster Wallace piece today. Wimbeldon's going on right now, after all. And Wallace seems to have a cult following that I'm trying to understand. (I think that both Bill Simmons and Bethlehem Shoals are fans.) I did like it even though Wallace and I are polar opposites when it comes to writing. I am terse while he was expansive; like a Joe Posnanski or Aaron Gleeman. Too, I tend to keep my digressions within the main body of the text, instead of shunting them off to footnotes. But I am beginning to see some advantages to his method.

Wallace also wrote this article for the New York Times Play magazine. I may tackle it later. I happened to read the Esquire piece in a compilation book. I didn't realize it was online until after reading the piece. Frankly, I find stuff that long much easier to follow in print than online.

Snowclones

The Economist discusses snowclones; those phrases like "X is the new Y" or "It's X's world. We're just living in it." I pretended to read the article.

How accurately can we estimate a hitter’s runs?

The short answer, according to the Hardball Times: Pretty accurately, but not perfectly. I wanted to link to this article by Colin Wyers because I thought it was important. Yet I didn't see much discussion about it when it came out and I hang out online in some of the some places that statheads do. Here's the important part:

Some things to take away from the chart:

Power hitters are far more "inconsistent" than other kinds of hitters. Doubles, triples and home runs by far have the highest standard error.
Walks are very consistent, showing very little standard error compared to other events. Outs are also very consistent. So, all else being equal, players with either very high or very low on-base percentages would tend to have less error in their linear weights estimates.

Colin was writing about hitting. That's the portion of baseball that's easiest to analyze statistically. If there's fuzziness there, what about when it comes to analyzing the rest of the game? None of this should suggest that Duane Kuiper was a better hitter than Barry Bonds or anything like that. But I am curious to hear what others like Tom Tango have to say about this article. Maybe I missed the discussion.