baseball | Wait until next year

September 5, 2009

This week’s sporting pages I’ve enjoyed reading…

I’m not sure if this will be a regular feature or not (and if so, any suggestions for a catchier title are more than welcome!), but here are a few links to sports-related stuff I’ve enjoyed reading this week…

Baseball

The Mets injury crisis has been well covered with Weekly Hit Ground Ball: If the Mets didn’t have bad luck … (Baseball GB) and a rather nifty graphic of how often each Met was hurt via A picture of disarray (The Hardball Times).

A look back at past technology with Clocking Pitch Speed in 1917 (Wezen Ball).

Flip Flop Fly Ball has updated with some more fun baseball infographics. Well worth a look.

I also finished reading Roger Kahn’s The Head Game. He really is a great writer, genuinely warm and interesting, and this was a fascinating look at the history of baseball through the perspective of the pitcher. Christy Mathewson was quite the player, wasn’t he?

Football

Twohundredpercent has just had a refit, and always is full of good content, covering every level of football.

So, what have you enjoyed looking at this week?

September 2, 2009

Catching up on the baseball

The past two weeks I’ve been on annual leave, and so haven’t been able (or willing) to watch much sport over that time. Baseball has particularly suffered, and so last night I attempted to catch up a little, especially as we enter the business-end of the season, with October’s play-offs looming.

I watched some of Monday night’s Texas Rangers/Toronto Blue Jays game, and picked an entertaining and bizarre matchup for getting back into the swing of things (excuse the awful pun). The Blue Jays went 11-0 up and the game seemed dead and buried, only for Texas to drag themselves back into it, so the ninth and final inning began 11-10. Toronto seemed to wake up again at this point and notched up seven without reply, the exhausting game ending 18-10. There wasn’t a whole lot of quality, but there was a whole lot of hitting fun.

I then switched to last night’s early game, for some live baseball action, again with the Rangers and Blue Jays. I didn’t see a whole lot before my bed called, but the pitching seemed a whole lot less wild.

As a bit of an experiment I tried some mid-game(s) tweeting and was encouraged to actually get some replies from my random notes thrown into the ether. I might have to try that again. It will give me something to do between innings, anyway. Well, something other than forage for more snacks.

One way I do keep up is Craig Calcaterra’s daily roundup at the Hardball Times, which has to be one of the most entertaining, fun and accessible baseball recaps I’ve come across. Today he pointed out a fun story about Adrian Beltre returning from a nasty sounding testicle injury to the tune of Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker”. I’m sure Beltre will never hear the end of that one.

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August 16, 2009

Giants beat the Mets in 10 and the downside of watching condensed games

mlb.com has done a grand job when it comes to its online baseball coverage and I’m a great advocate of signing up for it’s audio and video service. Access to each and every game for a reasonable price is good enough as it is, but for those of us who let real life get in the way of watching sport, they kindly offer the condensed game option. In fifteen-odd minutes you get the feel of how a game panned out, with each ‘out’ edited into one package.

However, just watching the highlights of yesterday’s Giants/Mets game, I have become more aware than ever of its limitations. If only there were more hours in the day, and I’d had the time to watch the whole game, either as it happened or ‘as live’. As baseball is all about the ebb and flow, the pauses as well as the bursts of action, highlights will always be second-best. But this particular game, even from just a fifteen minute summary, seems to have been something pretty special.

The first few innings seemed like a bit of a pitchers duel, with Santana and Cain going at it. Then Wright gets a nasty concussion, the pitch actually knocking his helmet off. Santana then pitches wildly in return. The Mets fight back from 4-1 down to level the game. The Giants win in extra innings, a dramatic home run from Molina.

While the condensed game got some of this drama across, it would have undoubtedly been much more satisfying (bar the result) to watch events unfold in real time.

However, until we get a 27 hour day, with three hours for watching baseball, I guess the condensed games are a good compromise between keeping up with baseball, and actually keeping up with the real world. And enjoying the real world is no bad thing.

July 13, 2009

Today’s tips

Hi,

A winning bet on the baseball last night, so here’s another one – this time for the Home Run Derby. It’s a bit of a lottery, and this guy seems overpriced…

Brandon Inge (15.00) 2 pts

I’ll try and get some proper content up on here soon. But I guess these tips are helping get the place up and running again. So far, I’m in profit (up about 2 points by my calculations), but I still wouldn’t recommend following these blindly!

Tag: baseball