This is a story of my basketball life. It is a story of how I have become accustomed to losing. It is a story of how I have been conditioned to be a Timberwolves fan. Warning, it is long and rambling.
I was playing around with some Baseball-Reference.com stats today, and I noticed something. Check out the career park-adjusted lines for the following FA CF'ers:
AVG/OBP/SLG -- Dude
.257/.336/.488 -- Andruw Jones
.282/.340/.456 -- Aaron Rowand
.251/.341/.445 -- Mike Cameron
.268/.321/.465 -- Torii Hunter
They all have pretty similar offensive value. Good power, a decent OBP, and a middling batting [...]
Name: frightwig
Hometown: Bremerton, WA
Town I Currently Live In: relocating to an undisclosed location in Oregon
Profession: dedicated parental unit
Bats: R
Throws: R
Positions: corner IF/OF
Greatest Career Achievement in Baseball/Softball/T-ball: I was good enough to be a regular starter for my county youth league teams, but I was never an All-Star. I don't recall being the [...]
Oooooooh! Scary, kids! Happy Halloween!
I was gonna post "D.O.A." by Bloodrock, the creepiest song ever to land in the top-40 (peaked at #36), but embedding was disabled.
I'm just glad that ubelmann didn't opt out during the World Series. The timing would have been terrible.
Moss queried:
Does the A-Rod situation help or hurt the Twins re: their 3B situation? On the one hand, there's an extra 3B on the market. On the other hand, there's an extra buyer on the market, and it is the Yankees.
I thought this topic deserved its own post.
Torii Hunter, as expected, filed for free agency on Monday. Then, he told the Twins that he wouldn't negotiate with the team during the 15 days that the team has an exclusive right to try to work out a deal.
Teams have an exclusive 15-day negotiating period with pending free agents before the market officially [...]
File under: Half-baked crap.
If Hunter leaves in free agency, the Twins would receive no compensation for losing one of their biggest stars and a locker room pillar who takes some of the attention away from young players like Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau.
(Emphasis mine.)
I understand that how much someone values draft picks relative to veteran [...]
Live on the Buckingham Palace grounds for the Elizabeth II jubilee celebration, 2002
Bonus track: Eurythmics with a live version of "There Must Be An Angel" on Parkinson
The Monty Hall Problem
When I first announced that I would be doing this feature on a regular basis, Moss asked me a question about whether a person on the game show "Deal or No Deal" should have switched cases at the very end. I noted that it didn't matter whether or not he decided [...]
If you believe in karma, you'd have to say that the Rockies' attempt to trademark the term "Rocktober" wasn't exactly a positive move.
[contributed by: Rhubarb_Runner]
Sports Illustrated magazine cover - November 2, 1987
"THE CHAMPS!"
The Rod (with 500 career HR at the age of 31, I think he's earned the definite article) has decided to void his contract. According to Cot's Contracts, Texas owed The Rod $21M over the next three years under the now-voided contract. This effectively gives Texas about 10% more payroll to work [...]
A few days ago I mentioned David Sanborn's old Night Music program. Well, here's a clip from the show featuring Dizzy Gillespie in 1988. Before playing, Diz has some fun goofing on Jools Holland.
What do the Rockies and Red Sox have in common? Each team has a seven game winning streak and a three game losing streak in this post season. I'm thinking that the Red Sox like the timing of their streaks better.
with the remnants of Queen at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert
I've mentioned more than once here that the first major league baseball game that I ever attended was on July 4, 1973. I was just eight years old and we sat in the cheap seats down the third base line. I don't know what the tickets cost back then, probably about $2 or [...]
I'm slightly less excited about this week's Gopher game.
Shamelessly stolen from the bjhess blog.
I wish I knew the source of this clip.
Anybody remember David Sanborn's old Night Music show? It used to run on NBC in the late '80s in the wee, wee hours of Sunday night, as I recall. He'd get various kinds of interesting musicians to come on and just [...]
Two runs in two games ain't gonna win you many.
"I've Got Rhythm"
and Richard Glazier playing pt 1 of "Rhapsody in Blue"
So, um, yeah, Game 1 was sure interesting. Josh Beckett struck out the side in the first, Dustin Pedroia led off the game with a home run, and the Red Sox steamrolled the Rockies in a game that was decided before the halfway point. I turned it off in the fifth inning and [...]
It's not about the $75-$80 million, according to Torii:
"There's other stuff, inside stuff, that people don't know about," Hunter told the paper. "Money has something to do with it, but trust me, that's just a percentage. We need to talk about stuff that needs to change before we start to get into deep talks."
I can [...]
File this in the surprisingly candid comment file. Randy Wittman, commenting on his roster: "We could have our own developmental league right here."
His last public performance, Trinity Church, NYC, 3/29/07.
The videos run about 58 minutes total, so you may not watch it all, but it's good stuff to play while browsing other windows.
I think this is a pretty interesting matchup and I'm hoping for a good series that draws some fans back into watching baseball.
Boston, of course, is the big money, old school, East Coast franchise that represents all that baseball has hung its hat on for the last several years. They have a [...]
I mentioned this when it was a rumor in the Cup of Coffee, but the Wolves have dealt Rickey Davis and Mark Blount to the Miami Heat for Antoine Walker, Michael Doleac, Wayne Simien, a future first round pick (It is lottery-protected in 2008, protected through the No. 10 selection in 2009, through the No. [...]
Let's get this World Series started!
This is obviously who I'm cheering for, even though as of Sept 30, I knew like 5 of these dudes. If you need to know who is on the AL champs, the loathed BoSox, well, I looked at them in early May. [Note: Roster may not be the same. [Subnote: I may not care.]] [...]
October 22, 1955, live on CBS broadcast of "Together with Music" starring Coward and Mary Martin.
Don't forget to try to solve the Nation's Problems.
[contributed by: Rhubarb_Runner]
Baseball Cards magazine cover - January 1988
"1987 WORLD SERIES"
Perusing the internets this evening, I ran across a column by a self-described "old-time sportswriter" pointing out a fellow dead tree journalist's mistake of writing the Rockies off in April.
The Colorado Rockies were 7-11 that morning and in last place in the five-team National League West. They were coming off six consecutive losing seasons in [...]
I had written an elaborate introduction to probability theory, but my post got to be a little bit long and I wanted to shorten it. It people are interested, I can post it later. For this post, I had a couple of interesting examples and wanted to cut to the chase.
Conditional Probabilities
Often times [...]
What are your thoughts about this series? I'll provide mine as part of the Game 1 log.
Long suffering Boston fans finally have a winner. Heh.
The "Tulsa Sound" version
and the headbanger version
ALCS Game 7: Papelbon vs. Pronk
Well, Cleveland is facing an elimination game. That's, um, not good.
Joined by the wonderful Emmylou Harris. 2000. Beers to cry in are optional.
Well, the Red Sox are 2-0 when Josh Beckett starts for them and 0-3 otherwise. If Carmona can keep his pitch counts down and the Indians can jump on ol' Bloody Sock early (which will help keep the pitch counts down for Carmona), they'll start hanging the World Series logos in [...]
Saturday morning coffee is the best.
Re-mix by Fat Boy Slim. It's all about production value.
Last year, about this time, Lucy and I traveled to Wisconsin to attend a wedding anniversary party for Lucy's godmother -- 50 years. We met up with Lucy's parents that day and it was a shocking and sad day for both Lucy and me.
Lucy's mother has cancer. She's been living with the disease [...]
The Indians disregarded my advice and did not "Git 'R DUN".
Though he wrote the song, Gram Parsons had been booted from the group by this time. Chris Hillman and Bernie Leadon up front, Sneaky Pete Kleinow on pedal steel. 1970. This is country music, right?
Kicking Dave Dudley's "Six Days On The Road" into high gear. 1971.
Git 'er dun.
I'll admit it. I don't know who the hell Dane Cook is.
SF noisemakers live. 2006. Dig that crazy drummer.
In 2003, the Minnesota Twins won their second consecutive American League Central Division championship, but they failed to get past the New York Yankees in their AL Division Series matchup. The Twins made a mid-season trade for Shannon Stewart and installed Johan Santana into the starting rotation, caught fire after the All-Star game to [...]
I'm constantly at odds with the folks who are at odds with computer ranking systems.
I noticed today that SBG pointed out a Deadspin article which pointed to a different blog which mentioned that a single computer ranking system had SBG's beloved Bison ranked in the top 20.
This is the sort of thing that the broadcast [...]
Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too. -- Judge Smails
Last night’s game was exciting if you are a Red Sox hater – the Indians jumped on the Red Sox halfway through the game and blew them out. However, if you are a fan of close, tight games, this one was really a yawner (after [...]
Boy, does Boston ever need an off day.
From German television. 1971. A rather mean-spirited little rocker. "If your sitting at home in your parlour, join in." The epic "Salty Dog". Live 1976.
With the Rockies in, baseball has a small market upstart playing for its brass ring, which is great for the sport. Colorado (Colorado!) has captured the imagination of sports fans across the country. Imagine that -- the jersey doesn't have to say New York or Los Angeles or (hopefully) Boston.
Which gets [...]
If so, contact me at sbg at stickandballguy dot com.
Congratulations to the Rockies. They've blown up the National League.
The first thing they always did was count you.
We're going to be a bit more sophisticated than the counting you did in high school, but I imagine this will be familiar to a lot of you anyway. A lot of the stuff I write about has to do with discrete, finite probabilities. In [...]
This has certainly been a disappointing series so far. Before the series started, we heard a lot about how there were no big market teams in this one and how that would kill TV ratings. I don't believe that has to be the case and I really hoped that this would [...]
You might have heard somewhere that the Red Sox recently ended quite a long World Series drought. Well, their opponents in the ALCS, the Cleveland Indians have had a little drought themselves. Joe Posnanski writes a brilliant piece about life as a Cleveland Indians fan. The article's premise is why [...]
Too bad AZD doesn't want to make it a series.
Earlier this evening, my roommates were discussing their feelings on dating. The consensus seemed to be that dating strangers was a total pain-in-the-ass because you have to play "the game," which stresses everyone out, but helps protect the feelings of those involved (at least, to a degree.) They thought that it was preferable [...]
Just your typical, 60-something, wheelchair-bound, chain-smoking, leftist, pop star. Mr. Wyatt is an interesting cat. Paul Weller on slide guitar.
@
We had some problems earlier today, but it's time for a game and things are rolling.
The other day I posted an interesting stats question in the middle of the comments of one of SBG's posts. To be honest, the reason I posted it was because I hadn't solved it yet and I wanted to know the answer. I figured that it didn't really involve any deep theoretical math [...]
The Cincinnati Reds have chosen the least creative path possible.
We'll see whether or not Bill Smith is any good, but right now, I'm glad Wayne Krivsky is nowhere near the Twins' front office.
Top 15 in pitcher abuse points in 2003, in order: Javier Vazquez, Kerry Wood, Livan Hernandez, Mark Prior, Mark Redman, Al Leiter, Woody [...]
Live at La Scala, London 2005. Thanks to AMR for this one. From their 2007 album, Strawberry Jam.
@
I picked the Indians to win the ALCS because I want them to win more than anything. The other big reason was because I thought four starts by Captain Cheeseburger and Fausto Carmona would give the Tribe an advantage. Then the big beef patty gave up a bunch last night and [...]
I started a feature last year during the 2006 season writing features about the top 40 Minnesota Twins as rated by their cumulative Value Over Replacement Player or VORP. I got about half way through the list and then the season started, my wife had a baby, and so forth. So, I [...]
I'm going to head over to zooomx's for a glass of wine or two.
On July 23rd, 2002, Johan Santana gave up 8 ER in 3.2 innings as the Twins lost 8-7 to the White Sox. Santana has started 157 games since that day, and he has allowed fewer than 8 runs (earned or otherwise) in all of those games.
C.C. Sabathia's still a great pitcher, but that's kind [...]