Baseball

SNL: Chico Escuela's First Appearance
Ben Simon a.k.a. Cartoon Man Central

We heard that a guy we know was a fan of the Seattle Mariners baseball team and they were in the playoffs, so we started watching them. They beat the Detroit Tigers in a series of five games in the ALCS (American League Championship Series), and then lost to the Toronto Blue Jays in the ALDS (American League Division Series). So then we watched the Blue Jays play the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series. The Dodgers won the series last night in the eleventh inning of game seven.

Mostly it was just baseball: pitches, balls, strikes, hits and runs, but there were a surprising number of oddball incidents like,

• breaking bats
• batters struck by the ball thrown by the pitcher
• batters struck by a ball they have just hit
• runner hit by a ball thrown by the second baseman
• baseball that landed at the base of the outfield wall, actually wedged under the wall
• two outfielders colliding while trying to catch a fly
• a runner on first being tagged out when he thought the batter had gotten a walk. Batter thought he had gotten a walk, but the umpire called it a strike.

There was one game in the ALCS series where they broke four bats. Things were getting tense and I'm looking at the batter and I got this feeling that he was going to break his bat and lo and behold, he did.

Baseball is so random. Any given pitch may be a ball (outside the strike zone) or a strike. Some pitches may inadvertently go wild, but sometimes the pitcher will deliberately throw a ball. So besides not knowing what the pitcher is planning to throw, we have the occasional fluke that throws the ball off course. So it's like a full helping of random plus a sprinkling of evil fairy dust.

Pitches travel around 90 MPH, which is like 130 feet per second. It's only 60 feet from the pitcher to the batter and the ball will be several feet closer by the time the pitcher releases it. If we figure 55 feet of free flying, the ball will be over home plate in less than half a second. The batter has maybe a quarter of second to size up the ball's trajectory and decide whether to swing or not. Sometimes a miracle occurs and the batter connects and we get a home run.

$3.2 million for Pete Rose (video at top) is small potatoes. Blue Jays first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. just signed a 14 year contract for $500 million. 

Once upon a time gambling on sports was verboten, which is what got Pete Rose in so much trouble. When we started watching these games I swear half of the ads were for gambling. Then Chauncy Billups got busted and those ads stopped, but last night they were back again.

P. S. I was amused to see the pitcher and catcher covering their mouths with their gloves when they are talking to each other. They look like masked warriors out of some video game.