no worries :-) everything is fine :-)

First of all, my sincere apologies to MLB TV. I needed to create what they call “an account” and then the MLB-TV Free Game was, indeed, a free game! Thank you MLB-TV. A nice surprise to be able to watch the game against Boston yesterday. I only wish it was possible to watch the Twins during the season on MLB TV. When will baseball figure that one out?

THEN

I’ve been drinking the Spring Ball Whisky all spring. I know these games don’t count. I know I know I know.
I know.

But 8-17?

Yesterday Mr. Brigham came in to pitch in the bottom of the 8th with the Twins out front, 5-4. Two thirds of an inning and one grand slam later, it’s 8-5. These sorts of things seem to keep happening to the Twins this spring. They made it interesting, the Twins, loading the bases and getting a run in the ninth, but, final score, 6-5 Red Sox, and the Twins drop to 8-17.

A few other observations from the game.

Note Cards: I noticed both Twins and Red Sox outfielders looking at notecards out there in the outfield. Possibly working on memorizing team-mates names? Flash cards? More likely something about positioning, I guess. So old fashioned! Notecards! Like.

Red Sox pitcher Pivetta was pretty impressive. In one stretch: Correa, K, Buxton, K, Lewis, K, Kepler, K. The heart of the order. Impressive.

Willie Castro made a fantastic play at third; threw a batter out at first while sitting on the ground. Red Sox player was not particularly fast, but still. That’s a pretty good arm.

There is apparently a pitch known as a Vulcan Change-up. More research needed.

Niko Goodrum was wearing glasses out there. How many ballplayers wear glasses anymore? He looked very studious out there, and he drew a walk in his only at bat. Studied each pitch very carefully. I can’t think of many fielders that have worn glasses. Pitchers, yes. (Ryan Duren comes to mind immediately.)

The Twins pitching coach went out to the mound to talk to Brigham. He looked like a 14 year old kid. Why is the ball-boy talking to the pitcher? Are they running out of balls? Whatever he said to Brigham, it did not help. I’m sure he’s a fine coach.
I wish he looked a bit more like Sal Maglie though.

New Hats? Again? I guess it’s probably like printing money. I am still getting used to last year’s new hat. Sigh.

What if M S stands for Might Stink?

And that glove. I’m not a fan of the baby-blue glove. But: none of my business. AND it seems HUGE. There must be rules about that. Maybe Paddack just has a small head?

The Twins play the Orioles today. The Orioles are 22-6 this spring. They are in first place, and are foolishly taking Spring Ball much too seriously.

Reel Baseball

It’s been quite some time since I’ve added a baseball book to my list. Surely I must have read some baseball books during “the lost years” – and maybe someday I’ll track them down. But yesterday I finally finished with Reel Baseball, so I thought I’d mention it.

DVD inside! I must admit, that was the selling point. Plus, $2, discount shelf at Half-Priced books. So I bought this thinking it had possibilities, but I’m afraid it didn’t quite live up to its potential. The text was pretty standard Baseball History text, that I’ve likely read in maybe a dozen other books, and the pictures in the book – and there are a lot of pictures, of course – are the usual pictures.

The DVD was okay. Joe Garagiola narrating, doing his thing. The game action was fun to see, but I wish there had been more of it. Maybe that’s a good thing, it left me wanting more. (Not sure if it’s very possible to get more, though. I think a lot of these newsreels are in the public domain now, but maybe not very accessible online.) Nice to see Ducky Medwick, Babe Ruth, Teddy Ballgame. Lots of World Series action. It was fun. Baseball is fun, to quote a famous philosopher. And it’s fun to compare yesterday and today. To me, today does not do well in the comparison. Today has a little too much CGI polish, if you know what I mean. I guess dollars will do that. Things were a bit grittier back then. A bit more “real.” Relatable? (Ahhh, nostalgia…. Things ain’t what they used to be.)

No Bulldog Bouton in the DVD. (Not that everything must revolve around Bouton.) But, pro-tip, to see the Bulldog in action, you can watch the highlights from the 1964 World Series on YouTube. If you want.

Video quality is not hi-def, of course. But, watching him throw, wow. He threw HARD. It does make my arm hurt to see, a little bit. Throwing over the top like that? Ouch. I think you might get too the low-def feeling of the game back then. Things are not so orderly and plastic as they are now. Every pixel perfect.

Meanwhile, back in Pixel Perfect today, the Twins take game 2, 2-0, and sit alone on top of the black-and-blue Central Division of the Junior Circuit. A long way to go. One game at a time. Joe Ryan on the mound today. Let’s play some ball…

Now I’ll Complain About Box Scores

(Oh, boy. It’s always something.)

Looking at the Twins box scores on their website, and, I gotta say, annoying. A box score should have the basic stats of both teams visible at a glance. In a box. You can look, see everything, and move on. With the MLB site, you have to click on which team’s stats you want to see. Why?

(I know. Poor me. Has to click. So hard. Such a hardship.)

It just seems to me that the basic box score, which has served us well for oh-so-long, wasn’t broke, and shouldn’t have been “fixed.”

There. I’m done now.

The earliest box score I found on Chronicling America is in the Indianapolis Journal, Thursday, October 4th, 1883.

I like the title of this one. “Another Defeat.” It sounds like a post I might have written in this very blog.

As I said, box scores have been with us almost forever. Wikipedia reports since 1859, created by none other than St. Henry Chadwick, FoBB. And over the years it has not changed much. Here’s a box score from 1912, from the Atlanta Georgian. The Red Sox couldn’t do much against Marquard in game 6 of the World Series.

The Sox lost game 7, too, 11-4, with Smokey Joe Wood the loser. But then: Surprise, they came back the next day, Game 8! to win the 1912 World Series, and Smokey Joe came back and got the win, too, pitching three innings in relief. This game 8 sounds like quite the game, with the Giants taking a 2-1 lead in the top of the 10th, and the Red Sox plating two in the bottom of the 10th to win it all. Mathewson going the distance and the loser. (I obviously should have looked for that box score!)

Here’s another nice old box score from the Chicago Day Book, 12 January 1914, reliving “the great game of September 23” 1908. (Took me awhile to figure this out, due to my poor reading skills.)

Yup, the game ended in a 1-1 tie. 1908 was that kind of season.

One last old box score. Washington Evening Star

Too bad, Yanks. Not your year. [smirk]

This was a pretty typical newspaper box score when I was a lad. Perhaps the Golden Age of the box score. I would be very pleased if someone would make an app, in their spare time, that would generate these from modern data.

The ESPN website provides better box scores, I think, IMHO, than MLB. I guess I shouldn’t expect MLB to provide for all my needs. They’ve go their own business to mismanage. I guess I will need to go to ESPN for box scores.

Maybe they’ve got spring batting stats as well? (no.)

sigh.

Why must things change? Contrary to popular belief, I don’t like to complain.

Okay, now I’m done. Goodnight.

Where they play ball

Where They Play Ball

A sunny day. 2015.

(Thanks Google for the images.)