RealityChuck

Decent drive-in entertainment (where I saw it), but ultimately a forgettable popcorn movie.

If you define pitcher as "someone who pitched in the major leagues," then Ty Cobb had 852. But a pitcher stealing a base happens from time to time. It looks like the last Met pitcher to record a stolen base is Jae Seo in 2004. Sid Fernandez got one in 1986. Tom Seaver had one 1969 and a total of four in his career (all with the Mets). That looks like the lifetime record of steals by a Mets pitch, and Seaver's two steals in 1967 is the season record. I don't know the circumstances, of course, but most likely it would have been a delayed double steal: the pitcher stole second to draw a throw, but the catcher let him so the guy on third wouldn't score.

Frayed Knot wrote: * Around 6PM today I briefly saw some orange-ish ball in the sky which was giving off both light and heat. Any ideas what that could be? Orange ball in blue sky. Someone up there is a Mets fan.

="Elster88"]That throw to nail Counsell at third (replay available in the link below) was beautiful. I can't think of another time when a speedy guy, who was running with the pitch, got thrown out on a single to right! . Should be the Mets entry for "Play of the Year." The amazing thing about it is that Counsell never even got to third base. Nine times out of ten, on a play like that it's either too late, or so close that the manager comes out to argue. But he did miss the cutoff man. I am enthusiastic that he'll be helping the team next year and beyond.

Edgy DC wrote: 8) The slugging guy who didn't hit much but was a threat to connect for a homer. Dave Kingman. 1982

Good point, sharpie. I'm a little less enthusiastic, but it's still too early to draw any major conclusions.

Baseball cards? The first baseball cards I bought predated the Mets: I started in 1959. I do have several original Mets: Bob Miller, Chris Cannizaro, Jay Hook, and Roger Craig. I got Miller in '62, but picked up the rest later. I also have Tom Terrific's rookie card. Rod Carew's rookie card. Maury Wills's first card (Wills refused to let himself be on a card until he was traded to Pittsburg in 1967. When he was in the minors, Topps didn't sign all players and when they asked the Dodgers if Wills would make the club, they said he had no chance. Once Wills made the team, he turned down Topps for ignoring him. He did appear in a Dodgers uniform on a card in 1970, when he was traded back to them. I have that one, too.) These, and many others are in my safe deposit box. I stopped collecting in 1994. At that point, I had at least one representative sample of every Topps issue except the 1952 blue back. I never started up; once the back of the card was in color, they lost all interest for me.

But that's the copyeditor's job: to make sure he isn't writing different statistics, or mispelling someone's name, or using bad grammar, or leaving out "not." Would he rather leave those sort of things in his work?

SNY just had the announcement; it took a bit of time to get the details on the web page. That's why the links there didn't show much. The article is up now.

Wow. But Nady will be back, at the very least, next year when Cliff leaves.

So Bill James doesn't think consistency is important? So it's OK if he says Babe Ruth has 714 home runs at one point and 914 at another? Or that Joe DiMaggio name is spelled Joe Dimagio? Or that he says at one point that a batting average is an important statistic and at another point that it's not an important statistic? Is Bill James willing to print a different number each time he lists a particular statistic in order to make the book more interesting by being inconsistent? As for James knowing more than any copy editor; how many books has he copyedited? Now, it is true that a copyeditor will question any usage that looks unusual, but they don't automatically change it: they query. And James is probably ignoring the hundreds of times a copyeditor saved his ass that he's conveniently forgetting in place of the half dozen times they didn't get the point. There are, of course, bad copyeditors, but it looks like James doesn't even like good ones, and, if you take his comments at face value, has no objection to putting incorrect statistics in his books.

Cautiously optimistic. He showed competence and may be an innings eater, but it's too early to be sure.

But isn't the number of pitchers really irrelevant? What's important is the team's record, and whether they do it with 7 pitchers or 15 is meaningless.

The question is: Is Hernandes better than Gonzalez or Lima Bean? Probably. Julio is giving up a bit, but it will give Heath Bell a shot at the bullpen, so it's not that major a loss, and they have a veteran to pitch for now.

But the situation's different for each team and each player, isn't it?

MFS62 wrote: The NL pitcher who sees the oppposing pitcher come to bat against him twice in the first inning is having a bad day.If he sees him bat once, it's a bad day. Twice isn't going to happen -- he'll be pulled by then.

Gwreck -- ignore the troll. He really doesn't believe anything he posts, anyway.

Mediocre at best. The only good scenes are those with Stephen Root; I understand they were part of a short animated film that was pretty good. It looks like Judge took that and padded it out into feature length by showing a dumb story (Hypnosis as a plot mechanism? How cliched can you get? I mean, that was old when the Three Stooges were doing it; Hitchcock refused to do a sequel to The Thirty-Nine Steps because it has hypnosis in it) and dragging the few jokes out until they stopped being funny. It was probably a 20-minute short's worth of jokes, not a feature.

Edgy DC wrote: Um, Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy appearing as Mortimer and Randolph Duke from Trading Places in Coming to America. Day late, dollar short.Good pick. I wouldn't count the Star Trek, since the films are all interrelated: they all have "Star Trek" in the title and are part of the same franchise. I can think of three other people not mentioned: one pair (together) from the 1940s and one from the 1960s. Hint: the pair made both films for the same director. Hint: the 60s was an Oscar-winning actress who played a detective.

John Cazale, actually. For something harder, name at least five actors who reprised roles in films that were not sequels of the first film.

I'm currently reading Will Eisner's Contract with God trilogy, one of the greatest graphic novels ever (and the first to be billed as such). Only Maus is better.

You're right: "Major League Baseball" was trademarked in 1968. I started watching before that, though.

"Major league" dates from 1892. And the first cite in the OED, interestingly enough, uses the term to describe the Western League. ]1892 World Almanac 227 The Western League began playing in 1886... It was one of the �major leagues� last year. 1910 J. EVERS Baseball in Big Leagues iii. 50 The principal abuses of the system have been by major leagues taking players from lower class leagues. 1954 Sun (Baltimore) 9 Apr. 20/4 There are now from 22 to 24 cities being considered for the major leagues... This is the opinion of Ford Frick, baseball's high commissioner. So the Western League was called a major league before the National League, and it was referred to as such nine years before it became the American League. "Major League Baseball" was never used when I was younger. I'd be surprised if it dated from before the 90s (the OED only gives one cite for it -- in lower case from 1968). If anyone referred to the sport, it was always just "baseball" or NL or AL. I think the NL and AL started using it because all other sports leagues were referred to by letters and until interleague play, the two leagues were completely separate. It wasn't just the games: trades from one league to another fell under different rules -- there were specific interleague trading periods; any player traded from one league to another outside of those times had to go through league waivers. The umpires even wore different gear: NL home plate umpires had something like a catcher's pad, usually under their clothes; AL home plate umpires had big balloon protectors that looked like a small mattress tied to their chests (they also set up differently). The commissioner was usually a figurehead (once Landis died and until Bowie Kuhn took over) and the league office had little power.

Bret Sabermetric wrote: Contextualizing again: Signing Glavine to a four year deal was a mistake, even if he keeps up his excellent pitching all through 2006. He's 37-43 as a Met so far, if he goes 15-9 from here on out, which is a lot of games (he would be 19-11 on the year, and probably win a Cy Young) he would be exactly at .500 ( 52-52, or an average year of 13-13) which is not what they thought they were getting at 10+ mil per year for 4 years. This is a best case scenario, and they got screwed overall by the signing. And, of course, won-lost record is the one statistic that clearly shows whether a pitcher is good or not. Nothing else matters, and if the pitcher is stuck behind a lousy offense, that's his fault. Right? But that's the wonderful thing about Sabermetrics: you can pick and choose whatever statistic you want and pretend you've proven something.

Edgy DC wrote: More seriously, I curiously inquire: who else throws the knuckler nowadays? i don't understand why there isn't at least one knuckleballer in every system. Playing it safe. As Wakefield pointed out, if you have a guy with a 90 mph fastball and he has a bad game in the minors, people just say, "Well, we know fastballers tend to be wild and he just needs time to find his control." When a knuckleballer in the minors pitches poorly, it's that damn trick pitch. Throw some heat, dammit! If you go with a fastball, no one will second guess you. If you go with a knuckler, everyone will.