dinosaur jesus

That is correct. It looks like he meant that it's been done ten times, not by ten players.

Hafner's a monster. At least as good as Ortiz, if he can get the AB's.

Galarraga, 1993, beating out Olerud's .363 for the best average in baseball. Baseballreference.com has a fun feature where you can see what someone's stats might have been in an average year, or playing for the Dodgers in 1968, or playing for the Rockies in 2000. Olerud's 1993 and 1998 averages come out to .423 and .411 in Colorado.

Valentin tripped? Is he okay?

I beg your pardon? I'm not up on the modern slang.

You're pretty cut yourself.

I like what wool caps smell like when it rains.

Maybe his ambition was to make people forget that other Reggie Jackson.

If Miledge makes the All Star team this year, he'll be having a hell of a season. Character issues can wait if he plays like that.

The thread title got me excited for a moment, and then I remembered the season won't start for another six weeks. I saw the Mets almost get one in an exhibition game in Toronto once, right before the season. Four or five pitchers got through the eighth, but the guy in the ninth--it might have been Josias Manzanillo--had nothing that day. Even though it wouldn't have counted, it would have been pretty funny if they did it in the Skydome and never at Shea.

Keep up the Braves hatred. As long as they're still doing the chop, as long as Larry Jones is still with them, as long as Cox is still the manager. If they lose 100 games, I'm going to enjoy every one.

I associate Ken Boyer with Ed Charles because they shared duty at third base in 1967, until Boyer was traded. And because their names together make Charles Boyer.

seawolf17 wrote: Bring me Jeff Innis! I agree with you, but short of Dan Quisenberry, have there been any sidewinders who have had a long stretch of success? (I have the Byung-Hyun Kim face in my head, watching those home runs fly out of the park against the MFYs.) Well, there's Chad Bradford, who's had a good nine-year career. Kent Tekulve.Ted Abernathy. Elden Auker. Some excellent power pitchers have been sidearmers--Eckersley, Ewell Blackwell, Walter Johnson--but that's another subject. I think a sidearmer is as good a bet as anybody. If there weren't such a strong prejudice against them, Terry Leach would probably have had quite a successful career.

Pitch counts per inning probably are higher over the last decade, and I'm sure that does play a role. But I don't know how much. Complete games have declined through eras when pitch counts probably didn't change appreciably, or may even have gone down. I doubt that pitch counts were much different in 1960 than in 1950, for example--strikeouts were way up, but walks and hits were down--but there were still far fewer complete games. And through most of the sixties, when I'd guess that pitch counts were actually declining, so were complete games. (1968, the Year of the Pitcher, is an exception.)

It's not a modern trend. It goes all the way back to the beginning of the game. The number of complete games has been in a gradual decline for 130 years. Take the year you pointed to, 1969. That year, in the National League, there were 531 complete games pitched, or about 44 per team. Now look ten years before that, and another ten years, and so on (note that in these years the season was 154 games or less; I've prorated the shorter seasons): 1959: 47 per team 1949: 59 1939: 64 1929: 71 1919: 90 (prorated) 1909: 100 1899: 132 1889: 136 (prorated) 1879: 146 (prorated) And of course the trend continued after 1969: 1979: 30 1989: 18 1999: 8 That doesn't really answer the question, of course; it just makes the question why this has been happening for so long. All I can suggest is that teams have always been worried about wearing out their pitchers' arms, and have kept trying to use them a little less. The Mets, by the way, were one of the first teams to use a five-man rotation, which is a related development.

He ought to work on his stance. You could definitely bust him inside. And if he keeps crowding the plate like that, someone's going to bounce one off his fat head.

Fire Joe Morgan just did a great demolition job on that piece.

That's not a Lou Piniella bobblehead. That's what his head always looks like.

One player opts for baseball. Not exactly a trend. The big advantage that football has--regardless of which sport is more popular--is that if you're drafted in the high rounds, you're usually on the team right away, rather than having to take your chances working through the minors. It's hard to compete with that.

The lovable, fuzzy Nutrias are still on the Zephyrs website. Reportedly they've been breeding like, well, nutrias. Boudreaux D. Nutria and his wife Clotile are not only the New Orleans Zephyrs official mascots, but they have become King and Queen of Zephyr Field and the ambassadors of baseball for the entire south Louisiana area. This lovable, fuzzy husband-and-wife tandem has become the most popular nutria in Jefferson Parish, an area that has often greeted nutria with open fire instead of open arms. Boudreaux has made Zephyr Field his home since 1997 when he was found lost in the swamp exhibit at the Audubon Zoo. The Zephyrs adopted Boo and put him to work as the official mascot. He has charmed and entertained hundreds of thousands of fans throughout the region and was the New Orleans’ most celebrated bachelor…until 1998. That’s when he met the former Clotile Picou when she answered a Gambit Weekly personal ad the Zephyrs placed for Boudreaux. It was love at first bite, as Clotile accepted Boudreaux’s marriage proposal in front of a sold-out crowd on April 11 1998. They were married at Zephyr Field on August 16, 1998 in front of a then-record crowd of 11,012. They have expanded their family to include Beauregard, Cherie, Claudette, Jean-Pierre, Noelle and Thibodaux. It’s a six-pack that can’t be beat and the Zephyrs most enduring gift to the children of New Orleans.

Opinion: Either you're confused or you're shitting everybody. Fact: Randy Tate never pitched a one-hitter for the Mets.

Edgy DC wrote: I had no idea cloning technology had gone so far in Philadelphia. It used to be called inbreeding.

So how come Hank Aaron hits a grand slam to tie the game, but it's the Mets guys who get named MVP? There's that East Coast bias for you.

I knew a German who thought it was funny that the star of Bonanza was named Lohengrin.

Lorne Calvert, Premier of Saskatchewan.