Category Archives: Sports

General sports articles that range from teams to drug testing to amateur sports.

MLB Playoffs: Fall Baseball is War, Part Two

Posted on by
Reply

On September 3, I wrote that “Fall Baseball is War” here. With that in mind, September 18 was the Battle of the Bulge. The stituation going into that night’s games found Detroit, Atlanta, La Dodgers, Boston and Oakland comfortably in first place in their divisions, and St. Louis two games ahead of Pittsburgh. but Pittsburgh, and Cincinatti 2.5 game back, along with St. Louis will make up the Division winner and NL Wild Card races, so there is little drama in the National League, unless, of course, Washington wins them all going forward.

The war is in the American League Wild Card race where Tampa Bay and Texas now lead, but Cleveland is  .5 games back and Baltimore, New York and Kansas City are within  2.5. Anything can happen and the teams that are hot will prevail.

The fact that Fall Baseball is War is shown by the scores last night. The Angels beat Oakland 4-3 in ten innings, Baltimore beat Boston 5-3 in twelve innings, Tampa Bay beat Texas 4-3 in twelve innings, Cincinnati beat Houston 6-5 in thirteen innings, and Miami beat Philadelphia  4-3 in ten innings. The five extra inning games were joined with the Yankees 4-3 (four in the eighth for the Yankees) win over Toronto, San Diego beat Pittsburgh 3-2, scoring two in the ninth, St. Louis beat Colorado 4-3, and the New York Mets beat San Francisco 5-4  scoring four in the bottom of the ninth. So the five extra inning games were matched by four one run games. 

These bitterly contested games came after 152 had been played and only the AL Wild to be decided. What is most indicative of the furious nature of Fall Baseball is that Houston, with only 51 wins and 101 losses, battled Cincinnati in a thirteen inning game, and Miami with 56 wins and 96 losses went ten to beat the Phillies. The intense comprtitiveness of a MLB season never lets up. Baseball players never quit. Every at-bat, every pitch thrown in reflected in their careet records and is used to deterine salaries for the coming year or multi-years. Even the last batter, on the last pitch thrown to a Houston player, will be trying with all his skill to make a hit, and the pitcher making that pitch will be trying to get an out. This is the very nature of a Major League Season, the long season, where the differences between teams at this point may appear to be great, but really comes down to the ability to win the Fifth Games, of which there are thirty-two each year. (SEE: Fifth Game Theory). These are the games, won or lost, that determine winners, even down to the last game.

Wild Card Race on September 16; Yankees Falter

Posted on by
Reply

The AL Wild Card race is becoming clearer. In two weeks the regular season will be over, and,we will know more, and may even have a playoff for the playoffs, an interesting scenario.  This morning finds Texas and Tampa Bay tied at 81-67 for the two Wild Card slots. Cleveland is now only  .5 games behind, with Baltimore  2.5 back and New York 3 back. On August 23 Here that the Yankees, due to the easy schedule in the last twelve games had a real chance to make the Wild Card, however, the Yankees have faltered. Where they had to win half the games against the better teams, Baltimore and Boston, they have lost 8 of 12, and dominate the lesser teams, they beat Chicago times. The poor showing against Boston, especially, where they lost 7 of 8, is the reason they remain 3 games back. The Red Sox, I am certain, regale in their role in the Yankees apparent demise. 

The Orioles likewise, lost 6 of 8 against NY and Cleveland. They did win 5 of 8 against Toronto and the White Sox. They remain 2.5 games behind.

The team that has won according to the dominate/breakeven rule is the Cleveland Indians. They won 6 of 7 against the Mets and White Sox in September, and won 4 of 7 against KC, Balitmore and Detroit. They are  .5 games behind. If any of the three teams are to make the Wild Card, it seems the Indians are the team.  They will  have to pass Tampa or Texas to do that.

Texas has only won 1 of 10 recently and play Tampa Bay and KC 7 times this week.  They finish with Houston and LAA. Tampa Bay, of course, has the 4 against Texas at home this week and then play 7 against NYY and Baltimore before the final three in Toronto.

Tampa Bay and Cleveland are the probable winners here. However, baseball has strange twists. Yesterday, trying to win its twelth in a row against Minnesota, ran into a Twins team that hadn’t scored in 25 innings only to have the Twins score twice in the 7th on a single by Chris Parmelee, BA  .223 and four times in the 8th, three runs coming on a homerun by Josimil Pinto, a catcher who spent the Summer in AA, to win the game. Tampa Bay will remember that piitch to Pinto if they fail to make the playoffs. That final three in Toronto are critical.

There is another race worth noting and that is to avoid the Igniminy and the MLB Cellar Dweller, Here.  In the NL West, San Francisco, San Diego are tied and Colorado 1 game down for last place. Maybe they will all tie for last, or, as they would describe it, fourth, place and all will avoid the Ignominy of the Cellar Dweller.

The last two weeks of the regular season, like all of September is War, after that we have the playoffs and then the long, cold Winterl

Stonewall Jackson’s Greatest Tactical Victory

Posted on by
Reply

Confederate General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson was a spectacular general. He is famous for his Chancellorsville attack that nearly destroyed the Union Army of the Potomac in May 1863, yet it was his victory at Harper’s Ferry September 12-15, 1862, was his most brilliant. This victory captured 12.600 federal troops and made the battle of Antietam on September 17 possible. That was the bloodiest single day of the war. NOTE: Jackson was shot by friendly fire from a North Carolina regiment at the conclusion of the Chancellorsville battle and died several days later of pneumonia. 

Thanks to RealHistory, an account of that battle that details Jackson’s tactical brilliance is available Here. This is an important article for Civil War historians, of which I am one, and asks the question of what this brilliant tactician would have done if he had lived to lead his corp at Gettysburg. This corp, failed to take the high ground of Culp’s Hill on the first day of that battle and allowed Union General Meade to maintain the very defensible Cemetery Ridge line that was the key to the battle.

My friend, George Will, says that Meade would have withdrawn from Gettysburg and taken up a position at the equally formidable Pipe Creek line and won the battle there, but his family is from Illinois and mine from North Carolina.

I find Harper’s Ferry to be a mystical place and this article describes its military importance in 1862.

More on Union Decertification from Powerlineblog.com

Posted on by
Reply

My friend John Hinderaker of the Powerlineblog.com also picked up on the significance of the union decertification movement that I commented on yesterday.  Here and below

As HInderaker describes it , “Defunding the left” was one of the objectives of the Republican uprising of 1994; unfortunately, that goal went unrealized. This is one of the basic differences between Left and Right: conservative candidates and organizations have to raise money from individuals who contribute voluntarily, out of conviction, while Democrats and liberal organizations are able to extract money by force from taxpayers and others. The Left has managed to institutionalize itself.

Labor unions are the most notorious example of this phenomenon, although by no means the only one. In many states, Democratic politicians have enacted laws that compel workers to contribute to labor unions; union bosses, in turn, take much of that money and contribute it to Democratic politicians. This is the real “dirty money” in politics.

Most people do not realize the extent to which unions dominate special interest spending on elections. When you talk about special interests, it is hardly worth mentioning any other than unions. This chart, from Open Secrets, shows the fifteen largest contributors to federal campaigns during the period 1989-2012. Ten of the fifteen are unions:

Not a single one of the top fifteen gives primarily to Republicans.

The unions’ greatest enemy is freedom of choice. Experience shows that most people, given the option, will decline to join unions. Currently, this is being borne out in Wisconsin, where Governor Walker’s public sector union reforms–among other things, his legislation ended forced union membership in the public sector and required unions to be recertified annually–have allowed state and local employees to abandon unions in droves. One of the most stunning results is the extent to which public sector unions are being decertified. The most recent instance is the Kenosha school district, as Right Wisconsin reports:

Now that Wisconsin’s educators have been given the right to choose whether or not to belong to a labor union, the unions are struggling to attract enough members to stay afloat. Proving all along that the union leaders didn’t really represent their members, as much as sponge off of them.

Under a provision of Act 10, public employee unions are required to file for annual re-certification by August 30 if they wish to remain a recognized bargaining unit. Thursday Afternoon, Mark Belling broke the news that only 37 percent of the teachers in the Kenosha Unified School District voted to reauthorize the union in a recent vote. … Kenosha Unified is the third largest school district in the state.

Wisconsin’s public sector unions may soon be on life support:

In 2010 — the year that Walker was elected governor — the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees District Council 48 was thriving, having enrolled more than 9,000 workers and reporting income exceeding $7 million.

By the end of 2012, District Council 48 was down to just under 3,500 dues-paying members — a loss of nearly two-thirds of its represented workers. …

Other public employee unions are faring only marginally better. Most have lost between 30% and 60% of their members in the past two years.

With their ability to extract dues by compulsion taken away and their memberships plummeting, Wisconsin’s public sector unions will no longer be able to funnel millions of dollars into the Democratic Party’s coffers. Freedom is a wonderful thing.”

What we have here is a significant move that may serve to level the political landscape by removing the forced contribution to liberal candidates that compulsory union membership causes is reduced if not eliminated. Where is worked in Wisconsin, and Michigan, it is far less likely in my state of Minnesota where the unions are intertwined and with indistinguishable from the DFL party. 

 

MLB Playoff tiebreaker rules

Posted on by
Reply

The addition of the second wild card to the MLB Playoff System this year offers some interesting scenarios with regard to ties at the end of the regular season on September 29. The rules are here. These rules take into consideration the multiple scenarios that this very competitive year offers. 

The AL standings this morning has Texas and Tampa Bay as wild card leaders, but New York, Cleveland, Baltimore, and, now, Kansas City are within two games of the second wild card leader, Tampa Bay. As they say, “you’ve got to be kidding, right?” 

I wrote on September 10 here that the Indians may have a slight edge over the Yankees. I am not so sure of that now. Cleveland has a hard time in critical games, see here and the Yankees are winning the Fifth Games with regularity. See Fifth Game Theory here.
The Yankees won another Fifth Game last night with a two run ninth inning homerun. Baltimore made it a perfect Fifth Game by scoring one in the bottom of the ninth but lost 5-4.

I am convinced that there is no way to predict the outcome of the AL Wild Card race, but everyone pay attention, it will be wild.

Watch Walter Johnson’s Pitching Mechanics

Posted on by
Reply

On September 6, I posted an analysis of Babe Ruth’s swing. Click here to view the video. Here is an analysis of Walter Johnson’s pitching motion. There are similarities, as arm speed and bat speed are critical in both pitching and hitting. This is very instructive. Click here to view the video.

MLB Playoffs on September 10

Posted on by
Reply

The playoff drama of September is now focused on the American League where Cleveland and Baltimore are 1.5 games behind Tampa Bay and New York and Kansas CIty are 3 and 4 games back. This drama is created by the new format that adds a one game playoff between the two top non-division winners for what has been the lone wild card position. I wrote hereearlier that the schedule favors the Yankees, but they have faltered and have only gained a half game since August 23.  Kansas City finishes with seven games against Chicago and Seattle, but may be a game or two too far back to close the gap. Baltimore plays three against the Yankees this week and then Boston six times and the resurgent Blue Jays (8-2 over the last ten) six times with three against Tampa Bay. There is no easy road there.

The lesson here is that although it is possible to close a gap in a few weeks, the gap was caused by the way a team played for 135 games, and it is unlikely to change very much in the last 27. So, too, is the lead a team has earned. A team must collapse to lose a long developed lead. I still think the Yankees can make it to the wild card due to the schedule, but they must dominate the lesser teams and they lost 3 of 4 to the Red Sox where a split was necessary, but they swept three against the White Sox. Playing the top teams even and dominating those below is the secret here. The reason the schedule favors the Yankees is that when they finish with Baltimore and Boston next Sunday, they play last place teams twelve straight to end the season. If they are 4-2 or 3-3 with Baltimore and Boston, they can be 9-3, or 8-4 with the lesser teams. It will still be close.

Cleveland has a similar chore, and plays thirteen times against sub .500 teams to end the season, with five more with KC whom they beat yesterday, as well. Cleveland may, in fact, have a slight edge over the Yankees in this race to the wild card.

Of course, all is pure conjecture if Tampa Bay plays well as wild card pretenders trail this team in the standings. TB plays six of twenty against sub .500 teams. If they split with Boston, Baltimore and NYY, and dominate 6-0, 5-1 or 4-2 against Minnesota and Toronto, they will win. It will be interestng and that is why our interest remains.

The real race is to avoid ignominy by finishing last. In the NL Central, San DIego, San Francisco, and Colorado are one game apart for last. All of these teams have tough teams to play going forward with the final series of San Diego at San Fransico likely determining the loser.

“It ain’t over ’til its over,” said Yogi Berra, the sage of baseball lore. So true. It will come down to who throws and fields the best, as it has for the first 140 games of the season.

Perfect Fifth Game in New York

Posted on by
Reply

I posted an article on “Fifth Game Theory” here; that explains how pennants are won by those who win the Fifth Game. In short, most all teams win two of five games and lose two of five games, That leaves the fifth game to determine who wins the pennant. Tonight in New York, the Red Sox tied the game in the top of the ninth at 3-3 and in the bottom of the ninth Ichiro Suzuki singled, stole second, advanced to third on a fly ball and scored the winning run on a wild pitch. A perfect Fifth Game outcome. 

Remember that “Fall Baseball is War” here and that is how this season is finishing. 

Watch “Babe Ruth Swing Analysis (by Jaime Cevallos)” on YouTube

Posted on by
Reply

I just found this analysis of Babe Ruth’s swing. His swing is excellent, as you can imagine. It is controlled and powerful. His area of impact is as large as it gets. This is for the pure baseball fan who can view it HERE

Watch “China – Hell March – the largest army in the world –

Posted on by
Reply

Napoleon warned of the marching Chinese. This video show the precision of military marching by various elements of the Chinese armed forces.

If you like military stuff or just a good show, try this one out.