Jerrod Ankenman

NBA playoffs

Sat, 17 May 2008 02:47:24 GMT

I have been watching the NBA playoffs and it is just impossible to believe that a major professional sports league, especially one that just uncovered a betting scandal, could tolerate the utter ineptness and inconsistency of its "best" officials. If aliens were trying to figure out the personal foul rules by watching tape, they would have to watch like thousands and thousands of games and still they would probably wind up with empirically derived rules that had all kinds of qualifications and randomness.

Just terrible.

Anagrams

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 17:05:40 GMT

Each year we do a "clues hunt" where there are little slips of paper hidden all around the house and each clue leads to the next clue, until finally the clues lead to the kids' Easter baskets.

This year I did an acrostic style clue, where they had to fill in the word/locations and certain letters were circled. Unscrambled, the letters formed the location of the Easter baskets. When the kids had found all the clues, they settled down to work on unscrambling the letters. They didn't get it right away so I fetched them some Scrabble tiles to work on it.

The answer was BLACK CAR. This happens to be unbeknownst to me, an anagram of CRACK LAB. So that was funny.

Firefly

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 06:42:58 GMT

While I was at the WSOP, I got a chance to watch bits and pieces of a couple episodes of Firefly with Terrence; I thought it seemed pretty good. I recently got ahold of the entire series, and have been watching it over the last couple weeks. I finished up today, along with the feature film Serenity.

The fact that this show was canceled after 14 episodes, when you compare it to the deluge of crap on TV, is just an embarrassment. It's like pulling the Matisses at MoMA down in order to exhibit Thomas Kinkades or something. Geez.

Why I am not an Obama supporter

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 21:40:00 GMT

I got a chance to talk to a few people about politics at ATLARGE this past weekend. I think I'm starting to crystallize some thoughts about what Obama is. Of course, these aren't 100% original thoughts; I read far too many political articles to have 100% original thoughts. But I think that the Obama-Reagan comparison - one he made himself before being bludgeoned about it - is a good one, if not completely accurate.

Reagan was a transformative politician; he persuaded the country in broad numbers that we needed a new direction, that we needed change. His rhetoric was soaring - not in quite the same way as Obama's, but in an effective way nonetheless. And he yanked the country to the right. Obama, I think, is made of some of the same stuff that Reagan did -- to win the hearts and minds of independents and moderate Republicans and pull the country back to the left in a way that will endure beyond his Presidency.

Bill Clinton, for all his virtues and faults, never did this. Clinton was a centrist; the most important achievements of his presidency (NAFTA, welfare reform, even dontaskdonttell) were across-the-aisle bipartisan compromises loathed by the left wing. Bill Clinton pulled his party to the middle. Because he did that, he won. But at the end of Clinton's presidency, the nation hadn't really moved left at all, and the stage was set for George W. Bush's campaign of "compassionate conservatism."

There have been charges leveled at Obama that he is "all talk." I dunno, I've read through quite a number of his policy papers. And I don't see a lack of substance there at all. Now it may be that the campaign has forced him to put substance in places it was lacking previously. If so, that's okay -- that's one of the reasons we have campaigns! I don't see the lack of substance charge sticking. What I see, however, is a set of positions that are basically unoriginal, standard progressive-liberal fare.

I'll just run through a few off his own website: (http://www.barackobama.com/issues/)

Civil Rights
--Pass the Fair Pay Act to combat pay discrimination among genders.
--Expand hate crimes legislation.

Economy
--Tax breaks for working families
--Fight for "fair" trade
--Amend NAFTA

Education
--Fund NLCB
--Create the American Opportunity tax credit

Fiscal
--Reverse Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy

There are plenty more, of course. Also, Obama supports a whole bunch of good ideas, as we would expect any politician to. But none of these positions is original; they are stock progressive-liberal positions.

Those of you who read my blog probably have some idea of my politics; hawkish on national defense, conservative on government spending and the size of government, moderate to liberal on social issues. You know, "free speech, free markets, free people." As such, I'm sorta happy that the nation moved right under Reagan. But I am unhappy with the corresponding increase in the power of the religious right throughout the period, the expansion of the power of the executive branch, especially under Clinton and Bush (mostly the latter), and the runaway expansion of entitlement spending.

Now there is one thing about Obama that differs from Reagan, that I think is significant about our polity. When Reagan ran for President, first in 1976 and again in 1980, he embraced the mantle of conservative. Instead of fearing that being labeled a conservative would hurt him, his campaign was more of the tone "I am a conservative. And here's why you should be too." Now for whatever reason - perhaps Rush Limbaugh has something to do with it - neither Clinton nor Obama seem interested in embracing being a "liberal." But that is precisely what they are, and it's sort of unseemly to me that they seem to be embarrassed of the term.

If I were a progressive-liberal - that is, if I favored the expansion of the government's role in things like healthcare and education, higher taxes on the rich and more subsidies for the lower classes, then I would support Obama, because I think that an Obama presidency has far more potential of advancing the progressive-liberal agenda than a Hillary Clinton presidency. There are other advantages to electing Obama as well. Electing a black man President would be great for our country, as a strong sign to our children that we want the old racist ways to fall away. An Obama presidency will be positive for our image abroad, both among our friends and our enemies, all actual handling of foreign affairs held equal.

But I'm not, and so I don't.

Also, this is funny even if it doesn't really tie with my views:
http://obamamessiah.blogspot.com/

lol

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:41:05 GMT

http://conjugalharmony.com/

also

http://militarylovelinks.com/

Note: on the second site's search page you can identify yourself as a man looking for a man or a woman looking for a woman. I guess it does say "international."

One for each of them...

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:40:27 GMT

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0208/A_broad_reading.html

Basically, Hillary Clinton said that insurance companies discriminating on the basis of preexisting medical conditions is "unconstitutional." In the same way, it seems that if lenders discriminate against borrowers based on their ability to pay back their loans, this too would be unconstitutional? Ah, well, it seems they didn't do this "unconstitutional" thing, so now we should dissolve freely entered into contracts.

http://volokh.com/posts/1203389334.shtml

Barack Obama (while in the Illinois State Senate and running for a seat in the US House) proposed a gun control law with the following provisions:

--Proposed to make it a felony to have your gun stolen from your residence and later used to harm another person if that gun was not "securely stored" in your house.
--Restricting gun purchases to one a month.
--Banning the sale of guns at gun shows except for "antiques."
--Banning police departments from reselling used guns, even if the funds from such sales are used to buy guns that are more modern, better, etc.
--Banned gun dealers from operating except from a storefront and banned stores from operating five miles from a park or school.

This last one is awesome. First of all, I can kind of understand the reasoning behind the "selling drugs near schools" thing, but guns? Do people really think that having a gun store three miles away from a park puts the kids at the park in danger? Of course it doesn't. However, if you look at these maps:

http://ryjones.wordpress.com/2008/02/23/obama-exclusion-zone-king-county/
http://ryjones.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/barak-obama-rights-exclusion-zones/

The intention to "circumvent the Second Amendment" seems clear to me.

http://campaignfreedom.org/blog/id.514/blog_detail.asp

John McCain's campaign might be in violation of campaign finance laws; at least the DNC has filed a complaint. Basically, it seems that last year when McCain's campaign was on the rocks, he applied for federal funds to run his campaign. Later he got a $3 million loan from somebody else, which he kinda-sorta-but-not-really secured with the federal money. Additionally, he kinda-sorta used his federal funding qualification to get on the Ohio ballot, which is apparently some big, hard, expensive process. Now he's winning and has plenty of money thanks to the New York Times, and wants to withdraw from the federal system, because remaining in it will limit him to spending $4 million between now and the party convention.

The point here is that in the general election, Obama is going to try and paint McCain as part of the corrupt establishment, despite his words. This kind of stuff just creates the appearance of lawyer-sanctioned-impropriety that even if McCain isn't in violation of the law, you just don't want floating around you.

Also, McCain has been pandering to social conservatives, which makes me mad.

Hrm.

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 03:02:53 GMT

Well, I'm happy Giuliani is going to lose.

But please, Rudy, hang in there for two more days. On February 1st you can jump ship.

A few political thoughts

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:51:16 GMT

The candidate selection processes are moving along nicely, and I thought I'd share a few thoughts.

The emergence of John McCain as the GOP frontrunner makes me happy, but also makes me a bit torn. I will probably still vote for Ron Paul in the primary for reasons previously discussed all over the place, especially at extempore. Basically, I think the gist is, wrong politician, right ideas.

Beyond Ron Paul, though, I'm far more comfortable with McCain as a candidate than with any of the other candidates on either side. I'm troubled by his position on campaign finance, and I'm not rejoicing in his candidacy. But to my mind, he's the least flawed of a deeply flawed group of candidates.

My mom asked me (she's a lifelong Democrat) who I would vote for if I were voting in the Democratic primary. I said without hesitation, "Hillary. She's the more divisive candidate. And if a Democrat is going to win, I want division. I want partisanship. I want bickering and infighting so that nothing gets done and the government can't spend any more money because they can't agree on how to spend it." I have this fear that Obama will get elected and he'll be able to achieve his vision of uniting Republicans and Democrats and ushering in an era of peaceful coexistence and cooperation between the big spenders from the right and the big spenders from the left. *shudder*

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E2D9173CF933A15750C0A962958260
"Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."

Rudy Giuliani is a statist thug. It shouldn't surprise you that someone who support Ron Paul anti-supports Rudy.

Michelle has the best line about Mitt Romney. Everyone I've told this to has burst out laughing, so I'll just put it out there: "People keep speculating about what Romney will do when he's President. But he won't be running for anything then, so how will he decide?"

As for Kevin Spacey, I think he's done now that he lost SC by 3%. I might buy a lot of him at like 2% on Intrade, as an emotional hedge. If he does win the nomination, at least I'll have the cash. And wouldn't it be hilarious if John Edwards hung in the race and picked up enough 15%s to play kingmaker at the DNC? Actually, no, it would mean that Obama would be nominated.

So my list at the moment is:
Ron Paul
John McCain
Hillary Clinton
Barack Obama/Mitt Romney
Rudy Giuliani
Mike Huckabee

Um, yeah, "frontrunner"

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 03:55:08 GMT

From OpinionJournal's Best of the Web:

(there's no permalink right now that I can see, so http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/ will work for now. I'll edit it later):

Mitt Romney, who beat McCain in Michigan, won only the zinc in South Carolina, finishing behind Fred Thompson as well as McCain and Huckabee. But Romney did get a gold in the Nevada caucuses. Rudy Giuliani finished sixth in both South Carolina and Nevada, with 2% and 4% of the vote, respectively. If Giuliani doesn't do better than this in Florida, it will be enough to call into question his status as the GOP front-runner.

Um, anyone who thinks Giuliani is still the frontrunner is not qualified to handicap elections. Sheesh. Giuliani might be angling to set the record for "fastest exit by a previous frontrunner from a campaign without trying to win any votes."

Always worth listening to

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:44:25 GMT

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm

Typical Jerrod-politics

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 05:53:09 GMT

Everyone else I've seen has a range from like 15% to 80%. Instead, I apparently am beyond categories:

65% Ron Paul
59% Rudy Giuliani
58% Bill Richardson
57% John McCain
56% Mike Huckabee
55% Chris Dodd
55% Mike Gravel
50% Mitt Romney
49% Joe Biden
49% Dennis Kucinich
47% Tom Tancredo
46% Hillary Clinton
46% Barack Obama
45% Fred Thompson
44% John Edwards

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

The health care question on this quiz has really poor alternatives imo, so I just marked it as "no significant changes" and Don't care, even though that's not true at all.

By the way, this campaign has made me happy that Chris Dodd is my senator. I didn't know that I was happy about that before. This is especially pleasing in light of the four senators I've had most recently before moving to Connecticut: Kennedy, Kerry, Feinstein, and Boxer. :P

Wrong, but in a good way.

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 21:44:11 GMT

Today I took the GRE. I've been preparing for it halfheartedly over the last couple weeks, which means I bought a book and have been taking some practice tests. In the practice tests I have consistently scored 780-800 on math and 680-720 on verbal.

Today was the big day, so I drove down to Glastonbury to the testing center. These tests are computer-adaptive tests, which means they make the questions harder as you do better, etc. Also, this means you work at your own pace, on a computer, and no one else is there to bother you, which is a big improvement over the SAT imo.

When I arrived at the testing site, I took my blood sugar, which was inexplicably around 200. I didn't *feel* stressed out, but sometimes stress causes my sugar to rise. Anyway, this is bad, because I know from past experience that having high blood sugar causes my mind to work worse. Anyway, I took a shot and shrugged my shoulders and went in.

The first half of the test are essays. I felt "ok" about my essays; I actually sorta ran out of time on the first one, which usually means I wrote too much. The second one was better, I thought, but neither were my best work.

After a ten-minute break, I started the multiple choice sections. The verbal consists of four types of questions: antonyms, analogies, sentence completions, and reading comprehension.

In my practice exams, sentence completions were a breeze, analogies were easy as well unless (as occasionally happened) I didn't know the word at all. The other two categories would give me trouble, however. Analogies especially are maddening because the relationships between the words aren't always clear and I often feel like two or more answers are right.

In any event, the first verbal section felt like a disaster. There were TWO antonyms (out of 8) that I didn't know at all, the analogies were meh, the reading comprehension wasn't very difficult, but even the sentence completions felt tricky, and there were a couple sentence completions where I felt like two answers could be right.

Next was the math section, which was middling easy. There were a couple of problems that I wasn't sure how to solve analytically, but I wound up just plugging in numbers and figuring it out. After that was another verbal section. One of the verbal sections was therefore an experimental section (where they give new questions to establish a baseline for future testtakers). This verbal section wasn't quite as much of a disaster, but I didn't think it had gone well, either.

At the end of the test, they give you the option of cancelling your scores. I wasn't really feeling that good about the exam; the essays were bleh, the verbals were both yucky, and I just felt ok about the math. Then I thought to myself, "Self! If you cancel your scores you have to take the test again!" Finally I just decided to report the scores and see what happened. I mean, if it was really bad I could just take it again.

I got 800 on math and 770 on verbal. Nice read. (obviously the essays aren't graded in real time).

Iowa

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 03:32:13 GMT

So Kevin Spacey won the Iowa Caucuses. Nice job, Kevin.

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 00:51:13 GMT

From a WSJ editorial today:

As for Mr. Bush, one lesson is that his veto strategy has been a political and policy success. Though widely called a lame duck, he continues to dominate the debate on security and defense. He is also on the cusp of controlling spending growth far better than he ever did when Republicans controlled Congress.

Yay for divided government! Now, if I could only think of some way to continue the division after 2008. Alas.

smoking

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 20:47:03 GMT

(inspired by comments in a blog post at the Volokh Conspiracy.

One widely accepted idea in economics is that a free market is extremely efficient at matching supply and demand, using the price mechanism. As far as I know, this is even accepted by anti-free market economists, who simply believe that other negative factors surrounding a broadly-based free market economy outweigh this efficiency. I could be wrong about this, however -- if you have examples, I'm interested to hear.

Libertarian-minded people (I am one) extend this idea to other areas of economic activity as well. We talk about marketplaces of ideas, markets for health care, markets for mostly anything that can be provided by private producers and not the government. Now some of us argue this position from principle -- that is, that the role of government ought to simply be limited -- and some from our belief that this will result in better outcomes, due to the increased efficiency of the market at satisfying consumer demands.

In most cases, the free market really does do a better job of satisfying consumer demand. But there are some exceptions. For example, consider the bans on smoking in bars, restaurants, etc. that began (I think) in California in the midtolate 1990s. These were government action promulgated as working condition relief to workers (such as waitresses) in these environments. Before these government-issued bans on smoking, you would be hard pressed to find a bar anywhere that did not allow smoking. At the time, I was selfishly happy (as a non-smoker), but felt on principle that this intervention was likely overstepping the limits of government.

Ten years later, bans of this type have been enacted around the country. Smokers have adapted, and my anecdotal evidence leads me to believe that both smokers and non-smokers alike are broadly happy with the resultant atmospheres in bars, restaurants, etc, and if all non-smoking bans were dissolved today, a majority but not all of these establishments would remain non-smoking, while the remainder would return to allowing smoking.

The question I pose is: if free markets are so responsive to consumer needs, why was there no apparent move by bar/restaurant owners to move toward entirely non-smoking venues if it seems so clear in retrospect that there was a strong desire on the part of a majority of people to have non-smoking establishments?

3.3 billion!

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 23:17:42 GMT

Slashdot reports on a Reuters story that the number of mobile phone accounts worldwide has reached 50% of the number of people worldwide. I would not have guessed this many.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/29/213245

When it Raines, it pours...

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 19:10:56 GMT

There's been a flurry of activity in the analyst community to work on raising awareness of Tim Raines, who seems poised to join the Blyleven/Santo group of obviously deserving players who aren't elected to the Hall of Fame when he becomes eligible this year:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=684
http://raines30.com/c21.shtml

Raines' career divides neatly into two parts, a seven-year peak (1983-1989), and a slow decline phase (1990-2002). Unfortunately for him, he played a) in a mild pitcher's park b) in Montreal and c) in a mild pitcher's era (the 1980s). As a result, he was underrated at the time and remains underrated today when comparing his offensive totals to those put up in the high-offense 1990s and 2000s.

At his peak, he was a 9-10 win per year player and arguably the best player in the National League from 1985-1987. For the seven years 1983-1989, he finished in the top five in the NL in on-base percentage six times. After his peak, he had one more top-notch year (1992), and settled into a slow decline worth about 3-4 wins a year. He wound up playing a total of 23 seasons, some in part-time roles.

Anyway, if any Hall of Fame voters read this blog, leaving Raines off your ballot is a mistake!

Democrats: building tomorrow's workforce today.

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 05:06:39 GMT

http://www.news.com/Democrats-Colleges-must-police-copyright%2C-or-else/2100-1028_3-6217943.html?tag=nefd.lede

(from Slashdot)

hail to the juice, baby.

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 03:44:30 GMT

Unranked Illinois leads #1 Ohio State 28-21 with 7:30 left. They have been running the ball effectively all day. They have 4th and inches at their own thirty.

Ron Zook (the Illinois coach) sends out the punt team. As they are getting ready for the punt, Ohio State decides they have the wrong personnel out there and calls a timeout. During the timeout, Juice Williams, the Illinois quarterback, convinces Zook that they should go for it. He keeps the ball on a sneak, they make the first down, and Illinois holds the ball for the rest of the game (including three 3rd down runs for first downs by Williams) to upset OSU.

Sending out the punt team here is so wrong. When they did it I said to Michelle, "if they punt I'm going to root for Ohio State the rest of the way because any team that would punt here doesn't DESERVE to win!" Luckily, Juice fixed it.

Gone Baby Gone

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 03:18:26 GMT

We went to see this movie tonight, and it was directed by Ben Affleck. It was great. Yes, I did in fact separate those two ideas into two separate sentences, because "directed by Ben Affleck" and "great" don't seem to be appropriate sentence cohabitants. Nevertheless, it really was a fairly well-done, thought-provoking movie.

Without spoiling it too badly, here are some of the things I liked about it:

1) There were twists and the action was engrossing, but the twists weren't the point.
2) Michelle reports that the setting (poor Boston suburbs and surrounding areas) and the way that the regular people acted (ie in Dorchester) was spot-on.
3) It examined a difficult moral issue pretty thoroughly, but without layering on "here's what I, the director, think." In a sense the movie felt to me a little like Million Dollar Baby, but at the end of that movie, I don't think anyone who wasn't a die-hard euthanasia opponent walked away with ambiguity about the topic; there was clearly an effort to make us sympathize with Eastwood's decision. Here I walked away from the movie unsure about the morality of the situation, and that felt good, like the way you feel after reading a classic novel or something.

Highly recommended.

Followup re: sportsbook.com

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 22:34:03 GMT

Response I received:

Dear Jerrod,

Thank you for contacting us.

It is not our policy to send out your password randomly. However, we do send your username out to you for reference if needed. Your username and password would never be sent together for security reasons.
I can assure you that our customers' security is treated as paramount.

We are always here to help you. Please feel free to reply to this email if you have any additional questions in relation to this or any other matter.

Kind regards,

Laura White

Unfortunately, I have in my possession a piece of paper that Sportsbook.com sent me through the USPS that has my username and password right next to each other in plaintext.

email i sent just now

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 04:30:11 GMT

..to sportsbook.com.

Hi, just wanted to let you know that I have permanently unsubscribed from all your lists because you sent me a promo offer in snail mail with my account password in plaintext. This password was leftover from my Paraise Poker account.

This reflects an attitude toward account security that simply isn't appropriate for the amounts of money that I have bet on sports in the past (up to five figures).

Hopefully you will reconsider this very poor policy to protect your other customers from fraud in the future.

Jerrod Ankenman

now who's living in the past?

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 04:23:29 GMT

During a commercial in Game 3 of the World Series, I was surfing the channel guide and saw that YES was playing the 1978 one-game playoff for the AL East.

That is funny to me.

Live World Series Blog

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:37:09 GMT

Well, I'm going to watch the game tonight, so I figure I'll run a live blog. Won't that be fun?

8:35 pm
Flip on the TV, and the first thing I hear is Tim McCarver talking about "an American League lineup with five guys over 90 RBIs." Great, that's a wonderful metric on how good a team is; how many guys have 90 RBIs. Oh well, maybe Tim will be better this year.

First pitch in just a second.

8:37 pm
I've heard around the web that the radar guns are juiced, and don't really know how to evaluate that claim. Does Beckett really throw 95-97 consistently? Seems pretty good if so.

Beckett strikes out Tavares on a pitch a couple inches off the plate. What's the point of having that FoxTrack super-duper grid thing, if they're going to replay the pitch, show it outside, and McCarver's going to go "right on the corner?" Sheesh. Matsui next.

8:40 pm
They show a graphic about how much Matsui has improved since moving to Colorado:
Matsui with the Mets: .256, with the Rockies: .301.
A quickie search yields parkfactors of about -.020 for averages at Shea and +.021 for Colorado. So I guess he improved a little, heh.

8:48 pm
Beckett struck out the side. After Pedroia homers and Youkilis doubles, maybe Francis will give up the cycle to start the game? Nah, neither Ortiz or Ramirez will triple. :)

8:50 pm
Ortiz shows bunt and then like actually bunts the ball foul. Stop that!

8:54 pm
Lowell walks^H^H^H^H^H flies out as the home plate ump gives Francis a charity strike on 3-0.

8:57 pm
McCarver hasn't irritated me for at least four minutes. Yay! And Varitek singles...

9:02 pm
Pretty decent play by Garrett Atkins at third to end the carnage in the first. Atkins is pretty much a bat out there for the Rockies, who are otherwise a very good defensive team, so it's bonus for them to get a nice play out of him there. Still, three runs might just be enough for Beckett.

9:07 pm
KKKK

9:10 pm
KKKKK

9:12 pm
Nice, Buck and McCarver talking about Troy Tulowitzki and how even though he's outpaced offensively by Ryan Braun, he still deserves ROY because of his defensive value. They did, of course, dwell on how his 99 RBI were 2nd-most by a rookie shortstop all-time (whocares?), but at least they have the main idea right -- the good-glove shortstop with 108 OPS+ (in 155 games) is better than the stone-handed third baseman with OPS+ of 153 (in 113 games).

9:15 pm
The Dane Cook commercials are lame.

9:18 pm
Sexiest Fan Alive? WTF is that?

9:19 pm
Youkilis hit .500/.576/.929 in 33 PA in the LCS and didn't win the MVP. Best performance by a player on the winning team to not win the series MVP ever? A double and a walk so far in the World Series, too. Nice player. Doesn't look that good in jeans, though.

9:24 pm
Poor defense all around by the Rockies on the Ortiz double; Holliday should have taken a better route so that he was the one throwing. How many RBIs did Mike Lowell have in the regular season? 120? Was that a record for Red Sox third basemen? Really? (Those of you who watched the LCS and LDS know that this came up every time Lowell batted). Four numbers for you: .380, .390, .445, .388. (obp for pedroia, youkilis, ortiz, ramirez)

9:33 pm
Manny catches one ugly. But hey, that's Manny being Manny! :P

9:47 pm
It's just easy to score runs with a team OBP of .362. Sheesh

9:49 pm
heh. "He's not a very good cribbage player, but he's a pretty good baseball player." --francona on pedroia

9:50 pm
I like the in-game interviews they do with the managers these days; they seem to actually ask reasonable questions. But could we please cut back to the game when pitches are thrown or something so that we don't miss Helton's double?

9:52 pm
Atkins strikes out^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H takes ball two.

Buck: "Helton was just as good a hitter on the road..."

Helton's lifetime line at home: .367/.465/.663 on the road: .295/.394/.502. Virtually identical!

KKKKKK.
KKKKKKK.

10:04 pm
Ortiz singles with two outs, and the Red Sox have another baserunner, like they always seem to.

3-2, 2 out. I totally want to see Manny foul off about twenty pitches here, so Ortiz has to keep running and running...:P

10;10 pm
Varitek is a switch-hitter, but has a platoon split like a right-handed batter, about 25 points of SLG. Whoops, there are two more for the numerator. Kind of a slow call by the down-the-line umpire. The announcers said it was interfered with by a fan, but on the replay it was just a case of "they allow fans, so sometimes the ball comes up and smacks them."

All this with two outs.

10:19 pm

KKKKKKKK.

10:22 pm

Beckett reduces his K/BB ratio for the postseason by 17 with a walk.

10:34 pm

Sadly, I don't know the balk rule very well, so I can't really make any interesting comment on whether that was or wasn't. Oh well.

10:36 pm
Youkilis doubles. Still not a looker in jeans.

10:38 pm
note to Rockies: STOP GIVING UP SO MANY TWO OUT RALLIES IF YOU WANT TO WIN WORLD SERIES GAMES. THANK YOU.

10:47 pm
"Millar was as valuable to that 2004 team with his spirit and energy as with his bat." Um, probably not.

Poor Tulowitzki. Everything is just out of his reach. He's well regarded by observers and statistically as a defensive shortstop, but it just feels like one of those "pastadivingjeter" games for him today.

The Red Sox have batted from Youkilis to Drew (2-7) with two out.

10:56 pm
Speier walks in his second run in a row, and this game continues to be totally over. Probably I won't have much to say, because I'll be playing KoL . Looking back over what I wrote, this is harder than I thought! :)

10:59 pm
Oh heh, I just realized that all those runs get charged to Morales, not Speier. So if the next guy gets the first hitter, Speier's line will be: 0 0 0 0 3 0. :)

...and the award goes to...

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 03:47:24 GMT

Most gratuitous mentions of a player not on the field, not on either team, and not related to anything of interest during a pro sports broadcast goes to the Monday Night Football announcers, who mentioned Tom Brady just about every second sentence during the Colts' win over the Jaguars, even going so far as to claim that the reason that Peyton Manning kept the ball on a sneak in the second quarter was because it was a nationally televised game and blah blah Tom Brady something something, I never could figure out what the hell they were talking about.