Archive for the ‘baseball’ Category

The Answer is: “Joe Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election As Sure as the Cincinnati Reds Won the World Series in 1919”

Posted: September 21, 2023 by datechguy in baseball, election 2020, election 2024, media
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Image via Baseball-Reverence.com

If you look at any list of world series winners you will note that the listed winner of the World Series in 1919 is always the same.

It is the Cincinnati Reds managed by Pat “Pop” Moran (from my city of Fitchburg Massachusetts after whom Moran square in the city is named and to whom a nice monument exists in west Fitchburg).

The 1919 Reds are a team that doesn’t get enough credit but let’s take a look at the actual real numbers involved via that invaluable site Baseball-Reference. com :

The 1919 Reds were a good team, they went 96-44 finishing 9 games ahead of John McGraw’s giants. By comparison their World Series Rivals finished 88- 52 3 1/2 games ahead of the Cleveland Indians.

They had a first rate pitching staff with a team ERA of 2.23 (almost a full run better than their world series opponents at 3.04) this is why they gave up a mere 2.9 runs per game nearly a full run less than their World Series Rivals

At the plate they were 2nd in the National league in batting, slugging and OPS and led the national league in OBP, although all of those numbers were below their AL rivals.

With the Glove the Reds had a fielding percentage of .974 to their AL rivals .969 a slight edge but combined with their pitching lead to their run differential of 1.3 not only led the majors but was a full 30% higher than their vaunted AL rivals.

Put simply the Reds were a team with strong pitching and defense and solid up and down the lineup facing a team in the world series with a solid ace and a stronger batting lineup if you look at the team stats for the season one could easily pick the Reds as the favorite to win. (One might point to their White Sox ace with a 29-7 with an 1.82 record in 35 starts as the deciding advantage, that is if you ignored the fact that Reds Starter Dutch Ruether went 19-6 with an identical 1.82 ERA in 29 starts).

It was to be the classic matchup of a team with an overwhelming offense vs a team with solid pitching up and down the rotation and better defense…

…or rather it would have been if a group of White Sox players had not decided to throw the series. This led to all kinds of scandal, trials, losing of evidence and the appointment of a tough baseball commissioner who ruled the game with an iron fist for the next 20 years.

However it didn’t change the result. In the record books the Cincinnati Reds were the winners of the 1919 world series.

Today everyone remembers the 1919 White Sox but few talk about the excellent Reds team that won the series and everyone assumes that the White Sox would have won if they didn’t throw the series because nobody has bothered to remember how good the Reds actually were but even though the 1919 Reds are only remembered these days as the team that the Black Sox threw the world series to, in 1919, 1924, 1950, 1972, 1999 and even today 104 years later if you look up the question: “Who won the 1919 Major League World Series” the correct answer remains: “The 1919 Cincinnati Reds 5 games to 3.”

And that brings us to the favorite question that the media likes to ask the GOP during the 2024 cycle.

Right now the country is in the worst shape than I have ever seen in my 60 years on this planet. The economy is in a shambles, our position in the world is a joke, our military is in a self destructive cycle, our social fabric is tearing apart our borders don’t exist, laws are not enforced, basic human rights that we had acknowledged as sacred for centuries are cast aside and we have a president who on a good day has the intellectual and physical prowess of John Gill.

The media/academic left is doing all it can to protect the banana republic that this administration has become and as part of this attempt keeps circling back to the 2020 election asking every GOP candidate running for any office from President to dog catcher: “Who won the 2020 presidential election?” figuring that an answer of “Trump” can be used to discredit the candidate with the general public while an answer of “Biden” will discredit them from the base.

There is no question in my mind that election 2020 was stolen and that inaction by the people charged with enforcing the norms to make sure the result is honest led to the final result but the bottom line is as simple as the answer to who won the 1919 world series.

So I suggest that if you are a GOP Candidate for President, or Senator or Congress, or Governor or Dog Catch and the question is asked:

“Who won the 2020 election?”

or

“Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election?”

the proper answer by any GOP candidate who thinks the election was stolen or might have been stolen is: “Joe Biden won the presidential election of 2020 election as sure as the Cincinnati Reds won the world Series in 1919.”

They won’t like the answer and if they challenge it the best response is: “Are you saying the Cincinnati Reds didn’t win the 1919 world series?” and press them on this.

Now I realize that this is to some degree an insult to the 1919 Reds who as I’ve noted above were a great team and were certainly capable of winning the 1919 World Series but as they are all long dead I think they will forgive us in this case.

If the White Sox move to Nashville, I might already be there to welcome them–with updates

Posted: August 27, 2023 by John Ruberry in baseball, crime, News/opinion
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By John Ruberry

For the second straight post at Da Tech Guy, I’m writing about crime in Chicago.

Outside of the Oakland Athletics, who are on pace to lose over 110 games and may be headed to Las Vegas next season, no MLB team has had a worse season than the Chicago White Sox. 

Predicted to finish around the .500 mark–which is where they finished up, exactly, in 2022–the South Siders never recovered from an April 10-game losing streak. 

The Sox on are pace to lose 100 game this year, which is how many they lost in 2018. That season, the White Sox unloaded several veteran players, kicking off a rebuild project with the goal of bringing the World Series championship back to the South Side for the first time since 2005. That rebuild brought the Sox to the playoffs in 2020 and 2021, but they won only two playoff games–losing five.

Another teardown occurred this July, the White Sox are in rebuild mode again.

August has been even worse for the Sox. Longtime team owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, known to be loyal to a fault with the front office staff of the White Sox and the Chicago Bulls–Reinsdorf owns that team too–uncharacteristically fired the top two men in the White Sox front office, Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams. A couple of days later, news broke that the White Sox, a charter member of the American League, might move out of its current stadium, the state-owned Guaranteed Rate Field, its home since 1991, to elsewhere in Chicago, or perhaps to the suburbs or even Nashville. The Sox have six years left on their lease at Guaranteed Rate Field. 

On Friday night, in a game where the Sox were punished 12-4 against those otherwise awful Athletics, a female fan in the left field bleachers was shot in the abdomen, another woman was grazed by a bullet. 

A move to the suburbs–perhaps joining the Chicago Bears in Arlington Heights–or to Tennessee, probably is more attractive now more than ever for Reinsdorf.

The woman who was shot Friday night is in fair condition, the fan who was grazed by the bullet declined medical care.

According to the quite reliable CWB Chicago, police officials are exploring the possibility that the bullet that wounded the woman may have been fired from a mile away. A gunshot detection system detected gunfire a mile southeast of Guaranteed Rate Field–in the Bronzeville neighborhood. The White Sox and the CPD, in several statements, have said that the shooting was not part of any altercation inside the ballpark.

If CWB Chicago is correct, the Sox and the city of Chicago still have a big problem. And there is an historic precedent that bodes poorly for professional baseball on Chicago’s South Side.

The rise in criminality since 2020 has been the dominant news story in Chicago, despite subtle attempts by the mainstream media to minimize it. Headlines routinely speak of people “injured” in shootings, rather than using the correct verb, which is “wounded.” The first Chicago Police Department statement on the Guaranteed Rate gunshots spoke of a “shooting incident,” rather than a “shooting.”

Another MLB “shooting incident,” actually a homicide, took place during batting practice before a July 4 doubleheader between the host New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Polo Grounds–in the Coogan’s Bluff area of upper Manhattan in 1950. The post World War II decline of New York was underway, although the city was years away from bottoming out. The way NYC’s fictional doppelganger, Gotham City, was portrayed in the Joker movie is a pretty accurate portrayal of what New York was destined to become.

A teenager, in a twisted way to celebrate the Fourth of July, fired a gun from the roof of an apartment building a half-mile away from the Polo Grounds. A fan sitting in the upper deck, Bernard “Barney” Doyle, was instantly killed by the stray bullet. A horrifying photograph of Doyle slumped over, dead of course, was on the front page of the New York Daily News the next day. That pic probably gave New Yorkers nightmares for years.

The Giants struggled at the gate in the 1950s. Despite winning the World Series in 1954, only 1.1 million fans crossed the Polo Grounds turnstiles that season. In their last two seasons at the Polo Grounds, only the pathetic Washington Senator’s had worse attendance. City Journal’s Clark Whelton, writing about the Doyle killing in 2018, claims the crime was “quickly forgotten.” I’m not so sure. But Whelton did add of the team’s owner, Horace Stoneham, that he was “said to have brooded for years about Doyle’s strange demise and the run-down buildings on Coogan’s Bluff.”

In 1958, the Giants and Dodgers abandoned New York for California. When they arrived, there were plenty of Giants and Dodgers fans who had moved out to the Golden State before them.

As our day jobs wind down, Mrs. Marathon Pundit and I are eyeing our exit from crime-ridden, crumbling, corrupt, and tax-greedy Illinois. Tennesse is at the top of our list for our next, and likely last, home. Both of us watched Joker for the first time this month. We compared Gotham City to today’s Chicago.

Why should we stay here?

Wouldn’t it be great if we, as Tennessee residents, were there to welcome the White Sox to Nashville?

UPDATE August 28, 2023, 7:15pm EDT:

Thank you to Dan Proft of WIND-AM Chicago. He, along with Amy Jacobson, co-host Chicago’s Morning Answer–a show I Iisten to, either over the air, or by way of the podcast, nearly every weekday–for mentioning this post on the air today. Look for Proft’s take around the 9 minute mark.

Also, here’s an update, and I have a strong feeling there will be more than one for this blog entry. Chicago’s interim police superintendant, Fred Waller, in a press conference this afternoon, discussed what his public affairs callously called a “a shooting incident” on Friday night. It was a shooting. “We’re dispelling a lot of things,” Waller said. As for where the bullets originated, he added that “coming from outside [Guaranteed Rate Field] is something we’ve almost completely dispelled.”

Still, fans who have bought tickets to a Sox game, or are considering doing so, probably have a lot on their minds now, to say the least.

UPDATE August 29, 2023 4:20pm EDT:

This story keeps getting stranger. There was online chatter that one of the women who was shot had sneaked the gun inside Guaranteed Rate Field beneath her belly rolls. I mean, what kind of people make up stuff like that?

Well, they may not have to do so.

Here’s what longtime Chicago sports reporter, Peggy Kusinski just tweeted:

“As I reported on @ESPN1000 just now… the shooting at Guaranteed Rate Field during a #WhiteSox game was indeed an accidental discharge by one of the women “grazed” by the bullet. She reportedly snuck the gun in past metal detectors hiding it in the folds of her belly fat.”

ESPN 1000 AM is the White Sox flagship radio station. It’s a credible source and Kusinski is a solid journalist.

If true, this news is a black mark for the White Sox fan base. What type of person brings a handgun to a baseball game? On the other hand, after the game, in a heavily hyped promotion, Vanilla Ice was to be the headliner of a “90s Night” concert. Were the women there for the Sox-Athletics game or for the postgame show? The White Sox cancelled the gig due to what they called “technical difficulties.” They lied. Shame on the White Sox. Police officers wanted to keep stadium lights on to look for evidence.

And how does a gun detection system miss a firearm hidden in belly rolls?

And what about the Chicago Police Department? Interim superintendent Waller said in a Monday press conference, “At one point in time it was requested as a precaution” to cancel the game. But the game played on. Who made that call to continue? The White Sox? The police? Mayor Brandon Johnson? The women who were shot are said to be teachers. Johnson is a product of the Chicago Teachers Union, for whom he was a longtime organizer, and Johnson is a former CPS teacher. Johnson’s political career is a creation of the CTU.

Without a doubt, I’ll have at least one more update.

Update August 29, 2023, 9:15pm EDT:

Second City Cop is hinting about the “graze wound” woman, that the injury may have been a power burn, is a Chicago Public Schools teacher.

UPDATE: A CPS teacher had the gun?

UPDATE: A CPS teacher with a suburban home address?

John Ruberry, a lifetime Chicago White Sox fan, blogs five miles north of Chicago at Marathon Pundit.

Five Things to Consider if you want to run a Dynasty League

Posted: August 18, 2023 by datechguy in baseball, dynasty baseball, fun, gaming, online gaming
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As anyone who follows me on twitter knows I’m very much into the Dynasty Baseball game, which came out of the old pursue the pennant boardgame from the pre-pc era. It’s my primary pastime these days beside watching regular baseball.

You can have a lot of fun playing in a league but if you want to run your own remember while it’s a lot of fun it’s also quite a bit of work. If you’ve thought of running your own league here are a few things you should consider:

A: Consider how much time you have:

The first thing you need to consider if you want to run a Dynasty league is how much free time you have to both run the league and play in it. Playing a game itself is not all time consuming, about 30-40 minutes per game is what’s required, but if you are scheduling games 2 days, 3 days or even four days a week can add up, particularly if you are not retired or have a family that likes to do things. Furthermore if you’re running a league you have to leave yourself enough time to put out the various fires that take place. So when deciding to run a league make sure you decide:

  1. How much time you have for administration
  2. How much time you have to actually play

What I’d do is figure how many free days I have to play and then subtract one or even two and then set whatever league you create to that length, that will assure that you have time to get it done.

B: Consider what type of league you want

There are three basic types of leagues in order of complexity

  1. Draft leagues (Hardest)
  2. Existing team leagues
  3. Season Replay leagues

All have advantages and disadvantages:

Draft leagues:

Draft leagues involve drafting players from a pool of players from the same season. Draft leagues have several advantages over existing team leagues:

  • A: You get to be GM as well as manager building your own team and are thus more invested in it
  • B You can continue the league year to year to keep up interest
  • C You can tweak the system to add realism, (trades, waiver wires etc)
  • D The Draft itself becomes an event

It’s my experience that some people enjoy the GM factor more than the games itself and that you really become invested in the teams and players. I’ve reached the point in my league that I started in 1969 that I even make baseball cards for the folks on my team to wit:

My Version of Jack Hiatt’s 1971 card

However draft leagues have their downsides:

  • A: Considerably more time to manage
  • B: Handling the rosters
  • C The draft itself may take days or weeks
  • D Keeping Competitive balance
  • E More things to go wrong

Running a draft league means, handling rosters of every single team, running a draft and trying to do it fairly and if you are having a league that goes from season to season keeping up the competitive balance from season to season. All of these require extra work and time depending on the size of your league: (My current draft leagues are 16 players for 1996 and 20 for 1971) and of course the more players the more work.

Bottom line: Draft leagues are in my opinion the most fun but if I were new I’d start with an existing league first to get my feet wet:

Existing team leagues

Having a league of existing teams takes a lot of work out of the system. The adantages are clear:

  1. There is almost no managing of rosters
  2. No trying to get people together for a draft
  3. No worrying about a change from one season to the next
  4. If more than one person wants the Yanks, or Cubs they can have them
  5. You can mix eras
  6. As soon as you have your schedule made you can start at once

Most existing team league involve GREAT teams which is the pool for tournaments. These tend to be very popular because the teams are memorable although you can spice things up as I did by creating leagues that aren’t just great teams two examples:

All pathetic team leagues: Teams in such a league all have to have a minimum loss level (90, 100 or something in between) This makes for a very odd game where you are constantly hoping for players to roll of their opponent’s cards. Also it gets interesting when one such team has a superstar. A 1967 Mets team with Tom Seaver for example. Can you picture the number Seaver produces when only facing slubs?

All Mediocre teams (the SD Jones league) I ran a league of teams that all had records from 80-82 to 82-80. This makes for an interesting league as there is enough of a mix of slubs and stars to really involve managing games.

Either way with these teams you don’t have the same roster / upkeep issues although with some of the older teams you are more likely to run into situations where a team has no pitcher eligible to use.

The disadvantages of set teams are:

  1. Teams are static no variation.
  2. No GM or Draft or Trade type fun
  3. Balance (think 27 yanks vs well almost anyone)
  4. Less incentives for teams losing to continue
  5. The mix of eras can cause anomalies

Bottom line set teams are a good option to start out but tend to be one or two shot deals. They work with teams that

Replay Leagues

With a replay league you play a team in an actual season in order.

The advantages:

  1. Very realistic. Actual team, actual schedule
  2. Schedule is pre-made so faster start
  3. The system handles trades and signings when it happens
  4. Excellent for solo league play

There are however some huge disadvantages

  1. Your season only moves only as fast as the slowest player
  2. Locked into the number of games in the season (162) games
  3. Unbalanced a bad team is always bad

A season replay league is a great choice if you want to get familiar with the game in a hurry. But you want to be sure that the players in it are committed because you can’t move to July 21 till all of July 22’s games are done. You might impose a 24-48 hour limit to get things in.

You CAN make a season replay league into a draft league but the amount of work is considerable and if you do be prepared for a season to take a full year

C: Consider how many series you want in a week:

Unless you are playing a season replay which is played based on when a day is finished. The Dynasty league system allows you to schedule up to four series a week at any time you wish to set.

As a series can be set for anywhere from 2-4 games that means as little as 2 games a week and as many as 12.

The fewer series played in a week of course the easier it is for people to play without having to resort to autoplay but that also means the slower the season goes. Also consider that a game takes 30-45 min in my experience so a 4 game series can take 3 hours while a two game series can be done in 90 minutes.

Also remember that the more series you have in a week the less likely you are to draw in players who are already in a league or two who won’t be able to squeeze in those extra games.

And the more series a week the less time to reschedule when real life insists on asserting itself over your scheduiled gaming time.

D: Consider how many games you want in a season:

Unless you are playing a season replay which fixes you at 162 games (or 154 if you play 1957 or 60 if you play the COVID season) you have the option to set any number of games.

The longer the season you play the more real it will be and the less impact injuries and suspension will have. Of course a short season the season will be and the more chance that a streak of good or bad luck will carry the day.

Also consider a short season means that you can have multiple seasons in a year while a long season will likely mean two at the most.

And if you have a draft league remember the draft takes up time between seasons it doesn’t finish in a day (unless you play face to face).

But either way remember you are the guy who is going to have to make this schedule and enter it manually into dynasty

E: Consider How many players you want to manage:

Note that I didn’t ask you how many teams you wanted in your league I asked how many players you want to manage.

A smaller league means fewer players and the fewer players you have the easier it is to have guys show up when games are scheduled and to schedule more games in a week etc.

It’s also a lot easier to come up with a schedule with fewer teams.

A small intimate league is fun but of course there is nothing like a large league with 16-20 players and a great variety of styles of play and management, plus you get less “Superteams because so many players are used. For example in my current 1971 league there are only 6 pitchers not on someone’s roster.

But keep this in mind any online league usually involves people you don’t know personally. The only thing everyone has in common is a love of baseball and a willingness to pay for the game.

There are invariably going to be the basic problems, people from different time zone having issues being free etc but you are also going to run into disputes and errors and mistakes and if it’s your league you have to make the calls. Managing people of different temperaments, different ages et/al can be difficult so do your best to impartially stick to the rules.

I STRONGLY suggest that you avoid non-league stuff in conversation or in the slack room and if you’re on social media and are angry about something in the news don’t vent in the league space (I made that mistake a few years ago in a league and it’s a mistake I regret.)

But more than that I suggest not having any kind of cash league with a prize. Once money is involved everything changes and any mistake becomes magnified

Remember in the end it’s all about having fun, make the choices to allow the maximum amount of fun for yourself and all the work will pay off.

Shades of the Yanks & Red Barber in Baltimore and Kevin Brown

Posted: August 8, 2023 by datechguy in baseball, media, Uncategorized
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I first heard of the Kevin Brown business on the drive home last night hearing he was suspended for something he said on his broadcast.

Things being what they are these days I had presumed he had said something either affirming conservative values or noting liberal insanity, things which are VERBOTEN by those who run sports media these days.

Then however they played the clip of what he said and all of us in the car were confused. Barber noted that if the O’s won that night it would be their first series victory in Tampa bay since 2017. My thought was, hey this is a positive thing highlighting the difference between the bad old days and what they have now.

Apparently any mention of the bad old days was too much for the o’s and denials by Baltimore not withstanding. broadcasters from all kinds of teams are having fits over it and are shocked that a team would so such a thing.

Apparently none of them remember what happened to Red Barber.

His entry at the encyclopedia Britannia reads thus:

Known for his integrity, Barber left the Dodgers after he was urged to make his commentary more supportive of the team, and he was fired by the Yankees after he reported that the last-place team had attracted a mere 413 fans for a September game.

A little more detail on the story is here:

That September 22 [1966], the day Michael Burke became president, 413 specked 65,010-seat Yankee Stadium. On WPIX television, Barber thought it “the perfect place for Burke to start, nowhere to go but up.” Red asked director Don Carney to pan the stands. No shot. He asked again. Zip. Later he said, “I found out [Yanks radio/TV head] Perry Smith was in the control room. He told them not to show the seats

Well he may not have gotten the shot but Barber spoke up anyways:

Barber recalled from using 1930s radio teletype, leaning into his mic: “I don’t know what the paid attendance is, but whatever it is, it is the smallest crowd in the history of Yankee Stadium, and this crowd is the story, not the game.” Red’s act defied. Next week, like Mel Allen in fall 1964, he misjudged. Asked to breakfast by Burke, Barber, like Allen then, anticipated a new pact—indeed, thought Burke was going to ask about player personnel! Instead, the new Yanks head said. “We have decided not to renew your contract.” Barber convened the press, said that “I have a record of thirty-seven years of fine work. I am not going to allow Mr. Burke, or anybody, to trifle with it,”

Now in fairness there is always the possibility that the O’s will be able to produce some other reason for this nonsense, but let’s not pretend that this is a shock, after all if the Yanks were willing to do this to a broadcast legend like Red Barber how less likely are the O’s going to feel guilty over doing something similar with Brown if the owner digs in his heels?

Actually now that I think about it I guess Brown was suspended for advancing a conservative value: The same conservative value that Barber was fired for, telling the truth.

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