October 24, 2005 [LINK]
NOTE: This post was inadvertently omitted until November 1. My apologies.
David Pinto's thoughts on Game 2 last night reminds us why baseball is the greatest sport of all, providing "equal opportunity" for becoming a hero:
Jose Vizcaino proved once again that if you put the ball in play, good things happen (although I still have not seen a report of Garner's reasoning in that situation). His hit along with Podsednik's home run demonstrate something else I love about baseball: Anyone can be the hero. In football and basketball, there are designated heroes. Joe Montana throws to Jerry Rice. Bird or Johnson or Jordan gets the last shot. But in baseball, Podsednik and Vizcaino get the chance to be the hero and sometimes succeed.
The indefatigable Bruce Orser is hunting for ballpark information sources in cyberspace once again, and sends me a list of links to satellite maps of ballpark neighborhoods (courtesy of maps.google.com) can be found at at mlbroadtrip.com, plus an intriguing set of ancient ballpark images with crude diagrams at seasonspastbaseball.com. Bruce also raises a conjecture
that left handed pitchers, or at least some of them, may be able to put more movement on their pitches than right-handers. Did you ever make an observation like that?
Anybody?