Blog post

October 7, 2011 [LINK / comment]

Tigers end Yankees' dream of #28

The Detroit Tigers took an early lead over the Yankees last night, with shocking back-to-back home runs by Don Kelly and Delmon Young in the first inning. (Young was let go by the Minnesota Twins earlier this year, a big mistake, quite obviously.) The Tigers held on to win the game by a score of 3-2, thereby winning the AL Divisional Series by the same "score," 3 games to 2. Somehow, the hot bats of the previous game (when the Yanks won 10-1) were nowhere to be seen. All the heroics by Granderson, et al. on Tuesday night were for nought, and hopes that the Bronx Bombers might win the World Series for the 28th time suddenly vanished.

And so, congratulations are due to the Tigers for going to the American League Championship Series for the first time since 2006. Their manager Jim Leyland expressed deep respect for the Yankees in his postgame press conference. He has every right to be proud of his team, which emerged as a very tough competitor during the second half of the 2011 season. They could go all the way...

National League resumes

Tonight the Milwaukee Brewers will try to stave off the challenge from the Arizona Diamondbacks, who came back from a 2-0 deficit to tie the NLDS. If the Brew Crew take due advantage of playing at home, it will be their first chance to win a league pennant since 1982 -- when they won the American League pennant! And in Philadelphia, the Phillies will likewise try to stave off the challenge from the St. Louis Cardinals. With the winningest record in all of baseball, they were heavily favored to go to the World Series for the third time in the last four years.

Veterans Stadium update

Since this might be the last game played in Philadelphia this year, I figured I ought to hurry up and make a minor update to the Veterans Stadium diagrams. The maximum external diameter is about 14 feet smaller than I previously estimated, or 766 feet rather than 780 feet. That's a difference of about 1.8 percent. A few more minor changes as well...

Also, I noticed some text on that page was woefully out of date: "in 1980 the Phillies won their first and only World Series title." In fact, they became world champions once again in 2008, of course. I'll have to go through some of the other stadium pages during the off-season to make sure there are no other instances of that sort.