Over a week ago now was supposed to be the best day of the year: Opening Day, the glorious beginning of the 2020 baseball season. But, like so many other things (everything), it has been postponed. Major League Baseball first delayed it by two weeks, then decided it should wait at least eight weeks, pushing the earliest potential Opening Day to May 21.
Continue reading “Some thoughts on baseball scheduling in 2020”
Happy Friday! (But really, what is time anymore?) I’ve been working on a much longer post lately, but I wanted to share this quickly.
Continue reading “Life is a simulation”
The 2019 World Series has now ended (congratulations, Nationals!), which means it’s time to update my post from last year about night baseball and the World Series.
We got lucky this year; even though the Series went a full seven games, only two were over four hours (game two was 4:01, and game three was 4:03). But, despite that, only one ended up being under three and a half hours (game five was 3:19).
Altogether, the average length for a game this year was 3 hours, 44 minutes, and 43 seconds, which makes it fourth Series in the past five years to have a game-length average between 3:40 and 3:50.
However, if we ignore the extra inning games, this is actually the second-longest World Series game average length since the World Series became a night-based event in 1985. The longest averaged slightly longer in 2007 at 3 hours, 45 minutes, and 45 seconds. That was the Series in which Boston swept Colorado, and no game was faster than three and a half hours. Interesting!
And here’s one more fun fact for you: this Washington-Houston World Series is the first (definitely in the night ball era; possibly ever) in which there were multiple nine-inning games that spanned more than four hours.
It was perfect timing; I moved to Syracuse, and so did the Mets.
They had been looking for a new location for the their top farm club for what seemed like ages, trying to get out of the far-off Las Vegas market. Then an opportunity opened up in Syracuse, and the Mets jumped at it.
Initially, I was suspicious. Continue reading “Some thoughts on the Syracuse Mets”
While talking with some friends earlier this week, I came to what I consider a stunning realization: as an adult, I’ve never watched more than a few innings of the World Series, outside of my Mets in 2015 and the Cubs’ historic run in 2016. This, as a huge baseball fan, was astounding for me to put together. Continue reading “A Long Game’s Night: A Short History of the World Series at Night”
Food and minor league baseball have always had a connection. After all, a good concession stand is a great way to draw people out to the ballpark when rosters keep changing and any players doing really well could be promoted at any time. So, in order to generate interest, create excitement, and instill a sense of local pride, many teams have started changing their names for a game or two to honor a local food. Continue reading “Farm to Fork: A Short History of Food-based Minor League Baseball Team Names”
