Today’s Reflections

YAY! Cleveland made the ALCS and won Game 1! Go Cleveland!

(This is SO HARD to say, but) YAY! The Brewers won! They beat the Dodgers twice, the Evil Empire, Part II!

GO Brewers! (ouch)

There’s an article below that describes a major change to baseball that is being tested in the AFL — Forcing outfielders to lineup in a particular spot prior to each pitch. This is to promote more extra-base hits. AWESOME!

Why not just eliminate singles — make every hit to the outfield an automatic double! Just think, PCA can set the MLB doubles and triples records by August!

This is stupid. Way back when, when infielders extremely overloaded the hitter’s power side — that was hurting baseball as nearly every ball hit in that direction was an automatic out. It was damaging the game.

Much differently, outfielders cover a much larger area and make adjustments by more that whether the hitters are dominant to one field. For each individual hitter, scouting and spray charts determine if the outfielder needs to move more to the power side, or less. If they need to move deeper, or shallower. It is detailed, studied analysis, not a “Here’s a LH batter — everybody move to the second base side.”

Instead, MLB wants to put a ball and chain on outfielders. Which is surprising, because while I disagree, a large number of people think that snaring a home run over an eight-foot fence is the most exciting play in baseball. If it was a 10-foot fence, sure, that would be really impressive. (I almost went into a diatribe of what I think are more exciting plays, but I digress).

Why not control outfielders like you do video games? Have a coach with a joystick control how effective an outfielder’s play is. (I better be careful — someone may be watching).

Bottom line — the extreme infield shift hurt baseball. Constricting outfielders to certain spots of the field is fixing something that doesn’t need fixing. We have way too many ERAs that are at or above 5.00 already. Is this a “fix” to dominant pitchers like the Miz — while he’s striking out 14 a game, allow almost every ball hit to the outfield will fall for a hit. That would improve baseball!

Bullhockeypucks! Looks like I’ll head out to a AFL game soon (I was going to, anyway). Read the story — more interesting points than I have room to write about. 🙂

I appreciate your reading.

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The Change MLB is Considering That Would Damage Baseball:

Commending a Take, and then a reconsideration on that take:

Free Agents/Trades/Predictions:

Assorted Stories:

Food For Thought:

Granville Henry “Stick” McGhee (March 23, 1918 – August 15, 1961) was an American jump blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, best known for his blues song “Drinkin’ Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee“. McGhee grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee. He received his nickname when he was a child. He used a stick to push a wagon carrying his older brother Brownie McGhee, who had contracted polio. Granville began playing the guitar when he was thirteen years old. After his freshman year he dropped out of high school and worked with his father at the Eastman Kodak subsidiary. In 1940, Granville quit his job and moved to Portsmouth, Virginia, and then to New York City. He entered the military in 1942, and when he was discharged in 1946, he settled in New York.

In the military, McGhee often played his guitar. One of the songs he performed was “Drinkin’ Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee”, one of the earliest prototypical rock-and-roll songs. Cover versions were recorded by Wynonie Harris, Lionel Hampton, Big John Greer, Johnny Burnette, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Mike Bloomfield‘s Electric Flag. McGhee continued to make records for Atlantic and created popular songs, but his music career overall was not successful. He recorded a number of rock-and-roll songs, such a “Whiskey, Women and Loaded Dice”, “Head Happy with Wine”, and “Get Your Mind Out of the Gutter”. However, he was unable to make money from his records. He retired from the music industry in 1960.[5] He became ill shortly afterward and died in August 1961 of lung cancer.

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