Today, Banished to the Pen hosted a remembrance of the 1988 baseball season, to which I contributed a review of the movie Bull Durham, which was released that year. The ’88 season was a big one for baseball: lights at Wrigley Field, Kirk Gibson’s famous World Series home run, and Jose Canseco becoming the first player ever to hit forty homers and steal forty bases in the same season.
The full post is available here.
iPads in baseball dugouts. Drones at football games. Gambling on gambling. All that and more in my latest post for TechGraphs, a roundup of the week’s top sports technology stories.
The full post is available here.
The most famous Yankee catcher, a veteran of twenty-one World Series and one World War, died yesterday at the age of ninety. It’s a testament to the power of Yogi Berra’s personality, which remains his strongest legacy, that it casts a shadow longer than the remarkable numbers that attempt to illustrate his baseball achievements. What follows is a sampling of those numbers:
If you’re not going to know nothing about baseball, these are some pretty good things to know. Now get on to Yogi’s funeral, or else he won’t come to yours.
Depending on who you are, and, really, who your grandfather is or was, the top of this week’s college football AP poll could look reasonably unsurprising to him: Continue reading
I have to agree, because the man said what I’ve been saying for a week now: Michigan State looks like the best team in the country at this moment. Both teams in the Oregon-MSU game looked better than anything the SEC had to offer through the first two weeks of the season.
Week three saw the Spartans struggle against Air Force’s triple-option offense, but, one has reason to expect, that data point will have little meaning going forward. Meanwhile, Georgia dominated South Carolina in what easily was the Dawgs’ best game of the year, and Ole Miss made it two straight over Alabama.
The Black Bears’Rebels’ win certainly was exciting, and it’s led some to argue that they deserve the top AP spot. Their sixty-four points per game and undefeated record that includes a win in Tuscaloosa merit a top-tier ranking, but home wins over UT-Martin and Fresno State aren’t terribly revealing.
Terribly revealing? Missouri’s ugly win over UCONN is a strong indication that the two-time SEC East champions are unlikely to defend their consecutive division titles in Atlanta this December. Ohio State had a similarly weak victory over Northern Illinois, but those Huskies are better than the ones from New England, and the Buckeyes’ recent track record suggests they’ll be fine going forward.
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One of the cited reasons for the unprecedented decision to relocate the Atlanta Braves from their downtown home at Turner Field to a new suburban stadium location in Cobb County was that the downtown location offered too little parking for fans. After the new stadium deal was approved, however, it was revealed that the new location would offer even less parking than currently available at Turner Field. That, together with Cobb County’s continued resistance to public transportation service, undoubtedly would render the new stadium less accessible than Turner Field.
Now comes news that, when it opens in 2017, SunTrust Park will be even less accessible to fans than previously thought. That’s because funding sources and political support for a bridge connecting the stadium to fan parking has dried up, if they ever existed.
The bridge is an unquestionable necessity, because the new stadium site sits at the intersection of I-75 and I-285, and the latter, obviously an extremely busy interstate highway, separates SunTrust Park from this fan parking. Here’s an approximate view from a June 2015 Google Maps capture:
While the new stadium will open in April 2017, according to the latest report, the earliest the bridge would be ready is September 2017. Even that late date may be optimistic, though, as it is completely unclear from available information that any reliable sources of funding– or even a consistent cost estimate– exist. Until the bridge is complete, fans will be left to ford the above-depicted urban river by their wits alone. Maybe a bicycle would help?
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Previously
Georgia Supreme Court Upholds Cobb’s Braves Stadium Bond Deal
Braves Break Ground on Baseball Boondoggle
The yard sale at Upton Abbey continues
From Barves to Burbs: What’s happening to baseball in Atlanta?
Hey, football is a thing that’s happening, and my latest post for TechGraphs reflects that, highlighting news stories about the NFL, tennis, baseball, and even a hint of hockey.
The full post is available here.
After consecutive nine-win seasons capped by victories in the Music City and Compass Bowls, James Franklin parlayed his success at Vanderbilt into the Penn State job he always wanted, turning the reins in Nashville over to Derek Mason, who promptly flopped his way to a three-win season that included no victories against conference opponents. Despite a relatively easy 2015 schedule, things weren’t looking too good for Mason’s second season either.
All that changed on Tuesday, however, when the Nashville Post published a report on the Commodore coach that remains equal parts startling and encouraging:
“I had a sheet that I had been looking for for the last 18 months,” Mason said. “Lo and behold, about two weeks ago, it popped up. I found it in my library of football books.”
What he found was a detailed list of game situations and what he should do in each of them. According to his timeline, he had it when he accepted the job at Vanderbilt last January (or shortly thereafter). He was without it, though, when the Commodores went 3-9 and failed to win an SEC game for the first time in five years.
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He noted that the ‘gameday checklist’ he has produced for this season includes 65 items “and it covers everything I need to know.”
ALDLAND 