Pluto Demoted

Pluto has been demoted, leaving only eight planets in our solar system. We've had other "planets" demoted before, most notably Ceres, which joins Pluto in the new dwarf categorization (along with other objects).

Iain Murray on the proper conservative take:

There are no longer nine planets. How should conservatives react? Personally, I prefer
the reversion to the eight traditional, and therefore right, planets. I shall not, however, stoop to the typical arguments of the left and suggest that anyone who supports Pluto is a paid shill for the Disney Corporation…

Even mlb.com reported on the matter: Pluto's lack of star power results in demotion.

In other news, an important service announcement for women.

Bob Feller

I just noticed that today marks the 70th anniversary of Bob Feller's first major-league start. He pitched a complete game, allowing one run, and striking out 15 (back when the AL record was 16 and the major-league record was 17 (held by Dizzy Dean)). Certainly an impressive start. Even more impressive, he was only 17 years old. He was signed by the Indians during his junior year of high school for $1 and a team-autographed baseball (doesn't quite compare to today's signing bonuses). Getting him to the big-leagues was a bit more expensive for the Indians, though, because they violated some rules in bringing him up, assigning him to minor-league teams he never played for, and were fined $7500. At the end of his rookie season, he went back to high school for his senior year. It was an amazing start to an amazing career. He was 266-162 with 2581 strikeouts, missing over 3 1/2 years in the prime of his career due to World War II (he could have had about 350 wins otherwise).

Baseball Errors

Why don't they call errors anymore in baseball? I mean, they do it on all the obvious ones, but if there's even the slightest doubt, they won't rule it an error. Too many hurt feelings or some such. I was at the Astros-Diamondbacks game on August 6, and there were about three plays that should have been ruled errors, but were not. Lots of sloppy play, especially on the part of the Diamondbacks. I'm watching the Diamondbacks at the Giants right now, and there were a couple of bad plays on defense that weren't ruled errors. Fielding percentages have gone up and errors have gone down over the last few years -- all the "best defensive teams" in history (in quotes because it's based on fewest errors and highest fielding percentage) have been in the last ten years. Watching them play, it's obvious that the fielding has not gotten any better.

The Pepsi marching band commercial is horrible.

Jason Schmidt pitched rather horribly today (especially by his standards), but was pretty impressive at the plate. He hit a couple of bullets to left field that were just short of homeruns -- one hitting about a foot below the top of the wall and another hitting the ground right before the wall. They ended up being a double and a single, respectively, but they were really close. The Giants would be sitting in a much better situation if they could have gotten those and/or some better clutch hitting. I think they've left a runner in scoring position in every inning except the first (in which they scored four runs, their only runs of the game so far (bottom of the seventh, one out).

In non-baseball news, I received season eight of The Simpsons in the mail from Amazon yesterday (very nice) and recently purchased a Super Nintendo and a GameCube on eBay (won the auctions on Monday, so still waiting for those). Also, possible Vegas trip this weekend. Yep, that's right, I'm blowing through my money.

The Giants have now scored three runs to take the lead, meaning Schmidt stays unbeaten by the Diamondbacks since September 5, 2003. Entering today's game, he was 11-0 with a 2.61 ERA in his last 16 starts against them (allowing six earned runs today certainly hurt that ERA).

I'm back

Due to business what with moving and all, plus general laziness in setting up my wireless router (yes, I could blog from my desktop, but for some reason, I like to stick to laptop blogging), plus other general laziness as it pertains to blogging, I have not posted in awhile. Well, I'm back.

In the near future, expect a resumption of the Simpsons Top 100 Countdown, information on competitive (and non-competitive) Senate races for the fall elections, along with other races that might be worth watching, general irreverence, baseball, and whatever else I happen to feel like posting.

As is my norm, I'll start with something on my mind right now. I was following the Cubs-Astros game online, and it went 18 innings, with the Cubs winning 8-6. The Cubs got five runs in the first five innings off Roger Clemens, and the Astros got six runs in the first six innings. The Cubs then got a run off Brad Lidge in the ninth, and the game went scoreless until the 18th. Seems rather unusual for a game that involved that much scoring in the first nine innings to go scoreless for so long in extra innings. The matter I wanted to comment on more, though, was use of pitchers. Dusty Baker (manager of the Cubs) used his last pitcher (and final bench player) to start the bottom of the 17th, having previously used a couple of pitchers as pinch-hitters. This struck me as a bad idea, as the game could have easily drug on for several more innings, and you should be prepared in case of injury or just have another pitcher ready to go if that one gives you five or six innings. On the other side, you had Phil Garner not use any starters in relief. Oswalt was apparently injured, and Pettite was scheduled to start the next game, but he had a couple other pitchers on his bench, and left in Borkowski, who had not previously pitched more than four innings in a game all season, for his sixth inning of work, in which he gave up two runs and took the loss. I'll admit, he'd pitched very effectively through his first five innings of work (allowing only one baserunner), but you can't much rely on your relievers to give you six innings of work. As I was not watching on the tele, I don't know if Garner had one of his starters getting ready in the bullpen or not, but it seems like a bad decision.

In other baseball news, the Diamondbacks-Rockies game is currently in the top of the 18th (and the Diamondbacks just scored to take a 2-1 lead). I can't recall another day in which two games each went 18 innings (or more). Fifteen, sure, and maybe even sixteen, but not eighteen. Ican't even recall, off the top of my head, a game lasting more than 18 innings since I started following baseball. I'm pretty sure there was a 19-inning affair in there somewhere, but I can't really recall it.

Off the top of my head, though, so major league records for longest game, by innings:
Major League record: 26 innings, ending in a 1-1 tie, and I believe it involved the Cubs, and it occured in the 1920's
American League record: 24 innings
National League expansion era record: 23 innings, Giants at Mets, and it was the second game of a doubleheader, sometime in the 1960's.

The Arizona-Colorado game just ended (without further scoring), and I 'll take that as a sign to finish this blog post as well. Oh, a note on pitching in that game: there was a general aversion to using starters, but the relievers had been used more sensibly, so it wasn't much of an issue, except perhaps for Ramirez of Colorado, who had thrown four innings and took the loss.

And for anyone wondering about how my fantasy team is doing, I'm in first place with 77.5 points (out of 90 possible), and second place (the good doctor) is at 66. So doin' pretty well.