Whew! If I had cared very much about who won that college game between Purdue and Virginia, I'd still be too shaky to type. A great game, except for the officiating. The players are better at playing than the referees are at their job, but whatevs. Probably stands to reason as I'm sure the refs don't work at it as hard.
Lots of really fantastic games in this year's tournament. Had my 11-year-old, who usually disdains "sportzing," yelling along with me the other night when Purdue beat Tennessee in another overtime thriller. She likes it when a long 3-pointer is answered by another, and then a thundering dunk at the other end, like heavyweights exchanging body blows. But I have some work to do before she appreciates a team that will lock you down, like Texas Tech.
Today's region finals were both between a #1 seed (Gonzaga, Virginia) and a 3-seed (Texas Tech, Purdue). One of tomorrow's is between a 5-seed (Auburn) and a 2-seed (Kentucky) and the other matches a 1-seed (Duke) against a 2-seed (Michigan State). Not a lot of upsets in the tournament, as usual.
Didn't the major league baseball season formerly start after the college basketball season was over? I love baseball, but it would be okay with me if the Twins did not have home games in March. The game is meant for hot weather, which is why St Louis is arguably the best baseball town in America. The game's different when it's cold, not what it's meant to be. As a lad, I read Ted Williams's My Turn At Bat, his as-told-to sports hero autobiography, an above average representative of the genre, and I remember him saying that he probably wouldn't have hit .400 in 1941 if it weren't for an injury that kept him out of the lineup for most of April.
The Twins' and Indians' hitters appear to feel similarly, as they've played two games against each other now, both won by the team that managed to score twice. The Tigers have it worse. They won their first game, 2-0 in ten innings, and have since suffered back-to-back shutouts. After today's game, their manager, the quotable Ron Gardenhire, was asked when he would start worrying about the team's lack of run production. "When you guys leave the room," he said. "I'm gonna cry and tear the pictures off the wall. I'm gonna drink heavily."
I complain about games in March but having six months of this ahead of us is a prospect to relish. Checking my memory about Ted Williams's 1941 season, I see now that he did indeed have hardly any at-bats in April. I also learn that back then an RBI sacrifice fly counted against your batting average, like any other fly out. Today, it's not a charged at-bat, and, applying the current rule to Williams's 1941 season, his batting average rises from .406 to .419. The summer of '41 is also the one in which DiMaggio hit in 56 consecutive games, compiling a batting average of .408 during his streak, which lasted from May 15 to July 16. Over the same stretch of calendar days, Williams batted .412. DiMaggio won the MVP Award even though Williams led the league in (besides batting average) home runs, runs scored, walks, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. DiMaggio's Yankees won the pennant, which probably helped him, and, as the MVP is determined by ballot of baseball writers, Williams's combative relationship with the Boston beat reporters played a role, too. In two other seasons, 1942 and 1947, Williams finished second in the MVP balloting despite having won the Triple Crown. Wtf, right? Here are Williams's numbers for those seasons compared to the MVP winner--Joe Gordon in '42 and DiMaggio in '47 (MVP winner/Williams):
1942: Runs (88/141); home runs (18/36); RBI (103/137); batting average (.352/.356); hits (173/186); doubles (29/34); on-base percentage (.409/.499)
1947: Runs (97/125); home runs (20/32); RBI (97/114); batting average (.315/.343); hits (168/181); doubles (31/40); on-base percentage (.391/.499)
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