I'm sitting here watching an enjoyable baseball game. I can only enjoy them when I don't much care who wins. Anyway, if I were the announcer, I think I'd say that at the start of this game Justin Turner, the Dodgers' third baseman, had a 0.01% chance of hitting for the cycle, but now that he has a single, double, and home run, he has a 0.0101% chance of hitting for the cycle. Maybe, if he lines one toward the gap, and the outfielders collide at full tilt, both getting knocked unconscious. . . .
I just looked at his stats in Baseball Reference. It happens that over the past three seasons Turner has collected exactly 400 hits, and one of them was a triple. He did have two stolen bases this year (and 34 in his career). The Twins were thinking of trading for him, but he runs too fast, and once he had a good game against the Yankees.
When they talk about "how the game has changed," no one ever mentions that nowadays players tap the toe of their shoes with the bat, whereas in my youth they tapped their insteps. I don't know how today's technique is supposed to clear the dirt from the back set of spikes. Maybe that is why Max Kepler hits his toes so hard. Someone should tell him to watch tapes of Harmon at the bat. Just tap the instep. I did it to my Keds a million times and it works.
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