I had a blast at Yankee Stadium on Saturday in the company of fellow Baseball Prospectus author and Yankee fan Derek Jacques. The two of us were all smiles as we watched the Yanks spank the Cubs 8-1 for their fifth straight win.

Facing a free-swinging lineup that featured Neifi Perez and Corey Patterson battting 1-2 (thank you, Dusty), Chien Ming Wang had an easy time, allowing only five hits and striking out five over eight innings. Wang barely had to break a sweat; he threw only 88 pitches and looked like a man who’s got no business ever going back to Triple-A. The rookie made only one mistake; the first pitch of the sixth inning to #9 hitter Jason Dubois landed about 400 feet away from home plate. Still, if there’s ever a time to groove one…

That homer cut the Yanks’ lead to 3-1, but the Bombers loaded the bases for Derek Jeter in the bottom of the inning and Jeter, who’d never hit a grand slam during his decade in the majors, finally got the monkey off of his back, depositing a Joe Borowski pitch over the left-centerfield wall as pandemonium broke out. The Yankee captain drew a curtain call after the hit, got a standing O when he went out to shortstop to start the seventh and another one when he came to bat in the eighth, after which he earned yet another curtain call with a homer to right center off of Cliff Bartosh. What a lovefest.

We spent the game sitting next to an endearing boyfriend-girlfriend scoring team; he was keeping track of the Yanks, she the Cubs, but they were clearly rooting for the home team; her derisive taunts of “Jer-O-Meeee” Burnitz made it quite clear where she stood. The duo reminded me of that old joke — variously attributed to Dizzy Dean and Curt Gowdy — about the lovely couple at the ballpark in which he kissed her on the strikes and she kissed him on the… eh, never mind. With Derek and I both armed with scorecards as well, the four of us made quite a sight, diligently keeping track pitch-by-pitch and helping each other fill in the rare missed play.

Derek brought his digital camera with him, and he’s posted a handful of pictures as well as a writeup of the game at The Weblog That Derek Built. Check it out.

Just a quick note to wish all of the dads out there, including my own, a Happy Father’s Day. Like many of us, I came to baseball through my dad, who served up hittable whiffle-ball offerings in our backyard, told us tales of Reggie Jackson, and taught us to root for the Dodgers. Someday I hope to have kids of my own to do the same for, and having just gotten married, I suppose I’m a step or two closer to that, which is rather mind-blowing. While Andra and I aren’t quite ready to pursue that route, the biological clock is ticking: I’d better hope that my surgically repaired shoulder holds out long enough.

I’ve got a couple of father-related FI favorites to offer up in honor of today. The first is my profile of Reggie, whose exploits provided my family with a benchmark for over a decade:

When I played catch with Dad, occasionally he’d toss me one that would sting my hand or glance off of my glove. If I complained about the location of the throw, he’d shout, “Don’t hit ‘em so hard, Reggie!” The lesson: be tough, don’t complain, and don’t expect any opponent to cut you slack.

The second piece is a rumination on Barry Bonds and his father, Bobby Bonds (who had just passed away), Boys of Summer author Roger Kahn and his father (a central theme of that amazing book), and my bond with my own father:

Whether we grow up to be ballplayers or writers or brain surgeons, as children we come to the game via our fathers (and sometimes our mothers) — somebody who throws us fat whiffle-ball pitches in the backyard, who explains why the glove goes on the opposite hand from the one we throw with, who takes us to the ballpark for the first time and patiently endures our barrage of questions as we struggled to reconcile the stadium game with our own narrow backyard experience, who teaches us how to read a box score and how to fill out a scorecard. Ideally baseball isn’t the only vehicle for our bonding, but it’s a sure one, with a built-in mechanism for measuring the passage of years and our own growth.

I’m a lucky guy to have such a great father, and our bond goes far beyond baseball. On the day of my wedding last month, Dad added just one more amazing memory and piece of sage advice to a repository rich in both. After weeks of unflappability and calm, I had suddenly (and understandably) grown very nervous and fidgety on the morning of the wedding, struggling to kill time all day long in the company of my friends. About an hour before I went to get dressed for my big moment, Dad took me aside and said, “It’s a big day, but don’t forget to stop and smell the roses. Take it all in and have fun tonight.” By the time the ceremony started, my nervousness had dissipated, and I was calm and relaxed enough to enjoy every moment of my wedding and the revelry that followed. Thanks, Dad.

On the topic of Father’s Day, be sure to check out Joe Lederer’s surprise tribute to his father, Rich Lederer, over at Baseball Analysts.

In which five topics are combined into one epically cumbersome entry, commemorating one of baseball history’s more ridiculous trades…

The past week has seen not one but two announcements of new ballpark’s for New York City’s teams. First NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg drafted a proposed Shea Stadium replacement (ETA: 2009) to pinch-hit for the defeated Jets stadium (a real West Side Story) in a revised 2012 Olympic bid. Then on Wednesday the Yankees unveiled their plans for The House That George Built.

I’m elated to see the West Side stadium and with it the misguided and doomed attempt at securing the Olympics crash and burn. The $2.2 billion price tag on a stadium that would be used for its main purpose some eight times a year was outrageous, particularly with a cost to the taxpayers at some $600 million to over $1 billion, depending upon who’s counting. I also have a strong desire to keep New York state free of the scourge of pro football; the current NFL blackout rules are bad enough that I’m forced to endure the plodding of two teams that have chosen the Meadowlands as their addresses if I want to watch football on any given Sunday. Go back to Jersey.

By contrast, I’m supportive of the much more justifiable prospect of a new ballpark to replace Shea, a not-particularly-pleasant place to see a game even if you’re wearing blue and orange. In fact, my first choice would be to see the Mets get a new park along the lines of that Ebbets-esque contraption that was being pushed before September 11, with the Yankees double-bunking while the current Casa Bambino receives a much more aesthetically generous upgrade than the last time around. On that topic, the intrepid Neil deMause, who covers the stadium game via his Field of Schemes book and website as well as at Baseball Prospectus and beyond, had this to say via email on the topic of just such a renovation: “No reason they can’t still do that. In fact, they could probably even do a phased-construction thing at Yankee Stadium over a couple of winters – that’s what Save Fenway Park’s architects had proposed for Fenway before John Henry & Co. found religion.”

But while you can color me lukewarm at the proposition of a new Bronx ballpark for reasons I’ll get to below, I have to admire the relatively savvy manner with which the Yanks have gone about this enterprise. As the New York Times‘ Richard Sandomir wrote recently:

In the coming weeks, the Yankees will call a news conference to unveil plans to build a ballpark in the Bronx that they will finance without public money for construction or discourtesy to egos and agendas in the State Legislature.

The $800 million stadium plan has been nurtured for years without any public fulminations from the team’s principal owner, George Steinbrenner, who spent time in decades past threatening to move to Manhattan or New Jersey.

The stadium will rise on parkland that is far from the vitriolic political debate between developing the Far West Side of Manhattan and redeveloping post-Sept. 11 Lower Manhattan – a trap that has ensnared advocates of the proposed $2.2 billion Jets/Olympic stadium over the West Side rail yards.

In many ways, the process of creating the new Yankees ballpark will be the antithesis of the Jets’ project- suddenly moribund after being spurned Monday by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in a vote of a potent state panel – which was the centerpiece of New York City’s now close-to-impossible quest to be host to the 2012 Summer Games.

The Yankees’ project has no urgent deadline (like July 6, when the International Olympic Committee is to make its host city decision); no land dispute over Macomb’s Dam Park and no need to build atop a concrete platform (which the Jets’ plan called for); no lengthy history of endemic opposition (like Westway); no semantic tap dancing over whether it is a stadium or a convention center (which the Jets perpetuated); and no reason for Cablevision to vehemently campaign against it (as it did to the Jets’ stadium).

It’s clear that the Yankees read and reacted to the trends in stadium financing against huge public subsidies that offer little in return to municipalities with better things to spend their money on. There will be about $300 million in government aid, much of it from the state to build garages, but the state will get the parking revenue.

My main beef with the new park isn’t in the way it’s being paid for; in this George Steinbrenner has proceeded in a manner which shames his peers (save for the Giants’ Peter Magowan, whose park is privately financed) and sticks it to them at the same time. Nor is it with replacing the most hallowed venue in professional sports. This is one case where anybody wishing to nominate the admittedly superior aesthetics of Fenway or Wrigley as trumping the historical value of the Bronx park can count da ringzz, beeyatch; they can’t claim a venue which plays host to a lineage that runs through Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson and Derek Jeter. Nor is it the prospect that the new park will be, as a Times architectural critic put it, “the worst of two worlds. It is neither a compelling design that speaks to its age, nor does it do justice to the memory of the past… the result is more suited to Las Vegas than to the Bronx.”

No, it comes down to what it means for the fans like me in the cheap(er) seats; there will be significantly fewer of those in the new park. From a capacity of about 57,545 in the current model (down from as high as 82,000 according to Ballparks.com, the new stadium will have somewhere between 50,800 and 54,000, with 30,000 in the lower deck and 20,000 in the upper ones, a revers of the current configuration. “Field level” seats carry a cachet that equals higher prices, and the increased number of luxury boxes necessitates the elevation and recession of the upper deck, making it much further away from the players à la Shea. I love the Tier Box seating (lower part of the upper deck) in the current configuration; I much prefer the birds-eye view of the field to the distorted ground-floor one and though I’ve never caught a foul ball, would mourn the lost opportunity to spill my $8 beer and send my scorecard flying in the futile pursuit of one.

• • •

Speaking of the Yankees, pigs are flying past my window as they — for two games against a team that’s approached .500 after an abysmal first six weeks — appear to be clicking on all cylinders: Mike Mussina twirling a gem, Hideki Matsui returning to his 2004 form, streak-threatening sprained ankle and all, Bernie Williams throwing out baserunners, Jason Giambi crushing pitches a long, long way, Andy Phillips drawing the ticket out of Columbus to replace Rey Sanchez on the roster instead of Fellix Escalona, Kevin Brown turning into a pumpkin.

I had the ballgame on last night when Brown came up lame, and though the initial guesstimate (later confirmed) was back spasms, YES analyst Jim Kaat suspected an elbow injury based on Brown’s reaction. When Will Carroll inquired what happened via the BP mailing list, I admitted that I was “rooting for elbow. Add him to the [Tommy John] pile so he can *&%# off from my world forever.” This drew a scolding reaction from one of my listmates, and while I’m not in the habit of rooting for injuries (baaaaad karma), I doubt there’s a Yankee fan who feels any differently. In fact, I doubt you could find a Yankee fan who would piss on Brown if he were on fire, unless said urine had a high enough nitrogen content to increase the flames. The clubhouse wall punch combined with his taking the ball for Game Seven of last year’s ALCS when he was physically unfit to do so have dug Brown a hole out of which he’ll likely never climb while wearing pinstripes. In this road-to-nowhere season, I’d just as soon watch (or not watch) Your Name Here from Columbus fill his rotation spot until Jaret Wright returns.

Speaking of Wright, yes, I had him pegged to do well this season, and it looks as though I may be dining on crow at some point; let’s just hope it tastes like chicken. It’s worth noting Wright’s trip to the DL is almost certain to be manipulated to the point that the injury clause buyout kicks in, saving the team $3 million. Whoopee!

• • •

Speaking of Tommy John surgery and bad karma, it should be pointed out I said this after already fretting privately that Dodger closer Eric Gagne’s injury would need a second go-round of the procedure. Per Will Carroll, there’s a glint of a glint of optimism that what’s being termed a second-degree sprain (a/k/a a partial tear of the Ulnar Collateral Ligament, as opposed to a third-degree, complete tear) may be surmountable in six-to-eight weeks.

If Gagne does undergo surgery, I hope they can transplant some common sense into his thick skull, as his recent arm woes were triggered by two absolute no-no’s that have me wondering how vapor-locked the closer is upstairs: pitching before his early-spring knee sprain had fully healed, altering his mechanics and leading to his late-spring elbow injury, and then the other day, reaching back for a few lost MPH on his fastball after Dodger pitching coach Jim Colborn mentioned that he’d lost some zip. Grrrr.

In my fantasy league, they laughed at me when I bypassed Gagne and chose Brad Lidge with the 11th pick, then grabbed Yhency Brazoban much later. Guess who’s running away with the league lead?

• • •

One of the great advantages of being part of Baseball Prospectus is the sheer volume of data to which one has access. With a few exceptions, the BP suite of advanced statistics (Value Over Replacement Player, Pitcher Abuse Points, Reliever Expected Wins Above Replacement Level, Run Expectancy tables, etc.), is uniformly available back to 1972 thanks to the play-by-play data they own.

But actually being able to control the flow of that data is another matter entirely; it’s something of a bottleneck because relatively few of the writers are database-savvy, leading to many late-night data queries such as “Looking for list of all the MLB hitters who’ve put up an EqA higher than .341 in the last 10 years” that while easy enough to fulfull, require the cooperation of multiple individuals.

Fortunately, BP has recently taking steps to resolve this problem, offering access and some level of instruction in SQL, the language of BP’s databases, to us neophytes. Fifteen minutes of unsupervised poking around, and I had come up with a list of the worst Defensive Efficiency Ratios since 1972. Here they are:

Year   Team   DER
1999   TBA   .6617
1997   OAK   .6629
1999   COL   .6633
1994   COL   .6643
2005   COL   .6648
1996   BOS   .6666
1993   COL   .6674
1996   HOU   .6683
2005   NYA   .6685
2000   TEX   .6689
1997   COL   .6691
1998   TEX   .6697
2005   CIN   .6700
1986   SEA   .6704
1999   TEX   .6708
1996   DET   .6717
1994   SEA   .6717
2001   CLE   .6718
1995   PIT   .6728
2000   PIT   .6732

The current Yanks were once on pace for the worst DER of the post-’72 ERA, and as recently as a couple of nights ago were as high on this list as #5. It’s worth note that two other teams from this year make the list, the Reds and the Rockies, who have seven of the bottom 21 slots on this list. That probably points to the necessity of park-adjusting these figures, something that’s been attempted by BP’s James Click but not applied across recent history.

As if on cue, Click — a clutch god with the numbers to whom I owe countless thanks — rolled out an article on the Yankee DER today, and accounts for the Rox field-driven futility as well:

Looking at the last 34 years (because we lack Reached On Error totals for earlier years), the worst defensive teams, adjusted for their park, are:

Team   Year      DE      LgDE      PF       PADE
----   ----     ----     ----    ------     ----
SEA    1986    .6704    .7012    1.0189    -5.29
CIN    2005    .6712    .6955    1.0381    -5.22
OAK    1979    .6800    .7029    1.0388    -5.10
SDN    1972    .6978    .7154    1.0410    -4.43
FLO    1998    .6737    .6902    1.0426    -4.42
DET    1989    .6909    .7053    1.0474    -4.31
HOU    1996    .6683    .6872    1.0318    -4.27
SDN    1974    .6862    .7056    1.0276    -4.07
NYA    2005    .6674    .6955     .9947    -4.06
SDN    2002    .6784    .6969    1.0279    -3.99
SDN    1997    .6752    .6883    1.0434    -3.99
NYA    1984    .6830    .6999    1.0320    -3.95
CHN    1987    .6765    .6981    1.0165    -3.89
CHN    2002    .6864    .6969    1.0490    -3.86
CHN    1981    .6859    .7097    1.0070    -3.68

(DE is the normal DE for the team including ROE, LgDE is the league average DE for that year, and PF is the team’s DE Park Factor.)

PADE is a percentage, so a PADE of -4.06 as the Yanks have means they turn 4.06% fewer balls into outs than a league average defense in their park. Note that suddenly the Rockies fail to appear on the list at all while the ’86 Mariners–doomed by an Alvin Davis/Ken Phelps platoon at first and Harold Reynolds at second–now suddenly top the list of the worst defensive teams of the last 34 years.

So it would appear that the Reds, not the Yankees, are the team giving closest chase to what I will call the Concrete Glove. None of which exonerates the Bronx Bumblers, by which I mean the ones who didn’t sign Carlos Beltran.

• • •

Several months back, when I was culling through my referral logs to see where my site’s traffic was coming from (a necessary part of maintaining a website but an incredibly nerdy thing to write about), I noticed I was getting hits via a blog called Can’t Stop the Bleeding. Checking the link, I realized CSTB was the site of none other than Gerard Cosloy, head honcho of Matador Records, an independent label whose music I’ve spent the better part of the last 15 years listening to via bands like the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Railroad Jerk, Pavement, Yo La Tengo, Guided by Voices, the Fall, and more (and yes I’m living in the past since their current roster includes hip bands like Interpol and Belle and Sebastian for which a ten-foot pole is not enough to keep me away). It’s no stretch to say I probably have my hands on 100 Matador releases within my sub-500 square-foot Manhattan apartment, and if you added up the number of times I’ve seen the label’s bands play live, you’d approach a similar number. So I was tickled to see that a link to Futility Infielder was featured prominently “above the fold,” as they say.

Calling CSTB a baseball blog is flattery, however; whatever the sport, it specializes in the offbeat, the crime beat and the look-who-got-beat (usually the Mets, apparently Cosloy’s favorite team). CSTB best approaches its true calling as a scandal sheet for the sports world. Cosloy’s acerbic sense of humor is not for everybody, particularly the politically correct. Nonetheless, he most definitely does not suffer fools gladly. Here’s his report of a recent trip to Wrigley Field, where he encountered one of FI’s least favorite ballplayers, the vocally homophobic relief pitcher Todd Jones:

Florida reliever Todd Jones has long been CSTB’s journalistic hero. His old as-told-to columns for The Sporting News showed yours truly that if a big, burly dude like Todd wasn’t ashamed of flaunting his learning disabilities and backwards sexual politics in public, I’d have to get a lot bigger and burlier I wanted to manage the same thing.

Tonight while on a fact finding mission at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, I had the opportunity to observe Jones up close and personal. While sitting alongside the Marlins bullpen, I spied Todd bringing autographed baseballs to a couple of heavily made up / perfumed individuals sitting a few seats to my right. I’ve long heard that signing autographs during the game was forbidden (or so Red Sox backup catcher Bob Montgomery claimed many years ago), and as much as I’d like to credit Todd for being a nice guy, I hate to break it to him that both of these girls had penises. What’s more, since we’re in Illinois, I’m pretty sure they weren’t married to each other.

File under “Rednecks Duped by Drag Queens”… In a similar vein, Cosloy calls attention to the quizzical ramblings of White Sox outfielder Carl Everett (another FI anti-fave), whose views include advocating the demolition of Wrigley Field as well as the sadly all-too-common homophobia, which is apparently especially in vogue among relief pitchers (see Queer Eye-unfriendly Mike Timlin — formerly thought to be a beacon of tolerance — and the otherwises admirably gritty Cal Eldred, whose recent brush with death hasn’t shaken his own prejudices). Anyway, CSTB is an entertaining read, guaranteed to amuse and outrage. Check it out.

•••

Five topics? Hell, I’ll throw in a sixth for free. Perusing that Von Hayes trade, I noticed that not only was everyone’s favorite 47-year-old bat wizard, Julio Franco, sent to Cleveland as part of the package, but so were Manny Trillo, a staple of my birthday bretheren Xmas All-Star team, and Jay Baller, whom I used in the title of my historical rundown of ballplayers with our shared first name. Funny how that works out.

It’s that time of week again; the Prospectus Hit List is signed, sealed, and delivered. There’s a new bird ruling the roost this time around, with the St. Louis Cardinals taking over the top spot from the Baltimore Orioles, who dropped to fourth, and the Twins and White Sox in between those two.

This was the tightest battle for the top spot in the half-dozen of PHLs I’ve written, with the top four teams completely shuffling themselves between Sunday and Monday. Interleague play wrought no small amount of havoc all the way around. The O’s stumbled against the Reds (last week’s #28) and the Pirates (who have shaken off the derision I heaped upon them earlier this season to approach .500). The Twins lost a dramatic series to the Dodgers, one which saw Hee Seop Choi hit six homers, including a walk-off on Friday night and a hat-trick’s worth on Sunday (see Jon Weisman for some great insight into Choi’s ups and downs). Last week’s #4, the Rangers, lost five out of six to the Phillies and the Braves. Put two teams that don’t see each other but once every few years, and stuff happens.

The Yankees, of course, continued to careen down the lost highway, dropping two of three to the Brewers and then two of three to the Cardinals, finishing their road trip at an unsightly 3-9 and overall having lost 11 of 14. They’re now #17 on the Hit List. Friday night’s three-error debacle prompted Joe Torre to give his squad both barrels:

Furious after a performance he called the low point of the Yankees’ dismal season, Torre tore into his players in a meeting after the game. In comments to members of the news media after a brutal 8-1 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, Torre did not hold back.

“I’m just not happy,” he said after the Yankees collected three errors and just six hits. “It was an ugly game. We didn’t play hard enough. We didn’t do anything to help ourselves win. It was an embarrassing, embarrassing game.”

Derek Jeter and others said they had never seen Torre as upset as he was after the game. Though he later modified his answer, Jeter seemed as disgusted as Torre at what he had seen. “It seems like we don’t care,” Jeter said.

Asked if the message would be heard in the clubhouse, the third-base coach, Luis Sojo, who won four World Series rings under Torre, said, “It’d better be, because he never talks like that. I’ve been here 10 years, and I’ve never seen him talking like that.”

As if on cue, Randy Johnson finally delivered a gem on Saturday, shutting out the league’s most potent offense and striking out seven in seven innings (hmmm, maybe he’s just a National League pitcher?). But by Sunday, the Yanks were back to the business of sucking like an Electrolux. Scott Seabol, a former 88th round pick who spent seven years in the Yankees’ system while drawing a lone at-bat in 2001 — think of him as the poor man’s Clay Bellinger and wince — socked a two-run pinch-homer off of Tanyon Sturtze to key a four-run rally. Guh.

While George Steinbrenner declared that Joe Torre’s job is safe the other day, how many Yankee skippers have heard that line before? How many who heard that are even alive to tell the tale? Not Billy Martin, Bob Lemon, or Dick Howser, to be sure, and one imagines a psych-ward’s worth of interims who’ve been institutionalized as well. Like the ringmaster of a particularly decrepit traveling circus, GM Brian Cashman made the road trip to all four cities and though he’s got “a lot of things going on behind the scenes,” there are few Band-Aids available. Sure, the Yankees might move Tony Womack either to centerfield or (fingers crossed) a city more worthy of his baseball talents such as Moose Jaw, and futilityman Rey Sanchez has a pair of bulging disks in his neck, necessitating a roster move, but then what? Per Cliff Corcoran, we’re just flogging the should-have-signed-Carlos-Beltran horse again, and that’s about the deadest nag in the stable.

• • •

With the Yankee broadcast turned to low volume in the background, I’m finally digging into Steve Goldman’s Forging Genius, and I’ve got a pile of other books to discuss as well (if you’re an author or publisher who’s sent one along, apologies for the delay; nothing personal, just a wedding and a honeymoon and the need to keep paying the bills ahead of you in the batting order). Though my scrawlings here have been kind of irregular, I’m going to try to get through one or two books in each of my posts.

Today’s honor — a book I bought rather than one sent in solicitation of a review — goes to one of my favorite writers, Steve Rushin, who does the “Air and Space” column for Sports Illustrated. Stellar photography aside, he’s really the only reason I keep resubscribing to the mag. Rushin’s first book, Road Swing, saw him spend a year driving all over the country to sample every meat of our country’s sporting stew (both literally and figuratively), with gut-busting results. Honestly, the only other writer who makes me laugh out loud on as consistent a basis is David Sedaris. If I’m reading either of them in public, I tend to giggle so maniacally that I get worried looks from strangers, and I thank multiple dieties that I’ve still got control of my bladder as I wipe away the tears. No joke.

Rushin’s new book, The Caddy Was A Reindeer and Other Tales of Extreme Recreation, is a collection of columns and features done for SI, but it finds the author treading similar ground to Road Swing with no less hysterical results. Travel-writing dominates the collection, which is named for and more or less bookended by a pair of stories in which Rushin goes to the Arctic Circle in search of the northernmost golf courses in the world:

I had first heard of ice golf two summers earlier, while traveling under the midnight sun in northern Scandinavia. “You must return in the winter,” implored the deskman at the Strand Hotel in Helsinki, “when we play ice golf on frozen lakes and snow, in freezing temperatures, with balls that are purple.”

“Yes, well, I imagine they would be,” I stammered…

Golf, the great leveler of presidents and palookas, forms the backdrop for a couple other stories and functions a metaphor throughout the book, as Rushin fully explores some of mankind’s more futile sporting pursuits and our attempts to salvage dignity and build character through the adversity induced by them: “When I asked my caddie at Old Head what the course record was, he said, ‘Safe.'”

In doing so, Rushin’s travels take him all over the globe — the Tour de France, the World Cup, pub darts in England, a flurry of pre-Olympic activity in Nagano, a volcano crater in Bali (site of an 18-hole course), the Nurburgring road in Germany (the closed track where many car commercials are filmed), and in pursuit of competitive eaters, rollercoaster buffs, and tailgaters extraordinaire. Rushin’s a big kid at heart, one in awe of the world’s sporting wonders, but he’s a sensitive one as well, with a sympathetic ear for those whose out-of-leftfield sporting pursuits bring them a sense of identity, and a willingness to lose his lunch finding out what they go through.

Which isn’t to say that the author avoids the big four North American sports. There’s a a meditation on the secret language of Red Sox fans, a sympathetic profile of former Reds and Tigers manager Sparky Anderson, plenty of basketball (including a touching account of his courtship of WNBA star Rebecca Lobo, now his wife), and at the center of the book, a fascinating 58-page meditation, written for SI’s 40th anniversary issue, that delves into the rise of such modern-day wonders as Monday Night Football and the career of Roone Arledge (a pet topic of mine), the Astrodome, and a profile of the men behind those garish rival startup leagues of the Seventies, the World Hockey Association and the World Football League.

How great is this book? I can give it no higher praise than to say that it was the only one I took time out from my honeymoon to read. I had saved it for just such a special occasion, and it more than lived up to the honor. Don’t miss the an excerpt of Caddie at Amazon and check out an archive or two of Rushin’s columns (some of them subscription-only) at SI.com if you haven’t had the chance to sample his work.

It was a lost night of watching baseball on Tuesday. Saw the last five innings of the Yanks losing to the Milwaukee Brewers for the second straight night. Ben Sheets stymied the Yanks on two hits through seven innings, but the game remained close because Carl Pavano made only one mistake, a pitch Brewers shortstop Bill Hall hit over the wall in the second for a two-run blast.

As they did the night before, the Yanks had a shot at tying the game against closer Derek Turnbow. Jorge Posada singled with one out, then Robinson Cano doubled–Geoff Jenkins nearly making a diving catch but losing the ball upon impact with the ground–to send Posada to third. Alas, Bernie Williams grounded out, scoring a run but bringing the Yanks down to their final out. Derek Jeter, who made the final out on Monday, did so again as he meekly slapped Turnbow’s first pitch right back to him. Sheesh, so much for Mr. Clutch. That’s 1-7 on the road trip, their ninth loss in 10 games, and according to the Daily News, 0-22 when scoring three runs or less, and on a 0-for-25 skid with the bases loaded. Expect blood in the streets soon.

Flipped over to the Dodger game, where they were leading the Tigers 4-2 in the top of the sixth. Rookie Derek Thompson had pitched five solid innings before Scott Erickson, whose futility I pointed out yesterday, came on in relief. Pudge Rodriguez jacked Erickson’s second pitch over the right-centerfield wall to trim the lead to 4-3. That’s the 12th homer Erickson has allowed in 42.2 innings. Thanks, Scott. Maddeningly, Jim Tracy allowed Erickson to put runners on first and second before bringing on rookie Franquelis Osoria, fresh off the turnip truck from Las Vegas to make his major-league debut. Osoria gave up a sac bunt to Nook Logan (great name), and then a run on a groundout, thus taking Erickson’s ERA to an appropriately airplane-esque 7.17.

With the score tied, Chris Spurling, a former Yankee farmhand currently sporting a sub-2.00 ERA, came on in relief for the Tigers and retired the side on six pitches, yielding three infield grounders. Weak. Duaner Sanchez came on for the Dodgers, and on his second pitch, rookie shortstop Tony Giarratano, who had come on to replace Carlos Guillen when the latter strained his hamstring, hit one out for his first major-league homer. Sanchez apparently liked the feeling so much he went 2-0 on Dmitri Young before the Meathook crushed one about 500 feet to make the score 6-4. A Rondell White double, a Pudge single, and a groundout (finally an out!) yielded another run, and then a Logan single stretched the score to 8-4. Nice relief pitching, guys. Save for a measly walk, L.A. could do nothing against a trio of hard throwing Tigers — Kyle Farnsworth, Ugie Urbina, and Troy Percival — and that was that. Phhhht.

Watching these desultory performances, I took some time to fire back answers to five questions 6-4-2 blogger Rob McMillan sent along regarding my two suffering teams. Since I’d written an epic Hit List over the past two days and covered both teams more extensively as well, I had plenty of answers on the tip of my tongue. You can read the exchange here.

• • •

That epic Hit List generated this response from one of my readers:

HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO READ ALL THIS?!?! You’re killing me, Smalls!

–TG in SF

TG, I’m glad you asked. I’ll share with you a simple way to get through such a long article.

First hire a pair of monkeys to write abstracts of each team summary (you can buy some here, but be sure to get a receipt if you’d like to return them once you’ve read the article). Get a proboscis monkey for the NL, and maybe something smaller for the AL such as a white capuchin or a spider monkey (trust me, from an aesthetic standpoint, this will work). Most monkeys have an innate understanding of sabermetrics; it’s almost uncanny how much more well-developed it is compared to the average beat writer.

Monkeys are overqualified when it comes to printing out their work, so pawn that task off on a chicken that can peck at the keyboard until the job is done. You may have to sprinkle a bit of corn on the keyboard, but don’t worry, it will wash off.

Once the chicken has printed the abstracts as well as the original article, her work is done. So if you haven’t eaten, by all means feel free to dispose of the chicken the way nature intended (there are plenty of recipes to choose from). When you’re done, climb in your car and head towards the nearest interstate. If you don’t have a car you can buy one here; sadly, in this case public transportation is not an option.

While driving, pick up the first hitchhiker you see; you may have to drive awhile to find one but the outskirts of town are a popular spot. When you finally get a hitchhiker, have him (or her) read you the abstracts and, if you’d like to hear more about the particular team, the full entry. Most hitchhikers can be quickly trained to do this.

Voilà! A simple way to read lengthy articles that can be applied almost universally to any piece of baseball analysis (I’ve not tested it on other subjects). Oh, and once you’re done, be sure to feed the papers to a goat–it’s important to recycle.

Note: no animals were harmed in the writing of this entry. Lunch, however, was another matter…

The latest Prospectus Hit List, my first in four weeks, is up today. It’s a meaty one, as I fell prey to the temptation to give season-to-date evaluations at the one-third mark while reacquainting myself with all the teams, giving myself about twice as much work as normal. Only the patient hard work of the men behind the scenes enabled the piece to go up on time. Thanks to Ben Murphy for keeping the Hit List warm in my absence.

Topping the Hit List are the Orioles for the fourth week in a row thanks to the dynamic keystone duo of Miguel Tejada and Brian Roberts, not to mention a staff that’s improved by about 3/4 of a run over last year thanks in part to pitching coach Ray Miller. Even the nomadic Bruce Chen, on his eight major-league team just shy of his 27th birthday, is outperforming every Yankee starter. Meanwhile the Yankees, currently in Milwaukee on a 12-game road trip from hell (or to hell, which is where their season has gone), are 16th. Yesterday my mother-in-law, a Milwaukee resident, left me a message that she was going to the ballgame. She said she’d try not to boo Gary Sheffield (she likely doesn’t remember the youthful Shef’s sins as a Brewer so much as she recalls the reaction when he came to town with the Dodgers, a game of which we attended), but if others around her started doing so, she might not be able to resist. Funny woman. As for the Dodgers, this seems like a good opportunity to catch up with them in greater detail as I did the Yanks the other day, so here goes…

No team got out to a hotter start this season than the Dodgers, who matched their best start in club history when they reached 12-2, and topped the Prospectus Hit List for the weeks of April 17 and April 24. That they did so without Eric Gagne and with a makeshift bullpen was part of their charm, and with Jeff Kent hitting like a house on fire, the early returns on crow — as in eating it at GM Paul DePodesta’s expense — looked quite promising. Ridiculous rallies — from down 5-0 in the first and 8-3 in the fourth to the Giants on April 12, from down 6-0 in the third to the Brewers a week later made the team seem like a logical extension of last year’s division-winning comeback kids.

They soon leveled off, but when I left for my wedding, the Dodgers were two games ahead of the Diamondbacks, with a record of 20-12. Hee Seop Choi was on a tear and Yhency Brazoban, the converted former outfielder who was a throw-in in the Kevin Brown-Jeff Weaver swap with the Yankees, was 10-for-11 in save opportunities in the Goggled One’s absence. Since then, however, the Dodger season has taken a turn. They’ve gone 10-15 since that point, dropping to third in the NL West, four games behind the Padres, who tore through May at a 22-6 pace, and a half-game behind the Snakes. This week’s Hit List has them dwelling at #20.

What’s gone wrong? Mainly, it’s been injuries. The team has sent 13 players to the DL, with eight currently residing there: starters Wilson Alvarez (his second stint) and Odalis Perez, swingman Elmer Dessens and reliever Darren Dreifort (who wasn’t expected back all season, as per his miserable history), catcher Paul Bako, third baseman Jose Valentin, and outfielders Milton Bradley and Jason Grabowski. Others who’ve spent time there include starter Brad Penny, closer Gagne, leftfielder Jayson Werth, and infielder Antonio Perez.

The injuries have hit the rotation the hardest, with no fewer than nine pitchers making starts this year. As I said on the Hit List, the high profile gambles on Penny and Derek Lowe have paid off thus far; Lowe’s been a horse, averaging 6.6 innings per start to the tune of a 3.35 ERA and a K/BB ratio of 3.47. Penny’s averaged over six innings per start with a 3.67 ERA. But Odalis Perez was erratic before heading to the DL with shoulder soreness, Jeff Weaver’s been his usual maddening self (a 5.65 ERA and only five quality starts out of 12), and the five hole has been a disaster, with Scott Erickson and Alvarez combining for an 8.10 ERA and 15 homers in 46.2 innings. Erickson, who last had a servicable season in 1999, is particularly cooked, walking two batters for every one he’s struck out. Other than the fact that he’s got “the good face” there’s no earthly reason he’s clogging a roster spot. Rookie southpaw Derek Thompson, straight from Double-A Jacksonville, has given the Dodgers two serviceable starts, and Rule V rookie D.J. Houlton has pitched in with a good one as well. Meanwhile, former top prospect–and make no mistake, that’s former–Edwin Jackson is currently sporting an 8.08 ERA in Triple-A Las Vegas, with only one more strikeout than walk. Eeesh.

Even with the return of their ace closer, the bullpen has fallen on hard times. Alvarez was successful in relief, Brazoban and Duaner Sanchez have had good seasons thus far, but Giovanni Carerra, who’s appeared in 26 games thus far, has been overexposed, and several of the human interest stories–sidearmer Steve Schmoll, Japanese League vet Buddy Carlyle–who rounded out the pen have been blown clear to Las Vegas. One who hasn’t is Houlton, who’s put the Dodgers in a tough spot. The scouts like him, and PECOTA thinks he’s ready, projecting him for a 4.71 ERA. But his overall performance, featuring a 6.04 ERA and about four walks per nine innings, doesn’t really merit a spot on the roster, yet the team’s hands are tied; they’d have to send him back to Houston rather than down to Vegas.

The pitching hasn’t been particularly helped by the defense; the team’s Defensive Efficiency Ratio of .691 puts them 11th in the NL, two points below the league average. With a strikeout rate that’s only 9th-best in the league, that translates into a lot of additional base hits. Shortstop Cesar Izturis (105 Rate2, or five runs above average per 100 games according to Baseball Prospectus‘s fielding numbers), second basmean Jeff Kent (104 Rate2) and centerfielder Bradley (116 Rate2) have played well at key positions, but everywhere else, the Dodgers are giving runs away, particularly at third base (about which, more momentarily).

On the hitting side, the team has run hot (.276/.358/.450 and 5.48 runs per game in April) and cold (.260/.327/.389 and 4.29 runs per game in May), though as a whole they’re averaging 4.89 runs per game, second-best in the NL. Kent went as frigid in May (200/.241/.330) as he was red-hot in April (.333/.457/.643), but fortunately, he appears to be back on a tear, 12 for 19 with three homers, three doubles and 10 RBI, eight of them in the last two games. He’s at .288/.371/.534 overall, with 12 homers and 48 RBI (leading the team by 20 and third in the NL behind Derek Lee’s 53), great numbers for a second-sacker.

Fellow free-agent signee J. D. Drew, who endured an 0-for-25 start, is up to .276/.403/.500, and Bradley was at .298/.345/.511 before a finger sprain sent him to the DL and Drew over to center, where he’d originally hoped to play when signed. Leftfield has been a problem, with Werth having returned only about two weeks ago. Substitute Rickey Ledee got off to a hot start, but has since cooled off, and Jason Repko hasn’t really shown much; as a whole, Dodger leftfielders are hitting .252/.314/.394.

Choi enjoyed a nice hot streak that appeared to quiet the doubters for a few moments, but he’s in the throes of a miserable 3-for-39 slump since May 18 and down to .245/.327/.417 overall. Fortunately, professional hitter Olmeido Saenz has filled in particularly well (.323/.396/.635) and has driven in 27 runs in 96 at-bats. Elsewhere Jason Phillips, acquired from the Mets for headache Kaz Ishii just before Opening Day, has shorn up the catching, and Cesar Izturis has turned into a bona fide leadoff dynamo (.321/.366/.396 and a league-leading 28 multi-hit games) as well as a dazzling shortstop.

Third base appeared to be headed for disaster, as Jose Valentin snapped both a 27-at-bat hitless streak and some knee ligaments in the same game. Neither aged Japanese import Norihoro Nakamura nor minor-league journeyman Mike Edwards could handle the hot corner, and even with hot-hitting Antonio Perez (.387/.472 /.516) now manning the bag, the Dodgers are living dangerously. As a team, their third-base defense has been 19 runs bellow average per 100 games, Perez himself 17 below. Yikes.

Manager Jim Tracy has done a very good job of mixing and matching his bench players under the circumstances, indlucing finding at-bats for the red-hot Saenz. He’s gotten exceptionally good performances from the pinch-hitters, who are batting .272/.330/.370, which is excellent by the lowly standards of pinch-hitters. Ledee is 6-for-11 in that role, Edwards 4-for-5.

As a whole, the Dodgers have shown that when they get hot, they can be the best team in the league. With the Giants meandering without Barry Bonds and looking to have worse troubles with ace Jason Schimdt, the Padres cooling off after their hot May and lacking much of a rotation beyond Jake Peavy and Adam Eaton, and the Diamondbacks using smoke and mirrors (a -37 run differential despite their 30-27 record), the division is still ripe for the picking. But they’ll need some better luck in the health department and some help from DePodesta if they’re going to win it.

As much as I was pining for baseball by the end of my honeymoon — having gone the better part of three weeks without catching more than a few innings here and there — I’ve had a tough time sinking my teeth into the action since returning home. That’s as much a product of putting the various non-wedding-related strands of my life back together as it is of the current woes of my two teams, the Dodgers and Yankees. But either way, I’m still a bit disoriented, so, with my new double-wide iMac in place today, I’ve been strolling through the stats to see where these teams are. Today I’ll hit the Yanks, with the Dodgers coming in the near future.

When I departed for Milwaukee, the Yankees held a 15-19 record, having won four straight games at a time when many analysts, myself included, were calling for a priest to administer last rites to the dynasty. The streak reached ten wins, just in time for the team to cross the .500 threshold by the season’s quarter mark and preserve a few necks, particularly that of pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre. The big bat during that stretch was Tino Martinez, who reeled off eight homers in an eight-game span, creating a morality play in which the golden child’s Bronx virtues of wholesome clutch goodness were hailed as trumping the mercenary black arts of the disgraced (and nearly demoted) Jason Giambi. During the streak, the New York Times‘ Murray Chass credited George Steinbrenner’s intervention, which is fine if you believe in the kind of General Patton/Knute Rockne bullshit that the Boss sells and perhaps no more outrageous than all of the Chicken Little pronouncements that this was a team on its way to 100 losses and a new dark age.

Jotting down some notes during my brief return to New York, I noted that the most important part of the Yanks’ season might come while I was in Italy, when the Yankees’ own honeymoon from the streak wore off and they needed to maintain some kind of day-in-day-out consistency. Two weeks later, that consistency is nowhere to be found. After dropping two out of three to the Red Sox, the Yanks have just been swept by the worst team in baseball, the Kansas City Royals — a team Joe Sheehan called a contraction candidate just a few days ago (fellow BPer John Erhardt’s take on the Royals was hilarious).

While Alex Rodriguez had a hot enough May to be named the AL Player of the Month and the offense as a whole has rolled to a 5.31 runs per game clip — tied for third in the majors — the team is still fighting several drags on the offense. Giambi (.234/.379/.355) is hitting like a man who left his bat speed in the Gold’s Gym “pharmacy”. Hideki Matsui (.262/.319/.398) has borne more resemblance to the hitter who struggled in his first year in America than last year’s slugging superstar, though with fewer groundballs. Robinson Cano (.247/.266/.393) has shown a little pop and exactly no control of the strike zone, walking a mere three times in 95 plate appearances. All the speed in the world can’t make Tony Womack (.265/.310/.298) a productive hitter, particularly at an offense-first postion; his OPS is nearly 150 points worse than the average AL leftfielder. And even a seven-hit burst over a four-day span hasn’t returned Bernie Williams (.252/.329/.371) to being the fearsome hitter of yesteryear.

As bad as those hitters have been, A-Rod (.313/.422/.626) and Gary Sheffield (.325/.415/.540) have been propping up the offense. They’ve had considerable help from Derek Jeter (.386 OBP as the entrenched leadoff man), Jorge Posada (coming off a scorching .325/.398/.588 May that has quieted the doubters), and Martinez has provided some of the pop Giambi apparently can’t, though at .245/.341/.532, it appears he’s crested as well.

But make no mistake: pitching and defense are still the main culprits of this team’s woes. At .660, their Defensive Efficiency Ratio is 28 points worse than any other AL team, 38 points below league average, awful at a record-threatening pace, and one point lower than it stood on May 10, a week after the big shakeup that sent Womack to left and Wiliams to the bench. The team’s 4.57 ERA is the ninth-worst in the majors, and the 6.08 strikeout rate is lower than it was when I bitched about Stottlemyre. Mike Mussina (3.92 ERA) appears to have gotten rolling, but Randy Johnson (3.92) has hardly been the dominant force from the catalog, Carl Pavano (4.50, with a team-high 13 homers allowed) has gopher trouble, and despite reeling off four straight wins while I was gone, Kevin Brown (5.14) still looked like the staff ace of the Suck City Sucky-Sucks the other night against KC. Rookie Chien-Ming Wang, however, has been a pleasant surprise, posting a 4.06 ERA despite a very low K rate (3.35 per 9 innings); his secret is keeping the ball on the ground (a 2.70 G/F ratio, which is Derek Lowe territory) and he’s yet to allow a homer. It’s too early to start fretting about where he’ll wind up if and when Jaret Wright returns; on a staff this fragile and uneven, he’s certain to have a role.

The front end of the bullpen has sorted itself out, with Mariano Rivera and Tom Gordon blessedly returning to form, while Tanyon Sturtze has maintained the gains he showed last fall. But the back end looks like a trainwreck at which Felix Heredia and Jay Witasick would be welcomed; Paul Quantrill (6.53), Buddy Groom (6.59) and Mike Stanton (7.36) have obviously taken a few paddlings. The depth they had at the outset of the season is gone. First, the numbers game caught Steve Karsay off base — he was released after being designated for assignment (Bronx Banter’s Cliff Corcoran weighed in with a fine, lengthy piece about Joe Torre’s penchant for burning through relievers and Karsay’s place in that history). Almost on cue, Felix Rodriguez went down with a knee injury just as they watched Karsay depart. It’s like that.

At 27-26, just one game from the one-third mark of the season, the Yanks have ridden their current five-game losing streak into fourth place in the AL East. They’re five games out of first and 4.5 out of the Wild Card spot; get used to hearing about the latter as much as the former, as this team will likely have to scrap for its October invitation. The 100-win season typically pencilled in for the Torre Yanks would require a 73-36 record (that’s a .669 winning percentage, not quite ’98 territory but not far off) to attain. Ninety wins (63-46, or .578 from here on out) will put them in the thick of the Wild Card but guarantee nothing other than frayed fingernails. There’s nothing wrong with that kind of excitement, of course, but that shouldn’t distract anyone from the harsh lessons the season has brought so far. This is not a team of miracle-makers, this is every bit the Homer Simpson-designed kludgemobile I envisioned in March. The ride over the next two-thirds of the season doesn’t promise to be any smoother.

Ladies and gentlemen, step right up to the looooong-threatened, new and improved Futility Infielder 2.0. The same great ingredients, now with less scrolling and 22.2 percent extra width (not that I didn’t have plenty of Extra Width before — I’ve bought that album three times over).

More pixels for everybody! Or something like that.

I build and maintain this site to entertain myself along with everybody else, so you’ll have to forgive the compulsion to rearrange the furniture now and again (I am a designer, after all), not to mention the silliness of that new banner with the bobblehead mini-me. The story behind that is that several months ago, Andra found someplace that made customized bobbleheads based on photographs, and decided to have one made of me — wearing a Dodger uniform — as a Hanukkah gift. This soon turned into a fiasco, as the makers forgot to put a cap on “me,” insisted that the team’s road greys were its home uniform, and forgot the one element which lifts the Dodger uni above all others — the red numbers on the front. Also, the rendition didn’t bear much resemblance even with the glasses (which I still wear 98 percent of the time, contrary to many recent photos). For better or worse, the company attempted to redress some of her grievances, only they again forgot the cap, and the head on the second version appears to be that of Keith Olbermann:

Eh, no worse than most other bobbleheads, resemblance-wise. Both versions now sit atop my CD carousel, among what I like to refer to as the Futility Infielder Executive Board (it’s basically a bunch of yes-men, geddit?). Wanting to get some mileage out of the little statue, I had initially planned to put a photo of one on the homepage, then decided to have some Photoshop fun. Somehow, the result wandered up into the banner during a moment of whimsy and chutzpah, and until I’ve got a better idea or acquire a sense of shame, there it will stay.

Anyway, the actual upgrade process for the site seems to have gone through relatively hitch-free. Under the hood, not much has really changed except for my penchant for posting photos to the blog. There are now permanent links to the blog archives and the 2004 DIPS results in the navigation bar. The links page has been retired in favor of what’s on the blogroll to the left, the contact form has been mothballed in favor of a simple email link because I don’t know enough Unix to configure the Form Mail script. Most of this means bubkes to you except that more text fits on the screen to accommodate the fact that 3/4 of you have wide enough monitors to see it all, and if you don’t, you probably need a new computer (in an unrelated story, I just plunked down for a new one myself).

One post-wedding project down. Back to baseball soon enough…

I’m going to be rolling out a facelifted version of this site over the course of the day, with the blog upgrade trailing on a separate circuit behind the rest of the site (which you’d notice if you came in through the front door). If the going gets weird — graphics looking screwy, links missing, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria — that’s why. Rest assured that my tech staff will be working to fix the problem:

See you on the other side…

The newlyweds Mr. and Mrs. Jaffe are back from their spectacular honeymoon in Florence and Venice, Italy. We had a wonderful time; the weather — 70-80 degrees and sunny during the day, with nary a drop of rain to dampen our spirits — was perfect, the food — at least in Florence — was amazing, the wine flowed freely, the accommodations were outstanding, and even the dollar, which has been more or less getting its ass kicked since the advent of the euro, was about 10 percent stronger than on our Paris/London trip last summer.

But by the eighth day of our ten-day trip, our sightseeing — at a more hectic pace than we’d promised ourselves — began to take its toll. The churches, piazzas, crucifixion frescoes, and Madonnas-with-child began to blur together, the chintzy glassware, high prices (screw the 100 euro gondola rides that are “mandatory” for such romantic-themed trips; we couldn’t be bothered) and tourist traps grated on our nerves, the Venetian canals and confusing maze of alleys drained our mental energy. When Mrs. Jaffe’s stunning blue eyes began to well up with tears as she told me she needed a vacation from our vacation, I knew there was no shame in my secret yearning for the grid and the grit of New York City.

More than anything besides orderly street numbering, I missed baseball, subsisting at best on a thin gruel of two-day-old line scores in the International Herald Tribune. I missed my electronic conduit to the game, my Internet pals who make following the bouncing balls so much fun. Keeping a very low profile, I checked my email a couple of times, mostly to prevent my inbox from overflowing with junk mail, dropped by this site to read the kind words my visitors had left, skimmed Under the Knife, Bronx Banter, and Dodger Thoughts for quick fixes on the sly. And I yearned for the time I could kick back on the couch with a cold brew and a ballgame, whether to watch the surging Yankees or the struggling Dodgers, those two teams having reversed course since the point at which I went into turbo-wedding mode.

I’ve been saying for the past ten years that you know you live in the right place when you look forward to coming home from a vacation, and in my case that rings true even for a milestone event such as my honeymoon. With my return, the circus that has dominated my life for the past year is leaving town, and while I’m grateful that such a momentous occasion is now in the rearview (and perhaps a bit sad that I won’t be so much a center of attention for awhile — how else can I get a hundred and sixty people, not to mention a three-piece band, to humor my vocalized rendition of “Ring of Fire”?), I’ll now have considerably more energy to devote to my writing and the rest of my work. I’ve got a slew of projects — for Futility Infielder, Baseball Prospectus, and beyond — that have been back-burnered for too long and I’m excited to dig in.

One of the advantages of traveling abroad is the opportunity to step back from the everyday mindset one falls into as a citizen of the U.S. As I explored the cradle of the Renaissance, I was reminded of how often our dearly held beliefs turn out to look ridiculous, even malevolently so, years or centuries later when new discoveries are made and the light of reason and truth outshines those Dark-Aged dogmas. There are a host of political parallels I could offer, particularly in this polarized environment, but there’s plenty to which that applies even in the baseball sphere. I’m looking forward to spreading a bit of that good light around.