I recall the good old days
But thankfully, they’ve gone
Now the ponies all are broken nags
That stumble as they groan
And throw the jockeys from their throne
When there are pitches left to dodge
And lions left to tame
But it’s nothing but a dirty rotten shame

–Elvis Costello

This is a transition year, and I was hoping that even as such, Fortune might favor the A’s, and we would still witness a competitive season. Alas, Fortune has ignored the A’s, and Murphy and his Law have stepped in to fill the vacuum.

The A’s are seven games under .500 with five more games this week against the reigning monsters of the AL East. And now Rich Harden is probably out for several weeks with a pulled oblique muscle. I’d ask what else could possibly go wrong, but I’m afraid Murphy might decide to answer that question.

Billy Beane is walking around repeating his Hitchhiker’s Guide mantra (“Don’t Panic”), but that’s a far cry from a mantra like “This Is Our Year”. It’s someone else’s year, and the best the A’s can hope for is to be a nice, minor decoration in the larger artwork, like a solid-colored gonfalon hanging from a jewel-studded cross.

Don’t Panic aside, I fully expect some kind of move to be made soon. Beane and Macha have had two closed-door meetings in the last week. With the draft coming up in early June, Beane would probably prefer to make whatever move they’re going to make now, so that he can focus on the draft for the next few weeks. (Wouldn’t this time of year be really fascinating if draft picks were tradeable?)

I wouldn’t expect a trade, since he’d probably be selling low with most of his chips slumping. He’s better off letting them play and seeing if they can increase their trade value for July. But for a spark, I’d probably just call up Dan Johnson, rotate him into the mix with Hatteberg and Durazo, and see what happens.

Update: Oh yes, I forgot to add: and make Zachary happy, too. Matt Watson is getting called up. I haven’t heard about anyone getting sent down, so I’m assuming Harden goes immediately to the DL, Watson takes his roster spot, and the A’s go with 11 pitchers.

But with Watson here, that makes Jermaine Clark less necessary. I’d send Clark down and bring up Johnson.

I’m very much looking forward to the Mike Mussina-Rich Harden pitching matchup tonight, but I suppose the big story is that Jason Giambi is returning to Oakland for the first time since his BALCO testimony was leaked.

Giambi may not even play, as he is struggling at the plate. Perhaps, as some suggest, he is failing because he stopped taking steroids in 2003. Giambi says he has been battling some minor injuries: a forearm cramp and a recent beaning.

Giambi may be right. Even when he was in Oakland, he was never the type of player who could hit with minor injuries. In Oakland, when he was nursing an injury, he would DH. Look at his career numbers as a 1B (mostly healthy) vs. as a DH (less healthy):

Just like in his recent struggles, his ability to walk didn’t suffer as a DH, but his batting average dropped a ton. The difference now is that his slugging percentage is down, too. That may just be a matter of sample size, though.

I doubt Giambi will ever be a great player again, because it’s unlikely he’ll ever be consistently healthy again. Mike’s recent study shows that players with similar stats to Giambi’s often ended up retiring soon thereafter. But I still think it’s possible he could put together another stretch of good fortune with his health, and have a John Jaha-like last hurrah before his body fails him at last.

He worships Seattle-based dessert food:
“Thornton secretive cake.”
Adrian Beltre cuts off other bread bins,
And darn never eats chicken.
Brilliantly Boone burps egg flour chunks,
Managing to eat it in bold haiku-
Winn hath wrought thy butter, Olivo eats bread:
“Thornton secretive cake.”

Honey, the chances of giving up a two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth with a one-run lead two days in a row are astronomical. See? It’s been pre-disastered. We’re going to be saf

Lightning never strikes twi

It looks like the leader of Royalty
Unloaded all pledges of loyalty
Cuz his passionate blood,
When his team was a dud,
Reached near-fatal levels of boilty.

And so he says to me, you want to blog? and I says, Yeah baby! I want to be a blogger! I says play ball, bunt monkeys! I’m making hot dogs without mustard! Ah ha ha ha haaaa!

He says to me, he says to me, ‘Baby I’m tired of watchin’ this lousy team!’ I says, I says, why don’t you blow it to bits?

And he says to me, he says to me, you got style, baby! But if you’re gonna to be a real blogger you gotta get a gimmick…and so I go I says Yeah Baby! A gimmick, that’s it! Team Explosives! Aaaah-hahahahaaaa!

So he says to me, you gotta do something smart, baby, something big! He says you want to be a superblogger, right, and I go yeah baby, yeah yeah! What do I gotta do? He says, you got bombs, blow up the team; it’s packed with powder. You’ll go down in superblogger history, and I go yeah baby, cuz I’m the Evil Midnight Blogger What Blogs at Midnight! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!

Eat my smoke, Zito baby! I’m trading you! Kaboom!

Dotel, baby, this could happen to you, too. This could happen to anybody! He says he hung that slider, and I go, I says, it’s the only hung you got. Ha!

And then next thing you know: milkshake! Whoosh!

And so I says to Byrnes, uh, Byrnes baby Byrnes, I says, you got legs baby, you’re everywhere, you’re all over the place, but you’re not here anymore, baby! You’re outta here!!!

Oh, hi!

Durazo, I says, I don’t like the price of your jib, and I go, you’re going, baby, your jib’s going straight Outta Town!

Excuse me…excuse me…and then I says tell me I’m wrong, and he says I can’t baby ’cause you’re not!

And Hatteberg, Hatteberg, sixty seconds to nowhere, baby! You’re becoming the next victim of the Evil Midnight Blogger What Blogs…hey pay attention!

Yeah Baby! Now you’ve only got twenty seconds until you all Eat My Stew!!!

You’ll never prove a thing; I’m just a part-time programmer. Down with patience! Blogging is good, baby!

FRIAR FRANCIS: Did I not tell you she was innocent?

LEONATO: So are the prince and Claudio, who accused her
Upon the error that you heard debated:
But Margaret was in some fault for this,
Although against her will, as it appears
In the true course of all the question.

ANTONIO: Well, I am glad that all things sort so well.

   —Much Ado About Nothing, Act V, Scene IV

Went to the doctor yesterday for my heartburn, and he said I had a “classic case of acid reflux.” That’s not the greatest news in the world, in that I’ll probably have to deal with this on and off for the rest of my life now, but I am happy to hear that it’s classic. There’s a clear program for dealing with it. I’ve had some other things where the doctors aren’t quite sure what’s going on, or how to treat it. That’s worse.

But given that I’m trying to calm down my stomach, I’ve decided to avoid any unnecessary stress. So when Scott Hatteberg committed two errors on one play with the bases loaded yesterday, I turned off the TV. I knew right then and there the A’s were going to get their butts kicked, and I didn’t need the aggravation.

I probably shouldn’t even watch any games at all this week, but that’s probably not going to happen. I’m rather addicted to this sport, and it’s hard to quit cold turkey.

Speaking of addictions, I hope that this article about amphetamines by Jeff Passan in the Kansas City Star is much ado about nothing, but I have questions.

Would any of the other players in that congressional hearing have gone into a Mark McGwire-like silent trance if they had been asked about greenies instead of just steroids?

How widespread is widespread? What percentage of Major League baseball players are addicted to amphetamines? What would happen to them if they were suddenly forced to stop taking them? Would they have withdrawal symptoms? Would their performances drop?

If clubhouses in the 90s had amphetamine-spiked coffee out in the open, the team doctors and management had to know about it, and tolerate it. Do they still tolerate amphetamines today? If not, when did they stop, and what prompted the change?

What if they only stopped this year, because of the steroid scandal? Would scoring go down? Or have pitchers popped greenies as much as hitters?

What if some teams stopped their tacit tolerance of amphetamines, and others didn’t? Would the performance of those teams suffer unfairly in comparison to others?

When Brian Anderson says about public perception, “we’re going to get slaughtered if the public buys into it,” should we buy into it?

When Bud Selig says, “It is time to put the whispers about amphetamine use to bed once and for all,” is he right? Is it time to cease our gossipy whispers, grab our torches and pitchforks, and come after these players with the shouts of an angry mob, hungry for the slaughter?

Or do we just let it slide, because thinking about it makes us sick to our stomachs?

I’m in a bad mood. Maybe it’s this heartburn that’s been bothering me for the last few days, or maybe it’s because yesterday was Mother’s Day, and my wife hates it when I yell at the TV, so to give her as nice a day as possible, I bottled all my negative emotions during yesterday’s game, but now they’re ready to burst. In any case, I need to vent, and that’s partly the reason why I started this blog. The following is probably not particularly rational:

• Memo to Fox Sports Net: I hate smoking as much as anyone, but the next time you show that anti-smoking ad with the chick who keeps saying “I’m not a smoker”, I’m going to poke a fork through my eyeball sockets and scoop my brains out onto the floor. Must you show that thing every dang inning?

  Really, is it ethical to run ads that prevent lung cancer in some people, if it causes suicide in others?
   

• Peter Gammons writes a rant about failing to plate runners from third with less than two outs that I wish I had written myself, since I’ve been screaming similar things at my TV for over a year now.

  The table Gammons uses tells it all. Only eight MLB teams have scored such runners less than 50% of the time. Only two have scored less than 40% of the time. The A’s have scored less than 30% of the time: a .286 average as of last week (and almost certainly lower now after two straight shutouts).

  Gammons quotes Buck Showalter as saying “Too many hitters have no idea about a two-strike approach,” which would definitely be part of my rant. But to those players on the A’s who do have a two-strike approach, I’ll add this: you don’t have to wait until there’s two friggin’ strikes on you to use your two-strike approach. If there’s a runner on third with less than two outs, or a runner on second and no outs, use your two-strike approach from the first pitch. Get a pitch to put in play, and put it in play. Don’t swing for the fences, and don’t hope for a pitch later in the AB that you can hit a home run with. You guys ain’t hittin’ home runs anyway.

  I’ve had a sneaking suspicion that this has been a fundamental flaw in the type of players Billy Beane likes to acquire. High-walk players just don’t put the ball in play enough to drive in runs. Over on Baseball Prospectus, James Click has a study that puts some numbers behind this suspicion. It’s subscription only, but I’ll include a key quote:

  This doesn’t mean that walks are a bad thing; it just means that teams with a disproportionate percentage of their baserunners coming on walks will have a higher percentage of their baserunners left on base than teams whose baserunners come from hits.

  In Beane’s defense, I think he’s come to realize this. His acquisitions of Mark Kotsay and Jason Kendall the last two offseasons shows that he does appreciate players who put the ball in play. But if the rest of the current A’s roster can’t do the job, Billy Beane should go and find some players who can. Because that .286 percentage is simply unacceptable. When something doesn’t work, you try something else.
   

• Speaking of Jason Kendall, I am not much impressed with his defense. Half his throws to second base don’t even get there on the fly. Yesterday, he let two wild pitches go through his legs when he failed to turn his glove over and block the ball. And his hitting hasn’t been all that great, either. If Macha is serious about his “players write the lineup” mantra, he’s going to give Adam Melhuse some more chances to play.
   
• I’ve seen enough of Eric Byrnes. His swing is so screwed up now that his biggest strength offensively is the HBP. Give me Charles Thomas, Matt Watson, Andre Ethier…anybody.
   
• And finally, in the spirit of replacing things that don’t work with things that do, I’ll replace my jinx reverser with Cliff Corcoran’s.

  The A’s will get swept in Boston. The A’s won’t hit Wakefield or Arroyo at all while the Red Sox pound Haren and Saarloos. On Wednesday, Barry Zito will have more bad luck, as the A’s may get some baserunners against Matt Clement, but as usual, they won’t get a single clutch hit or productive out to drive in a run. Or as I said to Cliff Corcoran the other day when he predicted that Kevin Brown would give up 20 baserunners in a single inning against the A’s, “That may be true, but even if the A’s get 20 baserunners against Brown in one inning, they would still fail to score any runs.”

Cliff pulled the old reverse jinx trick by predicting an A’s sweep, thereby guaranteeing that it wouldn’t happen.

It totally negated my recipe trick, and the A’s went back to their pre-recipe-blog non-scoring ways, and lost 5-0.

Moreover, I think he’s up to some other evil trick at this very moment, so to counteract him, I’m throwing out a triple dose of recipes:

First, here’s where to get some jinx-removing root oil.

Then, we’ll use the classic Egg Jinx Removing Spell.

And to invoke the power of Motherhood, and to prevent my powers from crumbling away, I’ll throw in Mom’s No-Crumble Nutbread.

That, plus a solid dose of Rich Harden ought to do the trick.

The A’s beat the Yankees 6-3 in ten innings, but I’m not feeling pumped up about it like I usually do after beating them. This felt like a mid-August game between two teams in fourth place, not a tense battle between playoff-caliber clubs.

Barry Zito pitched well (although Macha left him in too long again), and the A’s got a couple of home runs (home runs? what’s that?) from Eric Byrnes and Bobby Kielty. But that’s about it for the highlights. The rest of the game was ugly.

Used to be that you had to play your best mistake-free game to beat the Yankees. But tonight, the A’s played sloppily, left a gazillion runners in scoring position again, and yet still won because the Yankees played even more sloppily than the A’s.

The key play was in the bottom of the eighth inning where Octavio Dotel threw a terrible pitch behind Alex Rodriguez, which glanced off the glove of Jason Kendall, who then threw out Jorge Posada trying to advance to third base with two outs in a tie game. Just a horrible pitch, but an even more horrible baserunning mistake.

Then the Yankees played defense like a bunch of Little Leaguers in the top of the 10th, and handed the A’s three runs. The A’s tried their best to slop the game back to the Yankees in the bottom of the 10th, walking the leadoff man and dropping a pop fly, but the Yankees failed to capitalize, and the A’s held on to win.

The Yankees failed to capitalize? I can’t remember ever saying that before. Something weird is going on here. First the Red Sox break their curse, and now the Yankees can’t get the lucky break they almost always seem to get. The Earth’s magnetic North Pole and South Pole must be flipping upside down or something.

Therefore, I hereby declare that the recipe of the day is Broccoli and Cornmeal Upside-down Cake. What could be more appropriate than that?

Yesterday, as I started my car, my radio was tuned to 610 AM, the A’s flagship station. 610AM has just switched from being an oldies station to religious (Christian) programming.

I have nothing against religious programming per se; some of my favorite films
and music albums explore the relationship between God and man. My problem is that most of it just descends into trite, annoying clichés.

I was expecting the worst, either some bland Christian pop music like “You Light Up My Life”, or some 700-Clubish “Democrats will burn in Hell” chatter. But I decided to keep an open mind and give the station a chance. To my surprise, I didn’t turn the dial; the announcer was reading a story about the death of Aaron Burr.

That certainly got my curiosity up. Awooon Buuuhh! Awooon Buuuhh! (Can anyone hear the name Aaron Burr anymore without thinking of that commercial?) I wondered, why would a religious station discuss Aaron Burr?

It turns out the Aaron Burr in question was Aaron Burr, Sr., not Awooon Buuuhh, Jr. who was only a year old when his father died.

The story being read was not about Burr or Buuuhh; it was a biography of Burr’s father-in-law (Buuuhh’s grandfather), Jonathan Edwards. Edwards succeeded Burr, Sr. as President of Princeton University in 1758. (His term was brief; Edwards died just months later in a failed smallpox immunization attempt.)

Jonathan Edwards was a Calvinist Puritan preacher in a time when Puritanism was fading in popularity. Like any good Puritan preacher, he could deliver an effective fire-and-brimstone story, such as Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God:

…you are thus in the Hands of an Angry God; ’tis nothing but his mere Pleasure that keeps you from being this Moment swallowed up in everlasting Destruction.

In Edwards’ era, Isaac Newton’s physics and John Locke’s philosophy were profoundly changing how people looked at the world God had created. Edwards, in his writings and sermons, attempted to merge these new ideas with his old Calvinist Puritan beliefs.

This, I suspect, is why the religious station was discussing the life of Jonathan Edwards. Edwards had many followers in his day, but over time, his philosophical theology faded along with Puritanism itself. But America is experiencing a bit of a neo-Puritan (i.e. Fundamentalist) revival these days, and his arguments now have a new audience who find them useful.

I knew nothing about any of this until I went home and looked up Edwards on the web. What fascinates me about this is that people in the 18th century were deep into the sort of beer-or-tacos, faith-or-rationalism debate that characterizes baseball today.

On the one hand, you have the old school: the 18th-century Puritans (21st-century scouts), who were deeply entrenched in a pre-scientific culture, had complete faith in their way of doing things, and utterly rejected the new knowledge. At the other end of the spectrum, you had those (some atheists and statheads) who rejected the old ideas as pure illogical nonsense, and would only tolerate rational arguments.

In between, you have a full spectrum of beliefs. There are some (Jonathan Edwards, Joe Morgan) who will acknowledge the new ideas as having some merit, yet still cling with a fierce determination to the old way of life. Others (Deists, Billy Beane) will acknowledge the mysteries to a small degree, but insist on behaving as if the universe is mostly rational. Most people fell somewhere in-between.

Interesting, too, that the most venomous debates were not between the purists on either end, but between the near-purists. We all know how much poison there is between the Joe Morgan camp and the Billy Beane camp. Similarly, Edwards had strong contempt for deists, who believe in God but not in miracles:

Edwards reveals the status of deists in his own mind when, in an unpublished sermon preached in 1731, he refers to “robbers, pirates and deists” with apologies to the robbers and pirates.

So don’t expect the scouts vs. stats debate to end any time soon. If the history of faith vs. reason has shown us anything, the argument could last for centuries.

When me say me want A’s to shake up things, me not mean replace old A’s with Bizarro A’s.

Old A’s park dry in May. Bizarro A’s park rainy. Old A’s score no runs, give up just a few. Bizarro A’s score lots of runs, give up even more.

Me not like. Me wanted Bizarro Beane to turn worthless diamond into valuable coal. Not turn worthless solid diamond into worthless diamond dust. It still worthless.

Me must learn to be careful what me ask for.

This recipe for kitty litter cake is the most disgusting thing I’ve seen in a long time. Aside from the A’s offense, of course.

The A’s got shut out through 5 2/3 innings by Chris Young tonight. That’s inexcusable. Not that Young can’t have a good day every now and then, but tonight wasn’t it. He wasn’t painting the corners. He was constantly falling behind in the count. He was throwing 3-1, 87mph hit-me pitches down the middle of the plate, and the A’s were fouling them off or popping them up. There are plenty of AA and AAA teams that wouldn’t have been shut out by Chris Young tonight.

Shutting down the A’s offense right now is incredibly simple: just throw the ball over the plate. Don’t walk anybody, and chances are, the A’s won’t hurt you.

The A’s were hitting like this in 2002, and in the middle of May, Billy Beane shook things up: he traded Jeremy Giambi, he demoted Carlos Pena and then traded him, too. They went on to win the division.

I’m sure Billy Beane is working the phones right now, seeing what his options are, so that perhaps in a week or three, he can do some shaking. Or perhaps, the A’s will wake up and start hitting by then, so a shakeup won’t be needed.

But a wakeup or a shakeup better come soon. I don’t want to spend the next five months watching hitting like this. Frankly, I’d rather eat kitty litter.

One of my favorite things on the web are the “Elsewhere” entries over on 2 Blowhards. I’d really like to flatter them, so here’s some imitation:

• Zachary Manprin didn’t like Eric Byrnes’ diving catch on Saturday.
   
• Over at Athletics Nation, they’re discussing an Eric Byrnes-for-Reggie Sanders rumor. I don’t know why St. Louis would do that. When you’re kicking butt like the Cardinals are, you don’t mess with your team.
   
• The latest BP Postseason Odds Report shows the A’s with a 29.4% chance of making the playoffs, slightly higher than the Angels’ 28.75% chance. But here’s the sad thing: the A’s have an average of 78 wins in their simulations, the Angels 77. If the West was won by a sub-.500 team, it would be truly pathetic.
   
• Rob McMillin expands on my list of satellite pictures of current ballparks, with a satellite tour of old ballparks.
   
• Meanwhile, Marine Layer has both satellite and ground-level tours of possible future ballpark sites for the A’s.
   

And finally, my four-year-old daughter offers her own satellite image of a future A’s ballpark, apparently named ‘Bank of America Field’:

Some comments from the architect:

• “I messed up on the batters boxes.”
• “Hatteberg is a really long word.”
• “Crosby is spelled ‘Crows Bye’. That’s really funny.”
• Her favorite recipe.

Philip Michaels offers this blog some recipe recommendations. I’m grateful, Philip. Although I’m not sure I can recommend the fish tacos. Isn’t that a Padres thing?

I didn’t see the A’s game today. Went with the family to a Tom Chapin concert. If you’re looking for good children’s music that won’t drive you insane with cliches, Tom Chapin’s the guy. You may disagree, but it’s a free country, and I am me, and you’re not the boss of my brain.

It was a fun, entertaining day. After the show, we got to meet Chapin and his fellow performer Michael Mark (whose claim to fame is writing the theme song for Entertainment Tonight), and they couldn’t have been nicer to the kids. And best of all, unlike the show at the Coliseum, we didn’t have to witness somebody tear up their collarbone.

I guess we’ll find out tomorrow how bad Nick Swisher is hurt. Swisher certainly hasn’t been hitting much better than any of the other outfielders. So it’s hard to say the A’s will be missing his bat all that much.

Saturday, I was at the game and watched Swisher play first base, giving Scott Hatteberg a day off. This role may be where Swisher is missed the most.

Swisher looked pretty comfortable around first base. Hatteberg wore down at the end of last year because the A’s had no adequate replacement at 1B. Durazo is a truly awful defensive first baseman. Kielty has played a little bit there, but I’m not sure he’s much better. Maybe Keith Ginter ought to start taking some grounders at first. Otherwise, if Hatteberg gets nicked up and needs a couple of days off, we might end up seeing Dan Johnson.

But I’m guessing the A’s will call up an outfielder, since none of them save Kotsay were hitting anyway. If the A’s MLB site is to be believed, Matt Watson is the only other outfielder currently on the 40-man roster, so I’d call him the favorite. On the other hand, it also says the 40-man roster only has 37 players on it, so it could be someone else, like Jermaine Clark, who is a bit more versatile defensively.

On the positive side from Sunday’s game: (a) the A’s won, and (b) Barry Zito pitched well.

I’m still have some optimism about Zito; he had one bad game against Tampa, but otherwise has been pitching with a lot of bad luck. He’s added a slurve, which he said on the post-game show today is really just his curveball thrown from a 10-to-4 instead of an 11-to-5 angle, which gives it a velocity in the upper 70s, instead of the high-60s-lower 70s with his curveball.

I’ve noticed this year that he’s had a much greater variety of speeds on his pitches than in previous years. Before, he was just a three-pitch, three-speed pitcher. Now he has a larger palette of speeds and pitches to paint with. His fastballs used to be 86-89mph; now it varies between 82-89. His off-speed stuff was always 68-73; now that range is 68-79.

I’ve always felt that Zito’s biggest problem is that didn’t have enough ways to get somebody out if one of his pitches wasn’t working. The more ingredients you have in your kitchen, the more creative you can be with your recipes.

It doesn’t look like he has quite mastered his new tools yet, but give him time. The old dog of the A’s pitching staff is still young enough at 26 to learn a few new tricks.

Today is May Day, when Socialists across the globe get out and demonstrate for a more equitable distribution of wealth.

I’m not a socialist, but perhaps I should demonstrate for a more equitable distribution of PECOTA percentiles. Only three A’s players are hitting above their 10% percentile projections for OPS:
 

Not fair! We demand equality! 50% percentiles for all!

I am grateful the A’s finished April with a 12-12 record and only one game out of first despite the injustice of Those Who Play Dice With The Universe. Otherwise, we might not just be protesting for justice. We might be calling for a revolution.

Thought I’d jot down my notes as I watch Tim Hudson take on Mark Mulder for the first time.

I have a soccer game at 6:30, but Mulder works quickly, so I might be able to watch the whole game. Of course, that’s what I thought the other day, too.

4:35pm: Hudson vs. Eckstein. Seen that before. Eckstein singles to left, as Brian Jordan trapped it.

4:38: Larry Walker, bunt single. Huh?

4:39: Pujols chases a hard sinker in the dirt and strikes out.

4:42: Hudson leaves a couple of pitches up and over the plate, and Edmonds and Rolen hit them hard. 3-0 Cardinals.

4:46: Hudson is having a hard time finding the happy zone between hittable pitches up and pitches too low. The low pitches aren’t called strikes, and the high pitches are moving toward the center of the strike zone. This is what happens when Hudson has a bad game.4-0 Cardinals.

4:47: Hudson makes a diving catch on a squeeze bunt and turns it into a double play. Web gem.

4:50: Mulder gets Furcal to ground out on an 0-2 splitter. That’s what Good Mulder looks like.

4:53: Mulder leaves a pitch up, and Jordan hits a deep fly to center. That’s what Bad Mulder looks like.

4:55: Franco lines a fastball up the middle, just like Giles did. Where’s Mulder’s forkball?

5:00: Molina makes a bad pickoff throw, runners move to 2nd and 3rd. Mulder throws the forkball, but Jones won’t chase it. Mulder leaves a 3-2 pitch way up high, and Jones singles to left. Some pitchers duel this has turned out to be. 4-2 Cardinals.

5:02: Mulder at bat. Mulder grounds out 3-1 on a 1-1 changeup. Hudson smiles at Mulder as their paths cross near first base.

5:07: 1-2-3 inning for Hudson. Looks like he found the happy zone.

5:11: Hudson bats against Mulder. Hudson loses his bat into the stands striking out on an 86-mph changeup. That’s gotta be worth a lot of bragging points for Mulder.

5:27: Brian Jordan takes a slider down the middle and hits a two-run homer. Tie game, 4-4.

5:29: Fly out to center, then a walk. This is vintage Bad Mulder. Fly balls and walks are rarities for Good Mulder.

5:35: Hudson gets a strike called below the knees on Grudzielanek. Hudson will be impossible to hit if he gets that call the rest of the night.

5:36: Grudz gets an emergency-swing double down the line. Lucky shot.

5:39: Mulder up with 1 out and runner on third. Infield in. Hudson almost hit Mulder with the first pitch. Perhaps to see if he’s squeezing.

5:42: Hudson strikes Mulder out with two cutters on the inside corner. I guess they figure Mulder’s arms are so long, he’ll have trouble getting around on the inside pitches.

5:43: Giles makes a great play to stop a grounder from going into right field. Inning over.

5:48: Mulder gets two groundouts in a 1-2-3 inning. That looks more like it.

5:51: Albert Pujols goes oppo. 6-4 Cardinals. It wasn’t even that bad a pitch; it was right on the outside corner. Maybe it was a bit too high, but Pujols is just awesome.

6:02: Hudson breaks his bat and grounds out back to Mulder. If you can pitch inside, so can I.

6:06: Boy, it looks like Marcus Giles has Mulder’s number. Single up the middle drives in Furcal. 6-5 Cardinals.

6:07: Mulder gets a double-play ball to get out of the inning.

6:13: Molina bunts the runner to second ahead of Mulder. Unless you’re gonna pinch hit for Mulder, that’s crazy.

6:14: Mulder looks for that inside pitch, and pulls it foul.

6:15: Hudson pitches away, and Mulder hits a line drive to left, but it’s caught.

6:20: We got through five, 6-5 Cards. Gotta run…

Curt Schilling wins!

Lou Piniella’s dislike for Modern Architecture is clearly a huge weakness. With my purple forcefield, I could easily kick his ass, too.

In fact, I’m the most kick-ass guy on all of baseballtoaster.com. Well, me and Mike Carminati. Mike, like me, is a giant robot. His computerized brain (presumably the size of a planet) can cause me a slight problem, but I have far superior strength. Plus, Mike is too busy being depressed about the fact that he’s about to be famous.

Otherwise, I can pound the other guys fairly easily. These guys might win once in a while against me:

• Alex Belth is a Human-Sized Bee that was Created by a Radioactive Accident, and controls Human Thought. His agility is superior, but his strength and intelligence dwarf mine.
• Score Bard also has better agility, but otherwise, he’s just a stupid ape.
• Will Carroll (a flying plant) can match my agility, but that’s it.

The rest of ’em just get smacked around, all the time:

• Alex Ciepley is Giant Blob that breathes Fire, Hovers Eerily, and has a Swirly Hypnotic Gaze. No hope against me.
• Cliff Corcoran is a Giant Ant that emits Ultrasonic Screams. And gets stomped on by Giant Robots.
• Derek Smart is quite similar to Lou Piniella, except that he seems to dislike cars instead of modern architecture.
• Jon Weisman? What’s the use of having webbed feet if you dissolve in water? No chance.
• Scott Long is easily confused and susceptible to electrical damage ‘Nuf said.

1. These two events, the former at a costume ball in Stockholm, the latter in Seattle, happened on the same date, 135 years apart. Not only that, the years have the same exact four digits.

2. She claims she was 55 days younger, but this cannot be verified. The documentation was lost or destroyed during the Nazi occupation.

3. Perhaps the creative urge with sports is genetic. One of his more popular songs was called “Lawn Tennis.”

4. His other film was, of course, one of the top-grossing films of all time. Lee Marvin, on the other hand, had no other films that year.

5. November 29, 1633, in Paris.

6. Vida Blue (twice), Bobby Valentine (twice), and Bob Oliver.

7. The game featured the fifth-to-last career home runs for two different hall-of-famers.

8. Joining Lou Gehrig, Al Kaline, Dave Winfield, and Tom Landry, among others.

9. It was the first overtime game in USFL history.

10. It featured the first female ape in outer space.

Curt Schilling claims that some Tampa Bay players are questioning the rationality of their manager’s beanball policies. In reply, Lou Piniella channels Brian “I am not an idiot” Sabean.

We won’t admit hearsay as evidence into this trial, so we don’t know whether Schilling’s claims are accurate or not. But we can present some evidence on Piniella’s behalf.

A new scientfic study (via Dianekes) has provided a mathematical model for the behavior known as “altruistic punishment”.

Altruistic punishers are willing to pay a personal cost to ensure that people cooperate. Darwinists have puzzled over how this behavior could have evolved, since you would think that the people willing to perform such punishment would have a reduced chance of surviving and reproducing than those who do not.

Eureka Alert summarizes the findings thusly:

To examine how altruistic punishment could take root in a society, James Fowler developed a mathematical model that simulates interacting behaviors in a society over time. He found altruistic punishers can enter a population of cooperators and noncooperators and change the dynamics of the group. Under certain conditions, altruistic punishment is so beneficial to the population that it will come to dominate the behavior of the group and keep noncooperators at bay.

These results may help to explain the origins of cooperation and punishment. Previous studies have shown that altruistic punishment stimulates the reward center in the brain, suggesting that humans may have physically or developmentally evolved this behavior.

So the self-policing behavior of beanball wars has several benefits:

• It improves the overall cooperative behavior in the group as a whole. It prevents non-cooperating people from taking advantage of those who cooperate. If the whole group is cooperating, you’re less likely to be a victim of a non-cooperator, as well.
• Altruistic punishers come to dominate the behavior of the group, essentially becoming the alpha males. (Chicks dig the team leader.)
• The brain is wired to make such altruistic punishment actually feel good. Them’s the rules and we like it that way.

Beanball wars are not necessarily an “idiotic” part of baseball culture; there’s a winning evolutionary strategy behind it. Pitchers who are willing to take the risks (ejection, fines, mound-charging) and throw at batters to “send a message”, as well as the managers who order such behavior, are playing a complex game, where only the fittest survive.