July 21st, 2008
UPDATE: I’ve added some baseball-related humor here.
OK, I’m confused. Consider the following inning:
- First batter gets a base hit; advances to second on a balk. Runner on first, nobody out.
- Second batter lays down a sac bunt, advancing the runner to third. One out.
- Third batter grounds out to third, runner stays put. Two out.
- Fourth batter gets a base hit, first batter scores. One run in, runner on first, two out.
- Fifth batter hits a triple, fourth batter scores. Two runs in, runner on third, still two out.
- While sixth batter is up, pitcher throws a wild pitch, fifth batter scores. Three runs in, two out.
- Sixth batter grounds out to second. Three outs.
For that inning, how would you score the pitcher’s line, in terms of runs, earned runs, hits, and errors?
Now consider another inning, same pitcher throwing:
- First batter gets a base hit. Runner on first, nobody out.
- Second batter is hit by a pitch. Runners on first and second, nobody out.
- Third batter lays down a sac bunt to third, runners advance. The first baseman drops the throw from third, and the ball rolls behind him. First batter scores. Runners on first and second, nobody out.
- Fourth batter pops out foul to the catcher. First and second, one out.
- Fifth batter strikes out looking. First and second, two out.
- Sixth batter flies out to deep center. Inning over.
How would you score the line for that inning?
Here’s how I did it:
First hypothetical inning: 1.0 IP, 3R, 3ER, 3H, 0K, 0BB
Second hypothetical inning: 1.0 IP, 1R, 0ER, 1H, 1HK, 0BB, 1HB
Why do I ask? Because these examples a real game, and the official scorekeeper differed from me. His final score showed the pitcher with 4R (which I had) and 2 ER, one fewer than I had. I’m looking all over the place for the second unearned run, and I can’t find it. Digg?
For reference, here’s the box score and the play-by-play. I’m concerned with the bottom of the fifth and the bottom of the sixth.
Categories: Blegging, MLB/MiLB, Sports |
21 Comments
July 21st, 2008
According to Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria, Obama is the “conservative” when it comes to foreign policy, and McCain is the “liberal”:
Over the course of the campaign against Hillary Clinton and now McCain, Obama has elaborated more and more the ideas that would undergird his foreign policy as president. What emerges is a world view that is far from that of a typical liberal, much closer to that of a traditional realist. It is interesting to note that, at least in terms of the historical schools of foreign policy, Obama seems to be the cool conservative and McCain the exuberant idealist.
…snip…
Obama rarely speaks in the moralistic tones of the current Bush administration. He doesn’t divide the world into good and evil even when speaking about terrorism. He sees countries and even extremist groups as complex, motivated by power, greed and fear as much as by pure ideology. His interest in diplomacy seems motivated by the sense that one can probe, learn and possibly divide and influence countries and movements precisely because they are not monoliths. When speaking to me about Islamic extremism, for example, he repeatedly emphasized the diversity within the Islamic world, speaking of Arabs, Persians, Africans, Southeast Asians, Shiites and Sunnis, all of whom have their own interests and agendas.
Obama never uses the soaring language of Bush’s freedom agenda, preferring instead to talk about enhancing people’s economic prospects, civil society and—his key word—”dignity.” He rejects Bush’s obsession with elections and political rights, and argues that people’s aspirations are broader and more basic—including food, shelter, jobs. “Once these aspirations are met,” he told The New York Times’s James Traub, “it opens up space for the kind of democratic regimes we want.” This is a view of democratic development that is slow, organic and incremental, usually held by conservatives.
Obama talks admiringly of men like Dean Acheson, George Kennan and Reinhold Niebuhr, all of whom were imbued with a sense of the limits of idealism and American power to transform the world. “In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative,” wrote Larissa MacFarquhar in her profile of him for The New Yorker. “There are moments when he sounds almost Burkean. He distrusts abstractions, generalizations, extrapolations, projections. It’s not just that he thinks revolutions are unlikely: he values continuity and stability for their own sake, sometimes even more than he values change for the good.”
…snip…
Ironically, the Republicans now seem to be the foreign-policy idealists, labeling countries as either good or evil, refusing to deal with nasty regimes, fixating on spreading democracy throughout the world and refusing to think in more historical and complex ways. “I don’t do nuance,” George W. Bush told many visitors to the White House in the years after 9/11. John McCain has had his differences with Bush, but not on this broad thrust of policy. Indeed it is McCain, the Republican, who has put forward some fanciful plans, arguing that America should establish a “League of Democracies,” expel Russia from the Group of Eight industrialized countries and exclude China from both groups as well.
The whole thing is worth the read. Cross-posted at SayUncle and TennesseeFree.
Categories: Foreign Policy, Politics |
93 Comments
