I’m a sports fan, and I “collect” stadiums (stadia?). Especially major league baseball, NFL football, and NHL hockey. My goal, before I die, is to see a baseball game in the home stadium of every MLB team. It would be an added bonus if I could do the NHL and NFL venues, but right now, I’m focusing primarily on baseball.

Problem is, I keep forgetting where I’ve been, and losing count. Therefore, mostly for my own reference (and because I expect few others to be interested), I’m posting a list of venues attended below the fold. I’ve ordered them in roughly the order in which I first visited them, to the best of my ability to recall.

However, if you have comments concerning favorite (or least favorite) venues, feel free to leave them.

MLB: (20 venues in 15 cities for 17 home teams [one since moved]; 16 of current 30 teams, 53% complete)

1. Milwaukee County Stadium, Milwaukee Brewers (Defunct)
2. New Comiskey Park, Chicago White Sox
3. Riverfront Stadium, Cincinnati Reds (Defunct)
4. Bank One Ballpark, Arizona Diamondbacks
5. Olympic Stadium, Montreal (Defunct)
6. Miller Park, Milwaukee Brewers
7. Coors Field, Colorado Rockies
8. Great American Ball Park, Cincinnati Reds
9. (Old) Busch Stadium, St. Louis Cardinals (Defunct)
10. Wrigley Field, Chicago Cubs
11. Tropicana Field, Tampa Bay Devil Rays (Shithole)
12. Ameriquest Field, Texas Rangers
13. (New) Busch Stadium, St. Louis Cardinals
14. AT&T Park, San Francisco Giants
15. McAfee Coliseum, Oakland A’s
16. Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia, Phillies
17. Kaufman Stadium, Kansas City, Royals
18. Fenway Park, Boston, Red Sox
19. Yankees Stadium, New York (Bronx), Yankees
20. Shea Stadium, New York (Queens), Mets

NHL: (6 venues in 6 cities, 6 home teams, 20% complete)

1. The Arena, Carolina Hurricanes
2. United Center, Chicago Blackhawks
3. Fleet Center, Boston Bruins
4. Gaylord Entertainment Center, Nashville Predators
5. Air Canada Centre, Toronto Maple Leafs
6. HP Pavilion, San Jose Sharks (Playoff game)

NFL: (6 venues in 5 cities, 4 home teams)

1. Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans Saints (Pre-season)
2. Milwaukee County Stadium, Green Bay Packers (Defunct)
3. Tampa Stadium, Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Defunct)
4. Lambeau Field, Green Bay Packers
5. Riverfront Stadium, Cincinnati Bengals (Defunct)
6. Paul Brown Stadium, Cincinnati Bengals (Pre-season)

NBA: (1 venue)

1. Bradley Center, Milwaukee Bucks

IHL/AHL: (2 venues in 2 cities)

1. Bradley Center, Milwaukee Admirals
2. Riverfront Coliseum, Cincinnati Cyclones

PCL (AAA): (1 venue)

1. Autozone Park, Memphis Redbirds

Southern League (AA): (1 venue)

1. Joe Davis Stadium, Huntsville Stars

NCAAF Div 1: (1 venue, 0 home teams)

1. Liberty Bowl (Southern Miss vs. Utah, and Boise State vs. Louisville)

NCAAF Div 3: (1 venue, 1 home team)

1. Van Male Field, Carroll Pioneers

This is the guy whose endorsement McCain actively sought out.

UPDATE: I don’t know what’s gotten into Bill Hall lately, but I like it!

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.

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.

But this makes me wonder: What is the rule here? Is there one at all?

UPDATE: In response to this very incident, a new rule was drafted: the pitcher must declare which hand he’s going to throw with first. The batter can then respond by declaring which side to hit from. Each may change sides once during the at-bat, but only after the first pitch is thrown, from the side originally declared by the pitcher. It’s worth noting that this is exactly the opposite of what our resident baseball expert digglahhh told us in comment #5.

Example 1: Runner on first, batter grounds to the shortstop, who throws to second, getting a force out. The second baseman chooses not to throw to first, or throws too late. Fielder’s choice, clearly.

Example 2: Runner on first, batter grounds to third. The runner gets a good jump and the third baseman isn’t sure he can get the throw to second in time, so he throws to first and gets the force there. My guess: Not fielder’s choice, just 5-3.

Discuss.

P.S.: I’m thinking of going to Huntsville this weekend to go see a Stars game. Has anyone been? Any thoughts what to expect?

Massachusetts is now in the process of repealing the racist and obsolete law that Mitt Romney invoked to continue to limit marriage rights for gays after the state legislature removed the overt bar to marriage in the law. Until now, gay couples - but not heterosexuals - could not get married in Massachusetts unless they were official residents of the state, as the result of an old Jim Crow law specifying that couples from out of state could not get married “if their marriage would be illegal in their home state” - a reference to anti-miscegenation laws in southern states. The Supreme Court has long since invalidated legal prohibitions on inter-racial marriage, and the law has never been invoked since then, but was never officially appealed repealed. When gays won the right to marriage equality, the existing anti-equality law was triggered again, so now the law only applies to gays. Romney and his right-wing supporters, happy for any form of discrimination they can still call their own, used it to prevent marriages for gay couples from other states. Now that MA has a decent governor again, they’re working to correct certain oversights.

Interestingly, the article implies (though perhaps not intentionally) that the legislature only acted after marriage equality was recognized in California without a discriminatory clause, and New York state announced it would recognize out of state marriages (ironically, without actually providing equality for in-state ones). That creates a huge pressure for New York couples to seek marriages in California or Canada, to claim equality back in New York. With full marriage equality available in Massachusetts, NY couples can get it done there much more easily than in California, representing a potential revenue stream of more than $100 million over just a few years’ time. Was MA really acting to end discrimination, or just jumping on a lucrative westward-bound bandwagon? Hard to say, but it underscores the dangers of leaving your liberties in other people’s hands.

Either way, great news, again, from Massachusetts. Step by step, state by state, one of the ugliest forms of open discrimination still remaining in this country fades into the growing trash heap of conservative history. Every day, hundreds of new legal gay couples are created, and thousands of people see their stupid fears and fantasies exploded by the simple, mundane reality of equality in their states, cities, and neighborhoods. By the time the planned hate amendment referendum comes up in California this winter, there will be tens of thousands of gay couples married and living in equality in that state - and California is not going to vote to forcibly divorce them all simply out of spite. The other states will follow suit, as their own citizens marry and demand recognition of their rights. With two states now actively offering to all citizens a form of legal equality that they can take back to their homes, there will be a flood of legally married gay couples across the country not merely challenging the legal discrimination they face, but forcing their neighbors to admit that it’s their own friends and family members they are hurting for no reason.

It’s over. The haters have lost, faster even than I imagined. The bigots are now doing nothing more than fighting a rear-guard action to see how long they can continue destroying at least some lives, somewhere. They’ll succeed in that - they’re good at it. Jim Crow taught them how to evade and undermine legal equality with a fierce and savage cunning, and they haven’t forgotten. If we don’t get a decent Supreme Court, it could be that the last state to hold out for discrimination could go for decades before giving up. But that’s all just trapped-animal raving. As far as the nation’s choice between equality and bigotry is concerned, and notwithstanding some early and painful victories by well-organized bigots, it’s over.