Back to a Winning Strategy

Opening Music: The Impossible Dream (The Quest) by The Smothers Brothers

Recently, I've been making posts on things that none of my readers really care about, like my votes for baseball's most valuable players, and our getting another cell phone. This post is all about getting back to the blog's core competencies: family photos! Here are some recent ones:

End of the 2005 Biking Season

Opening music: Losing it by Rush.

I have a few odds and ends things to write about. The first (with the demise of daylight savings time) will be the 2005 bicycle (and motorcycle) mileage report. For 2005, according to my odometers, I rode 1,001 miles (1,611 km) on the bicycle, and rode a lowly 223 miles (359 km) on the motorcycle.

Year	Distance Bicycled (miles)	Distance Motorcycled (miles)
2002	1168
2003	855
2004	700	410
2005	1004	223

If I ride any more before the end of the year, I'll update this page.

Closing music: Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone? by Ted Leo and the Pharmicists

Use a Q, Get a Fine

Here's a news story worth writing a joke about:

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20 fined for using letters W and Q

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) -- A Turkish court has fined 20 people for using the letters Q and W [...].The court [...] fined each of the 20 people 100 new lira ($75.53) for holding up the placards, written in Kurdish, [...]

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For the whole story, click here.

Knowing what I know about Turkey (which isn't much), I'm sure that it's more of an anti-Kurd thing than a real aversion to the letters Q and W. But it would be kind of funny if only it didn't reflect so poorly on freedom of speech and minority rights in the country. (Next, I'll try to open a business in Quebec, put a sign in English out front, and see what happens.)

Jonathan Hurst is 39 Today

Today is Jonathan Hurst's 39th birthday. Hurst has the distinction of being the only player in major league baseball history born on 20 October 1966, so he's the only player in MLB history turning 39 today.

Hurst appeared in 3 games for the Expos in 1992, and in 7 for the Mets in 1994. More recently, he has been spotted pitching for the Brother Elephants of Taiwan's Chinese Professional Baseball League.

Here's Hurst in his younger days with the Mets:


And here's a more recent photo with the Brother Elephants:

Geography Games at Mousebreaker.com

Check out Geo Genius USA and Geo Genius Europe at Mousebreaker.com. On my second try, I scored like 8192 or so on the USA one, and 3161 (which ranked me #25) for the European version. In both, you need to quickly drag and drop state or country names at their locations on a blank map. The annoying things is that places like Luxemburg or Rhode Island are too small for me to get the label in the right place on the first click.

And, if you think you're really smart, try County Countup! I think I scored 52 on that one.

Feeling Morbid Again

I would say that it's because it's close to Halloween, but I think the real reason is because it's the time of year when I need to make my work-related insurance choices for 2006.

Through work, I can get $X per child of child term life insurance for 2006 for a small payroll deduction. To "break even" for one person, he or she would have to have a one-in-whatever chance of dying during the year. But, in my case I have more than one kid. So the odds make it even more likely for it to be a financial benefit.

Someone needs to do these calculations, or there could be no insurance industry. But I hate doing it for my own family.

Maybe I'm approaching it wrong. I'm not really considering financial hardship should a child die -- I'm thinking of it more like an investment or even a lottery ticket. What are the odds of hitting the jackpot or striking it rich or whatever? Yuck.

My 2005 Internet Baseball Awards Ballot

There are still a few hours left to vote in the 2005 Internet Baseball Awards, now administered at BaseballProspectus.com. Since 1991, the IBA has been the real selector of the real baseball MVPs, top pitchers, etc. (Seriously, I feel that the IBA voters generally do a better job than do the "real" voters.) For more information on the IBA or to vote, click here.

Before I announce my votes, let me say that I don't consider the team's performance when ranking the players. I'm looking for the best players, and not the "best players on the best teams". Also, as a caveat, I don't really feel comfortable putting pitchers in my MVP rankings. I do it, but I feel as I'm just tossing one in there.

So, without additional justification, here's my ballot:

National League Cy Young Award

1. Roger Clemens
2. Andy Pettitte
3. Dontrell Willis
4. Chris Carpenter
5. Roy Oswalt

American League Cy Young Award

1. Johan Santana
2. Mark Buehrle
3. Kevin Millwood
4. Bartolo Colon
5. Jon Garland

National League Most Valuable Player

1. Derrek Lee
2. Albert Pujols
3. Jason Bay
4. Morgan Ensberg
5. Chase Utley
6. Carlos Delgado
7. Roger Clemens
8. David Wright
9. Todd Helton
10. Miguel Cabrera
    

American League Most Valuable Player

1. Alex Rodriguez
2. Mark Teixeira
3. Manny Ramirez
4. David Ortiz
5. Travis Hafner
6. Michael Young
7. Johan Santana
8. Brian Roberts
9. Vladimir Guerrero
10. Jason Giambi

(I'm less interested in "Manager of the Year" and "Rookie of the Year", so I don't vote on those.)

Comment away!

Sweet Lou Shouldn't Have Quit His Night Job

Lou Pinella has now been a major league manager for all or parts of 19 seasons. (Wow. That many aleady?) Before then, he spent 18 seasons as a big league player, debuting before even I was born. I'm sure he's forgotten like ten times as much baseball as I'll ever know. This said, after listening to him helping to broadcast the baseball playoffs, here's hoping that he finds another managerial job in '06.

Is it just me, or is he awful as a broadcaster?

Strange Spot For a Hurricane

I usually track the status of Atlantic hurricanes, possibly more than is necessary from this landlocked position. Hurricane/Tropical Storm/Tropical Depression Vince had quite an unusual track, and is apparently the first recorded tropical storm (since 1851 at least) to make landfall in Iberia.

Could a Great Lakes hurricane be far behind?

High School Reunions

It's been an undisclosed number of years since I graduated from high school and tonight there was a scheduled formal high school reunion. I have always attended this sort of thing in the past, but I didn't go to this one. There are really two reasons for this:

1. I'm busier now. Not only do I have my own activities, my kids also now have things to do. I suppose I could have missed my son's football game today (or hit the road immediately following it), but it didn't seem worth the effort.
2. It doesn't seem to be a high priority for the folks I'd like to see at a reunion. I figure that the people I would most want to see are the people that I already keep in touch with. A few months ago, I e-mailed all of my fellow classmates that I could remember seeing, speaking to, or writing within the past 5 years (not counting those from alumni band). I basically said, "Let me know if you're going to the reunion. I'll go if you do." Nobody said that they were going to attend the reunion. I'd suspect that maybe people were trying to avoid me, but they didn't attend previous reunions either.

I've heard people say, "Why should I go to something like a reunion? I see all the friends I want to see already." For me, it's more like, "Why should I go to the reunion? All the friends I want to see won't be there anyway."

No offence meant to those that were there. As I said above, I'm thinking of people I've seen in the past 5 years outside of alumni band. And I did attend alumni band this year after missing it in 2004. One high school thing in the course of a few weeks is enough.

Winning Going Away

In August, I wrote an entry on the progress of my Fantasy Baseball team. Back then, I had been in first place for a few weeks, and was wondering how long it could last. Well, the answer turned out to be, for the entire rest of the season. I don't think a day went by since that post where I was out of first place, and it never got really close. More recently, my lead had been increasing, and the lead at the end of the season may be just about the biggest all year.

Why did I do so well? I suppose (in a 13-team league) drafting David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, and Andruw Jones didn't hurt the power department, and the bullpen was anchored by Mariano Rivera, Billy Wagner, and Danys Baez.

If you'll excuse me for a moment,

Just a Little Glass

2005 Dave Spiwack League Champions

Here are the detailed final standings:


Here're my team's final batting statistics:


And here are the pitchers:

We're Now Wireless

It took more than a week, but the phone number port (of our wired phone to our new wireless phone) has gone through. We'll have to see how this works out. If it doesn't work well, I suppose we could always get a new wireline home phone for $24/month or whatever.

Call us at home and see if it goes through!

Inverted Spectra and the '05 Indians

Has there ever been a team in baseball history that had so much of its offence up the middle defensively, and were so weak offensively on the corners?

Here's the '05 Indian defensive regulars from best hitter (OPS) to worst.

1) Peralta, SS
2) V Martinez, C
3) Sizemore, CF
4) Crisp, LF
5) R Belliard, 2B
6) Broussard, 1B
7) Blake, RF
8) A Boone, 3B

You would expect the following to be the offensive order, from best to worst. (See Bill James on the defensive spectrum.)

1B - LF - RF - 3B - CF - 2B - SS - C

The Indians' order is this:

SS - C - CF - LF - 2B - 1B - RF - 3B

I suppose this is a good thing, as I'm sure it's easier to find a good-hitting 1B or RF than a ace starting pitcher or top-hitting SS.