Reports of the 300-Game Winner's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

With Randy Johnson’s 300th win on Thursday night, sports columns and radio shows are rampart with the speculation that he may be the last 300 game winner for the foreseeable future, if ever. At first glance, they seem correct – 46 year old Jamie Moyer is the next closest with 250 wins. Other prime pitchers seem too old with too few wins: Andy Pettitte (220 wins; 37 years old); Pedro Martinez (214; 37); Roy Halladay (140; 32); Roy Oswalt (131; 31); CC Sabathia (122; 28)

But, when looking at the history of 300 game winners since 1982, when Gaylord Perry became the first to reach the mark in nearly 20 years, hope begins to emerge. Even Andy Pettitte and Pedro Martinez, who may seem near the end of their careers at 37, has more wins than Randy Johnson did at that age, and also more than Phil Niekro.

To be sure, Randy Johnson and Phil Niekro were quite a bit behind the power curve compared to other 300 game winners of the era, but they made it. Their careers also started later than other 300 game winners, perhaps allowing for them to pitch further into their 40s as well. But, when one looks at some of the younger pitchers, there are a few promising candidates. Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt both are on pace with at least 3 other 300 game winners, as are Mark Buehrle, Johan Santana and Barry Zito.

Just from the perspective of wins vs. age, the best candidate is CC Sabathia, who has 122 wins at 28 years of age. That would put him ahead of the pace for Randy Johnson, Tom Glavine, Roger Clemens, Steve Carlton, Nolan Ryan, Don Sutton, Phil Niekro and Gaylord Perry. Indeed, the only recent 300 game winners he is not ahead of are Greg Maddux and Tom Seaver.

To be sure, he, and any of the others are still a long way away from the mark, need to stay healthy and need continued success. It may seem like a long shot for any of these pitchers to reach that mark. But it most have seemed like a long shot in 2000 when 36 year old Randy Johnson wrapped up his 13th major league season still more than 20 games short of 200 wins.

Language Foul of the Day

I just read an article about a man who "organized an impromptu pillow fight." Really? It wasn't very "impromptu" then, was it?

Best National Anthem Renditions

I just saw on the Time website that they had a list of the 10 worst performances of the National Anthem. I don't have quite the readership of Time, but I felt compelled to make a list of my favorite National Anthem performances. It's amazing how many of them are Super Bowl performances.

I've only listed 8, but it's getting late. They're in no particular order, except Whitney Houston, who is at the top.

- Whitney Houston

- Marvin Gaye

- Jimi Hendrix

- Faith Hill

- Beyonce

- Mariah Carey

- Carrie Underwood

- Combined Choirs from the US Naval Academy, US Air Force Academy, US Military Academy at West Point and US Coast Guard Academy

Whither Language?

I'm no Henry Higgins, or any sort of student of language, but I have been wondering lately what the English (or American) language will sound like in a hundred years. I recently got a Twitter account, which is an amusing little service (though of minimal use to me personally, some, like Gary Vaynerchuk, seem to be using it to great effect). The thing about Twitter is that one is limited to messages of 140 characters.

That got me thinking about the other pressures we have to compress our messages into the fewest words. Cell phone text messages are similarly limited; TV sound bites force public figures to over simplify their message; and the sheer volume of information available to people on the web reward those able to get their point across quickly and efficiently, if not comprehensively.

So, what does that mean for language structure? Our language patterns obviously change fairly rapidly, and to a more significant extent than just the shift in popular slang. Backed up by no research whatsoever, it seems to me that 50 to 75 years is about the length of time it takes for significant style changes to occur. Movie dialogue and political speeches from the 40s and 50s is decidedly different than today, to say nothing of the 1860s or 1770s.

It seems that the pressures of information flow will force us to strip language down to its bear bones, ensuring the essential meaning is communicated quickly as one may not have the opportunity to get further. Americans in general have the reputation of going straight at the heart of a topic, compared to other cultures who approach issues more leisurely. It may be that those cultures may have more of a language adjustment in the near term than we will. (a sampling of the latest Twitter messages often reveals at least a couple posts in Japanese and Chinese, and sometimes in languages I don't even recognize)

In all, I hope that we will find some sort of balance between the need to quickly share information with the benefits of being able to fully explain context, and the beauty of well written or well spoken words.



P.S.- For those disappointed in my lack of posting lately, I would like to highlight the "no periodicity" clause of my blog introduction. Sure, I'd like to be inspired more often, but such is life.

Trivia for the Night

Going into tonight's game, the Cubs and Dodgers have met 2,024 times. The series is tied 1,012 - 1,012. They had never met in a post season game.

They Don't Do Nostalgia Like They Used To

I’m not a Yankees fan by any means, but as I am sitting here watching the final game in Yankee Stadium, I must say I am very disappointed that ESPN failed to show any of the pregame festivities. It seems like it would have been easy to shift SportsCenter over to ESPN2 and get a nice ratings boost from all the baseball fans looking to relive a little history. (Or perhaps I would be extremely disappointed once again in the stark realities of America’s collective taste and find out that they did do that study and found that people would prefer to watch highlights from NFL week 3 rather than highlights of 85 years of baseball’s most prestigious venue)

Without even thinking too hard, I come up with Ruth hitting the first home run at the stadium, Gehrig’s farewell speech (not to mention his consecutive games streak only recently broken), the only perfect game in the World Series, Jackie Robinson stealing home on Yogi during the World Series (though Yogi would argue), 26 Championships (plus however many World Series that the Yankees lost), the first time in baseball history where a team came from three games down in a seven game series (against the Yankees, but the final drama played out in Yankee Stadium) and the emotional World Series after 9/11.

So, I think it would have been worth and hour of ESPN's time to let baseball fans around the country share in the pregame ceremonies.

To come full circle, here are some of the first and last stats for Yankee Stadium. Hopefully Wrigley and Fenway will stay around for many years to come.

(Firsts shamelessly copied from Dugout Central)
First Game: April 18, 1923
Score: Yankees 4, Red Sox 1
First Pitch by: Bob Shawkey (Yankees)
First Batter: Chick Fewster (Red Sox)
First Hit: George Burns (Red Sox; no, not that George Burns, but he could have been, the late actor was 27 at the time)
First Home Run: Babe Ruth
First Error: Babe Ruth


Last Game, Sept 21, 2008
Score: Yankees 7, Orioles 3
Last Home Run: Jose Molina (Yankees)
Last Run Scored: Brett Gardner (Yankees)
Last Hit: Jason Giambi (Yankees)
Last Pitch by: Mariano Rivera (Yankees)
Last Batter: Brian Roberts (Orioles)

China Olympic History

One thing I really enjoy about my family is how intellectually curious everyone is. In a comment to my last post, my ever-inquisitive sister-in-law asked "Say, here's a question, why did China not participate in the [Summer] Olympics during the 30+ years prior to the 1984 LA Olympics??"
Wow, here I am, someone who eats up all sorts of China stuff and I had no idea there was such a gap. That, of course, instigated a spate of internet research to find out what the history was. Which is a fascinating thing in itself when you're researching the history of regime that controls things as tightly as the Chinese. You can go for the official version with the usual biases, random articles that seem helpful, but you're not really sure of the quality / accuracy, if they have an agenda or what it is, wikipedia entries that could use a little grammar help, the Americanized version (i.e. many pictures and few words), etc..
It's a muddled history, depending on which source you read. Ah, if I only had primary sources! But, I'm not quite up to that level of research on this topic tonight.
Anyway depending on which source you read, here are some Chinese Olympic highlights

1896: The IOC either does or does not extend and invite to the Qing dynasty to participate in the first Olympics. If they do get an invite, the Qing dynasty does not reply.

1932: The government in Manchuria was going to send two athletes, but one of them(Liu Changchun) refused to represent the Japanese puppet regime, and was then sponsored by the Chinese nationalist government. The other athlete (Yu Xiwei) either was arrested by the Japanese or also attended the games. I go with the first option, as he is not mentioned in the official version of the history, and if a 2nd Chinese athlete had spurned the Japanese, I'm sure the PRC would mention it.

1952: China attends for the first time as the "People's Republic of China" (though arrives too late to compete due to political disputes as to whether to invite Taiwan or China) A cut from the "official version" shows you why I love reading propaganda: "With the overthrow of the Kuomintang government, which was rotten to the core, the People's Republic of China was established in the next year. Paying great attention to the people's health and the cause of sport, the new regime adopted a positive attitude toward the global Olympic Movement."

1956: Versions of this are pretty darn muddled, but suffice it to say that the whole "one China" question raises it's head. It appears to me that the PRC boycotted the games since they included athletes from the Republic of China (Taiwan). PRC-slanted histories say the IOC banned them from the games or kicked them out of the IOC in favor of Taiwan, but my impression is that their logic is that since the IOC tolerated the presence of Taiwan, they "forced" the principled PRC to withdraw, which is in their view, being banned.

1980: The PRC rejoins Olympic competition at Lake Placid following a compromise where Taiwan will compete under "Chinese Taipei", using a special flag, rather than their national flag. However, they boycott the Summer Olympics in the USSR, along with other countries, due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

1984: The PRC rejoins the summer competition. Actually, since the 1952 team was the first PRC team, and arrived too late to compete, and the 1956 team boycotted on the eve of the games, this is really the first team from the PRC to compete in the Summer Games.

Anyway, there is a brief history of China in the Olympics for everyone. It may even be mostly accurate! ;)