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Fifth Third Park, Toledo (MLB #23 - We'll Always Have Toledo)

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  Most people wouldn’t think that Toledo would be one of the stadiums we’d be looking forward to the most in our five-year quest, but it was. This was the 45 th stadium we’ve been to, and the first one where Kerry has gone out of her way to buy some team-branded merchandise (other than souvenir plastic margarita glasses). Note the Mud Hens logo on her new shirt. Moreover, in many ways, it more than lived up to our expectations of an enjoyable evening. In fact, if we have a more enjoyable evening just hanging out at a baseball game, particularly a minor league game, in this five-year project, I’ll be surprised.   There are two things that make the Toledo Mud Hens special, particularly for Kerry. The less important one is that some of Kerry’s earliest memories are from Toledo, although she hasn’t been here in over 60 years (yes, we’re that old). Her father got a Master’s degree in Math from Bowling Green State University (he went on to get a PhD, and become a college prof...
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Comerica Park, Detroit (The ball-strike challenge system is a welcome improvement - Too bad they got it wrong)

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    With the ABS (Automatic Ball and Strike) challenge system going into place this year, Major League Baseball has taken a huge step forward to make sure that the outcomes of games are decided by the actions of the players, rather than the umpires. It’s too bad they did it wrong. The ABS challenge system The way the ABS challenge system works is that after every pitch where the umpire calls a ball or strike (i.e., every pitch on which the batter doesn’t swing), there is an opportunity for a challenge. But the challenge has to be made “immediately,” and can only be made by the batter, pitcher and catcher, by tapping their cap or helmet. In practice, I’ve seen few pitchers make challenges, so it’s really the batter or the catcher. If there’s a challenge, a graphic shows up on the scoreboard, which shows the trajectory of the ball, and then shows where it is in the strike zone. An example is here , or a set of stills from the process is shown below (the image above is re...
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Comerica Park, Detroit (MLB #22 - The season unraveling)

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    Few seasons play out exactly as a team had hoped. After all, every team hopes to win the World Series, and only one out of the 30 will do so. Every season has ups and downs, but many times, a season will unravel, for reasons that might or might not have been foreseen. This evening, we watched two teams whose seasons may have both unraveled in the last 10 days. Boston Red Sox – firing the manager The Boston Red Sox made the playoffs last year. Over the winter , they lost one of their best hitters, Alex Bregman, to the Cubs via free agency, but they thought that they had improved their pitching and defense, so they thought they might be better this year than last. Instead, they started out by winning only 10 of their first 27 games, putting them in the American League East. So they fired not only manager Alex Cora, but also five of their coaches. It was an ignominious end for Cora, whose tenure with the Red Sox started so well – in his first season, 2018, the Red So...
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