Baseball Toaster: The Griddle : Book Review: But Didn't We Have Fun

Rank	Team	W	L	PCT	Division
1	Chicago Cubs	97	64	.602	C1
2	Philadelphia	92	70	.568	E1
3	Los Angeles Dodgers	84	78	.519	W1
4	Milwaukee	90	72	.556	C2
5	New York Mets	89	73	.549	E2
6	Houston	86	75	.534	C3
7	St. Louis	86	76	.531	C4
8	Florida	84	77	.522	E3
9	Arizona	82	80	.506	W2
10T	Colorado	74	88	.457	W3
10T	Cincinnati	74	88	.457	C5
12T	Atlanta	72	90	.444	E4
12T	San Francisco	72	90	.444	W4
14	Pittsburgh	67	95	.414	C6
15	San Diego	63	99	.389	W5
16	Washington	59	102	.366	E5

American League

Rank	Team	W	L	PCT	Division
1	Los Angeles Angels	100	62	.617	W1
2	Tampa Bay	97	65	.599	E1
3	Chicago White Sox	89	74	.546	C1
4	Boston	95	67	.586	E2
5	New York Yankees	89	73	.549	E3
6	Minnesota	88	75	.540	C2
7	Toronto	86	76	.531	E4
8	Cleveland	81	81	.500	C3
9	Texas	79	83	.488	W2
10	Oakland	75	86	.466	W3
11	Kansas City	75	87	.463	C4
12	Detroit	74	88	.457	C5
13	Baltimore	68	93	.422	E5
14	Seattle	61	101	.377	W4

Random Game Callbacks

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So where is that book?

Personal favorites that I wrote

The Metro Area Battles

New York

W L GB

Yankees 89 73

Mets 89 73

Baltimore/DC

W L GB

X - Orioles 68 93

Nationals 59 102 9

Chicago

W L GB

X - Cubs 97 64

White Sox 89 74 9

LA/Orange County

W L GB

X - Angels 100 62

Dodgers 84 78 16

SF/Oakland

W L GB

X - Athletics 76 85

Giants 72 90 4.5

X - Clinched

So long and thanks for playing this year

1. Washington (8/31)
2. Seattle (9/1)
3. Pittsburgh (9/6) *
3. San Diego (9/6) *
5. Baltimore (9/8)
6. Oakland (9/8)
7. Atlanta (9/9)
8. Kansas City (9/9)
9. Cincinnati (9/10)
10. Texas (9/13)
11. Detroit (9/15)
12. San Francisco (9/17)
13. Colorado (9/18)
14. Cleveland (9/19)
15. Toronto (9/21)
16. New York Yankees (9/23)
17. St. Louis (9/23)
18. Florida (9/23)
19. Arizona (9/25)
20. Houston (9/26)
21. New York Mets (9/28)
22. Minnesota (9/30)
23. Chicago Cubs (10/4)
24. Milwaukee (10/5)
25. Chicago White Sox (10/6)
26. Los Angeles Angels (10/6)

* - Teams eliminated at same time

The last batter to reach on catcher's interference was ...

Seth McClung of Milwaukee by Koyie Hill of the Cubs on September 26, 2008.

FAQs

At least I think they should be.

Cycle alerts

Yellow alert - Player needs triple for cycle
Orange alert - Player needs double for cycle
Red alert - Player need single for cycle

If a player needs a home run for the cycle, the level of the alert varies depending upon the determination of the Cycle Detection Warning System, which is headquartered in Thief River Falls, Minnesota.

Syndication

About the Toaster

Baseball Toaster runs on some experimental software called Fairpole. It's still under development.

For more information, please visit the Fairpole blog, or read the FAQ.

Book Review: But Didn't We Have Fun

2008-05-23 06:00

by Bob Timmermann

Peter Morris, who has been publishing baseball history works at a fairly good rate in past years, (Game of Inches and Level Playing Fields), has another entry this year in But Didn't We Have Fun: An Informal History of Baseball's Pioneer Era, 1843-1870.

In this book, we get a look at baseball back when the game's rules were just being established. The game was becoming a sport. It was transforming itself from a recreational event to a competition. But the change in players' attitudes about how baseball should be played didn't happen overnight. Instead, there was a gradual transformation of the game to the game that we know today.

The years on each end mark the time when baseball's first rules are written down and widely publicized. These are the rules of the Knickerbocker Club of New York and Morris argues that they won the day, in part, because the club was very throrough about writing down events.

1870 marked the last year when there was no organized professional baseball league. In 1871, the National Association of Professional Baseball Players started play and the emphasis on baseball would be winning and not much else.

However, pioneer baseball wasn't always just a bunch of guys getting together on the village green for a glorified version of a modern day company softball game. Morris asserts that once there are written rules in a game, players quickly started looking for loopholes in the rules to exploit.

The classic case of this is one of baseball's first stars, Jim Creighton, who played for several clubs in the New York area right before the Civil War. Creighton trained hard with a steel ball so he could deliver a pitch as hard as possible under the rules of the day, which required an underhand throw with a stiff arm.

Creighton soon was throwing harder than any batter had seen. They flailed away at his pitches or at best popped them up. However, under the rules of the day, there were also no such things as balls or a strike zone. So batters decided to just wait out Creighton until he delivered a pitch to their liking. Morris recounts a game where Creighton threw over 300 pitches in three innings as batters waited him out for something they thought they could hit. (Creighton died in 1862 at the age of 21 of natural causes.)

There is a lot else to learn in the book. You can find out how the role of the umpire changed. The first umpires sat in a rocking chair with an umbrella for shade and was often given a glass of beer. Getting a game ball after a game was the ultimate prize in this era as they were hard to come by.

For most people who visit this blog, reading about baseball before the Civil War might seem to be incredibly arcane, but you can trace back the lineage of the sport we follow obsessively to a group of young New Yorkers who just wanted to get some fresh air and hit a ball around. And you can ask yourself: Is it still fun today? Isn't supposed to be?

Comments

2008-05-23 07:21:40

1. Johnny Nucleo

Ah, to spend a beautiful summer's day watching a baseball game while sitting in a rocking chair under an umbrella with a glass of cold beer. They had it all figured out back then.

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