The Daily Dose/August 25, 2022
By Gaylon Kent – America’s Funniest Guy™
Leading Off
Notes from around our human experience.
TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME: Baseball, of course, has changed and not necessarily for the better and attendance continues its decade-and-a-half decline and TV viewers continue to ignore the postseason. This is hardly a bulletin, though, as it has always evolved, just like other sports have. Usually, these changes have been embraced, but the game is not as much fun to watch now as it used to be.
Get Your Official Daily Dose Policy Right Here: Baseball’s problems can be traced to one thing: the demise of the complete game. What used to happen about a quarter of the time in the 1970s has been going down ever since and it’s to the point now where only one percent of big league games feature a pitcher going the distance and that’s rounding up.
Thanks, Guys: This tragedy can be laid directly at the door of the pitch counts and innings limits that are now standard in youth and other amateur leagues. By the time a kid signs a professional contract, they are unable to pitch more than a few innings a game.
Dry, Technical Matter: Teams have averaged over four pitchers per game since 2015 and only once this century has a pitcher had more than ten complete games in a season, James Shields, who had eleven for Tampa Bay in 2011. Last year’s leader had three.
FunFact: The last major leaguer to have 20 complete games in a season was Fernando Valenzuela of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who had 20 in 1986.
The Bottom Line: If baseball wants to end the dependence on analytics, end the shifts and batters teeing off and looking for home runs, it must start producing pitchers who can throw smoke for nine innings. Make the requirement for a quality start at least seven innings with two runs allowed instead of the current six innings and three runs. Don’t look for this to change anytime soon, though. The demise of the complete game was gradual and if baseball ever decides to groom starters to go nine again, that change will be gradual, too.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody – Sparrow goes to a baseball game. Today’s Diary.
The game blew, the home team losing 16-4 of all the silly things, the game out of hand before anybody needed a deodorant…There were a couple of good defensive plays but that was really it; there was no reason to bring your history book to this one.
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On This Date
Extra, extra, read all about it.
In 1981 & 1989 – Voyager 2 makes its closest point of approach to Saturn and Neptune. It was the first spacecraft to visit Neptune and discovered, among other things, five moons and four rings. Voyager II was launched in 1977, left the Solar System in 2018, and is now the third-farthest man-made object from Earth, trailing Pioneer 10 and her sister Voyager 1. The probe flew past Jupiter in 1979 and Uranus in 1986 and while NASA still has contact with it, the spacecraft is expected to lose all power by 2025.
In 1904 – James Jeffries defends his world heavyweight boxing title, defeating Jack Munroe via a second-round TKO at Mechanics Pavillion in San Francisco. It was the seventh and final title defense for Jeffries, who retired after the bout. Jeffries had won the title from Bob Fitzsimmons in 1899 and had unified it with a win over Tom Sharkey later that year. Jeffries came out of retirement in 1910, losing to world heavyweight champion Jack Johnson in a 15th-round TKO.
In 1979 – The Charlie Daniels Band is at #1 on Billboard’s country chart – then known as the Hot Country Singles chart – for the only week with The Devil Went Down To Georgia. The song also went #1 country in Canada, peaked at #14 in Great Britain, and at #3 on the Hot 100. The line “chicken in a bread pan pickin’ out dough” comes from the song Ida Red by Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys and the song remains the band’s only #1 country hit in a chart career that spanned from 1973 to 2003.
Some Philosophy Crap
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
…the ultimate power is not to preside in a white house or open a parliament while seated on a throne but to reinvent the world for everyone by giving them the dreams that you wanted them to dream.
Gore Vidal
Lincoln
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
Knowledge is power.
Aretha Franklin’s first #1 song on Billboard’s soul chart was I’ve Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You) which spent seven weeks at #1 in 1967.
Today’s Stumper
Match wits with Gaylon. It’s not that hard.
How many moons does Saturn have? – Answer next time!
