Football Season Comes Early
I mean this in two senses. First, football season should never start before Labor Day. It just shouldn’t. Maybe an exhibition game or two — let’s let a college All-Star team face the reigning NFL champions again. That was fun. OK. If you want to have a game in Ireland a week early, I’m here for it. The season should also be over on January 1st. After all, if you aren’t going to pay the players, when are they going to have time to hit the books and fully participate in the college experience? The tie between a football player and his alma mater is a bond forged in the deepest attachments of which people and institutions are capable. Loosen those ties and you might as well allow free agency and legalized gambling. Scholar-athletes honorably representing their school against the forces of commercialism. What could be finer?
Second, of course, is the fact that baseball season is essentially over. It’s all exhibitions and next-year tryouts from here on out.
We used to discuss football, particularly SEC football, a lot more around here. I’m not much of an SEC football fan, though as a college football fan, the SEC is pretty much unignorable, unless of course you mean last year’s championship game. But I grew up a Georgia Tech fan, and they opened their season tonight playing the team coached by former Brave Deion Sanders. Tech fans are nostalgic for the days when they were relevant — they’re sort of like Pirates fans. But I’m nostalgic for almost everything about college football that has evaporated (as the first paragraph should make clear) so I had my split screen on tonight watching both the Braves and my beloved Yellow Jackets. My real team is the Yale Bulldogs, but they play not just in a former era; they mostly play in a former century — their 10 game season begins September 20th, though the Ivy League champion, for the first time, will participate in the FCS bracket this year.
The (Baseball) Game
The Braves are still in Philadelphia, as long as you don’t count Austin Cox or Wander Suero, whi are now Gwinnett Stripers. Welcome back to Nathan Wiles and John Brebbia. The Braves are still holding at their team-tying record of 64 players used. Another player used will move the Braves up into a tie for the 9th most players used: anyone doubt we’re going to get there? Buehler? Buehler?
The Braves started Whitman, who in his previous start against the Phillies this year in June gave up 10 runs in 2 innings of “work.” . Of course he had a no-hitter through 3 1/3. The Phillies finally broke through in the fourth with a Schwarber walk, a Harper bunt hit and a Marsh single. He even pitched around an Alvarez throwing error in the bottom of the fifth, getting Schwarber to pop up.
Whitman was opposed by Ranger Suárez who had completely dominated the Braves in the two earlier games he faced them this year, giving up only one run in 13 innings of work. Tonight, he never came close to a clean inning, allowing runners in scoring position in the all of his five innings of work, though he had only yielded a run in the second. On his last pitch, he narrowly avoided giving up a second run when Castellanos threw an ineffably slow Matt Olson at home.
So by the time the Tech game started, it was 1-1 after 4 1/2. Tech turned the ball over on their first three possessions.
Elder had thrown only 82 pitches through 6, so Snit brought him out for the 7th. This often ends poorly. Not tonight. 7 IP, 3 hits, 1 run. Game Score: 72. Tonight, Whitman was a fine dark chocolate caramel — almost Belgian.
When Dylan Lee came in for the bottom of the 8th, Tech had scored a field goal to make it 7-3 despite the three turnovers. Lee departed with Schwarber on 3rd and Harper on 1st and only one out. Pierce Johnson gave up a sacrifice fly to Bohm to finally give up the lead.
The 9th started just as Tech took the lead, 10-7. Jhoan Duran made quick work of his half-inning: no màs.
Go Tech.
Statistical Announcement
As I usually mention, my occasional forays into baseball history use the Retrosheet database, which is only updated to include the previous season in December. I have spent the last several weeks trying to get the capability to answer current season questions. While I cannot do everything with this database that I can do with the Retrosheet database, there are a lot of questions I can answer now that I couldn’t answer before, though it takes a completely separate program to do so. So if you have a question which about this year, let me know. I’ll see what I can do. I hope to be able to actually integrate this with the Retrosheet database as a seamless whole, but there’s a lot of programming involved, so it definitely won’t be until next season, if at all.