Baseball fever

Congratulations to my friend Neal Traven for landing a short piece in USA TODAY "OPS on-base plus slugging valuable and easy statistic." If your inner stat geek wants to understand "OPS" then check out this short explanation.

Since I'm talking baseball, let me note that on any given evening, I'm highly likely to tune into a game on TV. Sometimes, the only game being broadcast on cable involves the Atlanta Braves. After all, they are "America's team" according to TBS.

Last night, the only game on our local cable was Atlanta's.

So, had yesterday been an ordinary Tuesday night, I would have watched at least some of last night's Atlanta-Arizona Diamondbacks games and would have seen Randy Johnson throw one of baseball's 17 perfect games. In about 125 years of history, that's one every 7.5 years. I've never seen one, despite watching a lot of baseball in my lifetime. A lot.

This time, I was at a going away party for a friend, he had election returns on his TV (Kucinich 2% vs. uncommitted 9%), and I missed the perfect game.

Sigh. To recap the bad news: the friend is gone for six weeks, I missed the perfecto, and my anti-war candidate finished behind just about everyone (I think he beat LaRouche).