DeGrom’s stats are almost beyond comprehension

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I know, I know, small sample size, but you gotta love this one, from the world of baseball.

New York Mets (and former Binghamton Met) phenom Jacob deGrom’s first four starts this year have yielded an ERA+ of 1227.

(Dramatic pause.)

A little context on what that actually means.

Your average pitcher has an ERA+ of 100. There’s a little more to it that this but let’s go with the following, that an ERA+ of 200 means one is twice as good as the average pitcher, and an ERA+ of 300 means he’s three times as good.

So yeah, deGrom is 12 times as good as the average pitcher so far this year.

(Pause again.)

A little more context…

The highest single-season ERA+ in modern times is Pedro Martinez’s 291 in 2000. Greg Maddux approached 300 a couple times in the ’90s as well. A paltry sum compared to deGrom.

Sandy Koufax in ’66 had a 190.

Bob Gibson in ’68?

258.

So yeah, deGrom’s about five times as good as that.

Whoa.

And he’s hitting .545.

Georgia laws

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I can see it now… those Standard Time diehards, protesting the state of Georgia’s proposed legislation to make Daylight Savings Time permanent. Pretty soon they’ll be canceling Atlanta sports contests and boycotting peaches and such over it.

I tried to attend one of their rallies but I mistakenly showed up an hour after it had already started. Or maybe I was an hour early. I was pretty confused about the whole thing.

Just in time for the postseason

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Don’t look now but my hometown NBA team (that would be the Washington Wizards) are in sole possession of 10th place—and the final playoff spot—in the Eastern Conference.
Tonight the Wiz take on the once formidable Oklahoma City Thunder. OKC has lost 12 straight games and is ripe for unlucky number thirteen. Washington, meanwhile, has won eight of 10.
A few more and even I’d vote for DC statehood.

This might be way more sinister than we thought

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An all-too-popular conspiracy theory, floating through the American psyche and blogosphere since March 2020, is that COVID-19 is actually some grand government plan to expand the size of the state and keep citizens subservient for the rest of human civilization.

None of us is allowed to go anywhere or do anything or conduct any business. (Not quite, I know, but it’s not exactly 2019 here.)

Interesting theory.

I think the greater danger today and moving forward is that it is not a government edict keeping us from interacting with one another. We’ve just gotten so comfortable being distant (in all senses of the word) and having excuses for not doing things that the effect is the same as the giant boot of the state.

Dang.

(And if the conspiracy theory is true… wow, that worked out better than they could have imagined, eh?)

Let’s prove them wrong.

New schedule

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As of tomorrow I go from seeing a quarter of my students a quarter of the time to seeing half of my students half of the time.
Tell me how that math adds up and you can take over my classes for me.

Twin boys

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I’m in the middle of two stories right now, both related, I suppose, to the idea of manhood. One more explicitly than the other. The first is my new book, To Raise a Boy, by Emma Brown, she of I-broke-the-Brett-Kavanaugh-Christine-Blasey-Ford-story fame. Brown worked on the book as she navigated two worlds, the #MeToo movement (and her position, sort of at a forefront of it), and raising a young boy herself. (Her son was born in 2017 just as the movement began.) Basically, how does one teach a young boy not to be a sexual predator, and, related, how to live in a world in which others imagine you as a potential threat, based only on your maleness. (I know, I know, it’s so unfair to be a white male, but Brown at least approaches the subject with sensitivity.)

   Speaking of sensitivity, or being “woke,” or New Age, or whatever our definition of non-traditional maleness may be these days, there is the documentary I just began. It’s Ken Burns’s Hemingway, and details the life and work of a man and era when “woke” meant something you did every morning, not something you blogged about.
   Is there any more traditional American tough guy male than Ernest Hemingway? (John Wayne? Theodore Roosevelt?) That’s where the film starts of course. But if you’ve ever seen or read anything about Hemingway–who hasn’t?–you know that his biographers have identified soft spots in Papa’s behavior, sometimes looking no further than his own writing.
   I’ve only just begun both pieces. If either or both are worthy of further comment rest assured it will find its way here.
   How to raise a sensitive Hemingway in a world in which every man is feared as the brutish Hemingway. Might be an impossible dream.
   But isn’t it pretty to think so?

Brave New World

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Never mind cellphones and the Internet. I try to tell my son I grew up in a world without strawberry milkshake PopTarts and the boy just doesn’t believe me.
Seriously, who could imagine such an existence?

One more word on college basketball

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I received at my home the other day the alumni magazine for George Mason University. Never mind that I am not a George Mason alum and neither is anyone in my family, I do enjoy perusing its pages.

Imagine my surprise when I turned open the front cover and found on its reverse side a picture of a recent GMU basketball game.

With my wife and son sitting in the stands.

Well, their cardboard cutouts.

Me? I must be next to my wife, seated behind the support pole for the home team’s basket.

Even my cardboard cutout gets an obstructed view seat.

Worth the wait

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My hometown baseball club (that would be the Washington Nationals) had to wait a few days for its season opener following several positive COVID tests among players and staff members last week. What was supposed to be an April 1 open against the Mets became an April 6 opener against the Braves.

For Nats fans it was worth the wait.

MVP candidate (I’m calling this already) Juan Soto delivered the game-winning hit in the bottom of the ninth inning, a game started by Cy Young candidate (calling that one too) Max Scherzer.

All 12 people in Nats Park were ecstatic.

[Editor’s note: Official attendance for the game was 4,801.]

Still undefeated in ’21!