At the risk of being overly melodramatic, the box score (below) for yesterday's Malibu-Palisades game represents the culmination of a dream. I recall a conversation with John Puklus several months ago in which I expressed my interest in posting box scores for Malibu's games. Sadly, it didn't happen during the high school season because I never had time to learn the finer points of HTML, which is the language of web sites--one one of them, anyway.
I'm beginning to get the hang of it, though, and my more discerning readers will notice that the postings have gradually become more visually appealing over time. For example, the first photograph appeared on Sharks Baseball on March 4, over two months after the blog was born. The first photograph showing coaches up close appeared on April 25. (I don't even want to try and describe the technical challenges presented by the effort to get a picture of Dave Buss to work on the web. If you've ever read the novels of Anne Rice or Bram Stoker, you'll understand.) The first presentation of statistics in tabular form occurred on May 8 and, frankly, didn't look that great. The table published on May 11 looked a little better and the playoff roster posted on May 19 showed some further improvements in format.
If you doubt that my technique is improving, compare the format of the varsity baseball schedule back in January with that of the American Legion schedule posted a little over a week ago. (Perhaps it makes the schedule difficult to read for old folks like me, but you've got to be impressed with the Malibu M in the background.)
Anyway, this is the first--but hopefully not the last--box score. I think I can do a better job on the spacing between lines in the boxes to give it a tighter appearance. I can also add more data, such as game time temperature, wind speed and direction, attendance, bunt attempts missed, ATBPWNROB (average time between pitches with no runners on base), etc. (Your suggestions are welcome.) While I could post the boxes for the other teams, I doubt that I will because I'm not sure that any of my regular readers--Hi, Mom!--really care about those.
The box score, incidentally, is not intended to replace the narrative description of each game. (I'll get to that soon for yesterday's game.) If the blog were just like I'd like for it to be, for each game there would be a box score, a newspaper-length article, a set of pre-game and post-game notes, the pre-game Vegas line (just kidding), and a detailed post-game critique of each player and coach's performance. (Since I've got to live with two of the players, I'm really just kidding about that last one.)
Anyway, the blog has been fun for me and, from what I hear, for a few of you as well. Thanks for the feedback. To the players and coaches, thanks for the inspiration.
Perhaps thanks should also go to George W. Bush. If he hadn't made international politics so depressing, I would probably be spending more time on my other blog.
2 comments:
Some ideas for different statistical analyses...the all important winner of the game's "Kan-gear-roo Court" would be one, and a coaching stat...the hereto and forevermore known as "NERSG" or "Number of Eric Roth Second Guesses" stat. It is very important to the coaching staff to keep track of this tantamount data.
Don't worry. There will be thorough coverage of the new Kan-gear-roo Court. As for the NERSG, the calculator I bring to games only handles eight digits, so I'm not sure how accurate I can be with that one. On the other hand, as my blogging skills develop, I'm hoping to add a feature that will allow anonymous comments to go immediately from the fans in the stands to the blog and then into the dugout where they can be most helpful.
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