Home Run of the Day: Luis Hernandez, New York Mets (Trot Time: 33.08 seconds) [video]

On the second pitch of the fifth inning, Luis Hernandez fouled a ball directly off the inside of his right foot. He immediately fell to the ground in pain. The trainer came out and, five minutes later, Hernandez was back in the batter's box waiting for the next pitch. It came and Hernandez quickly deposited it in the right field seats. His trot wasn't so quick.

With a foot that was in so much pain the Fox team mentioned that it "could be broken", Hernandez did his best to trot around the bases. He reached first base in only 6.5 seconds, which is a slightly better than average speed. As he rounded the bag, though, you could tell how much pain he was in. It took him nine more seconds to get to second base and another eight seconds to touch third.

The pain was most evident as he turned for the home stretch, where he hopped on the non-hurt foot for a couple of steps. He eventually made it home without once pausing on the basepaths, becoming the second longest trot of the year. His possibly broken foot was a pretty decent excuse, though.

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How many times have you seen the "fake to third, throw to first" move work? It seems that every time a pitcher makes the move, the runner at first doesn't even blink. It's almost laughable, right?

On Friday night, Tim Wakefield picked off Toronto's Fred Lewis with the much-maligned move. Jordan Bastian, the Blue Jays' terrific MLB.com writer, immediately tweeted this:

That seems to be everybody's reaction whenever they see the move work. And I mean everybody. Because, as I've followed Twitter throughout this baseball season (follow Wezen Ball here!), I've noticed that this move might be more successful than you expect. It's still not very successful, mind you, but it's successful enough. Check out these tweets:

April 16 - Yovani Gallardo picks off Willie Harris

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Fans today can complain for hours on end about how the loud, pre-recorded music is ruining the fan experience. With the likes of Vanilla Ice, Linkin Park, and Lady Gaga all having an equally good chance at making it on the speakers during the three-plus hour ballgame, I can understand the argument. It should be remembered, though, that this argument is at least thirty years old.

In the June 30, 1980, edition of the New York Times, this article appeared: "The New Sounds of Music at Shea Stadium".  The article begins with this fine piece of writing:

They are getting ready at Shea Stadium. Al Jolson is flexing his knees for one more chorus of "Swanee," Judy Collins is practicing the high notes, and Bob Dylan is tuning up his guitar. It's time for baseball again.

They never know when they will be needed, but they must be ready, in their dust jackets and their cassettes in the announcer's booth. These minstrels, these troubadors have become as essential to baseball at Shea Stadium as the umpires and ground crew.

Most other ball parks resort to organ music, but Shea Stadium has become an open-air discotheque, featuring a wide range of singers - Frank Sinatra, Chuck Berry, Dolly Parton. All season long there has been a pop song for every occassion.

"Rock Around the Clock", "Send in the Clowns", "Take This Job and Shove It", and "Joy to the World" are all mentioned as songs played at Shea.

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Home Run of the Day: Jason Giambi, Colorado Rockies (Trot Time: 20.57 seconds) [video]

Boy, this NL West race is getting super-tight. With the Giant's 3-1 series victory over the Padres concluding yesterday, the two teams are in a virtual tie (though the Padres are up a game in the loss column). Adding onto that are the Colorado Rockies, who won their 10th game in a row yesterday off the walkoff bat of Jason Giambi. They are now only 1.5 games back. September promises to be another fun month in the life of the NL West.

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Is it really possible to go wrong with the Muppets? And is it really possible to go wrong with Bo Jackson? Combine the two and you have video gold (even if the audio is kind of wonky).

Have a good Friday.

"Bo knows cookies!"

I've been bad about updating everyone with podcast news on anywhere other than Twitter, so I figured I better not let another opportunity go by.

Last night, The Common Man and Bill, both from the excellent Platoon Advantage, and I got together for another podcast. We talked Trevor Hoffman and his milestone save, AL & NL Cy Young candidates, the Tony La Russa/Colby Rasmus battle royale, the Nyjer Morgan kerfuffle, and touched a little on the future of baseball in Portland. As always, it was a ridiculously full hour.

Even better, there were a couple of disagreements and, most importantly, beer and whiskey were consumed. My beer of choice last night, for those wondering, was the excellent Octoberfest brew from the New Glarus Brewery called Staghorn Octoberfest. Those of us in the upper-Midwest area know New Glarus pretty well, as it seems it's impossible to find a bar that doesn't serve Spotted Cow. But Staghorn is something completely different, and may just be my favorite Octoberfest beer ever. If it's in your area, you should definitely give it a shot.

Click the "Read More" link to listen to the podcast here on the site. You can also check out the podcast page itself or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes (from the little audio player). Enjoy, and be sure to let us know what you think. The next podcast will be in two weeks.

On Monday, the Portland Beavers played their final game in the Rose City. The Triple-A affiliate of the San Diego Padres is being pushed out this winter by the arrival of a new Major League Soccer team. As Craig points out, a few kinks aside, "there has been a Pacific Coast League edition of the Portland Beavers since 1903." It was truly a sad day for baseball fans in the Pacific Northwest.

These things may not be as uncommon as you think, though. In fact, the remarkable consistency of Portland as a triple-A city may be what's really uncommon. With a few exceptions - Indianapolis, Syracuse, Oklahoma City, and a few others - the life of a triple-A city is uncertain. Some cities stay with a team for decades before being summarily kicked to the curb when their contract runs out, while others seem to go from year-to-year, in-and-out of service. It's a wayward business, apparently.

In order to get a better idea of just how transient/permanent these relationships are, I decided to make a map of the MLB/AAA-relationships over the last fifty years or so. I actually had quite a bit of trouble in doing it (I really wanted to get a fancy little Flash map/timeline going, but it turns out my having never programmed in Flash before was a detriment - who knew?!), but I finally got something worth seeing. It's not perfect - you can't, for example, hover over the city to find out more details about it - but I think it gets the job done pretty well. I began the series with 1965 because that's the year that the minor leagues seemed to stabilize; before then, many teams had more than one triple-A affiliate in a given year. (I used the Baseball Reference Minor League Affiliates tables for my data) Click the image below to be taken to the year-by-year slideshow.

The most interesting thing that I learned from doing this - besides learning just how much turnover there is on a year-to-year basis (it's gotten better in recent years, but it's still a lot more frequent than you realize) - is just how long-distance some of these relationships are. The Washington Senators used to partner with a team in Honolulu, for example, while the Marlins were affiliated with the city of Edmonton, Alberta, for a couple of years. Those are trips of many thousands of miles - imagine shuttling between those cities on a week where you're called-up, sent down, and then called-up again. It's not exactly the ideal situation.

Teams seemed to have learned that lesson. When you look at this year's map, there are many, many more short lines on the map (Seattle-to-Tacoma, Atlanta-to-Gwinnett, Texas-to-Round Rock, etc), though it's still not eradicated completely. The Blue Jays, for example, have their triple-A ballclub in Las Vegas this year. It's definitely getting better, though.

I think there's a lot more there. Go check out the maps and let me know what you notice. And, if you have any ideas for a better way to display the information, I'd be glad to hear that too.