my question for the commish

On Tuesday afternoon, Major League Baseball Commissioner, Bud Selig, was a guest speaker at the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

It was an event that was free and open to the public.  As you can see from the picture below, my seat (actually standing area) was at the very back of the room.

baseball commissioner Bud Selig at the UW-Madison campus on Tuesday

Selig spoke of his reign as commissioner and the role the media has played in it.  He also spoke of how the media has changed significantly since his era began in the 1990's.  In his opinion, the media has changed, but journalism has actually not gotten worse.

His presentation lasted a half hour, which left plenty of time for a general question and answer session with the attendees.

I have been hoping to ask a question about the length of baseball games.  The microphone slowly made its way to the back, and I was getting excited.....after someone had a quick question about the Oakland A's stadium situation, it was finally my turn.

Dan: "Commissioner, last night's Brewers/Cubs game ended at around 9:30PM, the unfortunate part is that the start of the game was at 6PM.  Now tonight's game is slated to start at 7PM, how many people here are going to stay up for a game that lasts until 10:30?"

Selig's hand immediately shoots up.....as does about half the room.  Oops, maybe I misread my crowd, or maybe everyone in the room is retired, or possibly many of them are lying.

Dan: "Is there any concern about the length of games, or the pace of play?"

Bud: "I get after Joe Torre (the former Yankee manager who now works for Selig) all the time about pace of play.  But if you look at our numbers, our attendance is up, radio and TV ratings are up, and if you ask our fans, the time of games is not a complaint that we get."

It was an answer that I knew I would get.  Lately, the attendance for MLB in a season has been around 75 million attendees, which is an astounding number.  Obviously if the length of game was an issue, that number would be declining.

Then Selig went on a small rant about how when Hank Aaron used to get in the batter's box, he was there until his at bat was over.  "Now, you have a player who takes a pitch, backs out of the batter's box, adjusts the velcro on his batting gloves, and he hasn't even swung the bat!"  The crowd really liked his response.  It is something that I'm happy even the commissioner has noticed.

As I sit here writing this blog, I'm privately hoping that tonight's Brewers/Cubs game goes late.  Bad pitching or not, I think it is a shame that games take so long.  As of now, it is 9PM, and we are about to enter the top of the 6th.  Maybe Bud will be sitting in his recliner thinking about the guy who asked the question in Madison, or maybe he will blame it on the bad pitching again, or maybe he'll be asleep.

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Note, last nights' Brewers game ended at 10:26.

As I turn on The Big 1070 radio station this morning, Van Edwards just lamented that the length of these baseball games are messing with his schedule.

where to put a super bowl?

The culmination of every NFL season is the Super Bowl, which pits the best team from the AFC against the NFC.  This year's Super Bowl will be in Indianapolis, hosted at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis

The location of the Super Bowl is generally decided by the NFL 3 - 5 years prior to that year's Super Bowl.  Currently, there are known Super Bowl locations through 2015.

For the most part, Super Bowls are played in warm weather cities, but on occasion, like this year, a domed stadium in a northern climate can get the game.  The following year locations are in New Orleans, New York, and Phoenix.

I haven't been able to find a voting process for the Super Bowl, but cities vie to host a Super Bowl, and one would presume it is voted upon by the NFL owners and commissioner.  Non-NFL related sites say it is a secret ballot vote.  The NFL has not advertised the voting method online.

In many instances, cities are rewarded with a Super Bowl after the city has secured financing for a new stadium.  Last year's Super Bowl was in a new stadium in Dallas, as well as this year's Super Bowl in Indianapolis.  New Orleans has always been viewed as a good city for a Super Bowl because of the proximity of facilities and the personality of the city.  New Orleans has hosted the Super Bowl the most of any city, six times.  New York was guaranteed to get a Super Bowl because of their new stadium and partly because of some 9/11 sentiment, and to try out a Super Bowl in a non-domed cold weather location.

Getting the Call

On Monday, former Cincinnati Reds player Barry Larkin received enough votes to be elected into baseball's hall of fame.  The ceremonies occur later this year, but no doubt this is a big day for Larkin.

Barry Larkin getting the call
photo from Yahoo! Sports

Larkin was the only player to be elected in 2012.  To get elected to the hall of fame, a player needs to be retired for 5 years, and has to receive over 75% of the vote.  If a player is not elected, they can remain on the hall of fame ballot for up to 15 years.  The player will fall off the ballot altogether if they receive less than 5% of the vote.

In this year's vote, Larkin received 495 of a possible 573 votes (86.4%).  Next up was pitcher Jack Morris, who received only 67% of the vote.  While Morris did not make it into the hall of fame this year, he will likely make it soon.  Even though his career is over, he is on the cusp of the hall, and will have momentum to make it in the next few years.  It isn't that their statistics have changed, but kind of how the voters (writers) will slowly elevate a player until they are in the hall.

last day of the season

Seems to me that baseball's last game of the season is being pushed back farther and farther every year.  Wednesday's World Series match up was postponed a day due to rain, meaning the 2011 season is guaranteed to last until October 27.

With the help of Baseball Almanac, I decided to take a look back at the final day of the baseball season from 1915 through 2010 in 5-year increments.  By final day, I mean the final game of the World Series.

click on table to enlarge the data

As you can see, the last game of the season has generally been before the midway point of October from 1915 to roughly 1970.  There is a lot of data to dig through.  A better analysis would've been to look at the first World Series in 1903.  It is not depicted in the chart above, but the last date was October 13.

Early on, the World Series ended earlier in the calendar year simply because there were two teams in the playoffs.  The winner of the National League would play the winner of the American League in the World Series.

Starting in 1969, each league was divided into two divisions.  The winner of the divisional match ups would then play each other in the World Series.  The last game of the World Series was now at least a week or more later in almost all instances from the previous era.

In 1995, baseball had implemented a system where there were three divisions per league, plus a wild card.  This scenario added another round of playoffs.  As you can see in 2010, the final game of the season was into November.

With the data presented above, you can see the 3 distinct eras of baseball.  One going from 1903-1968, another from 1969 - 1993, and the final going from 1994 - present.  In the meantime, there is talk of a 2nd wildcard joining the playoffs in 2012 and beyond.

Finally, in looking at the box score, I thought it would be interesting to glance at the time it took to play each of the World Series games in each of the eras.

Although you can blame TV for making games long, the specialization of the game, and the mannerisms of the current ballplayer has added roughly more than an hour to each game over a 100-year timespan.

the height of an NFL quarterback

In watching Wisconsin quarterback Russell Wilson almost lead Wisconsin back to victory against Michigan State on Saturday, a lot of people wonder if he could be this successful in the pros.

Russell Wilson goes up against Michigan State
Photo by Mark Cunningham/Getty Images

The biggest thing holding back Wilson is his size.  Traditionally, NFL teams are looking for quarterbacks who are tall enough to see their receivers above the height of the linemen who are protecting him from the opposing pass rush.  If you can't see your receivers downfield, you won't be successful.

Wilson is listed as 5'11" in the Wisconsin player bio (71 inches tall).

Of the 32 quarterbacks starting in Week 7 of the 2011 NFL season, the average height listed on nfl.com is 75.25 inches (about 6' 3").

Two notable NFL starting quarterbacks are on the smallish size; New Orleans' Drew Brees and Philadelphia's come in at 6' tall.  However, each of those players have an unique skill set that sets them apart.  Brees has one of the strongest arms in the NFL, while Vick is the fastest and most agile quarterback in the league.

This doesn't mean that Wilson won't get a shot at the pros, but it does really stack the deck against him.

where the pitch really is

If you've watched some baseball playoffs on the TBS Network, you no doubt were interested in the little box they had in the lower right hand corner that displayed pitch locations.

Pitch Trax in the lower right corner

photo courtesy of TBS

How accurate is this?  The creators of this graphic say the actual pitch location is accurate to within 1/2 inch.  This is completely amazing.  The system uses two cameras mounted in the stadium to track the flight of the ball toward home plate.  To test the system, the engineers placed a piece of foam at the front of home plate.  With this, they were able to gauge where the ball hit the foam, and where the PitchTrax system placed the ball.

Baseball has not had many technological innovations that help television viewers through the years, other than the ubiquitous score in the upper left hand corner of the screen.  I would expect this PitchTrax system will be a mainstay for TV broadcasts in 2012.

watching the game with your smart friends

No doubt if you've ever gone to a bar to watch a sporting event, you end up talking to the annoying guy, or even worse, the guy who speaks a lot of truisms, such as "they need to play better defense" or "their offense is not good."

The guy who says "the team who scores the most points will win this game" is not very helpful.

This is where Twitter comes in really handy.

watching baseball and monitoring Twitter

With Twitter, you can pay attention to the game on TV, as well as get additional information from the people whom you really respect by following on Twitter.  It's like watching a game on TV with your friends, except your friends are going to say something interesting, and you don't really have to listen to them.