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.