There's no place like dome

One of the most famous family stories from my childhood involves the time when - aged 10 or 11 - I took a large stack of notebook paper and wrote on the first page, "To Walk with Jackals: Part One of an Epic Trilogy." I probably don't need to tell you that no more of the book ever got written. At age 12, I kept a scrapbook on our trip to the UK; at one point, I made a cover page for a mystery story of some sort, and even got onto the first real page - at which point the story literally terminates in the middle of the first sentence, never to continue.

This is something of a roundabout way of noting that the ideas I have to do things don't always match up with my capacity or desire to see them through. So maybe what follows is going to end up being completely irrelevant; certainly "My Year of Bonds" is dragging along like crazy, although I'm sure I'll manage to finish it eventually, if not within a single year. But I'm going to write about it anyway.

In addition to being something that may not ever get completed, The Capitol Dome Project is something that may well only be interesting to me. Alma, predictably, was not overly enthused, though she did humor me on the inaugural entry. Drew could only offer that it was not the dorkiest idea I've ever had. Alma's sister and brother-in-law suggested it could be interesting, although they were probably just being polite. My mom seemed to find it interesting, but then it's a lot of her dorkyribonucleic acid that I've got running around my body in the first place.

The Capitol Dome Project is, I guess, pretty self-explanatory. Basically, the goal is to visit all 50 US state capitals. And, in particular, the goal is to get a picture of myself standing in front of the capitol buildings, with the domes (or whatever, since there might be a handful that don't have domes per se) visible next to/behind me.

It's a project that could well take a very long time. Even if I averaged five a year - one every 2.5 months, which really sounds like a lot, especially once the few fairly close ones are finished - that's a decade. Ten years from now I'll be 37, and while I'll still be me and therefore surely not above completing a ridiculous project like this, who knows what might happen between now and then, really.

The "good news" is that by my calculation, 19 of the 49 remaining capitals are within six hours' drive - i.e. a weekend trip at worst - of a place I might have other reason to be for something more than just "vacation" (Chicago, DC, Boston). A further 18 are within four hours' drive of a major city that might be interesting enough on its own to justify a trip. The final 12 will probably require a special trip, and as such will probably include the last few to get done. (Naturally, only two of these are east of the Mississippi.)

I guess we'll see what we see, but since I already wanted to visit all the states in the union at some point, I certainly would like to be able to complete this project. The first entry - a tad repetitive if you've been keeping tabs on my Facebook photo albums - is here. Next update to come who knows when.

Seattle, walkin'-a-ton

A walk I took before work this morning:



Pictures from the walk will be up on Facebook tonight.

Morning star

I am pretty much a night owl by nature. When I was a baby, I would sleep from midnight to noon, then stay up from noon to midnight. At Northwestern, I was known for my late hours, often ridiculous even by collegiate standards, and my oft-quoted-by-Drew commentary on once needing to get up pretty early to catch a plane: "I should probably just stay up all night."

With that said, I really enjoy being up early in the mornings. I'm here in Seattle, as most of you are probably already aware. Since we came in on business, I figured that I wouldn't have a ton of time to do a lot of touristy stuff, since we'll likely be working 9-5 or 9-6 every day. (Granted, that still allows for 2-3 hours before sundown, and last night the sun didn't completely sink behind the Pacific until after I fell asleep, which was around 8:45 local time. But still.) However, I've been getting up earlier at home, and 5:30 Central, which is about when I've been waking, is 3:30 Pacific.

Well, I didn't get up at 3:30 today. But after a long day of travel and work, that would have been crazy. I woke up at 4:15 Central on Monday so I could get down to Midway for an 8:30 flight (which ended up having its boarding delayed by almost 90 minutes), and as usual didn't sleep on the flight. By mid-evening Seattle time, after a few hours of work, I was pretty wiped out. I was in bed by 8:15 or so, and though I didn't fall asleep right away, by around 8:45 I was gone.

A strange dream in which I was being chased down a dark hallway by a young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Cheryl Ford (better known as Karl Malone's illegitimate daughter by non-WNBA fans, by which I mean everyone) woke me up this morning at three minutes to five, just before my first alarm was set to go off. I had plenty of time to take a shower and be out the door by six.

The upshot is I was able to walk to Pike Place Market, take some photos of the waterfront and a snow-capped Mt. Rainier (lurking in the background and not terribly prominent in the photos as it fades into the sky), get a cappuccino from the first Starbucks, buy Alma a present, and walk back to the hotel... and even after writing this entire blog post it's only ten minutes past seven, leaving nearly an hour and a half before I'm scheduled to meet the other two people on the trip to walk over to the office. Being up early and doing things in that time makes me feel productive in a way that really nothing else can. I don't know if I'm the kind of person who can really be "early to bed and early to rise" every day, but darn if it isn't fun right now.

Oh, and pictures on Facebook, if that might interest you.

The old man and the Cink

Somewhere, there is a parallel universe in which everything happens exactly as it would in a Hollywood film. In that universe, Tom Watson stood over an eight-foot putt on the 72nd green at Turnberry on Sunday, took a deep breath, and calmly sank it. The crowd went nuts; Watson raised his arms in triumph. He had completed one of the great individual sporting accomplishments of all time, smashing the old record for oldest man to win a golf major, defeating a passel of men half his age and then some.

Unfortunately, we live in our universe, and in our universe Hollywood endings are as likely not to happen. Our Tom Watson stood over an eight-foot putt on the 72nd green, but he missed it badly, fell into a playoff, and simply ran out of gas, losing the four-hole playoff by a full six shots.

To Stewart Cink's credit, he understands that he was never the story and won't be going forward. Maybe that's unfair to him - he did what he had to do - but it's a fact. Cink is by all accounts a good guy, maybe one of the best on tour, but there isn't a person outside his family who was rooting for him in the playoff. Tom Watson was supposed to be the story - for the whole weekend, he had been the story, and all he had to do was make a putt he'd probably made thousands of times. Maybe he was worn out. (Senior tournaments are three rounds; Watson probably hadn't played competitive golf on four consecutive days since 2006, when he last made a major cut.) Maybe the pressure got to him. (He has eight majors, but the last came in 1983 - I wasn't even one year old yet.) Really, it doesn't matter at this point, does it? We were all rooting as hard as we could, and Watson was doing what he could, but it just wasn't enough.

But in twenty years, this is what we'll remember - Watson, nearly 60, chasing history, defying his age for almost the entire tournament. Moments like this are why we watch sports - amazing performances that glue us to the television, afraid to miss a minute. It was a galvanizing performance by Watson - everyone was abuzz, talking to each other about a tournament in which the leaders tee off at 9 am on the east coast and finish by 1 pm, a tournament that had lost the sport's supposed meal ticket in Tiger Woods, cut before the weekend. Instead, one of the sport's all time greats filled the void, and then some.

Ultimately, the finish was a letdown. But it doesn't totally diminish what Watson had done to that point. Our memories will be of his long putts, his conservative but effective tactics, and his lead at the 18th. We all thought he was going to do it... and in some ways, it doesn't totally matter that he didn't. The sadness will fade, but the good memories will remain. And when it comes to sports, maybe that's all we really need.

(Weather) Odds and (Chicago Card) Ends

The weather has been really weird this summer. Aside from a stretch of about one week, it's been cold - it got disgustingly hot for a few days, at which point I finally got around to putting my air conditioning unit in, and then it immediately cooled off and has barely cracked 80 at any point since. Mother Nature, you're hilarious. Seriously, I know it's night, but it's barely above 60 right now. I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, I guess - not having to run A/C means I don't have to pay any additional utilities, and having it be 75 and mild every day is pretty enjoyable. But it's just weird. I mean, it's mid-July! 75 isn't summer in Chicago, it's summer in London.

In more annoying news, the CTA sent me a note a few weeks ago saying my Chicago Card would soon expire. I went online to renew it and did what they told me to do, but a much later expiration date was listed, and sure enough, the next day I got an e-mail saying I had been erroneously mailed the letter saying my card would expire. I went on about my business until today, when I was unable to get into the el in the morning because... my card was listed as expired.

I called the CTA and they weren't terribly helpful, saying that a number of people were having the issue and that the powers-that-be weren't sure which course of action to take. Their only solution for now is explaining the situation to the workers at every single station (and/or bus drivers) and hoping they buy it and let me in for free. 1-for-1 so far (since I wasn't sure what was going on, I paid the cash fare this morning), but that's really not much of a solution, right? What if I'm in a hurry because the train is arriving? Trying to explain the situation to someone who may or may not have been briefed on it and may or may not believe me if they weren't is probably not something that can happen in ten seconds. And of course I take the Purple Line, which only runs once every 15 minutes at most times. They'd better resolve this problem soon.

The post with the Midas touch

My Year of Bonds: Vol. 3 is finally here, and it's for Goldfinger. Hopefully the lag between this and Thunderball will be less than six months, lest this turn into My Decade of Bonds.

O, hi (o)

Back from Ohio. We drove out for Alma's niece's christening. It's not that terrible a drive to the Cleveland area, about six hours each way. Not too much to say about it, I guess. It was a nice ceremony and I liked getting a little break from routine (too much routine being the main reason so little has appeared here recently). It's a strange feeling to take a trip like that, though - I feel like I've been gone for a week, in part because each travel day really feels like two days.

We did get one pretty good story out of this, though. There was a bunch of stuff in the car when we drove out on Friday because Alma's parents sent a number of things with us (as they were flying out the next day), and when I went to carry several of them inside, I accidentally left my keys on the seat... and then closed the door. It's hard to lock the keys in my car because you can't push the driver's door lock down when it's open, but I closed and locked it first, and then still had my keys in my hand when I went to get stuff out of the back. Ugh. Pretty sure that's the first time I ever locked my keys in the car; at least it certainly was the first time I locked them in the Civic.

The upshot is that I was this close to letting my AAA membership lapse a few weeks ago, and now I've used it twice in less than a month (first when a tire blew out on the highway, and then with the keys). But the best part of this story is coming. So I call AAA at 8:30 and they say they're going to send someone over. It gets to be close to 10:00 and suddenly my phone lets me know that a call has gone straight to voicemail. When I check it, it's the dispatcher saying that the truck is looking for me. Argh. I run downstairs and call them back, and the dispatcher asks if I see the truck. I don't, so he checks with the garage and then comes back to me.

Dispatcher: "Can you check and see if your door is unlocked?"
Me: [checking] "No, still locked."
Dispatcher: "Okay, let me check with the garage again."
[thirty seconds later]
Dispatcher: "Are you parked by the pool?"
Me: "No."
Dispatcher: "...okay, we'll have him come back by."

So... they unlocked someone else's car door and then just left? Awesome.

The 40-year-old version

Recently I put a photo of myself up on howoldareyou.net, to see what I'd get. Because I was looking for as recent a picture as I could find, I used this one from the Philippines:



Sure, it's probably not the greatest photo ever taken of me. The results so far have rated me as looking like I'm 40, though, which really bothered me at first.

But then I was looking in the mirror and thought that if I saw myself walking down the street, maybe I would think I was 40. (Although I am notoriously bad at guessing ages.) And then I thought some more about it: I turn 27 this year (!) and have a history of people thinking I look ten years older than I am. 37 and 40, obviously, aren't too far apart.

And then I kind of annoyed myself by thinking that I will turn 40 in August of 2022, which is only a little over 13 years away. Which is a lot, sure, but 13 years ago I was about to start high school, and high school does not seem like it was that long ago (at least in some ways).

Anyway. I do wonder - if I had used this picture, would they still have said 40?

Enough with this "a triple shy of the cycle" nonsense

Last night, Carlos Zambrano "nearly" became the first pitcher to hit for the cycle, smacking a single, double and home run against the Diamondbacks. After the home run, his last hit, the AZ announcers noted that he was "a triple shy of the cycle." I am so sick of announcers saying that someone was a triple shy of the cycle. I guess it's okay during the game when he could still get it (although I think it should have been clear that Z was not coming up again), but referencing it in game stories is functionally nonsense. Let me lay some numbers on you really quick:

So, since the start of the 2000 season there have been, very roughly, around 400,000 games played by major league players. In those games:

A player has hit for the cycle - at least one each of a single, double, triple and home run in the same game - 41 times. Pretty rare occurrence. Amazingly, there have already been three (Orlando Hudson for the Dodgers, Ian Kinsler for Texas, and Jason Kubel for the Twins, who capped his with a grand slam) in the 2009 season.

70 times a player has recorded a double, triple and home run but failed to get a single, making this nearly as rare an occurrence as actually hitting for the cycle. It has yet to happen in 2009.

217 times a player has hit a single, triple and homer but failed to get the double for the cycle. It's three times more likely than missing just the single and more than five times as likely as completing the cycle, but it's still pretty rare. It also hasn't happened yet in 2009.

504 times a player has fallen a homer shy of the cycle, including four times in 2009.

So, how many times has a player "fallen a triple shy of the cycle"?

2,540.

Two thousand, five hundred and forty! Just since the year 2000! Including, by the way, 37 times already in 2009, including twice by Mark DeRosa alone. To give you some impression of how many times that is, there have been just 1,178 ten-strikeout games by pitchers since the start of the 2000 season, including 15 so far in 2009. Not that ten strikeouts is an easy thing to do, but if you're watching a game, it's more than twice as likely that one of the hitters will fall "a triple shy of the cycle" than that one of the starters will strike out ten guys. (Zambrano had only three Ks last night.)

So, with that in mind, is there any chance we can stop making a deal out of a guy going "a triple shy of the cycle"? The triple is the hard part. Getting the rest? Turns out it's not so hard. It happens hundreds of times per year. Enough.

300?

The last post got me thinking. What is it going to take for someone to win 300 games again? And is anyone even within reasonable range?

First, let's look at some recent 300-game winners and their career arcs:

Greg Maddux
355 wins
75 wins through age 25 season
165 wins through age 30 season
Career win %: .610

Roger Clemens
354 wins
78 wins through age 25 season
163 wins through age 30 season
Career win %: .658

Tom Glavine
305 wins
53 wins through age 25 season
139 wins through age 30 season
Career win %: .600

Randy Johnson
296 wins
10 wins through age 25 season
81 wins through age 30 season
Career win %: .646

Of these four (Johnson will hit 300 this year barring something unforeseen, so I include him), Johnson clearly has the oddest career track, as he was a very late starter whose three best seasons came well after age 30 - in fact, Johnson's biggest win year and best ERA year were the same year, 2002, in which he went 24-5 and 2.32 in his age 38 season, which is virtually unprecedented. (Post-1900, no one else has ever won that many games in a season at that age or older. Reducing the age to 35 gives you just eight more guys, and only one beyond the deadball era - Steve Carlton, 24-9 at age 35 for the 1980 Phillies.)

Take note of where the first three guys were through their age 30 seasons, though. Maddux and Clemens were both more than halfway to 300; Glavine was a little behind but not crazily far off. Other 300-game winners in the past half-century (bear in mind there have only been nine) have done similarly:

Carlton: 148 wins through age 30 season
Seaver: 168 wins through age 30 season
Sutton: 155 wins through age 30 season
Ryan: 141 wins through age 30 season

Others have done it more like Johnson, by starting slowly and then hanging around forever:

Perry: 95 wins through age 30 season, pitched until age 44
Niekro: 54 wins through age 30 season, pitched until age 48

But everyone who's won 300 games has hung around forever, regardless of whether they were halfway there at 30 or not. Of the nine, only Seaver retired before his age 42 season, and he did it at 41. If you're going to win 300 games, you're probably going to do it at age 40 or so, so you'd better have both the drive and the stuff to pitch that long.

Obviously, then, predicting the next 300-game winner is no easy feat, since we can't say who's going to hang around until age 42 or so. One thing we can say, however, is that you really need to be close to halfway there by age 30. Yes, Maddux and Clemens won more games after 30 than before - enabling them to get to 350 - but Maddux is Maddux and we know now that Clemens had some assistance. Even Nolan Ryan, who pitched until age 46 to pick up his 324 wins, was nearly halfway to 300 by 30.

So, is anyone close, or might anyone be close? Perhaps the two most reasonable active candidates are Tim Hudson - 146 wins at age 33 - and Roy Halladay, who has 134 wins at age 32. Roy Oswalt, with 129 wins at 31, is also right there. However, these guys are all older than 30, and none is at 150, and Hudson is currently on the shelf and may not get there this season. (Halladay has a reasonable chance; Oswalt most likely won't.)

Let's look at Halladay as an example. Over the past seven seasons he's been one of the best pitchers in baseball. But at age 30 he had just 111 wins, meaning that if he pitched until 42 he would need 189 wins in 12 seasons, or nearly 16 wins per. Let's say he wins another 20 games this year, finishing his age 32 season with 151 wins. That still means he needs 15 wins a year for the next decade - probably about as long as he could pitch - just to get right onto the nose of 300 (and obviously, any setback makes it that much harder). To put himself in real position, Halladay needs to rip off a string of 20-win seasons in the next couple of years while he's still in his relative prime. But bear in mind that most pitchers don't just tear off a series of career-best years once they get towards the mid-30s. Doc's average is 17-8 per 162 games, and while 20 wins this year and 17 wins a year for the next decade would get him to 300, that average is likely to drop the older he gets.

Oswalt would seem to be in better position; through his age 30 season, he had 129 wins, 18 ahead of Halladay at the same age. Assuming 13 more seasons for Oswalt, he would need just over 13 wins per. Oswalt has only one season so far in which he hasn't passed that marker. But it's more likely that Oswalt will need 15 wins a year for the next ten years, and then he can bleed out the last 21 wins over two or three final seasons in his 40s. And can he win 15 games a year every year even as he ages?

The thing to consider is that Maddux (and to a lesser extent Clemens) have kind of spoiled us, because they came around right at the same time. The fact is that 300 game winners are extremely rare. Again, even counting Johnson, only ten guys whose careers started after 1960 have done it, and Glavine and Johnson barely got there. Yet Maddux and Clemens both reached 350. But you can't necessarily expect everyone to follow their career path. The most winning pitchers of the past 15 years or so tend to fall into one of three arcs, none of which match Maddux and Clemens' "lots of wins early, lots of wins late" track:

1. Slow start, pick up in their 30s, never really threaten 300 seriously.
Kenny Rogers (219 wins, 70 by age 30) and Curt Schilling (216 wins, 69 by age 30) are the poster boys.

2. Okay start, okay at age 30, can't quite get there for whatever reason.
Pedro is the #1 guy for this since he actually was halfway to 300 by age 30, with 152 wins. But he's won just 17 games in the last three seasons, beset by injuries, and without a job at age 37, stuck on 214 wins, he clearly has no hope in spite of one of the best winning percentages in history. John Smoltz had 129 wins by age 30 and played for a team that won a lot, but he had to convert to a closer due to injuries and has just 210 wins at age 42. Mike Mussina was just three wins behind Glavine through their age 30 seasons, but Moose couldn't pick up the pace like Glavine did, and retired after last season with 270 wins.

3. Jamie Moyer.
Moyer will almost certainly win his 250th career game in the next month or two. He's also 46 and has won more than 200 games after his age 30 season. Weirdo.

It's more likely that most guys currently active will fit one of those tracks (probably 1 or 2). A fast starter like Felix Hernandez (41 wins at age 23) could easily fall into #2; someone like Derek Lowe (127 wins at age 36, but seems like he's at his best now and could pitch into his mid 40s) could be a #1.

So will anyone do it? Well, I think anyone who's going to do it has to have at least 140 wins by the end of their age 30 season. You're still a long shot at that point - you have to pitch well, on teams that aren't terrible, until you're 41-42 - but at least it's vaguely within reach. (Glavine, as we saw, just barely got to 300 with 139 wins by age 30, but he also spent most of his 30s pitching for Braves teams that won 90-100 games every dang year.) Who fits this bill?

Well, no one currently at age 30 or older fits the bill. Buehrle is actually the closest. If he wins 18 games this year - possible if not extremely likely - he'd have 140 at the end of his age 30 season, putting him ahead of Glavine's pace. But he'd still have to pitch as long as Glavine did, and likely play for a lot of winning teams, to get there. He's a longshot.

Johan Santana may be the game's best pitcher, but he needs 21 wins this year just to get to 130 by the end of his age 30 season. I might buy him for 250, but 300 seems too far away.

C.C. Sabathia is frequently mentioned. At the end of his age 27 season he already had 117 wins, meaning that even an extremely conservative 11 per year would give him 150 on the nose by the end of his age 30 season. Given Sabathia's body, though, does anyone think he can pitch effectively until age 42? Pitching for the Yankees might boost his win total in the short-term, but he's going to have to really rack up the wins in NYC to compensate for what will probably be a shorter career.

Carlos Zambrano? It's not quite as ridiculous as it sounds. Z had 96 wins coming into this season, but he still has three full years before the end of his age 30 season. 15 wins per (not a giant stretch) would put him at 141, again ahead of Glavine's pace. But can Carlos pitch effectively until he's 42, or even 38? Can he keep winning 15 games a season if the Cubs of 2012 and beyond start to fall apart around him?

Beyond that you have a lot of guys who, with their current totals, might be candidates for 200 or even 250, but almost certainly won't sniff 300. Typical of this group is someone like Jake Peavy, who had 86 wins at the end of his age 27 season. That doesn't put him too far behind Zambrano, but since Zambrano himself is obviously a longshot, Peavy and guys like him must be considered even more so.

Really, you have to look at guys now in their early 20s to even start thinking about it. Take Chad Billingsley, for instance. At the end of his age 23 season he already had 35 major league wins, and he's added three just in the first three weeks this year. By the end of his age 25 season he could be in the high 60s or low 70s in wins (Glavine had 53 at the same age), and by age 30, if he wins 15 games a year, he'd be pushing 150. The issue, of course, is projecting anything on a guy this young. At the end of his age 25 season, Doc Gooden had 119 major league wins, putting him more than 40 ahead of Clemens at the same age. But at the end of his age 30 season, Gooden had added just 38 wins to that total (Clemens won 85 in the same span), and ultimately he didn't even get to 200 for his career, finishing with 194. Obviously there were some extenuating circumstances in Doc's case that probably won't repeat these days, but the point is that you can't really assume that a 24-year-old kid is going to be able to win 15 games a year for the next decade and a half. And so, ultimately, trying to project which guys are likely to win 300 games is pretty fruitless. No one's likely to do it, so we might as well enjoy the ride if anyone can manage to make it.