I used to love that song when I was a kid.

Adam: If you look at how much demand outstrips supply of tickets in a city like Boston or Chicago you'd think that the teams could make a killing by building a new park, twice as big, in an area with tons of cheap parking.

How would they make a killing doing that? It's the scarcity of tickets (high demand) that drives the price up. If the Sox played in a 70,000-seater, there'd be no worries about getting tickets. Instead of having the whole season sold out by mid-March, the Sox would be hoping for big walkups every day, since fans would know they could usually decide at the last minute to go -- or, whoops, "American Idol" is on, not -- and get a cheap seat as the anthem plays.

Something one or maybe both books brought up that I hadn't really thought about is sample-size issues. However you define "clutch," if we say it's roughly that few-times-a-game situation where the hearts are pounding, how many of those will any one hitter face in a year? A dozen? Two dozen? That sounds like a lot but let's say two dozen.

Considering it takes several hundred, and maybe a couple of thousand, plate appearances to make a fair judgment of a hitter's true big-league hitting ability, can we really draw any conclusions from the 100 to 150 clutch PAs a veteran player might have had?

Brad: And isn't the existence of closers an explicit defense of clutchness?

Yes. The use of closers, and the belief that only some guys have the right stuff to be closers, displays a belief in clutchness. Such use doesn't prove the existence of clutchness, only that managers believe in clutchness.

We expect Mariano Rivera to get the side out with few or no difficulties 55 times a year, especially in the playoffs, but no one expects Mark Buerhle to have 35 mistake-free first innings.

Nobody expects Rivera to have 55 mistake-free ninth innings. Even the acest of the ace relievers fail sometimes, and one-run saves are actually not as common as you might think. So there's margin for error in a good number of Rivera's saves.

And there's margin for error for Buehrle too. We don't expect Buehrle to have mistake-free first innings because that's not his job. He has to pitch to the lineup three or four times, so he has to use more pitches, which means he's going deeper into his toolbox, using lesser tools. He may use one plate appearance by a hitter to set that hitter up to get him later.

If Buehrle were asked to retire the side in one inning, there's every reason to believe he'd be very good at it. Don't forget that Rivera, like many a great closer, was a failed starter.

It may be that there's such a thing as some guys with the right stuff to pitch in the ninth, and some guys not having that right stuff. But the evidence suggests that more pitchers than you might think would be successful in that role.

I guess no one appreciates my subtle tribute to Jerry Coleman ...

Should be fixed soon.