I think Anon. 5:55 was on to the same thing I was, not so mysterious to old-time baseball fans:

I assumed by describing Jimmy Rollins' leadership and Napoleon-like (not to say Napoleonic) posture, I assumed you meant, of course, Napoleon Lajoie, the Hall of Fame 2nd baseman, mostly with the Cleveland team in the American League, who were renamed in his honor as the Cleveland Naps (becoming the Indians only after his retirement in 1915).

Leadership abilities? Lajoie had that too, serving as player-manager in Cleveland from 1905-1909, amassing a more-than-respectable 377-309 record, though the team never managed better than a 2nd-place finish. It was the "iconic pose" that threw me, though: Lajoie was best known as a hitter, and the best-known images of him all are with a bat in his hands, and you said Rollins' pose was as he took the field. It did eventually occur to me that you meant that other Napoleon, though perhaps not the most relevant one.

And if Anonymous wants to take that as an omen of the Indians' ascendancy, well, where's the harm?

(Quick link to Baseball-Reference.com page about Lajoie attached to my signature...)

Oh yeah, is that so? *gloat*

If MLB wanted to make more money, they should've made the first round best of 7 instead of best of 5. As long as they were spreading out the playoff schedule, why not?

I wish they'd do that, and shorten the season to 154 games. Or is it logistically possible to make it 158 games? That seems best, if doable.

it's official -Cleveland's goin all the way.

This web site is hard hitting, insightful, and detail-oriented. Relevant issues are explored, lies are exposed, people who are part of the story are interviewed and quoted. Every subject but sports.

I can't speak for everyone, but it's my impression that there are a lot of local fans who read this page. When it's playoff time, fans become a lot more interested in the other teams besides theirs, they want to find out what the upcoming series is going to be like, whether it looks like there's going to be a pitcher's duel or a slugfest. I am not talking about box scores or play-by-play, I am talking about trends and circumstances.

For example, on the radar gun story, it would have been slightly interesting to hear what other radar guns were reporting. How about an expert opinion who can tell us if the TBS radar gun is set up incorrectly or is getting radio interference or what.

The story about how Okajima looks at the ground while he's pitching is interesting; why not ask his manager and pitching coach about it? They have some rather interesting and odd viewpoints on it, they've been marvelling at it all year. If you're looking for another pitcher who worked like this, try Luis Tiant.

The beatpath thing is actually sort of interesting, you can analyze further and determine a statistical weight for each of the arrows, typically represented by making the line darker or wider. You need to do this if you want to anything with the graph besides look at it. I played with this sort of stuff a lot when I was a kid and I discovered computer programming. If you want to try to predict future outcomes, you'll need to also look at scores if you want to get reasonable results. My football predictor program used to work really well, but only toward the end of the season. Individual performances and matchups are also very interesting for prediction, but working it into your analysis is really tedious. Baseball is interesting because there is just a sea of statistical data to work with; there's an fascinating book about left-handedness (can't remember the title) that draws many conclusions from looking at baseball statistics.

Okay, you do have some interesting stuff here, but I still think you should dig into your stories a little more. The whole web site should be Pulitzer-worthy!

I prefer when King takes a wider perspective. It's not overbearing like Bill Simmons and the forced pop culture reference (although I like to read him because I am a Boston homer as well). And King is not as stats driven and dry as many other writers. Not that he's perfect, although I don't suspect he would suggest otherwise.

There are plenty of places to read in depth analysis of sports, and pleny of people who'd rather read King Kaufman instead. He writes about society through the lens of sports, not so much Xs and Os. Issues of race, steroids, etc, tend to trump play by play. That's why it's in Salon and not on ESPN...

To a lot of us fans in "flyover country," Joe Torre "IS" New York City, in a way that Rudy or Bloomberg can never be.

All of you here who think that this King Kaufman guy is any good at sports writing, go read the paper in any town with rabid sports fans, like Boston, New York, Chicago, or Cleveland (I'm sure there are others). Even the Murdoch rags like the Boston Herald and the New York Post have quality sports writing.

With the exception of King's column, this is probably my favorite web site; Glenn Greenwald deserves Pulitzer Prizes for his work.

The problem here is that there is no analysis of the things that matter. Injuries, relief pitching, and head-to-head rivalries are all very important in Baseball, and you won't see much of that here. What you see instead is an analysis of the announcers, the commercials and the radar guns, none of which have any bearing on the game.

Go back and read King's column with his playoff predictions and see how silly it looks now.

Tressel is the silver fox!

They didn't mess with the Cleveland players?

Further fuel for the David vs. Goliath thesis--apparently God's getting involved. How else to understand the plague of gnats or midges or flying ants that discombobulated Joba Chamberlain in the 8th inning of Game 2 of Yankees/Indians? One of the things I love about baseball is that you frequently see things you've never seen before. Those close-ups on Joba's neck with like thirty of these miserable little creatures apparently dracula-ing away was certainly something new.

A few other observations from a well-spent weekend:

1) Melky Cabrera's had a great defensive series, and he's hit a little too. That means, of course, that he's not long for the Bronx--you know Steinbrenner's pining for Andruw Jones for next year.

2) Love the utter Snidely Whiplash loathesomeness of Steinbrenner's 'win or I push Joe off a cliff' motivational ploy.

3) Newest wrinkle--find an over-the-hill CFer, put him in left, and live with regular season mediocrity, because come playoff time, he'll go nuts. Lofton and Damon are the stories of the series.

4) The Red Sox pitching was as good as advertized. The real revelation has been the Rockies' bullpen. Fuentes and Corpas have been lights out. And Troy Tulowitzski--wow, nothing flashy, just difficult chance after difficult chance handled with poise and confidence. Plus he can hit.

5) No way the Yankees are out of this. That offense is scary, tough out after tough out. And Jeter hasn't even started hitting. The Indians, though ahead 2-1, are still sort of the underdogs. Still, go Indians. Non PC nickname notwithstanding, it would sure be nice to see the baseball world revolve around some other axis than boring old Sparta/Athens.