First is all that spitting. Baseball players spit. The coaches spit. The umpires spit. The bat boys spit. If the outfielders could coordinate their spitting efforts, the groundskeepers could turn off the sprinkling system.
Torrent The Outfield
NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture 13.2 (2005) 120-121 // --> [Access article in PDF] A Poet Listening to a Baseball Game Late at Night, and Losing Streak Mary Kennan Herbert A Poet Listening to a Baseball Game Late at Night Go Mets. They're leading, 6-0, not a bad way to end the day. Piazza has recovered nicely from his latest injury. Leiter has an easy job of it. They're playing the Diamondbacks under a western sky sparkling with those same stars cowboys see, like a scorecard in May when the season is young and the team is full of energy, promising another summer of pleasures on my little radio, a Sony I bought for only ten bucks, my silvery link to rows of those stars so far away and near. This piece of paper, that whack of a bat, a rustle, a synergy, far from my desk and yet close to my heart. Nothing really important. Hey, they're hitting homers up to the Milky Way. This game is pure poetry. [End Page 120] Losing Streak First hurricane of the season. Water and wind slap windows of the diner. Here I sit in the diner toying with dinner. Our howling storm focuses my mind on how an extra "n" makes the difference between bacchanalia and banality. Extra innings. If only, if only my team had stayed the course. Of course, they lost the pennant. No deluge of champagne. Waves of rain cascade down dirty glass. The outfield grass is beaten down. Think of analogies. Watery gravy escapes. This mushy grave cannot contain it. Mashed potatoes are a dubious mitt against the torrent. Soon, the eye of the storm. Puddling. Hunger pokes at the catcher. Rivulets of moisture slide down a tumbler. Yet another supper. Super storm, eh? What do you recommend for dessert? What for the pain? Slide, slide, beat a wild throw home. Mary Kennan Herbert teaches literature and writing courses at colleges in New York City. She is a Brooklynite and a Mets fan. Six collections of her poems have been published, and her work has appeared in many literary journals, including the Elysian Fields Quarterly. One of her poems is included in Line Drives, an anthology of baseball poetry published by Southern Illinois University Press. // --> ...
Figure 1. Illustration of ten outfield players (numbered gray circles) and the eight positioning-derived variables: (a) stretch index, (b) speed of dispersion, (c) length, (d) width, (e) sectors, (f) corridors, (g) longitudinal speed of team center, and (h) latitudinal speed of team center.
Configurations of tactical behaviors expressed in team-related positioning-derived variables were computed to determine the structural and dynamic characteristics of the team. Eight collective measures were processed from the outfield players: stretch index, team length, team width, longitudinal position of team geometrical center (x axis) and lateral position of team geometrical center (y axis) (Duarte et al., 2013). Whereas team geometrical center (also named centroid) and stretch index have been previously defined, team length, and width were calculated as the difference between the maximum and minimum positions of players in the field's longitudinal and latitudinal dimensions, respectively, in each time unit. Also included was the speed of displacement (meters per second) at which team geometrical center was moving (differentiated lateral and longitudinal axes) and the speed of contraction and expansion in order to capture how the team was behaving (Bourbousson et al., 2010). This last variable was calculated by differencing the each data point of the stretch index with the previous one.
Illustration of ten outfield players (numbered gray circles) and the eight positioning-derived variables: (a) stretch index, (b) speed of dispersion, (c) length, (d) width, (e) sectors, (f) corridors, (g) longitudinal speed of team center, and (h) latitudinal speed of team center.
Just ask Nationals minor league hitting coordinator Troy Gingrich, who, thanks to a two-day torrent of rain, got to see Soto for all of seven innings before the big club pulled the trigger and called him up to Washington. 2ff7e9595c
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