With his two shutout innings in relief of Roy O during Game 2 of the National League Championship Series last night, Stros closer Brad Lidge — counting the past two NLCS — has not allowed a run to the Cardinals in almost 30 innings over the past two years.
Here’s hoping that the Cardinal players are thinking about that this weekend while trying to hit that nasty slider.
A couple of good ones to pass along to friends as we move on toward the weekend. First, from Letterman:
“We’ve had so much rain here this week. Do you realize that we are this close to being ignored by FEMA!”
Then, from Leno on the Minnesota Vikings players’ recent Lake Minnetonka escapade:
“What are they, 1-3? That’s the only offensive thing they’ve done all season.”
As Roy O brings the Stros home from St. Louis in a 1-1 tie in the National League Championship Series, Art De Vany, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of California, Irvine, provides this thought-provoking paper (pdf) in which he debunks the popular theory (of which I have never been comfortable) that MLB sluggers’ taking of muscle-enhancing steroids were the primary reason that several old home-run records were broken over the past decade. As Professor De Vany notes here and here:
The latest version of my paper, “Has Home Run Hitting Changed in Major League Baseball” is now up.
I take up the matter of steroids more directly and also such possible influences as “hotter” baseballs, altered ball parks, smaller strike zone and find them all to be lacking. They do not stand up to verifiable tests or statistics. And they shouldn’t because no explanation is required. There has been no increase in MLB home run hitting. Three home run hitting geniuses appeared in a brief time span and will soon be gone. Enjoy them and don’t look for explanations when none are required. The law of home runs and extreme human accomplishment that I develop tell us that we never know when this kind of genius will appear, only that it will be rare and intermittent.
Among the interesting aspects about living in the Houston area are the interesting things that one can find near one of the area’s many bayous in residential areas within or near Houston’s inner loop:
A contractor hired by the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department captured a 9-foot-long, 275-pound male alligator Thursday near Greens Bayou just outside Houston.
“He was removed without incident,” said Capt. Albert Lynch, a state game warden in Harris County, “but as many alligators as I’ve moved over the years, they usually do put up quite a fight.”
The alligator was caught right off Interstate 10 near the intersection of Normandy, in a flood-detention canal near Greens Bayou, . . .
As noted in this earlier post, an old fashioned run on the bank resulting from a lack of trust in the marketplace — as opposed to losses attributable to a relatively small number of shady business deals — is what really caused the demise of Enron. The revelations over the past week relating to Refco, Inc. — the largest independent futures-brokerage firm in the U.S. — has generated a similar lack of trust in the marketplace that has thrown Refco into its own Enronesque experience.
Although no where near the size of Enron, Refco is still a pretty darn big outfit. It has over $4 billion in approximately 200,000 customer accounts, and Refco’s futures-brokerage business is as big as the derivatives desks of most major Wall Street firms. The company is well-known for trading commodities, currencies, bonds and derivatives transactions with a wide-range of trading partners and counterparties, including hedge funds and customers attempting to hedge risk. Nevertheless, Refco — as with many such trading firms — is highly-leveraged, as its most recent public filings reflect about $75 billion in assets and a roughly equal amount in liabilities.