3 RBI, no HBP
Craig Biggio collected his 2,927th base hit last night, and drove in 3 runs during the Astros 7-4 win. However, the ellusive plunk number 282 was nowhere to be found, despite 13 pitches thrown in Biggio's direction.
Tonight the Pirates will let 3-time Biggio plunker Shawn Chacon start the game. Chacon hasn't plunked Biggio since April 10, 2002, but he pitched for Colorado back then, so it may have been the thin air that made him do it. Chacon also plunked Biggio on June 7th and 19th of 2001.
Biggio has never been plunked on September 27th.
Labels: plunkers
2 Comments:
Now if you ask me, and plenty folk do now and again, this here diminution of the plunking instinct in the part of Target Biggio is not only disquieting, but also alarming. According to the database gizmo over to the MLB web page, during the 2005 season he done got plunked 17 times. Likewise that gizmo tells me so far in the 2006 season he done been plunked only 8 times. According to my cipherin' skills that represents a 53% reduction. If this trend continues, then next season he will go from 8 down to approximately 4. Then he might could retire and have his accoutrements bronzed and displayed in Cooperstown without ever having surpassed the all time mark. Target has done us all a great service by taking strides to unify the silly "pre-modern" and "modern" records. Using the turning of the 19th to the 20th Centuries as the benchmark is hackneyed and useless. We need to either use "all-time" or the Cletus-standard, which is 21st Century records vs pre-21st Century records. It's kind of like that worn out "think outside the box" phrase. That is so "last century." The 90s are finished, so it's high time we all got back in the box and got back to work. Enough of that warm fuzzy trendy nonsense.
Here's my plan. I'm fixin' to order me up a passel full of them newfangled Plunk Biggio shirts and the like. I am passing them out to all my relations throughout Chesterfield County. I am instructing my kinfolk to don their apparel for the remaining games of this season, and I'll instruct them to wear them next season as well. We got to see Target get over the hump or else we will forever have to listen to folk lip flap about "modern records" as opposed to "the record" We don't want that, no sir. If you believe in the power of positive energy rays being emitted from select garments, and if you believe we can influence the trajectory of balls as the approach Target's bat, then you need to get on up here on the bandwagon with me and Mama and start willing them balls to whack him on his person. That is done through the wearing of the shirt on game days. (thus - you best buy one)
Now I know some of you folk are going to assume that this is a paid advertisement attempting to get you to buy a shirt. Well, it ain't. I got nothin' for my troubles. True enough, you'll either have to pay for a shirt or ask your brethren and cistern to pay on your behalf if you want to participate, but Lord have mercy --don't you see the need to participate? Ain't you right weary of them visiting sportscasters lip flappin' and jaw waggin' about Target holding the "modern" record? Land of Goshen – he's fixin' to come up two shy! Come on people, it is your civic duty. Like my Uncle Nervin Huckabee used to say about folk what he didn't hold in much esteem, "they ain't got no character." You want folk to talk about your lack of character because you opted to get Target up to two shy of the record, then you bailed out on him?
Shame on you. Get your credit card out and click, click, click on that computer machine of yours until it sells you a T shirt. (I promise this ain't no imbedded advertisement created by the web page jockey -- he don't even know me. This is a plea to get off your backside and help Target make the goal betwixt now and his planned retirement party at the end of next season). We don't want the record holder spelling "Hughie" with an effeminate "ie." We need a manly name like Craig (with an "ig") on the plaque in Cooperstown.
Amen.
If that had been a paid advertisement, he would have posted the link (okay, here it is - but only because cletus says it's important).
The other thing Mr. Huckabee notes is that Biggio has dropped his plunk production by 53%, and if he does so again next year, he'll finish next season with 285 hbps. The weird thing is that this is exactly what Zeno of Elea, the Greek Philosopher said would happen in his paradox called "Achilles and the HBP record". Zeno claimed that in order to break a record you first had to get half way to the record, and once you were half way, you still had to get half way to the record, and the journey is an endless sequence of getting half way, such that you never get there because the sum of that infinate series of halfs is less than the whole. He may have explained it better than I can, but it still doesn't make much sense. But, entering 2005, Biggio needed 32 HBPs to break the record and got 17 - 53% of the way their. Entering 2006 he needed 15 to break the record and has gotten 8 - 53% of the way their. If he doesn't get hit again this year, Biggio will need 7 plunks to break the record, and if he has another 53% reduction in HBPs as Cletus projects, he'll only get 4, which isn't 53% of 7, but rounds to the same thing. This is very close to what Zeno was talking about. Maybe. Fortunately the ancient Greeks didn't have baseball, so any of the thoughts of the great philosophers on that subject are probably not worth the marble they're chisled on.
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