Thank you, Craig, for making it fun every morning during baseball season to review the previous day’s happenings on the field.  I’m sure I would have missed out on a ton of stuff without ATH.

And Cards-Dodgers should be something like pudding vs. Jell-o.  Nah, Jell-o’s too firm.  Maybe cottage cheese.

I thought we had the fielding percentage argument settled back in 2004, when Carlos Lee played an errorless LF for 148 games. Go figure.

Clearly, like Lee, this gives Bay the well-earned right to butcher up LF for the next 5+ seasons.

As to whether a team has ever bounced back from as horrible an April as this year’s Angels, the 1981 Royals were 3-10 in April and got into the postseason. Maybe that doesn’t count; that was a strike year, and they got in by winning the division in the 2nd half.

The 1914 Braves were 2-7 in April (and 3-16 at the end of play on 16 May) and famously won the pennant and the World Series.

By way of comparison, this year’s Angels were 9-12 in April. Their low point would have been 25 April, when they were 6-11.

Yeah, the ‘05 Yanks were 11-19 on May 6, nine games back.  They won 95 games and the division.  The ‘07 version was 21-29 on May 29, fourteen and a half back.  They won 94 games, the Wild Card, and finished two back in the division.

Craig,

Thanks for seeing us through another year. I am having withdrawal symptoms already.

PS - I detect continuing anti-Canadian bias in in all this Jason Bay bashing. Shame on you!

Craig - can you take over volokh.com during the off-season? He’s getting a little wobbly regarding the fourth amendment lately.

Thanks for not merely keeping your day job to entertain us. I’ll miss this while undergoing stem cell procedures in the next two weeks!

I just love the fact that, for the next six months, A-Rod gets his name beside Mark McGwire in the record books. You couldn’t've planned the symmetry any better- two of the biggest names of the ‘roid era tied on the home run list. In typical A-Rod fashion, he’ll hit 26 next year to match Sosa. Oh well, now he can focus on his 2-for-15 ALDS and helping Kate Hudson pick the carpet for the apartment.

Craig, thanks for yet another season of ATH and all the other great stuff you do here.

The random references, the *hint* of snark, the love of tweaking Yankee fan-boys… all help make the long season a fun one here.

Thanks.

At times the baseball season can be like a good novel with a gripping plot—if you’re not careful, it’s easy to rush on, desperate to find out how the story ends. And in this mad dash toward the finish it is all too easy to miss out on the nuance and subtlety: the way the season meanders from chilly, sleety April night games, to sultry, lazy July afternoons, and on into crisp, clear September excitement; all too easy to forget the lessons that baseball teaches us, chief among which is the reminder that though each day brings its highs and lows, its terrors and joys, these are but fleeting feelings, soon to be replaced by the next day’s sorrows and saving graces. If we pay close attention, baseball can show us that beauty is in the details, but you can’t sweat the small stuff, that the overarching narrative is important, but let’s not get lost in it.

ATH helps reinforce these points, helps to pull back and appreciate the unique quirks that make the game so great. I won’t say thanks for writing it (one doesn’t, after all, write for the enjoyment of the reader, but rather because there is something worth saying, some thought worth sharing) but I will say I’m grateful for it.

It’s sad that I don’t know the season is really over until I read the last ATH.  Truly, your blog is fabulous.

And there’s always room on the Twins bandwagon.