Night Owl Cards

Tonight is Game 7 of the World Series, which means no one will be reading this. But I don't care. I've done a bunch of half-assed research and I must spill it somewhere. There have been 36 Game 7s in World Series history. Tonight's game between the Cubs and Indians is the 37th. I know fans are bracing themselves for an epic battle, the so-called "instant classic," but Game 7s produce dramatic games about as often as regular-season games. And that's why we constantly repeat the Game 7s that are memorable, because what we actually wished for came true. Other times, it's the Tigers beating the Cubs 9-3 in 1945 (I know you don't remember that, but it happened). Fans looking for a close Game 7 may or may not get their wish. There has been just one more extra-inning Game 7 (1924, 1991, 1997) than Game 7s that ended 11-0 (1934, 1985). There have been 12 one-run Game 7s and seven decided by more than four runs. Surprisingly, there have been nine shuto...

Heh, I bet you thought I made a mistake and meant to write "updating the BLOG," didn't you? Nope, I really did mean "blob." Those of you who were captive readers about a year-and-a-half ago, know that I have written about the blob  before . And you know that the term has nothing to do with the 1950s horror movie or its remake. But since I used the poster for the original movie on the last post, I might as well update things here with the '80s remake. What "the blob" refers to is our childhood term for the player who makes the last out of baseball game. That player is The Blob. In that original post, I referred to the Ultimate Blob. The "UB" is the player who makes the final out in the World Series. The original post then featured a rundown of all of the players who have suffered that horrible fate. Two World Series have gone by since that post, and I think it's time to rerun the list with the two most recent players who ar...

This has nothing to do with the movie, its sequel, or an all-consuming force from outer space. Instead, this is about two boys, their interest in baseball, and their silly fascination with failure. As boys, we would play baseball almost every day that we could. And when we couldn't, we would make up baseball games, whether it was in the backyard or with a pencil, piece of paper and a pair of dice. But we couldn't get through these games without injecting some humor into the proceedings. Specifically, we became interested in the player who makes the last out of a game. To my brother and I, that person was the ultimate example of failure. Here was a person entrusted with a team's last gasp, and he goes and robs his own teammates of their final breath. No one wanted to be this person. It was such a horrible fate that we had to come up with a name for someone who would fail in such a fashion. For a reason that I will never know, we called that person "The Blob." ...