Friday Notes: July 13, 2007

It’s a scary day around here.  This is what’s going on:

• As I’ve mentioned probably too many times, I’m going to the Braves game tonight against the Pirates.  It looks like a great pitching matchup, with Hudson facing Ian Snell, who has been outstanding this year for the Bucs.  I’ll be closely monitoring Willie Harris and Jason Bay from the first row out in left field, so you might see me if someone hits one deep in our direction.  The Braves get the dregs of the NL Central to start the second half, but unfortunately they face the Pirates’ two best pitchers, with Gorzelanny to follow on Saturday against Chuck James.  Carlyle will face Paul Maholm on Sunday.
• Among the ten things Studes didn’t know last week is that Jeff Sagarin compiled Player Win Averages (an early predecessor to WPA) for the last fifty years prior to this one.  The best season: Bonds’ 2004.  The worst: Neifi Perez in 2002.  Good thing he does stimulants.  Tango’s take is worth reading, with some comments about Steve Bedrosian and Hoyt Wilhelm.
• I saw the new Harry Potter movie last night, and I think it was perhaps the best of the five so far.  I haven’t read the books, but I thought this was the first movie in the last three that actually had a cohesive plot and didn’t feel rushed along.  I loved the first two movies, and this one is just as good, if not better.
• My fellow Harding folks, particularly those who attended church at West Side, probably know very well who Dr. “X” is in this letter.  I came to appreciate his point of view on a number of political and religious issues, but it is very similar to my own, so there’s some amount of bias.  His views are also very dissimilar to the political perspective of most of the Harding campus, which means this probably isn’t the first letter that’s been written about him or to him.  It’s terribly unfortunate that so many students enter Harding with such a lack of perspective on the world that they end up writing nonsense letters to “control” the evil liberal professor.

I’ll be back on Monday with a review of the short week, which will probably include a more-detailed review of Friday night’s game.