We Didn't Farm Santiago, After All

Congratulations to Yehuda for his glorious victory over the rest of us at Santiago. The careful observer will note, however, that the real winner was the desert...

Los Birdos (Warning! Baseball Content!)

As a lifelong Cardinals fan, I am--naturally--quite pleased with the outcome of the World Series. I am, also, as surprised as anyone. This was a maddening team all year; lots of slumps, horrible pitching, injuries--the works.

Of course, a lot of the maddening parts had been removed by the time the postseason started--by which I of course mean Mark Mulder, Jason Marquis, Jason Isringhausen, and Sidney Ponson. Also: Aaron Miles, who was mostly unseen in the playoffs. It's been mentioned elsewhere that the roster that played in October was worth more than 83 wins, if they got to play the whole season together.

That said, naturally the Cardinals are not a dominant team, capping a magnificent season with a roster's worth of rings. It's worth mentioning that a few years ago they were a pretty dominant team, but got playoff disappointment for their trouble. Such is the nature of the offseason, where a little luck can go a long way. You play, tops, nineteen games; if you can manage to win eleven of them--that is, play .578 ball for that stretch, with the wins interspersed in the right way--you get to be the World Champion.

The Pirates, for reference, managed a thirteen-game stretch in late May and early June that, if it happened in the postseason, would have won them the pennant (but a 4-1 series loss in the WS). You can get on streaks, win a few games in a row, have everything line up, and win a few short series. I've had a nagging suspicion about pro football for this very reason; the season is all of sixteen games, followed by a bunch of best-of-one "series" to determine the champion. It seems almost incredible to think that the Really Best Team actually wins the Superbowl, but there we have it.

(I realize that it's impossible for football teams to play longer seasons and series; there'd be deaths by game 51 just from bone disintigration. Just sayin'.)

There really isn't much to be done except to embrace the caprice of it, to accept the seeming irrationality. It is said that baseball exists for two purposes: to generate statistics and good stories. The former might represent the known; the latter, the unknown. The stories and the statistics often conflict, sometimes confirm each other; both are part of the fabric of the game. You can see symmetry and patterns in it; the 2006 Cardinals are now the world champion with the fewest wins in the regular season--they supplant the 1987 Twins, who won their championship against the Cardinals. A cosmic payback, or the result of chance and how teams develop? In the collective memory of baseball, it's both.

(History Dork Note: There's a similar dynamic at work in historiography. Just what is history? Is it the record of what actually happened, or is it a more organic construction--the tales we tell ourselves about our past in order to make ourselves self-intelligible? The former implies the naked truth; the latter...not so much. Most history that actually gets written contains both to one degree or another. If an historian says something in the introduction like "this event holds many lessons for us today and our problems," it contains a lot of the second kind of history. Everyone says they want to read and write unbiased, Real Truth history without an agenda, but they're lying it's hard to do.)

Anyway...just some thoughts about the Cardinals--along with the usual digressions--the day after the first World Series win of theirs I can really remember.

Santiago Players! To Me!

I've got a Santiago game started on Spielbyweb. It's called "MR&TLU [heart] Pedro," password "musings". Hope to see you there...

(Of course it's a five-player game.)

(PS: Also looking for that last Wallenstein player. "For Your Edification II," p/w "bgn". ....aaaand we're full. Thanks everyone! Still room in Santiago, though.)

Calling All Map Geeks

So, I was wandering around Barnes and Noble tonight after class; there was a book I thought they had, but I was wrong. I did notice two things, though:

First, B&N is apparently involved in National Games Week. They had a table full of games of various distinctions. Maybe if they get way-discounted I'll spring for that copy of Rheinländer. Or not; we'll see. There's another game that's captured my heart recently, on which more this weekend, probably. (Well...maybe. I'm also writing the thesis--turned in the first (tiny) installment of my draft today. Woot!)

Anyway, the big discovery--and I couldn't pass this one up--was that Taschen's edition of Joan Blau's Atlas Maior has hit the remainder pile in a Barnes & Noble edition. $25 gets you a beautiful, large-format treatment of this magnificent work. It is, sadly, not quite as sumptuous as the original Taschen version...but that one retails for $200, so I'm pleased with this copy. (And the Taschen version isn't quite as sumptuous as the original--in eleven volumes--but that one costs more money than you can shake a stick at, plus the stick.)

I'm a map nut. I love drawing them, I love looking at them--I think that's why I'm a wargamer and historian, right there. Wargames and history give you lots of excuses to look at neat maps. Images from the Atlas Maior influence my own mapmaking style--I'm not a zillionth as good, but it's nice to have something to shoot for. (I quibble slightly at the book advertising itself as "The Greatest and Finest Atlas ever Published;" I'm partial to the Saxton Atlas myself, but there's no denying the Atlas Maior's a real treat.)

Anyway--if you love old maps, have an interest in seventeenth-century history, or need to spend money at Barnes and Noble right now, I highly recommend this one.

Who's in for Wallenstein?

Over on Spielbyweb, I've started a game of Wallenstein called "For Your Edification II." I think there's one slot left; the password is bgn (I created it for my Friday BGN column). Come join the fun that is the Thirty Years' War in Germany!

Why I'm Applying to Auburn

...because the town sounds lovely.

Hey There!

Gosh, where has the time gone? Oh, right--getting a new car, getting my ceiling fixed, starting Real Work writing the thesis...

Just a couple of links for the moment, but I feel an idea welling up. It's either that, or my poor diet the last week or two is catching up to me.

First, "What have we learned from history?" Not much, apparently.

Second...I've never been a big Family Circus fan. Neither have I been a big Nietzsche fan. Now, if you put the two together--Genius!