The Sacrifice

 

Lately, I’ve been writing an academic paper for one of my grad classes that pertains to the blurring distinctions between religion and baseball. The game has just been so popular, for such a long time, and I’ve frequently thought about the relationship between the two social institutions, as there appear to be many similarities. 

The hardest part of the paper is defining religion, as a definition could be too exclusive or it could be too inclusive, depending on how you look at it. In the end, I decided to use several common characteristics that are across many religions in order to analyze baseball, instead of choosing a fixed definition. One of the characteristics studied was the concept of the “sacrifice”. As baseball fans, we all know the practical and obvious use of the term within the game, whether we’re talking about sac flys or sac bunts. Essentially, with these plays, you sacrifice yourself for the good of the team as you move runners around and by successfully sacrificing yourself, you gain something from your team, whether it’s their respect, admiration, trust, etc.

I won’t get into the specifics of what I wrote about, since I’m still teasing through a couple of things, but, looking at the statistics for 2007, can you guess who “sacrificed” himself more than any other player in the AL (presumably, for the good of his team)?

It was the Melk Man. Melky had a combined 19 plays (hits and flys) where he sacrificed himself for the cause. The only other player in baseball (this past season) to have more than that was Juan Pierre, but he only had 1 more sacrifice, and all 20 of his were on bunts (he’s fast). In fact, the Yankees sacrificed more than any team in baseball, as Hideki Matsui (10), and A-Rod (9), add to the Melky’s 19 (38 total).

For whatever reason, this is pretty interesting to me, especially since the Yankees are always thought to be a home run hitting, offensive juggernaut, which they are, but, as you can see, they still do some of the little things that help out their team (Joe Torre?). Of course, there are some people who don’t think that the sacrifice is helpful at all (an out is an out and you want your players to not make outs, especially intentional outs), which is another argument in itself (I don’t agree or disagree, I’m just stating that this is debated).

Cody Ransom Fighting For His Spot

According to Bryan Hoch, Cody Ransom has been “stating his case” with the Yanks. I doubt he’ll make it in the end, especially with Betemit already a lock, but Girardi seems to like his position flexibility and defense.

Exhibition: Yanks VS. Jays

Ian Kennedy and Joba Chamberlain have already thrown and were particularly dominant. Ian went 4.1 allowing 1 R on 6 H and he struck out 4, while Joba threw 1 innings and struck out 3.

Replacing Parkland Costs Money, Go Figure

From Newsday:

NEW YORK – The bill for replacing parkland bulldozed to make way for a new Yankee Stadium has soared by almost 50 percent, officials said.

Unforeseen environmental problems and other hitches have raised the estimated cost from $128 million to $190 million, parks officials said at a City Council hearing Wednesday.

No lie, I’m really sorry about the lack of posts in the past 2 days. I’ve been absolutely swamped with work. But, I promise to not only make it up to you with new posts later, but also, I’ll be conducting my first giveaway next week.

More later (hopefully)… I’ll be done with all this work soon (before Saturday). If I’m not posting, make sure to check in with one of the great blogs located on the sidebar. My favorites are RAB, Pinstripes PA, Yankee GM, LoHud, and a few others.