August 6, 2005 [LINK]

PNC Park revision

The crown jewel of the Allegheny River, PNC Park, now has a revised diagram that conforms to the new standard. That page is sponsored by Mark London, and marks the completion of the revisions for all three Pittsburgh baseball stadiums on this site. (I plan to tackle Exposition Park, the Pirates home at the turn of the 20th Century, in future months.) On deck: the Polo Grounds, sponsored by Phil Faranda. Just a reminder to folks who are interested in seeing updates to any one of the existing stadium pages: Sponsorships ($10 per page for individuals, and $8 for additional pages) are more than welcome. I know some folks are leery of PayPal, but I have had zero problems with them, and no one has reported any problems to me. Just do it!

My apologies to anyone whose e-mail messages I've failed to acknowledge recently. It's been another busy cycle for me lately, but hopefully I'll get caught up with all that very soon.

Let there be lights!

The Stadiums by class now lists the years when all of the early-20th Century baseball stadiums first had lights for night games. Those respective pages also list those years, as well. Among other updates are new thumbnail diagrams for several more stadiums. Nearly all of them should be revised in this way within the next week or so, but the full-size diagrams, alas, will take much longer...

Another one-run loss

All was going well in the middle innings last night, as the Nationals took a 5-4 lead, and then the bullpen fell apart, allowing San Diego to tie the game in the eighth and pull one run ahead in the ninth. That made the twelveth straight one-run-margin game that the Nats have lost. They were perhaps lucky that they didn't lose by a bigger margin, as the Padres racked up 16 hits, 12 of which were given up by Livan Hernandez. Livan threw his coat and glove in anger after being taken out of the game by Frank Robinson, even though the Nats were still ahead at that point. Such temper tantrums are not a good sign.

Playoff preview in St. Louis

The Nats remained 4 1/2 games behind the Braves, thanks to the 11-3 walloping inflicted upon them by the Cardinals last night. The Braves got their revenge today, winning 8-1, helped by two more home runs by the phenomenal Andruw Jones, one of which was a grand slam. On the FOX broadcast today, Joe Buck mentioned that the New Busch Stadium will still be under construction when the Cardinals begin playing there next year. The portion in left field (which overlaps the first base side of the present Busch Stadium) is supposed to be finished by July. We'll see.