August 23, 2007 [LINK / comment]
New "overlay comparison" page
I just finished another one of my summer upgrade projects: the Stadium overlay comparison page. Unlike the old Side-by-side comparison page, which lets you compare any two baseball stadiums (but only the latest version of each one), the new page compares baseball stadiums as they existed at the same point in time, listed in alphabetical order by city and team name. Another feature on the new page is that you can go to any of the stadium pages in question by clicking on their names. The page is interactive in terms of choosing stadiums and choosing among various historical eras: 1916, [1928], 1939, 1958, 1969, 1977, 1991, and 2007. Of course, several of those stadium pages are not complete in terms of early-era diagram versions (and in the case of the Cardinals, there is as yet no page at all for Robison Field), but you get the idea where this is going...
Miami stadium shuffle
Mike Zurawski informs me that the Miami Hurricanes have decided to move out of the Orange Bowl and into Dolphin Stadium. See reuters.com and miamiherald.com, which makes it clear that this is not a "done deal." Forgive me for being a little skeptical, but I'm pretty sure I've heard this one before. If the deal really does goes through, it may make it easier for the Florida Marlins to get public funding for their hoped-for new stadium, in which case the two teams would be trading places. I wonder how many times in the past two teams have exchanged physical locations for their home fields?
Historic loss for O's
The 30-3 drubbing suffered by the the Baltimore Orioles at the hands of the last-place Texas Rangers last night at Camden Yards was truly historic in proportions. The Rangers hit six home runs altogether: "Marlon Byrd [former Washington National] and Travis Metcalf both hit grand slams and Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Ramon Vazquez hit two home runs each." From MLB.com, here is the box score, "believe it, or NOT!"
| Team |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
Final |
| Rangers |
0 |
0 |
0 |
5 |
0 |
9 |
0 |
10 |
6 |
30 |
| Orioles |
1 |
0 |
2 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
3 |
Nats cool off
Two weeks ago, the (then) red-hot Washington Nationals had won eight of their last ten games, a feat matched only by the Yankees. Since then they have been losing most of their games, and were swept by the Mets during their recent home stand. Fortunately for the Washington team, however, the Florida Marlins have lost nine games in a row, so the Nats are now in fourth place! With a 57-70 win-loss record (.449), the Nationals are doing better than eight other teams in the major leagues, and that is a major accomplishment for rookie manager Manny Acta.