Fire from the Hip: Thoughts on Sports & Real Life

This article was going to be about the Ryder Cup before I decided that my patriotic theme was a bit off the mark. Offensive perhaps. Thus, I nixed that, but I really don't like Sergio Garcia. I expect the Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk alternate shot match against Garcia and Luke Donald this afternoon to be very competitive. Hopefully, flag hunting will be the order of the match. Watching this tournament makes me want to go challenge some slow-playing businessmen to a duel over at Inverness. Hmm, reminds me of some of my old playing days in the NESCAC against the spoiled kids from Amherst and Tufts. They had never seen a kid decked out in so much Cleveland Indians and Browns golf paraphernalia. I want you all to know that I am working on a mamouth project right now, which is why I have not written anything recently. Just a hint of what is to come. What if the old adage that good pitching always beats good hitting in baseball was false? My supposition is that the average duration of a team's games throughout the regular season will show that teams that play longer games have a better record than teams who average shorter contests. My thesis is based around the idea that in the expansion era, since 1995, good hitting will defeat good pitching because rarely does a team have good pitching from innings one to nine. I am interested in initial thoughts, comments, opinions, but save your criticism for the results. Currently engrossed in tedious research, I am gathering the data of each team's win/loss record and average game duration for the last ten, possibly eleven years depending on if I have to go to boxscores for the 2006 season.