That's Why You Throw All Four - I'm all for speeding up baseball games and one suggestion has been that when a pitcher wants to intentionally walk a batter, the batter should just go to first base instead of the pitcher throwing him four pitches outside of the strike zone.
That would speed things up, but rarely, and very rarely, a pitcher throws a wild pitch while intentionally walking a batter. It happened in Game 6 of this year's American League Championship Series. It didn't result in a run scoring, but it could have.
I still recall a game in the late 1960s at Forbes Field. Atlanta was leading Pittsburgh in the bottom of the ninth when the Pirates had a man on second base with one out and the Braves decided to intentionally walk a Pittsburgh batter. But the pitcher threw a wild pitch during the intentional walk, the runner moved to third and eventually scored the tying run on a sacrifice fly.
Pittsburgh went on to win in extra innings, but Atlanta would have been the winner in nine innings without that wild pitch.
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Rauh, Rauh, The Gang's All Here - This week while putting together The Post-Journal players of the week, we had to make sure we had the photo of the correct Rauh.
There was not one player of the week with the last name of Rauh, but two. They were Southwestern's Jimmy Rauh for football and Chautauqua Lake's Hannah Rauh for girls volleyball. And last week, the girls volleyball player of the week was Christina Rauh of Panama.
Maybe we should list the Rauh of the week.
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Always A Hurdle For JCC Women - The Jamestown Community College women's basketball team finally won a regional title last season after three straight trips to the championship game, but the Jayhawks didn't get the reward of the previous three NJCAA Region 3 Division II champs.
In the past, the regional champion qualified for the national tournament, but last season it was decided by the NJCAA for the first time ever that the Region 3 and Region 15 champions would play a district game with the winner going to the nationals.
To add salt to the Jayhawks' wound, just two weeks after they won the regional title, it was voted on at the national tournament that the district game would no longer be played.
That's just one of the hurdles the Jayhawks have faced.
JCC bid on and was awarded a two-year stint of hosting the women's regionals for 2005-06 and 2006-07. But before the 2006-07 season, a change was announced and it was decided to have the Region 3 Division II teams host the event in alphabetical order. So that season, instead of being back at JCC for the second-year of its two-year bid, the regionals were held at Alfred State College.
The Jayhawks lost the championship game that season to Genesee, which JCC had defeated twice in the regular season. But playing on their home court, which the Jayhawks were supposed to have done, instead of a neutral court could have made a difference.
The reason the Jayhawks hosted the regional tournament last season was because it was JCC's turn in alphabetical order, but now there has been another change. Region 3 decided the game should be hosted by the No. 1-seeded team in the tournament, but it was also stipulated that a team can't host the event for two straight years. So if the No. 1 seed repeats, the No. 2 seed would be the host.
As the defending champions, the Jayhawks might end up seeded No. 1 this season. But now under the new rule they couldn't play host to the regionals since they had them last year.
But JCC hosted last year under the old system, so if the Jayhawks are No. 1 this season shouldn't they still be the host because it is under a new system?
I guess not.
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Adding Fuel To The Fire - After their pregame warmups for last Saturday's Section Class AA quarterfinal football game at Riverside Institute of Technology, the host Frontiers taunted the Jamestown Red Raiders.
That wasn't a good idea.
Jamestown had plenty of motivation coming into the game. The teams had the same 4-3 records, but Jamestown was the No. 4 seed from Class AA South while Riverside was the No.1 seed from Class AA North and therefore was the home team. And no matter where the game was played, Jamestown was already motivated to win its first Section 6 playoff game in 10 years.
So Jamestown had plenty to be fired up for and it might have been a good idea for Riverside not to give the Red Raiders any more motivation.
Jamestown did its talking on the scoreboard with a 7-6 win.
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Double-Figure World Series Tickets - The cheapest ticket available for Game 1 of this year's World Series was supposed to be selling for $400. And there were reports that standing-room tickets were selling for more than $400.
Rather steep for standing, wouldn't you say?
I purchased four reserved-seat tickets for Game 3 and Game 5 of the 1971 World Series in Pittsburgh. They were good seats on the first-base side of Three River Stadium.
And I purchased them through the mail!
I ended up not needing two of the tickets for Game 5, so I sold them to someone in Jamestown for the face price. And what was that?
It was $10.