The Sherman Doctrine on Littering
Littering is a problem. We see trash everywhere – on streets and sidewalks, along highways, in and around schools, train stations and bus terminals. Here are some observations I considered in developing my doctrine.
1. Some people are litterbugs. They thoughtlessly toss away cigarette butts, candy and gum wrappers, coffee cups, soda cans, plastic bottles, Styrofoam fast food packaging, paper bags – you name it. These people create the problem.
2. Other people do not litter. I do not litter. Ever. I am not unusual. My unscientific assumption is that most of you reading this do not litter.
3. I do not know what percentage of the population are non-litterers, but It may be surprisingly high. Suppose that 90% of the people in our area never ever dropped a piece of litter on the street or threw any litter from their cars. Would our streets and roadways be immaculate? No. They’d be filthy. With the volume of traffic we have, 1 out of 10 pedestrians or drivers dropping things would create a disgusting mess.
4. I do not believe that littering can be eradicated by using positive or negative reinforcement to change the behavior of litterers.
5. Therefore, we in the non-littering majority, have two choices. We either do nothing about the litter we see every day OR we pick some of it up.
Now here is the Sherman doctrine:
Proposition A:
Every time I leave home or return to it, I pick up every piece of litter I see on the sidewalk in front of the house or in the driveway. If you see any trash in front of my house, you know it was dropped after the last time I passed by.
Proposition B:
Every time I go someplace as a pedestrian, I pick up at least one piece of trash. If my route takes me past litter baskets, I deposit one piece of trash in each one.
This procedure does not cost me a noticeable amount of time. It also does not make a noticeable difference in the cleanliness of my neighborhood. However, what if a large number of non-litterers followed the Sherman Doctrine? THAT might make a noticeable difference.
At a minimum, everyone should follow Proposition A. It doesn’t matter whether you live in a house or an apartment building. Do not tolerate any trash, not a single cigarette butt, in front of the place where you live. Pick it up! If you do it every time, it will never accumulate. Every day, I find something in front of my house to pick up, but not a lot.
In some places, Proposition A is in force. There are residential streets, including some in my Bronx neighborhood, that are litter-free because on those streets all the homeowners do what I do. These beachheads of cleanliness can be extended to cover all residential streets.
If a critical mass of people adopt Proposition B, I’m convinced that the unsightly shopping areas in the Bronx and elsewhere can become noticeably cleaner.
OK non-litterers. You’ve read the Sherman doctrine. Are you going to follow it?
Sunday, October 25, 2015
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Joe the Sherminator's Position Paper Part I
The Sherminator’s Presidential Campaign Platform Part I
October 3, 2015
There are qualifying requirements for many occupations. Music teachers, barbers, airplane pilots, professional baseball players are examples of vocations for which practitioners must have credentials and skills.
As we have seen in the U.S. this year, no qualification or experience is needed to be the President of the United States. Anyone who was born in the U.S. at least 35 years ago can run for President and can become President if he can get enough people to vote for him.
Therefore, I am announcing that I am a candidate for President. If you read what follows you will know about some of my recommendations for changes that I want to see in this country. It does NOT represent my entire platform. I omitted my views on many issues like climate change, health care, and prison reform. I may write about these and other issues as my campaign progresses. So here we go:
1. Reteach American History
An American future based on sane and humane values cannot be built on the unapologetic, triumphalist view of America as the greatest country on earth that is taught in history classes in our schools. In order to have a corrected future, America must be understood as a country that was built by the dominance of wealthy white males over everybody else. Our heritage as Americans includes a history of genocide of Native Americans, enslavement of blacks, militaristic imperialism throughout the world, racism, exploitation of immigrants, discrimination against women, and suppression of organized labor. All Americans who understand their history must accept their deserved burden of guilt and shame and use it to motivate a resolve to change their country.
2. Abolish America’s Culture of Violence
The United States is and always has been a violent country. The history of the United States is one of chronic violence. The United States can begin to reverse this by immediate, unconditional, unilateral demilitarization.
The American population is armed to the teeth so it is too late to repeal the Second Amendment and pass a law against gun ownership. However, gun ownership and use can be regulated in the same manner as car ownership and use already is. The following are my proposals for regulating use of guns:
• It must be illegal for ANYONE to own a gun without a license.
• To qualify for a license, applicants must take a gun safety course and pass written, psychological, and gun-shooting exams. (Drivers must do all these things to get a license except for a psychological test. Since road rage can make drivers dangerous, I propose that both drivers and gun-users should pass a psychological test before they are deemed to be qualified.
• Applicants passing all the requirements must pay a fee for their license.
• Gun license holders must be re-examined and if they pass, must pay a fee for renewal each time their license expires.
• As with licensed drivers and cars, licensed gun users must register every gun they own and pay registration and renewal fees for as long as they own each gun.
• Like car owners, licensed gun owners should be required to carry insurance covering them for liability resulting from any personal or property damage from the use of their gun. As with cars, larger and more expensive guns would require higher insurance premiums.
• Gun owners’ insurance premiums would also be raised in response to any insurance claims resulting from any incident involving one of their guns.
The glorification of violence must be relegated to America’s past.
Producers of all movies and TV shows in which guns are used shall pay a violence promotion tax. These tax revenues will be used to sponsor production of anti-gun public service messages that must be shown before, during, and after all entertainment that contains gun violence.
Movie theaters and cable TV stations that show violent material will collect a violence tax from ticket buyers and cable subscribers. These tax revenues will go as subsidies to producers of non-violent media entertainment. The lower cost of non-violent entertainment will be passed along to consumers creating a monetary incentive to choose non-violent entertainment.
3. Demilitarize America
The Pentagon and all military bases in foreign countries should be closed. All military personnel should be retrained and set to work installing wind and solar power generators in every part of the U.S. The military budget should also be redirected to infrastructure maintenance and upgrades and the building of a vastly expanded network of local and inter-city train lines.
America must cease all manufacturing and selling of military equipment. Weapons factories shall be retooled to begin manufacturing useful items (ie, bicycles and saxophones) for a peaceful America.
4. Make the U.S. economy MUCH more egalitarian
There must be no inherited wealth. Institute a 100% inheritance tax.
There must not be any billionaires. Anyone should be able to get by for life on a 999 million dollars. Wealth beyond that must be appropriated for public use.
There must be a reasonable maximum and minimum wage. Beyond a reasonable amount, there should be a 100% tax bracket. Taxes on the wealthy should be redistributed to low-income people as a negative income tax bringing them up to a minimum wage that is above poverty level.
5. Make Education in the U.S. egalitarian
• All schools must be funded equally across the country.
• Private schools will be abolished.
• All students must attend the public school that is closest to their home.
• Wealthy parents cannot make donations to the schools their children attend. All voluntary donations must go into a general pool and be equally shared by ALL schools.
• Every school is required to offer a full curriculum of arts education, including instruction on a musical instrument provided by the school for every child who wants to learn how to play. (This is easily paid for by taxing the rich and redirecting part of our so-called defense budget.)
• College education shall be free for everyone.
6. Eliminate undemocratic features in the U.S. Constitution
• Revise Article II Section 1 and replace the Electoral College with a straight national popular vote to determine the winner in Presidential elections.
What is so terrible about the Electoral College? If you already know the answer to that question, you may skip the following two paragraphs.
The number of Electoral votes from each state is equal to 2 plus the number of Congressional districts the state contains. The 2-vote bonus heavily skews the voting to favor the states with the lowest populations. For example, the Presidential popular vote winner in Wyoming, (population 563,000) gets 3 electoral votes. The choice of the plurality of California’s voters (population almost 40 million) gets 55 electoral votes. Thus there is one electoral vote for every 188,000 people in Wyoming and one electoral vote for every 727,000 people in California. A Wyoming vote carries almost four times the weight of a California vote in a U.S. Presidential election. The Electoral College is inherently undemocratic!
There is something about the Electoral College that is even worse than its weighted bias in favor of low population states. The Electoral College completely disenfranchises the vast majority of Americans! Since insane political polarization has taken hold in the U.S., 39 of the states have come to be defined as red states or blue states. Red states are conceded to the Republican candidate and Democrats do not campaign for their Presidential candidate in those states. The same holds true for Republicans in the blue states. All political campaign spending is concentrated into the 11 states that are defined as swing states. In recent elections, analysts have refined the focus even further to only three states – Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. The conventional wisdom says that the candidate who wins two of those states will win the election. If you live in a blue state, like New York, or a red state, like Utah, your vote has no real bearing on the outcome. Your state’s electoral votes will go as both parties assume they will. The outcome of the election depends completely on the voters in a few states, so most of us are effectively disenfranchised.
• Revise the Second Amendment to mandate complete government oversight of all privately owned weapons.
Read the Second Amendment as it now stands carefully carefully:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Whatever this meant to our Founding Fathers in 1791 is clearly inapplicable to life in the 21st century. There hasn’t been any such thing as a well regulated Militia made up of civilians in the U.S. for a very long time. Therefore THERE IS NO CONSTITUTIONAL RATIONALE FOR GUN RIGHTS!
My plan for gun regulation is outlined in section 2 above. The Second Amendment should be replaced by a version that explicitly allows the government to license all gun users, register all guns, and to confiscate all guns and revoke all licenses of citizens who fail to pay registration and renewal fees.
• Democratize Article I Section 3 and reconstruct the Senate
Article I Section 3. It calls for the formation of a U.S. Senate consisting of 2 Senators from each state. This gives half a million citizens of Wyoming the same representation as 40 million Californians. Clearly this is undemocratic. I therefore call for the immediate abolition of the U.S. Senate and the transfer of all its powers as defined in the Constitution to the House of Representatives. Or, if there is to be a Senate, then 100 Senate districts must be drawn so that each one contains close to 1% of the U.S. population. Today that would mean approximately 3.25 million people in each Senate district. Brooklyn, N.Y. has enough population to get one Senator. North and South Dakota and Idaho have a combined population that is close to the population of Brooklyn. Therefore, those three states could be a district represented by one Senator.
• Elimination of Disciminatory Age and Birthplace Restrictions in Articles I and II
The Constitution states that the President and the Vice-President must be at least 35 years old, that Senators must be at least 30 years old and that Representatives must be at least 25 years old. It also stipulates that the President must be born in the United States.
A citizen is a citizen. They must all be treated equally. There is no justification for setting an age or a birthplace requirement for any office holder in the U.S. Government. All of these should be eliminated from the Constitution. If a plurality wants to vote for a Presidential candidate who is under 35, or who is a naturalized citizen, then that person should be the President. That’s democracy.
October 3, 2015
There are qualifying requirements for many occupations. Music teachers, barbers, airplane pilots, professional baseball players are examples of vocations for which practitioners must have credentials and skills.
As we have seen in the U.S. this year, no qualification or experience is needed to be the President of the United States. Anyone who was born in the U.S. at least 35 years ago can run for President and can become President if he can get enough people to vote for him.
Therefore, I am announcing that I am a candidate for President. If you read what follows you will know about some of my recommendations for changes that I want to see in this country. It does NOT represent my entire platform. I omitted my views on many issues like climate change, health care, and prison reform. I may write about these and other issues as my campaign progresses. So here we go:
1. Reteach American History
An American future based on sane and humane values cannot be built on the unapologetic, triumphalist view of America as the greatest country on earth that is taught in history classes in our schools. In order to have a corrected future, America must be understood as a country that was built by the dominance of wealthy white males over everybody else. Our heritage as Americans includes a history of genocide of Native Americans, enslavement of blacks, militaristic imperialism throughout the world, racism, exploitation of immigrants, discrimination against women, and suppression of organized labor. All Americans who understand their history must accept their deserved burden of guilt and shame and use it to motivate a resolve to change their country.
2. Abolish America’s Culture of Violence
The United States is and always has been a violent country. The history of the United States is one of chronic violence. The United States can begin to reverse this by immediate, unconditional, unilateral demilitarization.
The American population is armed to the teeth so it is too late to repeal the Second Amendment and pass a law against gun ownership. However, gun ownership and use can be regulated in the same manner as car ownership and use already is. The following are my proposals for regulating use of guns:
• It must be illegal for ANYONE to own a gun without a license.
• To qualify for a license, applicants must take a gun safety course and pass written, psychological, and gun-shooting exams. (Drivers must do all these things to get a license except for a psychological test. Since road rage can make drivers dangerous, I propose that both drivers and gun-users should pass a psychological test before they are deemed to be qualified.
• Applicants passing all the requirements must pay a fee for their license.
• Gun license holders must be re-examined and if they pass, must pay a fee for renewal each time their license expires.
• As with licensed drivers and cars, licensed gun users must register every gun they own and pay registration and renewal fees for as long as they own each gun.
• Like car owners, licensed gun owners should be required to carry insurance covering them for liability resulting from any personal or property damage from the use of their gun. As with cars, larger and more expensive guns would require higher insurance premiums.
• Gun owners’ insurance premiums would also be raised in response to any insurance claims resulting from any incident involving one of their guns.
The glorification of violence must be relegated to America’s past.
Producers of all movies and TV shows in which guns are used shall pay a violence promotion tax. These tax revenues will be used to sponsor production of anti-gun public service messages that must be shown before, during, and after all entertainment that contains gun violence.
Movie theaters and cable TV stations that show violent material will collect a violence tax from ticket buyers and cable subscribers. These tax revenues will go as subsidies to producers of non-violent media entertainment. The lower cost of non-violent entertainment will be passed along to consumers creating a monetary incentive to choose non-violent entertainment.
3. Demilitarize America
The Pentagon and all military bases in foreign countries should be closed. All military personnel should be retrained and set to work installing wind and solar power generators in every part of the U.S. The military budget should also be redirected to infrastructure maintenance and upgrades and the building of a vastly expanded network of local and inter-city train lines.
America must cease all manufacturing and selling of military equipment. Weapons factories shall be retooled to begin manufacturing useful items (ie, bicycles and saxophones) for a peaceful America.
4. Make the U.S. economy MUCH more egalitarian
There must be no inherited wealth. Institute a 100% inheritance tax.
There must not be any billionaires. Anyone should be able to get by for life on a 999 million dollars. Wealth beyond that must be appropriated for public use.
There must be a reasonable maximum and minimum wage. Beyond a reasonable amount, there should be a 100% tax bracket. Taxes on the wealthy should be redistributed to low-income people as a negative income tax bringing them up to a minimum wage that is above poverty level.
5. Make Education in the U.S. egalitarian
• All schools must be funded equally across the country.
• Private schools will be abolished.
• All students must attend the public school that is closest to their home.
• Wealthy parents cannot make donations to the schools their children attend. All voluntary donations must go into a general pool and be equally shared by ALL schools.
• Every school is required to offer a full curriculum of arts education, including instruction on a musical instrument provided by the school for every child who wants to learn how to play. (This is easily paid for by taxing the rich and redirecting part of our so-called defense budget.)
• College education shall be free for everyone.
6. Eliminate undemocratic features in the U.S. Constitution
• Revise Article II Section 1 and replace the Electoral College with a straight national popular vote to determine the winner in Presidential elections.
What is so terrible about the Electoral College? If you already know the answer to that question, you may skip the following two paragraphs.
The number of Electoral votes from each state is equal to 2 plus the number of Congressional districts the state contains. The 2-vote bonus heavily skews the voting to favor the states with the lowest populations. For example, the Presidential popular vote winner in Wyoming, (population 563,000) gets 3 electoral votes. The choice of the plurality of California’s voters (population almost 40 million) gets 55 electoral votes. Thus there is one electoral vote for every 188,000 people in Wyoming and one electoral vote for every 727,000 people in California. A Wyoming vote carries almost four times the weight of a California vote in a U.S. Presidential election. The Electoral College is inherently undemocratic!
There is something about the Electoral College that is even worse than its weighted bias in favor of low population states. The Electoral College completely disenfranchises the vast majority of Americans! Since insane political polarization has taken hold in the U.S., 39 of the states have come to be defined as red states or blue states. Red states are conceded to the Republican candidate and Democrats do not campaign for their Presidential candidate in those states. The same holds true for Republicans in the blue states. All political campaign spending is concentrated into the 11 states that are defined as swing states. In recent elections, analysts have refined the focus even further to only three states – Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. The conventional wisdom says that the candidate who wins two of those states will win the election. If you live in a blue state, like New York, or a red state, like Utah, your vote has no real bearing on the outcome. Your state’s electoral votes will go as both parties assume they will. The outcome of the election depends completely on the voters in a few states, so most of us are effectively disenfranchised.
• Revise the Second Amendment to mandate complete government oversight of all privately owned weapons.
Read the Second Amendment as it now stands carefully carefully:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Whatever this meant to our Founding Fathers in 1791 is clearly inapplicable to life in the 21st century. There hasn’t been any such thing as a well regulated Militia made up of civilians in the U.S. for a very long time. Therefore THERE IS NO CONSTITUTIONAL RATIONALE FOR GUN RIGHTS!
My plan for gun regulation is outlined in section 2 above. The Second Amendment should be replaced by a version that explicitly allows the government to license all gun users, register all guns, and to confiscate all guns and revoke all licenses of citizens who fail to pay registration and renewal fees.
• Democratize Article I Section 3 and reconstruct the Senate
Article I Section 3. It calls for the formation of a U.S. Senate consisting of 2 Senators from each state. This gives half a million citizens of Wyoming the same representation as 40 million Californians. Clearly this is undemocratic. I therefore call for the immediate abolition of the U.S. Senate and the transfer of all its powers as defined in the Constitution to the House of Representatives. Or, if there is to be a Senate, then 100 Senate districts must be drawn so that each one contains close to 1% of the U.S. population. Today that would mean approximately 3.25 million people in each Senate district. Brooklyn, N.Y. has enough population to get one Senator. North and South Dakota and Idaho have a combined population that is close to the population of Brooklyn. Therefore, those three states could be a district represented by one Senator.
• Elimination of Disciminatory Age and Birthplace Restrictions in Articles I and II
The Constitution states that the President and the Vice-President must be at least 35 years old, that Senators must be at least 30 years old and that Representatives must be at least 25 years old. It also stipulates that the President must be born in the United States.
A citizen is a citizen. They must all be treated equally. There is no justification for setting an age or a birthplace requirement for any office holder in the U.S. Government. All of these should be eliminated from the Constitution. If a plurality wants to vote for a Presidential candidate who is under 35, or who is a naturalized citizen, then that person should be the President. That’s democracy.
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Baseball Logic Problems
I'm working on a major downsizing project in my house. My goal is to purge my domestic environment of as much extraneous stuff as possible. So far I've filled two large paper recycling containers with all kinds of printed stuff. However, I came across something I wrote almost 30 years ago that I'll preserve here.
These are baseball logic puzzles. All that is necessary to solve the puzzles is a knowledge of the rules of baseball. To engage the interest of fellow Mets fans at the time I wrote these puzzles, I used the names of real players. However, the situations described in the puzzles did not actually occur.
I hope you have some fun with these. Solutions are provided.
PUZZLES
1. One day, a fan turned on his radio and heard the broadcast of a Mets game already in progress. The first words he heard were: "Now Mookie Wilson will bat for the second time this inning."
What is the least number of runs that the Mets could have scored in this game?
2. Suppose that a Mets fan was in his car on his way to the supermarket. On his car radio, he heard that a game was about to begin and he noted that Mookie Wilson was in the starting lineup. The fan did his shopping and returned to his car more than an hour after the game started. When he returned to his car, he turned on the radio and again heard these words: "Now Mookie Wilson will bat for the second time this inning."
What is the greatest number of runs that the Mets could have scored during the inning which was in progress?
3. When Don Larson of the Yankees pitched a perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1956 World Series, he threw 91 pitches while retiring 27 consecutive batters.
What is the lowest possible number of pitches that can be thrown by a pitcher who pitches a complete game? The game is played to its conclusion. It is not shortened by rain, forfeit, or anything else.
4. How about a starting pitcher who retires 27 consecutive batters in a 9-inning game, but is the losing pitcher. Explain how that can happen.
5. Late in a game, Ken Dayley, a left-handed relief pitcher for St. Louis, was brought in to face two lefty Mets batters -- Hernandez and Strawberry. Then, with McReynolds and Carter due up, the Cards' manager replaced Dayley with Todd Worrell, a righty pitcher. While in the game, Dayley threw exactly 8 pitches -- 5 to Hernandez and 3 to Strawberry. Each and every pitch that Dayley threw was swung on and missed.
How could Hernandez have been allowed to remain at bat to swing at and miss 5 pitches?
6. In the bottom of the ninth inning, with the Mets trailing 6 to 1, Strawberry came to bat with the bases loaded and made the last out of the game, yet the Mets won the game 7 to 6.
How could that happen?
7. It was Mets 6, Cardinals 3 in the top of the ninth inning at Shea Stadium. The Cardinals had the bases loaded with two outs and Willie McGee batting. Davey Johnson, the Mets manager, brought in Randy Myers to pitch to McGee. Myers made no pickoff throws. He threw exactly one pitch and somehow he became the winning pitcher in that game.
What happened on that one pitch thrown by Myers?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOLUTIONS
1. At least 4 runs scored. To determine the minimum number of runs, create a worst case scenario. That means that Mookie led off the inning. As he comes to bat for the second time, 9 batters preceded him to the plate. Each one must be accounted for in one of three ways: an out, a man on base, or a run scored. At most, there are 2 outs and 3 men on base, so that leaves 4 men who can only be accounted for as runs scored.
2. The answer is 17. Here, we need to create a best case scenario. Mookie could have been the 9th man due up when the inning started. Then, on his second time up in the inning, he would be the 18th batter. Every batter reached base safely. No one was thrown out on the basepaths. The batter preceding Mookie hit a home run. 17 runs in. Nobody on. Nobody out.
3. If you answered "27" think again. The correct answer is 25. In a complete game, the home team may only have to bat 8 times. If they are leading after eight and a half innings, the game is over. A losing pitcher can get credit for a complete game with only 8 innings pitched. The 24 outs he must get can theoretically be accomplished with 24 pitches. Some time during the game he threw a pitch that resulted in the batter reaching base safely. And somehow that batter came around to score. Home team 1, Visitors 0 and the losing pitcher threw 25 pitches.
4. His streak of 27 consecutive outs did not begin with the leadoff hitter in the first inning. He could have yielded any number of first inning runs before mowing down 27 straight batters.
5. When Dayley came in there were two outs and a runner on base. On the second strike, the runner was thrown out trying to steal, ending the inning. Hernandez would then resume his turn at bat, leading off the next inning with no balls and no strikes.
6. The last out of a game is not always the third out of the last inning. A game can also end when the home team scores the winning run in the 9th inning or later. Therefore, after Strawberry's out, the Mets staged an incredible rally, scoring 6 runs to win the game.
7. McGee tripled, but was thrown out trying to stretch it to an inside-the-park homer. So that one play tied the score and retired the side. In the bottom of the ninth, the Mets scored, ending the game. Winning pitcher? That's right! Randy Myers.
These are baseball logic puzzles. All that is necessary to solve the puzzles is a knowledge of the rules of baseball. To engage the interest of fellow Mets fans at the time I wrote these puzzles, I used the names of real players. However, the situations described in the puzzles did not actually occur.
I hope you have some fun with these. Solutions are provided.
PUZZLES
1. One day, a fan turned on his radio and heard the broadcast of a Mets game already in progress. The first words he heard were: "Now Mookie Wilson will bat for the second time this inning."
What is the least number of runs that the Mets could have scored in this game?
2. Suppose that a Mets fan was in his car on his way to the supermarket. On his car radio, he heard that a game was about to begin and he noted that Mookie Wilson was in the starting lineup. The fan did his shopping and returned to his car more than an hour after the game started. When he returned to his car, he turned on the radio and again heard these words: "Now Mookie Wilson will bat for the second time this inning."
What is the greatest number of runs that the Mets could have scored during the inning which was in progress?
3. When Don Larson of the Yankees pitched a perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1956 World Series, he threw 91 pitches while retiring 27 consecutive batters.
What is the lowest possible number of pitches that can be thrown by a pitcher who pitches a complete game? The game is played to its conclusion. It is not shortened by rain, forfeit, or anything else.
4. How about a starting pitcher who retires 27 consecutive batters in a 9-inning game, but is the losing pitcher. Explain how that can happen.
5. Late in a game, Ken Dayley, a left-handed relief pitcher for St. Louis, was brought in to face two lefty Mets batters -- Hernandez and Strawberry. Then, with McReynolds and Carter due up, the Cards' manager replaced Dayley with Todd Worrell, a righty pitcher. While in the game, Dayley threw exactly 8 pitches -- 5 to Hernandez and 3 to Strawberry. Each and every pitch that Dayley threw was swung on and missed.
How could Hernandez have been allowed to remain at bat to swing at and miss 5 pitches?
6. In the bottom of the ninth inning, with the Mets trailing 6 to 1, Strawberry came to bat with the bases loaded and made the last out of the game, yet the Mets won the game 7 to 6.
How could that happen?
7. It was Mets 6, Cardinals 3 in the top of the ninth inning at Shea Stadium. The Cardinals had the bases loaded with two outs and Willie McGee batting. Davey Johnson, the Mets manager, brought in Randy Myers to pitch to McGee. Myers made no pickoff throws. He threw exactly one pitch and somehow he became the winning pitcher in that game.
What happened on that one pitch thrown by Myers?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOLUTIONS
1. At least 4 runs scored. To determine the minimum number of runs, create a worst case scenario. That means that Mookie led off the inning. As he comes to bat for the second time, 9 batters preceded him to the plate. Each one must be accounted for in one of three ways: an out, a man on base, or a run scored. At most, there are 2 outs and 3 men on base, so that leaves 4 men who can only be accounted for as runs scored.
2. The answer is 17. Here, we need to create a best case scenario. Mookie could have been the 9th man due up when the inning started. Then, on his second time up in the inning, he would be the 18th batter. Every batter reached base safely. No one was thrown out on the basepaths. The batter preceding Mookie hit a home run. 17 runs in. Nobody on. Nobody out.
3. If you answered "27" think again. The correct answer is 25. In a complete game, the home team may only have to bat 8 times. If they are leading after eight and a half innings, the game is over. A losing pitcher can get credit for a complete game with only 8 innings pitched. The 24 outs he must get can theoretically be accomplished with 24 pitches. Some time during the game he threw a pitch that resulted in the batter reaching base safely. And somehow that batter came around to score. Home team 1, Visitors 0 and the losing pitcher threw 25 pitches.
4. His streak of 27 consecutive outs did not begin with the leadoff hitter in the first inning. He could have yielded any number of first inning runs before mowing down 27 straight batters.
5. When Dayley came in there were two outs and a runner on base. On the second strike, the runner was thrown out trying to steal, ending the inning. Hernandez would then resume his turn at bat, leading off the next inning with no balls and no strikes.
6. The last out of a game is not always the third out of the last inning. A game can also end when the home team scores the winning run in the 9th inning or later. Therefore, after Strawberry's out, the Mets staged an incredible rally, scoring 6 runs to win the game.
7. McGee tripled, but was thrown out trying to stretch it to an inside-the-park homer. So that one play tied the score and retired the side. In the bottom of the ninth, the Mets scored, ending the game. Winning pitcher? That's right! Randy Myers.
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