Congratulations to Felix "the King" Hernandez of the Seattle Mariners, who yesterday set the all-time record for most MLB strikeouts by a Venezuelan-born pitcher, surpassing Johan Santana. If you didn't know anybody was tracking such a statistic, you're not alone.

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As a follow-up to my baseball trivia post yesterday, I note that Hugo Chavez has been very good for the Seattle Mariners:

When Ronny Cedeno started in left field Wednesday, with Endy Chavez in right and Franklin Gutierrez in center, it was the first time in major-league history a team started an all-Venezuelan outfield ( Read more... )

Q: According to the Associated Press, there are currently 818 players on the rosters of Major League Baseball teams. Of those, 229 were born outside the US. Which country was the birthplace of the greatest number of foreign born players in the MLB?

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200 hits in eight consecutive seasons. First since Willie Keeler, who did it 1894-1901, over a century ago in a very different game.

Took the day off to catch an afternoon baseball game with the co-editor of the North. I'd never done that before, and it was a lot of fun, especially after I'd gotten myself into a foul mood reading political blogs and downloading fifty dollars of software that only caused my system to freeze. It was a beautiful day at a beautiful park. Around the ( Read more... )

"Playing on this team and seeing what is happening around me, I feel that something is beginning to fall apart," Ichiro said through a translator. "But, if I was not in this situation, and I was objectively watching what just happened this week, I would probably be drinking a lot of beers and booing."-- Seattle Times, 23 May 2008, "Yankees hand ( Read more... )