With the Giants win over the Braves last night, we're down to our last game of the Division Series: a game-five elimination between the Rangers and Rays. I don't really know who I'm rooting for here, but I feel pretty confident I'll be happy for whoever wins. The fact that they'll then have to go and beat the Yankees only makes it better.

I have to say that the Rangers probably have the advantage, though, with Cliff Lee getting the start.

Tonight's tater trots should be posted shortly after they occur in the game. Be sure to check back often. And follow me on Twitter for other thoughts about tonight's game.

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UPDATE: Click through for the video and a play-by-play of Bart's colorful trot. (I had to move the video below the fold so things weren't pushed off to the side much.)

For the first time in what might be five years, I made an explicit effort to watch tonight's episode of The Simpsons. The news came out a few weeks ago that Bill James, the godfather to us all, would appear on a Simpsons episode. I wasn't sure what to think about that at first - I've seen way too many terrible guest stars on The Simpson in the last ten, twelve years to react positively to any news - but I slowly came around to the idea. As today approached, the enthusiasm of people like Rob Neyer, Joe Posnanski, and Jonah Keri got to me and I just had to watch it.

And, frankly, I'm happy I did. It was much funnier and well-written than I expected, and they seemed to give a good point of view on the stats-vs-heart argument. Not that I'm reading much into a Simpsons storyline or anything. No way.

If you watched the episode - and if you didn't, I guess I should say SPOILER WARNING - then you know that, about half-way through it, Bart hits a game-winning home run. Once he realizes it's gone, he busts out an emphatic and well-choreographed home run trot, including cartwheels, the moonwalk, and the worm. As the keeper of the Tater Trot Tracker, I took it as my duty to time that trot. The trot comes in at a speedy 17.85 seconds.

We can't judge Bart's trot against that of major leaguers, though. Bart, as a 10-year-old boy, can't be expected to run as fast as a grown man. Plus, on a Little League field, the bases are placed only 60 feet apart. This is just not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Still, I'll take a colorful 17.85 second trot like that over the fast, but mostly boring, trots we see from speedsters like Andrew McCutchen or Marlon Byrd. Thanks for making things exciting, Bart.

(Click "Read More" to see the trot play-by-play.)

We're only two days into the postseason, and already everybody is talking about how terrible the umpiring has been. The missed check-swing in the Tampa Bay game, the Berkman third-strike-ball and, most importantly, the Buster Posey not-caught-stealing in the Giants 1-0 victory over the Braves - those were all in yesterday's games alone!

I don't disagree with any of these complaints. All of those calls were egregiously wrong (though two of them wouldn't be a topic today if not for the next pitch) and deserving of attention. The Posey call, after all, led directly to the only run of the game and essentially gave the Giants the victory. Braves fans have every right to be upset.

These complaints do remind me of last October, though, when the poor umpiring was the story again. I wrote a post then reminding everybody that, as poor as umpiring is these days, this isn't exactly new. Now, that's not an excuse for the umps to continue to perform poorly; it absolutely isn't. I just wanted people to realize that we aren't seeing anything worse than we have before. I'm re-posting that article (originally found here) below:

There's plenty of talk today, as there has been all month, about the poor umpiring in these playoffs. In last night's Game 2, we saw Ryan Howard pull off a 3-4 double play after the first base umpire Brian Gorman incorrectly said that Howard caught the ball on the fly. Replays seemed to show that the ball took an oh-so-small short-hop into the mitt, but Gorman wasn't in the best position to see it. It was a tough call and one that you can't really fault the umpire for, but it was wrong all the same.

And it was exacerbated the next inning, with the Phillies up to bat. Chase Utley grounded the ball to second and, after Cano and Jeter did an excellent job turning a tough relay to get the lead runner out, he was called out at first by Gorman for the double-play. Replays were much more conclusive on this one, and Utley was clearly safe. Many people, Phillies and Yankees fans alike, had no choice but to wonder if it was a "make-up call" by Gorman (don't believe me? Twitter will vouch for that.)

So, considering all of that, this quote doesn't seem too far-fetched:

Whatever else this World Series is remembered for, it will be remembered for the uneven quality of its justice. As in previous Series, plenty of solid work was turned in behind the plate and on the basepaths. But in this one, much of it was undone by a few fateful blinks of the eye.

Okay, maybe it's not 100% true, but it's pretty close. And since it's a column from 1992 (by Jim Litke), when the Blue Jays were busy winning their first of two back-to-back championships, I think that's understandable. The point here is that, while it may seem like the umpires are worse this year than they've ever been, it's really hard to say if that's true. Umpires have been blowing calls on the big stage for years, for decades. More from the article:

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I’ve been up here in good ol’ Osh Kosh, Wisconsin, since yesterday morning doing work stuff. It’s as fun as you could imagine. Thankfully, though, I should be home in time for the playoffs this afternoon (except for the Rays/Rangers game – really, MLB? The #1 seed in the AL East is your early game? Seems brilliant.)

In the meantime, I wanted to remind everyone of the podcast I did along with Bill and The Common Man from Platoon Advantage on Monday night. This was a fun one. We discussed the upcoming Division Series and gave our thoughts on what we thought would happen. As always, there’s some good points by everyone.

The most important point, however – if I do say so myself – is from the Rangers/Rays preview: that Twitter showdown between Texas and Tampa Bay is really going to be key!

You can click below to listen to the podcast here in the browser or head on over to the podcast page and listen there. Also, don’t forget that you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes from there.

Enjoy!

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I know, I still owe everybody Tater Trot Tracker times for the last two days of the season (including big home runs like the one Buster Posey hit Sunday afternoon). I had a very busy weekend (including my first trip to Lambeau Field and my first NFL game yesterday) and I have a couple of busy nights ahead - including tonight's on-a-special-night podcast with Bill and The Common Man from Platoon Advantage. Hopefully, I'll be able to get these last two Tater Trot Tracker posts up tonight, but they might just have to wait until Wednesday or Thursday. I'm sorry for that.

One thing I didn't want to wait any longer to put up - because we've already waited way too long to see it - is an update on the predictions contest I ran at the start of the season. If you remember, back in March/April, I asked anybody interested to feel out my MLB Predictions form to enter into the contest. The winner at the end of the season would get 2 Free Tickets to any 2011 baseball game*!

(*Actually, a $30 gift certificate to either MLB.com or the team of their choice, which should be theoretically enough for two tickets.)

The form asked for division finishes, team victories, playoff participants, and MVP/Cy Young/ROY award results. Point values would be assigned for the accuracy of each of these predictions.

I've been meaning to update everyone on the contest all year, but, since the leaderboard was based so much on team victories at the end of the season, I wasn't sure what to do. And then, as the season started to wrap up, I got too busy to tally the points. I'm making up for that now.

To see the leaderboard and everybody's full predictions, side-by-side, click here.

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I'm going to be busy running errands all afternoon and evening, so the Tater Trot Tracker post for today is going to be delayed. I'll do my best to get it up some time this evening.

In the meantime, yesterday I participated in a discussion panel with Norman Einstein's, an online sports monthly, to talk about my thoughts on Ken Burns' "The Tenth Inning". Obivously, with my pieces on Tom Boswell and Jose Canseco earlier this week, I had some thoughts on the documentary. Click on over to Norman Einstein's latest issue to check out the discussion between Ben Birdsall of There Are No Fours, Brian Blickenstaff of Touch And Tactics, Drew Fairservice of Ghostrunner On First and Walkoff Walk, Patrick Truby of There's No "I" In Blog, and yours truly.

For other takes on "The Tenth Inning", I recommend Bill over at the Platoon Advantage and Jeff Polman (of Funky Ball fame) at Seamheads. Good stuff from those two.

I just wanted to follow up the post I wrote last night - "What current HOFer did Tom Boswell see mix a "Jose Canseco milkshake"?" - with some additional thoughts on the "milkshake" and the alleged HOF PED-user. Thanks to Rob Neyer and Craig Calcaterra, there has been a pretty decent discussion around the web about the piece and who the HOFer may or may not be. There's also been plenty of talk about how a milkshake isn't a very viable means of steroids ingestion - and, that, in fact, a milkshake (sans steroids) would be a very normal and legal thing for someone to take who was trying to bulk up through a weight-lifting regimen.

Everyone makes good points, and I'm not disputing anything. As I said in the post, Boswell's claim, and the way in which it was said, could very easily be inaccurate, imprecise, or just plain incorrect. A ten-second sound byte isn't enough evidence for anything. I only wrote the piece because it seemed pretty clear to me that Boswell felt like he was admitting steroids use by a Hall of Famer, even if it did come out imprecisely. If what he was trying to say was true, I wanted to figure out who the candidates could even be, since we don't have too many post-Canseco Hall of Famers.

"Jose Canseco milkshake" is not new

Looking around the web, I quickly realized that the "Jose Canseco milkshake" phrase is not new. Here's a book published in 1993 where they call the phrase one of the best insults in the history of the game. Boswell first mentioned the phrase back in 1988, when he made his very first accusations against Canseco. It clearly meant "steroids"; there's no confusion about whether these were shakes designed to increase mass or not.

Here's a quote from the October 5, 1988, edition of the San Francisco Chronicle:

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I'm posting this early because I didn't want to wait to talk about Jay Bruce and the Reds. The Slowest and Quickest Trots will be up later today (though I sincerely doubt anyone's beating Bruce in the "quick" department...).

Home Run of the Day: Jay Bruce, Cincinnati Reds (Trot Time: 16.92* seconds) [video]

Now this is how you celebrate a walkoff win. I suppose it helps when you're walking off into the playoffs...

On the first pitch of the ninth inning, in a game the Reds were losing 2-1 into the sixth inning, Jay Bruce electrified a crowd of thirty-thousand Cincinnati fans who had been waiting fifteen years to reach the playoffs. The ball caromed off the batter's eye in centerfield, but the game was over before that. Jay Bruce knew it the moment the ball hit the bat - sprinting out of the box with his hand raised without any hesitation. Houston centerfielder Jason Bourgeois knew it too, looking all but defeated as he watched it go over from the warning track. Bruce was running so hard that it felt like he was back at the plate by the time Bourgeois turned around.

I wish I could tell you definitively how fast Bruce rounded the bases. It's easily the fastest walkoff knock of the year. But with the huge crowd of teammates at the plate and the thundering crowd at Great American Ballpark, I just can't. Both camera crews - Houston's and Cincinnati's - changed to the crowd shot right as Bruce reached the plate, though the Reds crew did linger a bit longer than the Astros.

The 16.92 seconds is measured on that Cincinnati feed and, if you watch closely, you can see that they cut away right as Jonny Gomes starts to leap on the pile (he's the guy who runs out to the edge of the home plate circle as Bruce approaches the plate). In a later part of the six-minute highlight, when the broadcasters are showing a slow-motion replay of the home plate celebration, you can see that Bruce appears to touch home plate right as Gomes is landing on the pile. The official time, then, is probably a tiny bit later - maybe 17.0 or 17.5 seconds. The measure time of 16.92 seconds will do well enough, though.

And congratulations to the Reds and their fans. Doing the Tater Trot Tracker all year and watching 5,000+ home runs, I've grown to like quite a few of the Reds players (Scott Rolen, Chris Heisey, Joey Votto, Jay Bruce, etc.) because of the way they trot out their homers. It's fitting, then, that the biggest home run of the year comes from them and gives us such a memorable trot. Enjoy the playoffs.

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UPDATE: Please see this post for some additional thoughts on the "Jose Canseco milkshake", including evidence that Boswell first mentioned it in 1988.

PBS finally aired the first part of "Ken Burns' Baseball: The Tenth Inning" earlier tonight. If you don't think I watched it, you're crazy. I enjoyed it for the most part. It seemed more fair and straightforward than I thought it might be when it came to the more controversial topics, especially steroids. But there was one moment that stood out to me more than any other.

During the steroids segment, Washington Post writer Thomas Boswell - who, if you don't already know, was the first person to connect steroids to Jose Canseco, if even in the most superficial ways - gave this quote:

"There was another player now in the Hall of Fame who literally stood with me and mixed something and I said "What's that?" and he said "it's a Jose Canseco milkshake". And that year that Hall of Famer hit more home runs than ever hit any other year.

So it wasn't just Canseco, and so one of the reasons that I thought that it was an important subject was that it was spreading. It was already spreading by 1988."

Thomas Boswell seems to be telling us that he has first-hand knowledge of a current Hall of Famer using steroids. Who might that Hall of Famer be?

Well, if we take Boswell at his literal word, this is what we need to look for: someone who is already inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and who hit more home runs than he ever had before after Jose Canseco arrived in the league. Canseco won Rookie of the Year in 1986, so we'll start there even if it makes more sense to use 1988 as the starting point.

The second part of the statement confuses me some. I can't tell if he's trying to say that the milkshake story comes from the 1988 season, or if he's adding the 1988 date as more of a clarifying detail (in effect, saying "Here's a story of how it was spreading - which it started doing in 1988"). Let's keep the search as wide as possible, but keep the 1988 year in mind.

With those criteria, we get a short list of eight Hall of Famers (assuming pitchers like Goose Gossage and Nolan Ryan don't count). Here they are, in increasing order of who I think is most likely to be Boswell's milkshake-drinker:

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Tim Lincecum believes the balls in Colorado are juiced. That the Rockies are secretly giving the visiting teams balls that have not been properly kept in the stadium's humidor in order to increase offense. He's so sure of this, in fact, that, during a game last week, he received a ball from the umpire and, after saying loudly to himself "f*ckin' juiced balls", he asked the umpire for a new one. When pressed about it by the media after the game, he did not back down.

Heath Bell is also sure that the Rockies are messing with the balls. In fact, he thinks that they "cheat". On Sunday, Bell tweeted a message saying "SF are the nice people." A follower of his on Twitter interpreted from this that he was saying that the Rockies were cheating and, when he asked Bell if that's what the tweet meant, Bell said "yes they do."

That should solidify it then, right? Two star pitchers on two different teams are both absolutely certain that the Rockies are cheating - manipulating the balls that are put in play for their own advantage. So certain, in fact, that they're even willing to talk about it in public. These are men who are on the field of play. If anyone could be said to be experts on the topics, it's these guys. It's certainly not us bloggers in our mother's basements, or even the old guys in the press boxes. Our speculation is meaningless compared to the authority of the guys who play the game.

The ballplayers know the truth, and we would be foolish to ignore them.

Except, of course, that's ludicrous. For some reason, everyone seems to want to defer to the expertise of the ballplayers when it comes to these things. Is David Eckstein a great player? His teammates seem to think so, so it must be true. Should we be using machines like Questec to help review umpires' performances? Curt Schilling says no, therefore it's got to be wrong. Instant replay? BatGloves? Bigger helmets? Stupid ideas all - the players tell us so!

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