Lake Winnipesaukee Relay 2009

The 21st annual Lake Winnipesaukee Relay was held on a beautiful Saturday, September 26, 2009.  I ran leg 6 and Ruth ran leg 7 for the SRR Mixed PBR Big Open Cans team.   The SRR Men’s Masters team finished 2nd overall (first Masters, of course) and our other eight teams ran well and had fun.

This is my 9th year at the race, and my first time running leg 6.  Given the difficulty of the other legs, leg 6 was surprisingly easy, which fit in well with my fitness level after an injury-filled summer.  Next year I’ll do leg 5, and then I’ll have run every leg at least once.

Ruth and I took pictures:

There was a Model A Club meet that weekend, and the cars and the runners were often sharing the roads.  We have some pictures of the cars too:

Job security in troubled times

A look at the unemployment rates in the largest metro areas in the US shows that many cities are still suffering from the recession. We know the auto industry is in trouble, as shown by Detroit’s stunning 17.7% unemployment rate.  20 of the 50 biggest cities have more than 10% of their workers out of a job.  At least people are cutting back on gambling (Las Vegas is at 13.1%).

What industry is holding up the best?  The Federal government.  Unemployment is the Washington DC metro area is 6.2%, lower than any city on the list except for Oklahoma City.

“Greedy bureaucrats spending our tax dollars while the rest of the country suffers” or “people need government services as much or more in hard times”?  Whatever.  You can spin that either way, depending on your personal bias.  Keep in mind that a significant portion of the jobs in the area don’t involve working directly for the government.  They’re jobs at private companies that live off government spending.

I’m not sure what it means myself, but I find the numbers interesting.

Relegate the Royals!

It’s September, and once again fans of the Royals, Orioles, Pirates, and Nationals twist slowly in the dying summer breeze, while their teams play out the string listlessly, far from the excitement of the pennant (or wild card) races.  Meanwhile, fans in minor league cities and towns see their teams stripped of their best players, whether or not the team is in line for a league championship, just so the major league team can use that player once a week to pinch-run or relieve in a blowout loss.

The Pittsburgh Pirates are four losses away from clinching a record 17^th consecutive losing season.  Other teams have also settled into mediocrity. Baltimore is working on twelve consecutive losing seasons. Kansas City is on track for their fifth 100-loss season in eight years and 14th losing season in the last 15 years.  Cincinnati has nine consecutive losing seasons, and Washington is on pace for back-to-back 100 loss seasons, and they haven’t won more than 83 games in the past 11 seasons.

Many sports leagues around the world use a concept called “relegation” that would make life more exciting for fans of teams like these and for fans of countless teams currently denigrated as “minor league.”  With relegation, leagues are stacked according to their level of competition.  At the end of each season, the bottom teams in each league drop to the next lower league, and the top teams from the lower level league replace them.

With relegation, more teams have meaningful games at the end of the year, without watering down the playoffs by adding extra teams.  For example, here are the current standings for all the teams at .451 and below:

Position	Team	Wins	Losses	Pct.	Ahead/Behind
20	Arizona	60	73	.451	6
21	Toronto	59	72	.450	6
22	NY Mets	59	73	.447	5.5
23	Cincinnati	59	73	.447	5.5
24	Cleveland	58	73	.443	5
25	Oakland	58	74	.439	4.5
26	San Diego	58	76	.433	3.5
27	Baltimore	54	79	.406	0
28	Pittsburgh	53	78	.405	-1
29	Kansas City	51	81	.386	-2.5
30	Washington	46	87	.346	-8

Only one of these 11 teams (Cleveland) is within 18 games of first place in their division, and none are as close as 13 games to a wild card berth.  But in a situation where the bottom four teams are relegated to Triple A, all of them would still have something to play for.  There’d be excitement, or desperation at least, in Kansas City, instead of apathy.  Pittsburgh wouldn’t be selling off all their semi-competent players, they’d be struggling to stay in the majors.

Meanwhile, fans in Providence or Sacremento or Louisville would be cheering on their teams as they fought for meaningful pennants and for the opportunity to move up to the majors the following season.  And that effect would ripple down throughout the entire chain of organized baseball, into small towns across the country.

You’d lose the story where the perennial doormat jumps to the World Series, like Tampa Bay did last year.  But you’d replace that with the potential for a newly promoted team jumping all the way to the championship.  And you’d also lose the story where a pennant winner like Florida tortures their fans by dumping  all their players, rather than paying them for winning, since they’d be at risk of falling to the minors.

For relegation to happen, major league owners would have to accept the risk that their property could take a sudden drop in value (a risk leagues with relegation mitigate by means of “parachute payments” to relegated teams), and they’d have to give up control over their farm teams.  The minor leagues would have to give up their cozy arrangements with their parent clubs and really compete.  Everyone would have to start purchasing all their talent on the open market.  These are unlikely changes, but if they occurred, the spread of real competition from just the moneyed few in the big cities to every small town in the country would make baseball America’s game again.