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I met a Traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains.  Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

--- Percy Shelley, 1819
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I did a time waster the other day on the last man born in each decade to play in the majors. An obvious companion piece came to mind, completely unbidden. What could I do?
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Maybe ten years from now - no one can know exactly when - the last player born in the 1980s will play in his final major league game. We don't when and we don't know who. It could be someone like Giancarlo Stanton or George Springer - players born at the very end of the decade, and quite possibly good enough to play into their 40s. It could be some random relief pitcher who just goes on and on and on. Maybe some minor leaguer will suddenly develop a hellacious knuckleball, and pitch for bad teams (always the only teams that ever give knuckleballers a chance) until he's 46 or so.
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So there I was on the last Blue Jays off day thinking - I didn't prepare on off-day time waster, for a day without baseball. How will I ever look anyone in their virtual eyes again?

Oh quite easily, I assure you.
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Do I have a time-waster, for a day with no baseball? Is the bear Catholic? Does a Pope (that's enough of that...)
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Baseball has always had the best all-star game, despite the best efforts of the people who run the game to screw that up as well. And every few years, I update this lengthy piece about the mid-season classic and toss it up here...
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When did this all get started?
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On July 30, Jorge Soler was hitting .192/.288/.370 for the fourth place Kansas City Royals, 15 games off the division lead. Today he's the World Series MVP. Youneverknow.
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Here's a famous photograph. (Yes, it's some windy baseball lore, for a day with no baseball.)
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Long time Jays watchers know all too well that the Gold Standard for bullpen failure was established almost forty years ago.
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I thought I'd look at the Earl Weaver Clause in the official rule book. It's some windy baseball lore, for a day with no baseball.
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Hey, it's about time for a new thread, right? It's probably also just about time for me to go off on some weird tangent down the dim and misty paths of history... that's how you really know baseball season's coming.

Or we can just blame it all on John Northey. What do you think?
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Back in the misty Days of Yore (it was mid-summer 2006), I published a series of articles on this very website that looked at the all time top 25 in each of five major counting categories. The idea was to assess the chances of some active players of cracking those lists. The categories were: a)  Runs, b)  RBIs, c) Hits, d) HRs.
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I miss Earl Weaver, and I do wonder from time to time what he'd make of where the game has gone these days.
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Is what Edwin Encarnacion did last August the best month by a hitter in Blue Jays history?

As you might recall, Encarnacion hit .407 with 11 HR and 35 RBI; his OnBase was .460 and he slugged .919 - that's an OPS of 1.379, and I found it hard to imagine anyone being any better than that. But I didn't actually know, I wanted to find out, and I only knew one way to do that.
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