Thoughts In and Out of Season 7

The best in the game, materialisms, machine “minds”, machine prejudices, persons that behave like machines...

1. La règle du jeu: This year, MLB has altered its schedule of games so that, in the course of the season, each team in the majors can play every other. This means, of course, that each team plays far fewer intra-divisional games—twenty-four fewer, to be precise—and as a result all five of the frighteningly formidable squads in the AL East, including my beloved Orioles, have been set loose on the leagues like a pack of ravenous wolves descending on a flock of sheep, or like a rhinoceros charging through a bone china shop. At present, the winning percentage of the division as a whole against extra-divisional rivals is something like .660. If each of the divisions were a single team, the AL East would be on a pace for 107 wins—which is also, as it happens, Baltimore’s current pace. (Just saying.)