10 March 2011
Twenty-one Days before Opening Day
The Knot Hole Gang
(A Select and Highly Personal Email List, some of whom wish to remain Anonymous)
Dear Knot-Holer:
The Baseball Fan observes with great devotion the days of the Baseball Season, and it became the custom to prepare for Opening Day by a season of reflection and prediction. This season provided a time for converts and seasoned Fans alike to share with each other their allegiances and analyses so that conversations, whether appointed or joyously unexpected, could begin with mutual understanding and awareness.
I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Game we love, to the observance of a truly great Season by self-examination and objectivity; by reflection, contemplation, and self-awareness; by differentiation from past rivalries and present and obligatory pay-backs; and by reading and studying The Sporting News' Baseball Annual, the sports pages, the baseball blogs and websites, and, perhaps, conversing (at arm's length) with baseball handicappers of renown, the ones, of course, at liberty to have such conversations.
Those of you whose predictions achieve a high congruence with the Season's outcomes may fully expect an appropriate acknowledgment after the last pitched ball. To be considered for this prize, I shall need to have your predictions by Noon on Opening Day, March 31. Please reply to the email address from whence this came.
And, to make a right beginning to the Season, let us now kneel in silence to prepare to undertake to determine the results of our studies and our hopes for the Teams, and to set forth those results below:
2011 Baseball Season Predictions
Winners of Divisions and Wild Cards, League Champions, and World's Champion
AL East:
AL Central:
AL West:
AL Wild Card:
AL Champion:
NL East:
NL Central:
NL West:
NL Wild Card:
NL Champion:
World's Champion:
And when the Day of Judgment comes, that day dreaded by all whose Team has eliminated itself, the day when one Team alone wins the World's Championship, these Predictions will be put on the scales, and their value found by crediting the accurate prediction of a World's Champion with 10 points, the accurate prediction of a League Champion with 5 points, and the accurate prediction of a playoff berth with 3 points. For the purpose of this evaluation, regular season Division Winners and the Wild Card Winners are accounted as equals. If you correctly predict that a team makes the playoffs (whether as a Division Winner or Wild Card Winner), you will be credited with 3 points. The maximum score is 44 points for correctly predicting the Word's Champion, the League Champions, and the 8 teams to make the playoffs. In the case of a tie, the Predictions emailed earliest will be the winner. The decision of the Judges is final though not capricious.
Play Ball!
Very truly yours,
Howard Stringfellow
610-691-5655, x222
[From Bill: On the Third Day of Lent, Commissioner Stringfellow expanded his invitation, as follows.]
The Third Day of Lent, 2011
March 11
The Knot Hole Gang is a group of people who are colleagues, acquaintances, and friends of mine who predict the outcomes of Major League Baseball each season in a mild and private competition. Some are Christians and some are not; some wish to remain Anonymous. If you think of the love of baseball extolled in Roger Kahn's classic book The Boys of Summer, you will understand completely the nature of this enterprise. It's that simple.
This season I am opening up the Knot Hole Gang and inviting you to join. If you you have not been a Knot-Holer and wish to make your predictions and have them impartially evaluated through the season, please drop a note to my email address, and I shall send to you the official note calling for this season's predictions. Opening Day is March 31, so do not delay to begin your springtime reflection. Remember the words of King David, how he sang, as he plucked his favorite lyre, after a long day on a Judean diamond: "The fool has said in his heart: there is no game better than football" (Psalm 14:1, private translation).
Best,
Howard Stringfellow, Member
The New York Baseball Giants Nostalgia Society
Comments