Crunching The Batting Title Numbers

Going into today's final game of the season, one of the only things motivating Mets fans is the fact that Jose Reyes is in contention for the batting title, and would be the first Met to ever win the crown. His opponent is Ryan Braun of the Milwaukee Brewers.

Going into today's play, Reyes has 180 hits in 536 at bats for a batting average to five places of .33582. Braun has 187/559, or .33452. Here are tables showing possible outcomes based on up to 6 at bats for each player. Columns represent hits, rows represent at bats.

UPDATE: After a first-inning bunt single, Reyes took himself out of the game, in what was a much-criticized decision. Reyes finished at .337. Braun had to go 3-4 or better to win the batting title, however, he went 0-4, finishing at .332.

SNL Band Site Updated

New pictures and information on SNL's new musical director, Eli Brueggemann as well as keyboardist Tuffus Zimbabwe. And we bumped everyone else's numbers up, as we always do. 32 years for Pendarvis now, which might be a record.

Earl Kress 1951-2011

This is a sad day for animation fans. Earl Kress died early this morning at the age of 60, from a combination of cancers.

Over the years we had featured Earl's blog on our sidebar, a blog that we now know because of health he had to lay aside from time to time. (We'll be putting it back in our Hall of Fame soon. Earl's blog is no longer available)

Kress had a diverse career. One of his first media jobs was as a puppeteer for a kids' show that aired on the four-station network that is now known as NJTV, which is now under the operational guidance of WNET. The puppets' human co-star was the former Miss New Jersey, Hela Young, who later became the hostess for the New Jersey Lottery and who herself lost a similar battle with cancer years earlier.

Cartoons came calling next. Friz Freleng gave Kress his first job in cartoons as a writer for the 1975 ABC series "The Oddball Couple", which was a Neil Simon-sanctioned takeoff on "The Odd Couple" featuring a neat cat and a slovenly dog who were roommates and best friends, with Frank Nelson and Paul Winchell. At 24, Kress found himself working alongside writers and animators who were at least 25 years his senior, if not more. Over the years Kress added several other animated series to his résumé, including "Transformers", "Pound Puppies", "Taz-Mania" and most recently "Baby Looney Tunes".

Kress was perhaps best known for his love of animation and his willingness to ply his considerable expertise to enhance several video and audio releases of animation. Kress wrote the liner notes for "The Hanna-Barbera Pic-A-Nic Basket", a 4 CD box set compilation of the best theme songs and sound effects from the studio's productions. He was a popular talking head on many DVD commentaries and with his friend Mark Evanier (here is his tribute to Kress) hosted panels of voice actors and actresses at San Diego Comic-Con International and other similar forums.

In Evanier's essay, he sums up the man that was Earl Kress quite nicely: "In an industry where jealousy and resentment sometimes seem as prevalent as nitrogen, Earl was utterly undespised. I don't know anyone who didn't like the guy. He was smart. He was funny. He had good, honorable motives for every single thing he did."

Rose Walk Renovation?

On a recent trip to Atlantic City, I noticed some renovations taking place on the Miss America Rose Walk. Now, as you know, Miss America now calls that other gambling mecca home, and Atlantic City has been quietly erasing all vestiges of it being the home of a bathing beauty contest that blossomed into a scholarship program for deserving young women. A number of the plaques have been removed, revealing the 2x4 frameworks beneath, and it appears the stonework around them is being redone. Are the plaques coming back? And if they do, will it be all of them, including the two that have been stolen? (We didn't even bother to look in November 2010. The plaque of Bess Myerson was still gone when I looked a few weeks ago, along with those that surrounded it.)