Peter's baseball posting is inspiring me to put something together on the way my parents met, my experience as a kid at Candlestick, my childhood love of Jim Mason and Bucky Dent, my failed dreams of getting beyond Little League as a shortstop and pitcher, and my work as a research assistant on Arnold Rampersad's bio of Jackie Robinson, not to mention my experiences taking the family to minor league ball in Western NY and here at the Fukuoka Dome to see the Softbank Hawks. Someday! Before that, I have an idea about surveying the strengths and weaknesses of the various ranking systems for golfers via Moneyball. Anybody got other ideas about bridging the golf-baseball divide at Mostly Harmless?
For now, let me just throw out a few links to the LPGA money list, Rolex Rankings, Golfweek/Sagarin LPGA Performance Index, the tournament site for the Moira Dunn-territory Corning Classic (which just happens to be off my least favorite road, Route 17/86--it's almost killed me a couple of times--but don't let that stop you from checking out the field and official preview, or noticing that it's still a strong field despite only 3 of the top 20 on the money list being in it), and Hound Dog's tournament preview--and tell you a little story about the Japanese media while you wait for the pre-tournament interviews to be loaded onto LPGA.com.
Ryo Ishikawa, the youngest winner ever of a Japanese professional tournament (and maybe in the world--has anyone in the U.S. media bothered to fact-check this claim from the Japanese media?) at age 15, is getting the full SMAP Japanese media treatment, with camera crews even going to his high school to track him down. He gets asked questions like, "What is your type of woman?" (and laughed at when he says, "Someone who will support me when times are tough," because the interviewer was really asking him to name a celebrity). He says he wants to compete with Tiger Woods someday, but lately he just wants his normal life back. Sakura Yokomine, meanwhile, who only broke Mi-Jeong Jeon's 3-tournament winning streak on the JLPGA, would enjoy a little recognition for her accomplishment. Not happening. Apparently even Sakura get upstaged.
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