A Notable Harbinger

I knew San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey would win the National League Most Valuable Player award. What I cared more about was where Milwaukee Brewers left fielder Ryan Braun finished and—most crucially—if he was listed on all 32 ballots cast by the Baseball Writers Association of America. In the end, the results were favorable: he finished second and was listed on every last ballot. This much-deserved recognition by the BBWAA is crucial both for his chances at MVPs going forward and, ultimately, for future induction into the baseball Hall of Fame. To their enormous credit, the writers judged his overturned suspension for what it was: justice done, a horrible inequity righted. Further perpetuating his innocence of what he was accused, compare his 2011 MVP stats to those he accrued—all under a cloud of unwarranted suspicion and sans the longtime protection of Prince Fielder in the batting order—this season:

Year	Age	Tm	Lg	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+	TB	GDP	HBP	SH	SF	IBB	Pos	Awards
2007	23	MIL	NL	113	492	451	91	146	26	6	34	97	15	5	29	112	.324	.370	.634	1.004	154	286	13	7	0	5	1	*5	MVP-24,RoY-1
2008	24	MIL	NL	151	663	611	92	174	39	7	37	106	14	4	42	129	.285	.335	.553	.888	130	338	13	6	0	4	4	*7/D	AS,MVP-3,SS
2009	25	MIL	NL	158	708	635	113	203	39	6	32	114	20	6	57	121	.320	.386	.551	.937	146	350	6	13	0	3	1	*7	AS,MVP-11,SS
2010	26	MIL	NL	157	685	619	101	188	45	1	25	103	14	3	56	105	.304	.365	.501	.866	131	310	17	6	0	3	1	*7/D	AS,MVP-15,SS
2011	27	MIL	NL	150	629	563	109	187	38	6	33	111	33	6	58	93	.332	.397	.597	.994	166	336	9	5	0	3	2	*7/D	AS,MVP-1,SS
2012	28	MIL	NL	154	677	598	108	191	36	3	41	112	30	7	63	128	.319	.391	.595	.987	159	356	12	11	0	5	15	*7/D	AS,MVP-2,SS
6 Yrs				883	3854	3477	614	1089	223	29	202	643	126	31	305	688	.313	.374	.568	.943	147	1976	70	48	0	23	24
162 Game Avg.				162	707	638	113	200	41	5	37	118	23	6	56	126	.313	.374	.568	.943	147	363	13	9	0	4	4

In 2012, Braun played in four more games than 2011, had one less run, four more hits, two fewer doubles, three less triples, eight more home runs, an additional RBI, three fewer steals, walked five more times, had a batting average 13 points lower and an his OPS only fell by .07 points. But most importantly, his WAR—wins above replacement, a now widely accepted sabermetric tool that calculates how many wins that player contributed to his team’s win total above and beyond what they would have gotten from a “replacement value” player, someone with average skills—increased from 7.6 to 7.9, a sizeable amount. If the suspicions of him had any amount of truth, no way his WAR could have gone up; instead, if he were doping last year and clean in 2012, his WAR would have fallen precipitously.

The Small Screen

Now to something a bit lighter: behold my occasional update—in order of awesomeness—of the best shows on the small screen . . . :

Comedy

1. Modern Family 
2. Happy Endings
3. The Mindy Project
4. New Girl 
5. 30 Rock 
6. Cougar Town 
7. The Big Bang Theory
8. Suburgatory
9. How I Met Your Mother 
10. 2 Broke Girls
11. The Office

Drama

1. Homeland
2. Breaking Bad
3. Mad Men
4. The Good Wife
5. Person of Interest 
6. The Newsroom
7. Burn Notice
8. Fringe
9. The Walking Dead
10. SVU
11. Boardwalk Empire

On Literature

Reading Now: In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin; Barack Obama: The Story; Several Short Sentences About Writing

Immersed but On Hold: The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity; Catching Fire; A World Undone: The Story of the Great War; Theodore Rex

Recently Finished: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest; Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Up Next: Rereading John Keegan’s seminal treatise The Second World War and a to-be-determined thorough examination of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

A Little Bird Told Me . . .

That following @nicholasjonwood on Twitter is a great way to read his two sentence movie reviews and track his relentless pursuit of fantasy football immortality.