Player stats

I'm pretty stoked about my new system for keeping track of my team's season stats. This image shows the new system on top, the old on the bottom. My old system was pretty much just all about me: who I played, how the games went, total innings, etc. Whereas my for my teammates, I would just scribble their stats in between rows. For example, if my teammate named John Doe who is a SL5 beat a SL3 with a score of 4-1, it would get written "JD5 W 4-1 vs a 3". This is all fine from week to week, but at the end of the season when I want to figure out how everybody did, it's a total pain going back through all that handwriting, line by line, searching for a given player's initials. I end up having to draw a grid on another sheet of paper and do a lot of extra tallying. So for my new system I started out fresh by giving everybody their own column with 15 boxes, one box for each week. And they're simple to fill in: a W or an L, the score of the match, and the opponent's skill level. It's much less writing and therefore much cleaner. Kudos to anybody who can guess what the X's and dashes are at the bottom of each box.

As for mid-season changes in skill level, I've overlooked including a place to make a note of it. Because the ratio of averages of my players' skill levels vs that of their opponents is significant. It's always been important for me to know that if somebody on my team had a bad season I can go in and see how tough their opponents were, and vice versa. Finally, and just as important, will be the total number of games won/lost vs simple match record. Using myself as an example, my match record is 3-0 this season (batting one thousand), but my total games won/lost record during those matches is 11-4 (733).

Sure, with this new system I sacrifice some detail about how I played each of my matches, such as any early 8s, whether I started out weak but rallied to come back for the win, etc. Anyway, I'd be curious to know if any other captains in the league do this end-of-season, highly detailed player stats report. I've heard of captains making photo copies of the scoresheets, or even using carbon paper. But that's mainly just to safeguard against any potential point-keeping errors made by the APA league operator (very rare). There's got to be somebody out there who brings a laptop each week and enters shot-by-shot data into a spreadsheet. Or am I the biggest pool geek in the city?

The Ghosts of Sophie's Past

I'm not too sure of the details of this picture, when exactly it was taken or how it was acquired. All I know is that it's a picture taken in the storefront at 507 E. 5th Street, in the space that is now Sophie's. This past Monday evening at Sophie's, Jessica the bartender brought this photo out and several of us were gathered around it speculating as to when it was taken. We figured somewhere between 1890 and 1900, most notably because those appear to electric, and not gas, lamps hanging from the ceiling. Apparently the photograph was discovered by the current landlord of the building, who is related to some people who owned the building a few generations ago. Again, I'm sorry I don't know the specifics (and that this is such a poor copy shot taken with my cellphone). But me being the photography/history buff that I am, this image casts a certain spell over me. Never would I have guessed that this space has changed so little over the course of an entire century. I mean, it looks exactly the same as it does today (see below for comparison). The bar is in the same location and places to sit are on the right side as you walk in. Of course there isn't a pool table anywhere in this photo, and the windows in the back haven't been boarded up yet. But I just love the guy seated in the front all the way to the right and how he's holding his playing cards. It's definitely got a bit of a Jacob Riis "Bandits' Roost" feel, straight out of the pages of Luc Sante's "Low Life."