Matt Bynum of Hillerich and Bradsby quoted by Paul Daugherty – SI.com.

Estimated time from Chapman’s hand until the ball crosses the plate at 104 mph — 0.36 seconds.

Cincinnati’s Chapman appeared in his second game Wednesday, getting the win with an inning of relief.

The Cuban threw 11 pitches, nine for strikes and hit 104 mph twice, four were 102, and he tossed up a 99 mph change of pace.

MLB FanHouse reporting on Cincinnati left-handed pitcher Aroldis Chapman’s Major League debut. Chapman had been clocked at 105 in AAA.

Looks like 1 and 2 are Alabama and —

wait for it

— Boise State.

Or maybe 1 and 2 are Boise State and Alabama.

Click the link above for the list. Here’s the rest of the Pre-Snap Read top 10.

3. Ohio State
4. Oklahoma
5. Nebraska
6. T.C.U.
7. Virginia Tech
8. Oregon
9. Iowa
10. Florida

Boise State and Virginia Tech play Monday at FedEx Field.

Update from Deadspin: Strasmas Is Cancelled:

This is how it works in baseball. Power pitchers are delicate little roses, things of beauty only because their mortality is assured. We rarely get more than a few years of them at their peak, so to prolong our enjoyment, we fire up the hype machine. Strasburg was mythologized for years before he put on a major league jersey, and now it’ll be another couple years before he does it again.

And it was 10-1 Atlanta in the 3rd. [If it was soccer they'd have sent the Rockies back to France by then.]

But I left the game on anyway. Ken Burns came along to talk up his new documentary and he was more interesting than usual. And the Rockies scored a few runs — one in the fourth, three in the fifth.

10-5 after five.

Three more in the sixth. 10-8.

But none in the seventh. Still 10-8.

Then, four runs in the eighth. Rockies ahead 12-10.

And, to end the game in the ninth an incredible sliding catch by Carlos Gonzalez. What a great, great ballgame.

Well not so much for Atlanta.

Some trivia and stuff along the way. Atlanta’s nine starters each had an extra base (in just the first four innings) — seven doubles, a triple and a home run. That’s happened just five times in 58 years. (And they lost.)

Burns and the broadcasters were, of course, talking about baseball being the only game without a clock; it’s never over until it’s over kind of stuff.

But Burns noted as well that baseball (and softball) are the only game where the defense has the ball. The only game where the player scores and not the ball. The only game where you only get to use your best offensive player just one-ninth of the time (no going to Kobe or LeBron or Adrian Peterson every important play).

Joe Posnanski — Prince Hal and Tiger

I know there are those who will accuse me of exaggeration when I say this, but, until baseball appeared, humans were a sad and benighted lot, lost in the labyrinth of matter, dimly and achingly aware of something incandescently beautiful and unattainable, something infinitely desirable shining up above in the empyrean of the ideas; but, throughout most of the history of the race, no culture was able to produce more than a shadowy sketch of whatever glorious mystery prompted those nameless longings.

The coarsest and most common of these sketches—which has gone through numerous variations down the centuries without conspicuous improvement—is what I think of as “the oblong game,” a contest played out on a rectangle between two sides, each attempting to penetrate the other’s territory to deposit some small object in the other’s goal or end zone. All the sports built on this paradigm require considerable athletic prowess, admittedly, and each has its special tactics, of a limited and martial kind; but all of them are no more than crude, faltering lurches toward the archetype; entertaining, perhaps, but appealing more to the beast within us than to the angel.

And The Big Picture shows some recent work of Mother Nature.

In the past several months, powerful storms have wreaked havoc in many places, torrential rains in central Europe and parts of China, tornadoes in Australia, Montana and the American Midwest, and strong thunderstorms across the northeast. Now, as Tropical Storm Bonnie makes landfall in Florida and heads into the Gulf of Mexico, oil cleanup is being suspended, and the final “kill” operation is delayed for at least one more week. These storms have been destructive and deadly, but beautiful and awe-inspiring at the same time. Collected here are a handful of photographs of stormy skies, lightning strikes and storm damage from the past several months. (37 photos total)

That’s what’s in a name in Major League Baseball. Z.

There are 1,200 ballplayers on major league rosters (40 per team — 25 are active at any given time). The most common surnames are Rodriguez and Hernandez with 15 each. There are 14 named Gonzalez and another 14 named Ramirez. 12 are named Perez, 11 Sanchez, 9 Lopez, 7 Martinez, and 5 each Chavez and Valdez. (That 107 out of 1200.)

There are 14 Johnsons, and 9 each Jones and Anderson. Currently there are just 8 Smiths, but it is the most common name in baseball history.

Some factoids.

Just 11 Spanish surnames account for one-quarter of all the people in the Western Hemisphere.

Approximately one-third of all major leaguers are from the Dominican Republic or Venezuela.

I can remember when Latino ballplayers first made it to the big leagues and announcers pronounced Martinez as Martin-ez.

Tony Hawk can still do a 900. One of four men ever to do it.

Link via kottke.

Edward Abbey

And I never liked Dean Smith — at least not until I read this story from Charles Pierce.