Trivia 2

Last night's contest went pretty well. The turnout was kind of small again, because there were two other contests the same night, but there were enough people to make it interesting.

We had a good team, with a diverse set of knowledge bases - which was a good thing, because the questions were medium-hard and demanded a good range of knowledge. (For example: the answer to the very first question was "The South Sea Bubble".) The topics were spread across the rounds - one question per topic per round - rather than the more usual one-topic-per-round setup.

One of the topics involved the moderator reading the last few lines of a novel; we had to identify the novel. (I got most of those: "The Great Gatsby", "Animal Farm", "Frankenstein", ....) Another ("Chanteuses") had the moderator playing a song and asking us to identify the singer. Another of our people is a musician, and he answered most of those: Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Minnie Pearl, .... Musicals, famous losers, people whose names were animal-names, remakes - good topics and tough questions. We won going away; our final score was 79/100, and the second place team only got 56 points.

Padres 2009

So, the Padres 2009 season is over. They wound up with a record of 75-87, which is not good, but it's twelve games better than last year's record, and over the last two months of the season they did better than all but three other teams. Not too shabby.

Also, they didn't finish in last place. Also not expected.

What I'm most pleased with is the team's performance after they committed to youth. I've been waiting for Kyle Blanks to arrive for a while now, and he's shown that he can hit, and hit for power, at the major league level - and his outfield defense was better than advertised. Then there's Everth Cabrera. Most Rule 5 draftees wind up riding the bench - officially on the 25-man roster, but confined to occasional pinch-hitting or late-inning defensive substitutions. Cabrera fought his way into the starting shortstop's job, and did a pretty good job for a 22-year-old rookie: .254 average, 8 triples, 25 stolen bases, and a .781 stolen base percentage, not to mention good (though still raw) defense. The young pitchers - Mat Latos (21 years old!), Wade LeBlanc, Clayton Richard, and Luke Gregerson, to name a few - performed well, too.

Catcher and second base are still iffy, but the team looks solid at every other position. I feel good about their prospects; they might be in the hunt again as early as next season - which is a season or more faster than I was expecting six months ago.

Now, let's see what the Chargers can do this year....