The Pittsburgh Pirates have the worst offense in baseball, scoring just 2.86 runs per game, but they're not just hitting worse than any team in 2012—they're hitting worse than any team in baseball history. There have been 2,340 team seasons in the majors since 1900, and in all that time, only four teams have posted a lower batting average than Pittsburgh's current .217 mark. In terms of on-base percentage, Pittsburgh is doing even worse: It's tied with the 1908 Brooklyn Superbas for the lowest mark (.266) over that span. But the Pirates play in an age in which offensive levels are higher than they were during the dead ball era (for teams other than the Pirates, anyway). In 1908, the league-average on-base percentage was just ... Continue reading →
The Pittsburgh Pirates have the worst offense in baseball, scoring just 2.86 runs per game, but they're not just hitting worse than any team in 2012—they're hitting worse than any team in baseball history. There have been 2,340 team seasons in the majors since 1900, and in all that time, only four teams have posted a lower batting average than Pittsburgh's current .217 mark. In terms of on-base percentage, Pittsburgh is doing even worse: It's tied with the 1908 Brooklyn Superbas for the lowest mark (.266) over that span. But the Pirates play in an age in which offensive levels are higher than they were during the dead ball era (for teams other than the Pirates, anyway). In 1908, the league-average on-base percentage was just ... Continue reading →
Charlie Doerner for the Wall Street Journal Luca Forgeois, a 17-year-old New Yorker who aspires to drive in the Indy 500. St. Petersburg, Fla. On a warm afternoon in late March, Georges Forgeois, a New York City restaurateur with big dreams for his son in the hypercompetitive world of open-wheel auto racing, stood atop a set of temporary bleachers at a converted airport on Florida's Gulf Coast, trying not to ponder the imponderable. Forgeois had just shelled out $26,000 to repair his son's USF2000 race car after a wreck the previous weekend. Now an official was waving a red flag to signal some sort of incident. In auto racing, "incident" is often a discreet way of saying "crash." "All the cars are so close together, ... Continue reading →
