We’ll leave a controversial day with nothing but questions:

1) Who had the more remarkable Olympics: Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps (and would your answer be the same if Bolt was the American and Phelps the non-American)? (Question via J. Shelman).

2) Through the ups and downs, highs and lows, what overall grade would you give the U.S. to date in these Olympics?

Happy trails and viewing. We have many more Meaningful Home Runs to tabulate, taking one day off Brandon’s life with each player assigned a number.

You might recall that a week or so back, while on the Great Baseball Road Trip, Rocket proposed a metric for measuring meaningful home runs that was bandied around in the car for several hours until the Richotte Meaningful Home Run Index was created. We wrote an initial post on it, explaining that Rocket was hoping to find a way to measure whether Alex Rodriguez really hit “meaningless” home runs as is asserted by fans and other critics, or whether it was just a mirage. The index, to refresh your memories, is measured thusly:

A player gets:

*1 point for every home run hit in innings 1-6 that either brings a team within two runs or fewer or is hit when a team is up by two runs or fewer.

*1.25 points for every home run in the 7th inning or later that brings a team within two runs or fewer or is hit when a team is up by two runs or fewer OR for any home run in innings 1-6 that ties the score or puts a team ahead.

*1.5 points for every home run in the 7th inning or later that ties the score or puts a team in the lead.

*0 points for all other home runs.

The total number of points is then divided by the total number of home runs hit for the Richotte Meaningful Home Run Index (or Schottie for short).

That formula was devised without looking up anyone’s stats. But with a little free time on our hands, we were finally able to test a couple of cases: A-Rod and Justin Morneau. While we’re hardly saying our metric is perfect or without need for adjustment, it did show some interesting results for this year:

A-Rod’s MHRI is 0.670; Morneau’s is 0.974. Thus, Morneau has hit far more “meaningful” home runs as a percentage than A-Rod has, at least this year, and at least according to our definitions. Perhaps more interestingly: A-Rod has 28 home runs this season and 18.75 meaningful home run points; Morneau, with just 19 home runs — nine fewer, obviously, than Mr. Rod — has nearly matched A-Rod’s raw total and has 18.5 meaningful home run points.

This obviously doesn’t mean a whole lot considering these are just two examples within a pretty small sample size of home runs, but it is at least an interesting start. Also: considering Minnesota’s overall run differential is +62, while the Yankees’ is +50, A-Rod would theoretically have as many if not slightly more chances to hit “meaningful” home runs since much of the stat is determined by the game’s relative closeness.

For the morbidly curious: the blow-by-blow of each home run (date, opponent, result and points awarded) is listed after the jump for both A-Rod and Morneau this season. If you see any mistakes in our math, please point them out. If you have the inclination to tabulate numbers for any other players, please do so. We suggest using ESPN.com’s player game log pages, which will show you when they hit home runs and also provide a quick link to the summary of all scoring plays for those games. And now, the specifics: Read the rest of this entry »

A member of the Houston Texans’ media relations staff — a Minnesota native and RandBall reader, apparently — passes along a nice little story that had escaped our attention: Dallas will play host to Houston tomorrow night in preseason NFL action, pitting brothers and former Gophers Marion Barber III and Dom Barber against one another. It’s a nice story (though predictably short of commentary from MBIII, who is notoriously shy with the media). We’ll excerpt starting with a quote from the proud father, Marion Barber Jr.

“I’m kind of a sentimentalist,” the father said. “I most likely will cry at some point in the game, but the wife and I are planning on going down Friday morning. It’s so exciting for them and the opportunity that’s been presented to them.”

Barber, a former New York Jets running back, and his wife will be watching their sons appearing on the same field for the first time as pros. They never played together at Wayzata High School outside of Minneapolis and have been teammates only once, during Dominique’s freshman year at Minnesota when Marion III was a senior.

“It would be a dream come true,” Dominique said. “Just the fact to be at the highest level of football and to be on the same field with my brother, I’d be speechless. I’d just go out there and play football.“

And, for the record, we could not find a photo of the two brothers in the Star Tribune archives, so we had to go with that shot of MBIII and former backfield mate Laurence Maroney. The picture was taken right after their last game together, with Maroney presumably about to bite Barber out of shame and anger when he realizes so much talent was expended without a major bowl appearance.

Bringing that up should ensure at least 20 comments each from Dave MN and Jon. But we’ll open it up to the field: what have been the biggest wastes of talent, in terms of missed opportunities by teams, in local sports history?

You have to admire Stensation. Yes, he is a Packers fan, which is a terrible fate. But he is at least on with a sense of humor about the whole Brett Favre saga. As he prepared his basement for an impending fantasy football draft, he took a closer look at one of his favorite wall hangings: His Brett Favre autographed print. He was kind enough to take a big picture and then a more focused picture. Here’s what Stensation had to say along with his kind e-mail to us: “Not sure where this, ahem, ‘final’ quote comes from. But it’s engraved on an autographed framed print in my basement titled ‘Legacy of a Man.’”

And so, if we might repeat what Brett Favre said of his legacy, on this beautiful keepsake: “Play somewhere else? It will never happen. This is where my family is. This is where my heart is. This is where I belong.”

The turned tables and irony are just too delicious to warrant any further comment.

We weren’t going to bore you with details of our Interweb blog-based in-person fantasy football draft last night (Varsity edition; tonight is the B Squad), but enough people have asked to make it worthwhile. Complete rosters can be seen most easily right here; according to some commenters and some power ranking numbers Roughkat ran right after the draft, we actually have a pretty good team. That said, we are loaded up with question marks: Brandon Marshall, Larry Johnson and Ocho Cinco being chief among them. With no other discernible strategy to go with, we decided on the “let’s hope they get healthy and un-suspended” theory in drafting Ocho Cinco, Marshall and Bobby Engram along with three other lesser WRs to hold down the fort in the mean time. We’ll see. Other highlights:

*Biggest slacker: Us, for showing up at 6:57, three minutes before draft time.

*Biggest reach: Dave MN taking Darren McFadden at No. 19 overall. Could be this year’s Purple Jesus. More likely this year’s Curtis Enis.

*Best call: Jon nailing our manwich picks at 20 and 21: Larry Johnson and Tony Romo.

*Best joke that was carried through the night: SuperRookie bicycling to the draft with Jon riding on his pegs. (Note: did not happen).

*Biggest distraction: The U.S. World Cup qualifier that started around 9:10 as the draft was winding down rendered Jon and the Rook almost useless. Jon took Landon Donovan in round 13, while Super Rookie kept scanning his cheat sheet looking for players with low yellow card accumulations. (By the way, did anyone else see the U.S. player get bashed in the head and bloodied? That was gross).

*Biggest technological advance: This year compared to last year. Hassle-free wireless, everyone online who wasn’t at the draft. It was glorious.

*Biggest traveler: Stu, all the way from the St. Cloud area, and wearing a “Nixon in 78″ half-shirt. We don’t even know where to begin with that, but we do think the best part is that isn’t even a presidential election year.

*Biggest losers: Anyone who followed the draft live who wasn’t actively participating. OK, we still love you.

*Best sandwich picks: Rounds 13 and 14 from Jon: T-Jack (T-JOKE to some commenters) and Ryan Longwell. What a homer.

*Worst situation: The server who kept taking our empty glasses before we could refill them.

*Best trash talk: Sin City Rollers co-conspirator Victor Lebanon claiming our sandwich picks of Jerricho Cotchery and Selvin Young in rounds 6 and 7 trumped his one terrible pick (Kevin Smith) the round before. (Note: VL is grumpy by nature and would have said that regardless of which players were taken).

*Best part: The season hasn’t even started yet, and already half the league members hate their teams.

Fasola-link! Major cities at night from space.