YOU CAN'T HIT WHAT YOU CAN'T SEE: On Saturday, a former communist snuck into a California border town and threw a hard object at 105.1 miles per hour, narrowly missing a clergyman. He threw a bunch of other hard objects too, every one at more than 100 miles an hour. One of the intended victims managed to fight the ex-communist off with a stick, nobody was hurt, and the ex-communist left, defeated.

The ex-communist was Aroldis Chapman, a Cuban emigre; the hard object was a baseball; the clergymen were of the San Diegan Padre order. So, really, the only significant things about the encounter were the 105-mile-an-hour pitch -- the fastest ever reliably recorded -- and the snare-beat consistency of all of the 100-mph pitches.

A few weeks ago, when Chapman made his MLB debut, Jeff Sullivan at Lookout Landing did a couple of posts looking at how velocity affects the hittability of pitches and how hitters do against 100-mile-an-hour pitches. The results of the first confirmed the obvious -- the faster the pitch, the harder it is to put your bat on it. But the interesting thing to me was that of over 550 pitches thrown at greater than 100 miles an hour in the sample period, there were zero home runs. Chapman throws so hard that he has eliminated a True Outcome.* That's scary.

*The "Three True Outcomes" -- strikeouts, walks, home runs -- are the three principal things that can happen during a plate appearance that are not affected by the defense. Since the difference between a deep fly ball and a home run is sometimes luck, some key pitching stats try to normalize the ratio between the two, but maybe that would be unfair to Chapman and Joel Zumaya.

I AM THE BEST GODDAMN DANCER IN THE AMERICAN BALLET ACADEMY. WHO THE HELL ARE YOU? Very nice riveting and nerve-wracking Mad Men, as usual, and as usual, Sepinwall has the postmortem (celebrity endorsements: Jon Hamm! Bill Simmons!). I'm only here to tell you that the mother in the waiting room was played by Susan May Pratt, Center Stage's own prima ballerina.

BING! Southwest Airlines to purchase AirTran, giving it access to Atlanta Hartsfield and DC National airports, as well as a few locations in the Caribbean.

GET THEE TO A GRANARY:  There's a certain segment of this blog's readership which may be too busy to even comment here now that Sid Meier's Civilization V is out.

WHY YOU LITTLE....: It's become far too trendy to say that The Simpsons has jumped the shark, or at least that it hasn't been good since a particular point in time (often correlated with when the speaker was in college), but I wanted to talk about several things that bugged about tonight's edition:

• Excessive use of guest stars--there were seven special guest voices in tonight's episode. Only two (the Conchords) really added anything substantial (though Hawking and Glass had funny throwaway bits). One of the most remarkable things about The Simpsons is the massive ensemble it's created with just the five members of the voice cast, almost none of whom appeared in this episode (Krusty, Moe, Millhouse, Martin, and Grandpa are about it). Heck, even Marge and Bart don't have much to do in the episode.
  
• Lazy writing--The episode introduces two completely separate storylines (Homer and Bart go to Europe and Lisa goes to arts camp), which never intersect in any way whatsoever once the characters part ways--it's almost like they wrote two fifteen minute shorts and just jammed them together into a single episode.
• Family Guy-ification--Like South Park, the folks behind The Simpsons have tried to make clear that they're no fans of the Seth MacFarlane "remember the time..." setup to string in jokes/references. Yet, there were several instances of that exact same setup this week (pretty much all the Krusty flashbacks in particular). At its best, The Simpsons lets jokes follow from plot and from character, and doesn't just toss off lazy references.
  

All that said, there was a lot of funny stuff and oddball references (Marge knows the subtitles of both parts of Angels in America, visual tributes to the Conchords poster for Season 2, and a lot of nods to prior Conchords songs), but I wish the show could be what it was.

ARE YOU A BATTLEMENT? I never thought we'd see a team on the Race as dumb as Lori and Bolo, but we may well be on our way.

Season-openers of The Amazing Race tend to be a bit of a blur -- it's hard telling apart all the teams who insist they're going to be misunderestimated, even those who insist their compass skills will set them apart. I did notice The Nassoons, whose Princetonian propriety twice stalled them due to an unnecessary inclination to assist other teams in peril. I noticed that yet again that there are teams who enter the Race without mastering manual transmission.  I noticed Phil Keoghan's hairline has receded.

But most notably, I noticed that the producer structured this leg remarkably well -- a realistic set of driving challenges and two in-race challenges reliant on balance and smarts, not strength.  As far as the Express Pass is concerned, I'm intrigued but want to know more: (1) how late in the Race can it be used? (2) can it be traded? (3) will other passes be available, either when after first one is used or after every leg?

Oh, yeah.  There was this thing with a watermelon.  It's still gasp-worthy.  It may well have caused a concussion.  I'm glad she got an icepack, but hope there was a doctor involved as well.  Meanwhile, our Race is back.

(N.B. I know of only one pop/rock song to use the word "battlement" in its lyrics.)

Fienberg gives us permission to pray with sinners:  "Here's the thing you have to know: If the watermelon had somehow knocked Claire cold or broken her nose or dislodged her teeth or caused any sort of permanent or temporary damage -- God forbid, y'all -- CBS would not have made The Watermelon Incident into the centerpiece of the premiere's promotion. CBS' promotion spoiled the surprise of The Watermelon Incident, but in spoiling the surprise, it took an event that might have been too shocking to process within the context of a fun reality show and gave us permission to enjoy it, to some degree. We also wouldn't have been treated to at least five or six replays of the Watermelon Incident, replayed with a near Zapruder-ian glee: Back and to the left. Back and to the left. Back and to the left. See the way Brook runs over and has to pick up the bits of watermelon brain matter from Claire's shirt? OH THE HUMANITY!"

YOU GONNA START KNOCKIN' MY HOBBIES?  Watts thought we'd find this Netflix recommendation of interest.  She's right.