Fly, fly away!

It’s been a while since I updated the standings tracker chart. For a while there I was updating it almost every day because we had the best pennant race going in the history of our league.

Here is what the race looked like between July 1 and almost the end of August, when I last updated the standings tracker.

First, my apologies to the Balk.  I cut this screenshot where I did to focus on the four teams in the pennant race, which left the Balk line out.  It’s just off the screen to the bottom.  Also — the legend showing Canberra, Cottage, DC and Flint Hill is cut off the top, also for layout reasons.

Note how July started with the Wolverines, Dragons and Rosebuds all clustered together atop the standings?  Pittsburgh was just passing Canberra, but was not part of the race. About July 22d or so the top three teams were so close their data points we practically on top of  each other.  Pittsburgh had gotten closer, but was still just outside the race.

But by the time we got our first August update, Pittsburgh had made contact with the leaders.  For two weeks four teams tracked very close, spending all that time within 2 or 3 games of each other.  Note that this was mostly under the beneficent leadership of the Wolverines.  Then, just 5 days before the end of this snapshot, the Alleghenys take a sudden tumble while the Dragons take a sudden rise, and the beautiful tight race begins to fray.

Here is a shot of the standings tracker today, going back to that fateful day when the Dragons seized the lead:

(Oh, hello, Balk! Now we can see you.)

The pennant race, once frayed mid-way through August, never quite comes back together again. Haviland just keeps rising at a pace no one else can match.  For three weeks Pittsburgh, Portland and Old Detroit try to hold out pennant race together, with modest success. But in the last two days, it’s all come apart, probably definitively. Haviland has made a tremendous surge. Pittsburgh and Portland have collapsed.  The Wolverines, their heads spinning, are still standing there, looking around at the backs of the Dragons flying off above them, and the Alleghenys and Rosebuds cascading below them. Soon the W’s will be utterly alone in second place, unless something changes dramatically.