Hello.

"Every scoresheet tells a story."

Since getting involved with my high school baseball team in 1989, I've scored well over a thousand games at all levels, both in an official capacity and just as a fan. (If I had a dollar for every "are you a scout?" question....) I firmly believe that, with enough qualifiers, every game can be proven to have some unique event in baseball history. It is those nuggets-- with a reasonable number of qualifiers, of course-- that we set out to find here at Kernels.

We're not into metrics. We don't set out to predict who's going to win. (A good friend once ran a blog called You Can't Predict Baseball, which is true.) To us, the beauty of the game is those 81 blank squares and the fact that you never know for sure what's going to go in them. We are that little department of your brain that is watching a game and sees something just a little bit odd and wonders, huh, when's the last time that happened? Realizing (hoping?) that maybe, just maybe, the answer will be "never".

This series came into its own during the course of 10½ years in the Stats & Information Group at ESPN where I handled play-by-play, notes and nuggets, and various research for all sports throughout the course of the year. Baseball, however, has always been my first love, and one which lends itself very easily to this type of research because so many different things can happen on any play. The Kernels were featured each Sunday from 2013-16 on the Stats & Info blog and occasionally the front page of ESPN.com (see links in top bar) and were enjoyed by folks far and wide (I hope). Having moved on from that job, I present you their new home, free of some other corporate red tape like word counts and conflicting assignments. :)

We hope you enjoy reading and sharing, and feel free to pass along tips or suggestions for odd things you notice. I scour every boxscore every night, but it's not foolproof. I also post shorter bursts of notes each night on Twitter at @dakern74.

Welcome aboard. Please keep arms and legs inside the ride.

(P.S. I am also an avid road-tripper who has seen a game in over 200 professional stadiums (see list above). If you build it, I'll show up eventually. That could be an entire other blog series. Could be.)