What has the European press riled up today? McDonald’s on the Champs-Elysées? The rumors that Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni are having separate affairs? No, it’s Stats Monkey, a program developed by the Intelligent Information Laboratory at Northwestern University that can crank out an article about a baseball game without using a human writer.

“The system is based on two underlying technologies. First, it uses baseball statistical models to figure out what the news is in the story: By analyzing changes in Win Probability and Game Scores, the system can pick out the key plays and players from any baseball game. Second, the system includes a library of narrative arcs that describe the main dynamics of baseball games (as well as many other competitions): Was it a come-from-behind win? Back-and-forth the whole way? Did one team jump out in front at the beginning and then sit on its lead? The system uses a decision tree to select the appropriate narrative arc. This then determines the main components of the game story and enables the system to put them together in a cohesive and compelling manner. The stories can be generated from the point of view of either team,” reads the information at Stats Monkey website.

France’s Le Monde is calling it the “the era of robot-journalists” – according to Google’s computer-generated translation.

The big question is: As a baseball writer, will Stats Monkey let Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds into the Hall of Fame?

For those who remained adamant in their belief that they would one day live to see Rod Stewart’s name tied to a baseball scandal, today is your day.

Here is the connection: Rod’s son Sean, a reality show mainstay, is the current inamorato of Chantel Kendall, who is presently going through a messy divorce trial in Los Angeles with Kansas City Royals catcher Jason Kendall.

RadarOnline.com sifted through 3,000-plus pages of the divorce file and discovered that Jason was a user of the psychostimulant Adderall which “caused a rage that professional health care workers see as similar to steroid rage.”

RadarOnline.com reports:

“Baseball’s new drug scandal has led to shocking allegations and was triggered by the banning of amphetamines, which led to players obtaining prescriptions for Adderall.”

No doubt Bud Selig is at this very moment busy trying to get to the bottom of these latest accusations which are casting a grim shadow on his sport.

According to a report on the official site of the International Baseball Federation, baseball is a fast growing sport for visually impaired players in several countries.

The way the game is played varies from country to country: “In Italy, Cuba and Hungary, they use a drilled baseball containing sleighbells. In Chinese Taipei and the USA, they prefer an oversized ball with an implanted electronic beeper. The Japanese play with an air-filled ball with no sounding device at all.”

The beep baseball used in the United States was invented by Charles Fairbanks in 1964. The National Beep Baseball Association was formed a dozen years later, and now there are over 200 teams competing in the sport.

The Wikipedia entry for beep baseball provides a summary of how the game is played.