From the first-base side of the 400 level of Citizens Bank Park, everything falls into view: the green-on-green tartan of the grass, the crisp edges of the infield dirt and foul lines, the whole arc of the outfield wall and the bushes and the tall, glittering screen and all its flecks of aligning light. Television…
You cannot argue balls and strikes, and the rest comes down to instant replay. So when it comes to borderline calls, the only ones we can (and should) question is their decision to post. So let’s rank the hashtags used in its promotion: #OneGameSuspension – This one’s completely accurate. It is about a one game…
German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is often credited for developing one of our society’s most important modern philosophical concepts, that of the dialectic. Hegel’s dialectic builds off and extends classical philosophy’s Greek concept of a dialectical exchange, in which two opposing sides of an argument–a thesis and its antithesis–stake out a kind of territory…
There are so many places where there is not baseball. There are the early morning bike paths, teeming with rabbits and tree roots, where dreams hide within the quadriceps tendons as each small hill rolls into view. There are the choir lessons in the church annex, where your daughter and seven other less adorable children…
Last week, I was driving down a wide city street lined with box stores, chain restaurants, and strip malls. I could have pulled off into Discount Shoe Warehouse, or Best Buy, or Wendy’s. I could have grabbed a taco while getting my oil changed. I was provided the opportunity to pick up my dry cleaning,…
Oh my goodness. You did it. You did a split. Is it an Olympic-level split? Probably not, no. It is close enough, though. It looked at the task at hand and completed it. Often that’s all you could ask for. You don’t understand why the word ‘serviceable’ has a whiff of insult to it. Maybe…
(Recently the author made his first visit to Fenway Park, and offers some thoughts) Fenway the Museum: It’s a time capsule, which is very specifically different than traveling back in time. Seeing Fenway in 1920, or 1932, or some other year from the Williams/Yastrzemski/Fisk eras would mean seeing it with all the baggage of the…
I’ve long thought that a decent amount of baseball’s charm stems simply from the fact that the shape of the field is unique, rhizomatic. And it’s strange, really: one might point to the fact that nearly every other “modern” team sport takes place in the same rectangular dimensions, featuring goals or “ends” on either side…
Baseball has been played professionally in San Antonio since at least the late 1880s, when the city was a charter member of the Texas League. The history of chili in the city is much harder to trace, with many travelers coyly referring to “stews” that will “make one malodorous for days,” as one lady traveler…
The last perfect game in Major League Baseball was thrown by Félix Hernández, on August 15th, 2012. Barack Obama was the president of the United States, and Mitt Romney was vying to become the next one. The top grossing film was The Avengers, but the first one, not the second or third or fourth or…
Hi. I’m a philosophy professor and department chair, and I have an SOS for you. Things aren’t going well. There are far too many students who don’t understand the art of written communication. I get emails that are so garbled, I can’t work out what they say. I recently read an essay that failed to…
Flanigan Loveless raced to Dewey + Truman Advertising Agency’s Conference Room E in a futile effort to outpace his brain. “People, we are deep down in the gutter drain,” Loveless began after a long swig of warm water. “We got to get in front of this drain…” A second gulp. “Fast before we sink. It…
I am 37 and married with two kids. It is not a period of time I think anyone dreams about. Children do not fall asleep to thrilling stories of dad staining the deck, or of him waiting for the water to heat up to help us scrape the dried macaroni from a dish left out…
Today, March 27th, is Effa Manley’s birthday. Many of us know the usual things about her. First woman elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame; married to Abe Manley, owner of the Newark Eagles. Earned an induction into the Hall of Fame on the strength of her shrewdness and steadfast belief that Negro League teams…
(Editor’s Note: Light spoilers for Captain Marvel.) Captain Marvel played baseball. Baseball, the ur-American sport, the sport above all others that has been held out as what women can’t do[1], a sport that even today struggles with the idea that women can and want and should be considered shoulder to shoulder with the men in…
With the signing of (Late Twenties Player Two Years Off A Four-Win Season) for (Less Money Than Said Team’s Setup Man Earned In Arbitration) on Sunday, the story of Major League Baseball in (Current Year) continues to be one in which players and ownership find themselves at odds over the future of the game’s labor…