Baseball moves on without us (rude); your team will try anything in September, like you during Restaurant Week; a review of the Mike Trout animated series nobody knows about
Some players don’t have to be told by Ken Griffey Jr. to keep fighting; the Minnesota Twins are Emma Stone in “The Favourite”; ever see an ejected manager leave the field through the center field fence?
Love: Luis Arraez Style; What J.T. Realmuto can teach us about teaching.
This weekend, I threatened to quit my job. Not my baseball-related job, mind you, but a different one. Without getting too specific, I had an experience with the owner of the company that was unsatisfactory and his behavior left me with a bad taste in my mouth. We have since talked and patched things up,…
Going to my local independent league games is a bit of an exercise in déjà vu. Both the York Revolution and the Lancaster Barnstormers play in the Atlantic League, and the eight teams in that league, ranging from New England to Sugarland, Texas, are filled with Guys You’re Sure You’ve Seen Somewhere Before. Usually, that’s…
Search for “Cody Bellinger” “batting stance” and you’ll find some quotes about offseason adjustments. His legs were too straight. He stood too tall. That sort of thing. And it’s true. He stood tall with his legs straight: feet even but torso rotated slightly toward the catcher, so he had to peek over his shoulder at…
My family put a pool in our backyard when I was in the fourth grade. I was in it almost daily for the next few summers, swimming and hanging out with friends. All the kids in the neighborhood would come by and shoot water guns at each other, play Marco Polo, and dive. The sun…
It is the top of the first inning, and Mike Leake is pitching for the Mariners. That’s a boring sentence. Mike Leake is a boring pitcher. Still, not long ago I would have been watching anyway. Instead, as Leake begins throwing his average stuff with average command against an average Angels team on a statistically…
As Patrick Dubuque taught us last week, every man has a breaking point. I’ve seen it many times. Most recently, I saw it this past weekend. What you are witnessing in the above image from Saturday night’s loss to the Twins is Trevor Bauer’s. Slack-jawed, dumbfounded, and perplexed, he is wondering just how in the…
Bombs. Dingers. Homers, taters, goners, blasts. I love these words, but I hear them a lot. So I created my own list of home run metaphors, fresh and new. For my source material, I turned to the novellas of E.T.A. Hoffmann. His playful, early-nineteenth-century romantic fantasies are packed with expansive and intentionally silly overstatements. They’re…
The city of Philadelphia is awash in all things bamboo, thanks to the horticultural optimism of newish Phillie Brad Miller. With the team in the middle of an ugly and ill-timed skid through the NL East, Miller sought a change of fortunes through the procurement of a desk-sized (or player locker-sized) pot of lucky bamboo….
I have tried to be polite and civil about this matter, as it is not my wish any player should wind up in shackles turning the giant wheel beneath Rob Manfred’s office that powers MLBAM, but enough is enough: professional baseball players of America, I need you to let me live my life! It was…
It doesn’t matter what ballpark I go to. It doesn’t matter where I sit. It doesn’t matter whether I am alone or with others. Every time I attend a ballgame, I end up sitting in front of “that guy.” You know the guy. Or maybe you don’t. And if you don’t, take my word for…
The circumstances of the Black Sox scandal of 1919 have generated a plethora of richly imagined reiterations, from the iconic Eight Men Out to the fanciful and forgiving representations in Shoeless Joe and its Hollywood adaptation, Field of Dreams. W.P. Kinsella’s Joe Jackson carries no taint of treachery, and even the apparent architect of the…
In a box of computer-related detritus my parents didn’t want to get rid of without my input exists a still-in-package CD-ROM, complete with what can only be cereal dust caught in the tighter corners of the plastic. On further inspection, the disc is #6 of a six-disc collaborative promotional effort from Post, AOL, EA Sports,…
Frankly, it’s embarrassing to watch the Minnesota Twins hit juiced-ball aided home run after home run. It’s unseemly. Gauche. It is not how these things are done. Not around here. For decades, the club was too modest to hit too many home runs. They were nice when they happened and all, but discerning Twins fans…