Baseball has changed again without asking. They do not know what they have done, but they are about to find out. Inning breaks will be reduced from 2:05 to 2:00 in local games and from 2:25 to 2:00 in national games. Time is needed for us to decompress; to consider what was just shown. When…
Thought experiment: if you could magically add 30 points of on base percentage to any team in baseball, who would you pick? (Ordinarily, I’d add the caveat “excluding your favorite team” but let’s face it…if you’re an MLB fan during this execrable offseason, there’s a 95 percent chance the owner of your favorite team has…
The chant begins the second he steps from the batting cage after his final round: I-chi-ro. I-chi-ro. It comes from Japanese fans who have traveled hundreds or thousands of miles to be here; from American fans wearing worn Ichiro All-Star jerseys; from professional autograph hounds to small children who only know that he is a…
Mickey Callaway on Brandon Nimmo's stomach ailment: "I guess he cooked some chicken, and didn't know how to cook or something. He was throwing up all night. We're going to have to teach him how to cook so he doesn't miss any more games." 
— Anthony DiComo (@AnthonyDiComo) February 27, 2019 Hello Brandon, welcome…
At some point in every artist’s life, they find a purpose or meaning that forces their hand to make something new, something inspiring. To create something so unique that when people see it for the first time, their imagination lights up. For me, that inspiration started by taking ordinary items that people throw away and…
You didn’t know this, but Derek Jeter has never played in a baseball game on a losing team. When Derek Jeter scratches off a losing lottery ticket, he responds, “No,” and eats it like a hamster. If you are dining with Derek Jeter and finish before him, he quietly orders two more entrees and begins…
Marlins aiming to boost attendance by improving in-game experience. they are holding auditions for an in-game host, public address announcer, anthem singers and Marlins Mermaids. — Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) February 5, 2019 They should never have found her. “Find me a fish,” Derek Jeter had ordered one morning, before the infamous Miami dockyards had grown…
(English translation: No Exit from Arbitration) SCENE A conference room in Deadball Era style. A massive bronze pitch clock stands on the mantelpiece. ARENADO [Enters, accompanied by Tony Clark]: Hm! So here we are? CLARK: Yes, Mr. Arenado. ARENADO: [Taking in the surroundings] And some get used to this? Even after the tweets? CLARK: Tweets?…
Walls are in the news, and walls are on my mind. Today, as I write this, or yesterday, as you read this, Edgar Martinez was elected to the baseball hall of fame. Edgar had many walls placed in front of him throughout his career, and one was named Jim Presley, who stood tall and solid…
Yesterday, in introducing Jed Lowrie, not Manny Machado nor Bryce Harper, as the newest member of the New York Mets, GM Brodie Van Wagenen said the following: “I fully expect us to be competitive and to be a winning team and our goal is to win a championship and it starts with the division, so…
At some point, I stopped locking the front door. Death is not the only disease. It’s the obvious one, though, especially at times like Tuesday night. Felix Hernandez threw the change-up, Robinson Chirinos reached out his wrist to meet it, and then both men winced in pain. One man healed. The metaphor is unavoidable, as…
This was a night in which Joe West seemed, once again, determined to be noticed.
It is cold outside, and the plants are dead. We have a long pot on our front porch, and whenever I look at it in the winter I wonder how it’s possible those thin brown strings covered in dead leaves can summon the strength to become vertical again each March, and yet somehow they do….
Last year the signature event of the baseball industry was held in an upscale Disney resort hosted in a tiny tax shelter of a town carved out of Orlando that had a reported population of 47 in the last census. With a single lobby and accompanying bar, the initial thrill of hanging out with all…
Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky were so influential that “Moneyball” Michael Lewis wrote an entire book about them. Maybe the 23rd most interesting tidbit from the book about how our limited brains are out to destroy us is this: we greatly inflate the number of times in our lives we truly predicted a surprising…