On Monday night, the Lake Elsinore Storm, the High-A team of the Padres, did their annual “Nothing Night.” On the junior-junior-junior-junior circuit of the low minors, teams try to draw interest with a series of increasingly outlandish promotions, name changes, wild food items, and one-off jerseys that riff on seemingly every pop-culture phenomenon and ’90s…
All right, gang. It’s officially summer. And what is it that kids love most about baseball? “Chris Russo shrieking into a camera–” That’s right: America. So this Independence Day, we’re pulling out all the stops. Stars and stripes on the hats. Stars and stripes on the arm sleeves. Stars and stripes on the catching gear….
In case you haven’t heard, Ichiro Suzuki snuck into the Mariners’ dugout last Thursday via a fake mustache. Like Bobby Valentine before him, he was easily discovered, and whether under his own volition or that of Major League Baseball, he was gone from the dugout by the start of the second inning. While he gave…
My father is fond of the phrase “threw up on his shoes” to indicate a person spectacularly failing at a clutch moment, usually used in conjunction with the phrase “not exactly covering himself in glory, eh?” It’s a phrase pairing that gets used a lot, because he’s a lifelong Mariners fan. Yet on Sunday, the…
The length of its existence and sheer volume of games make it essentially impossible for one to know everything about the game. Even the things we think we know can be thrown into doubt, leaving a gaping hole where once there was certainty, creating ample opportunity for speculation among the hazy visage of fact. For…
Drafting players is a difficult process, with very few guaranteed successes sprinkled amongst dozens of players who never sniff the majors for a plethora of circumstances largely beyond their control. And yet drafting is also somewhat easy as it requires one to operate within defined parameters that are over a century in the making. In…
Nothing marks time quite so clearly as being in elementary school. A flotilla of cereal-box ships for Columbus Day, Tootsie Roll pop ghosts for Halloween, turkey hands for Thanksgiving. Pieces of copy paper folded and snipped into snowflakes, then taped to windows to shiver over heating vents, to mark the long winter months, and wads…
(with apologies to Natasha Trethewey’s “Myth”) The starter is the closer is the opener again, baseball writ by Rilke’s refrain: we must change our lives or suffer being left behind. Adapt or die. Some dislike the new, what’s bad for baseball, bullpen starts. Or: the JUCO prospect who almost didn’t play. Realize the scrap of…
In many ways, the history of Major League Baseball acts as both love letter to and commentary on American society, imbibing both its best and worst elements and reflecting them back to the public. The precise degree to which Major League Baseball encompasses the American psyche is likely something that cannot be arrived at quantitatively,…
My father is nearly done having to work. He belongs to perhaps one of the last generations of peoples to feel he can approach or achieve “retirement age”, and has worked for nearly fifty years, veering through largesse, near-bankruptcy, and everything in between. If you subscribe, as I do, to John Muir’s notion that everything…
The last notable pitcher we could find who dealt with this specific injury was J.J. Putz, who missed about five weeks with it as a Mariner in 2008. Putz, however, struggled with elbow issues the next season while with the Mets, eventually needing surgery to remove bone spurs. Putz, now a special assistant with the…
Next year will be the 100th anniversary of two events: the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I; and Babe Ruth being sold to the Yankees, which set in motion years of minor scuffles all across the Northeast corridor. Much of these skirmishes had to do with baseball players wearing different colored hats having…
He had never really been able to discern whether his love of Fight Club informed his foray into cloning or if his interest in the highly controversial process predated his affinity for the novel. In any case, he found comfort in the likeness of the two, although cloning required a mere three rules: under no…
(In honor acknowledgement of.) Having a baseball player during his cost-controlled early years seems like the best time. You imagined him improving year after year, possible Hall of Fame discussion, and finally taking a hometown discount to stay with you. That happens sometimes, but as you have learned, it doesn’t occur all that much. You…
Mon, Mar 5 Lyssa, we got a new hitting coach. it is raining today probably going to rain tomorrow too. say HI to your mom. Wed, Mar 7 Coach says my swing will be a lot better if I learn to tap my toe. say HI to your mom. she doing better? Thu, Mar 8…
Tampa, April 2018 – Tampa Bay Rays R&D Department The entire back half of the warehouse was a jumbled mess of wires, server racks, and exotic machines that looked one step removed from a sixth-grade science fair. In front of them was what appeared to be a portable shower festooned with dials and pulsing with…