“I love you,” Hernandez said. “I love you, Robbie, and you know I’m with you. You know I’m with you, bro.” Felix Hernandez believes in Robinson Cano. What, exactly, does he believe? “I’ve been talking to him a lot. He seems fine because he don’t make any mistakes. He’s a smart person. I don’t think…
In the final hours before his death, to the surprise and dismay of his closest friends, Socrates refused to flee into exile and instead imparted his beliefs concerning the importance of technology in baseball. His ideas on the subject were immortalized in one of Plato’s best-known dialogues, Phaedo (from which we get the dog’s name…
The summer that I was 20, I worked in the D.C. bureau of a newspaper chain. It was a pretty good gig, so far as these internships go: I got to do some real reporting and make a stupid face in the background of a White House press briefing on C-SPAN2, and it paid above…
Whenceforth I received the news that the great Bone Head from Mud City was applying saliva to the ball before releasing it to the batter, I was right steamed. Myself, returning straight from a season that saw me ace thirty-one victories for my club, well yes-sir, I feign ignorance as to why a gentleman pitching…
Yesterday, the Dallas Morning News put out this update on the condition of Tim Lincecum, who was shelved with a blister before the season started and was moved to the 60-day disabled list last week. Here are the saddest portions: 5. The phrase “attacked by a raging blister” It’s not just any blister, but an…
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…
The British Virgin Islands Marlins celebrate home runs by setting off the miniature volcano in left field. “This is just how the islands themselves were created!” the team’s publicity office crows when the great gurgling mass is unveiled. When a television reporter discovers a few weeks later that the “highly technical live-action sculpture” actually runs…
Story co-credit: W.C. Heinz // Photo credit: © Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports They were staring at their phones, the weather app reading 37, when it began, there, under the clouds, in the heart of the big apple. Three-thirty, but on it went. Windbreakers screeching during opening workouts from them, there, running and walking and in…
Level 1: While one man is conducting a television interview, another man pours sunflower seeds on his hat. Level 2: While one man is conducting a television interview, another man pours sunflower seeds on his hat. The man and the people interviewing him laugh, because it is funny. Level 3: While one man is conducting…
World Series: no instant replay. The games are so long. So long! And they’re just random ball-bounces anyway. Let the chaos reign. Playoffs: in the seventh inning or later, if the game is presently a save situation, then a replay umpire is allowed to call for replay of any call that can currently be challenged…
We went to the Indian Wells Tennis Garden this weekend for the BNP Paribas Open, also known as the Indian Wells Masters. We saw many tennis players, and all of them played tennis the same basic way. Sure, some were big hitters without much foot speed and some were small and fast and defense-oriented, but…
1934 Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience, today we are out at the Polo Grounds, that historical home of the New York Giants. There were sixteen teams, enough today to be a simple conference, but then the entire league. Nevertheless, an argument about what could be, what should be, and importantly, who…
There’s a good reason so many dads across this nation love baseball: tinkering. Yes, friends, tinkering — that old-fashioned pastime that your father and his father’s father, and his father’s father have enjoyed. You can find the dad of today in the garage, fiddling with a part that isn’t quite right for a project in…
It wasn’t fair. Johnny Bench hit 40, and Pete Rose was at .300 the entire year. She knew this, she knew this in part because it’s what the newspapers said, but it’s also what was on the back of the card she got from Clark’s, when her mom let her pick out one item under…
(photo credit: © Butch Dill-USA TODAY Sports) four months old He doesn’t remember this part, of course, but looking back through the worn baby book that his mother keeps on a shelf near the television—he wonders if this shape, the first shape, was maybe the best one. Really, it wasn’t a shape at all. He’d…
The color green helped hook me on philosophy. When I was a boy the street lights on Ambaum Avenue were aligned sideways, a rather charming little touch for a part of town and a childhood that desperately wished to be charmed. One day the lights were rotated ninety degrees, the boring old top-to-bottom way, and…