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…
Warning! Extremely minor spoilers for AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR ahead! If you’re into that sort of thing! The surprise cameo appearance of Tobias Fünke of Arrested Development in Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War spurred one hairbrained internet theorist to test the limits of “the most ambitious crossover event in history,” ultimately connecting Adam West’s Batman to the…
The recent controversy surrounding Ken Rosenthal’s interview with Kevin Pillar about his “recovery” from getting caught yelling a homophobic slur last year got me thinking about my own position in the world of this sport. There’s always some element of code-switching that goes on when I sit down to write about baseball. It’s not that…
One day, the young god Obatala looked down from the sky and said, “The situation in the ballparks needs improvement! I must talk with Olorun and see what can be done.” He said to Olorun, “Poor Happy rules nothing but Joes and Bobs! What he needs are Bucks and Robertos, Roys and Dons. Everyone could…
You are a Little League player. It’s the first game of the season. You are standing at the plate, ready to lead off the third inning. You take deep breaths, watching as the pitcher scuffs his cleats on the rubber. He is long finished with his warm-up throws, and seems to be drawing a shape…
Yesterday, the Colorado Rockies announced a six-year extension for star outfielder Charlie Blackmon. The presentation was superb, but one was forced to compare it to the somewhat lackluster way that the Phillies announced their own six-year agreement with top prospect Scott Kingery a week ago. It feels a little unfair. Perhaps it’s too late, but…
This is my first Opening Day without my dad. Not that Opening Day had been a ritual for us, or that it holds any particularly special meaning beyond our shared love of baseball. But my dad and I did share many of these ceremonial beginnings, mostly of the amateur kind as he coached my Little…
A few years ago, Emma Span published an article here at Baseball Prospectus on the subject of baseball fanfiction, specifically all the many weird sex scenes and pairings that the genre offers. (Please read for the mention of the Kevin Millar/Keith Foulke/Jason Varitek threesome.) The sex is what people tend to focus on when they…
Baseball starts at 10. You should wake up fifteen minutes before that. This has been your routine for the past two and a half years. Having a game to watch is one of the only reliable ways you have had to convince yourself to get out of bed. It has always worked before this year….
You wake up one morning and everything is fine. Your room looks the same as it did when you went to sleep. Nothing has been disturbed or altered. You didn’t have the nightmares last night. There are no demons in this room. You feel okay. You get out of bed and open the curtain. It…
This past weekend I found myself at a Goodwill, as one does when one has children who somehow go through pajamas faster than they go through meals. While sustaining the basic needs of said offspring, I discovered one of my favorite things: a monster box of baseball cards for seven dollars, filled with the usual…
You are 10 years old, and it’s Tuesday, and your little league tryouts are on Thursday, and you are sick. It’s the middle of February. One holiday Monday off school was enough for your body’s defenses to relax themselves a bit too much: You woke up with your stomach twisting in knots, your head throbbing,…
Three pieces reflecting on the 1985 World Series, 2018 spring training, and the long road from there to here.
(photo credit: © Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports) In the midst of their already-historic fire sale, the Miami Marlins recently announced that yet another head was rolling: The man who had, to that point, worn the suit known as Billy Marlin had been terminated from his position. While it was already sad and disturbing to see…
A year earlier DeGaulle fled Paris, resigning rule to the feuding students and labor leaders that took the streets as their own. Across the United States there were bombings and marches, and a year later four American college students would be shot dead on a campus by armed guardsmen, protesting the Vietnam war. But instead…