Short Relief

Short Relief: All Alone With the Memory

Baseball Tonight is dead and gone. The longtime ESPN studio mainstay was already wheezing out its final gasps of life after they relegated it out of daily status, but recent news confirmed that it wouldn’t be returning for the 2019 season. I’m skeptical that ESPN and the people in charge of distributing MLB content will...

Short Relief: Time Traveling

by Mike Bates, RJ McDaniel, and Holly M Wendt 1/28

The closest thing in the world to time travel cost me less than ten dollars. But it wasn’t always so cheap. Once upon a time, as you undoubtedly know, baseball cards were valuable. Growing up in the late ‘80s, everyone heard the rumors and fables of the guy who found his dad’s collection of 1930s...

Short Relief: The Rest of the Story

by James Fegan, Matt Ellis, and Matt Sussman 1/25

A field guide to how baseball players should interact with kids; a Tigers game just at the end of the world; and the anniversary of the Prince Fielder contract, the end of its own little world.

Short Relief: Where the Track Leads

by Beth Davies-Stofka, Kate Preusser, and Collin Whitchurch 1/24

A woman stops at a market near Brooklyn’s McCarren Park. She buys mini-quiches and carrots on her way to visit her mother. They settle in front of the television to watch the game and grieve. A Yankees fan for 80 years, her father died last winter, so this is the first year that he won’t...

Short Relief: Hallelujah

by Nathan Bishop, Justin Klugh, and Ken Schultz 1/23

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...

Short Relief: The Best Laid Plans

by Mary Craig and Demetrius Bell 1/22

In high school, one of the mandatory courses was succinctly named “Technology,” in which students cycled through various stations acquiring largely non-essential information. These stations consisted of things like career placement tests (my routinely no. 1 and no. 2 ranked jobs were circus performer and sanitation engineer), typing games we had mastered by grade 7,...

Short Relief: You Can’t Go Back

by Patrick Dubuque, Holly M Wendt, and RJ McDaniel 1/21

When I was ten years old, during the decade when all the kids collected baseball cards for three months, I had an idea. I had a couple of friends who lived up the hill from me. One lived in a giant house, the son of a doctor and a lawyer; I spent countless days losing...

Short Relief: First in War, First in Peace

by Matt Sussman and Bill Thompson 1/18

First to come up with the idea to sign Adam Ottavino: Brian Cashman First to know they were not going to sign Adam Ottavino: The Marlins First to contact Adam Ottavino: Brian Cashman’s administrative assistant First to come up with the idea of free agency: Marvin Miller First to print the blank contract: Josh, the...

Short Relief: Keeps Raining All The Time

by Kate Preusser, Beth Davies-Stofka, and Justin Klugh 1/17

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...

Short Relief: The Winds of Change

by nathan bishop and Matt Ellis 1/16

Last Thursday we saw The Nutcracker. Hundreds of parents crowded into a small elementary gym worn with age and underfunded maintenance. We need a new school pretty badly. The bond for it failed the vote late last year. We sat in small, cheap, uncomfortable, plastic chairs that were set entirely too close together, and watched...

Short Relief: Reflections on the Situation at Hand

by Mary Craig and Patrick Dubuque 1/15

Unless you’ve extended indefinitely your holiday break or decided to finally part with the material world, you’re by now well aware that the past two off-seasons have sparked a bit of contention between the players/MLBPA and the owners. The specificities of the brewing conflict can be quite difficult to fully grasp, particularly since the animosity...

Short Relief: Those Were The Days

by RJ McDaniel, Holly M Wendt, and Mike Bates 1/14

Here is a ruthless summary the previous day’s baseball proceedings from the Toronto Globe on June 6th, 1888: LEATHER HUNTING AT BUFFALO BUFFALO, June 5 — Today’s result may have reduced Mr. Fanning’s opinion of his ability to pitch good ball. Even that is doubtful. The main point now with Mr. Fanning is the opinion...

Short Relief: Employment

by Matt Sussman, James Fegan, and Sydney Bergman 1/11

It would make sense to extend the netting completely across the ballpark, and maybe just have the ballpark covered in plexiglass with holes for the athletes to breathe. Because in the end we really treat athletes as zoo animals: creatures to observe, admire, and fervently believe that they are not us. Getting money to play...

Short Relief: Baseball for All

by Beth Davies-Stofka and Kate Preusser 1/10

Last Saturday, female and male recruits started training together aboard the Marine recruit depot at Parris Island, South Carolina, a first for the Corps. This is a red-letter moment for women. The Marine Corps is the only service branch that hasn’t fully integrated its recruit training, and while the separate training policy hasn’t officially changed,...

Short Relief: Captain America & Friends

by Jarrett Seidler, Nathan Bishop, and Matt Ellis 1/09

“Time, you know, takes everyone out. It’s undefeated.” — Rocky Balboa in Creed *** David Wright’s career has been a constant in my adult life, a series of memorable moments in time and space. Many of these are marked in my brain with some weird correlation to whatever was going on in my life at...

Short Relief: Destinations Unknown

by Mike Bates and Mary Craig 1/08

If you search Mike Trout’s Twitter account for the airplane emoji, you will find 168 tweets in which it is paired with some number of exclamation marks and often accompanying the name of a city. The first such tweet dates back to September 18th, 2013, the day the Angels ended a 10-game road trip and...