Short Relief

Short Relief: Are You Ready for a Mustache?

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...

Short Relief: Karma and That Which Can Be Undone

by Holly Wendt and Patrick Dubuque 6/25

On Friday evening, during a tight game between the Cardinals and the Brewers, a fan crocheted in the stands. The act was, in multiple quarters, erroneously reported as knitting, but knitting uses two needles and crochet a single blunted hook. Much of Friday’s commentary had to do with the idea that if she was crocheting...

Short Relief: Barbarity and Baseball

by Sara Novic and Matt Sussman 6/22

As a writer of war literature, I’ve had my share of existential crises. Hell, I imagine most writers — even those who aren’t consistently elbow-deep in trauma — do. In moments like these, when (one of) our nation’s humanitarian emergencies feels so raw, so urgent, I find it difficult to think about anything else. I...

Short Relief: Hot Sea Shanties of the Promised Land

by RJ McDaniel, Beth Davies-Stofka, and Zack Moser 6/21

I am the most heat-averse person I know. I have lived in the Pacific Northwest, the ideal climate for someone who hates extremes of temperature, for my entire life, and yet every summer I find myself bewailing how hot it is, hiding indoors during the daylight hours, and wearing a lot of silk robes. The...

Short Relief: Drake and Making Wild Concessions

by Patrick Dubuque and Matt Ellis 6/20

Cleveland Indians acquire RHP Oliver Drake off waivers from the Milwaukee Brewers. [5/5] Los Angeles Angels acquire RHP Oliver Drake off waivers from the Cleveland Indians. [5/31] RHP Oliver Drake clears waivers and has been outrighted to Salt Lake (AAA). [6/19] Look, I don’t know. Long before I became a writer, I remember reading the...

Short Relief: The Second Direction

by Kate Preusser and Mary Craig 6/19

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...

Short Relief: Only Wanna Be With You (When You’re Winning)

by Jason Wojciechowski, Patrick Dubuque, and Holly M Wendt 6/18

Deadspin published a nice piece by Joe DeLessio on Friday about digging through his late father’s massive, overwhelming collection of memorabilia, most of which was baseball stuff, most of which of that was Orioles stuff. The word “stuff” is often a filler term where a better, more precise descriptor isn’t coming to mind, but in...

Short Relief: Chaotic Neutral Alignment

by Trevor Strunk, Sara Novic, and Matt Sussman 6/15

Hey you! Yes, you! Do you have a heritage night or pride-based festival that’s coming up? Do you want to have the spotlight and reach that only a major league baseball team can bring? Are you committed to having the Philadelphia Phanatic make a mockery of your beloved culture? If you answered yes to these...

Short Relief: The Light at the End of the Pitch Tunnel

by Patrick Dubuque, RJ McDaniel, and Beth Davies-Stofka 6/14

Steppenwolf is one of the most famous and most misunderstood of the novels of Nobel Prize winning-author Herman Hesse. I’m having trouble understanding it myself, fifty pages in; I’d nearly given up, only to see Hardball Times editor Jason Linden give it his highest praise. Written from the perspective of Germany between the wars, the...

Short Relief: Destiny and How to Avoid It

by Justin Klugh, Nathan Bishop, and Matt Ellis 6/13

There’s a video circulating of a young man striking out his best friend to win a high school championship game, then skipping his team’s celebration to hug and console his buddy. This footage has inspired the nation to rise up as one and say, “Love is a part of baseball.” What I’m here to tell...

Short Relief: Who Was Sarah Roberts?

by Mary Craig and Kate Preusser 6/12

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...

Short Relief: The Sweet Slumber of Summer

by Patrick Dubuque and Holly M Wendt 6/11

Perhaps the primary crusade in baseball analysis over the past decade is the drive toward the distillation of the baseball player’s true talent. On a throughline from wins above replacement to independent pitching metrics to BABIP noise to video-capture data, every aim has been to sluff off some of the noise, the complicating factors, that...

Short Relief: The L-Block of Baseball

by Matt Sussman and Sara Novic 6/08

Recently my wife asked me how Stephen Strasburg was doing, as if we text regularly. Her memory of baseball is frozen in the late aughts-early tweens of baseball, before we were married, and while I was tweeting something after every dang plate appearance. She remembers when Strasburg starts were big deals, and it turns out...

Short Relief: One Saturday in June

by Beth Davies-Stofka, Patrick Dubuque, and RJ McDaniel 6/07

One Saturday in June, a little girl opened the door to the hall closet and a stack of newspapers slid out. She squatted on the floor to look at them. The paper on the top had a photo of a man lying on the floor in a halo of light, surrounded by worried people. The...

Short Relief: The Most Dangerous Game

by Matt Ellis, Justin Klugh, and Nathan Bishop 6/06

When the phone rang he was in the kitchen. It wasn’t that he didn’t expect a call–there were talks between scouts promising this and that since September. No, instead it was only eight PM, and he thought there would be time to refill his glass of Tab and wait for the returns to roll in....

Short Relief: When the Drafts Were Worth Mocking

by Mary Craig and Kate Preusser 6/05

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...