Americans are big fans of cognitive dissonance. It’s hard to identify a single segment of society that doesn’t have a significant amount of hypocrisy.
It’s 1:11 a.m. EDT, and I’m writing from the Park Plaza hotel in Boston, where the Society for American Baseball Research is holding its 32nd convention. There will be presentations, panels, Q&As, awards, a trip to Fenway Park, and all the humidity humans can stand. Maybe more.
But mostly, there will be 600-odd baseball fans hanging out and talking about the greatest game in the world. Even as I type this, the hotel bar is loaded with baseball lovers of all shapes and sizes, including a bunch of BP staffers�no one works a bar like Chris Kahrl�and some of the best baseball researchers on the planet.
I’m in for a fun weekend. It’s 1:11 a.m. EDT, and I’m writing from the Park Plaza hotel in Boston, where the Society for American Baseball Research is holding its 32nd convention. There will be presentations, panels, Q&As, awards, a trip to Fenway Park, and all the humidity humans can stand. Maybe more. But mostly,…
The Loss of Two Cardinals
Many people brought up the point that strikeouts can only kick in at three pitches, and walks at four pitches.
The last Aim for the Head, about how offensive production varies with the number of pitches in the plate appearance, generated a lot of questions. Let’s dig into the mailbag: Ted Frank wrote: Excellent article. One thing missing, though. Of course BA is going to go down from the second pitch through the sixth; the…
Four months ago, the Minnesota Twins were headed for extinction, told they couldn’t compete in today’s game, that they were a drag on the baseball industry.
Today, the Minnesota Twins have the largest lead of any first-place team, seven games ahead of the Chicago White Sox, and are one of the best stories MLB has to offer.
Four months ago, the Minnesota Twins were headed for extinction, told they couldn’t compete in today’s game, that they were a drag on the baseball industry. Today, the Minnesota Twins have the largest lead of any first-place team, seven games ahead of the Chicago White Sox, and are one of the best stories MLB has…
Rob Dibble calls Shawn Estes a clown, Ken Griffey Jr. can’t decipher Bob Boone’s Stanford vocabulary, and Alfonso Soriano–apparently–has “larceny in his soul.” All that and more in this Week in Quotes.
I was sitting in a restaurant with my wife Saturday afternoon when my cell phone jumped to life. Jonah Keri’s words�”Darryl Kile is dead.”�rang just as false as those boys’ words had on that August afternoon 23 years ago. Yet, it was true, it had to be true, because while children may joke about such things, adults know better.
I remember August 2, 1979. I was eight years old, sitting on a stoop with my friend Arthur, when some older kids came by and told us that Thurman Munson had died. We didn’t believe them. Then another kid came by and said the exact same thing. And what were the chances of two kids…
TAKE THAT BACK "[Dibble] was unprofessional and uninformed. He said there was no retaliation after Mike got hit. This is the reason people switch off ESPN, because you have people with no knowledge of the game or the English language presenting the game we love." —Bobby Valentine, Mets manager, on ESPN commentator Rob Dibble questioning…
To test your mettle, we’re offering a quiz on contraction. Let’s see how closely you’ve been paying attention and how well you understand the new math that Major League Baseball has unveiled during its current round of labor negotiations.