With Microsoft’s new Xbox, the next time you yell at your TV it will actually be able to respond.

The Xbox One, which the software giant unveiled Tuesday, is a next-generation console that aspires to be more than just a plaything. Not only will Xbox One let users to watch live TV, rent a movie, listen to music and play games, viewers can use their voice and gestures to control the device too. Want to change the channel? Just tell the Xbox One to turn on a baseball game on ESPN or to check ...

Somebody dig up McLean Stevenson…it’s been renewed!

Larry Dierker, who has been a part of Major League Baseball in Houston as a player, manager and broadcaster for almost a half-century, will rejoin the team as a special assistant to new Astros president of business operations Reid Ryan, the team announced today.

“I’ll be doing some writing and will be a right-hand man for Reid, mostly in the area of public relations,” Dierker said. “I get the feeling that I will gravitate to the area ...

Like any decent American institution, baseball has close connections to sex, from the early 1900s postcards that featured baseball-themed sexual instructions to the salacious sheet music to the scorching hot photograph of five sexy, shirtless shortstops in Sports Illustrated to the amazing collection of baseball erotica that you can find on Amazon and the deepest, darkest corners of the web.

But there is another forgotten relic from baseball’s sexual past. Perhaps lost amidst the frenzy of ...

Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber announced today that a partnership of global sports powers, Manchester City Football Club and the New York Yankees, has acquired the League’s 20th expansion club. The new team will be named New York City Football Club (NYCFC) and expects to begin play in 2015.

Wait, I thought Manchester United was the Yankees’ fellow member of the Legion of Doom, not Manchester City!

The disarray in the Nationals’ bullpen reached a bizarre and self-inflicted new height Monday night. After the Nationals’ 8-0 loss to the Giants, Manager Davey Johnson revealed that set-up man Ryan Mattheus had broken his right hand Sunday when he punched his locker after a dreadful performance, landing him on the disabled list and leaving the Nationals scrambling for fresh arms.

Also known as THE WILL TO WIN.

The other day, I was watching the visiting announcing crew call a Kansas City Royals game, when Jeff Francoeur came to the plate. Before it even began, I knew what was coming. The announcers started to praise Francoeur. You know, it was all the usual stuff—great leader, plays terrific defense, bat coming around, wonderful guy. And, suddenly, a question came to mind.

What player in baseball do you think has the most ANT—Announcer Nonsense Talk—spoken about them? ...Read More...

Interesting stuff.

John Farrell and Torey Lovullo looked down toward the Twins bullpen. They saw some stirring, as Minnesota lefty reliever Brian Duensing had grabbed a ball and tossed it a few times.

Then Duensing sat down. It was then the Red Sox manager and his bench coach knew they had put the right people in the right places.

“It’s a good feeling,” Lovullo said after the Red Sox’ 12-5 win over the Twins Saturday night, “when all the puzzle pieces fit perfectly.”

The puzzle Lovullo ...

It’s been an incredible couple of months for the previously unheralded second-year pitcher. Corbin came into spring training having to compete for the fifth starter’s spot in the rotation, but he entered his start on Monday night at Coors Field as one of the bigger revelations in baseball in the first month and a half of the season.

And he didn’t disappoint, beating the Colorado Rockies by throwing the first complete-game of his career, giving up just three hits in a 5-1 victory, the ...

Toledo News-Bee, May 21, 1913:

With the score nothing to nothing in the sixth inning, an angry cow temporarily broke up a baseball game between factory employees recently at Altoona, Pa. The cow upset the players’ benches, charged the fielders and then disappeared.

Obviously this is the same cow that ate a baseball the week before in St. Louis. It’s got indigestion and it wants revenge.

Alex Sanabia is on the Marlins. The odds are at least decent that you’ve never heard of Alex Sanabia before. What’s he all about? Let’s see ... leads the league in losses ... kind of a control pitcher in the minors ... 24 years old ... drafted in the 32nd round, just a round after William Mays ... but pretty nondescript, mostly.

...Spitter. He’s the spit guy. The guy with the spit. Yeah, I remember him. Ol’ Spitface with the spit coming out of his face. Good spitter, that guy. Loves to spit. ...

Welcome back, JM Catellier…and his “own unique statistical formula”!

The average 20th century Hall of Fame starting pitcher has 258.3 career wins. That number is dragged down by Sandy Koufax’ 165 victories, but he can’t be omitted from this exercise as I consider him the best starting pitcher to ever throw a baseball.

Former Boston Red Sox ace Pedro Martinez retired following the 2009 season with just 219 wins and only two 20-win seasons. Is it possible that he’s a first ballot Hall of ...

Get out of his way, or Sale will eat you!

But what really left teammates in awe of Sale was his performance on a charter flight to California. In a four-hour masterpiece, Sale packed two ice cream sundaes and, by one teammate’s estimate, around 30 bags of potato chips into one of the skinniest bodies the sport has ever seen.

“I may or may not have done that,” Sale said.

Sale is one of baseball’s most promising young pitchers, a dazzling left-hander coming off an All-Star season in 2012. ...

Seems as if The Barry Bonds Family Foundation has welcomed a new member.

“I don’t try to compare me to anybody,’’ Bonds said. “I was the best on the field. I did more things than he did. My game was different than his game. So comparing him, to me, there’s no comparison.

“He doesn’t have my MVPs. He doesn’t have my numbers. Well, not yet, anyways.

“But does he have that ability? Yes, he does.

“Does he have that gift? Yes, he does.’‘

...“Winning a Triple Crown is amazing to me,’’ Bonds ...

Boz pays homage to the gritty, gutsy, scrappy, first place 2013 underdog Yankees:

Perhaps for the first time in their history, the Yankees now epitomize exactly the kind of team that always used to try to beat them: a group of inspired-by-adversity, too-old-or-too-young, one-last-chance players who band together to prove that baseball is a team game, not just an aggregation of talent and fat contracts.

Put a few all-star seasons, such as Cano’s 31 RBI, Kiroda’s 1.99 ERA and Rivera’s 16 ...

Before we chatter today, let us please make sure we all have those in the path of the tornado in Oklahoma yesterday in our thoughts.

Today’s games include: Matt Garza’s first start of 2013, the Orioles try to break out of the free-fall, Strasmas comes to San Francisco and Greinke goes against Milwaukee.

Wonder if Paul Anka can pen another hit after this nosedive…

But the thing that was most striking about Pujols is that he was always exactly as good as he had been the year before. He never had a bad year. He never had anything RESEMBLING a bad year. They called him “The Machine.” If you take the WORST statistical totals he had those first 10 years – that is, the lowest batting average he had over those 10 years, the fewest home runs he hit, etc.—you STILL come up with this season:

.312 ...

There have been 188,593 pitches thrown thus far this Major League season.

When you break that down, it works out to 292 pitches per game, 32.69 per inning, 3.85 per plate appearance.

If you miss one here or there, even while in attendance, you are anything but alone. The sport generally allows us to take our time settling into our seats or casually conversing with our nearby neighbors or strolling the concourse in search of food. The pace and plot of the game are such that, while any pitch ...

A person’s head collides with an object. Unprepared for the impact, the head jerks in a violent whiplash motion. The person collapses, rolling on the ground and holding his head, before rising slowly and unsteadily. Eyewitnesses testify that the person was confused or disoriented.

“By definition, that’s a concussion,” says Dr. Daniel P. Perl, a professor of pathology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., the American military’s medical school. ...

Is this the MLUA
Or is this the MLBPA

Rays manager Joe Maddon insisted Monday he was right — and the umpires were wrong — in the interpretation of replay rules on Sunday, saying it was “baseball anarchy” and “sandlot” for crew chief Gerry Davis to “make stuff up on the field.”

But an MLB review found that that Davis did follow guidelines properly in awarding the Rays’ Matt Joyce a home run.

...“Regardless of what they say, that rule is not in the book where you can change a double to a ...

Over the first 12 days of September, Langford went the distance against the Yankees, Orioles and Royals. Langford, who wore No. 22, had thrown 22 consecutive complete games.

Finally, on Sept. 17, in a game at Arlington, Texas, A’s manager Billy Martin marched to the mound after Langford had pitched 8⅔ innings and signaled for lefty reliever Bob Lacey to come on. Lacey induced a groundout from Buddy Bell to save Langford’s 17th victory.

“I remember him standing there like it was ...

I just linked this in the Cano-Pedroia Time Warp Thread, but I felt like maybe it needed wider exposure. Remember when Gregg Zaun had the greatest website ever? Well, Ben Zobrist (& wife) appears to have gone to the same school.

I’m going to start using emanded. That is all.

I was surrounded in the clubhouse the other day, with no escape. Two players wanted—emanded—to know why there was even an MVP debate last year in the American League.

So technically, the great debate from 2012 rages on. Six months after the winner was announces, we are still talking about it.

These two players, like a seeming overwhelming majority of players, couldn’t understand why anyone supported Mike Trout in the apparently ongoing ...

Is this really true?

Baseball teams change at a glacial pace. I’m not talking about how a team does in a given season…that can change quite dramatically…I’m talking about what a team is: the broad scope of a team’s talents, their strengths and weaknesses. A team that’s good at converting a double play generally stays good at turning the double-play, just as a team with a terrible bullpen can’t make that bullpen a strength, at least not quickly. A team that gets lots of production ...

New York Tribune, May 20, 1913:

[Heinie] Zimmerman is said to have been incensed by [Cubs owner Charles] Murphy’s statement…that Zimmerman would be able to play when he could get his hat on with a shoehorn, charging Heinie with having a swelled head.

This afternoon Zimmerman told [Johnny] Evers that he would not play, as he was ill. They then had a redhot argument, in which Zimmerman declared that he was tired of carrying the entire Chicago team on his shoulders…Evers informed Zimmerman that he ...