Tim Wakefield also got his 2000th K as a member of the Red Sox.

Link contains links to transcriptions for all three speeches given at Cooperstown today.

On May 15, 1948, the Philadelphia Athletics took on the New York Yankees in a doubleheader. What’s significant is not that the A’s, who finished a surprising fourth in the American League, swept the Yankees in New York, 3-1 and 8-6. After all, the Yankees were in a down year and finished in third place.

On that Saturday afternoon before 69, 416 fans, Yogi Berra caught both ends of the double dip for the first of what would eventually be 117 times. Berra had an atypical offensive day. He ...

The HOF inductions start at 12:30 on MLB Network, and if this is up by then you can use this as a chatter. Here, by the way, is the Clark Sports Center, where the inductions are held (as you can see, when it’s not used for inductions it is, well, a actual sports center with softball, soccer, etc.)

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With some descent elbow grease…I’m sure the bloody Healter Skelter practice scrawls will come off the walls.

Warren Spahn named his cottage “The Mound.” Ironically, its address is the same number as his ERA in 1953 — 2.10, the best he ever posted.

Warren Spahn clearly enjoyed living on the beach, and sometimes after spring workouts you could see him rowing a 16-foot life raft in the Gulf for an hour to get into shape.

“The Mound” is one of a cluster of cottages that were built by Warren ...

Or as the chicken parmigiant Michael the K said yesterday…“It looks like Jemile Weeks goes to the same barber as his brother.” (in-studio stale Snicker bars abound)

Morgan was simply a disgrace in center field Friday night, at least by modern-day standards. The bleacher fans were riding him, as is their custom with most any opposing outfielder, and Morgan heard every word. He routinely engaged them with words and sweeping gestures, at least one of them carrying the hint of malice, and created ...

And for this, the MLB Network pays him how much? (reaches for dusty “BOWA GOTTA GOWA” sign)

Still, Bowa said he’s not sure whether he’d like to return to the field as a manager or coach, even though he looked fit and probably 10 years younger than his age.

“I like what I’m doing,” he said. “I don’t like the way a lot of people approach the game now. I don’t want to categorize everybody, but there are a lot of general managers who throw everything into a computer and then try to pick their ...

Sorry if I didn’t post it the right way. I thought this was kind of interesting and was wondering what people here might think.

Once upon a time, sabermetrics was an interesting field. Better, it meant something. Those curious about how baseball worked were lifting the veil and understanding the mechanics of the game. New metrics were developed that gave us a better idea of not only what a player was worth but how to puzzle that particular question out. Following the logic behind the new wave ...

July 22, 1986 - date of one of the most remarkable games ever

A quarter century ago, Mets manager Davey Johnson got stuck in an unenviable position: He ran out of position players before he ran out of game. Ejections and pinch hits forced him to get creative, as the Mets somehow managed to prevail over the Reds in 14 innings. ...

So Carter at third, and Hearn at the backstop. Who replaces Mitchell in the outfield?

Here’s where Johnson gets really creative. He has a southpaw pitcher in the ...

According to a Wall Street Journal report, the number of ejections in the past 10 years has actually increased with the rising summer temperatures. Using information from Stats LLC, the study concluded that temperatures below 50 degrees yield just 5.8 ejections for every 100 games played in that weather from 2001 to 2011. From there, the average total goes up to 7.2 ejections every 100 games played in temperatures between 50 and 59 degrees, 8.4 in games between 60 and 69 degrees, 8.6 in games ...

The Memphis Redbirds, the Triple-A affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals, are holding an “Organ Donor Night” at AutoZone Park on Aug. 13 and these are the jerseys that they are planning to wear:

Organs in Memphis? Booker T approves!

Look, I don’t have time to goof on this…I’m too busy goofing on Spotify!

For instance, in the aftermath of Texas Rangers’ third baseman Adrian Beltre’s hamstring injury, which has landed him on the disabled list, Richard Durrett writes for ESPN.com:

      Perhaps the best measurement of Beltre’s worth is Wins Above Replacement or WAR. Basically, it looks at the wins a player adds above what a “replacement level” player would do. ESPN Stats & Information (shout out Joshua Kritz) tells me ...

Still, if pressed, my list of the top 10 second basemen of all-time would probably look like this:

1. Eddie Collins

2. Joe Morgan

3. Rogers Hornsby

4. Nap Lajoie

5. Charlie Gehringer

6. Frankie Frisch

7. Roberto Alomar

8. Ryne Sandberg

9. Bobby Grich

10. Lou Whitaker

That would make Alomar the second-best second baseman since integration and the seventh-best second baseman in the game’s 140-year history. Your list may differ, but no matter how you shuffle those rankings, Alomar’s ...

Image of the Day has returned for a special run, as we’ll see images of Baseball parks… FROM OUTER SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCCCEEE!

Today is Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, Mass. Many of you are probably familiar with it, at least passingly, and anybody who isn’t should be able to figure out what is so unusual about it by looking at this satellite image.

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From comments…“Conine is simply pissed off that he is no longer the greatest Marlins player ever.”

Does Jeff Conine get frustrated by Hanley Ramirez?

“On a nightly basis.’’

Because?

“I just, I don’t know, I think that obviously Hanley is a phenomenal talent. But as a guy that… I’m probably jealous too because I didn’t have that kind of talent but I had to work extremely hard on a nightly basis to put my talent on the field . I think that there are some nights when he ...

Gary Lane and Ron Mertus already have a small claim to fame - they can boast of having played together on the same Van Nuys High varsity baseball team with Don Drysdale nearly 60 years ago.

“He started off as a second baseman, and we called him ‘Porky,’” said Lane of the Dodgers’ eventual Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher.

Pat Gillick didn’t have any kind of similar nickname when Lane and Mertus hung out with him growing up in the San Fernando Valley.

“I know they called him ‘Yellow Pages Pat’ ...

In the end, Cashman sounded mystified by Igawa.

“It’s the most curious case I’ve ever heard of,” he said. “And frustrating. The lesson is to be very careful with Japanese pitchers. I give him credit for living a dream and for fighting the fight. It can’t be easy. It has to bother him, too.”

Cashman added, “He does things his own way.”

Like commuting to and from Manhattan.

“Yeah, he’s passed me on the drive down to Trenton,” Cashman said. “He drives faster than his ...

Can’t stop the jellied vealing! David Roth and David Raposa serve it up!

David Raposa: Kay’s three basic food groups, per his wife: bacon, steak, and the aformentioned chicken-pasta amalgam. His colon must look like Clint Hurdle’s face.

David Roth: I know that Clint Hurdle is a bunt-happy doofus, but I do love that the Pirates are in first place. I love it a lot.

David Raposa: I wish I could fully get on board with the Pirate love.

David Roth: What’s your problem with the Bucs? They kept ...

He just wishes the batters had the upper hand.

“I don’t know what the problem is with hitters today,” Rose said. “Man, there are so many guys who are swinging at balls bouncing in the dirt, so many guys hitting .230, .245. It’s hard to believe that (Derek) Jeter and Ichiro (Suzuki) are both batting under .270.”

...The one issue on which Rose did not have an opinion was whether players from the steroid era ought to be excluded, like him, from the Hall.

“You have to make up your ...

In the case of Jesus Montero, I think we are now getting enough data to see what others may have missed.

...The four year trend line is headed straight down in OBP, SLG, wOBA and wRC+. As the competition he’s faced has improved, the concerns about plate discipline and pitchers exploiting his aggressiveness have come to pass. Since peaking in High-A in 2009 his results have gone down annually when you look at his advanced numbers. This is not one bad season, its a manifestation of an ...

Way too early for John Lannan and his 35 wins but…

Give peace (and these guys) a chance

Players aren’t inducted for being versatile and sticking around into their mid-40s. Good thing Omar Vizquel can hit too. The last remaining player who made his debut in the 1980s, the 44-year-old shortstop could reach 3,000 hits if he sticks around a few more seasons. He also has won 11 Gold Gloves and has played every infield position.

Assuming he plays until he’s 40, Johnny Damon, 37, could easily ...

Saints alive! Doy-El takes on El Santo!

Voters from 1980, you were idiots. And you people didn’t get a lot smarter. Over time Santo received more support, but never enough to get into the Hall. Never close to enough. Needing 75 percent of the BBWAA votes to get in, he topped out at 43.1 percent in 1998, his offensive numbers from the pitching-dominated 1960s obscured by the cartoonish steroid era that was in full bloom in the late 1990s—and his defensive contributions simply ignored, I guess. ...Read More...

The only one that maybe compared came when Blyleven was with Pittsburgh and threw a two-strike curve in St. Louis one day to catcher Terry Kennedy, who was a lefty, “and he swung at it at the last second, like he was chopping wood,” Blyleven recalls. “Thank goodness it was the last out, because it made everybody laugh, not only on our team, but on their team.

“It was strike three, third out, so I went back to the bench, put a jacket on and looked over at their dugout and they were still ...

whenever we use a skill-based metric like xFIP or SIERA….We are using a proxy for regression to the mean that doesn’t explicitly account for the amount of playing time a pitcher has had. We are, in essence, trusting in the formula to do the right amount of regression for us. And like using fly balls to predict home runs, the regression to the mean we see is a side effect, not anything intentional.

Detroit Tigers broadcaster Rod Allen made an unfunny and inappropriate attempt at a joke about Latinos during Fox Sports Detroit’s telecast Thursday night.

Allen, a color analyst since 2003, said the postgame meal in the Tigers clubhouse at Target Field should include rice and beans, because most of the team’s lineup against the Twins had Latino heritage.

You see, the Latinos just love them some rice and beans, as the stereotype goes.

Would Allen, who is African American, make a joke about a ...