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.

View Larger Map

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 ...

Frank McCourt cannot use a loan he arranged to run the Dodgers for the rest of the season, a bankruptcy judge ruled Friday.

The embattled Dodgers owner suffered a significant setback when he was ordered to negotiate with Major League Baseball for a loan.

McCourt had argued he should not have to accept financing from Commissioner Bud Selig, who he feels is intent on stripping him of his ownership of the Dodgers.

Round 1 to MLB, but this fight’s just getting started ...

Tampa Bay Rays' left-hander Matthew Moore, the top pitching prospect in all of Minor League Baseball according to Baseball America and ESPN, is expected to join the Bulls on Friday and start that evening for Durham against the Toledo Mud Hens at 7:05 PM at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. The 22-year old has spent the entire season at Double-A Montgomery, where he was 8-3 with a 2.20 ERA and a league-leading 131 strikeouts in 102.1 innings pitched. ...Read More...

The atmosphere should be electric this weekend when the Pirates host the St. Louis Cardinals in a three-game series between National League Central contenders that begins tonight at PNC Park.
Only a few tickets remain for games tonight and Saturday night. Sunday afternoon’s series finale is also likely to sell out. There is no doubting that the Pirates are not only the hot story on the Pittsburgh sporting scene but in all of baseball as they continue to be surprise contenders following a run of ...

(throws corn across room)

More posters have been revealed and this time for some interesting films. First off is the baseball dramedy MONEYBALL, starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman and directed by Bennett Miller. Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland A’s back in 2002 most known for using a modern analytical system to draft players. The poster is actually pretty lame and reminds me a little too much of FIELD OF DREAMS. However, the basic point ...

Congrats to long time pal, Rich Lederer!...oh, and you too Blyleven.

“You look at the new age that we are in with the Facebook and (Twitter) and the online, all that stuff is very important, because I think, as writers that do vote, that is your job to look at numbers,” Blyleven said. “And that is what I think Rich Lederer brought out. He brought my numbers out a lot more.”

Jon Weisman of the DodgerThoughts.com blog called Lederer’s achievement “the most effective grass-roots campaigns for ...

Sorry. Steve Hirdt says you didn’t produce enough RBI evidence. Nothing we can do about it. Tough (%$^!).

Herm Krabbenhoft presented his findings to the Elias Sports Bureau, the official statistician for Major League Baseball, but thinks Elias hasn’t amended the record because Gehrig is an icon.

“They do not want changes, especially in significant records involving icons,” Krabbenhoft said. “Getting things changed by Elias is difficult.”

But Steve Hirdt, executive vice president of Elias, ...

Sorry, I never actually read the complete “Dwight Siebler for the HOF!” petition pledge when I signed it.

Bert Blyleven, entering the Hall of Fame at the advanced age of 60, will represent more than his body of work when he enters the Hall of Fame on Sunday. He will represent ghosts and friends, the injured and the ailing, the legacies of a foregone era.

“I look at the guys in the Twins Hall of Fame, and I played with all of them,” Blyleven said. “That’s pretty special.”

Blyleven chafed ...

Regina Morning Leader, July 22, 1911, immediately to the left of the linked article, Rube Waddell drops some early 20th century smack talk on…Toledo?

Yep, Toledo.  Of all places.

Mr. Rube Waddell opines that there must have been some mistake about a Toledo fan assaulting [umpire] Gerald Hayes on a street car in the silent city.

...

“Fight in that town?” queried Mr. Waddell.  “Why, they haven’t got the heart and courage in that town to stick a fishworm on the hook.  They tie ‘em on with silk ...

Slugging Astros first baseman Jeff Bagwell was considered the best of the Class of 2011 according to the electorate by securing 97% of all possible points in the latest Hall of Merit election.

Standout hitter/outfielder Larry Walker was next in line with 73.3%, while fiery pitcher Kevin Brown fell in right behind Walker with an almost identical 73.2%. 

Rounding out the top-ten were: Rafael Palmeiro (strong first showing despite some protest non-votes), David Cone, Rick Reuschel, Phil ...