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...

Bryce Harper was robbed.

We just don’t have the endurance to wait. We want same day delivery. We want instant downloads. We want stream, we want push notifications, we want instant analysis. We are a refresh button society, and we pound that thing over and over to get the latest, the very latest, the absolute latest … and then we hit the refresh button again.

In other words, hey, look, every team in baseball has played at least one game now.

It’s time for our early season baseball ...

There should be a hotline for former star athletes to call. They would use it just for emergencies, just for those moments when they have this interesting thought but are not sure if they should make that thought public. For instance, before doing an interview like this with Newsday, Goose Gossage might call the hotline.

Goose: So, I’m thinking about talking again about how you can’t compare Mariano Rivera to relievers of our time.

Hotline: Don’t do it.

Goose: No, this time I’m going to ...

You could be loooooooved, but you’re way out of liiiiiiiine….

Today is a great celebrity birthday day—Babe Ruth, Ronald Reagan and Bob Marley were all born on February 6. Also Zsa Zsa Gabor and Axl Rose and Tom Brokaw. America and the world would be a poorer place without them…

Ruth is, quite easily, the best hitter AND the best pitcher born on February 6. The second-best hitter is Smoky Burgess or Richie Zisk, and while they were both good hitters they were obviously a million miles from Ruth. ...

“The lesson to learn might be that we screwed this thing up.”

Less than a year after leaving Sports Illustrated for the MLB/USA Today startup Sports on Earth, columnist Joe Posnanski is on the move again: He just agreed to a contract with NBC Sports.

Jeff Idelson has learned, in his tumultuous time as President of the Baseball Hall of Fame, that you can’t ever get too caught up in the moment…

I ask [Idelson]: The character clause is obviously vague—do you think the Hall of Fame should clarify the clause to offer guidance to voters?...

Idelson says something a little bit unexpected: “Everyone should understand that ‘character’ is not to be used as a moral compass, but refers to how they respected the game, how they treated the ...

To all you Hall of Famers out there, happy birthday!

we’re looking at players’ first year on the Hall of Fame ballot, their percentage and what happened to those players.

More than two votes but less than 5%—176 players.

... [Ralph] Kiner first appeared on the ballot in 1960… He got three votes… He got fewer votes than Nick Altrock, who was once a good pitcher and by then had started to perform comedy routines with Al Schact (the “Clown Prince of Baseball”). He got fewer votes ...

Joe Posnanski speculates:

Nobody is getting into the Hall of Fame through the Baseball Writers door this year. I mean, yes, it’s possible—POSSIBLE—that Craig Biggio will slip into the Hall by a few votes. But I don’t think so. Not this year. Not on this crazy ballot…

I don’t know if this year’s ballot blackout will cause… administrative changes—looking ahead, I sort of doubt it. As weird as this year is, it’s really something of a one-year aberration… I think if any rule ...

Let’s begin by celebrating 15 players who I predict are making their one and only appearance on the [Hall of Fame] ballot.

I was always strangely fascinated by the fact that Jeff Conine was a world-class racquetball player. That’s how he was always described, too, as “world class.” Conine was a good big-league player who hit as high as .319, hit as many as 26 homers, drove in 105 RBIs one year, but it was this world-class racquetball thing that blew my mind. As good a baseball player as ...

Joe Posnanski and Michael Schur discuss Hall of Fame voting in the context of steroids (have we touched on that subject yet?), and then run down the ballot.  Both believe the HOF should have an “inner sanctum”; in its absence, Schur believes in a first-ballot distiction.  Thus, as I understood it, their 2012 ballots would be:

Poz: Bagwell, Biggio, Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Piazza, Raines, Schilling, Trammell, L. Walker (I’m taking his statement that he voted for Edgar “in the past” as a sign he ...