You killed them. You killed the Mets. You killed everything. You’re a monster.

Bob Costas is often evangelical at odd times. His recent ill-timed (if not illogical) remarks about gun control felt like something reserved for the Huffington Post — not the goal post — where he was broadcasting a football game. Now his increasingly throaty, theatrical bent led him to say that the Mets’ celebration after Sunday’s victory was a sign of the “end of Western Civilization.”

But this time ...

LOAD UP GANG!!!

If a great picture studs an art show, you pay a visit before the exhibit ends. If a classic car is for sale, you raid the piggy bank before your dream auto vanishes. If a popular broadcaster announces his retirement, you try as long as possible to postpone the inevitable. Tim McCarver is about to leave us. Let us bid him an affectionate farewell.

Born 52 days before Pearl Harbor, McCarver was a fine 1959-80 major-league baseball catcher — one of only seven modern ...

Terrific (yet clutch) interview with Singleton.

MW: I found that my personal appreciation of the game has increased exponentially as I’ve explored sabermetrics. I know there is a group of fans out there (and maybe they’re even the majority of fans) who cringe at the new age stats – can’t have the nerds ruining baseball with all their numbers! For me though, the metrics are not diminishing the game, rather they’re merely elaborating on what our eyes see. The “mystique,” if ...

Chemistry problems already? Oh no!

I happen to think Puig was perfectly within his rights to fly off the handle Tuesday night. But that’s not to suggest there aren’t reasons to fret that he is a ticking time bomb in the Dodgers clubhouse.

After his past two games, Puig has refused to speak with reporters. It kind of sounds like no big deal. He hasn’t had much to say anyway and the questions would have undoubtedly been repetitive.

But it’s a bit troubling that, at age 22, with less than two ...

Congressional Democrats handed Republicans a stinging 22-0 shutout during the annual Congressional Baseball Game at the Washington Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. on June 13, 2013. The game marked the 52nd edition of the modern version of the game, amounting to major bragging rights in the halls of Congress.

Seems like everyone wore the jersey of the closest minor or major league team to their district, which is pretty cool.

Are baseball fans the new silent majority?

Regular season baseball games outdrew Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final in fifteen television markets Wednesday night, including NHL strongholds Pittsburgh and Detroit.

The Giants/Pirates game on Root Sports earned an 8.95 rating in Pittsburgh, beating Bruins/Blackhawks Game 1 (5.99) by 49% head-to-head. In Detroit, the Tigers/Royals day game earned a 7.46 on Fox Sports Detroit — beating Game 1 (5.75) by 30%.

Baseball won the battle in seven other ...

600* BBWAA writers voted, but no one saw a thing.

* give or take

This, I think, was what made the Bert Blyleven-Jack Morris Hall of Fame discussion so interesting. The statistics made it abundantly clear that Blyleven was not just a better pitcher than Morris but light years better. But Blyleven just doesn’t have the Van Doren Gene … and Morris does. And so the debate over which pitcher was better raged on; in some quarters it rages on still. People don’t just see Morris as a Hall of ...

“I think we’ve shot ourselves in the foot”...Hey, stop lifting my R. Budd Selig material!

TA: This scandal, involving Biogenesis in Miami.  How damaging is this to the game overall?

BV: I think our entire posture on this situation has damaged the game.  I think it’s been handled poorly from the start, whenever the start was.  I don’t know when guys starting using performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, but I would think that it was about the same time that they were being used in other ...

After a messy public breakup with his last employer resulted in a $50 million lawsuit, Keith Olbermann will return to television in October as a studio host for Turner’s coverage of the Major League Baseball postseason.

The deal will have Olbermann leading TBS’ Atlanta-based studio show with Dennis Eckersley and possibly a second analyst. TBS this season has both Wild Card Playoff games, 18 of the 20 League Division Series games and exclusive rights to the National League Championship ...

Total Blam Blam strikes again!

Long-time baseball writer Jon Heyman riled up A’s players and fans with a tweet that was critical of the Oakland Coliseum.

Said Heyman’s tweet: “A shame the a’s and giants have to play these games at the coliseum while ATandT sits empty. #shame”

A’s reliever Sean Doolittle wasted little time in responding via Twitter, writing: “I can see why you don’t like it. We have a strict No High Horse policy at O.Co.”

...Heyman, who writes for cbssports.com, backtracked ...

Meet baseball blogger extraordinaire and eligible bachelor Aaron Gleeman.

Swan Song for Swingin’ Lovers!?

The Yankees’ contract with WCBS-AM, another one-year deal, expires following this season. So does Ma and Pa’s one-year contract. While all interested parties are talking about a possible deal, the radio situation is up in the air. CBS wants to remain the Bombers’ radio home and ESPN-98.7 is looking to take those Yankee radio rights away. Some Yankee moles suggest there are other interested outlets, too.

...Last season, we were confident Sterling and ...

It’s the 10th inning, it’s a tie game between the White Sox and visiting Marlins. As such, White Sox broadcaster and devoted rooter Hawk Harrelson was in a state of percolating tension and in no mood for the umpiring pratfalls of Angel Hernandez.

So listen as Hawk reacts—“reacts” as in “core reactor meltdown”—to a plainly incorrect call by Hernandez, in which the latter convinces himself that Alex Rios is out at first despite plain visual evidence to the contrary ...

Thanks to JB. ...Read More...

With the Yang-Mills existence problem seemingly solved…we now move on to the Heyman existence problem. Or something.

And sometimes there isn’t much you can do. I wrote what I did about Hawk Harrelson and The Will To Win because at some point, you have to come to the conclusion that someone isn’t worth talking to anymore. Hawk’s problem wasn’t that he was wrong, it was that he was stuck in a frame of mind that starts from conclusions and will, when it cares to, circle back around to ...

Sounding more like Bats Battaglia than Joey Bats…

“I think it’s a cheap shot and uncalled for to say something like that without having some sort of evidence to back it up,” Bautista said Friday in the visitor’s clubhouse at Fenway Park. “Comments and articles like that is what sometimes makes us wonder what’s the true intention of somebody that’s in the media. It blows my mind that somebody would just go out there and do something like that, and write an article where you’re ...

So it wasn’t the 7.96 ERA over his last three seasons that made Mitch Williams retire. It was the fun factor! #tommyrot

This team I did pick to win the AL West because I thought the additions of Josh Hamilton and Jason Vargas would help them because they are both low-key players who would fit in to the Angels clubhouse — which I have since found out from a player who has since left was not a very cohesive clubhouse. And it shows on the field.

Harold Reynolds pointed out one specific play ...

Neck Twitch Of The Death Nerve Strikes Again!

Mitch Williams appeared on 94.1 WIP this morning and ripped into Phillies pitching coach Rich Dubee, saying the Phillies need a new man for the job.

He said Roy Halladay‘s problems were a simple mechanical fix that Dubee simply could not find. He mentioned an encounter he had with Dubee in Spring Training, when Dubee yelled at him for trying to talk to his pitchers, although he claimed that did not make his criticism this morning personal. ...

Daugherty v. Social Media Vanguard #notaprayer

I don’t know if Jay Bruce regrets the tweet he sent out after the game Tuesday night. Reds media relations director Rob Butcher declined to ask Bruce if he’d speak to me, from St. Louis early Wednesday. I’m guessing Bruce isn’t happy with himself. He’s not a confrontational guy. He’s very pleasant, almost all the time. It was out of character for him to tweet this:

I appreciate all the tweets, good and bad, actually. You guys are what ...

The thought goes like this: When a network pays huge money for a sports team’s TV rights, it hikes its carriage fee for cable providers. The best regional sports networks (RSNs) cost upward of $3 a month for cable and satellite providers to provide to each household. With monthly TV bills already exorbitant and more options to provide entertainment, from Netflix to Hulu and beyond, consumers could rebel against the single-payment system and choose what they view a la carte. One executive who ...

~~ “I don’t want to look stupid!” ~~

Here we sit on April 25th and there are three aces who have yet to record a win for their teams: Matt Cain for the Giants, Cole Hamels for the Phillies and 2012 Cy Young Award winner David Price.

If I could have made a wager on this happening, can you imagine the odds I could have gotten? At least a million to one. But here we are, all three pitchers without a win.

Not only are all three without a win, but their teams have lost all 15 combined games the ...

Please read…

As an autism awareness advocate and parent of a child on the spectrum, Garfinkel’s comments struck a nerve. Being a caregiver to one with autism is hard enough. Having an exec make the comment, and having the season-ticket holders laugh was rubbing salt in the wound. “Rain Man,” of course, was an autistic savant. April is International Autism Awareness month. And the day before the brawl was Autism Awareness day at PETCO Park. It added up, and the seething turned into a ...

That’s the bold claim advanced last week by Michael Brendan Dougherty, who just took a step away from political writing to found a baseball newsletter (news-email?) called “The Slurve” [http://www.theslurve.com/], and who gives a great interview about the decision here. His case that baseball is peaking acknowledges the sport’s various difficulties (the Hall of Fame’s steroid problems, the pace of games, the Florida Marlins), but then follows with this:

   But overall the sport has ...

Fire Jon Miller!

On Former ESPN Broadcast Partner Joe Morgan: “I can’t presume to speak for Joe, but I think he definitely feels statistical analysis has its place. He works with Walt Jocketty now; he’s a consultant with the Reds. Walt picks his brain and Joe tells him what he thinks, based on his experience. Walt has his number-crunchers as well.

“Making up a roster based on numbers, or a decision based simply on the numbers, is where Joe disagrees. I remember talking about that with ...

Baseball in social media.

Brian Kenny…sigh.

Robinson Cano today fired his agent, Scott Boras, and signed up to become the first client of Roc Nation Sports, the Jay-Z-branded arm of Creative Artists Agency. Does this mean much? It’s not as though Memphis Bleek’ll be handling Cano’s negotiations for a new contract—he’ll be represented instead by Brodie Van Wagenen, who has brokered extensions for Ryans Braun, Zimmerman, and Howard. If anything, the move appears to be good news for the Yankees.

...Read More...