“We all know we lost the Series yesterday. We shouldn’t have let it slip away. We came back today to try to win it, but the momentum just took them and they won it. It’s not a nice feeling.
“We had in our mind that we were going to win the World Series. We were one strike away, but it didn’t happen. It would be easier if you lose four games in a row than having the thought that you were one strike away. It’s not easy. That game [on Thursday] will be hard ...
After a light Friday workout under the supervision of manager Bruce Bochy, whose regular gig is skipper of the 2010 World Series champion San Francisco Giants, the MLB team gathered at a nearby hotel to rest up for a long Saturday morning flight to Taipei, where the team will get ready for the first of five games played between Nov. 1-6 in three different cities—New Taipei City (XinZhuang Stadium) on Nov. 1, Taichung (Intercontinental Stadium) on Nov. 3 and 4 and Kaohsiung (Chengcing Lake ...
And it’s falling, it’s crashing! Watch it! Watch it, folks!
Here is Wilson, after Game 7 of the World Series, in his own words:
Do you have a sense of how things will progress?
C.J.: It’s foreign to me. I don’t know how it’s going to work. I don’t know if I’m going to get a text message saying, ‘X-amount of years; are you in or out?’ I have no clue. I don’t know if someone is going to be like, ‘we’re going to get you your own blimp; no matter how bad traffic is we will ...
As Yankee fans across the land zobristle at the mere suggestion!
2011 tells a similar story. Once again, Robbie had a great season. He posted 5.6 fWAR with a .375 wOBA, 28 homers, a .533 SLG and a .349 OBP. That was an All Star caliber season, but it wasn’t one of the top seasons in all of baseball. In 2010 he came close to having one of the top seasons in baseball. He didn’t come close in 2011. His fWAR ranked 22nd in the entire game while his wOBA was 27th in all of baseball. He placed ...
David Freese’s jersey is heading to the Hall of Fame. Well, what’s left of it. After the third baseman’s epic game-winning home run in the 11th inning, Freese’s teammates were at home plate waiting for him. Freese’s fellow Cardinals were there to “shred” him in what has become a St. Louis post-season tradition. Shortly afterwards, National Baseball Hall of Fame representatives took the remains of the jersey and are bringing it to Cooperstown.
David Freese’s incredible walk off solo home run ...
No offense to the Egyptian prison scene, but it doesn’t get much crueler than this.
Grapel, expected to fly home to Queens today from Israel, was celebrating his release at a press conference in Tel Aviv, flanked by his mother Irene and Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Queens), when he was pranked.
He said it would be hard to express his deep appreciation to everyone who helped free him.
“There’s so many people to thank,” he said, “and after being cut off for the past five months ...”
Dr. James Andrews, a widely known sports medicine orthopedist in Gulf Breeze, Fla., wanted to test his suspicion that M.R.I.’s, the scans given to almost every injured athlete or casual exerciser, might be a bit misleading. So he scanned the shoulders of 31 perfectly healthy professional baseball pitchers.
The pitchers were not injured and had no pain. But the M.R.I.’s found abnormal shoulder cartilage in 90 percent of them and abnormal rotator cuff tendons in 87 percent. “If you want an ...
Well…at least Tim McCarver will next be biitching on 158 days’ rest.
But Tim McCarver, the longtime Fox television baseball analyst, begs to differ. McCarver, who caught all 81 of those innings that Gibson pitched in World Series play for the Cardinals, laughed and said: “Here it is. I’m still disagreeing with him 50 years later.”
For the most part, McCarver thought Gibson was just as strong in a Game 7 as he had been earlier in the Series, with the exception of the Game 7 he pitched on two ...
Project Griffin: Investigating all extremist activity!
Jays’ general manager Alex Anthopoulos calls it “doing his due diligence” and it’s the important process of exploring all available avenues for improving the baseball team that, this winter, according to one source, will include at least discussing the possibility of signing free agent designated hitter David Ortiz, after Big Papi declares his free agency with this year’s class in the second week of November.
Ricky Adams, whose Major League Baseball career featured being a member of the Angels’ 1982 Western Division championship team, died early Friday following a lengthy bout with cancer.
Adams was 52.
“The Angels organization and their alumni are deeply saddened to hear of Ricky’s passing,” said Tim Mead, Angels vice-president of communications. “There is always a special bond with any member of the Angels family.
...At the age of 23, Adams made his major-league debut with the ...
But any true fan of Baseball should be offended by the nonsense that came spewing out of Tony La Russa’s mouth during the post-game interview Friday night. And I may never get over that.
“The game has never seen a better catcher than YADIER MOLINA.”
And the Earth officially became flat again.
...Yadier Molina? Yawwddy Molina?
He may not even be the best catcher is his family.
The only appropriate quote La Russa could have made here ...
Attention All Primates!: We have Repoz’s ear. If we don’t get some money within 10 days, then the other ear will arrive. In other words, he will arrive in little bits. ~ Thank you, General Citi Field Marshal Bridges Cinque.
The New York Yankees today announced that the organization has extended their current radio agreement with WCBS 880 through the 2012 season. The Yankees retain the option to extend the agreement for another year; however the parties intend to continue discussions about a ...
“[God] told me, ‘You haven’t hit one in a while, and this is the time you’re going to,’ ” said Hamilton, who had gone 65 at-bats in the postseason without a home run. “You know what? I probably had the most relaxed, peaceful at-bat I’ve had of the whole series at that moment. It’s pretty cool. You ought to try it sometime.”
As Hamilton recalled the sequence of events in the Texas clubhouse after Game 6, he ruefully took note of the missing piece in the discussion: God promised him a ...
Ugh, more crapthetic tie-in crap…meanwhile Shiitty/Awesome gets passed over again!
Game 7 of the World Series is slated to air on Friday night, and for the second time during the baseball classic we are going to have an “American Idol” alum performing the National Anthem.
Who is it going to be? According to reports, Chris Daughtry is going to be taking to the field in order to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” just a week or so after season 10 champ Scotty McCreery performed the same song. ...
After battling health issues for several years, Don Mincher is retiring as president of the Class AA Southern League, effective immediately.
Mincher conveyed the news to Southern League owners at the league’s meetings in Pensacola.
...Mincher was elected president of the league in 2000. Before becoming president, he was general manager of the Southern League’s Huntsville Stars from 1984 until he assembled a group of local owners who purchased the team in 1994. He ...
I’d ask my old HS pal Waxy Waxberg about this…but he hasn’t followed baseball since the Mets dealt Shamsky.
The St. Louis Cardinals’ miraculous, epic 10-9 win over the Texas Rangers last night is already being called one of the greatest baseball games ever played. But within minutes of the win, it provoked one of those soul-searching conflicts for St. Louis’ Orthodox Jews: to watch or not to watch the game on Friday night.
Baseball is a religion for fans in St. Louis, and Facebook and ...
Arizona Diamondbacks executive Jerry DiPoto will be the next general manager of the Los Angeles Angels, according to multiple media reports.
DiPoto has been senior vice president of scouting and player development for Arizona. He replaces Tony Reagins, who resigned in September.
MLB executive Kim Ng, Tampa Bay Rays executive vice president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, New York Yankees executive Damon Oppenheimer and Texas Rangers assistant ...
I have spent more or less my whole life rooting for comebacks. Maybe you have too? ... My non-Cleveland heroes were the masters of those comebacks. I despised the Dallas Cowboys, but could not but love the ways Roger Staubach seemed to emerge in the final two minutes, like the cardboard shapes that emerge from pop-up books. I loathed Larry Bird except when the clocked ticked to oblivion when I wanted him to hit the game-tying shot and extend the game. I could not abide ...
Boz with the local angle. A long, fun ramble of an article:
From the Rangers’ bitter perspective, this wild night seemed to replay all the stages of their baseball evolution, starting with their grotesque days of last-place finishes in Washington to their current status as back-to-back American League champions.
Yeah, yeah, “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” But this is ridiculous. The Rangers have to go all the way back to the embryonic humiliations of the old expansion Senators, then ...
Heaven help us all. Can’t wait for an unbendable auxiliary scoreboard to be built in RF!
Larry Lucchino is back.
While his name and title never technically left the Red Sox masthead — Larry Lucchino, president and CEO — there’s no doubt who’s back in the driver’s seat of your favorite baseball club.
And we’re not talking about new signage, expansion of concessions stands or additional seating. We’re talking about the baseball team, soup to nuts.
To Reggie Jackson, this is fact – not opinion – that Billy Martin engaged in bigoted and anti-Semitic behavior during his tumultuous tenure as Yankees manager.
“I didn’t say it as accusatory … I said it with feeling and empathy,” Jackson said in a phone conversation Thursday, seeking to clarify comments he made in a soon-to-be-televised interview. “I said it as to what went on.”
During a chat with Bob Costas, to be aired Monday on MLB Network, Mr. October provided frank commentary on ...
Another wondrous trip aboard the Conlin accidental time machine…
With his expensive team favored to win the 2011 pennant, Terry presided over the most precipitous final month collapse in baseball history. Francona, reportedly too zonked on pain pills for a knee gone bad to exercise proper command and control, was relieved of his job. Theo, himself in clandestine negotiations with the Cubs, was ordered to ditch a manager who had won him two rings.
Verducci knows all…and let’s everyone know about it.
With one more Rangers loss, Nelson Cruz is the Bill Buckner of Texas.
...There is a universal rule in baseball about playing the outfield with a lead, especially a two-run lead, and three outs or fewer from victory. Under no circumstance can the ball be hit over an outfielder’s head—not unless it’s flying all the way out of the ballpark. It’s called no-doubles defense. The outfielders have to station themselves deep enough to make sure the ...
TALK ABOUT TOUGH LUCK! Chick Lathers, the benedict infielder of the Detroit Tigers sure has had his share for awhile. When the season closed Chick took unto himself a better half and his father presented him with a fine suburban home at Detroit. Chick and his bride beat it away on a honeymoon and returned the other day to find that the home had been burned.
That’s the second worst thing that happened to him. The worst was being named Chick Lathers.
Plenty of things seem unique about Kuo at first. He won’t hit free agency ever if he retires this year — next year would be his last arbitration year. But Andres Torres debuted in 2002 and won’t be a free agent until 2014 if he’s still in the bigs, so we’ve seen something like that before. And Kuo has had two Tommy Johns, yes, but here’s a short list of other pitchers that have suffered the same fate twice: Brian Anderson, Chad Fox, Doug Brocail, Lance Davis, Darren Dreifort, Tim ...
12:38, 11th inning: David Freese ends the four-hour, 33-minute classic with a leadoff home run in the bottom of the 11th.
12:36, 11th inning: Mark Lowe becomes the eighth Rangers pitcher of the night. Nelson Cruz comes out of the game while pinch-hitter Esteban German stays in the game, playing left field. The Rangers only have their two backup catchers—Yorvit Torrealba and Matt Treanor—on the bench. In the bullpen, they have Mike Gonzalez, Game 5 starter C.J. Wilson and presumed Game 7 ...
On this day in the year 1900, St. Louis chose a new name for its baseball team: the St. Louis Cardinals. This was a vast improvement over their last name, the St. Louis Perfectos, which I am totally not making up.
Little did the St. Louisianites know that “Cardinals” was nearly impossible for most bakers to spell.
Well, didn’t Bill James say that having Don Drysdale could mean more than 400 pennants in 8,000 years…or some such?
Era he might have thrived in: Men like Drysdale ruled baseball in the late 19th century, Bob Caruthers, Guy Hecker, and others able to dominate both on the mound and at the plate. Official MLB historian and longtime baseball writer John Thorn explained to me awhile back, when I did one of these columns on Josh Hamilton, that the overall talent level was lower in the early days of ...
