He’s gone again. Rube Waddell, the eccentric pitcher formerly with big league teams, has disappeared. It is reported that he has been playing with the Virginia (Minn.) team, but no one can locate him.
By this point, Waddell would likely have been in really bad shape with tuberculosis. He was in a sanitarium by November 1913, and died in April 1914.
In the ninth inning of yesterday’s Indians/Reds game, with his team holding a 4-2 lead, Reds closer Aroldis Chapman buzzed a 100-mph heater past Nick Swisher’s head, and Indians radio announcer Tom Hamilton lost it. You can see the pitches and hear Hamilton’s reaction at the video posted here, which includes his statement that, “what you’d love to see Swisher do here is knock it right off the temple of Chapman and see how much fun it is to have a ball ...
Hey, there are over 8,000 Laughter Clubs worldwide…what’s another one?
And for all of that effort, passion and resilience, it would be nice to think that ownership had their backs.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. Jeff Wilpon showed up at Citi Field Tuesday night, made a rare public appearance and promptly gave up on the season during a pregame ceremony for Rivera, who threw out the first ball, and eventually the last.
“Wish we could see you in the World Series,” Jeff Wilpon ...
“These guys are in charge,” Walter said before the Dodgers’ 3-0 victory over the Angels. “Nobody wants me running this team. If they do, that’s a huge mistake. I’m not qualified to run a baseball team. I hope people know that.”
Walter is chief executive of Guggenheim Partners and one of the partners in Guggenheim Baseball Management, the company that owns the Dodgers.
Is there a point at which Walter will become involved in making baseball decisions?
Really, it’s fairly amazing how quickly the standings and the run differentials line up. You’d think, or at least some people probably think, that the relationship’s not really that strong. That the blowout wins and losses just don’t even out, or might even out eventually but certainly not before the calendar turns from May to June.
While we’re waiting, let’s do this today. Yesterday, GM Jed Hoyer talked a lot about the Cubs’ lack of walks and the importance of on-base percentage in the OPS equation. We couldn’t get to all of it in the paper, so let’s get to some of it here on the blog.
The Cubs still are last in the National League in walks drawn by their batters, with 116. The Brewers are above them, with 122. In their last four games, however, the Cubs have drawn 15 walks. They’re 12th in the NL in OBP ...
For most baseball players, a 50-game drug ban would be a career low-point. Most baseball players aren’t Josh Sale.
The Tampa Bay Rays’ minor league prospect showed the world how much of a winner he really is by boasting on Facebook about humiliating a stripper for cheap laughs.
According to the Los Angeles Angels, Dr, Lewis Yocum, one of the most notable sports medicine practitioners there was, has died.
An orthopedist who followed in the footsteps of Dr. Frank Jobe — the first man to perform Tommy John surgery — Jobe had been the Angels team doctor for many years. In addition, he has performed surgeries and consults for many other teams and players. After Jobe and Dr. James Andrews, Yocum was easily the most commonly-referenced and best known doctor in baseball ...
Dustin Ackley was a college star at North Carolina and the No. 2 overall pick in the 2009 draft, one spot after Stephen Strasburg. He moved quickly through the Mariners’ farm system, had a solid rookie season in 2011 at age 23 … and has hit .221 with a .600 OPS in 198 games since then.
Yesterday the Mariners demoted him to Triple-A and in discussing the move afterward manager Eric Wedge more or less blamed sabermetrics for Ackley’s struggles. Seriously, via Greg ...
This two person exhibition features Pat Riot and L.A. legend Bill Barminski. Who knew that an icon of the L.A. art world, Barminski, was a lifelong Cincinnati Reds fan and still considers Pete Rose his favorite baseball player?! The love of sport can reveal more about a man than any exterior pose he might ever take.
Pat Riot veers from slick conceptualist to sarcastic pop collage master in Known Gallery’s main room. His portion of the exhibition has large portraits ...
After getting the WARs for every drafted player going back to 1965, the question becomes how to evaluate the value of that draft slot. You can’t just take the average because even after nearly half a century, we still have a fairly small sample size for each draft pick. The average No. 109 pick, for instance, has provided twice the value in history as the No. 18 pick, but there’s nobody in baseball that would rather pick 109th than 18th. Thanks to Mike Piazza, the pick No. 1,390 would look ...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Less than a year removed from his selection in the draft, celebrated prospect Michael Wacha will make his major-league debut Thursday at Busch Stadium against the Kansas City Royals.
While it’s not nearly as easy of debut as it would have once been, this has to be one of the easiest situations they could call him up for with half the pitchers on the team having their arms falling off.
Here’s the thing about Brett Lawrie, the Toronto Blue Jays speeding ticket at third base.
He’s playing baseball — hell, living life — at full throttle. If you don’t get out of his lane he’ll pass you on the right hand side.
Risky? Sure but he’s not looking for your approval; he’s in a hurry. He might get pulled over here and there, but he certainly doesn’t care — or care to give the impression that he cares — about what you or I ...
Hey…at least it ain’t I Think We’re Alone In Last Place Now
So what lies ahead for Starlin Castro? It is decidely so? Outlook not so good? The easy out for the 8-ball would be “reply hazy – try again later.” But I’m going to go with “signs point to yes”. And the sign I’m pointing to is the great Alan Trammell.
Like Castro, Tram came to the big leagues at a very young age. He played 19 games for the Tigers at the age of 19 in ’77. The next season, as a twenty-year-old, he ...
Carving up Frenchy the clown. There’s enough for everybody!
The General Manager of your baseball team thinks Jeff Francoeur is worthy to don the Royal blue. The manager of your baseball team thinks he’s one of the best nine players at his disposal and dutifully fills out a lineup card with his name on it nearly every day.
I disagree.
Today I present to you the statistical case against Jeff Francoeur. (All numbers are through Sunday. After his 1-4 performance, it’s not like they ...
It’s not often that someone in another sport says “We ought to handle this issue like the NHL does.” Leave it to contrarian manager Dusty Baker of the Cincinnati Reds.
Baker, following a tiff between the Chicago Cubs and one of his pitchers, suggested that Major League Baseball use hockey’s time-honored tactics when it comes to settling disputes on the field: Let the players fight.
In this case, Matt Garza of the Cubs and Johnny Cueto of the Reds. From C. Trent Rosecrans of Cincinnati.com:
With several starters signed as major league depth struggling at Class AAA, the Nationals chose Karns to replace lefty Ross Detwiler, who is on the disabled list with a slight oblique strain, in the hope his ability can overcome inexperience. Karns, named this winter by Baseball America as the No. 5 prospect in the Nationals’ farm system, has a 4.60 ERA with 55 strikeouts over 45 innings this year.
An odd incident in the eighth inning of the Newark-Baltimore fray on Monday gave Mickey Corcoran a homer.
...Corcoran slashed a long hit to right center. Meyers [sic] in the outfield for Newark did not make an effore to go after the pellet, but instead started to run for the clubhouse, apparently thinking that it was the ninth inning. Gagnier ran after the ball from shortstop, but Corcoran easily made the circuit.
That’s so much more embarrassing than forgetting ...
Gausman makes his second start, Matt Harvey faces the Yankees in a BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF NEW YORK BASEBALL (or something like that, I have a flair for large amounts of exaggeration), and once again Colorado and Houston have the only NL game of the day. Wait… what? Since when? Oh, right.
So over the next four days, teams in opposite leagues will meet their natural rivals in four-game series — two games in each park.But let’s just say some rivalries are more natural than others. Following are the 15 “natural rivalries” being contested this week in order of how they fit the mold and the distance between the teams’ stadiums.
1. Chicago Cubs-Chicago White Sox, 9.9 miles [...]
15. Colorado Rockies-Houston Astros, 1,021.4 miles
The series over the years has been a lopsided one. The Yankees won five out of six games last year and entered Monday’s game holding a 54-36 overall advantage. The two teams were on divergent paths entering the series, as well. The Yankees, fielding a lineup below their normal standard, started the day holding share of first place in their division. The Mets, in fourth place and spiraling, have been desperate for wins.
The crowd at Citi Field was larger and more boisterous than for ...
Is Dustin Ackley the biggest Dustin bust since Dustydust?
Franklin, a 22-year-old switch hitter, was batting .324/.440/.472 with nine doubles, four homers, 20 RBI, 28 runs and seven stolen bases for Triple-A Tacoma. He now has 103 games in Triple-A after 79 in Double-A, so he should have enough seasoning to be ready for the bigs. He was drafted in the first round (27th overall) out of high school in 2009 by the Mariners and entered the season ranked as the 79th-best prospect in baseball by ...
Selection show is at noon today. Top 8 seeds and full bracket will be announced
Sixteen regional hosts are:
Cal State Fullerton
Florida State
Indiana
Kansas State
LSU
Louisville
Mississippi State
North Carolina
NC State
Oregon
Oregon State
South Carolina
UCLA
Vanderbilt
Virginia
Virginia Tech
Four team double-elimination this weekend, followed by eight super regionals which will be best-of-three between the sixteen survivors. CWS starts the weekend after next.
“Cueto should learn you don’t go after guys’ heads,” Garza said. “Don’t wake a sleeping dog and I think that’s kind of immature on his part and totally uncalled for. He’s lucky that retaliation isn’t in our vocabulary here.
“That’s kind of BS on his part. Just totally immature. If he has something to say about it, he knows where to find my locker and definitely I’ll find his.”
...“That’s totally uncalled for (when) you’re up ...
I once regarded the designated hitter as a hideous and cancerous blight that would inevitably lead to the collapse of civilization. I still do, but I can live with that. What I can no longer endure is the sight of gifted athletes victimized by a conspiracy to make them look like clowns.
Requiring pitchers to bat is like telling Bob Dylan to smile. It misuses their talent, lowers the quality of play, subjects them to pointless risk and probably causes irreparable loss of self-esteem.
With the first words out of his mouth following Sunday’s 8-3 Yankees loss to the Tampa Bay Rays, CC Sabathia wrote his own headline.
“I’m hurting the team,” the Yankees’ ace said after being racked up for a season-high seven earned runs, including a pair of two-run homers, in seven innings.
Sabathia didn’t sound frustrated or puzzled or angry.
He sounded dejected.
“I’m not helping the team out,” he said. “I just need to get better.”
Sabathia’s record of struggles at Tropicana Field are not ...
Instead of wondering I decided to reach out to Costas and gauge his potential interest in being commissioner. I also wanted to know Costas’ thoughts about possible changes he would make in baseball and what he’d recommend to increase the percentage of African-Americans playing in the Major Leagues.
When asked if he would consider replacing Bud Selig as commissioner Costas responded:
“I have no interest at in succeeding Selig. I have always ...
“False Gods will bring the devil the blues
Don’t slander me, don’t slander me”
42, directed and written by Brian Helgeland, takes a page of out the demonological playbook usually reserved for the Fox News contingent and creates a completely false set of events to “bolster” a story that needed no such artificial augmentation.
Helgeland, a lauded veteran talent whose involvement in two problematic neo-noir “masterpieces” (L.A. Confidential and Mystic River) has given him the kind of credibility ...
Well, at least it will keep his name alive come HOF voting time…
Despite Roger Clemens’ victory last year in his perjury case, a defamation lawsuit filed against the former Yankees ace more than four years ago in federal court in Brooklyn is threatening to keep alive allegations that he used steroids and cheated on his wife.
A magistrate judge in the civil case last week ordered lawyers for Clemens to turn over government documents to the plaintiff, former strength coach Brian McNamee, ...
