I have a picture of Joe Pepitone’s thing…but I certainly can’t show it here.
A big tip o’ the Monsanto Toupeé to fellow author and baseball obsessive Maxwell Kates, who dug up this amazing 1972 file photo of Joe Pepitone (taken on my sixth birthday!) and posted it on the Big Hair & Plastic Grass Facebook page.
As some of you know by now, Joe Pepitone is one of my favorite baseball characters — his autobiography, Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud, totally blew my 12 year-old mind when I first ...
Bridgehampton, N.Y., out on the East End of Long Island, is Red Sox territory. The bars along Main Street are decked out in red and will only show Yankees games if there’s nothing else on. TVs receive the Hartford network affiliates. Carl Yastrzemski was born on a nearby potato farm and still holds a handful of records at the town’s high school. Bridgehampton, you might say, sits beyond the Evil Empire’s borders.
In 2008, Tracy and Kevin Carey began selling caps and t-shirts emblazoned with ...
Teams won on the last at-bat in 10% of games this season — 181 games overall — entering Tuesday, the highest percentage since 1987, according to research by USA TODAY and Baseball-Reference.com. There had already been 51 walk-off homers this year, compared with 33 in 1993 when [Dennis] Eckersley originated the term, walking off the mound after a defeat.
LLWS:
The Little League World Series starts tomorrow. Schedule and TV listings are at the link above. If you are filling out a bracket (and if you ARE filling out a bracket, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU THESE KIDS ARE 12 YEARS OLD), it could be difficult this year, as the opening games of the double-elimination tournament seem pretty balanced, with the exception of Venezuela vs. the Netherlands (but then again, maybe young Honkballers are just as Cinderella as adult ones).
A follow-up from North of the Border on the whole idea of game in B.C. Place.
The stadium is undergoing a $563 million renovation for a Sept. 30 reopening and its floor and lower bowl will remain convertible for baseball. But Major League Baseball needs to approve the new centre-hung, high definition scoreboard. The giant video “shoebox” will be suspended from the housing for the retractable roofing fabric.
“We have asked MLB for a ruling on the scoreboard and required height but as yet we ...
PITTSBURGH—Class AA Springfield righthander Shelby Miller, the crown jewel of the Cardinals’ farm system as the team’s top pick in the 2009 draft, has been suspended indefinitely by the organization, Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak said tonight
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According to several sources familiar with the situation, the incident in question involved an altercation at a Springfield apartment complex with alcohol also being involved. This is believed to be the second such instance for the ...
Singles going steady…but they’re next to last in triples!
Because Cincinnati fans are no different from fans anywhere, many would like to run Baker out of town. And in truth, this hasn’t been Baker’s finest job. His light touch kept players such as Bruce and Stubbs relaxed last season. The pair responded by playing well in September.
Baker had ample clubhouse help last season from veterans Scott Rolen, Arthur Rhodes and Orlando Cabrera. This year, Cabrera and Rhodes are elsewhere and Rolen ...
Screw Sabermetrics! More pics of Flush Flaherty in Triathlong-johns…while every other MLB package team is showing/talking Thome’s 600th HR!
Last night, John Flaherty said something that, at the very least, bordered on willful ignorance. After the results of the Toyota Text Poll were revealed, the booth was having a conversation about the stats used–BA/HR/RB/R–in the poll. David Cone, of course, wondered where WAR was and mused about defense and runs created. Flash would have none of it.
Baseball lifers like me who are looking down the barrel of our Biblical three score years and ten, or can still see 70 in the rear view mirror (an awkward age), can particularly enjoy Congdon’s treatment of the fifties, baseball’s golden age, and pretty golden in other ways as well.
Baseball was golden in the fifties because so much attention was focused on this sport ...
Marlborough (New Zealand) Express, August 16, 1911:
At Sisson, California, butterflies in countless millions invaded a baseball field and stopped the game and drove the spectators into shelter. Automobile traffic was stopped, as the drivers were unable to see where they were going.
Well it’s about time Corky revisited his Rickey-less HOF ballo…huh, oh…it’s only about the Ray Chapman beaning.
After the fatal beaning, bitterness against Carl Mays spread across the country, despite appeals by Cleveland manager Tris Speaker to cool it on the hatred.
Mays thought the incident kept him out of the Hall of Fame. But Fred Lieb insisted that was not the case. Mays had the statistics — 207 victories, a lifetime earned run average of 2.92, a winning percentage of .620.
I would say the Cubs have no chance of unloading combustible righty Carlos Zambrano this offseason, but the Vernon Wells trade showed that even the game’s worst contracts can be moved.
Is Carlos Zambrano the most untradeable player in the majors?
Halladay had a line of 9 IP, 14 K, 1 BB, 0 HR - and loses - while a guy released by Pittsburgh goes 3-4 with 3 RBIs in his first start with his new team. #YouNeverKnow
[Lyle Overbay] came in 3-for-10 with two RBIs lifetime against [Roy Halladay].
The appetizer? Overbay smoked a 2-1 pitch to right to drive in Chris Young in the second inning.
Then Overbay delivered the decisive blow in a 3-2 victory over the Phillies, ripping a go-ahead two-run double off Halladay to the wall in ...
From the moment they were sued last year for $1 billion by the trustee for the victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s fraud, the owners of the Mets have fought every aspect of the enormous claim. ........
They also derided the trustee’s bid to force them to pay back hundreds of millions more — the trustee claimed the owners had been willfully blind to evidence Madoff might have been a fraud — as a gross overreach that was backed by distorted or fabricated evidence.
The Boston Red Sox turned their first triple play in 17 years on Tuesday night against the Tampa Bay Rays.
B.J. Upton and Casey Kotchman started the top of the fourth inning with singles off of Erik Bedard, who got out of the jam when Sean Rodriguez hit a hard grounder to third.
Jed Lowrie fielded it cleanly, stepped on the base and fired it to Dustin Pedroia, who got the ball off quickly to Adrian Gonzalez at first and beat Rodriguez to the bag.
Already banged up for the playoff race, the World Series champion San Francisco Giants received another blow Tuesday night when starting pitcher Jonathan Sanchez left the game with a sprained left ankle.
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The Giants, mired in a skid that knocked them out of first place in the NL West, began the day putting two players on the 15-day disabled list: outfielder Carlos Beltran and reliever Sergio Romo. At least two other players were unavailable for the game against Atlanta, the team they are ...
So why not digest the accomplishments of modern sluggers on similar grounds? Because players cheated, we’re told. It wasn’t Ruth’s fault that the country was rife with institutional racism at the time, or Koufax’s fault that he pitched at the most favorable time for pitchers since the Dead Ball Era. But players who were found to have taken performance-enhancing drugs, conventional wisdom goes, should be stripped of their accomplishments, of their ...
The estate of Frank Sinatra, a long-time Los Angeles Dodgers fan, has joined four other season ticket holders to ask a bankruptcy judge for an official say in the baseball team’s future.
Nancy, Frank Jr. and Tina Sinatra and the other ticket holders are seeking recognition as an official committee to advocate on behalf of Dodger fans who generally blame team owner Frank McCourt for its financial problems.
They did not specify their concerns or motives ...
So, we know Adam Dunn and Alex Rios are playing terribly. But it's actually a little worse than that. When we make preseason projections for players, we don't know how important individual wins will be to the team at the end of the year. We might have an idea that a player is three wins above replacement level, but we don't know for a certainty how crucial those wins will be. If the White Sox were running away with the division or mired in last place, the missing wins from Dunn and Rios may ...
The Rangers have announced plans to erect at Rangers Ballpark a statue of Shannon Stone, the Brownwood firefighter who died after falling from the stands July 7. The statue, which is still being designed but should be ready by 2012, will feature Stone and his 6-year-old son, Cooper, who was attending the game with his father.
Lackey has pitched all season for the Red Sox while trying to support his wife Krista in her fight with breast cancer. There have been times when Lackey’s performance on the mound mirrored his personal anguish. But he continued to show up. Lackey has not talked at length about his wife’s illness. He acknowledged the situation during spring training, saying that Krista had been diagnosed during the offseason. He asked that the details be kept private. A series of positive steps came to an ...
With the signing of Cole and Bell - and high school pitcher Clay Holmes on Monday evening - the Pirates signed all of their draft picks from the first 10 rounds, furthering their commitment to building their franchise around prospects. The Pirates spent about $17 million signing draft picks, which will likely place them near the top of the league in terms of total investment for the fourth consecutive year.
The Blue Jays were unable to reach an agreement with first-round pick Tyler Beede prior to Monday’s midnight ET deadline.
Toronto selected the pitcher with the 21st overall selection in the 2011 First-Year Player Draft. The native of Massachusetts will instead attend Vanderbilt University in the fall and is not eligible to re-enter the Draft until 2014.
There appeared to be a large gap between the two sides during the final week of negotiations, and they never got close to getting something ...
Beyond meaningless month streak thingee over! (Michael the K snaps six-packet of sumptuous Saxa Brown Sauce)
Finally.
It can no longer be said that A.J. Burnett has never won a game for the Yankees during the month of August. His manager and his bullpen got Burnett over the hump Monday night at Kansas City in a 7-4 victory that lifted the Bombers back into a first-place tie with the Red Sox in the American League East.
...Yankees manager Joe Girardi removed Burnett with two outs and a runner ...
Sure, sure…always blame Bruce. First Johnston, now Bochy.
Come October, the Giants may be in a position where they look back at several key moments that proved to be the difference between making the postseason and not.
Monday’s 5-4 loss in Atlanta, when the Braves scored three times in the ninth to win, may be one of those moments. And it’s hard to shake the feeling that it could have — even should have — been avoided, if not for Bruce Bochy’s decision to stand by his closer, Brian ...
Stan McNeal, numbers crunching HOF voter! (drops thick Burt Standish brick on toe)
By hitting his 600th career home run, Jim Thome has entered one of baseball’s most exclusive neighborhoods. By my count, he joins Henry Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays and Ken Griffey Jr. as the only players to reach that milestone without artificial aid.
If Thome wasn’t already a certain Hall of Famer, he is now. Even in this era, 600 homers remains a magic number. He will have my vote on the first ballot.
“He’s Mr. Flamboyant,” Morgan said. “When I’m between the lines, it’s like a Jekyll and Hyde. Now I’m Nyj Morgan, the businessman. But when I get onto the field, that’s when I try to make it happen and just try to be Tony Plush and leave it all out on the field, just so the fans and whoever who have never seen me or my teammates can say, ‘Wow, this team can play,’ or ‘That kid Tony Plush, Nyj Morgan, can play, too.’ ”
The Giants were beating the Marlins 5-2 with none on and one out in the top of the ninth. A real pinch-hitter was preparing behind Eli Whiteside, but after Whiteside struck out, Bruce Bochy sent Santiago Casilla to the plate instead. Casilla had pitched in the bottom of the eighth, and Bochy didn’t want to remove him for a pointless at-bat with closer Brian Wilson unavailable.
So you can already see why this was weird. Casilla had pitched in the eighth inning of a close game because Casilla is ...
