Posted: January 4th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 105 Comments »
Well, my Hall of Fame ballot should be up at Sports Illustrated Tuesday … just in case you want to read 5,000 more words about the Hall of Fame from me.
In the meantime … this project was a lot of fun. I don’t know if it MEANS anything, but it was fun. I was doing my usual investigative mayhem to get a better feel for the Hall of Fame ballot, and I thought it would be worthwhile to come up with the best players in baseball since, say, 1970. I don’t mean the overall best players — I mean, who were the best players in baseball at any given time.
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Posted: December 12th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 82 Comments »
You know, I find myself surprisingly sad about the Kansas City Royals signing Jason Kendall to a two-year $6 million deal — much sadder than I should be, really. I’m not sad because it is such a bad move. It is a bad move, but the Royals have made numerous moves in the last year or so that were worse — by worse, I mean “more damaging.”
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Posted: December 9th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 45 Comments »
Wezen-Ball has a really fun piece up now about the highest paid players in baseball since 1979 — when Nolan Ryan became the first million-dollar player. I highly recommend it so that you can see that Mark Davis was, for a time, the highest paid player in the game. That was back when the Kansas City Royals were trying to buy a World Series. What a world it was.
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Posted: November 24th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 74 Comments »
OK, I have this idea based on Albert Pujols winning his third MVP in five years … it starts with this: I think Pujols at age 29 is a Hall of Famer right now. To me, it’s done. True, you have to play 10 years in the big leagues to be eligible for the Hall, so technically he is not yet eligible. But my point is not that old “he retires tomorrow” argument. No, my point is that in my eyes that no matter what he does on the field from this point on, the rest of his career, he has already locked up Hall of Fame status.
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Posted: November 23rd, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 86 Comments »
So, it looks like I spent another sports year feeling pre-agitated about things that did not come especially close to happening. Zack Greinke won the Cy Young Award … he won it rather easily. There was no sudden and overpowering push to get Jack Morris into the Hall of Fame while Bert Blyleven writhes in baseball limbo. The Cleveland Browns did not hire Eric Mangini.
OK, well, wait, sometimes dread does come to life.
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Posted: November 10th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 87 Comments »
There is little doubt that you are expecting me to follow up that headline by writing about Derek Jeter. But … no.*
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Posted: October 10th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 93 Comments »
First off, I don’t like replay in football. I don’t like it because of the way it interrupts the flow and pace of the game. And, no, I’m not talking about the time it takes to make a call. I don’t care about the time it takes. No. For me, the thing with replay around is that everything in football feels theoretical. A receiver for your team makes an impossible touchdown catch in the final seconds … do you cheer? Do you go crazy? Do you throw your popcorn and drop your beer and kiss the person next to you and go berzerk?
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Posted: September 28th, 2009 | Filed under: Media | 14 Comments »
A couple of big events coming up this week for The Machine (Amazon – B&N – Rainy Day for autographed copies).
– Tuesday night in Kansas City, 7 p.m., I’ll be doing my Blog Event at the Unity Temple on the Plaza. Topics of conversation may include: The Big Red Machine, Pixifoods, Zack Greinke*, the movie expectation scale, Bruce, Infocos, the sheer horror that is the Kansas City Chiefs, Harlequin Romances, Joe Mauer, game shows and many, many more!
*Brilliant reader Devon points out: Since August 15 of last season, Zack Greinke is 20-10 with a 1.97 ERA, 283 Ks in 274 innings and 60 walks.
And the best news is that, unless I’m misreading the poll, a majority of people voted against me wearing a Snuggie. Am I misreading the poll?
– Thursday night in New York City — Brooklyn to be exact — I’ll be at a great Varsity Letters Reading Event. Others in the lineup include Larry Tye, who will talk about his terrific book, “Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend,” and Jennifer Ring, who will talk about her terrific book, “Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don’t Play Baseball” — both of those books were emotional reads for me for different reasons.
Point is: You’ll want to come out even if you have no interest in hearing me (I couldn’t blame you). In fact, I go last so you can just leave before I start. Doors open at 7 p.m.
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Posted: September 27th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 75 Comments »
You may have seen that Stuart Miller over at my favorite newspaper this week, The New York Times, champions a suggestion that a few people here at the blog have suggested as well — namely to replace batting average with on-base percentage in the Triple Crown. It’s an idea good enough that Steve Phillips is on board*, which as you know is pretty much all you need to say in this little corner of the blogodome.
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Posted: September 22nd, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 120 Comments »
This time we start this thing on time.
First inning: Zack gets Jacoby Ellsbury to hit ground ball to second on third pitch. He fallsl behind 3-1 to Dustin Pedroia, who pokes a double over Mark Teahen’s head — Teahen seemed to get a bad jump, though I don’t think he would have caught it anyway. Victor Martinez flies to left on first pitch. Nice battle with Youkilis, gets ahead 1-2 with fastball on outside corner, tries vainly to get Youkilis to chase slider, Youk fouls back 96-mph fastball, then swings over the slider. That’s strikeout 225 for Greinke.
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