Which Independent Players Will Make It to Opening Day? 51 Have Been in Major League Camps

One year it was Chris Coste, another Jon Weber and last season Scott Rice and Chris Colabello. The names change, but the stories are similar.  Players who have devoted years of determination and grit to beat the odds of climbing all the way from Independent Baseball leagues, through the affiliated minors and perhaps…just perhaps…squeezing their […]

At 23 and 5-Foot-6, ‘Veteran’ Independent Umpire Takes His Talent to Affiliated Baseball

Kevin Winn couldn’t be blamed if he popped a few pride buttons these days with three of the umpires he has supervised working major league spring training games and half of the 10-man umpire contingent in the Class A California League coming out of the American Association, but I found him this week largely singing […]

Ballpark Food

Today is Opening Day, and many are writing on the subject.  Opening Day is what I should be celebrating too, but I’m dwelling in the realm of spring training for a few more hours.   You might call it an afterglow. It’s funny how most of us dread the end of baseball in November.   Melancholy sets […]

Coste Adds Phils TV Job While Elbow Heals

     One of Independent Baseball’s favorite sons, so designated because of the dogged determination in which he did not debut in the major leagues until his was 33, has a new job in broadcasting, but at the same time is continuing his comeback from Tommy John elbow surgery with hopes, at 38, of landing a […]

After Years of Fighting Injuries, Randy Williams Is Having an Unblemished Spring

If Randy Williams turns out to be so fortunate as to spend all of 2010 with the Chicago White Sox, it will be his first such major league campaign, and he will turn 35 before fall. Williams certainly is off to a great start in following up on the second half of last season when […]