“A Million Dollar Deal”

In 1965 the Cincinnati Reds dealt Frank Robinson to the Baltimore Orioles.  Here’s an article I wrote almost 12 years ago that examines that historic trade. May you forever rest in peace, Mr. Robinson.  December 9, 1965: Reds right fielder Frank Robinson to the Orioles for Milt Pappas, Jack Baldschun and Dick Simpson. When Cincinnati […]

The Sunday Notes: Leftovers Edition

At some point over the last couple days, chances are you rummaged to find a snack in the refrigerator to find the leftover cranberry sauce sprouting some new life form. Yes, the leftovers time forgot is the theme for this edition of the Sunday notes. Whether writers grabbed some badly needed time away or I […]

Cha-Cha Cha-Chas Into the Hall of Fame

Hey baseball fans! As some of you know, there are three Puerto Rican-born Hall of Famers in Cooperstown: Roberto Clemente, Roberto Alomar, and one other person. There are also three Hall of Fame position players who played for the 1962 San Francisco Giants pennant-winning squad: Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and one other person. The “one other person” on both […]

My Top Five Most Underrated Hall of Famers in Baseball History

Hey baseball fans! With 205 baseball players in the Hall of Fame, not all of them are recognizable to baseball fans. Whether it’s because of the team they played for, the era in which they competed or another reason, some of the best baseball players of all time are not very prominent. With that being […]

An Interview with Billy Crystal

Hey baseball fans! I have a really cool interview for you today. This is my first ever actor interview, and it’s someone that I am very honored to have interviewed, Billy Crystal! Before I get to the interview, let me tell you a little bit about this great actor. William Edward “Billy” Crystal was born […]

MLB Blogger’s Baseball Interview with President George W. Bush

Hey baseball fans! Today I have a very special interview for you.  Probably my biggest one yet. It’s with a very famous political figure in American history and someone who I am very honored to have interviewed via email. He used to be the President of the United States, and actually co-owned the Texas Rangers […]

John Fogerty: Rockin’ In Cooperstown

John Fogerty has taken his turn at bat in some of the world’s best-known concert venues. Fillmore West. The Fox Theatre. Madison Square Garden. The Royal Albert Hall. But it’s likely the performance that meant the most to him was the one he gave on July 25, 2010 in Cooperstown, New York, at the National […]

My Top Five Fall Classics In MLB History

Hey baseball fans! Today, I want to tell you about my favorite Fall Classics in baseball history!! My only rule is this: no World Series will be in this list that happened in the last ten years. So, let’s get it started with Number Five. Number Five: The 1954 World Series Matchup: Giants vs. Indians […]

My Visit to the Sports Immortals Museum

Hey baseball fans! During the recent break, I went to Florida to visit my grandparents, Aron and Salome, and I visited the Sports Immortals Museum in Boca Raton, Florida. There, I got to look at 1% of the biggest collection of sports memorabilia in the world (the rest is in special storage vaults). Let me tell […]

All-Around Athletes

Hey baseball fans! As I promised in my Booming Batters post, today I will be blogging about some of the greatest all-around athlete nicknames in baseball history. Hope you enjoy: Stan the Man - Stan Musial From 1942-1963 with the St. Louis Cardinals, Musial had one of the best careers of all time. With 475 homers,  3,630 hits, and […]

Adjusting for Military Service

Many fans have wondered over the years about those players who lost playing time to military service – and how that may have impacted their total careers. One interesting aspect of win shares and the CAWS Career Gauge is that it is fairly easy to reasonably adjust a player’s career numbers to reflect this lost […]

2012 Milestones (And Beyond): Home Runs

Depending on which camp you’re in, 2012 will either tickle you pink or make you throw up in your mouth.  With 629 home runs already under his belt, Alex Rodriguez is only one away from tying former teammate Ken Griffey Jr. at 630 and 31 away from catching Willie Mays for fourth place on the […]

BBA Selects Kimbrel, Valverde For Goose Gossage Award‏

In earlier voting this postseason by the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, Atlanta Braves closer Craig Kimbrel won the Willie Mays Award for top rookie handily while the American League race for that award was much tighter.  With the Goose Gossage Award, handed out to the best reliever, Kimbrel got to see how the other half lives, […]

Fun With Retrosheet: Nelson Cruz Made Me Do It

Normally, I try to find someone else to blame for suggesting one of these posts, but this silly one is all mine. After noticing that Nelson Cruz had seven RBIs in the eleventh innings of Texas’ playoff series with the Tigers, I wondered what player had the most extra-inning HRs and RBIs in a season […]

Kimbrel, Hosmer, Hellickson Selected Top Rookies By BBA‏

Craig Kimbrel of the Atlanta Braves easily won the Baseball Bloggers Alliance‘s Willie Mays Award for top rookie in the National League.  The American League award, though, was a much different story. Kansas City first baseman Eric Hosmer and Tampa Bay pitcher Jeremy Hellickson both received 67 points in American League voting, creating the first […]

Fun With Retrosheet: Come-From-Behind Batting Champions, An Update

John Pastier was wondering (among other things) about the record for the most days leading the league in batting average without winning the title. Here’s the list: Player Year LED DNL DNQ First Last Pete Reiser 1942 131 36 0 5-11 9-24 Lenny Dykstra 1990 125 37 10 5-11 9-14 Larry Walker 1997 124 57 […]

PNC=Panoramic Nonpareil Cityscape

After hearing for many years about the splendors of PNC Park in Pittsburgh, I finally got there last weekend. My friend and former Hall of Fame colleague Russell Wolinsky wanted to make the pilgrimage, which was enough to persuade me to join him there on one of the three days I visited the ballpark I’d […]

Giants Fever in a Post-2010 World

I saw my first signs of acute Giants fever in the waning weekends of their 2010 championship year, when the team was in a neck-and-neck battle with San Diego for the NL West title. It wasn’t your standard rising crowd roar that accompanies two-strike counts for the home pitcher late in the game.  It wasn’t […]

You Can Bank on It

In 1967, Louis Armstrong recorded “What a Wonderful World.” Do you think Armstrong naturally believed that about everything? Most likely not, but he made a decision to view life with optimism. While Armstrong dazzled the jazz circuit, Ernie Banks shared a similar view on the baseball diamond. “Let’s play two,” Banks said. A combination of […]

“Nobody’s Perfect”

Just one step away. One break. We all know the feeling. What separates us is what we do when the moment comes and what we have learned to prepare us. That’s what this week’s read, “Nobody’s Perfect,” is about. The “almost-perfect game” is merely part of the story. Read Armando Galarraga and Jim Joyce’s story […]

Juan Marichal recibio leña en Caracas (Juan Marichal received firewood in Caracas)

El 13 de junio se cumplen 48 años del no hit no run de Juan Marichal sobre el equipo de los Colt 45 de Houston. ese dia Juan demostró todo su potencial como futuro Hall de la fama. Ese dia Marichal subió al monticulo con una racha de 5 victorias en fila y termino el […]

The Greatest Pitching Duels of the Century

Sticking to my policy of reviewing only books I can highly recommend, I bring you a gem by Jim Kaplan, long-time “Sports Illustrated” writer and author of a dozen previous baseball books, including a fine biography of Lefty Grove. His new volume, titled The Greatest Game Ever Pitched: Juan Marichal, Warren Spahn, and the Pitching […]

Honig Gives Boost to All

Sit down to watch “A Hall for Heroes,” “Baseball’s Golden Age,” “When It was a Game” or any number of other baseball programs. No doubt you will hear plenty from Donald Honig. Maybe you have delighted in one of 12 baseball books he has authored. This week, allow the man with plenty of baseball yarns […]

New Baseball Terminology

Last week my wife, Martha, and I came across the word atavism and neither of us knew the meaning.  I suggested that it meant “possessing the qualities of an ata.”  That was wrong.  We looked it up and discovered that it actually means “the tendency to revert to ancestral type.”  Kind of like what Brady […]

Noticing a Few Similarities Between Ken Griffey Jr. and Willie Mays

Ken Griffey Jr. turns 41 tomorrow, November 21. I recently read through the authorized Willie Mays biography by James S. Hirsch, and although I’d known of a few loose analogies between the careers of Griffey and Mays, I was struck by the sense that the two great center fielders had several key points in common, […]

The Beacon of Birmingham

In the midst of a dark and all-too predictable world, Rickwood Field became a beacon. Birthed out of a conversation with Connie Mack, the ballpark started with a handful of rivals but outlasted each of them to stand peerless. Read Allen Barra’s “Rickwood Field: A Century in America‒s Oldest Ballpark“ because: 1. Similar to last […]

El lado olvidado del béisbol (The forgotten side of baseball)

Sin embargo existe una faceta del juego que deben rendir todos los equipos cuando saltan al terreno de juego. Hablamos del desempeño defensivo de los jugadores, el cual puede tener tanta incidencia en el desenlace de un juego como lo que puedan hacer los pitchers o los bateadores.

Scenes and Quotes From San Francisco and the Giants Clubhouse After Winning the 1962 Playoff

A while ago I hunted down the San Francisco Chronicle from the day after the Giants beat the Dodgers to win the 1962 N.L. pennant. It’s been overlooked by the World Series that followed, but the race was a thriller that nearly matched 1951’s, and was the start of the Giants-Dodgers rivalry in California. To […]

Serie Mundial inédita. (An original World Series)

Las sombras de Polo Grounds persiguen al pequeño centerfielder de los Gigantes de Nueva York que corre como un velocista de 100 metros. Lo único que se ve es el 24 burbujeando en la zona de seguridad, Willie Mays estiró el guante y la pelota aterrizó en la malla, parecía estar leyendo un libro. Giró y lanzó al cuadro en medio de su caida, a un lado flotaba la gorra.

They Are Two Stepping in Texas

There is dancing in Texas tonight.  The Texas Rangers played the best two teams in the American League and beat them both in convincing fashion to win the first American League Championship for the franchise after fifty years of frustration.  The anticipation of history in the making gave drama to a game that was decided […]

Buster Posey, Neftali Feliz Win Two-Man Races For Willie Mays Award

The battle for the Willie Mays Award, given by the Baseball Bloggers Alliance to the top rookie in each division, turned out to be a two-man affair in both leagues, with Texas Rangers closer Neftali Feliz and San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey finishing solidly ahead of their closest competition, Detroit Tigers outfielder Austin Jackson […]

The Seattle Mariners, a mystery off the field

The Mariners get a day to rest before starting a series with the Cleveland Indians tomorrow so there is no need for my usual ranting about the dismal state of this fading season. Instead I thought I would talk a little about the players themselves and their lives off the field. Of course being that […]

Ralph Houk un manager que dejó huella. (Ralph Houk: A skipper in a mission)

El pasado miércoles 21 de julio de 2010 falleció en su casa de Winter Haven, Fla el manager de los Yanquis de Nueva York, Tigres de Detroit y Medias Rojas de Boston. De inmediato imágenes de mis lecturas sobre los Yanquis de comienzos de los años sesenta tintinearon en la pantalla de mis recuerdos. El eco de sus declaraciones y de algunos de los peloteros de esos equipos resonó en algún lugar de mi cráneo.

Touring The Bases With…Ken Henderson

“The press started to build me up pretty heavily, and the thing that they used to write quite often was that I was the next Willie Mays, which I don’t think was the right thing to do. I don’t care if a player is black or white, it doesn’t make any difference, there was nobody […]

Hammering Away with Henry

For much of his life, Henry Aaron has felt marginalized. Hank Aaron arguably sits atop the baseball pyramid as its home run king. But what about Henry? Blessed with baseball talent that landed him among the best all-around players ever, Hank Aaron assumed a public persona. Meanwhile, “The Hammer” effectively subjugated his private side, Henry. […]

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