Word Gets Around

There’s a bruhaha brewing in Los Angeles, where GM Ned Colletti called center fielder Matt Kemp on the carpet this week and told the press it was because he wondered whether Kemp was resting on his laurels after signing a long-term, eight-figure contract, rather than giving 100% effort on the field. The esteemed ESPN.com columnist […]

“Ball Talk: Baseball’s Voices of Summer”

I was recently sent a free copy of Kevin Bender’s DVD, “Ball Talk: Baseball’s Voices of Summer,” a 1989 documentary hosted by Larry King that “celebrates Hall of Fame-honored baseball announcing pioneers Mel Allen, Red Barber, Jack Brickhouse, Jack Buck, Curt Gowdy and Ernie Harwell…” I watched it on Saturday and it’s fantastic!  The film […]

Great What-If Matchups

One of most baseball historians’ favorite things to speculate about is how certain players would have done if their careers had happened in different times and places and against different opponents. How spectacular would Ozzie Smith have been on a dirt infield with a small glove instead of on Astroturf? Suppose Ted Williams had been […]

Remembering a Baseball Player So We Don’t Forget the Mistakes of Our Past

A good friend of mine lost a good friend yesterday. My friend is Claire Smith, and her friend was Alfred “Slick” Surratt. Slick was a player for the Kansas City Monarchs, a teammate of Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson in the Negro Baseball League. He died at 87. Claire was one of the first women […]

Alabama, the Cradle of Baseball Greatness

A little while ago I started to realize that Alabama has produced some of the greatest players in baseball history. I remembered reading Bill James making a point somewhere in his Historical Baseball Abstract from the ’80s about sports players tending to come from poor areas. I thought about Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, and […]

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