Clearing The Bases

Arizona Diamondbacks: Pretty tough week for the DBacks as they lose 2B Aaron Hill until June with a broken hand. Hill suffered the injury when he was hit by an Edwin Jackson pitch. Tried to play with it over the weekend but just couldn’t do it. Outfielder Jason Kubel was also placed on the DL […]

White Sox Opening Day: 39 Degrees and Billion-Dollar Burgers

The Chicago White Sox opened the 2013 season on Monday by beating the Kansas City Royals, 1-0, at U. S. Cellular Field in front of an announced crowd of 39,000 people. In other words, there were one thousand people in the ballpark for every degree in the air. The high temperature in Chicago for the […]

White Sox Rising

May 31, 2012 When the Chicago White Sox swept the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field two weeks ago it was fun but, really, can’t an old person with a fly swatter beat the Cubs? The Sox, however, were apparently emboldened by that three-game ear-gouge of their crosstown rivals because now the Pale Hose are taking […]

Crosstown Crosshairs

  May 20, 2012 Sox, Cubs,  NATO   The whole world is watching.  And now it knows how bad the Cubs really are. And how good the White Sox could be. If they keep playing the Cubs. On a hot spring weekend in Chicago when world leaders and angry protesters came to town for the […]

Bill Veeck Day

Today is Bill Veeck Day. It is the day that Paul Dickson’s biography of Bill Veeck is officially released, the day “Sport Shirt Bill” is back with us once again. Like a bad penny, he has returned. It is something he himself said often, as he bounced between Wrigley Field and Comiskey, forever part of […]

Cardiac Kids Take Chicago

Three tense and tightly contested games yielded two road wins for the 2012 Washington Nationals in Chicago thanks to surprising late inning magic. Call them the “Comeback Kids,” the “Cardiac Kids,” whatever you will, but the Nationals scored nine times in the last two innings during the three-game set in the Windy City.  The late […]

Crosstown Crisis?

Not A Crowded House Normally the annual “Crosstown Classic” series between Chicago’s Cubs and White Sox are an automatic sellout at U.S. Cellular Field as Sox fans love nothing more than to see their team whip up on the Cubs and also impugn the testosterone of all Cubs fans who dare to wander down to […]

FEATURES OF THE BALLPARKS DATABASE

Besides the basic field dimensions and batting event factors, there are some other features of the ballparks database that I’d like to highlight: Starting with the index page, you’ll see that the default order is number of games played in the stadium.   Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are at the top.   This can be an […]

If Only All 48 Indy Players Could Catch This Break

    Robert Coello has only been pitching for four years after starting his professional career as a respected catching prospect, but the 6-foot-5, 250-pound right-hander no doubt is the envy of many of the other products of the Independent Baseball leagues who have their nameplates posted on a dressing cubicle in a major league clubhouse […]

The Sweet Swing of a Slugger

Nowadays, it’s difficult to think of baseball players without talk of steroids, performance enhancers, or at least strength training. More than a century ago, however, raw skill and equipment formed a power-packed duo that dictated a player’s success. “Sweet Spot: 125 Years of Baseball and the Louisville Slugger” by David Magee and Philip Shirley is […]

‘Roids, Aging, and The Pride of the Goldpanners

The original habitat for this post can be found here. It has been twenty years since this photo was taken, yet I saw it for the first time yesterday.  Why is this photo not more celebrated? Anybody know where I can get a fake ID? Perhaps, I’m exaggerating the comedic value of a photograph, as […]

Rattled in the Clinches: Manager Pie Traynor and the Epic Collapse of the 1938 Pirates

On the evening of September 29, 1938, inside the funereal visitors’ clubhouse at Wrigley Field, a despondent Pie Traynor leaned back, fired up a cigarette, and prepared to lie through his teeth. His Pittsburgh Pirates had just lost three crushing games to the Chicago Cubs thanks to Gabby Hartnett’s famous “Homer in the Gloamin’” and […]

Two Cy Young Winners Play the Outfield

The Dodgers used their entire roster, playing both a reigning and a future Cy Young Award winner in the outfield, to outlast the Cubs 2-1 in a 21-inning marathon. Extending over two August afternoons, the game took six hours and ten minutes to complete, establishing a new mark for the longest game ever at Wrigley […]

Buying A Manager

“I came here with $100,000 to get a new manager and two new players for the Chicago club.” said Chicago Cubs President Charles H. Weeghman as he arrived in New York City for the annual National League baseball meetings of 1916. “I have in mind for a leader two men who have attained national prominence […]

Touring the Bases With…Carmen Fanzone

A former versatile infielder turned accomplished musician who once played the “Star Spangled Banner” before a game at Wrigley Field, Fanzone–a flugelhorn player–was originally signed by the Red Sox and spent five years in the majors from 1970-1975, four of them with the Chicago Cubs.  Click here to watch a video of a conversation I had […]

Irish American Baseball Hall of Fame Announces Nominations for 2010 Induction Class

Foley’s NY Pub & Restaurant Recognizes Players, Executives, Journalists and Entertainers of Irish Descent New York, NY (March 15, 2010) –  Foley’s NY Pub & Restaurant (18 W. 33rd St.) today announced the nominations for 2010 induction into the Irish American Baseball Hall of Fame (IABHOF).  Voters include past inductees into the IABHOF and a […]

Cooperstown Rediscovered

For a young boy who loves baseball, there is no cooler place to grow up than near Cooperstown, N.Y., the home of baseball. My family spent many summer weekends boating on Otsego Lake and taking in the Norman Rockwell-like atmosphere of a village that lives and breathes baseball—just like I did. If you have a […]