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Mark Little flicks the joystick and opens a special developer's menu in Major League Baseball 2K12. The screen jumps to an empty ballpark, with a few lines representing the trajectory of a pitch and the timing of the batter trying to hit it. Little starts fooling with some ratings, creating a situation involving a high-contact hitter with not much pop. More »
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Hidden in this interesting piece about identity fraud from Tyler Kepner in the The New York Times is the perhaps not so stunning realization that many of the people charged with evaluating, acquiring and displaying baseball talent don't know a thing about baseball. Sandy Alderson, the current general manager for the New York Mets, used to be the chief executive for the San Diego Padres. In 2010, he visited the Dominican Republic to discuss the issue of identity fraud on behalf of Major League Baseball and, in essence, to deliver an ultimatum. More »
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At Hang Up and Listen Comes Alive! here in New York last week, regular panelist Mike Pesca devoted his Afterball to a very important issue: the continued deterioration of This Week in Baseball, the Fox program that airs on Saturday afternoons during the MLB season. Once upon a time it was Bowie Kuhn and Mel Allen's answer to NFL Films. And now it's Rupert Murdoch's way of meeting FCC regulations. And, even worse, they take themselves far too seriously when it comes to bloopers. Consider: the above blooper did not even win blooper of the year. More »
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I'm not sure why I'm so taken by this Craigslist posting, sent in by a pair of readers, seeking a very specific sort of ballplayer for a Wake County (N.C.) 9U travel team. Maybe it's because all the nine-year-olds we remember from little league swung as hard as they could on every pitch, and because everything hit to the outfield got past the fielders for a triple anyway, and because only the fat kids were put at catcher. More »
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The Rangers catcher's physically expressed frustration at a prior strike call earned him 66 games in Venezuelan winter ball, which is the rest of this season and all of next. We wonder how broken up he is about it, considering his son was kidnapped in his home country a few years back, and the worst thing he's ever had to deal with in MLB was a dugout fart cloud. [ESPNDallas] More »
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Satoshi Furukawa, an astronaut with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, played a one-man game of baseball at the International Space Station a few weeks ago. He only managed two outs, but to be fair, he was pitching, batting, and fielding in outer space at the time. More »
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The group behind London, Ontario's newest pro baseball team, the Rippers, claims not to have had one of the most infamous serial killers in mind when they chose the name and designed the logo seen here. London, Ontario's "Ripper" is a man hiding behind a cape, wearing a top hat, and wielding a baseball bat, and he will be "lurking" in Labatt Park come spring 2012, but he is not at all like London, England's Ripper. More »
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Surely it was a surprising development when Pirates outfielder Xavier Paul agreed to sign with the Brisbane Bandits of the Australian Baseball League this season. But his agent dotted the I's and crossed the T's, and Brisbane rolled out the red carpet for Paul to make his debut last week. More »
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Unlikely Mets ace R.A. Dickey tweeted last night about an event that we've imagined so often in our dreams. Great knuckleballers are friends in real life! More »
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Perhaps World Series Game 6 has faded from your mind, as the series ended Friday night with not a bang but a whimper. But you should recall, in any case, that Game Six was pretty fucking cool. We posted New Yorker writer Roger Angell's scorecard and asked Deadspin readers for theirs. This one comes from Baseball Prospectus prospect guru Kevin Goldstein. If you have one you'd like to send along, hit us up. More »
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The Atlantic has a nifty look at century-old gadgets invented to bring baseball results to the masses as live as possible, at a time when the only options were attending a game or waiting for the evening newspaper. Or that monstrosity above. More »
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And really, what more is there to know than that? You're doing life wrong. [NYT] More »
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MLB has a tradition of sending a band of all-stars to the East after the season ends—to the MLB-Japan All-Star Series, for example. This year the great stars of MLB are headed to Taiwan for a three-game series with the Chinese Taipei national team. Wait a second, these are terrible stars! More »
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Detroit's ace pitcher Justin Verlander registered a once-in-a-generation performance this year. Still, even that magnificence may not be enough to overcome some baseball writers' biases against awarding the Most Valuable Player award to a pitcher. But a video game—Sony's acclaimed MLB 11 The Show simulation—suggests anyone who votes against him is flat wrong. More »
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SI's Chris Ballard and Kotaku's Owen Good have teamed up to tell the story of minor-league pitcher Jack Swift, whose last-chance season and remarkable feats from 60 years ago are only now becoming known. You should go read it. [Sports Illustrated] More »
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Summer Anne Burton is drawing every member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in chronological order. She began the project in January, 2011, and she would be thrilled to draw your favorite baseball player for you. Here are some of her drawings. Click the images to expand. More »
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The Baltimore Sun is reporting, based on police records released via Public Information Act request, that Cy Young Award winner and Orioles broadcaster Mike Flanagan's suicide did not come as a complete surprise to those closest to him. More »
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"Before the top of the sixth began, [second baseman] Pete Orr forgot to look both ways when exiting the dugout and accidentally stepped in front of five racing sausages. He ducked between Polish and Italian but smacked into Hot Dog. The fans booed the sheepish Canadian, who smirked as an entire dugout burst into laughter." [Philadelphia Inquirer] More »
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Here's a short version of Billy Lyle "BJ" Wallace Jr.'s life: Such a good baseball player as a youth that he made the 1992 U.S. Olympic team, notched a record 14 strikeouts in a game vs. Italy, was the the third pick in the MLB draft, signed a $550,00 contract with the Expos and knocked around the minors but never made the bigs. More »
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WBAL reports that former Orioles pitcher Mike Flanagan, television announcer and top executive, was found dead on his Baltimore County property Wednesday afternoon and that sources confirmed that Flanagan took his own life 'despondent over what he considered a false perception from a community he loved of his role in the team's prolonged failure," according to the WBAL-TV's sports director Gerry Sandusky. More »
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Welcome to the second installment of DRURY, our exclusive Little League World Series power ranking and prediction engine. Yesterday's edition was postponed due to the earthquake and lack of interest. The ranking is a composite of the teams' box score statistics and schedule strength—see the original post for more detail. Today's update sees Mexico overtaking the U.S. West team on the strength of their pitching: More »
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We're a few days into the Little League World Series, which means it's time to unveil our system for evaluating the teams: DRURY, or Determination of Robustness of Undoubtedly Rambunctious Youths. It takes box score statistics from every game, converts them into a composite runs scored and allowed per game (BR/18O and BRA/18O, respectively), and then adjusts those figures for strength of schedule. The final figures are the teams' adjusted Pythagorean winning percentages; they're scaled so that the best team has a DRURY of 1. Without further ado, here's the first batch of rankings, based on games prior to today: More »
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Tipster Michael M. shared this picture he took off of his television after the Reds/Nationals game commenced following a 38-minute delay. It's titled, "Brandon Phillips likes Michael Morse's pretty hair." Anyway, Phillips went 3-for-4 with an RBI while Morse was 0-for-3 with a run in the Nationals's 3-1 win. More »
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This is a beautiful story of modern reconciliation. Last night, Toronto's Brandon Morrow hit Mariner Casper Wells with a pitch. The outfielder was forced to sit out the remainder of the game, which deprived him of the chance to extend his home run streak to five straight games. More »
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In the fifth-inning of a big 18-and-under Mac-N-Seitz Midwest Championships and Showcase baseball game, home plate umpire Kyle Reynolds detected shenanigans were afoot. They were the sort of shenanigans in which a catcher allegedly jumps out of the way of a pitch so it strikes the umpire behind him, and the brand of hijinks that results in reports filed with the Lee's Summit (Mo.) PD. More »
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We all know times are tight for the Dodgers franchise. But there's only one person who knows why a kid who retrieved a foul ball during the sixth inning of today's game against the Phillies was forced to part with a lifelong souvenir. The world demands answers, mean Dodgers employee who probably handed the ball over as a gift to a lovechild after the game was over. (H/T Panico2) More »
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The worst part of this brawl video between American Legion teams from Cherryville, NC and Douglasville, Ga.? You can see the Cherryville run scorer say something to the Douglasville catcher — presumably something like "Cherryville rules!" — but you can't really see the ball the catcher threw at the run scorer immediately thereafter hitting its target (0:18 in). More »
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Yankees outfielder and fountain of enthusiasm Nick Swisher has just released his first album, Believe. It features Swisher on lead vocals with Kidz-Bop-style backup, not to mention special appearances on guitar from Bernie Williams and Barry Zito. Looking at the track list, it's basically a concept album for optimism: More »
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In the eighth inning of the Indians-Red Sox game last night, with the game tied at five runs apiece, Asdrubal Cabrera's hit a line drive to right field that was initially ruled a single. Umpires reviewed the play and called it a homer — Cabrera's second of the night — to give Cleveland a two-run lead. All of the evidence needed, though, was in the imprint of the baseball's seams on this poor woman's right knee: More »
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When Jake Bertanza went to last night's Yankees game, he might have expected that CC Sabathia would pitch a lovely game, but he certainly could not have known he'd end up sitting a few seats away from Michael "Big Yankees Fan" LaPayower and his videographer brother. More »
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Rick Kaminski, a 67-year-old man who provided a memorable part of the baseball experience to crowds at the Kingdome and Safeco Field in Seattle, died of complications from a brain aneurysm yesterday. He was known as "Rick the Peanut Guy," and he'll be missed. More »
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This young man named Jayden makes the type of running-dive catch that gets major leaguers on a slow day's top-plays countdown and lands 9-year-old kids on a top-prospects blog. More »
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Tipster Andrew D. was kind enough to share this video of a foul ball deflecting from the stands at Progressive Field in Cleveland onto the dome of a sideline cop. At first, he's on the edge of seething, but then he sees the whimsy of the moment and just goes back to his responsibilities to God, Country and Team. More »
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Last night was Retro Night at the Phillies/Padres game. This is the type of thing a team does to keep a sell-out streak alive when a) the Padres are in town, b) on a Friday night in summer, c) when the temperature at first pitch is 98 °F. More »
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In San Francisco, they make sure the kids develop a sense of entitlement at an early age. More »
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So some dope interrupted the Murdoch family's stammering and mumbling today by "throwing a pie" at Rupert Murdoch, which actually meant waving a styrofoam plate in Murdoch's direction as some sort of foam slid off it, till Mrs. Rupert Murdoch jumped up and clobbered the "pie" guy. More »
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Last week we brought you the peculiar odyssey of the Lake County Fielders, a minor league baseball club in Zion, Ill., owned in part by Kevin Costner. The Fielders' manager — former Blue Jays skipper Tim Johnson — resigned over team-wide pay disputes, many of its players refused to play, and the opposing manager, Jose Canseco, penciled himself in as a starting pitcher and won. More »
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MC Hammer Bobblehead Night" alt="Zubazpalooza > MC Hammer Bobblehead Night" width="640" height="360" />The long-awaited MC Hammer bobblehead night finally arrived in Oakland yesterday, and it was rather exciting for everyone involved. More »
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Play was stopped at the Nationals-Braves game in Atlanta on Saturday evening so that police officers could take down a streaking fan in a wedding dress. This captivated the crowd and beguiled Davey Johnson. More »
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