Baseball Page 1008 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
This Year's Baseball Hall Of Famers Are Nearly Sure Things
The most important man in baseball every December is Ryan Thibodaux. Thibodaux runs the Baseball Hall of Fame Vote Tracker, which does exactly what it promises: it keeps a running tally of BBWAA members’ ballots, allowing you (and also, crucially, people who are actually good with statistics) to get...
MLB And Cuban Baseball Federation Reach Deal To Eliminate Defection And Smuggling Of Cuban Prospects
Major League Baseball and the Cuban Baseball Federation reached an agreement Wednesday on a deal that would allow Cuban baseball players to play in America without having to defect and be smuggled into the United States. From MLB.com:...
Mother Of Addison Russell's Child Shares Details Of Mistreatment
Chicago Cubs shortstop Addison Russell was suspended 40 games by MLB last year for violating the league’s domestic violence policy. The suspension followed his ex-wife, Melisa Reidy-Russell, sharing details of the abuse she says she suffered at Russell’s hands while they were married. Now, another w...
Cubs Owners Discussed Moving Team Out Of Chicago During Beef With Mayor
In the nine years since Monopoly-man-come-to-life Joe Ricketts and his cartoonishly wealthy progeny purchased the Chicago Cubs from the Tribune Company, the Ricketts dynasty—publicly represented by 55-year-old investment banker and public transit enthusiast Tom—have found themselves in repeated disa...
Former Marlins President David Samson Taunts Fleeced Taxpayers: "$1.2 Billion. Fuck You!"
Miami has arguably been hit harder by the pro sports stadium scam than any other city in America. When former Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria managed to get a publicly financed stadium built in 2012, he stuck Miami-Dade County with a stupefying bill that will eventually cost taxpayers $2.4 billion. Give...
CC Sabathia Got To Curse Out The Rays <i>And</i> Got His $500,000 Bonus
CC Sabathia finished the 2018 regular season six outs shy of a performance bonus in his contract that would have paid him $500,000 for reaching 155 innings. He would have gotten it, had life and Tampa Bay not intervened. In his final start he was rolling through five, having thrown only 55 pitches, ...
Report: Anonymous Executive Says "That Whole Anthem Issue" Will Keep Bruce Maxwell Out Of Baseball
Former Athletic Bruce Maxwell is currently without a team, and is distressed enough about it that he recently fired his agent. Teams need catchers—it seems like half the league is circling around Marlins catcher J.T. Realmuto—and Maxwell is a catcher, and while he would be exactly no one’s idea of a...
Baseball's Hall Of Fame Was Busted Long Before Harold Baines Got In
It was terribly unfair of the “Today’s Game Era Committee” of the Baseball Hall of Fame to put Harold Baines in this position. When they elected Baines to the Hall on Dec. 9, the TGEC did him an honor, but also made him the foremost case study for the knowledge gap between those who control the Hall...
It's Pretty Messed Up That The Red Sox Might Be Shedding Payroll
The championship window is rarely open as long as you’d like or expect it to be—just ask the 2014 Red Sox. And the current defending World Series champs can see it coming. In the next two to three years, Boston is going to have to worry about the following players hitting the open market: Chris Sale...
No Offense, But Adam Ottavino Would Make Babe Ruth Look Like A Sack Of Pig Assholes<em></em>
There might be a couple of outliers, but for the most part, current players in any major sport would easily defeat the sport’s early legends. It’s not their fault. The older dudes were the best of their era—and some of those eras still had the color line—but they would not be the best in a later era...
The Mets Are Ready To Get Weird
It was, from the outside, a quiet day in Las Vegas for the second day of baseball’s winter meetings. Not much stirring; a chilly day in the desert. But inside? Oh, inside, that stove is red fucking hot....
Nationals Somehow Add New Layers Of Humiliation To Loss Of Bryce Harper
The Nationals have historically acquitted themselves far better in free agency than their fellow DC professional sports teams, at least two of whom are excruciatingly awful at signing players. But in their hurry to announce their franchise-altering failure to retain Bryce Harper, they appear to have...
Paul Konerko Has A Good Bad Idea For The Hall Of Fame
The baseball world is very bored right now, and so is in high dudgeon over the election to the Hall of Fame of Lee Smith (fine, whatever) and Harold Baines. Harold Baines! It’s alternately inexplicable (Harold Baines was good for a long time, but c’mon, he’s no Ryan Klesko) and completely explicable...
Really? These Fuckin' Guys?
Relief pitcher Lee Smith and right fielder/DH Harold Baines were both elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday night by the Today’s Game Era Committee. Its voters gave Smith its unanimous approval, while Baines just hit the 75 percent threshold with 12 out of 16 votes. (Lou Piniella fell just ...
Nationals Owner Mark Lerner On Bryce Harper: "I Really Don't Expect Him To Come Back"
The Bryce Harper free agency sweepstakes are underway, and the Nationals seem to already know where they stand in the race. Their offer to Harper, which was first reported last month, is somewhere in the range of 10 years and $300 million. That is probably less than other interested parties will pu...
Here Is An Extremely Weird Baseball Hall Of Fame Ballot
The way baseball’s Hall of Fame and the veteran sportswriters who vote in its elections have responded to the presence of drug users on the ballot over the last several years has been terrible for the institution, turning what should be an annual celebration of the game’s great players and rich hist...
Former Major Leaguers Luis Valbuena, Jose Castillo Killed In Car Crash
Former major leaguers Luis Valbuena and Jose Castillo were killed in a car crash in Venezuela Thursday, as reported by the Orange County Register. Valbuena was 33; Castillo was 37....
The Diamondbacks Dealt Paul Goldschmidt For Peanuts
The St. Louis Cardinals became a much more fun team yesterday, and they barely gave up anything to pull it off. On Wednesday, baseball’s most uptight franchise sent three fairly irrelevant players to the Arizona Diamondbacks, who in return gave them big-time slugging first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, ...
Red Sox Will Visit White House
Because this is now a legitimate question after every championship, it was news Monday night when the Boston Red Sox announced they have accepted an invitation to visit President Trump at the White House. When it is and who will attend are still up in the air—J.D. Martinez must be psyched, but you c...
The Mariners Have Pulled The Plug
After a couple of trades in the past 24 hours or so, the Seattle Mariners officially suck again, and they don’t even have fond memories of recent playoff runs to keep them warm over what promises to be several years worth of rebuilding. A run of aggressive, win-now spending—or, anyway, intermittent ...