Baseball Page 1223 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Sad State Of The Modern Baseball Blooper
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 Ku...

The A's Are Very Interested In Manny Ramirez
Per ESPN Deportes: "The Oakland Athletics are 'very interested' in making Manny Ramirez their designated hitter next season," a source said. (The source, we'd assume, is a baseball insider named "Bott Scoras," but we digress.) Ramirez appeared in a supremely forgettable 17 at-bats for the Rays last ...

The Mets Are Moving In The Fences, And They're Selling Them Too
Because they can't lure you to the ballpark with a winning team, the Mets will try to lure you with home runs. They're bringing in the outfield walls at Citi Field to goose scoring, and here's a question we definitely never pondered: what do you do with the old outfield wall? If you're a billion dol...

"The Fans Would Throw Little Tinfoils Of Hash At Me": A 1980 Interview With Bill "Spaceman" Lee, Baseball's Stoner Evangelist
The folks at The Golden Sombrero alerted us to this wonderful piece of baseball history: a 1980 High Times interview with pitcher Bill "Spaceman" Lee in which Lee holds forth on drugs, Bowie Kuhn, race, reincarnation, drugs, drug use, drug abuse, which drugs Expos fans threw to him in tribute, eatin...

Yu Screwed Prince Fielder (Sort Of)
Your roundup of all the hottest hot-stove items of the day (and whatever shit Ken Rosenthal is throwing against the wall). This is ... HOT FUCKING STOVE!!!...

Oh Yu: A Collection Of Awful Yu Darvish Headline Puns
Japanese pitcher Yu Darvish officially signed to a six-year, $60 million deal with the Texas Rangers on Wednesday. Darvish, perhaps the most highly-touted player to ever come out of Japan, will be counted on to help shore up the Rangers' pitching staff following the loss of their former No. 1 starte...

Fausto Carmona Is Not Fausto Carmona
He is Roberto Hernandez Heredia. That is all....

The Verducci Effect Is Overworked And Broken Down
Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci came out with his annual "Year After Effect" column yesterday, based on his hypothesis that that young pitchers tend to break down the season after an increased workload. Specifically, a pitcher 25 and under is supposed to be at risk if he pitched at least 30 more i...

Tebow! Tebow! Tebow! (This Is A Dodgers Story)
Here is a story about Clayton Kershaw. He is a good pitcher, and he likes Jesus, but beyond that he doesn't have much in common with Tim Tebow. In fact, he's nothing like Tim Tebow. They play different sports and haven't met. Still: Tebow in the headline! Tebow everywhere. What do you have to say ab...

The Mets' Colossally Inept Medical Staff, Exposed In A Beat Writer's Twitter Rant
Adam Rubin, late of the New York Daily News and now of ESPN New York, is one of those guys who've been on the Mets beat as long as we can remember. (He remained on it despite a memorably bizarre incident in 2009 where Omar Minaya accused Rubin of writing bad things about the Mets because he wanted a...

Turner, Montana, Pop. 192, Angrily Lashes Out Against Baseball Blogger And Geography
Above is an infographic from Craig Robinson's indispensable Flip Flop Fly Ball, showing the lonely position of Turner, Mont. Turner is nearly equidistant from Seattle and Denver, but at 647 miles from Safeco Field, Robinson awards it the title of American Town Farthest From A Major League Team....

Murray Chass's Hall Of Fame Vote Is Based Partly On His Dinner Plans
Blogging anti-blogger Murray Chass has written one of his patented half-lucid anti-blog blog posts about the Hall of Fame. Near the end of the post, he dodders over to the subject of his own voting habits. This one's a treat:...

Should You Be Scared Of The Yankees In 2012?
Yes! Yes, you should be scared of the Yankees in 2012. Terrified, probably. Because a pair of big moves made their biggest problem—35-year-old A.J. Burnett, who is owed $33 million over the next two years—essentially disappear. No more hanging knucklecurves in big games, no more walks, no more hits,...

AL MVP Justin Verlander Eats Like You Do When You're Drunk At 2 A.M.
Your roundup of all the hottest hot-stove items of the day (and whatever shit Ken Rosenthal is throwing against the wall). This is ... HOT FUCKING STOVE!!!...

Bud Selig Can't Hear You: A Gallery
In honor of Commissioner for Life Bud Selig's new contract, we give you this metaphorically rich gallery, which we first ran in September 2010. ...

Matt Garza Could Be Bound For Detroit
Your roundup of all the hottest hot-stove items of the day (and whatever shit Ken Rosenthal is throwing against the wall). This is ... HOT FUCKING STOVE!...

Baseball's Hall Of Fame Voters Are Irrational, But Not For The Reasons You Think
Last year, Bert Blyleven, the former Twins right-hander whose Hall of Fame candidacy was long a cause among the stathead community, got into Cooperstown on his 14th ballot. But was it really a triumph of rational thinking or merely the product of a different kind of irrationality? We revisit what we...

Here's Barry Larkin In The Most 1991 Photo Ever
Check out baseball's newest Hall of Famer, in what looks like the early 1990s, sporting that dope look, complete with one of the shoulder straps undone on his overalls. No, that's not a Cubs sweatshirt, as noted here, but rather something from the 1990 MLB All-Star Game, which was played at Wrigley...

Barry Larkin Is In The Hall Of Fame
Your roundup of all the hottest hot-stove items of the day (and whatever shit Ken Rosenthal is throwing against the wall). This is ... HOT FUCKING STOVE!...

Barry Larkin Will Make The Hall Of Fame, According To "Exit Poll"
The 2012 Baseball Hall of Fame inductees will be announced at 3 p.m. Eastern. But there's no need to wait for the official numbers to be announced, as more than a hundred BBWAA voters have already published and defended their ballots. This indispensable spreadsheet collecting all the ballots made pu...