MLB Page 1090 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

To Get You To Come To Cooperstown, The Hall Of Fame Will Re-Honor Lou Gehrig and Rogers Hornsby
See that guy over there? That's James "Deacon" White. He played mostly third base and catcher, and had a .740 career OPS. His best years came in the Ulysses S. Grant administration. He's the only baseball player entering the Hall of Fame this year....

Hall Of Famers Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, Curt Schilling, Tim Raines, Mike Piazza, And Edgar Martinez Not Elected To Hall Of Fame
A grand total of zero perfectly excellent baseball players have been deemed worthy of joining luminaries like Tom Yawkey, Ty Cobb, and Kenesaw Mountain Landis in Cooperstown....

MLB To Introduce "Interview Caps." You Know, For Interviews.
How funny! I was just saying to myself the other day, "MLB needs more caps. Sure, they've got home caps, road caps, alternate caps, throwback caps, second alternate caps, batting practice caps, road batting practice caps, fashion caps, and playoff caps for each round, but that's not nearly enough ca...

Bullpen Cell Phones Are Coming To Major League Baseball Next Season
MLB and T-Mobile just announced a new deal here at CES that'll (maybe? hopefully?) cut down on embarrassing miscommunications between the bench and the pen. Starting next season, clubs will have the option of using dedicated, in-dugout cell phones to help get their relievers up and warming. Although...

Roger Clemens Will Teach Young Astros Pitchers Everything He Knows
I hope everyone is ready for Roger Clemens to make the long, painful transition from controversy-dogged outcast to wizened baseball mentor, because it's going to happen. With two bizarre perjury trials and a flirtation with an MLB cameo in the rearview mirror, Clemens is turning his thoughts to coac...

2012 Deadspin Hall Of Fame Nominee: Oddibe McDowell's Water Bill
Has it really been close to two years since we first said hello, and a full 10 months since we had to say goodbye? We miss our old friend more than we can say....

Should Steroids-Era Sportswriters Be Kept Out Of The Hall Of Fame Voting?
Jeff Pearlman has an interview up with Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci, one of the most accomplished baseball writers working. It's long and covers numerous subjects, but it only addresses steroids in two areas: Verducci's groundbreaking 2002 cover story on PEDs in MLB, and whether hindsight makes...

Here's A 29-Team Roundup Of Fans' Dumbest Giancarlo Stanton Trade Proposals
Originally published in Baseball Prospectus....

The Poor Astros Will Be Sent To Slaughter On Baseball's Opening Night
MLB just announced which two teams will be facing off in the first game of the 2013 season, and the matchup is a curious one. On one side there are the Texas Rangers, a team that has proven itself to be one of the most exciting and watchable squads in baseball over the course of the last three seas...

2012 Deadspin Hall Of Fame Nominee: Fat Chipper Jones
He showed up for spring training looking like a fat ass. His fatness touched off a debate about whether he was fat. Eventually, Fat Chipper himself chewed the fat, and soon there was no denying what everyone else could see. He tried masking it. He found himself a Playboy-model girlfriend. He even ar...

According To Exit Polls, Nobody Will Make The Baseball Hall Of Fame
The results of 2013 Baseball Hall of Fame voting will be announced on Wednesday, and this year represents a unique ballot. Steroid users, suspected steroid users, a cocaine user, a catcher, Jack Morris. Want a preview? Baseball Think Factory has compiled the votes from every writer that made their v...

Torii Hunter Says Homosexuality Is "Not Right" (Then Claims He Was Misquoted)
On Saturday, Kevin Baxter of the Los Angeles Times wrote a column about the obstacles that a potentially gay athlete still faces in today's locker room culture. Included in the piece is the following quote from Detroit Tigers center fielder Torii Hunter:...


ESPN Writer Has The Single Best Strategy For Dealing With The Hall Of Fame's Steroid Problem
Though we blast the self-important BBWAA members who deal in absolutes, there's no denying that the Hall of Fame has itself a pickle. Bonds and Clemens, the consensus best hitter and pitcher of MLB's last 20 years, are eligible this year, the most obvious examples of players who would get in based s...

Venezuelan MLB Players Spend More Time Worrying About Being Kidnapped Than Most Professional Athletes
Becoming a professional baseball player should mean you're pretty much set, right? Forget the odds that a fringe (or star) professional athlete will go broke before he's a certain age—if you spend much of your twenties and thirties making millions or near millions of dollars for playing a game, you'...

Brandon McCarthy Is A Woman, According To His Driver's License
The mistake is right there on the Diamondbacks' pitcher's new Texas driver's license, which was tweeted out this afternoon by McCarthy's wife, Amanda. But I dunno, Brandon. Those nails look pretty feminine to me....

Don't Be Terrible, Be Good, And Win: How To Pitch, According To Fox Game Of The Week Scouting Reports
Originally published in Baseball Prospectus....

Alex Rodriguez Has Given Himself A New Nickname, So Everyone Be Sure To Call Him That
Say hello to Captain Rodriguez. A-Rod has been spending the holidays in Florida with his family (and Torrie Wilson), and he's documenting it all on his Facebook page. He put this photo up yesterday, but quickly deleted it. Maybe because the Yankees already have a captain, or maybe because he realize...

Fat Chipper Jones Is Apparently No Longer Fat
The debate continues: Fat Chipper earlier today tweeted the photo you see here (click to make it bigger), inviting us all to help him out. "What's wrong with this pic folks?" he asked. We've been looking at it all afternoon, and we're stumped. We can only surmise that he looks thinner because of his...

Ugueth Urbina Is Out Of Prison, Still Has His Fastball
It's odd that no one's really gotten to the bottom of what happened with decorated reliever Ugueth Urbina in Venezuela in 2005. Just before the season began, his mother was rescued from kidnappers in a commando-style operation, after being held for ransom for five months. Just after the season, in w...