baseball Page 327 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Luke Scott Hath Slain The Hellboar
Everyone's favorite gun-humping birther, Luke Scott, arrived at the Tampa Bay Rays' spring training facility with a special guest: the stuffed head of a slain hellboar. How did Scott come to claim this bloody prize? By sticking the beast with a spear, of course! Scott told Rays Report that the boar...

Poor Son Of A Bitch Mat Gamel Tore His ACL For The Second Time In Two Years
It super sucks to be Mat Gamel right now. The Milwaukee Brewers' corner infielder, who was at one time a fairly promising prospect, will miss the entire 2013 season after tearing his ACL. Gamel's injury is all the more depressing due to the fact that he just finished a rehab stint after tearing the...

Time To Retire The Verducci Effect: What <em>Really</em> Predicts Pitcher Injuries?
Originally published in Baseball Prospectus....

Tim Lincecum Had A Very Zen Offseason
Now that spring training has officially kicked off, it's time for baseball writers to spend the next two months filling column space while absolutely nothing of consequence happens. Fox Sports' Ken Rosenthal got started today, asking various members of the San Francisco Giants to share their favori...

How Clark Olson Beats Everyone Else In Fantasy Everything
The guy who just beat everyone else in America at all the fantasy sports, again, is a computer science professor who is not so much into trades but who is really, really into spreadsheets. Clark Olson, the 2012 winner of ESPN's omnibus Uber Challenge fantasy game, again, tallied the high score acros...

Carl Pavano's Freak Spleen Injury Nearly Killed Him
Live by the freak injury, nearly die by the freak injury: On January 12, Carl Pavano slipped on some ice outside his Vermont home, fell onto the handle of his snow shovel, and after taking a moment to recover, went about his business until he couldn't anymore:...

Mike Piazza's Book Tour Produced An Excellent Illustration Of The Absurdity Of Steroid Handwringing
Mike Piazza wrote a memoir, and if early releases are any indication, it's mostly about how weird a human being he is. Perhaps because of his eccentric streak, many apparently hoped that the book would be a tell-all about the steroid era, like Jose Canseco's Juiced from someone who isn't (as much of...

It's College Baseball's Opening Day, And The Umpires Are Already Falling Over Their Own Feet
Believe it or not, there are a few of us who really do get excited for college baseball's opening day. (This may be a Florida thing. Being able to see live baseball in mid-February in gorgeous weather is tough to turn down.) While the players may be fully-trained and ready for the field, the umpir...

Is Trevor Bauer's Terrible New Rap Song A Diss Track Directed At Miguel Montero?
Trevor Bauer is one of the most highly touted pitching prospects in baseball. He is also a terrible, terrible rapper and possibly kind of a dick. When he was traded from the Arizona Diamondbacks to the Cleveland Indians in the offseason, his former teammate and catcher Miguel Montero made some poin...

Economists Disagree Over How Influential Jose Canseco Was In Spreading Steroids, Start Getting Personal
With advance apologies for giving any more press to Jose Canseco, you might want to check out a little contretemps happening over at Econ Journal Watch about Canseco's role as the Johnny Appleseed of baseball steroids. There's been a debate for a few years now about Canseco's claims to have spread t...

Todd Helton Got A DUI This Morning And Posed For An Unfortunate Mugshot
Colorado Rockies first baseman Todd Helton was arrested early this morning for driving under the influence of alcohol in Thornton, Colo. According to police, Helton was pulled over a few blocks away from his home at 2:39 a.m. Helton just released a statement on the incident, via the Denver Post:...

Caltech Baseball Gets Off The Decade-Long Schneid
The Caltech men's baseball team got back to business yesterday. A business all Caltech athletics, it would seem, has some experience with: snapping incredibly long and depressing losing streaks while simultaneously and not effectively (at all) flaunting the NCAA's eligibility rules. Not two years ag...

Mark Grace Gets Jail Time For All Those DUIs He's Been Collecting
Former MLB first baseman and Diamondbacks color commentator Mark Grace is going to jail because he can't stop driving around Arizona while drunk. Earlier today, Grace pleaded guilty to endangerment and DUI, and was sentenced to four months of work-release jail time and three years of supervised pro...

The Art Of The Japanese Bat Flip
This video was put together by some unknown Japanese hero a year ago, but it's making the rounds today (I think it popped up first on Fangraphs last week). And that's 100 percent of the background on the video you're going to get....
![Rejoice: The New Mascot In The Washington Nationals' Presidents Race Is William Taft, Our Fattest And Sleepiest President [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/18cp6zbk5fvosjpg.jpg)
Rejoice: The New Mascot In The Washington Nationals' Presidents Race Is William Taft, Our Fattest And Sleepiest President [Update]
At a fan fest today, the Nationals will announce the addition of a new American president to their much-beloved mascot race, which already saw a shake-up late in the Nationals' season when Teddy Roosevelt won for the first time ever. Crowd-pleasers that the Nationals are, they understood that fans ...

A Lip Reader Deciphers The Umpire-Manager Arguments Of 2012
Originally published in Baseball Prospectus....

Delmon Young Can Earn $600,000 In Bonus Money By Not Being A Fat Mess
On Tuesday, the Philadelphia Phillies signed Delmon Young, noted anti-semite and worst player to ever win the ALCS MVP, to a one-year, $750,000 contract. Today, we learned that Young's contract has one very peculiar stipulation. From the AP:...

Cardinals Great Stan Musial Dead At 92
Baseball Hall of Famer and unquestionable great Stan "The Man" Musial passed away tonight at 92. Musial started his major league career in 1941 and would play his last game in September of 1963; in the intervening seasons he made 24 All-Star teams, missing out only once, when he was serving in the U...

Drive A Legendary Cincinnati Sportswriter To Reds Games, Get Free Reds Tickets (And Gas Money, Too)
Hal McCoy, one of the go-to baseball writers on the Pete Rose investigation, the man that nicknamed the Reds the "Big Red Machine," and a winner of the J.G Taylor Spink Award (the highest that the BBWAA gives to its members) could use a favor:...

RIP Earl Weaver, The Irascible, Cigarette-Smoking Orioles Manager Who Was Moneyball Before "Moneyball" Existed
Earl Weaver, who managed the Orioles for 15 seasons from 1968-1982 (and another two from 1985-1986) passed away on Friday night at the age 82. In 11 of his 17 seasons, the Orioles won 90 or more games, and in his first three at the helm he guided Baltimore to three World Series, one of which, the 1...