baseball Page 343 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

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...

Yorvit Torrealba Receives 66-Game Suspension For Slugging A Venezuelan League Umpire
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 wor...

The BBWAA Tries Again With A Bill Conlin Statement, This Time Acknowledging That Child Molestation Claims Are Bad
When the allegations about Bill Conlin came out yesterday, America quickly turned its eyes to the Baseball Writers Association of America. Because we're dumb, you see, and wanted to hear from the secret club of baseball writers who annually send up smoke signals from Cooperstown. The BBWAA also give...

Someone Wrote The Craziest Thing You'll Ever Read About Tom Verducci
Over at Baseball Prospectus, Jason Parks leers literarily at SI's man: "He didn't intend to harass Verducci, although in hindsight the behavior he exhibited did appear suspect to most casual eyes. ... On the walks, he said he would track his (the World) movements, studying his gait and his smile, ho...

Call This Number If You Think You Can Beat Some Guy In <em>R.B.I. Baseball</em>
Your morning roundup for Dec. 6, the day we learned the word "vivisepulture." Photo via Kotaku. Got any stories or photos for us? Tip your editors....

The Baseball Hall Of Fame Ballot Is Out, And It Seems No One Good Retired In 2006
The fine folks at the Baseball Hall of Fame mailed out their ballots today, and I immediately called our travel agent just to threaten her with litigation if she even thinks about getting me a hotel in Cooperstown next summer....

Astronaut Plays One-Man Baseball Game In Space
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....

Dan Lozano: Albert Pujols's Superagent, "King Of Sleaze Mountain"
Somebody's out to get Dan Lozano. The agent for Albert Pujols, Lozano is pursuing what everyone expects to be the biggest contract in baseball, the financial and professional zenith of a career that's been two decades of success. When Lozano, 44, left the Beverly Hills Sports Council last year, he t...

Jack The Ripper Spoiled The Unveiling Of Canada's Newest Baseball Team, The London Rippers
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 baseb...

And Then Al Michaels Said To Howard Cosell: "You're Drunk. You're Ruining The Fucking Telecast."
Howard Cosell, who died in 1995, ruled sports broadcasting from the 1960s until the 1980s. He commentated on Monday Night Football from its inception, called boxing's biggest fights, and popped up on Olympics and baseball telecasts, too. In his new book, Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth, and the Tra...

Meet The Minor Leaguer And Scam Artist Who Sold A Pittsburgh Pirate To Australia
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....

Preeminent Knuckleballers Hang Out Together In Their Spare Time
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!...

Here's Another Cool Scorecard From Game 6
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 ...

How They Followed Baseball Before Radio, Or: Steampunk Gamecast
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....

The Last Act Of The Notorious Howie Spira
Howard Spira appeared in the Gawker offices one summer day as if summoned from the beyond, which in some sense he had been. He just stood there, anxiously clutching a black plastic bag, his enormous green eyes sweeping the room. His skin had the hue of a life spent mostly indoors and in poor health....

If You Have A Hard-On For Baseball-As-Talisman, The Bill Buckner Ball Is Up For Sale
As if I needed to tell you, today is the 25th anniversary of Darryl Strawberry's second inning, one-out walk against Roger Clemens in game 6 of the 1986 World Series. Oh, you didn't realize that? Maybe you're not that big of a baseball fan after all....

An Idaho-Based Pig Farmer Named Lindy Hinkleman Has Won $300,000 Playing Fantasy Baseball The Past Three Years
And really, what more is there to know than that? You're doing life wrong. [NYT]...

Scenes From The Arizona Fall League: Lizards Go Down Easier With Mountain Dew
Baseball is boring. Being a pitcher is worse. Being a reliever on an Arizona Fall League team with a 20-man bullpen leaves you with so much free time, you're probably insane if you don't spend your afternoons swallowing geckos....

Ozzie Guillen Will Appear On <em>Baseball Tonight</em> Throughout The World Series
It dawns on me that we could play a game with two tentpoles of recent Chicago White Sox squads. We'll call the game "Guillen OR Pierzynski." Said the White Sox drink rally beer during games to get themselves going? (Pierzynski.) Went on a profane tirade after the White Sox lost to Bruce fucking Chen...

MLB Is Sending A Very Sad All-Star Team To Taiwan
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!...