baseball Page 38 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Roger Angell knew baseball was about people, not stats
Roger Angell loved baseball in its purest form. Throughout over half a century of covering the sport for ‘The New Yorker’, Angell saw the game dip, duck, dive, and dodge its way through rule changes, scandals, and fundamental changes, yet his love for America’s pastime never faded....
How mad do you have to be to argue a ball for your teammate?
Every bad call for one team is a great call for the opposing team. That’s why fans always get upset when umpires make bad calls against their team, but stay silent when the same is done against the opposition. Players act the same way. That’s what made Anthony Rizzo’s ejection in Thursday’s game aga...
Yankees minor leaguer cut for running alleged memorabilia scam
Can you imagine signing a $597,000 contract to play in the New York Yankees minor league system right out of college, only to ruin it all by scamming fans and stealing bats, gloves and equipment? Jake Sanford, the Yankees third-round pick in 2019, was cut by the club on May 12 for multiple infractio...
Mets fans are going to need some really strong anti-depressants to keep up the optimism
Pete Alonso’s two-run walkoff homer in the 10th inning Thursday improved the New York Mets’ record to 26-14, which is good for the second-most wins in baseball and a six-and-a-half-game lead in the NL East. They have a +44 run differential, put up the fourth most runs in the MLB, and boast the leagu...
Baseball is less fun when NO ONE MOVES THEIR BACK ROW
Sporting leagues should enact a per game minimum of fun-yet-stupid plays attempts. For the NBA, each squad should be required to take at least 15 30-foot plus jumpers. There should be at least two trick plays per team in NFL games. I don’t know what it is for soccer or hockey. Maybe it’s something a...
Who would win? Pitchers or position players?
Baseball is wacky nowadays. Just a few nights ago we watched Tampa Bay outfielder Brett Phillips pitch to reigning AL MVP Shohei Ohtani. The very next day, Ohtani was on the mound pitching to Phillips. When was the last time something like that happened? We’ve got a universal DH now. This stuff shou...
Put Aaron Judge in center field, you cowards!
This is going to sound like a conspiracy theory, but hear me out. If you only put your best players in your lineup, you tend to do well. I know, right! Insane! Call me crazy, but so too did they call Galileo crazy when he said the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe, and look where we are now. B...
No one was as alone as Nathan Eovaldi was last night
It’s often stated that pitchers are weird, which helps explain why they tend to wet themselves every time it’s even suggested they need to change their routine. Just watch what happens when MLB tries to put in a pitch clock next season. The streets will run yellow with hurler urine!...
It’s all just so pointless
There was a baseball game on the Northside of Chicago last night. I didn’t watch it. I haven’t watched any of them. But Twitter tends to tell me if there’s anything that happens of note with the Cubs. I can’t say I’m not informed. I just don’t have to watch Marquee Network’s high school AV Club leve...
Shohei Ohtani is amazing and Michele Tafoya tweeted something dumb
Michele Tafoya is no stranger to controversy, whether made up out of whole cloth and not really even involving her, or overlooked when she was too cozy in her sideline job with some of the NFL’s worst humans, or completely of her own doing by going on cable news and advocating for white supremacist ...
It’s getting late pretty early in Boston
The Red Sox won 92 games last season and went to the ALCS. They had a fair amount of turnover in the offseason, losing Eduardo Rodriguez, Kyle Schwarber, and Hunter Renfroe in free agency, but Boston also added Michael Wacha and Rich Hill to the rotation, got Jackie Bradley Jr. to come back to their...
Gabe Kapler, your mustache/beard take is all wrong
For once, I get to speak with the exact same authority on a subject as a professional athlete. Gabe Kapler played professional baseball for 12 seasons and has been a manager for the last four. While I can’t speak with anywhere near the same authority on what it takes to hit a curveball or when to pu...
FIFA forgoing $150 million annually to pursue delusions of grandeur
Like people who are addicted to Coca-Cola products, gamers can spot a knockoff within the first three seconds of tasting one. Try giving a Coke lover a Pepsi, and they get offended. A waiter responding to a request for a Coke with, “We only have Pepsi. Is that OK?” is met with a laugh more often tha...
Strange doings on this nervous night in Anaheim
Well it wasn’t that nervous. The Angels won 12-0. But it got tense at the end, as Angels rookie Reid Detmers threw a no-hitter in just his 11th big-league start. And he did it while only striking out two batters, which is strange indeed. Eleven groundouts always helps, though. But in this day and ag...
Leafs and Lightning are playing the strangest series
In a playoff series, especially one between two very good teams which the Lightning and Maple Leafs are, you expect some swings. No one expected a short series, which means twists and turns as teams exchange wins. Momentum generally swings on the performance level of your goalie the next night, but ...
Josh VanMeter was forced to catch for the first time in 12 years. It didn’t go well
Ask any Pirates fan and they’ll tell you how bad a second baseman Josh VanMeter is. The 27-year-old is hitting .171 with a .496 OPS in 15 games this season. Well, after today, he’s not only the worst second baseman some Pirates fans have ever seen, but the worst catcher as well. ...
The Giants are suffering a power outage
Fresh off a franchise-best 107-win season, nobody expected the San Francisco Giants to repeat as NL West champs in 2022. The departures of key players such as Buster Posey, Kris Bryant, and Kevin Gausman were going to be difficult to overcome. The Giants managed to replace Gausman by acquiring Carlo...
The Cincinnati Reds are tanking hard and it (probably) won’t save them
The Reds are a joke. Not a gut-wrenching knee slapper either. I’m talking about a “force the audience to ask for a refund”-type joke, AKA just normal Amy Schumer material. The Reds’ record is an abysmal 3-22. To put that in perspective, only one team in the Modern Era of baseball (since 1901) had a ...
Anthony Rizzo’s season has made absolutely zero sense
The New York Yankees are a good baseball team. Contrary to what any rational baseball fan wants to believe, the Yankees are currently leading the AL East and are top-5 in MLB in average, OPS, and home runs. They are a great team, and a big part of their offensive prowess in 2022 has been first basem...
We’re not going to get rid of the Mets, are we?
Usually, you can dismiss hot April starts as nothing more than cute. Whether it’s real or not, if you have the motivation, you can always lean on baseball “needing to play out” because of the length of the season. Sure, it’s harder to dismiss a hot start from the Dodgers, but why even try? Almost an...