A Four Course Feast of Baseball Ignorance

The past couple of weeks have brought an even greater parade of baseball ignorance than usual from the professionals who play and report on the game. I started to write about one of them, but before I could fully digest that affront to my baseball taste, another one jumped out at me, followed by two [...]

Get Used to It Mr. Strasburg

On the same afternoon when I watched Mike Pelfrey pitch eight innings of one-run ball only to see the bullpen (aided by a muffed fly ball) blow a 4-1 lead and cost him the victory, I saw that the same thing happened to Stephen Strasburg. That is, he left the game as the potential winning [...]

The Day of the (Starting) Pitcher

So we’re one day into the new baseball season, and most of what we’ve seen is great starting pitching. Even though the Mets moved in the outfield fences at Citi Field, the Mets and Braves managed to scratch out one puny run between them. Kyle Lohse didn’t allow a hit to the Marlins until the [...]

The Greatest Baseball Fan I Know

I met John Russell during the summer of 2003, my first as a researcher at the Baseball Hall of Fame library. I was stationed at the downstairs desk, the library’s public area where scholars and fans alike congregate to explore and share baseball history. Some visitors make appointments; some make annual pilgrimages (like another great [...]

A Pilgrimage To the Past

Baseball is all about connections. Players make connections with teammates that extend beyond the playing field and beyond their careers. Management links combinations of people whose connections strengthen the collective effort. As fans, we connect with teams, players, and events, and each of us accumulates a rich fabric of memories, favorites, and unfulfilled wishes. Every [...]

The Winter of My Discontent

It has been more than a month since I felt like writing anything about baseball. The musings, daydreams, and historical diversions that usually fill the off-season void have not been sufficient to overcome the ravages of reality enough for me to celebrate anything with words. Oh, I’m having a fine winter on a personal level. [...]

Celebrating Mets History Anyway

Last week was a tough one for Mets fans as Jose Reyes has done what most New Yorkers can’t manage until they’re twice his age–he took the money and fled to Florida. The team might be in for the Second Dark Ages the next few years, reminiscent of the forgettable seasons between the departure of [...]

“Twilight Zone” At The World Series

I was going to write about Tony LaRussa’s “Twilight Zone” experience in Game 5 (“I keep calling for Motte. Where’s Motte? When I tell Derek Lilliquist he’s fired, will he think I said ‘your fly is open’?”) and decided to wait until the World Series ended, but after last night’s bizarre Game 6 I’d like [...]

Hall of Fame Honors Selig With Locked Door

When the press release was distributed by the Hall of Fame on August 18, it seemed like a cool thing–dedicating a library space to the archives of baseball’s nine commissioners. As the release put it, “Cooperstown will also now be forever celebrated as the archival home for the Office of the Commissioner following the Wednesday [...]

A Book To Be Savored

There seems to be no debate in baseball history circles about the identity of the game’s greatest photographer: Charles Conlon. If/when the Hall of Fame stops dithering and institutes an annual award for baseball photography, it will be named after Conlon. With good reason: the New York-based Conlon took thousands of photos from 1905-1942, capturing [...]

PNC=Panoramic Nonpareil Cityscape

After hearing for many years about the splendors of PNC Park in Pittsburgh, I finally got there last weekend. My friend and former Hall of Fame colleague Russell Wolinsky wanted to make the pilgrimage, which was enough to persuade me to join him there on one of the three days I visited the ballpark I’d [...]

Once More–With Feeling

One year ago today I posted the third part of a series on the myth of the “writers and broadcasters wing” at the Hall of Fame (titled “A Wing and a Player”). The confusion over whether such “wings” exist has existed since the J. G. Taylor Spink Award for baseball writing was created in 1962. [...]

Gambling at the Hall of Fame: Part Three

In the last of this three-part series on gambling at the Hall of Fame (please read the first two parts if you haven’t already), it’s time to talk about gambling that goes on AT the museum every day of the year. I’m referring to fantasy sports, and if your reflex response is “gee, that’s no [...]

Gambling at the Hall of Fame: Part Two

Are you ready for the bizarre story I promised you last time, about gambling AT the Hall of Fame? If you haven’t read “Part One” please do so before reading this one. In it, I told about the Hall of Fame refusing to hire me in the mid-1990s because of my background as a Las [...]

Gambling at the Hall of Fame: Part One

I want to tell you an amazing story about gambling at the Hall of Fame, but to appreciate the irony of the story fully, you need the background to put it in context. For that, I have to take you back twenty years to my first tenure in Cooperstown. I arrived here in April 1991, [...]

My Proudest Moment at the Hall of Fame

Maybe it’s fitting that my proudest moment at the Hall of Fame did not occur at the museum or even in my office in the library, but outdoors at the Clark Sports Center. Though I enjoyed every day I spent at the library (except for the last one), we’re coming up on the fifth anniversary [...]

The Most Diabolical Hall of Fame Quiz Ever

I don’t know if “diabolical” is the right word or not for this quiz. I’ve been working on it for a few weeks, and at different times it has seemed demented, ingenious, absurd, hilarious, or just plain sick. The one person I ran some of it by e-mailed me a few days later to call [...]

From Worst To First At The Hall Of Fame

You are looking at a photo of part of the Hall of Fame’s newest exhibit, “One For the Books,” which covers the records and record-keeping of the game. Those of you who have visited the Hall of Fame might recall the exhibit it replaced, which wasn’t called anything–with good reason. The old “records room” was [...]

Don’t Make Me Keep Explaining This

In case you haven’t noticed, relief pitchers are taking it in the shorts so far this season, and there’s no help in sight. Tony LaRussa’s Cardinals alone blew a half-dozen leads in the ninth inning in April, and the late-inning meltdowns are becoming a daily staple. The fact is that more leads are blown in [...]

2010 Was Not the “Year of the Pitcher”

Last summer I posted a blog titled “Not Yet the Year of the Pitcher,” in which I reported on being interviewed by a Bloomberg News reporter who wanted to know why people were calling 2010 the “Year of the Pitcher.”  I disagreed, saying that a half-season was not conclusive. The two pitchers he cited as [...]

The Greatest Pitching Duels of the Century

Sticking to my policy of reviewing only books I can highly recommend, I bring you a gem by Jim Kaplan, long-time “Sports Illustrated” writer and author of a dozen previous baseball books, including a fine biography of Lefty Grove. His new volume, titled The Greatest Game Ever Pitched: Juan Marichal, Warren Spahn, and the Pitching [...]

The Duke’s-Eye View

This has been a tough winter for baseball Hall of Famers. Sparky Anderson died in November, the seemingly indestructible Bob Feller left us in December, and now Duke Snider is gone. I never got to meet Snider, which I’m told was my loss. But he was the protagonist in one of my favorite Hall of [...]

To Preserve History–Or Not To

In my last blog (“Censorship The Hall of Fame Way”), I wrote about the editors of the Hall of Fame’s membership publication, “Memories & Dreams,” censoring the last article I wrote while still working at the Hall of Fame. I urge you to read that article if you haven’t, since this is a follow-up to [...]

Censorship The Hall Of Fame Way

Did you hear about the new edition of “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn” in which there is no evidence that Mark Twain ever used the word “nigger”? If seeing that word here–in any context–bothers you, stop reading this now, go out and buy the latest Bowdlerized edition of a literary classic, and have a nice [...]

Checking A Swing–And Checking It Twice

Baseball fans and historians received an early Christmas present last night from the MLB Network with its special telecast of Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. Only a few months after a long-forgotten kinescope was found in the vault of Bing Crosby, part-owner of the Pirates in 1960, MLB Network staged a long-to-be-remembered event [...]

Fraudulent History 101

So Marvin Miller got screwed again this week in the Hall of Fame balloting. Who didn’t see that coming? Miller certainly saw it coming, undoubtedly the reason why he requested that his name be kept off future Veterans Committee ballots after being snubbed in 2008. That time around, the committee was heavily stacked against him, [...]

Sparky Anderson Even Argued With Class

As a lifelong Reds fan, I was saddened to hear of the death of Sparky Anderson, the man who managed the team during the most glorious period in franchise history. In 1970, he took over a team that had led the National League in runs scored the previous two years, but had finished in the [...]

Bermuda Triangle Behind Home Plate

Something strange has been going on at home plate during the two LCS series. In the space of five games, we have seen five clearly blown calls on balls that never got past the plate. It’s as if there’s no umpire at all back there, or like a wrestling referee the assigned umpire is somehow [...]

A Wing And A Player

Did you know that 153 of the 387 members of the Baseball Hall of Fame never played a game in the major leagues? That seems like a large percentage, doesn’t it, nearly 40%? What are the folks in Cooperstown thinking, putting such a major emphasis on non-players? Does that seem right to you? Well, it [...]

You Heard It Here First

Even though the Mets have entered the phone-it-in stage of the 2010 season, my wife and I found ourselves watching a couple of very good pitching duels between the Mets and Rockies the last two nights. First it was Mike Pelfrey outgunning Ubaldo Jimenez (17-2 coming into the game) to win 1-0. That game hinged [...]

Let’s Re-Elect Dizzy!

Here we go, folks–sing along with me. . . . As anyone knows who pays close attention To America’s favorite game, The announcers and writers do not have a “wing” In the Cooperstown Hall of Fame. Despite all the protests of well-meaning fans And colleagues of mikemen and scribes, The announcers and writers do not [...]

Unfortunately, I Was Right

In 2004, long-time Bay Area sports announcer Lon Simmons won the Ford Frick Award presented annually at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Cooperstown. From that moment, Jon Miller, who idolized Simmons since childhood from listening to him broadcast Giants games, began referring to Simmons as a “Hall of Fame announcer.” Miller, I was [...]

Right On The Nose

My sainted father used to say that a pitcher should have the right to smack his fielders on the nose when they make errors that cost him runs or victories. I couldn’t argue then, and still can’t. Of course, it should work the other way, too. A team should be entitled to pummel any starting [...]

Surprising and Not-So-Surprising First Half

Now that we’re on the verge of the National League’s annual humiliation in the All-Star Game, it’s time to review the first half of the 2010 season. For some teams and players it has been business as usual, with baseball’s daily smorgasbord punctuated by a number of surprises, most recently the failure of the Evil [...]

We Urge You To Take Public Transport

My wife and I made our first trip to Citi Field on Tuesday. For some reason we didn’t get there last season, when the reviews were mixed–favorable comments on the park itself, negative comments on the absence of suggestions that the Mets franchise existed before 2009. For that alone I’m grateful that we waited until [...]

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