Head Shots and Humanity
In honor of Dustin May’s 22nd birthday, there is an issue that has been on my mind for a while. When my son was seven years old, he took a comebacker to his left eye. On impact, he dropped to the ground, the batter advanced to first base, and, as you might expect, everything stopped…
What We Do For Our Kids
When we decided to send our youngest to sleepaway camp in Wisconsin four years ago, I didn’t appreciate that it would require me to make two trips to the Midwest each summer. Of course, there is always the possibility that she could fly alone, but insofar as she was seven years old her first time, we…
Actions Should Have Consequences
Last weekend, in what turned out to be his final act as a member of the Cleveland Indians, Trevor Bauer hurled a ball from the pitcher’s mound into the batter’s eye beyond the center field fence – some 375 feet away. It was a moment of pique. It was, in Bauer’s words, “unbecoming, childish, and…
Baseball: The Tie That Binds
About eight months ago my son decided he would do a summer program at the University of Texas. This would be an opportunity for him – while still in high school – to live in a dorm, experience college life, and be on his own for a few weeks. It would be an opportunity for…
Three Million Reasons Not to Care
Since 2001, the Dodgers have drawn more than three million fans every year, save for 2011, when they fell 65,000 short. Not only are they on pace to hit the mark again this year, they might set their all-time record (2007’s 3.85 million is the number to beat). To paraphrase an Iowan ghost, if you…
This Isn’t That Hard
In 2015, at the height of the Matt Harvey inning-limit nonsense, I wrote an article about the insanity of all of it. For those of you who don’t recall the piece, I had two thoughts: (1) An inning count is a silly way to measure pitcher usage – that a more accurate analysis would utilize…
Money for Nothing – Why Give Pre-Arbitration Raises?
As I may have previously mentioned, I am a very lucky guy. Among the many reasons, I married a woman who doesn’t know a ton about baseball, but is always interested in learning. And, for that reason, she has no compunction about listening to me drone on about the game’s minutiae for long soliloquies. Over…
Bell(inger) of the Box
We are a month-plus into the season, and it seems as if the National League MVP race has been whittled down to two players. Christian Yelich started the season en fuego, hitting four home runs in his first four games, and 13 in his first 22 (two more were robbed). Equally impressive has been the…
Who Do Agents Represent?
Shortly before I graduated law school, I decided I didn’t want to be a lawyer (well planned, I know). So, nearly six figures in debt, with graduation on the horizon, I visited a corporate consultant to figure out what the “anything” is that you can do with a law degree. I sat in that office…
Crushed Davis
I moved to Los Angeles in the summer of 1979. At that time, the Dodgers had an impenetrable infield, with Cey, Russell, Garvey, and Lopes. Davey Lopes was in his eighth big league season, and he would go on to play in eight more. But by 1981, Lopes was beginning to see the end in…