Focus On The Process: From “Let’s Go” To Letting Go To Watching Him Go
An owner buys a team and hires a general manager. The general manager hires a field manager and together they go about building a championship team. Along the way there are hiccups and bumps, and wonderful and happy moments. The road is never straight, but the trials and tribulations — the journey — are what…
Don Mattingly Is a Hero and Nomar Garciaparra Is Not Much Discussed, and Yet Their Careers Numbers Are Shockingly Similar
Sometimes it is fun to look at two wholly different players and see how very similar they were. Today we will look at two guys who essentially played on opposite sides of second base*, one of whom stayed on the Hall of Fame ballot for 15 years, topping out at 28.2% of the vote; and…
Bryce Harper vs. Aaron Judge – Who You Got?
Bryce Harper became a sensation when he was 16 years old, appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated. He forewent his final two years of high school (obtaining his GED) to enroll in junior college, making him draft eligible at the age of 18. He was selected 1/1 in the 2010 draft by the Washington…
40 Years After the “Rick Camp Game”
July 4th marked the 40th anniversary of what has colloquially become known as the “Rick Camp Game.” But, as you will see, it was a whole lot more than that. As is typical for a 4th of July game, this battle between the visiting New York Mets and the hometown Atlanta Braves, was scheduled to…
In Celebration of Carlos Delgado’s Career
Over a 17-year career, former Toronto Blue Jay, Florida Marlin, and New York Met Carlos Delgado slashed .280/.383/.546/.929, which totals a 138 OPS+. Over those years, he won three Silver Slugger awards, was named to two All-Star teams* and was in the Top-10 in MVP voting four times. *In retrospect, only two is a crime.…
Baseball Is A Game Built on Fathers and Sons
A version of this article first appeared in the May 13th edition of the IBWAA “Here’s The Pitch” newsletter. In the last two weeks, two former big leaguers sat in the stands and watched their sons come through in the clutch. In the sixth inning of a 1-1 game two Saturdays ago, Minnesota Twins infielder…
Hitting a Home Run In Your First MLB At-Bat Is Exciting, Not Indicative of Anything
Two weeks ago, Matt Gorski of the Pittsburgh Pirates hit his first major league home run in his first major league at-bat, on the first pitch he saw. With that swing, Gorski became the 136th member of this not-so-exclusive club – the first MLB at-bat homer club. And he joined an inclusive subset of that…
Aaron Judge, The 2024 World Series, and Sliding Doors
My wife is always giving me hard time about playing the sliding doors game. She thinks it’s a waste of time. I had a colleague who once gave me a t-shirt that reads: “What if there were no hypothetical questions?”. And one my favorite books is Mike Pesca’s anthology, “Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs…
Opening Day Performances May or May Not Be a Sign of Long-Term Success
Last Thursday was MLB’s Opening Day. A day of renewal, as teams start the season with a clean slate and great hope for the future. The same is true for the players. While they all start with a .000 batting average, that can only go up from there. Some players get their seasons off to…
Charlie Grimm, a Glove, Wrigley Field, and Generations of Baseball Love
Today would be my late wife’s 54th birthday. In addition to giving me nine wonderful years of marriage and three beautiful children, she gave me her dad, Marty. Marty was an interesting man. He never met an illness he didn’t have or couldn’t diagnose (with the help of the Physicians’ Desk Reference that he kept…