THEY’RE BACK
THEY’RE BACK Forget all this nonsense about the Monday after the Super Bowl; and forget ESPN’s world dominance and their creation of “Opening Night” the Sunday before. Opening Day – Monday – should be a National Holiday. A day when kids are off school (oh, right, they are already), and parents have freedom from meetings,…
HOWE WILL JOSH’S STORY END?
HOWE WILL JOSH’S STORY END? As I think I may have mentioned here in the past, each morning, before I even put two feet on the floor, I check Peter Gammons’ “Around the Majors” blog. He always have useful tidbits from the day before, and loads of advanced metrics that even true baseball nerds would…
Opening Gay (A Conversation)
OPENING GAY (A Conversation) Daniel Murphy, the Mets second baseman, skipped Opening Day last season to be with his wife for the birth of their first child. He got a ton a flak for that in the New York media – as would be expected as they give flak for essentially anything. At the time…
LIFE LESSONS
LIFE LESSONS The crack of the bat. The pop of the glove. The smell of the grass. The click of the smart phone? Ah, Spring Training is here. If you are wondering which of the above is not like the other, you may have missed the current brouhaha involving Curt Schilling and his daughter, Gabby.…
FOR THE LOVE OF . . . PART 2
FOR THE LOVE OF . . . PART 2 So now we know. Maybe. Sort of. Did Max Scherzer sign the second richest pitching contract in history for the love of money or to win a ring? Or both? One thing we do know, another team had to offer $66M more than Detroit to make…
FOR THE LOVE OF . . .
FOR THE LOVE OF . . . What do we want from our athletes? What is – or should be – their driving force? They play for the love of . . . what, exactly? From a young age we are taught – we are told – it is “all about the rings”. I remember…
HOPE
HOPE Hope is a dangerous thing. We as fans – and as fathers – often fall victim to the curse of “hope”. We hope that our team will win the World Series; we hope that we get that raise or sign that client; we hope that our kids grow up healthy and happy. And somewhere,…
112
112 In early March, we headed to Arizona (and some headed to Florida) and watched PFP on side fields. We sat on the grass and drank cold beer in the warm late-winter sun. We harangued superstars, has-beens, and never-will-bes for autographs and baseballs. We got our juices flowing, then they “headed north”. For seven months…
IT’S ONLY JUST A GAME
IT’S ONLY A GAME The tragic and shocking news of Oscar Taveras’s passing on Sunday cast a pall over Game 5 of the World Series. Buster Posey, the potential new face of baseball had this to say: “My first thought was, ‘This game is not that important.’ I mean, we make so much about the…
THAT JUST CAN’T HAPPEN
THAT JUST CAN’T HAPPEN Over the past few years, I have seen my son strike out looking with runners on base in late innings situations. And each time I have the same response: “that just can’t happen”. I coach my son’s travel team, and I find myself saying, on a weekly basis, after one pratfall…