A couple of links today: — Calvin Peete was miraculous. There’s no other way to say it, really. He died on Wednesday at the age of 71. I wrote a few words about him. — I’m hoping most of you saw this already on Twitter or wherever, but I’m doing a little baseball poll here. Hoping…
Month: April 2015
A Strange Argument Against the NL DH
I do not remember baseball before the DH. I was six years old when the designated hitter rule was implemented in the American league, and I have no memory at all of the discussion and fury that went with the rule change. The DH, for me, was just always there, like the sun or the…
The Best Pitcher In Baseball History
We can argue about the logic of it all, but it’s pretty obvious that different sorts of cheating in sports inspires different levels of rage. For instance, as alluded to in yesterday’s post, the Los Angeles Dodgers pretty openly cheated during the 1960s when they built up the pitching mound at Dodger Stadium higher than the…
Koufax
When I was in my young 20s, I sold off my entire baseball card collection. I needed the money.* But, in addition, I had this powerful impulse that it was time to grow up. True, this impulse came to me later than it does to most people, but still the day arrived when I looked…
The Museum of Nice Players
OK, it has been a little while since I’ve done kind of a weird baseball post, so let’s try one here. I woke up the other morning with the number 19 on my mind, no idea why. Maybe it was an homage to Bernie Kosar or Bob Feller or the Paul Hardcastle song or magic…
A few links
We’ll get back going again here next week with the next baseball player on the 100 and a few other things I’m kicking round. In the meantime, a bunch of links here: — Really enjoyed this one … caught up with Jackie Stiles, the all-time leaders scorer in women’s Division I basketball. I’ve been writing…
How do you solve a problem like Dalkowski?
Opening day, and I go back to 1962 — the story of Steve Dalkowski and Earl Weaver. Did Dalkowski throw a baseball harder than any person who ever lived? We’ll never know for sure, of course, and it’s hard to pinpiont exactly what “throwing the hardest pitch” even means. Later this month, Jontahan Hock will unveil…
The Brevity of Pitching Stardom
Justin Verlander just went on disabled list. It could be something minor — but such things for 30-something pitchers are rarely minor. Here, by Baseball Reference WAR, were the five best pitchers in baseball in 2011 — we’re talking just four years ago: 1. Roy Halladay 2. Cliff Lee 3. Justin Verlander 4. CC Sabathia…
April Fool
All April Fool’s jokes are stupid. Well, OK, maybe not all — there was the fun George Plimpton thing and there probably were one or two others that worked — but almost all are stupid. For instance, I’m pretty sure my daughter was just April Fooled into sending me about 20 frantic texts about…