Month: December 2018

In the moments after Harold Baines was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday night by the “Today’s Game Era” Committee — and, wow, that was a stunner — the most-asked question after, “Huh?” was, “What does this mean?” Well, more directly, the questions were like: “What does this mean for Edgar Martinez?” “What…

All this week we’re taking a closer look at the 10 people on the Today’s Game Era Ballot for the Hall of Fame. I’ve written a lot about George Steinbrenner over the years. He has been endlessly fascinating to me. To end this series, I’m going to put together some of those words I’ve written about…

All this week we’re taking a closer look at the 10 people on the Today’s Game Era Ballot for the Hall of Fame. Because I’m a crazy person, I sometimes like to think of a developing baseball stat as a performer with big dreams (!). “Someday,” she announces when she’s very young, like in the second…

All this week we’re taking a closer look at the 10 people on the Today’s Game Era Ballot for the Hall of Fame. On April 16, 1970, Lou Piniella made an out at every base. This doesn’t have anything to do with his Hall of Fame case. This really doesn’t have anything to do with anything….

All this week we’re taking a closer look at the 10 people on the Today’s Game Era Ballot for the Hall of Fame. There’s a beautiful irony in that some of the greatest hitting coaches in baseball history — Charlie Lau, Walt Hriniak and Kevin Long, for example — couldn’t actually hit a lick themselves. Well,…

All this week we’re taking a closer look at the 10 people on the Today’s Game Era Ballot for the Hall of Fame. In 1995, Davey Johnson had one of the strangest seasons anyone has ever had in the history of baseball. It also happened to be the first full season I spent as a sports…

All this week we’re taking a closer look at the 10 people on the Today’s Game Era Ballot for the Hall of Fame. In 1988, Orel Hershiser led the National League in wins. One year later, in 1989, Hershiser led the league in losses. In 1988, Hershiser won the Cy Young Award, got some MVP votes,…

All this week we’re taking a closer look at the 10 people on the Today’s Game Era Ballot for the Hall of Fame. There’s a Hall of Fame case to be made for Will Clark, but if we’re being honest about things, it really isn’t any better than the case to be made for John Olerud…

All this week we’re taking a closer look at the 10 people on the Today’s Game Era Ballot for the Hall of Fame. Joe Carter had a knack for RBIs. Yes, we all know that runs-batted-in is a team-context stat — you need runners on base in order to drive them in — and that the…

All this week we’re taking a closer look at the 10 people on the Today’s Game Era Ballot for the Hall of Fame. So let me tell you an Albert Belle story, one I’ve been thinking about for, wow, I guess it has been more than 20 years now. This happened at Yankee Stadium, and it…