What’s it like being Ian Kinsler? What’s it like being one of the best players in the league (but never getting the right amount of attention) for your 10-year prime through a combination of above-average (but not eye-popping) offense, above-average (but not flashy) defense, and above-average baserunning (without gaudy stolen-base totals)? What’s it like being…
During the top of the 7th inning in Saturday’s Dodgers-Brewers contest, the camera’s gaze took on an increased intensity. After Corbin Burnes walked Max Muncy and gave up singles to Manny Machado and Cody Bellinger, Jeremy Jeffress took the mound for Milwaukee. Joc Pederson served up a single. With the bases loaded and the Dodgers…
One of the things I like about being a writer is that you can always keep everything. Artists and sculptors have to mine their own souls, transfer that material into physical form, and then give it away to other people. Musicians and actors can record themselves, sure, but their performances are trapped in that moment…
Not too far from Williamsport, home of the Little League World Series, lies Ricketts Glen State Park. Covering 13,050 acres (or 4,350 baseball fields) in parts of three counties, it is a jewel of a state park. Its Lake Jean is large enough to accommodate both a busy swimming beach and lily-padded arms and stream-fed…
The stalks of the tomato plants have turned black and grown too tall, spindly Dalí horrors visited by one kind of vegetal blight or bacteria or another. On the heels of this wet summer, the green of their leaves glows virulent, and the heirloom tomato produces softball-sized fruits that have only flirted with ripeness before…
NEW YORK—The landmark criminal case against alleged heinous serial killer Stats took a turn yesterday as United States Attorney Geoffrey Berman, taking the rare step of handling the matter himself, watched a noted sabermetrician whom he had called as a witness hand the defense a gift-wrapped package of reasonable doubt for the jury. Russell A….
By the baseball diamond, behind the bleachers and dugouts and the rusting fence, there used to be a forest. You spent a lot of time there as a kid. You picked up plants and old bones, pretended you were a wolf-person. In your memory you are always very young, and yet somehow always alone; it…
On the west-bound edge of the turn lane, covers splayed and pages waving, a book. Some traffic-based injury—or the hands that jettisoned the book—dislodged a small chunk of pages, which lay a little more centered in the lane. What was knowable about the book in the few seconds it was visible as I drove by?…
On Monday morning, I’ll be at my annual optometrist appointment, trying not to blink at the little puff of air during the first stage of the glaucoma test, trying not to squint against the lights bright and brighter, trying to decide which of the two lens options really is better in the series of minute…
1. The crows complaining from the maple tree outside the window sound enough like that one row of fans in Philadelphia in 2006, Mike Lieberthal at the plate in the second game of the September 3 double-header against Atlanta, the one that isn’t the one where Ryan Howard hit three home runs. Lieberthal stands in…
All across baseball, teams are deciding how to direct the season’s water, and some riverbeds we know are going to be parched.
Deadspin published a nice piece by Joe DeLessio on Friday about digging through his late father’s massive, overwhelming collection of memorabilia, most of which was baseball stuff, most of which of that was Orioles stuff. The word “stuff” is often a filler term where a better, more precise descriptor isn’t coming to mind, but in…
Perhaps the primary crusade in baseball analysis over the past decade is the drive toward the distillation of the baseball player’s true talent. On a throughline from wins above replacement to independent pitching metrics to BABIP noise to video-capture data, every aim has been to sluff off some of the noise, the complicating factors, that…
Intentional violence does not inhere in baseball, though you could be fooled by, you know, watching a major-league game and seeing the not-insignificant amount of actual and threatened violence regularly on view. I apologize for the hot take because those are not this forum’s métier, but life would be better if fact matched theory in…
By Wednesday, the arugula had drowned. One of the pepper plants sank in its pot, and the basil, larger, more robust, was covered in slugs—the small invertebrate crew of some verdant, sinking Pequod, clinging to their own green mast. The plants themselves had conditions of their own: every leaf riddled with holes, symptoms, surely, of…
Sure, Shed Long pic.twitter.com/O6r1Plwrox — James Fegan (@JRFegan) May 8, 2018 What other uses does Pensacola Blue Wahoos second baseman Shed Long’s weird plastic thing–which he places on his bat for wind resistance on practice swings–possibly have? (Note: It has his name on it. His name is Shed Long.) –A nametag, obviously. It’s unwieldy and…