Steppenwolf is one of the most famous and most misunderstood of the novels of Nobel Prize winning-author Herman Hesse. I’m having trouble understanding it myself, fifty pages in; I’d nearly given up, only to see Hardball Times editor Jason Linden give it his highest praise. Written from the perspective of Germany between the wars, the…
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…
One Saturday in June, a little girl opened the door to the hall closet and a stack of newspapers slid out. She squatted on the floor to look at them. The paper on the top had a photo of a man lying on the floor in a halo of light, surrounded by worried people. The…
Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way—ours is a family of Mets fans. My dad and his younger brother have always loved baseball, but my grandma was by far the biggest diehard in the family. This is our first season, and the Mets’, without her. My grandma liked to tell the story of…
Tampa Bay y Seattle se emparejan para otro intercambio, con los Mariners agregando a Alex Colomé y Denard Span.
(with apologies to Natasha Trethewey’s “Myth”) The starter is the closer is the opener again, baseball writ by Rilke’s refrain: we must change our lives or suffer being left behind. Adapt or die. Some dislike the new, what’s bad for baseball, bullpen starts. Or: the JUCO prospect who almost didn’t play. Realize the scrap of…
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…
For the first couple of weeks, he tries to learn everyone’s names, from the trio of outfielders who all look alike, young and tanned and hungry, to the seemingly unending stream of guys coming out of the bullpen, a clown car unloading. So many he sorts them into two groups: Beard and No Beard, and…
What baseball would look like if it were modeled after different chess variants.
A Bog to Sell You By: Holly M. Wendt Baseball is a game of careful measurements and fixed dimensions: 60 feet, 6 inches from the mound to home, 90 feet between the bases. Outfields vary a bit; MLB’s official ruling indicates that “parks constructed by professional teams after June 1, 1958 must have a minimum…
One thing that being a middle-aged dad and being an MLB closer have in common.
So in the evening, again, we started ahead of the porters and went down and across the highways and through a deep thicket of strip malls and across a train depot to the stadium, where the ground was broken and the walking difficult, and afternoon sun was very hot. We walked until we reached the…
TURN DOWN YOUR LIGHTS (Where applicable) In a not too distant future Way down in Anaheim There was a guy named Albert Not exactly in his prime He worked for the Angels baseball team Just a few hits from a milestone dream He did a good job batting every day But Mike Scioscia had Ohtani…