Top pitchers and MVP for the National League 2012

In fulfillment of my Baseball Bloggers Alliance obligations, here are my ballots for the Walter Johnson and Willie Mays awards, which are the organization’s equivalents of the Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards. I’m posting for the National League only, as I follow it more closely than the American League. Walter Johnson Award 1. […]

Manager of the year in baseball? Bob Melvin

Who was the best manager in baseball in 2012? I’m going with Bob Melvin of the Oakland Athletics. My criteria are twofold: I go with the skipper whose team is a winner and whose team achieved its success in disproportion to its expectations and talent. By those standards, Melvin is a slam dunk (and I […]

Baltimore-Washington wins the 2012 Major League Baseball metro-area title

Which metro area had the most successful baseball season? After listening to the Athletics overtake the Rangers on my way home from work last evening, I was all set to declare the Bay Area the cross-league, total victory champions. But then I remembered that Baltimore-Washington is eligible, and a check of the standings this morning […]

Red Sox Nation shows its pride on Massachusetts license plates

Red Sox fans are crazy for their team, and as I traveled New England while on vacation last week I was struck by the number of BoSox specialty Massachusetts license plates I saw. They were a common site on Cape Cod, on Boston area highways, and I even spotted them in New Hampshire and Vermont. […]

Which former Philly is faring worse on the West Coast?

Listening to the Dodgers-Giants game last evening (thanks, ESPN Radio!), I got to wondering which of the Phillies traded to the two NL West teams was performing worse: Shane Victorino or Hunter Pence? Neither has set the world on fire. Pence is hitting just .225 for the Giants and has an on-base percentage of .290, […]

Baseball has been good to me, through 56 years

Today I celebrate my 56th birthday and as I was born in ’56, the day seems doubly special. I woke up thinking I need to something I had never done before: find out what happened in baseball that day, Aug. 26, 1956, for my hometown team, the Cleveland Indians. They played the Washington Senators that […]

A pitching matchup to skip work for

The most intriguing pitching matchup in baseball today has to be Tim Lincecum and Stephen Strasburg. The game will be played in the sunshine at AT&T Park in San Francisco this afternoon, and I’d love to be there. Lincecum has gone from being one of the undisputed top few pitchers in the game the past […]

Great idea from Rolling Stone: A time-travel ticket to the baseball game of your choice

Rolling Stone isn’t a place I normally look for baseball news, but the hard rocking magazine came up with a gem today. Writer Dan Epstein posed the question to several musicians: if you could travel back in time to one game, what would it be? Epstein himself chose a 1976 game between the Tigers and […]

The Brewers helmet hangs in a new home

My beloved, talismanic Milwaukee Brewers batting helmet is hanging in a new home. More accurately, I should say it was hanging, briefly, above the mantel until it toppled off the too-short nail in the wall over the fireplace in our new house. The living room – like every other room in the house – is […]

Did R.A. Dickey get hosed by not being named National League starter for the All-Star Game?

I was a bit late in catching up to the news today that Matt Cain was named National League starter for the All-Star Game tomorrow in Kansas City. That surprised me, because I figured R.A. Dickey of the New York Mets would likely be chosen by virtue of his higher victory total. What didn’t surprise […]