MLB 2020: Can’t find my way home

This post contain less rational thought than (presumably) most of my posts exhibit. Essentially, I’m screaming into the void. I’m frustrated that the owners and players have gone ’round and ’round on a 2020 season everywhere except on the base paths. Even more, I sympathize with the thousands of people whose livelihoods are tied to […]

Pitchers who rake —a dying, underappreciated art

The chatter around the Cold Stove League today is that Major League Baseball is likely to allow a universal designated hitter for whatever shortened season we get in 2020 as well as 2021 and, inevitably, forever after. For years, I’ve been expecting this change to come, all the while fervently hoping it wouldn’t. Metaphorically speaking, […]

My baseball career, corrected

Following a line of reasoning current among some federal officials that coronavirus would go away if we merely stopped testing, I had an emotional breakthrough today in looking back at my youth baseball career. I didn’t realize it until now but, had we not kept statistics, as a teenager I was rocketing on a trajectory […]

Synthetic conflicts and more: Media league softball

Sports Illustrated had a great story the other day on the life and times of the Central Park Press League, a softball competition that flourished for a couple of decades before withering and, at last in 2018, dying. The story by John Walters is a terrific read for anyone, but for this wire service and […]

Nine positions and universal truth

I got a serious chuckle out of the graphic posted this morning on the Instagram account called The Baseball Authority. The graphic is a distillation of youth baseball, mid-point on the spectrum between cynicism and truth. In grade school gym class ballgames, I started by playing second base. I wasn’t the smallest kid (he was […]

Post-game drivel

Here’s an absurd, imagined scene: yours truly as manager of the Cleveland Indians, addressing reporters after a ballgame in a press availability that is broadcast live to the masses. The absurdity is not so much that I’d be manager of the Tribe (although it certainly is daft). No, what’s loony to me is that across […]

Missing baseball? Check out these old radio broadcasts

Baseball on the radio forms the soundtrack to much of my life, and I miss hearing live games. Fortunately, the Internet Archive has a trove of old broadcasts that can scratch your audio itch. The broadcasts, free of copyright restrictions, run from the 1934 All-Star game through the 1973 World Series. I’ve sampled several games […]

A baseball idyll, COVID-19 edition

My baseball-crazy next-door neighbors have set up a virtual academy in their back yard, and it brings joy to my heart. It’s a family of Phillies fans, as affirmed by the tell-tale red and white “P” sticker clinging the back of their SUV. The boys, about 12 and 9, emerge from the house at sun-up […]

Hear me roar about Comerica Park in Detroit

This is, of course, the Ball Caps Blog, so at this point in its resurrected phase I reckon I should post something again about baseball caps. Herewith is my latest acquisition, a Detroit Tigers cap that I bought last summer during my first visit to Comerica Park. The photo will go down in my personal […]

Keeping the Tiger team intact

When your season is unexpectedly cut short by a pandemic, what’s a college coach to do? At Princeton, Scott Bradley has turned to virtual tools to keep coaching. Through the university’s athletic fellows program, I’ve had a glimpse of how the head coach and his assistants have managed to keep the team together and inspire […]