Alcohol and baseball: A dangerous combination

Austin Kearns of the Cleveland Indians was pulled over on a drunk driving charge in Kentucky. Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers was picked up in Florida for alleged DUI. And on Tuesday night this week, Coco Crisp of the Oakland Athletics was picked up on DUI and other charges in Arizona. This has not […]

For Oscar night, a list of my favorite baseball movies

Oscar takes center stage tonight at the annual Academy Awards, and this is a good time to reveal my list of favorite baseball movies. The list is just that: my favorites, influenced as much by sentiment and personal experience as it is by objective judgments on quality film-making. A few ground rules: It contains movies that […]

Google’s news archive a treasure for baseball researchers, fans

For the baseball fan and the baseball researcher, the Google News Archive is a dream come true. Point your browser to news.google.com/archivesearch and at your fingertips you have access to an unimaginable bounty of newspaper and magazine clippings on the grand old game, not to mention just about any subject you might care to […]

Tribe denies Grady Sizemore trade rumors

It’s good to hear the Cleveland Indians deny emphatically rumors that they might trade away Grady Sizemore. It’s even better news that Sizemore will take the field about mid-March during spring training as he continues rehabilitation from knee surgery last season. The Tribe needs Sizemore. He’s a dynamic presence in the lineup and a fan […]

With “Jesus” at his side, Manny to be Manny in Tampa Bay

Multiple reports tonight citing unnamed sources say that Manny Ramirez and Johnny Damon will be reunited this season as members of the Tampa Bay Rays. While the news isn’t quite as big in 2011 as it would have been a few years ago, it’s still worth a “wow.” Manny and Johnny, the former with his dreads […]

Caps, logos and the aesthetics of baseball

While baseball teams have plenty of crass commercialism in the names of their arenas and stadiums, at least the uniforms aren’t sullied by corporate logos as they are in other countries. Over at ESPN.com, Jim Caple laments that major league baseball team logos are becoming more corporate, blander and not nearly as much fun as […]

Oakland Raiders cut Cable, and other musings on big-league coaching

Word is out tonight from the Bay Area that Al Davis has given the heave-ho to Coach Tom Cable, who guided the Raiders to an 8-8 record this season, their best in recent years. Evidently improving operations is not enough in Oakland, where it’s “just win, baby.” Or so it’s supposed to be. The Raiders […]

A new year, and it’s about time I got started

We’re already two days into 2011, and it’s high time I got cracking here at the Ball Caps Blog. I can’t quite explain my absence the last several weeks other than to speculate that it may be fallout from surgery in November. I just haven’t had the drive to post. Nonetheless, I’ll offer a few […]

Musings on new ballparks and competitiveness

Back in the 1970s, I figured the surest way to assure your major league ballclub a pennant and victory in the World Series was to build a new stadium. I watched it happen in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh with Riverfront Stadium and Three Rivers Stadium, respectively. But baseball is more complex than that, as any number […]

Tracking down my first major-league baseball game

The Internet was invented for us baseball fans. No other sport offers such a rich trove of statistics, and the Web is chock full of sites that slice and dice them. One of my favorite is baseballlibrary.com, which enabled me to track down the precise date of the first major league game I attended. I […]