What’s the best time zone for baseball fans?

Road trips are rough on major league teams, particularly when making the big leap from Eastern time to Pacific time or vice versa. It’s also an issue for us baseball fans, who have to show nimble ingenuity to catch the broadcasts of our favorite teams. This week it’s been a trade-off for me: the San […]

Voodoo and the art of fantasy baseball

I could have told you that Aubrey Huff was going to break out of his slump. I benched him on my fantasy team this week. Those who play in gung ho competitive leagues or in the more casual settings that I prefer harbor voodoo beliefs that our maneuvers on the fantasy diamond have an impact […]

Giants, Dodgers embrace rivalry, denounce violence

When you get 25,000 or 50,000 people together for a baseball game and throw in a few beers, it’s inevitable that some fans are going to misbehave. I’ve seen that ugly side of baseball in major league stadiums up close. One of the worst episodes was in 1977 or 1978 when a nasty fight broke […]

After the first full week of play, some startling names atop the baseball standings

As I write this post, the Yankees and Red Sox (again!) are playing on the Sunday night telecast. If the Yankees win, they’ll manage a tie in first place of the American League East not with the Sox but with the Baltimore Orioles. Whoa. And check the AL Central standings. The Indians, who (be honest) […]

Taking the plunge in fantasy baseball one more time

Fantasy baseball tears me in two directions. On the one hand, I love the concept of creating my own team to see what might happen if I were picking the lineups. On the other hand, pulling apart the game at the seams and stitching into something else should never eclipse the real thing. So I […]

Twitter and baseball: A good match

Twitter has been around since 2006, but it was last year when it really took off. And 2010 was the year I discovered the power of Twitter for us baseball fans. It was early in the season when I started using the #SFGiants hashtag, and I unexpectedly found myself caught up in a loose-knit community […]

Gaining a new appreciation for the cactus in Cactus League

A family matter brought my wife and me to Tucson for a few days, the closest I’ve ever gotten to Spring Training in Arizona. While time did not permit us to travel north to the Phoenix area where the major league teams are training, I was able to stop by briefly at Hi Corbett Field […]

Adrian Gonzalez in the American League East: This should be interesting

Is this guy eager to play ball or what? Adrian Gonzalez checked in to the Boston training camp in Florida yesterday, the first Red Sox player to do so. It will be fascinating to see how Gonzalez does in his first season for the BoSox after five seasons with the San Diego Padres. I have […]

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 […]

Peering past Super Bowl Sunday to the start of Spring Training

We have one more week of bread-and-circus hoopla leading up to the Super Bowl, and then we can shift our full attention to what really matters: baseball. Spring training is just around the corner. Knowing that pitchers and catchers will soon be breaking out the balls and mitts keeps us going through the cold months. […]