The antithesis of the Kingdome: Seattle’s new ballpark

SEATTLE — I paid my first visit June 23 to what is now T-Mobile Park, a delightful place for a baseball game near the shore of Puget Sound. The day was glorious, a Wednesday afternoon in a seam between two heat waves dominating the American West in transition from spring to summer. With the sun […]

This season counts

I spent a relaxing Sunday sitting on our back patio, listening to snippets of four baseball games late in the afternoon, Phillies and Mets on my portable radio, Giants and Brewers on my iPhone, a home-brewed ale in my glass. During the Phillies game against the Cardinals, play-by-play announcer Scott Franzke referred to the statistics […]

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 […]

Who’s worth more? A baseball player or the doctor keeping your wife or child alive?

I opened the papers this morning to read about the Seattle Mariners giving Robinson Cano a 10-year contract for $240 million. The New York Mets apparently have agreed to give Curtis Granderson $60 million over four years. And there was the Jacoby Ellsbury deal with the New York Yankees earlier in the week: 7 years, […]

Who was the best rookie in Major League Baseball in 2011? Freddie Freeman

In the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, this is my rookie year for voting in the group’s end-of-season awards. In the BBA, the Willie Mays Award goes to the top rookie, and here’s my ballot influenced heavily by the great MLB.com statistical rundown on rookies: 1. Freddie Freeman, Atlanta – Braves: Playing virtually every game at 1st […]

Can Ichiro reach 200 hits again?

Ichiro Suzuki has slapped out 200 or more hits each year since he joined the Seattle Mariners in 2001, but his streak is in danger. He went 2-for-4 tonight against Kansas City, bringing his total to 161 (as best as I can tell from MLB.com). That means he’s going to need a lot more two-hit […]

The West Coast: A wasteland for baseball offense

AL, NL, all around the game: the West Coast is a barren landscape for hitters in Major League Baseball. I’m most acutely aware of the offensive struggles of the San Francisco Giants, the defending world champions who rank last in runs, 28th in hits and 25th in home runs. The Giants play a lot of […]

Thanks to television, the NFL is truly the national sport

Baseball may traditionally be America’s national pastime, but as a spectator sport football is king. That’s a tribute to television broadcasting. In a continent spanning four time zones (and I’m excluding Alaska and Hawaii), football has an enormous advantage in capturing the attention of the public. Even in an era of Monday night and occasional […]

A tip of the cap to Lou Piniella

[picapp align=”right” wrap=”true” link=”term=Lou+Piniella&iid=7044743″ src=”http://view.picapp.com/pictures.photo/image/7044743/tampa-bay-devil-rays/tampa-bay-devil-rays.jpg?size=500&imageId=7044743″ width=”234″ height=”350″ /] In a graceful move, Lou Piniella has announced he’ll retire after wrapping up the season with the Chicago Cubs. Piniella has distinguished himself as someone who excelled as a player and a manager, a combination that is uncommon if not rare. I’ve followed Piniella’s career for a […]

An American icon: The pocket baseball schedule

CLEVELAND – Besides the crocuses poking their way up through the snow, one of the first signs of spring in northeast Ohio is the emergence of the annual Cleveland Indians’ pocket schedule. I picked my copy up at a shop counter the other day while visiting relatives. The schedule, neatly folded and tucked into my […]