A Gold Medal Vacation I’m back from Salt Lake City, having spent the past nine days totally immersed in the Winter Olympics. My friends and I had an absolute blast–our vacation was everything we’d hoped for and more. I’d intended to post something of our goings-on, but our schedule, with 5 AM wakeups and often …
Archive of entries posted by Jay Jaffe
Bad Rug Bud Beat Down Add “the law” to the growing list of things Bud Selig does not have on his side these days: baseball fans, baseball players, politicians, economists, Minnesotans, common sense, decency, and the truth, to name a few. On Monday, the Minnesota Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal to lift an …
Hope Springs Eternal Here in New York, it isn’t much of a stretch to envision the local nine embarking upon a playoff-caliber season. Seven straight postseason appearances have raised the bar far beyond that measure; a playoff run isn’t just hoped for, it’s expected by Boss Steinbrenner. The Yankees hunt bigger game(s), and the braintrusts’s …
Snuffing the Arsonist Seattle lefty reliever Norm Charlton was recently diagnosed with not just a torn rotator cuff but a torn labrum as well. The former Nasty Boy obviously won’t pitch during the 2002 season, and at 39, might finally be done. This item caught my attention because Charlton put up a strong season with …
Insert Home Run Trot Here I seem to have won an award given out by a website called Sports Central. While it’s not quite the same as Ed McMahon coming to my door with an oversized check, I am honored to be ANYBODY’s site of the week (and now, the Unemployed Yankee Fans of Greater …
The Jay Ballers of the World, Part II The second part of my research piece on ballplayers named Jay, which covers the hitters, is now up. Here I present to you the All-Jays: SS Jay Bell 1B Jay Kirke CF Jay Johnstone (with Jay Payton as defensive replacement) RF Jay Buhner LF Jay Gibbons DH …
The Futility Infielder Sweepstakes Right now, the most amazing thing about the Yankees’ offseason activity isn’t the big-name free agents they’ve signed, the money they’ve spent, or the way they’ve retooled their offense. It’s their bizarre attempt to corner the market in futility infielders (and if I know a trend when I see it, it’s …
The Jay Ballers of the World, Part I Off and on over the past six months, I’ve been working on a piece about all of the ballplayers named Jay who have appeared in the major leagues. Thanks to the wonders of Baseball-Reference, Retrosheet, the Baseball Library and other sites around the web, I’ve compiled capsule …
A Banner Day A set of banners which I designed for the Baseball-Reference.com website are now in place: the main banner, the banner from the player search results, and a link banner over at Baseball Primer. These are something I offered to do for Sean Forman’s fine site back during the summer, but the process …
Clearing the Bases Finally a chance to catch up on a few things without worrying about what’s going to be in Part III of the next continuing series: • Ozzie Smith was the only player who garnered enough support to gain election to the Hall of Fame. While I had the Wizard on my ballot, the …