Happy New Year, everybody! I’m back in NYC, still buried under an avalanche of work, beating editors back with a fungo bat while sleep is in short supply. When the news came down that CT scans of Mark McGwire’s 70th home run showed a ball that was out of MLB’s specifications, it rang a bell …
Greetings from Salt Lake City, where I’m wrapping up the first leg of my holiday travels. I’ve been working on various baseball projects as much as I’ve been celebrating this week (even on my birthday), and I’m still not sure that the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t an oncoming train, but that’s …
Baseball Prospectus has a new blog, and I took the opportunity to follow up my latest Hall of Fame ballot piece with my Unfiltered debut, featuring a couple of JAWS-flavored notes on Jeff Bagwell (who retired today) and Cal Ripken, Jr. Enjoy!
Yes, I’m still alive. My social life has been reduced to an afterthought. Mealtimes last 20 minutes if I’m alone, maybe 22 minutes if my wife is around (she’s a saint, and she understands what this time of year means for me). My apartment looks like a used bookstore after an earthquake hit, with a …
I spent Thankgiving week halfway around the globe in Barcelona, my wife and I having cashed in a nest egg of Frequent Flyer miles for a pair of almost-free tickets. Had a great time over there except for the loss of a beloved, custom-made jacket and the trickle of surreal baseball news coming to me …
The only baseball I ever retrieved at a ballgame was at a Walla Walla Padres game in 1980; my grandparents lived in that sleepy little Washington town, and as my grandfather took us to many games in the early ’80s I saw future stars like Tony Gwynn and John Kruk play many times. Other future …
The picture above is a rather typical shot of my home office these days, with books, magazines, papers, gadgets and discs strewn everywhere. I’m nearing the end of my second set of player comments for Baseball Prospectus 2007, and since I’m about to head out of town for a long Thanksgiving break, I thought I’d …
How apathetic am I about the outcome of the 2006 World Series? Well, it’s Wednesday, and the Series ended last Friday, with the Cardinals defeating the Tigers, four games to one. World Champeens, and I’m only just now getting around to blogging it. I guess I missed the parade. This was kind of like 2004, …
A Baseball Prospectus reader brought to my attention a rather unfortunate error in my World Series Game Two diary. Namely that the list of scoreless inning streaks we discussed and passed along is for a single postseason, not overall consecutive scoreless postseason innings. Reviewing the TiVo, the Fox graphic was titled “Longest Scoreless Inning Streak: …
As most of you reading this are aware, I’m a TiVo evangelist, and never moreso than when it comes to the postseason on Fox. Nonetheless, last night I watched Game Two of the World Series — the I [Heart] NY matchup between faield Yankees Jeff Weaver and Kenny Rogers — more or less in real …