It wasn’t quite a clean bill of health, but it counted as good news. My orthopedic surgeon, who repaired my right labrum in November 2003, reviewed my recent MRIs on Thursday and declared, “You’ve got a slight tear of the rotator cuff, and some fraying of the biceps tendon. But that might have been there …
Continue reading ‘Clearing the Bases — Torn and Frayed Edition’ »
Not a lot going on above the surface here, but I’ve got a couple of things cooking in the lab, in between trips to the doctor to determine the extent to which my once-repaired right shoulder is in need of further attention following a skiing mishap. Thursday’s the big day for the reading of the …
A few quick hits: • Buster Olney on the wink-and-nod Hall of Fame votes for the unqualified: We see it every year, these odd little vote totals, with some writers exercising their constitutional right to fill out their ballot with guys who — with all due respect — should only enter the Hall of Fame …
Continue reading ‘Clearing the Bases — All Will Be Revealed Edition’ »
The BBWAA voting results for the Hall fo Fame were announced on Tuesday, and contrary to many a pundit’s expectations, one man gained entry. Bruce Sutter garnered 76.9 percent of the vote to become just the fourth reliever elected to the Hall. Goose Gossage, whom I’ve argued has a much better case, received 64.6 percent …
One of the early defining moments of The Sopranos came in the series’ second episode, “46 Long.” In the back office of the Bada Bing, Silvio Dante, as played by Steve Van Zandt, does an animated impersonation of Al Pacino in The Godfather, to the amusement of his cohorts: “Just when I thought I was …
Yes, I’m back. Back in New York City after a week and a half in Salt Lake. Back to the high-bandwidth connection rather than a 56K modem I need to armwrestle my brother to access. Back to worrying about the health of my surgically-repaired right shoulder (more on that after the inevitable MRI). And with …
As the holidays and my 36th birthday rapidly approach, I want to take the time to thank everybody who responded to my three-part series on the Hall of Fame at Baseball Prospectus and my little brush with the mainstream media. The response was the biggest in the three years I’ve been evaluating the Hall ballot …
If you heard me cussing last night as the news about the Johnny Damon signing trickled in, you’d have wondered which side of the aisle I was sitting on. “In the words of Joe Schultz: shitfuck,” I wrote to the Baseball Prospectus internal mailing list, a medium which rarely sees a four-letter word, though now …
My third and final piece evaluating the 2006 Hall of Fame ballot is up at Baseball Prospectus, this one tackling the relievers. Because there are only three of them in the Hall (Hoyt Wilhelm, Rollie Fingers, and Dennis Eckersley), and because Eck was a starter for half his career, computing a positional JAWS standard as …
My wife, who was sick a few days ago, fell asleep early on Friday night, leaving me to putter around our apartment into the wee hours after I couldn’t edit one more player comment. I spent a few minutes watching a TiVo’d HBO Sports documentary on Howard Cosell, a favorite of mine, as the man …