Say this for Jim Bouton: he knows a good story when he stumbles upon one. More than thirty years after Ball Four, Bouton returned to bookshelves last year with the acclaimed Foul Ball: My Life and Hard Times Trying to Save an Old Ballpark, a diary of his battle to spruce up Pittsfield, Massachussetts’ Wahconah …
My travels have delayed these two pieces, each long enough to be one of my normal blog entries. Since they share something in common — writer pals of mine working on their first books — and since I’m not sure when I’ll next be online (I’m currently in Austin, Texas for a wedding), I’ve combined …
Not that I wish to keep the mood around here so melancholy, but having spent most of the last couple days away from my computer, I wanted to pass along a few more links on Doug Pappas — both from people who knew him personally and those who only knew his work — before I …
The world of baseball lost a giant of a writer and its foremost expert on financial matters on Friday when Doug Pappas passed away while vacationing in Texas’ Big Bend National Park. The cause was heat prostration. He was 43 and is survived by his mother, Carolyn Pappas. As the chairman of the SABR Business …
I watched most of the two Yankees-Angels series over the past couple ofweeks, and though the Yanks took four out of six, Anaheim certainly played them tough. Most memorably ,the two teams split a pair of series-opening extra-inning thrillers, and both Angel wins have come on the nights when the Yanks’ personal rent-a-bitch, Aaron Sele …
Continue reading ‘DaVanon and On: A Cross-Generational Tale From the Replacement Level’ »
Satan, check your thermostat. At a time when my regard for ESPN’s empire couldn’t be any lower, Baseball Prospectus‘ Will Carroll called my attention to the fact that that ESPN’s Sortable Stats now include pitchers’ DIPS ERA (or dERA as it’s sometimes called), as well as a stat called DIP% which expresses the ratio of …
Thanks to Studes of the great Baseball Graphs site, The Hardball Times has its first Win Shares reports of the seasons. I decided to take a quick breeze through the Yankees, foregoing the rounding which Bill James mandates in the Win Shares book, because at this early stage in the season the difference between, say, …
For the first six weeks of the baseball season, I was living in Dodger denial. But Alex Cora got my attention on Wednesday night. If you haven’t watched the Dodger shortstop’s epic at-bat from May 12, head over to MLB.com to do so. Cora battled Chicago Cubs pitcher Matt “Pubic Beard” Clement for 18 pitches, …
I haven’t had much luck on my trips to the ballpark the past two weeks. My trek to last Wendesday’s Mets-Giants game was cut short by a rain delay-induced exodus, though I did get to see an historic Mike Piazza home run before departing in the fifth. Tuesday night’s trip to Yankee Stadium was even …
As you may have noticed from the comments or the home page, things are a little different around here today. Blogger rolled out a new system as I was trying to post my Productive Outs follow-up late last night, and in a case of late-night early-adoption blues, I tried to see what would happen. The …