My first glimpse of the 2004 season’s stateside edition was a memorable one. Flipping back and forth between ESPN2’s coverage of Monday night’s Giants-Astros matchup and the pregame for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Game, I caught Houston manager Jimy Williams waddling to the mound to confer with starter Roy Oswalt. The ‘Stros held a …
In the annals of Dodger history, few trades have turned out more disastrously than the one made on November 19, 1993, when L.A. shipped Pedro Martinez to the Montreal Expos for second baseman Delino DeShields. At the time, the 22-year-old Martinez was coming off of his first full season as a Dodger, having gone 10-5 …
Apologies for the slow load times today… it appears I’m having some trouble with Blogrolling, the service which generates “The Roster” of links at left. On an unrelated note, if any of you reading this is a web designer who understands the workings of RSS and is familiar with Dreamweaver, I’m looking for a bit …
I know I’m not alone in the baseball blogosphere or the writing world in general, but I have a nasty habit of leaving unfinished business with this site. But I can check one more task off the list: I’ve finally completed my page for Melvin Mora, the 2003 Futility Infielder of the Year. Here’s the …
Continue reading ‘Melvin Mora: 2003 Futility Infielder of the Year’ »
Okay, so that didn’t go quite as planned. Mere hours after bragging about my TiVo in this space I was mildly cursing it. In a situation that seems to be related to YES sharing its Time Warner Cable slot with wee-hours paid programming, my recorder had a little braincramp and botched taping the 5 AM …
Continue reading ‘Land of the Late Rising Son of a … Part II’ »
For somebody who generally doesn’t watch a lot of television, my Sunday in front of the tube was epic. I caught both thrilling NCAA Tournament games (though the Kansas result shredded my bracket), then turned to this week’s offerings of The Simpsons, Arrested Development, The Sopranos, and South Park, many of those thanks to the …
Almost exactly a year ago, Michael Lewis set the baseball world on its ear with a New York Times Magazine article excerpting his forthcoming book, Moneyball. This weekend, Lewis returns to the mag with a different kind of article, one having absolutely nothing to do with Billy Beane or sabermetrics (though the Oakland A’s play …
For most of us in the baseball website racket, keeping at fantasy team or two is as much obligation as hobby — you’ve got to have one to wear the corporate colors, after all. But using one’s fantasy team as fodder for a column is just too damn easy; it makes those occasional bullet-point extravaganzas …
The big news in New York today is that the Yankees have signed Mariano Rivera to a two-year, $21-million contract extension, with a vesting option for the third year based on games finished. It’s sick money to be sure, especially for a reliever who has averaged only 68 regular-season innings a year over the past …
I’ve had interviews on the brain for the past few months — verbal ones, written ones, for business and for pleasure. Earlier this winter, I had the opportunity to appear twice on Baseball Prospectus Radio — the first to discuss my BP articles on the Hall of Fame, the second as part of a Yankee …