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 …
Continuing his fine coverage of the issue of gays in sports, ball talk‘s Alex Ciepley published his first-ever interview for his site this week, a two-part Q&A with Michael Muska. Muska’s not a baseball player, but he’s a man who has made some waves as the first openly gay male college coach (at my alma …
Prolific blogger Aaron Gleeman, in conjunction with Bill James research assistant Matthew Namee, has launched a new baseball website called The Hardball Times. The duo has enlisted several familiar names to contribute to the site: Alex Belth, Craig Burley, Joe Dimino, Robert Dudek, Ben Jacobs, Vinay Kumar, Larry Mahnken, Bryan Smith, Dave Studenmund, and Steve …
Whether it’s Virginia, Connecticut, Portland, Las Vegas, or points beyond, the Expos have no future in Montreal, and their present, with the losses of Vladimir Guerrero and Javier Vazquez over the winter, is no bed of roses. They need any excuse they can to draw fans to Olympic Stadium, where they averaged a paltry 13,537 …
Selena Roberts has a tiresome Sunday piece in the New York Times that, had it been written a year ago, would have placed her on the cutting edge of old-school writers gawking at the newfound popularity of Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane. Her usage of hackneyed terms such as “nerd,” geek,” “smarty pants,” and “whiz …
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At the Prospectus/Bible Pizza Feed the other night, a bunch of us were kicking around the managerial prospects of Yankee coaches Willie Randolph and Don Mattingly, two names often mentioned as potential successors to Joe Torre. Like everyone else in Yankeeland, these two will surely receive a lot of scrutiny in the coming season. Randolph …
Hey, remember me? I’m the guy that used to type words into complete sentences and coherent thoughts and then post them on this page — writing, they called it. I’ve been told I was a pretty fair country writer, but I’m still trying to piece together exactly how I managed to do so much of …
Damn, it felt good this weekend to turn on the TV and catch sight of the Yankees and Red Sox playing ball in Florida. With the ALCS Game Seven and a winter of roster one-upsmanship on everybody’s mind, this might have been the most overhyped Grapefruit League game of all-time. Add “Evil Empire” trophy Jose …
It’s been another busy week for me, so I haven’t had a chance to do any blogging lately. The steroid story is dominating the landscape and I’m working on a piece that should be up… tomorrow? Let’s hope so. In the meantime I’ve been spending my limited spare time devouring the new Baseball Prospectus 2004. …