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Can these 7 teams keep up their early success?
1:27 AM EDT
Will Leitch
https://www.mlb.com/news/teams-enjoying-early-success-in-2024-mlb-season
Worst to best.
Angels
Pirates
Royals
Brewers
Guardians
Tigers
Yankees
Power Rankings: There's already a shakeup at the top
https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-power-rankings-for-the-week-of-april-7-2024
No-doubt slam continues Stanton's revival
Slugger homers for second straight game as Yankees improve to Majors-best 8-2
April 7th, 2024
https://www.mlb.com/news/giancarlo-stanton-hits-grand-slam-as-yankees-beat-blue-jays
Pinstripe Alley’s Top 100 Yankees How the list came about.
This offseason, PSA will run a months-long tribute to the greatest to ever don Yankees pinstripes.
By Andrew Mearns@MearnsPSA Updated Dec 24, 2023, 10:23pm EST 10 Comments / 10 New
https://www.pinstripealley.com/2023/10/23/23926997/yankees-top-100-players-history-baseball-pinstripe-alley
Today, Pinstripe Alley’s revised Top 100 Yankees will commence. Here’s how the master list came to be:
Among the PSA staff, Jake, Matt, John, Josh, Esteban, Peter, Sam, Andrés, Kevin, Casey, Noah, and I all submitted lists. Each list was given equal weight in the final tally.
To get a neutral perspective, I found the Top 100 Yankees by both Baseball Reference WAR and FanGraphs WAR, averaged the rankings, and created a single Top 100 from the resulting list. This is by my own admission not an entirely perfect method since different elements go into calculating each version of WAR, but it’s the one I chose to get a couple different objective rankings.
One last list came from the aforementioned fan vote. We had quite a few lists come in via e-mail, and while plenty were from people who just read the site rather than comment, I do want to salute PSA community members SJNYCPianoYank, pjhimself, Why’s The Name Gone, NJYankeeFan, rutgersstu, Citizenghosttown, francesco smith, and quingbokong for submitting lists! The final fan list was created from the 100 Yankees who had the highest average rankings.
A grand total of 216 different Yankees received votes for the Top 100! Obviously, not everyone ranked all 216 names, so whenever someone failed to appear on a list-maker’s Top 100, they were automatically given a ranking of 101. That way, the absence was acknowledged with no assumptions made regarding how low they might have fallen, and I didn’t have to haggle everyone for even longer lists.
The master list came from the average of the 14 sources noted in bold font above. The 100 highest-ranking names made the final cut.
Pinstripe Alley Top 100 Yankees: #1 Babe Ruth
The greatest of all time.
By Joshua Diemert@JoshuaDiemert Feb 6, 2024, 12:00pm EST
https://www.pinstripealley.com/2024/2/6/24050035/yankees-top-100-players-babe-ruth-best-mlb-history-legend-red-sox-gehrig-mantle-ohtani
No argument at all.
Pinstripe Alley Top 100 Yankees: #2 Mickey Mantle
As a player, the Mick’s achievements transcend all eras and put him right up there with the very best players in history. The legend, however, endured his fair share of suffering and pain in his life.
By Andrés Chávez Feb 5, 2024, 2:00pm EST
https://www.pinstripealley.com/2024/2/5/24061803/yankees-history-top-100-players-mickey-mantle-biography-star-legend-center-fielder-switch-hitter
Mantle was one of my favorite players growing up. But not sure he beats out Gehrig.
MLB Spring Training 2024: Reporting Dates for All 30 Teams
DANIEL CHAVKINFEB 3, 2024
https://www.si.com/mlb/2024/02/03/spring-training-reporting-dates-30-teams-grapefruit-cactus-league#:~:text=Each%20club's%20pitchers%20and%20catchers,to%20five%20days%20after%20that.
Pinstripe Alley Top 100 Yankees: #3 Lou Gehrig
He means way more beyond baseball, but Lou Gehrig was also a heck of a baseball player.
By Matt Ferenchick@MattF15 Feb 4, 2024, 12:00pm EST
https://www.pinstripealley.com/2024/2/4/24055791/yankees-history-top-100-players-lou-gehrig-biography-first-base-babe-ruth-murderers-row-als
I always figured Ruth and Gehrig as 1, 2.
Pinstripe Alley Top 100 Yankees: #21 Graig Nettles
A golden defender at the hot corner, “Puff” was a catalyst for the Yankees’ long-awaited return to glory and remains one of the great underrated players in MLB history.
By Peter Brody@PBrods7 Jan 17, 2024, 12:00pm EST
...In 1971, Nettles set the MLB record for most assists by a third baseman in a single season, his mark of 412 besting the previous record of 405 held jointly by Robinson and Harland Clift. He’d also break Clete Boyer’s Yankees franchise record of 396 assists by a third baseman by converting 410 in 1973. As if preordained, Nettles and Robinson would finish tied for the second-most assists by any defender in MLB history.
....“I am convinced that batting averages are the most overrated statistics in baseball. Many people say fielding averages are meaningless primarily because they award the fielder who neither covers ground nor takes chances. I’ll exchange a hit any time for driving in a run with either a sacrifice fly or an infield grounder. A player who scores runs and drives them home is the type of player who helps his club. Who would you rather have, a .300 hitter with 45 ribbies or a .250 hitter with 75?”
...Nettles is likely one of the biggest Hall of Fame snubs of the last half-century, his 67.9 rWAR the highest mark for a third baseman not enshrined in Cooperstown. His 390 home runs ranked 24th in MLB history at the time of his retirement, trailing only Mike Schmidt, Eddie Mathews, and Darrell Evans among regular third basemen. Nettles still sits in the top-15 in Yankees history in both iterations of position player WAR, and he’s one of just 11 Bombers to hit at least 250 homers with the team. He was removed from the BBWAA ballot after earning just 4.7 percent of the vote in 1996, and has fallen short of consideration on multiple Veterans Committees.
https://www.pinstripealley.com/2024/1/17/24040870/yankees-top-100-players-graig-nettles-biography-21-third-base-world-series-gold-glove-defender
Minus-50 degrees? The coldest winter league you've never heard of
January 16th, 2024
https://www.mlb.com/news/coldest-baseball-game-ever
?"Whaleships in winter quarters at Herschel Island, 1893-1894," painting by Capt. John Bertonccini. During last heyday of American whaling (c. 1890-1908), many ships wintered off Yukon coast. Baseball diamond in lower right. #cdnhist #cdnhistory pic.twitter.com/kvsQnHUE3p
— David Reamer (@ANC_Historian) June 12, 2021
Yankees History: Bob Feller has a very bad day
Gehrig, DiMaggio, and company gave the future Hall of Famer the worst game of his career on one day in 1938.
By Matt Ferenchick@MattF15 Jan 15, 2024, 4:00pm EST 1 Comment / 1 New
https://www.pinstripealley.com/2024/1/15/24031830/yankees-history-cleveland-bob-feller-hall-of-fame-joe-dimaggio-lou-gehrig
What is the longest World Series drought in Yankees' history?
By Adam Weinrib | Oct 30, 2023
Following their first championship, the longest they've ever gone without winning a title was the gap between 1978 and 1996, 18 agonizing years that featured only three postseason berths. Next October, the current Yankees will reach the 15-year mark.
What's the longest the Yankees have ever gone without winning the American League and playing in the World Series?
That would be the 1981-1996 portion of the previously mentioned gap, meaning the modern Yankees have already matched that. If they make the World Series in 2024, it'll be a tie. If they don't, they're the worst in franchise history.
https://yanksgoyard.com/posts/what-is-the-longest-world-series-drought-in-yankees-history-01hdp8ze0pkm
Happy Bobby Bonilla Day. Only 13 more years to go.
King of Throws
Tom House rebuilt Nolan Ryan and fixed Randy Johnson. He worked with Tom Brady and Drew Brees. At 75, he has reinvented himself (again) with an app that teaches young players to pitch the right way.
By Jason Turbow
May 9, 2022
When most of the world first became familiar with Tom House, he was catching Hank Aaron’s record-breaking 715th homer in 1974. House, then a relief pitcher for Atlanta, was stationed in the bullpen beyond the left-field fence at Fulton County Stadium, just where the ball happened to come down.
Exactly as House had planned it.
As it turned out, House was more than just a guy in the right place at the right time. Watch the clip on YouTube, and you’ll see a rooted figure who takes not so much as a shuffle step in either direction. All House had to do was lift his glove and catch the ball.
The man on the mound, Dodgers pitcher Al Downing, was, like House, a soft-tossing left-hander. House, having pitched spring training batting practice to Aaron, had an idea what might happen.
“If the pitch was outside and elevated, I knew he would hit it to left-center field,” House said. “So when I got the choice of where I wanted to be, where do you think I put myself?”
In just the right spot, of course. House has exhibited that kind of knack throughout his decades-spanning career in which catching a milestone homer barely cracks the list of interesting things about him.
ImageTom House was in the bullpen in Atlanta in 1974 when he caught Hank Aaron’s 715th career home run. He seemed to know exactly where it would land.
Tom House was in the bullpen in Atlanta in 1974 when he caught Hank Aaron’s 715th career home run. He seemed to know exactly where it would land.Credit...Bettman, via Getty Images
After eight years as a big league pitcher, and eight more as a big league pitching coach, he earned a doctorate in sports psychology to better understand how pitchers think. He wrote or co-wrote 22 books on pitching. So profound are his theories about how human arms release small objects that a parade of N.F.L. quarterbacks, including Tom Brady and Drew Brees, has come to him for mechanical tutelage.
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His influence, and the loyalty it has garnered, got some attention last September, during an episode of the “Manningcast” edition of “Monday Night Football,” when Eli Manning was discussing Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott’s outlandish warm-up routine. Manning exuberantly explained, “That’s the Tom House stuff!”
It is reasonable to suggest that nobody on the planet knows more about throwing things than Tom House. And after decades of perfecting the mechanics of some of the greatest athletes to walk the planet — sometimes going as far as fixing the flaws in an opponent’s delivery, only to watch that opponent subsequently beat his team — House has shifted gears with a simple goal for his latest act: Fixing the way young players throw baseballs — for free.
Taking It to the People
Today, House is putting his knowledge and experience into an app called Mustard, designed to help parents and coaches correct mechanical flaws in young pitchers. The app’s A.I., built from tens of thousands of three-dimensional models he has compiled over decades of motion-capture studies, analyzes uploaded video and makes recommendations for things like head angle and hip separation. It then feeds the user an assortment of recorded drills, almost all of them executable without the need of a partner, to address whatever issues are identified.
In an age when exclusive coaching carries more cachet than ever, the Mustard team keeps the bulk of the service free, House said, to democratize instruction and keep children involved. (Mustard also includes a subscription model that allows access to seminars and sessions featuring House and assorted big leaguers.)
The face of that democratic movement is a 75-year-old coach who has made a career of working with Hall of Famers yet loves to post earnest encouragements of young players and coaches on Twitter — he insists all the posts come directly from him.
Of huge concern to House is the astounding number of 13-year-olds in this country who quit organized sports by the time they reach high school — 70 percent of them, according to a poll by the National Alliance for Youth Sports. “Giving out elite instruction to 12-year-olds not only helps them play better, but with more fun,” House said. “It keeps them in the sport.”
It is not as simple as that, of course. By House’s calculations, every inch of growth or five pounds gained pushes a growing teenager backward neurophysiologically by two months.
“A 6-foot-7 18-year-old is going to be three years behind a 6-foot-1 18-year-old because of the massive road trip between big toe and release point,” he said.
Coaching 10-year-olds is very different from coaching 16-year-olds. This is all baked into the equation. And House is thriving as a voice of reason who is unafraid to issue a controversial opinion even as he exudes warmth for baseball and its participants.
A Pioneer in the Field
Keen analysis of players’ bodies and movements should not be surprising when it comes to House, who was an early adopter of training technology, even as the rest of baseball actively rejected such things. In the 1980s, he encountered Gideon Ariel, who competed in the Olympics for Israel in the discus and the shot-put and became a pioneer in the field of motion capture. House was so taken by the process that he sold his stake in a San Diego baseball school, where he taught in the off-season, and took a second mortgage on his home to purchase the equipment for use on pitchers.
Not long after, the Texas Rangers, fresh off a 92-loss, last-place season in 1984, came calling. General Manager Tom Grieve, 37 at the time, had just hired Bobby Valentine, who was only 35 himself, as manager. The young-gun organization didn’t have money to hire an adequate scouting department; both men knew that sticking with the status quo would not be enough.
House, they decided, was a perfect fit.
He brought Ariel’s system to Arlington and recorded Rangers pitchers in previously unheard-of ways. He connected with a Canadian Olympic rowing coach who used thermography — heat maps — to help gauge recovery time. He installed a weight room (an unusual technique because of a longstanding fear of compromised flexibility) and focused on the rear-facing rotator cuff muscles that serve as de facto brakes for the arm. Given the increased gravity of working down a mound, House concluded, deceleration after a pitch causes more damage than everything leading up to it. “If your accelerators are stronger than your decelerators,” he said, “you’re going to break.”
Fortunately for House, his new manager afforded a very long leash for such theorizing.
Image
House earned a Ph.D in sports psychology to better understand how pitchers think.
House earned a Ph.D in sports psychology to better understand how pitchers think.Credit...Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times
“We converted a closet into a little lab with three VHS recording machines and two tiny TVs,” Valentine said of House’s setup. “When we started doing motion capture, Tom showed a javelin thrower, a left-handed tennis player and Kenny Rogers, who was a young, lefty pitcher on our team. Then he showed how, at strike point — as the racket hit the ball or the ball left the hand — the front leg was firm and the front side had stopped. The bodies and the arms all looked identical. When I saw that, I said, ‘Wow, you’re on to something here.’”
House expanded his experimentation to the realms of sleep and nutrition, things that today are standard in big league clubhouses but were a shock to the 1980s system. He created subliminal audiotapes to aid visualization. (“I really wanted my voice on those tapes,” Valentine said. “Tom never let me.”)
House’s primary weakness as a pitching coach — and on this he will agree — was that he was more interested in process than outcome. Failure was tolerable if it benefited a player’s long-term goals, which was a problem in a sport that pays big league coaches to win games. The Rangers’ front office, however, understood that House’s methods had long-term value.
“I trusted Tom implicitly,” Grieve said. “If he wanted to teach his guys to throw left-handed instead of right-handed, I wasn’t going to tell him not to do it.”
Because most of House’s alchemy occurred behind closed doors, few outside the program had any real idea about what he was doing.
That all changed with a football.
At some point along the way, House realized that the mechanics for throwing footballs and baseballs were identical, so he started putting pigskins in his pitchers’ hands. Tight spirals on a football made for easy assessment, offering a visual clue about whether the pitcher was doing things correctly. Moreover, the weight of the football built functional strength and aided in recovery for pitchers, not to mention it was a workout they enjoyed.
In football-crazy Texas, the sight of Rangers pitchers playing quarterback in the outfield before games was nothing short of sacrilege. Soon, their coach earned a slew of pejorative nicknames like Nuthouse and Outhouse. Even pitcher Charlie Hough got in on the action, joking once to The Los Angeles Times, “We’re leading the league in third-down conversions.”
Then Nolan Ryan showed up.
Image
Dak Prescott of the Cowboys got a lot of attention last year for his warm-up routines, which Eli Manning called “the Tom House stuff.” The House stuff also included having Nolan Ryan warm up with a football.
Dak Prescott of the Cowboys got a lot of attention last year for his warm-up routines, which Eli Manning called “the Tom House stuff.” The House stuff also included having Nolan Ryan warm up with a football.Credit...Roger Steinman/Associated Press; Tony Tomsic/USA TODAY
When Ryan joined the Rangers as a free agent before the 1989 season, he was 42 years old and 22 years into a career that had largely established him as the greatest power pitcher in baseball history. Two hundred seventy-three wins were augmented by 4,775 strikeouts, the most in history by a wide margin.
As it turned out, one of the right-hander’s greatest strengths was his curiosity. Ryan agreed to give the footballs a try, and soon found himself immersed in an injury-prevention program aimed at prolonging a career that was already historically durable. “There was an instant connection,” Grieve said.
The moment reporters saw Ryan — a cattle-ranching Texan who had earned intense respect in the state — tossing a football with teammates, criticism of the practice disappeared.
“That drill was different, and the traditional baseball people didn’t believe in it,” Ryan said. “Because of that, I think Tom got the stonewall from a lot of different angles. He didn’t deserve it.”
Over Ryan’s first three years with Texas, during which he was 42, 43 and 44 years old, he went 41-25 with a 3.20 E.R.A. and led the league in strikeouts twice, whiffing three times as many men as he walked — something he had done only once to that point.
Image
House long ago identified the throwing motion of baseballs and footballs as being the same. He and Marques Clark, a strength and conditioning coach, worked together at a park in Carlsbad, Calif.
House long ago identified the throwing motion of baseballs and footballs as being the same. He and Marques Clark, a strength and conditioning coach, worked together at a park in Carlsbad, Calif.Credit...Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times
“Nolan was better after age 40 than before,” House said. “He threw three pitches to two locations, and fewer pitches per inning. He added a changeup. He never got hurt. That was this Hall of Fame time.”
“Tom helped me slow down the aging process,” Ryan said. “He brought recovery to my attention — how long it takes to recuperate from a start and be ready again five days later. That was very different at 44 than it was at 24, and the routine we developed was vital to my process.”
It almost defies belief, but five of the Rangers’ nine primary pitchers during Ryan’s first two seasons with the club — the other four being Hough, Rogers, Kevin Brown and Jamie Moyer — played into their 40s. Ryan, Hough and Moyer make the list of the eight oldest players of the modern era. They were righties and lefties, control artists and fireballers and each was looking for ways to extend their careers. No matter their demographic, they had one thing in common: They all learned how to maintain their pitching arms from Tom House.
‘I’m a Teacher First’
Randy Johnson was struggling. It was 1992, and Johnson, a tall left-hander with a Ryan-like fastball, was in his fourth full big league season. His talents, though, were undercut by a profound lack of control. At 6 feet 10 inches, Johnson simply possessed too many moving parts for consistent coordination. When the Rangers arrived in Seattle that August, Johnson was 2-7 over his previous nine starts, having walked 52 batters over 56 innings while posting a 5.46 E.R.A.
Image
Randy Johnson was far too wild to be effective in 1992. Advice from House, the pitching coach for a division rival, got Johnson’s Hall of Fame career on track.
Randy Johnson was far too wild to be effective in 1992. Advice from House, the pitching coach for a division rival, got Johnson’s Hall of Fame career on track.
Credit...Tony Bock/Toronto Star via Getty Images
From the visitors’ dugout, House and Ryan knew what he was going through. House had followed Johnson, a fellow University of Southern California alumnus, since the pitcher’s college days. Ryan had once been a wild fireballer himself, leading the league in walks eight times in an 11-year span. In 1989, however, which was Ryan’s first season under House, the 42-year-old topped 300 strikeouts for the first time in a decade while walking only 98.
He and House wanted to help Johnson. A meeting was arranged for early in the morning, before anyone else arrived at the Kingdome. The three men talked through Johnson’s mechanical issues, and House offered one primary suggestion: He wanted Johnson to land on the ball of his foot instead of his heel while striding toward the plate. The results were immediate.
“I’d been losing my arm slot, falling off toward the third-base side, and that tip helped me stay balanced,” Johnson said. “I didn’t play for the Texas Rangers, but Tom helped me anyway. That meeting was extremely impactful.”
Johnson closed his season by striking out 117 batters over his final 11 starts while walking only 47 and shaving about two full runs off his E.R.A. That dominant stretch included a game in September in which he struck out 18 Rangers batters — a result that gained extra notice when Johnson credited House with his improvement.
For House, any negative attention he drew was worth having helped a struggling pitcher. “I’m a teacher first and everything else second,” he said. “It wasn’t even a question for me, really.”
Image
House has written 22 books on pitching and he co-founded a series of pitching-related think tanks and academies.
House has written 22 books on pitching and he co-founded a series of pitching-related think tanks and academies.Credit...Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times
It was certainly worth it for Johnson, who pitched until he was 46, winning 303 games and five Cy Young Awards, while striking out 4,875 batters, the second most in history behind Ryan.
Discussing that meeting decades later, Johnson, now a Hall of Famer, was left with one nagging question.
“That help that Tom House gave me — why didn’t I get it in high school, or in college, or in four years of the minor leagues?” he said. “Why couldn’t someone else have seen it along the way?”
Why? Because Tom House has made a career of seeing things that other people can’t. He continues to prove it every day, with a decidedly 2022 approach of having an A.I. version of his deep knowledge available to any player who wants to download it. It is a teaching method that could and should outlive him. To House, having a say in the future of how the game is played is all he needs to make it worth the time and effort.
“I’m 75 years old, and we’re here talking about Mustard,” he said. “It makes me realize that we’re just getting started.”
A version of this article appears in print on May 10, 2022, Section B, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: The Arms That House Built, and Keeps Building. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/09/sports/baseball/tom-house-mustard.html?referringSource=articleShare
I missed the play and I'll watch it later but the announcers were questioning the official scorers decision to score Cabrera's hit as a single instead of an error since Severino ended up throwing a 1 hitter.
Since it happened in the second inning the scorer ruled it a hit instead of an error by IKF. If it had happened in the 7th inning the scorer might have been less forgiving.
As the importance of baseball player statistics increased, teams began to pressure writer-scorers for favorable scoring decisions for their players in games played at home stadiums, and a home team scoring bias was perceived by many coaches, players, and writers. Controversies related to perceived bias or errors in scoring have led to questions about important baseball records, including several no-hitters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_scorer#:~:text=for%20each%20stadium.-,After%201980,writers%2C%20coaches%2C%20and%20umpires.
You make the call.
If you haven't figured it out by now I am a traditionalist when it comes to baseball.
It used to be no one talked to a pitcher who had a perfect game going. And announcers dared not mention it.
I think the ghost runner on second sucks at all levels of baseball. T-ball included.
7 inning double headers is not what I paid to watch in person.
The jury is still out on the DH.
The robo ump is a stupid idea. Earl Weaver is doing somersaults in his grave. The very thought of an ump no longer being able to punch out a batter on a called 3rd strike is sacrilegious. Go to a game and see for yourself.
Programs and a pencil with an eraser and the team name on them are a must for every MLB game. Parents and kids don't know how to keep score today.
Finally Yogi was right. Pitchers are either liars or crybabies and he should know.
I'll get back to you if I think of anything else.
Oops, one more thing. Playing the same team 19 times in a season is a dumb idea. I liked the couple who used to make up the MLB schedule every year.
MLB schedule 2022: Every Sunday morning baseball game on Peacock, matchups, what to know
Sunday baseball is officially coming to Peacock this May! 18 MLB games will be featured on the streaming service starting with the Chicago White Sox vs. Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park on Sunday, May 8 at 11:30 p.m. ET. See below for the full Sunday baseball on Peacock schedule.
https://sports.nbcsports.com/2022/06/01/mlb-schedule-2022-every-sunday-morning-baseball-game-on-peacock-matchups-what-to-know/
Another lame idea. But at least I know why the Yankees are on at 11:30 tomorrow.
Donaldson speaks to teammates after incident with Anderson
NEW YORK -- Josh Donaldson said on Wednesday that he has spoken to his Yankees teammates about the recent flap with Tim Anderson of the White Sox, adding that it was “tough to hear” Aaron Judge and manager Aaron Boone publicly criticize his invoking of Jackie Robinson’s name.
https://www.mlb.com/yankees/news/josh-donaldson-speaks-with-teammates-after-incident
In earlier times he'd have been traded by now.
Legendary baseball writer Roger Angell dies at 101
By Lindsey Adler
May 20, 2022
48
Born September 19, 1920, in New York City, Roger Angell liked to say that between himself and his father, Ernest Angell, born in 1889, they had witnessed nearly the entire history of Major League Baseball, founded in 1876. Despite a lifelong love for the game, Angell did not begin writing about baseball until 1962, when The New Yorker sent him on assignment to Florida to cover spring training. His final piece on baseball was published on The New Yorker’s website in 2018; in total, his career as a late-starting baseball writer spanned 56 years.
Angell died Friday at the age of 101 of congestive heart failure, his wife Margaret Moorman confirmed to the New York Times.
His love of the game spanning nearly a century, Angell was, in a sense, a representation of baseball’s history and evolution. He was 42 years old when he wrote “The Old Folks Behind Home,” the piece he filed for The New Yorker in 1962. By then, he’d graduated from Harvard University, served in the Air Force during World War II (during which he’d worked as the managing editor at a military magazine), and had spent a decade working at a travel magazine called Holiday before following his mother, Katharine Sergeant Angell White, and stepfather, E. B. White, to The New Yorker.
When the National Baseball Hall of Fame recognized Angell as the recipient of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award in 2014, he became the first baseball writer to receive the accolade despite never having held membership in the Baseball Writers Association of America.
Angell’s baseball writing was curious, passionate, and often an eerily faithful reflection of how it feels to watch the game and the players that bring it to life. He was an outsider, never beholden to the structure and limits of a traditional newspaper writing job, able to watch the game from the press box as he would have from the stands, doodling in his notebook about catcher positioning and other subtle but intrinsic elements of the game.
In 1980, Angell wrote of pitcher Bob Gibson:
“(W)ith Gibson pitching you were always a little distracted from the plate and the batter, because his delivery continued so extravagantly after the ball was released that you almost felt that the pitch was incidental to the whole affair. The follow-through sometimes suggested a far-out basketball move — a fast downcourt feint. His right leg, which was up and twisted to the right in the air as the ball was let go (all normal enough for a right-handed pitcher), now continued forward in a sudden sidewise rush, crossing his planted left leg, actually stepping over it, and he finished with a full running step toward the right-field foul line, which wrenched his body in the same direction, so that he now had to follow the flight of the ball by peering over his right shoulder. Both his arms whirled in the air to help him keep his balance during this acrobatic maneuver, but the key to his overpowering speed and stuff was not the strength of his pitching arm — it was the powerful, driving thrust of his legs, culminating in that final extra step, which brought his right foot clomping down on the sloping left-hand side of the mound, with the full weight of his body slamming and twisting behind it.”
The game of baseball changed drastically throughout the course of Angell’s life, so much so as to become nearly unrecognizable to the lifelong fan as he watched Jacob deGrom’s Gibson-like brilliance for the Mets in his later years. But Angell’s writing hardly strayed into the nostalgic or wistful for the version of the game that he loved as a child and in the prime of his writing career.
Angell could not recall the first time he attended a live baseball game, as he wrote in his 2007 memoir, “Let Me Finish.”
“My father began taking me and my four-years-older sister to games at some point in the latter twenties, but no first-ever view of Babe Ruth or of the green barn of the Polo Grounds remains in mind,” he wrote. “We must have attended with some regularity, because I’m sure I saw the Babe and Lou Gehrig hit back-to-back home runs on more than one occasion. Mel Ott’s stumpy, cow-tail swing is still before me, and so are Gehrig’s thick calves and Ruth’s debutante ankles.”
He recalled an instance of seeing Ruth on the street in Manhattan, after the Babe had retired, wearing a camel-hair coat.
“How it felt to be a young baseball fan in the thirties can be appreciated only if I can bring back this lighter and fresher atmosphere,” Angell wrote in “Let Me Finish.”
“Attending a game meant a lot, to adults as well as to a boy, because it was the only way you could encounter athletes and watch what they did. There was no television, no instant replay, no evening highlights.”
Angell’s fascination with the athletes — the ballplayers — was the foundation of his baseball writing career.
“I collected great lines and great baseball talkers — lifetime .300 talkers — like a billionaire hunting down Cézannes and Matisses,” Angell said in his Spink Award acceptance speech. “I stalked these guys and buttered them up and got their flow into my notebooks and onto my tapes, and, in rivers, into the magazine.”
Angell was more versatile than a single-minded ballwriter, spending much of his career as the fiction editor at The New Yorker and championing and editing writer John Updike. He eventually split his time between his home in Manhattan and a home in Brooklin, Maine, where his mother and stepfather had lived.
Throughout his career, Angell published a series of five baseball essay anthologies, starting with “The Summer Game” in 1972. He often documented the game he loved at its best: Full of brilliant, passionate, creative minds. He covered Steve Blass’s career-ending yips and Gibson’s intimidating yet anguished persona, and wrote a book with David Cone in the dark days of his career. He didn’t shy away from the toughest personalities in the game — finding common ground with Ted Williams due to both having sons named John Henry — while delighting in his relationship with Dan Quisenberry, one of the game’s quintessential quirky relievers.
“My gratitude always goes back to baseball itself, which turned out to be so familiar and so startling, so spacious and exacting, so easy-looking and so heart-breakingly difficult that it filled up my notebooks and seasons in a rush,” Angell said during his Hall of Fame speech. “A pastime indeed.”
https://theathletic.com/3107190/2022/05/20/roger-angell-baseball-writer-obituary/
Yankees' Nestor Cortes explains temporarily deleting Twitter account: 'I've grown up... I'm trying to clean that up'
Ryan Morik
Mon, May 16, 2022, 5:49 PM·1 min read
Nestor Cortes deleted his Twitter account on Monday after inappropriate tweets of his were unearthed in the previous 24 hours.
Cortes, whose 1.35 ERA is the second-lowest in baseball, had a series of questionable tweets from 2012-15 which were brought to light during his eight scoreless innings on Sunday against the Chicago White Sox.
"This happened 10 years ago ... I've matured now," he told Ian O'Connor of the New York Post. "I've grown up. Now I'm trying to clean that up. I hope to correct it now and moving forward."
According to O'Connor, Cortes will return to social media "hopefully in a few days" and wants to move on from the past.
The former 36th-round pick has become one of the best pitchers in baseball, defying all the odds. He defected from Cuba, was drafted late, and was designated for assignment and traded several times. He hopes that others move past the tweets and view him as a role model.
"I want every kid to relate to my story," he said. "I want them to look at me like, 'Hey, I can probably be that guy one day. He wasn't a superstar coming up in the system.' Hopefully I can use that message for them."
Cortes added that "the message to my friends and family & the people that are following me on social media to see the positive message that I want to send out."
https://sports.yahoo.com/yankees-nestor-cortes-explains-temporarily-214149310.html?src=rss
Reds don't allow a hit, still lose to Pirates
Jason Owens
Sun, May 15, 2022, 4:16 PM·3 min read
The Pittsburgh Pirates didn't log a hit on Sunday.
But they still managed to win.
Led by rookie Hunter Greene, the Cincinnati Reds held the Pirates without a hit for eight innings. But Rodolfo Castro walked in the eighth and eventually scored the game's only run in a 1-0 Pirates win. The Reds failed to counter with a run in the top of the ninth inning, meaning the Pirates didn't need to take the plate in the bottom half.
Fielder's choice secures unlikely win for Pirates
Greene took the mound for the eighth inning with a no-hitter intact. He induced a groundout from Jack Suwinski to start the inning. He then walked Castro with one out and issued another walk to Michael Perez to leave runners at first and second with one out.
Reliever Art Warren replaced Greene after the back-to-back walks and proceeded to issue a walk to Ben Gamel to load the bases. Ke'Bryan Hayes then grounded out to second base, but the Reds couldn't turn the double play, allowing Castro to score the game's only run on a fielder's choice.
https://sports.yahoo.com/reds-combine-to-no-hit-pirates-still-lose-201614214.html?src=rss
This might be the filthiest pitch of 2022 so far
Yanks' Diaz snaps off filthy slider for Renegades
https://www.mlb.com/news/new-york-yankees-wellington-diaz-deals-nasty-slider
That is one nasty slider.
Cortes pitches a gem. Yankee hitters sucked and Higgy throws the ball away.
D'oh! Higgy tosses immaculate inning ball to fan
But don't worry, they got it back
41 minutes ago
https://www.mlb.com/news/kyle-higashioka-nestor-cortes-immaculate-inning-ball
Yankees announcer John Sterling mistakes out for home run: 'It is gone, but caught'
https://sports.yahoo.com/yankees-announcer-john-sterling-mistakes-out-for-home-run-it-is-gone-but-caught-135859173.html
Japan’s Perfect Game Drought Ends With a 19-Strikeout Masterpiece
Roki Sasaki, 20, pitched the first perfect game in Nippon Professional Baseball in 28 years. But don’t expect to see him in M.L.B. anytime soon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/11/sports/baseball/roki-sasaki-perfect-game.html
Stanton can't stop hitting homers vs. Red Sox
Feat is a first in Yankees history, breaking tie with Mantle from 1954
April 9th, 2022
https://www.mlb.com/news/giancarlo-stanton-homers-six-straight-vs-red-sox
For the Yankees, a Nice Win Comes After a Crushing Blow
In a day of mixed emotions, Aaron Judge ended his negotiations for a contract extension but the Yankees got a walk-off win over the Boston Red Sox in extra innings.
12h ago
By TYLER KEPNER and JOHNNY MILANO
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/08/sports/baseball/aaron-judge-yankees-red-sox.html
Baseball returns to normal. Gone are the 7 innings DHs and the ghost runner for extra innings.
MLB and MLBPA agree to new CBA pending ratification
2 minutes ago
Mark Feinsand
Mark Feinsand
@feinsand
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Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association reached an agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement on Thursday, paving the way for the 2022 regular season to begin on April 7.
The CBA must still be ratified by both sides before it becomes official. Once that happens, Spring Training camps are expected to open on Sunday, bringing the three-month lockout to a close.
The deal came to fruition a day after MLB postponed Opening Day until April 14 in the absence of a new agreement and announced that each team’s first four series were removed from the schedule. However, as part of this agreement, a full 162-game schedule will be played, and the four series that were previously removed from the calendar will be rescheduled. The makeup games that came as a result of the delay will be rescheduled as nine-inning doubleheaders.
The new five-year CBA is expected to include increased minimum salaries, a new pre-arbitration bonus pool to reward the top young players in the game, a raise in competitive balance tax thresholds, the introduction of a universal designated hitter, the widest-ranging Draft lottery in pro sports, elimination of Draft-pick compensation for signed free agents, a system to prevent alleged service-time manipulation, limits on the number of times a player can be optioned in a season and a 12-team postseason. There will also be the evaluation of an international Draft.
Once the CBA is finalized, teams around the league will turn their attention to completing their offseason business, as more than 200 players remain on the free-agent market, including notable names such as Carlos Correa, Freddie Freeman, Kris Bryant and Trevor Story.
This is a developing story. We will update it as more details become available.
https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-mlbpa-agree-to-cba
Ortiz makes it on the 1st ballot. The steroid boys and the hate speech guy go home empty handed.
Good for the voters. They got it right.
On Her Way Up: Yankees Tap Woman as Minor League Manager
Having served as a hitting coach in the team’s system, Rachel Balkovec will be the first woman to manage a team in affiliated baseball.
1d ago
By JAMES WAGNER
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/10/sports/baseball/rachel-balkovec-yankees.html
We found them: They're the worst team ever
https://www.mlb.com/news/featured/the-worst-baseball-team-ever
With Hodges, HOF infield finally complete
December 6th, 2021
Mike Lupica
https://www.mlb.com/news/gil-hodges-election-completes-dodgers-hall-of-fame-infield
Long overdue.
The late Gil Hodges finally made it to Cooperstown this weekend, the end of a long baseball journey for the family of a great baseball player, manager and man who died too young and was ignored by the voters and the various committees acting as gatekeepers for Cooperstown for far too long.
Cloyd Boyer, Last of a Three-Brother Baseball Rarity, Dies at 94
His pitching career was cut short, but at one time he and his brothers Ken and Clete were all on the major league stage together. He ended up outliving them.
By Richard Goldstein
Sept. 25, 2021
Cloyd Boyer pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals and the Kansas City Athletics and, in a baseball career of nearly a half century, later worked as a pitching coach for the Yankees and the Atlanta Braves and as a minor league manager, a roving pitching instructor and a scout.
But in none of those roles was he especially well known. What brought him his greatest distinction was something more familial: He joined with the third basemen Ken and Clete Boyer in a three-brother major league rarity.
Having outlived both Ken and Clete, Cloyd Boyer died on Sept. 20 at 94 in a nursing home in Carthage, Mo. His death was confirmed by his son Ken.
The Boyers were not the only brotherly trio to play in the major leagues at the same time. Joe, Dom and Vince DiMaggio famously came before them. More recently there were Felipe, Matty and Jesus Alou, and Bengie, José and Yadier Molina. But across baseball history, notable three-brother combos are a small fraternity.
Cloyd was the eldest of seven brothers; he also had seven sisters. The four Boyer boys who didn’t make it to the major leagues played in the minors. Cloyd’s promising pitching career was victimized by injury, but Ken and Clete, the youngest of the three, flourished in the major leagues.
Ken Boyer played for 15 seasons, 11 with the Cardinals, and later managed them. A fixture on All-Star teams, he was the National League’s Most Valuable Player in 1964, when the Cards faced brother Clete’s Yankees in the World Series. Ken hit two home runs and a double and drove in six runs in the Cardinals’ seven-game Series victory. He later played for the Mets, the Chicago White Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers. He finished his career with 282 home runs and 2,143 hits.
Image
Boyer, left, with his fellow Cardinals Joe Garagiola, center, and Harry Brecheen at spring training in St. Petersburg, Fla., in 1951.
Boyer, left, with his fellow Cardinals Joe Garagiola, center, and Harry Brecheen at spring training in St. Petersburg, Fla., in 1951.Credit...Associated Press
Clete Boyer, known for his sharp fielding at third base, spent 16 seasons in the majors. After playing for the Athletics, he was a Yankee from 1959 to 1966, appearing with stars like Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford on five pennant-winning teams, two of them World Series champions. He later spent five seasons with the Braves.
Ken Boyer died in 1982 at 51, and Clete Boyer died in 2007 at 70. Both had cancer.
Cloyd, a right-hander with an outstanding fastball, pitched for the Cardinals from 1949 to 1952 and was a teammate of the future Hall of Famers Stan Musial, Red Schoendienst and Enos Slaughter. After being sent to the minors, he pitched for Kansas City in 1955.
A shoulder injury shortened his major league career, leaving him with a 20-23 record.
Long afterward, he maintained that his chances of coming back from the injury had been spoiled by the baseball wisdom of his time and an odd bit of instruction from Eddie Stanky, who became the Cardinals’ manager in 1952.
“The whole philosophy was to pitch through pain and it would eventually go away,” Cloyd was quoted as saying in Lew Freedman’s “The Boyer Brothers of Baseball” (2015). “And if your arm doesn’t come around, we’ll get somebody else.”
Not only did his shoulder never fully come around, his injury was further aggravated by Stanky’s insistence that he work on his baserunning skills.
He told how Stanky, seeing his potential as a pinch-runner, had put him through drills in which he practiced scrambling back to first base to avoid being picked off. As Boyer told it: “He’d be my coach. He’d yell, ‘Get back!’ And I had to dive back. I think that’s when I hurt my arm the second time.”
After his one season with Kansas City, Boyer pitched in the minors until 1961. He was a pitching coach for the Yankees in 1975 and 1977 and with the Atlanta Braves later in the 1970s and in the early ’80s. He managed in the Yankees’ minor league system and worked for them as a roving pitching instructor and a scout.
Cloyd Victor Boyer was born on Sept. 1, 1927, on the outskirts of Alba, Mo., near the city of Joplin in the southwestern part of the state. His father, Chester, was a grocer and worked on road-building projects run by the Depression-era Works Progress Administration. His mother, Mable (Means) Boyer, tended to the large family.
He graduated from Alba High School in 1945, pitched for a Navy team on occupation duty in Japan after World War II, and was then signed by the Cardinals out of a tryout camp.
He retired from baseball after managing a minor league team in the Braves’ organization in the 1992 season.
Cloyd’s brothers Wayne, Lynn, Len and Ron all played in the minor leagues.
In addition to his son Ken, Boyer is survived by his wife, Nadine (Witherspoon) Boyer; another son, Jim; a daughter, Cheryl Boyer; 10 grandchildren; 19 great-grandchildren; three great-great-grandchildren; his brother Ronnie; and his sisters Deloris Webb, Pansy Schell, Shirley Lockhart, Bobbi McNary and Marcy Layton.
Although he enjoyed a long baseball career and was considered an outstanding student of the game, Cloyd Boyer let his deeds speak for themselves.
“I don’t go around bragging about anything,” he said in “The Boyer Brothers of Baseball.”
“The way I figured it, the Lord’s been good to me. I was lucky.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/25/sports/baseball/cloyd-boyer-dead.html
Aaron Boone’s questionable bullpen moves backfire on Yankees
https://nypost.com/2021/10/02/aaron-boones-questionable-bullpen-moves-backfire-on-yankees/
Sept. 29: LHP Andrew Heaney optioned to the Florida Complex League
The Yankees worked out an agreement with Heaney, who expressed a desire to remain in the organization. Manager Aaron Boone said that the club believes Heaney was “not that far off” from being the solid pitcher he had been in Anaheim, and by reporting to Tampa, Fla., he’ll attempt to regain that form. “We’re excited to keep him in the mix,” Boone said.
https://www.mlb.com/yankees/news/yankees-injuries-and-roster-moves
Yanks lead WC race on head-spinning sweep
Judge, Stanton power late rally for 6th straight win
1:09 AM EDT
https://www.mlb.com/news/yankees-sweep-red-sox-take-sole-possession-of-wild-card-lead
Derek Jeter calls out the one writer who didn't vote for him during Hall of Fame speech
https://sports.yahoo.com/derek-jeter-calls-out-the-one-writer-who-didnt-vote-for-him-during-hall-of-fame-speech-205449369.html
And Donald Fehr sucks.
A Hall of Fame Shortstop, Through and Through
Over the years, Derek Jeter took plenty of criticism for his fielding. But his spot at the center of a Yankees dynasty was far from coincidental.
By Tyler Kepner
Sept. 7, 2021
When it was all over in New York, after he singled home the winning run on his final swing, Derek Jeter at last turned nostalgic. For two decades, he had been the master of the moment, always pushing forward, never lingering on what it all meant. But now he had given his last performance on his favorite stage.
So Jeter took a final visit to his happy place, shortstop at Yankee Stadium. He had been feted with goodbye gifts at other stops in that 2014 season, but all he wanted from the Bronx was a mental snapshot. He crouched on the grass, just beyond the lip of the dirt, said a prayer of thanks, and drank it in.
“I want to take something special from Yankee Stadium,” Jeter said later. “The view from shortstop here, tonight, is what I want to take from it.”
On Wednesday, in Cooperstown, N.Y., Jeter will have another view to last a lifetime. Weather permitting, he will gaze out from behind a lectern at the Clark Sports Center and see a hillside full of fans eager to witness his induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Attendance will be lower than usual; the ceremony was canceled last year because of the coronavirus, and pushed back this year to a midweek afternoon, after Labor Day, to limit the number of fans who can make the trek. But the 2020 class — Jeter; the former outfielder Larry Walker; the former catcher Ted Simmons; and the union chief, Marvin Miller, who died in 2012 — will finally have their day.
ImageJust as he did throughout his 20 seasons as the Yankees’ shortstop, Jeter led his teammates onto the field for the start of Game 6 of the 2009 World Series at Yankee Stadium.
Just as he did throughout his 20 seasons as the Yankees’ shortstop, Jeter led his teammates onto the field for the start of Game 6 of the 2009 World Series at Yankee Stadium.Credit...Barton Silverman/The New York Times
It is daunting for just about anyone.
“There’s nights where I don’t go to sleep — and when I do go to sleep, it’s not for very long, because I’m waking up and it’s all going through my head,” said Walker, who has rehearsed his speech many times. “So believe me, butterflies are here right now, and there’s a lot of them.”
If Jeter is nervous, chances are he will not show it. He said last week that he had still not finished his speech and would not share it with anyone before delivering it. He has resisted any impulse to script out the day, he said, so he can savor the moments as they happen.
But Jeter, now the chief executive of the Miami Marlins, is obviously aware of the exclusive ranks he is joining. Just 333 people have a spot in the Hall of Fame, and only 10 were shortstops who played for one team. Somewhat surprisingly, five did it in the free-agent era: Jeter; the Cincinnati Reds’ Barry Larkin; the Baltimore Orioles’ Cal Ripken Jr.; the Detroit Tigers’ Alan Trammell; and the Milwaukee Brewers’ Robin Yount, who played almost half of his career in the outfield.
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“People identify with certain players on a team, and that core player, for the most part, is the shortstop,” said Larkin, now a Reds broadcaster and senior adviser to the team president. “I think you build your team around that position and those players and personalities that man that position.”
What Might Have Been
Image
Shortly after he was drafted in 1992, Jeter visited with the Yankees to take batting practice. If a scout had gotten his way, Jeter would have been with the Cincinnati Reds instead.
Shortly after he was drafted in 1992, Jeter visited with the Yankees to take batting practice. If a scout had gotten his way, Jeter would have been with the Cincinnati Reds instead.Credit...Focus on Sport/Getty Images
Jeter and Larkin could have been teammates. The Reds held the fifth overall pick in the 1992 draft, and after four teams — Houston, Cleveland, Montreal and Baltimore — passed on Jeter, some in the draft room at Riverfront Stadium thought they would take Jeter, a star at Kalamazoo Central High School in Michigan.
A top scout, Gene Bennett, had been instrumental in drafting amateurs from the Midwest like Larkin, Paul O’Neill and Chris Sabo, a group that helped the Reds win the 1990 World Series. Bennett badly wanted Jeter, but the scouting director, Julian Mock, took a college outfielder named Chad Mottola instead.
“Julian Mock’s position in the room, and I’ll never forget this, he said: ‘Mottola’s got a chance to be a 40-home run guy, he’s got a great arm, and we already have Larkin,’” said Jim Bowden, who was then the Reds’ director of player development.
“Larry Barton Jr. — another one of the older Reds guys who were there forever — stood up and said, ‘What do you think we did with Eric Davis? Eric Davis was a shortstop, too, and we put him in center field.’ And Gene Bennett said, ‘Exactly, we could move Jeter to center or you could have Jeter play shortstop and Larkin play center. But there’s enough middle of the diamond for everybody. Don’t let that be the reason.’”
It was a monumental mistake for the Reds, who are still waiting for their next pennant. They would get only 17 hits from Mottola, who batted .200 in a brief career and is now the hitting coach for the Tampa Bay Rays. Jeter, meanwhile, collected 3,465 hits for the Yankees, batted .310 and made 2,660 starts at shortstop, the most in baseball history.
A Shortstop Is a Shortstop
Image
Among the most famous plays of Jeter’s career was when he dived into the stands to snag a foul ball against the Boston Red Sox in 2004.
Among the most famous plays of Jeter’s career was when he dived into the stands to snag a foul ball against the Boston Red Sox in 2004.Credit...Barton Silverman/The New York Times
In a mind-set the Yankees would come to embrace, Bowden, who was named the Reds’ general manager in late 1992, said he would not have moved his established star off shortstop. Larkin had extraordinary range to his left, Bowden explained, but perhaps more than that, it would have simply been awkward to dislodge his franchise cornerstone from shortstop. The position may be more central to a player’s identity than any other besides catcher.
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“I would agree with that,” Larkin said. “I think it’s the constant communication. You’re involved in every pitch of the game, because although the ball may not be hit to you, when the catcher is throwing that ball back to the pitcher, it’s your responsibility to make sure the ball doesn’t float into center field. So that’s part of it.
“The other thing is you’re the communicator between the bench, the infield and the outfield. You’re in the middle of the field, so you kind of have control-tower responsibilities, if you will. So communication’s another big deal — and, of course, any and every team that’s had success is strong up the middle.”
So it was for the Yankees of Jeter’s era. His team won five championships, mostly with Jorge Posada at catcher and Bernie Williams in center field. Curiously, all three were often maligned for their defense, Jeter especially; according to Baseball Reference, he ranked better in the field than a typical replacement player in just three of his 20 seasons.
A Flood of New Hall of Famers, Followed by a Grinding Halt
Fifteen years ago, the Baseball Hall of Fame inducted 17 people from the Negro leagues. The election came with some controversy and has been followed by silence.
Sept. 6, 2021
Yet for all of that, the Yankees won so prodigiously that Jeter played exactly one home game in his entire career with the team eliminated from postseason contention: that final game in 2014.
“I prided myself on being consistent, and when a play needed to be made, I felt as though I was going to make it,” Jeter said last week, on a conference call with reporters. “And I argue that my teammates had confidence in me making the plays as well. So I don’t really put much into it, because I don’t think it’s possible to have that much success as a team if you had someone that was just so poor defensively.”
Jeter played shortstop because his father, Charles, had played there at Fisk University in Nashville. Charles coached Derek in Little League, and played his son at second and third base, too. A brief escape from the infield did not go well.
“I remember being very young and telling my dad I thought it was easy to play outfield, and he put me in the outfield, hit me some fly balls and I wasn’t very good,” Jeter said. “So that was the end of the outfield experiment.”
Jeter stayed at shortstop, and only shortstop, until the very end. He stayed there in his first full professional season, with Class A Greensboro in 1993, when he made 56 errors. He stayed there in 2004, when Alex Rodriguez — the American League’s reigning Gold Glove Award-winning shortstop — joined the Yankees and switched to third. Jeter broke his ankle diving at short in the 2012 playoffs, costing him most of the next season, but he returned to play 140 games in the field at age 40.
“Derek was, I think, the most confident player I ever played with,” said Yankees Manager Aaron Boone, a former third baseman, who played beside Jeter in 2003. “The guy who just said: ‘Give me the ball,’ always wanted the ball, and just played the game with a ton of confidence. It didn’t mean he was the best of the best, necessarily, but I felt like there was an underlying, real confidence in what he was doing, and that helped make him even better than he was.”
The Plays That Made the Player
Image
Jeter’s signature move, at least defensively, was to catch the ball on the run to his right and then leap in the air before throwing the ball to first. “He had an absolute cannon,” Andrew Velazquez said.
Jeter’s signature move, at least defensively, was to catch the ball on the run to his right and then leap in the air before throwing the ball to first. “He had an absolute cannon,” Andrew Velazquez said.Credit...Barton Silverman/The New York Times
Regardless of any questions about his defense, some of Jeter’s most indelible highlights came in the field: his balletic flip to the plate in Oakland when facing playoff elimination in 2001; his face-smash into the seats at Yankee Stadium to snag a fast-sinking foul against Boston in 2004. He wore Michael Jordan’s Jumpman logo on his cleats and took to the air for his signature move: When a grounder to his right pulled Jeter into the outfield, he would scoop, elevate and fire a strike to first.
“To jump, full-speed, in the opposite direction and turn and throw it on the money, it’s crazy,” said Yankees infielder Andrew Velazquez, who grew up in the Bronx idolizing Jeter. “He had an absolute cannon. I tried it in the minor leagues a few times and I think I three-hopped it.”
Velazquez was 10 months old when Jeter made his debut in May 1995, at the Kingdome in Seattle, batting ninth and going 0 for 5. Jeter finished that season in the same park, watching from the bench — he was not on the active roster — as the Mariners eliminated the Yankees in a thrilling division series.
The next season would end much differently for Jeter: at shortstop in Yankee Stadium, celebrating his team’s first World Series title in 18 years. It would ingrain in Jeter a demanding but matter-of-fact standard, that a season is only successful if it ends in a championship.
Jeter’s fans loved him for that mentality, and more.
“He was very consistent about who he was and what he wanted to be as far as winning, and I think that attitude carries over into every aspect of life,” Velazquez said. “To my generation, he’s a role model. Even players that are still coming up, guys born in the 2000s, they look up to him. The way he handled his business on and off the field, and now what he’s doing after the game — he’s like everybody’s favorite player. Your favorite player’s favorite player, you know?”
Jeter had an uncanny ability to shake off defeat while noticing and internalizing everything. Early in his career, a pitcher stole a strike from him with a quick pitch; from then on, every time he dug into the batter’s box, Jeter would raise his right arm to ask the umpire for time. When Bob Sheppard, the venerable public-address announcer, mispronounced Posada’s name in those 1995 playoffs — “Posado,” he said — Jeter heard it and stuck the nickname “Sado” on his friend for the rest of their careers.
He also learned to never make excuses, a lesson embedded in the Yankee experience. With each passing championship, Jeter said, Yogi Berra would remind him that he had won a record 10 as a player. It is tougher to win now, Jeter would protest, citing modern playoff rounds, but Berra would cut him off.
“His response was: ‘You can come over to my house and count the rings anytime you want,’” Jeter said. “So I always felt as though you’re trying to chase something.”
Jeter, now 47, has not given up the chase. He is still competing, trying to build a franchise in his image. But the first chase is over, and the long road has led him, at last, to the only stage grander than shortstop in the Bronx.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/07/sports/baseball/derek-jeter-hall-of-fame.html
Another no-hitter? This one no small feat
August 21st, 2021
https://www.mlb.com/news/eli-jones-little-league-world-series-no-hitter
Little League Classic FAQ: Angels vs. Indians
2:27 AM EDT
https://www.mlb.com/news/angels-indians-little-league-classic-2021-faq
It’s the time of the year when Major Leaguers are able to step back in time and remember exactly what made them fall in the love with the game of baseball.
After the 2020 MLB Little League Classic was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the annual tradition will be back tonight, when the Angels and the Indians meet at 7:10 p.m. ET in Williamsport, Pa. -- the home of the Little League World Series.
MLB umpire Angel Hernandez supports young fan hit by a home-run ball from Yankees' Giancarlo Stanton
Hernandez tossed the young fan a ball after the inning
https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-umpire-angel-hernandez-supports-young-fan-hit-by-a-home-run-ball-from-yankees-giancarlo-stanton/?ftag=SPM-16-10abi8d
They probably still booed him.
Stat of the Day: History of walk-off homers
Aug 12: White Sox 9, Yankees 8 -- History of walk-off homers
Tim Anderson's two-run shot off Zack Britton in the ninth inning during the inaugural Field of Dreams contest marked the 15th walk-off homer hit by the White Sox against the Yankees. And who hit that first walk-off dinger? Well, it was Shoeless Joe Jackson on July 20, 1919. It seemed like a fitting connection on this special night of baseball.
https://www.mlb.com/news/chicago-white-sox-stat-of-the-day-august-2021
I guess the CWS winning was mean't to be. Manfred missed a golden opportunity to free Shoeless Joe. Would have finally set things right.
Yanks set for nostalgic Field of Dreams Game
https://www.mlb.com/news/andrew-heaney-excited-to-start-field-of-dreams-game
Rizzo makes NYY history: 'Definitely special'
https://www.mlb.com/news/anthony-rizzo-yankees-history-in-win-over-orioles?game_pk=633018
Took Rizzo all of one at bat to wait on it after a 13 pitch walk.
Field of Dreams FAQ: Tickets, other details
July 15th, 2021
They built it, and they’re coming. One of the most highly anticipated games in Major League Baseball history is set for Thursday, Aug. 12, when the MLB at Field of Dreams Game presented by GEICO will be held at the famous movie site in Dyersville, Iowa.
After getting pushed back a year by the coronavirus pandemic, this game between the White Sox and Yankees is ready to emerge like ghosts coming out of the corn field, and interest is not all that dissimilar to the interest in Ray Kinsella’s farm-turned-field.
So here is a handy FAQ to answer any questions you might have about MLB at Field of Dreams. If you ask it, we will answer.
When and where is the game?
The game is scheduled to take place on Thursday, Aug. 12, and it will air live on FOX.
The game will take place at a newly constructed, 8,000-seat ballpark near the “Field of Dreams” movie site in Dyersville.
Who is playing in MLB at Field of Dreams?
The matchup from the original plans for the 2020 game is back on, as the White Sox and Yankees will face one another in the rescheduled event in 2021.
The Sox are the “home” team, surrendering a home date at Guaranteed Rate Field for this unique event. They were an obvious choice to be included because of their role in the 1989 “Field of Dreams” movie, in which the ghosts of “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and other members of the 1919 Black Sox play on the diamond in the Iowa cornfield.
Will this count as a regular-season game?
Yes.
Will fans be able to attend?
Yes. People will come. People will most definitely come.
How can fans get tickets?
A public registration will be available exclusively to residents of Iowa from Friday, July 16, through Friday, July 23. Registration for the lottery will be limited to fans who have Iowa zip codes. On Monday, Aug. 2, winners of the lottery will be notified and will then have the opportunity to purchase up to two tickets and one parking pass for the special game.
Will the game be played on the same field that was used in the movie?
No. Not only is that field not up to typical Major League dimensions, but too many balls would get lost in the cornfield.
3D Rendering of Field of Dreams
Aug 8, 2019 · 0:25
3D Rendering of Field of Dreams
Where will the ballpark be located?
In the field beyond the northern perimeter of the movie field. In a nice homage to the game in the film, a pathway through the cornfield leads to the ballpark.
The right-field wall features windows to show the cornfields beyond the ballpark.
How large will the ballpark be?
It is large enough to hold 8,000 fans.
What will the field look like?
The design of the park pays homage to Chicago’s Comiskey Park, which was home of the White Sox (and, for a time, “Shoeless” Joe) from 1910-90.
Will the ballpark be used again?
The field will stay intact. Go The Distance Baseball, the company that operates the movie site, will consider other potential uses for it.
Will this be the smallest facility to ever house an MLB regular-season game?
No, BB&T Ballpark at Historic Bowman Field in Williamsport, Pa., where the Little League Classic has been held, is the smallest. It has a capacity of 2,366.
What happens if the game gets rained out?
In the 2020 schedule, an off-day was built in after MLB at Field of Dreams to leave room for a makeup game. In the 2021 MLB regular-season schedule announced in July, the Yankees and White Sox were slated for a three-game series at Guaranteed Rate Field from Aug. 13-15 with an off-day on Aug. 12.
Has MLB ever had a regular-season game in Iowa?
No, this will be the first. But the White Sox and Cubs did stage an exhibition in Fort Dodge, Iowa, in 1942, for the opening of Dodger Stadium (no, not that one). Hall of Famers Bob Feller, Cap Anson, Dave Bancroft, Fred Clarke, Red Faber and Dazzy Vance all hail from Iowa. Feller’s father, William, predated the movie idea by building his son a ballfield on the family farm in Van Meter.
https://www.mlb.com/news/field-of-dreams-game-tickets-and-faqs
Free MiLB.TV weekend: 10 games to watch
July 15th, 2021
Somerset Patriots (Yankees) @ Richmond Flying Squirrels (Giants)
No. 7 Yankees prospect Luis Medina had the hardest-thrown pitch in Sunday’s Futures Game at 100.7 mph. In fact, 20 of his 28 pitches were clocked at 98 mph or above by Statcast. So when he takes the mound Friday in Richmond, expect the right-hander to bring a ton of velocity to MiLB.TV. He’ll be backed by No. 97 overall prospect Oswald Peraza, a strong defensive shortstop who has really taken a jump in his slugging ability during his age-21 season. The hosts have a Top 100 prospect of their own in No. 63 Heliot Ramos. The 21-year-old outfielder had a terrific spring for the Giants, and, though he’s had a bumpier time in Richmond, he still has the potential to impact any game with above-average power and a plus throwing arm.
https://www.mlb.com/yankees/news/10-milb-tv-matchups-to-watch-on-milb-major-fun-weekend
Dick Tidrow, two-time World Series champ with Yankees, dead at 74
Pitcher also credited with helping build San Francisco Giants' dynasty in early 2010s
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/dick-tidrow-world-series-champ-yankees-dead
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