Glove is All Around -The Anatomy of a Catch!

Ah springtime, “when everything else begins again” as past commissioner of baseball A. Bart Giamatti once said referring to the cycle of life which promises “sunshine and high skies”…and of course, baseball!  This is a spring unlike any because of the experiment of instant replay and several new controversial rule changes so as the baseball season blossoms, I think it’s time you and I have a little sit-down about the birds and the bees to better understand the anatomy and how certain things work.  Today we’re going to look at the catch and transfer that has hearts pounding like a teenage crush…

Pirates-Brewers hurt each other's feelings...benches clear! Divas and DEVO

If you didn’t see a clip of the baseball “brawl” yesterday in Pittsburgh, here’s what you missed - in the top of the third, Milwaukee’s Carlos Gomez hit a deep fly to center field that he thought was a dinger so he went into a slow home run trot, a la Domingo Ayala, and hurt pitcher Gerrit Cole’s feelings because in fact, the ball didn’t leave the yard. After Gomez reached third on his inside-the-park triple, Cole ran towards, but not too close to Gomez, shouting mean words in his general direction like an insulting Frenchman which in turn, hurt his feelings as well. This visibly upset many of the other players and coaches who trotted on to the field somewhat rapidly to air their grievances but this only lead to pushing and shoving and an all-out scuffle. Eventually, some players wrestled on the grass and got stains on their bunched-up trousers. Oh yeah, and then the Brewers went on to win an otherwise great game, 3-2 in 14 innings.

Pine Tar Redux - Not For Nothin', Lets Take a Look Back...

It's quite clear in our big-screen, high-def world that Yankee pitcher Michael Pineda was using pine tar on his pitching hand last Thursday night versus the Red Sox in Yankee Stadium.  Before the reaction on social media could crash the internet or you could hire Matt Taibbe to do an investigative piece, Boston manager John Farrell was silent on the issue immediately after the game while slugger David Ortiz had this to say, "everybody uses pine tar, it's no big deal."  If your first instinct is to call Oliver Stone so somebody can get to the bottom of this cover-up, let me ask you a question. Pineda was obviously breaking the rules, but was he really cheating? I'll answer that somewhat circuitously by going to the way-back machine and taking a look at the only pine tar controversy that matters, the 1983 George Brett incident.  Work with me here...

Aaron's #715 - To The Moon!

This week marked the 40^th anniversary of Hank Aaron’s record setting 715^th home run.  To a kid growing up in the 70’s, this event was as big it got, “The Thrilla in Manilla”, Evel Knievel jumping Snake Canyon, Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King’s “Battle of the Sexes” throw down all rolled into one gigantic super-hyped inevitability. How big? I was 13 at the time and remember being in the car with my parents and hearing the call on the car radio…I remember it was a Monday night.  We usually only use tragedies to mark those handful of times in life when we remember exactly where we were when something historic happened, but this one was different, transcendent in ways a 13 year old simply couldn’t grasp. Growing up in Massachusetts, I wasn’t completely oblivious to race issues – the Boston busing crisis was in our consciousness – but again, I was just a 13 year old fan so for me, number 715 was just a

Crash Course - "Slide or Avoid" Adopted in Bigs

With all the attention on instant replay this spring, another significant rule change is in effect involving plays at the plate which now makes it illegal for a runner to intentionally crash into a catcher to knock the ball loose; the play that put the “hard" in "hardball."  Rule changes, like no-more-fakes-to-third which was adopted last year, usually start at the big league level and trickle down, but this is a rare case of the big leagues adopting a rule that’s long been in place in the amateur leagues for safety’s sake.