Tag Archives: Baseball

Thoughts on Major League Baseball

The Deadball Project – Game 6

Mets 6, Polish All Stars 4

Jerry Koosman had it; Phil Niekro didn’t, and the Mets took the series four games to two.

Koosman scattered four hits over seven shutout innings, while Niekro didn’t make it out of the second. “My knuckler wasn’t knuckling,” he said. “With one exception,” said Stan Musial after the game, “the hits were all weak singles. Bloops or grounders just out of the reach of our infielders.”

A parade of relievers held the Mets to just two runs afterwards, with the help of two double plays.

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Adrián Beltré, Joe Mauer, and Todd Helton

Now that the confetti has settled, the people at the Hall of Fame can start designing the plaques to go in the actual “Hall”. Mauer and Helton will be easy; they’ll get Twins and Rockies caps, respectively. Beltré spent his best years with the Texas Rangers, so he’ll probably get their cap.

I don’t feel as excited about the announcements as I’ve been in the past. It’s not that the players aren’t deserving, it’s more that there’s been so much written about the candidates and voting and percentages and the like that it’s almost a relief when the announcement is made.

I do enjoy reading what the experts / professional baseball writers have to say; they are of course the most knowledgeable on the topic (especially when they are the ones with the actual votes). What does get tiring is all the over-detailed analysis of the vote tracking and other statistical minutiae. Tell us stories! It’s been years since we’ve seen them in action! Remind us how great they are, in a way that mere numbers can’t do!

The Deadball Project – Game 4

Mets 4, Polish All Stars 3:

Another nail-biter; another Mets win. “Ya gotta believe!” laughed Jose Reyes, who scored a go-ahead run for the Mets in the eighth, and drove in the winning run with two out in the ninth. Moe Drabowsky was responsible for both; giving him the loss. Jesse Orosco got the win, thanks to his getting Alan Trammel to ground into a double play in the top of the ninth.

The Mets got an early lead off Joe Niekro, with solo home runs from David Wright in the first and Keith Hernandez in the second, but he shut them down for the next five innings. Thanks to another home run from Ted Kluszewski, the Poles tied the score in the fourth. Continue reading →

The Deadball Project – Game 3

Polish All Stars 2, Mets 0

The Poles needed a win in order to avoid having to face Jacob deGrom down three games to none in the series. Stan Coveleski was up to the task. He notched eleven strikeouts while scattering six singles and two walks over eight innings, Mets batters complained that he was “putting a little something extra” on the ball, but as one of the known spitballers who were granted an exemption after the practice was forbidden in 1921, there was little they could do about it. Continue reading →

The Deadball Project: Game 2

Mets 5, Polish All Stars 4

“It was just like the way we worked on it in Spring Training” – Tug McGraw

It was quite the finish. The Mets had a one-run lead going in to the bottom of the ninth, and the Polish All Stars had the top of the order coming up. A leadoff double from Alan Trammel was followed by two quick outs, and it looked like the Mets could get out of it. But Stan Musial dropped a single into shallow left field, putting runners on the corners, and bringing Ted Kluszewski to the plate. “Big Klu” was 3 for 4 so far, with a home run and two singles. On deck was Troy Tulowitzki, who was hitless in four at bats – and had grounded into two inning-ending double plays. Continue reading →

Book Review: The Called Shot

The Called Shot: Babe Ruth, The Chicago Cubs, & The Unforgettable Major League Baseball Season of 1932
Thomas Wolf
University of Nebraska Press
Copyright 2020 by the author

It’s one of the most iconic moments in baseball, if not all of sports. In the top of the fifth inning in Game 3 of the World Series, Babe Ruth is at the plate with two strikes on him. He faces / looks at / glares into the Cubs dugout, waves / motions / points emphatically at / towards / in the direction of the pitcher’s mound / outfield / the centerfield bleachers, possibly says / yells something, and then slams the next pitch soaring into the Chicago afternoon for a home run.

Wolf decides not to spend a lot of time and ink going over that moment; instead, he looks at the season that led up to it. Continue reading →

The Deadball Project – Game 1

Mets 14, Polish All Stars 7

It didn’t go as expected. With two Hall of Fame pitchers facing each other, one would think it would be a low-scoring duel. Nor was it a slugfest; there were only six extra base hits in total.

The Mets jumped out to an early lead, thanks to uncharacteristic wildness from Harry Coveleski. He loaded the bases in the 1st with single and a pair of walks, and paid for it after a pair of singles pushed across a total of three runs. He settled down in the 2nd, but after giving up another three runs in the 3rd, he had to be sent to the showers.

Tom Seaver had his own meltdown in the fourth. Continue reading →

The Deadball Project

When you’ve been a baseball fan for a long enough time – and not particularly obsessed with a single team – you might start putting together “All-Time” teams. Not just players from one specific franchise, but perhaps an “all switch-hitters” team or a team where everyone is named “Joe” (or Jose, of course).

I consider myself to be of Polish ancestry, so naturally I thought of a “Polish All-Stars” team. If I am a fan of any one team, I would have to say it’s the Mets. So I’ve often tried to come up with an All-Time Mets team.

Then, with the two teams, might it not be fun to have them face each other in a best-of-seven series?

That’s where “Deadball” comes in.

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On the 2023 World Series

Well, that was set of games.

Look, they can’t all be stone-cold classics like 2016 or 2017. Sometimes you wind up with a pair of “meh” teams (2006), or one team that got hot / lucky at the right time, and then was totally overmatched in the Series (2007). This was a case of the latter – the Diamondbacks were a streaky team that barely made it in to the playoffs, and then got just hot enough to take advantage of their opponents’ weaknesses in the first three rounds. Then they ran into the best offense in the American League: the Rangers were first in batting average, on base percentage, slugging percentage, and tied for first in home runs. They didn’t really stand a chance. The Rangers also had six players selected for the summer’s All Star Game, so we shouldn’t have been surprised at how far they made it. Continue reading →

Book Review: Why We Love Baseball

Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments
Joe Posnanski
Dutton Books
Copyright 2023 by the author

The title is something of a misnomer. The book is not a collection of essays on how great baseball is, nor is it a historical chronicle of key events in the history of the game.

Over and over again, with his many books and articles and essays and blog posts, Joe Posnanski has shown himself to be a master at telling stories. Here, he puts that skill to work, with what turns out to be over 100 stories of baseball at every level.

Sure, there are plenty of things from the Major Leagues and World Series. But that’s not all there is to baseball. A Little Leaguer learns the knuckleball from and old star, and uses it to toss a perfect game…. A real potato makes an appearance on the field in a minor league game…. A team pulls of the perfect “hidden ball” trick in the College World Series.

Continue reading →