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Here’s a short and cool essay about Stan Musial, the St. Louis Cardinal outfielder who is one of the best baseball players of all time and rarely talked about. He was also famously nice and generous. The opening story about how he was never once thrown out of a game is amazing all by itself. I found it through Rob Neyer’s ESPN blog.

I always want to believe that famous people — actors, atheletes, authors — are “nice.” I don’t know why, but I do. And it’s a relief to learn that sometimes these people in all likelihood were really just genuinely nice people.

1 Comment | Tags: baseball, rob neyer, stan musial

Carlos Zambrano’s doctors say his arm cramps are simply a result of low potassium levels. Now I love baseball, but could we please have some REAL injuries? “Low potassium levels” is about as weak as Josh Beckett being benched because of a blister on his finger. In football people have their shins split in half.

Separate point: Classic/smarty-pants books should NOT have essays by professors as introductions. They’re boring and stodgy and alienating. They also tend to contain massive spoilers. If you want those essays at all (to give the book context, to explain its impact) then put it at the end as an epilogue. I’m reading Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here and then smarty pants intro [...]

2 Comments | Tags: baseball, books

Bill James answers questions answers questions over on the Freakonomics blog. Who’s Bill James? The smartest and most interesting baseball analyst alive, that’s who. What I like about Bill is that, for a guy who gets a lot of stats question, he has fun. My favorite in this interview:

Q: How important are good-hitting pitchers to the success of an offense in the N.L.?
A: Exactly as important as good-fitting underwear on a long drive.

Here’s Rob Neyer’s favorite:

Q: Has looking at the numbers prevented you from actually just enjoying a summer day at the ballpark? Have we all forgotten the randomness of human ballplayers? By reducing players to just their numbers can we lose sight of the intangibles [...]

5 Comments | Tags: baseball, bill james, freakonomics

Fun quote from Bill James, the baseball stats and analysis guru who just published The Bill James Gold Mine, in an interview in Time:

Time: Getting back to the book a bit — you know, many fans sitting in the sports bar look at Bill James, all this baseball math, this “sabermetrics,” and probably think, ‘Gosh, these guys have too much time on their hands. They’re geeks.’ What’s your response to that type of thinking?

Bill James: You’ve got me.

“Yes” is funny.

1 Comment | Tags: baseball, bill james, geeks

Amazing! The Red Sox are World Series Champs for the second time in four years. That is crazy.

It’s a long way from 1986.

0 Comments | Tags: baseball, red sox

The Red Sox are going to the World Series for the second time in four years. Pretty amazing. A friend of mine who roots for the just-beaten Cleveland Indians says that he kinda hates the Red Sox now, because they “feel like the new Yankees!” And by “Yankees” he means some combination of “team that always wins” or “bullying team that buys its way to success” or “evil” or so I assume.

First of all, the Red Sox are not truly “the Yankees” until people stop comparing the Red Sox to the Yankees. Second of all, it’s doubtful that any of us will live long enough to see any American sports franchise have as much success for as long a time [...]

14 Comments | Tags: baseball, movies, red sox

Manny Ramirez dared to say that if the Red Sox lose the playoffs, it’s “not the end of the world.” Specifically, he said:

“Why should we panic? We’ve got a great team. It doesn’t happen, so who cares? There’s always next year. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.”

And so Red Sox Nation, of which I am a proud member, is supposed to be furious with their best hitter talking about being okay with losing. Except I’m NOT angry — I think Manny has the perfect attitude. It’s that same laid-back attitude that lets him NOT get rattled when he’s at the plate in the bottom of the ninth with two outs. He doesn’t care if it’s two [...]

13 Comments | Tags: baseball, red sox

I’d still love to see Derek Jeter get caught in a brothel of terrorist hookers, but it’s impossible to dislike Joe Torre. It’s actually fun to see how much baseball players love him. When Torre came back from surgery for his prostate cancer, it was no less than Red Sox nation at Fenway Park who happily gave him a standing ovation. Last night was probably Torre’s last game in pinstripes. If you like baseball, that’s a big deal.

He’s one of the two best managers the Yankees have ever had, and still manages to carry himself as if he’s just a guy who’s about to re-align your station wagon’s suspension. I like him. In the late 1970s, with Reggie Jackson’s bravado [...]

3 Comments | Tags: baseball

Tonight, I watched the Red Sox-Yankees game while sitting in the front row of Yankee Stadium, DIRECTLY BEHIND the stairs to the Sox dugout. Matt Pack had gotten these tickets very last-minute but had no idea how good they were. He called around to a bunch of people to see who could go. He finally got to me, and so at 7:15pm (yes, late) I was stepping out of the D train to meet Pack, James Eason and Aaron Bergeron (all rooting for the Sox) for the game.

When the usher sat us in the very front row, we were so dumbfounded we didn’t even realize at first that we were in [...]

11 Comments | Tags: baseball

The Journalista blog from The Comics Journal is outstanding. Tidbits linked in just today’s entry:

• A review of the new Gilbert Hernandez Paolmar story.
• Hilariously over-large breast drawings in super-hero comics here and here.
• Adam Koford’s 700 drawings of hobos.

Can’t beat that! In other linked goodness, Pete Rose admits he bet on the Reds (to win) every night he managed. He also bet while playing. This guy is a jerk, but I still think he belongs on the Hall of Fame. 4,000 hits is 4,000 hits.

And here’s something about a redesigned alphabet.

0 Comments | Tags: baseball, comics, words