Baseball’s first professional player

In 1936, the first ballots for the newly-created Baseball Hall of Fame were mailed out for voters to consider. As with modern Hall of Fame balloting, there were two ways to be elected: the Baseball Writers Association of America (or BBWAA) was allowed to vote for contemporary players from the 20th century, while the Veteran’s

The fantasy dilemma

For the past 15 years or so, I have been in a fantasy baseball league of some form or fashion. The league I’m in now is a “keeper” league, meaning that a few of the team’s players from the previous season can be held over, but everyone else has to be thrown back into the

All we need is just a little patience

Yom Kippur begins at sundown tonight, and before the atoning begins I wanted to share a story about one of the Jewish players who has had a long and successful career in the big leagues. But, of course, there’s a personal angle to this tale, which you may or may not not be able to

The game without any drama

When history looks back on the baseball games of last Wednesday night, the Red Sox/Orioles game in Baltimore and the Yankees/Rays game in Tampa will receive the lion’s share of the attention. The endings of the games were weirdly synchronized with each other, in a way that Hollywood would never be able to script. But

I’m shutting down for the season, too

Maybe this practice has been going on for a long time and I just haven’t noticed it, but there seems to be a wave of players that are being “shut down” for the remainder of this season. Joe Mauer, Andre Ethier, Johnny Cueto, Chone Figgins, and several others have decided–or been told–that they won’t play

Just ten more days to catch the Killers

I’ve been playing fantasy baseball, in one league or another, for about fifteen years. I think of it as a way to connect myself with the game as a whole, instead of just focusing on the one “real” team that I root for. And it works, on some level, since I sometimes watch games just

My dog knew what to do

The picture above is of Zoe, who was a Wheaten Terrier that my wife and I had for about a dozen years. I had never had a dog–or any sort of a pet, really– when I was growing up, and I wasn’t particularly excited about getting one, either. But my wife prevailed, and we picked