Phil Regan Hiring Brings Underperforming Mets Back to the Future
With MLB teams now choosing pitching coaches from colleges and other diverse sources, given the new science of pitching, only Brodie Van Wagenen and the New York Mets would have chosen an octogenarian. Even though that octogenarian had been a …
Dave Dombrowski, Brodie Van Wagenen: Help! We Need Relief!
This has been a maddening baseball season for Brodie Van Wagenen of the New York Mets since day one, and now that Dave Dombrowski and the Boston Red Sox were thoroughly mauled by the Yankees in London last weekend, he …
Chin Music is Back Thanks to Men in Black
There they are. See them? Behind each base. Those men in black are not Tommy Lee Jones or Will Smith, they’re MLB umpires. And they’re witnesses to the rebirth of chin music. The home plate umpire is the one who …
Steroids, Launch Angles and Spin Rates—Not My Grandfather’s Baseball
After more than a century, is the game played on baseball fields around the country still the same game as it was played 50 or 100 years ago? I’m afraid to say that what I see these days is not …
From Gambling to … Gambling
Baseball has come full circle. From gambling to … gambling. From its roots with professional gamblers in the earliest days of amateur baseball to its growth as a business that provided athletic thrills to paying fans, many of whom bet …
Baseball Magic, Sixties Style
A friend once asked me why I loved baseball so much as a kid. “Baseball magic,” I said. “What’s baseball magic?” she asked. I thought about the idea for a few moments. What was baseball magic? Several thoughts came to …
Because this John Means Business
While I prefer not to admit it, I watch Baltimore Oriole games when John Means pitches. Perhaps because he pitches quickly, efficiently, and has worked to an ERA of 2.67 so far this season. Meaning that Means makes Baltimore baseball …
Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule
Fans hardly ever hear an announcer declare the umpires have just called the infield fly rule. Does the ordinary fan have any idea that the infield fly rule is called when first and second, or first, second, and third bases …
Baseball Magic: Dining at Pino’s with Jerry Casale
Years ago there was a southern Italian trattoria on East 34th Street in Manhattan, called Pino’s. It was owned by an ex-major league pitcher from Brooklyn named Gennaro Joseph ‘Jerry’ Casale. No doubt about it, walking into Pino’s was like …
Little League Should Avoid Emulating the New National Pastime
The Care and Feeding Column in Slate recently addressed a common issue: overzealous coaching in a league of nine- and 10-year-old boys. A league of Little Leaguers. Playing the new national pastime. One of the boys’ mother’s voiced a common …
