"I'm just looking for a second chance. Other people get second chances. Alcoholics. Drug addicts. Spousal beaters. Not gamblers, though. But, if you want to put something on my tombstone that was very important to me, it’s 1,972. That’s how many winning games I’ve played in. So that makes me the biggest winner in the history of sports. No one else can say that." Here, Now is a short documentary that looks at baseball legend Pete Rose, as he lives his life today.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on May 23, 2012 -
45 comments
Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg. It was built in 1912 and rebuilt in 1934, and offers, as do most Boston artifacts, a compromise between Man's Euclidean determinations and Nature's beguiling irregularities.
So wrote John Updike in his
moving tribute to Red Sox legend Ted Williams -- an appropriately pedigreed account for this
oldest and
most fabled of ballfields that saw
its first major league game played
one century ago today.
As a team
in flux hopes to recapture the magic with an
old-school face-off against the New York
Highlanders Yankees, it's hard to imagine the soul of the Sox faced the
specter of
demolition not too long ago. Now
legally preserved, in a sport crowded with corporate-branded superdome behemoths,
Fenway abides, bursting with
history,
idiosyncrasy,
record crowds, and occasional
song.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Apr 20, 2012 -
48 comments
The 50 Greatest Sports Gifs of 2011:
Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue
on Jan 4, 2012 -
135 comments
Here's the deal: If you don't play for, or you are not an employee of, the team in question, "we" is not the pronoun you're looking for.
"They" is the word you want.
Why
"We" is the most overused term in sports.
posted by The Gooch
on Oct 20, 2011 -
154 comments
The recently retired Manny Ramirez was one of the most inscrutable players in recent history. Ben McGrath of the New Yorker attempted to figure out Ramirez's motivations in
this 2007 piece.
posted by reenum
on Apr 11, 2011 -
32 comments
Today, Deadspin
leaked financial documents detailing the finances of several MLB teams, including a few that are getting revenue sharing money. They show that several of MLB's "poorest" franchises turned a profit due to these cash infusions.
[more inside]
posted by reenum
on Aug 26, 2010 -
56 comments
Chelsea Baker throws like a girl. Of course, she is a 13 year old girl, so that is to be expected. She is a pitcher that went 12-0 with 2 perfect games in the Plant City FL Little League this season. She hasn't been tagged with a loss in 4 years. Her secret is the knuckleball that was taught to her by a former coach, retired MLB pitcher
Joe Niekro.
posted by COD
on Jul 26, 2010 -
142 comments
Joeurt Puk (aka Joe Cook) is the father of Cambodian baseball. In
this feature by ESPN, Patrick Hruby looks into Cook's background and finds that Cook may not be the tireless philanthropist he claims to be.
[more inside]
posted by reenum
on May 19, 2010 -
6 comments
When people think of the pitfalls of the baseball draft, it is hard not to remember the story of
Matt Harrington. Harrington was drafted in the first round of the MLB draft by the Rockies and the Padres in successive years, only to go back into the draft after failing to reach an agreement each time. As the years went by, his stock kept falling.
[more inside]
posted by reenum
on Nov 3, 2009 -
50 comments
At least one of these things is true, and possibly both: (a)
This was the most tense game of baseball ever played; or (b) relations between Jews and the Klan have deteriorated dramatically since 1926. Bill Francis, a research librarian at the Baseball Hall of Fame, unearths a tantalizing newspaper clipping.
[more inside]
posted by kosem
on May 11, 2009 -
44 comments
Baseball nerd fun: Type in which team's at bat, how many outs, which inning, how many on base, and the
Win Expectancy Finder will spit out the likelihood the team wins, based on actual game data from the periods 2000-2004, 1991-1998, and 1979-1990.
posted by ibmcginty
on Oct 26, 2006 -
12 comments
Baseball Race. "[A]n online application that allows you to view any Major League Baseball season, split by league or division (even wild card races), as an animated, date-by-date race between the various teams you choose."
posted by brain_drain
on Sep 11, 2006 -
22 comments
Sports Illustrated has an excerpt from the upcoming book
Game of Shadows. The book claims to have detailed evidence of heavy drug use by Barry Bonds. Tom Verducci of SI (who has a Hall of Fame vote) has suggested this will keep him out of the Hall and is damning as the
Dowd Report, which lead to a lifetime ban for Pete Rose. Would this provide any kind of closure to the steroid era? If Bonds does not sue, is that as good as an admission? And although his motives can be considered dubious, did Jose Canseco end up becoming a savior of baseball?
posted by dig_duggler
on Mar 7, 2006 -
78 comments
