In July 2011,
Uganda's Little League baseball team became
the first African team to qualify for the
Little League World Series, which was held in Williamsport, Pa., in August 2011. After beating the
the 22-time World League qualifying Arabian American Little League squad from Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, the Ugandan team
couldn't take part in the world series after their visas were denied (NYT; alt:
HuffPo), due to
concerns about birth certificate validity, but that's not the end of their story.
The Canadian team from Langley raised funds to travel to Uganda,
giving the Ugandan team the match they were denied.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jan 20, 2012 -
19 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
The Last Act of the Notorious Howie Spira. The conventional shorthand for what George Steinbrenner did wrong, in press accounts of the mudslinging-and-extortion scandal, is this: The Yankees owner had an "association with Howard Spira." It made Spira sound menacing—this known gambler, this criminal element. He was the embodiment of the Yankees owner's dark side: Steinbrenner the Nixon bagman, the convicted-and-pardoned felon. Under questioning in court, Steinbrenner described their relationship in ominous terms. Did Spira "destroy" him? "As far as baseball is concerned, yes," Steinbrenner said. "He did a very good job."
posted by auto-correct
on Oct 29, 2011 -
2 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
It's all 'Moneyball' Now "You didn’t have to spend the day dancing around the drum circle in Zuccotti Park to see Game 5 of the Yankees-Tigers division series in New York — with its constant cutaways to those slick-suited men hunched over their BlackBerrys in the Legends Suites — as more than just a baseball game."
posted by mecran01
on Oct 15, 2011 -
28 comments
If you are an East Coast baseball fan, there are two reasons to stay up past your bed time:
1) Your local nine are on a West Coast road swing
2) To indulge in one of the true joys of baseball: Listening to Vin Scully call a baseball game.
In the October edition of GQ, Scully looks back on
some of his most memorable calls, in a career that started in 1950 when the Dodgers called Brooklyn home. If reading Scully's recollections isn't enough for you, The website includes audio of the calls in question.
[more inside]
posted by dry white toast
on Sep 10, 2011 -
27 comments
Who was the worst defender in the history of baseball? A commenter in a baseball-fever thread compiles
a list of the bottom 100 career dWAR figures of all time -- in other words, the 100 players who cost their teams the most wins with the glove. (
Joe Posnanski on the WAR metric, for those unfamiliar with it.) The list is an interesting mix of players whose bats allowed them to stay in the game for years despite terrible glovework (Bernie Williams, Manny Ramirez, Dave Winfield) and players who were so bad in the field that they managed to rack up a lot of negative dWAR in shorter careers (Chris Gomez, Dean Palmer.) Toby "Stone Fingers" Harrah is #14 with a -10.9 dWAR. Dick "Dr. Strangeglove" Stuart just misses at -6.1. Some active players have a chance to finish high on the list:
Ty Wigginton is only 33 and has already bumbled away enough balls in 2011 to "improve" his ranking from 24th to 15th.
Worst of all time? No, it's not the Captain -- Derek Jeter is #2 on the all time list with -13.4 dWAR. Can you guess the "winner"?
posted by escabeche
on Aug 30, 2011 -
85 comments
Who holds the longest home sell-out streak in professional sports? The Red Sox have the longest streak in major league baseball, just under 700 games (and counting.) The Washington Redskins have sold out 348 straight home games, a streak dating back to 1968. But the longest streak belongs to the Portland Trail Blazers, who sold out 814 straight home dates between 1977 and 1995.
Yesterday, they were joined by
the Dayton Dragons of the Class A Midwest League, whose victory over the Bowling Green Hot Rods marked their 814th straight sellout. The Dragons, despite playing in an
economically troubled mid-sized city,
have sold out every home game the team has ever played, drawing over 8,000 fans a game, better than most AAA clubs. Dragons manager
Delino DeShields was
last seen on MetaFilter as a hitting coach in the independent Pioneer League. General manager Gary Mayse
explains how the Dragons have found success in hard economic times.
posted by escabeche
on Jul 3, 2011 -
35 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
Archived Baseball photos from 1917-1956 Today, the
Boston Public Library will publish on the Internet the
first 100 of a trove of nearly 3,000 rarely seen baseball photographs taken by
Leslie Jones, who worked for the Boston Herald and the Boston Traveler from 1917 to 1956. Moments preserved by the shutter and squirreled away in his Dorchester basement, where he kept tens of thousands of images. The Boston Globe has
a selection published here. The first batch of snapshots was released to coincide with today’s Opening Day at Fenway Park. Library staff plan to upload several dozen more images each week until all 2,881 photos are online.
The project is part of a broader initiative by the library to give the public unfettered access to Jones’s entire archive of tens of thousands of images. He photographed
car wrecks and ice-crusted fishing trawlers; shot luminaries like Albert Einstein and
Amelia Earhart; and the
people of Boston.
posted by Gungho
on Apr 8, 2011 -
18 comments
