Not long ago, during one of my son’s club games, I noticed that the back of the opposing starter’s jersey seemingly featured the name “Musial.” I approached the fence separating the bleachers from the field and asked our first base coach if that was indeed the case. Not quite […]
For those who don’t live in the New York tri-state area or otherwise haven’t been paying attention to the Yankees, Anthony Volpe has emerged as the latest scapegoat for a fanbase that’s been nursing a steady burn over the team’s vanishing preeminence. Once celebrated as the heir apparent to […]
A quick run-through of recent Major League Baseball news reveals the degree to which the sport relies on the wow factor of its lightning-strewing arms. One MLB.com article from late June, recounting Shohei Ohtani’s third mound outing following his return from elbow surgery, came with the headline “Ohtani dials […]
On Christmas mornings in the Ott household in the early 1980s, it was a common occurrence for me to unwrap the obviously book-shaped gift and see some form of the baseball record book staring back at me. These volumes became my companion through the long winter months, and while […]
With the month of April (already!) drawing to a close and the noise of small sample sizes fading into the background, it’s a good time to take stock of the Major League leaderboards and note the players who have excelled to this point of the season. Some, like Aaron […]
With the cold weather still lingering in many parts of the country, winter-weary baseball fans can take comfort in knowing that the action ramping up across ballparks in Florida and Arizona heralds the arrival of spring. But while the Grapefruit and Cactus League games have been an annual component […]
There’s a wonderful old commercial for Starting Lineup sports figures that features an unseen singer waxing about his childhood dream of becoming a big league baseball player, ending with the line, “And summer would go on forever.” Coincidentally, around that time summer did linger past its usual expiration date – […]
On January 21, members of the BBWAA will reveal the results of the 2025 Hall of Fame balloting. Because we here at Coffee & Box Scores didn’t receive official ballots (surely they got lost in the mail), I will reveal my own personal choices in this space, with Roger to […]
In his recent article about Carlos González, my colleague Roger highlighted Car-Go’s 2010 numbers as an example of a Hall-of-Fame-type campaign from a player who stands little to no chance of earning a plaque of his own. He also took the fun step of revealing an all-time starting nine of […]
Sometimes, when thinking back to my childhood in the early 1980s, I try to remember how a young baseball fan followed the sport’s top athletes in those pre-cable, pre-internet days. Magazines like Sports Illustrated kept us in the loop, along with NBC’s nationally televised Game of the Week and […]