The very first Opening Day home run in the modern era came from an unlikely source: the bat of pitcher Jack Powell. On April 19, 1901, in front of the home crowd in St. Louis, the hurler helped his cause in what was ultimately an 8-7 loss to Chicago (on […]
Today’s guest writer, James Potocki, spent 25 years creating content for Major League Baseball as a cinematographer, editor and producer. If you’ve been a baseball fan over that time, you might have seen some of his work – This Week in Baseball, Prime 9, The World Series Film and the […]
Of the 30 current franchises in MLB’s galaxy, just five can claim a player who produced at least 250 home runs and 250 stolen bases for it: the Astros, Brewers, Cubs, Yankees and Giants (who, unlike the others, have two such well dug-in performers). Before reading further, any appetite to […]
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 […]
This past season, Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran became the ninth player in AL history to pace that league in both doubles and triples – a feat that had last coronated a campaign in 1970, when Twins outfielder César Tovar did it (the others, going backward: Zoilo Versalles in 1965, […]
Recently, I was skipping through the Major League leaderboards on Baseball Reference, just passing the time while the coffee brewed on the stove, when an enormously cool occurrence jumped off the screen: in 1955, the top 10 in position player bWAR was made up of 10 future Hall of Famers. […]
This past season, Royals All-Star Bobby Witt, Jr. – AL batting champ, runner-up in league MVP voting, Silver Slugger, Gold Glover, producer of the second highest extra-base hit tally ever for a shortstop – also enjoyed a flirtation with hitting .400 … at home. The dalliance fell short, leaving the […]
September 19th, 2009 made for a doleful night to those of us whose eyes tend to get all whirligig-y at the sight of numerical outliers. In Atlanta that evening, the incomparable Pedro Martínez was but a meek version of the right-hander who had awed a decade earlier, surrendering three runs […]
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 – […]