In the fall of 2020, I started watching baseball with my then-6-year-old son for the first extended period of time. As his dad is a Yankees fan, he of course absorbed that they were the good guys, and he quickly picked up on the starring figures in this spectacle: The twin […]
The very last games of a season being played to determine a champ, a series of games played within a tight window on the calendar. By its very formula, the World Series is an alchemist of drama, a stoker of tension and breathlessness. Sometimes, though, it really transmutes the ingredients […]
Down by a run, down to their three final outs, the Dodgers start to rally back and conclude the surge with a swing that makes World Series history. Before the momentous swing, an intentional walk hits pause in the tension while also ratcheting the tightness. And then the history-making swing […]
Later today, before Jack Flaherty delivers the first salvo of the 120th Fall Classic, presumptive NL MVP Shohei Ohtani will be a central focus during one set of lineup introductions. AL MVP favorite Aaron Judge will absorb the same sort of attention in the other roll call. Before a single […]
Fernando Valenzuela made only one World Series appearance in his career: a complete game in Game 3 of the 1981 World Series to, for all intents and purposes, save the Dodgers season. It’s fitting that the left-hander’s rescue effort came in front of the Dodger Stadium crowd in 1981, for […]
See Here for Part 1 On the morning of October 3, 2000, the set of batters who could proclaim they ended their postseason careers with a .300/.400/.500 line (“ahem,” they might cough, “with at least 100 plate appearances”) numbered six: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Hank Greenberg, Gene Woodling, […]
The 2024 postseason has been a canvas calling to the artists who hold a bat in their hands, an invitation to paint thunderous and striking images of what can occur when a pitch nears the plate. The World Series alone will feature seven hitters coming off a 1.000-OPS line drawn […]
A number of candidates could have vied for top 2024 honors when it came to “wow” – those elevated, extra-magnetic, enchanting, exciting, entrancing individuals who commanded the highlights, flirted with the record books and treated baseball fans to six months filled with daily performances that made one joyous and awed […]
“No way,” I insisted. “The Mets are not beating the Dodgers.” It was October 1988. I was huddled on a street corner outside our junior high school with a few other friends who enviously watched the braver boys interact with the girls, but at that point I was focused […]