Quick (and be honest with your response): who hit the most World Series home runs as a first baseman? Riffle through the mental rolodex …. of course, Lou Gehrig. This bit of trivia is probably unsurprising, as Gehrig – who ended up with 10 four-baggers – famously walloped NL […]
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 […]
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 […]
During the 2024 regular season, Juan Soto claimed partnership as one-half of one of three distinct hitting duos in the old pastime’s history to each produce a 40-HR, 100-walk, 100-RBI season. The 25-year-old Soto and his hitting mate in the feat, Aaron Judge, joined Tigers Norm Cash and Rocky Colavito […]
The very first time the Mets faced the wrenching possibility of postseason elimination – Game 5 of the 1973 NLCS against the defending pennant-winners, the Reds – the club received an imposing harmony of contribution. The NL’s ’73 Cy Young Award winner, Tom Seaver, gave the club an ace-like line, […]
The grandeur of postseason baseball is that with the condensed number of games and expanded importance of each contest, the moments turn to MOMENTS and more easily cast us back to “remember when.” A swing in the bottom of the ninth in Cleveland can instantly be a teleporter to Wrigley […]
Imagine a postseason résumé that contains the following numbers for a single year: 10 games played, 15 hits with seven going for extra-bases, 12 RBI, a .341/.370/.750/1.120 slash line. Looks and feels like a middle of the order guy, right? Maybe Jay Buhner in 1995 or Bernie Williams in 1996 […]
Six times this postseason, Gleyber Torres has walked to the plate in the first inning to get things started for the Yankees. Five times this postseason, that opening opportunity has equaled an opening salvo: walk, walk, double, single, double. It’s a small picture of Torres as the catalyst, and presents […]
In the very first game of the very first World Series, Pittsburgh’s starter, Deacon Phillippe, did something that, to this day, has been replicated only 20 times: he issued no walks while fanning double-digit batters (he had 10 K’s). No one matched Phillippe’s feat for 46 years, until Brooklyn’s […]