It’s Hall of Fame consideration season. Until the announcement of the new class, Connections will be looking at some of the names on the 2025 ballot. Currently, there are 275 men who have been elected to the Hall of Fame as a “Player” (in contrast to “Manager” or “Pioneer/Executive” or […]
It’s Hall of Fame consideration season. For the rest of the calendar year, Connections will be looking at some of the names on the 2025 ballot. On September 28, 2013, Andy Pettitte made the final start of his 18-year career. In one of those magical convergences where timing dances […]
With the 2024 World Series in the books and its immediate highs and lows receding into the past, it’s time for all of us to take a collective breath and remember some of the non-baseball activities we may have overlooked since the postseason began. Just kidding! After all, we […]
Of all the postseason home runs that have punctured a tense October (or November) air, 232 of them have resounded within a winner-take-all scenario. Across those singular swings and flights during the tension of a win-or-go-home affair, only two have ever occurred as late as the eighth inning and stunningly […]
The start of the 2024 postseason got rolling on the same day October did, when eight clubs began marking their routes toward the very same dream destination. After just a few days had passed, four had woken up to a dim reality – end of the road – while four […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]