Archive for March 2014

The name “John Curtis” has entered my consciousness on two occasions. One of them dates back to the old television show, The Waltons. Do you remember when Mary Ellen Walton, the eldest daughter to John and Oliva Walton, gave birth to a boy? He was given the name of John-Curtis Walton. The name of John […]

I’ll admit it; there are perks that come with working at the Hall of Fame. One of those benefits involves the occasional visit from a retired major leaguer. We had one just last week, when former Kansas City and Oakland A’s second baseman Dick Green came to Cooperstown. Accompanied by his wife, Lia, Green got […]

The charm of the National Pastime is in part due to the myths it inspires, from the creation story of Abner Doubleday, to the beginnings of the curveball and William Cummings. “Candy” Cummings claimed to have invented the curve in 1863 after noticing thrown clam shells bobbed and dipped in flight. What a delightful story! […]

Last week, Baseball America reported that someone in the Philadelphia Phillies organization contacted the NCAA about potential infractions involving the Phils’ fifth and sixth round draft picks, Ben Wetzler and Jason Monda respectively. Reports indicated that someone with organizational ties told the collegiate governing body that the two college juniors broke rules by using an […]

2/26 Update/Correction: The total number of shifts presented yesterday were wrong. In the database we were using, some of the records were duplicated. The duplicate records have been removed and the data should now be correct. You can find an updated Google doc with the updated data here. Sheet 1 has the player data, and […]

Translation: Good morning.  Or in this case, Wake up! No, this is not a complaint that the Cincinnati Reds and Cleveland Indians failed to sign Masahiro Tanaka. Yes, this is a wake-up call to the Ohio-based baseball clubs that the 2014 season is approaching rapidly, and neither squad has done anything significant so far this […]

When we were growing up in the early 1970s, we had fun saying Jim Fregosi’s name. It rhymed with Bela Lugosi, one of my favorite stars of the horror genre. Fregosi and Lugosi. We rhymed those names so often that other kids, the ones who didn’t follow baseball, must have thought it was Lugosi who […]

Here’s your chance to vote for the 2014 SABR Analytics Conference Research Awards winners. The SABR Analytics Conference Research Awards will recognize baseball researchers who have completed the best work of original analysis or commentary during the preceding calendar year. Nominations were solicited by representatives from SABR, Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs, The Hardball Times, and Beyond […]

Over the weekend, a link was passed around on the interwebs, and before it gets lost in the ether, I wanted to post it here, because it sounds pretty exciting: The Journal of Sports Analytics The roster the journal is boasting is quite impressive. These are some of the best and brightest minds the game […]

A death puts us in mind of mortality, and the days inside it.