Mike Trout was voted Most Valuable Player of the American League, it was announced today, and how about an “it’s about time!” for the Angels center fielder. This was his second MVP award, but it could have been his fifth, given that he has led the league in one of the most important metrics, Wins […]

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I had disappeared down the YouTube rabbit hole today, when I came across some videos that might interest sports fans, and baseball fans in particular. Renditions of the speech from the movie Field of Dreams, a soliloquy sometimes known as “The People Will Come” speech. I have three versions of it here — one you […]

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We usually encounter some sense of shock when a Major League Baseball player dies during his active career. Or, at least, we certainly do in the more modern history of the game, when players stopped dying from influenza, typhoid fever and tuberculosis. And when the player dies during the MLB season. A guy who was […]

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The LA Galaxy has been around for 21 seasons now, but it struck me today that never in that time had the soccer club had to fight for attention in its hometown with a local National Football League team. The NFL abandoned the Los Angeles market after the 1994 season, when the Rams and Raiders […]

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An important part of fantasy sports leagues is how it brings a fan improved awareness of the players — particularly those on his or her team. Some “owners” even do a sort of scouting of players — just like the professionals! Huston Street of the Los Angeles Angels was the third of four relief pitchers […]

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No, really. Sometimes we know things before someone in the advanced-metrics community produces the numbers that tell us so. Mike Trout is really, really good, and his Angels teammates are really, really not good. Anyone who watches the Angels for a weekend (or follows the club’s boxscores for a week) could have deduced that. But, […]

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The website FiveThirtyEight.com is best known for political predictions and analysis. But it has a sports component, and today it produced an interesting piece on the best and worst teams in Major League Baseball history, at least according to the Elo statistical tool. It goes back to 1903, the year when the first World Series […]

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Bartolo Colon was called “The Horse” by Angels manager Mike Scioscia, back in the middle part of the past decade. In part because Colon was “strong as a …” but also because he “weighed as much as a …” That was back when Colon was the Angels’ ace and winner of the 2005 Cy Young […]

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Well, it’s good news in my view of the world, anyway. We don’t have to be negative all the time, do we? Let’s do a list to celebrate some of the uplifting or inspirational or remarkable. For one day, anyway.

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These must be hard times for baseball fans in the greater Los Angeles area. The Dodgers have a chance to be good, but they cannot be seen by most fans. (Because of that ridiculous Time Warner Cable mess.) The Angels can be seen by almost all fans, but no one should have to watch them. […]

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