The New York Yankees came to town to play a three-game inter-league set with the Los Angeles Dodgers, in a matchup of the clubs with the best records so far this season. Excuse me if I, a lifetime Dodgers fan, was a little creeped out by it. The Yankees took two of three, outscoring the […]

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As a sportsman, Jim Bouton was best-known as a pitcher for three early-1960s New York Yankees teams that reached the World Series. As a careful observer and serial pot-stirrer, he was best-known for the diary he kept of the 1969 Seattle Pilots season, which led to the 1970 book Ball Four. It was an endeavor […]

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Many baseball fans love the idea of the ballpark hacked out of a corn field in Iowa to serve as the focal point for the baseball movie Field of Dreams. It is not a one-shot prop. It is not generated by a computer. It is acres of land where corn once grew, carved out for […]

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Kind of a Triple Crown, as far as I am concerned. The not-expensive set-up with MLB-TV to choose among various live games during the European night and early morning; the Dodgers doing what they do (destroy the National League); and the pleasure of listening to the cerebral and chatty Orel Hershiser, who serves as color […]

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Anyone who has watched the 2019 Dodgers for a half-dozen games already knows what is going to keep this team from its first World Series championship since 1988. The bullpen. Yesterday, the club had its last chance to address the problem under the new trade deadline of July 31 … and chose not to. “We’re […]

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Two years ago I suggested it was time to tear down and replace Dodger Stadium, perhaps the least comfortable big-league ballpark still in use. That has not happened. And some fans made clear to me that they believe tearing down Dodger Stadium was a horrible ideal. But I will concede the Dodgers did the next-best […]

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I have held a Baseball Writer’s Association of America press credential for the past 30 years or so, which goes a long way toward explaining my shock and horror at the price of Major League Baseball tickets. BBWAA credential-holders do not pay to enter the stadium. Any MLB stadium. In my mind, when I get […]

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I was watching the 2011 movie Moneyball in the wee hours last night, and I was struck, anew, by one big question: How did baseball writers evaluate what they were looking at … before the dawn of advanced analytics? How did veteran reporters — including most of them right on through the Baby Boomer demographic […]

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Been donkey’s years, as the Brits would say, since I did a list. It’s time. This one is going to be a little apples-and-oranges. My favorite road trips as a professional sports journalist. Some considerations: –What is more important? The travel? Or the event I was there to cover? –Or will we almost certainly get […]

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It is a cool November night, and I don’t know it yet, but I am sprawled on my back at the Cal State Los Angeles football field. Above me, a rectangular patch of vision switches on inside my facemask. On the fringes, darkness broken up by banks of electric lights. In the center, dominating the […]

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