One of my favorite Rites of Spring has always been a hearty re-reading of this great baseball classic that dates back over a hundred years ago. Enjoy. Casey At The Bat By Ernest Lawrence Thayer, San Francisco Examiner – June 3, 1888 The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day; The score stood four to two with but one inning more to play. And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same, A [...]

While surfing the Internet the other night I came across an article about Matt Lauer. (It was nice to see something online not related to a Kardashian for a change.) The article explained how Lauer threatened to jump ship to CBS. To keep him on board NBC offered him a salary of $25 million. He accepted. And not a soul complained. $25 million for Matt Lauer? And he can’t even hit a curve. Every once in awhile I, [...]

NL Central At A Glance Chicago Cubs: If you think it can’t get worse than where the Mets were – take a look at the Cubs. However, they are getting to a point of respectability. Jeff Samardzija went from that guy who played tight end for Notre Dame to a potential ace. He has some serious talent, but is he an ace for a good team or does he just happened to be the best [...]

NL West At A Glance Arizona Diamondbacks: The D’Backs made tough decisions this off-season  They decided to build their roster based on their team concept, and not based on just overall talent. Some think Justin Upton was the move that proved their concept, but I think it was sending Trevor Bauer to Cleveland. Kevin Towers and Kirk Gibson have an idea of what they want this team to look and act like, and they apparently did [...]

AL West At A Glance Los Angeles Angels: What’s there to say about the Angels? They have the best lineup in baseball and one of the game’s top pitchers in Jered Weaver. C.J. Wilson is solid, though there are some concerns after that. Joe Blanton, Jason Vargas and Tommy Hanson are all back end starters and there’s a huge bridge between the top two and bottom three. They should score a ton of runs, though. [...]

Updated Post 11:45 PM Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports posted on this today and I wanted to add some additional information that has surfaced that is relevant to my original post: The government is in. Despite the failings of federal officials in past high-profile cases that married athletes and PEDs, the Florida Department of Health has started an investigation into Anthony Bosch, operator of the Biogenesis clinic that allegedly provided drugs to players, the New [...]

You’ve heard it before—ninety percent of the players who sign professional baseball contracts will never play an inning in a major league game. That’s a staggering number. We all know that becoming a professional athlete is rare, but what is the difference between the ten percent that make it to The Show, and the ninety percent that don’t? Think about it. That ten percent of players that make it to the bigs aren’t more talented. [...]

March is fantasy baseball draft month, and with only a week left, leagues are beginning to finalize and finish their drafts. The fantasy baseball season officially kicks off on Opening Day, which is a little over a week away. Over the past week or two, a number of high caliber players have gone down. Here is some injury news to be aware of as you head into the final week of drafting, as some of [...]

The 2013 All-World Baseball Classic team was announced Wednesday, and the squad is riddled with Mets both current and former alike. Of course “Captain America” aka David Wright, who’s .438 batting average and 10 RBIs earned him the nickname made the team. Wright was also the only American to make the cut. From the reigning champion Dominican Republic, former Met spark plug and current Blue Jay Jose Reyes made the team as did former Mets [...]

AL Central At A Glance Detroit Tigers: The odds on favorite to win the World Series, the Tigers aren’t just a big fish in small pond, they’re like a shark in a puddle. It took them a while in 2012 to remember they’re the Tigers, only overtaking the White Sox in late September and spending 33 days in first place, but one of those was October 4th, and that’s all that counted. Victor Martinez is [...]