Text Me Maybe!
Breaking News from The Off-Base Newsdesk* at Foul Territory… NEW YORK – The Major League Baseball Players Association has announced that “On-Field Cell Phone Use” is a major agenda item in the next collective bargaining agreement. The players union wants …
MLB Trade Deadline Leads to Tough Decisions
In less than a week, some general managers will feel compelled to look one last time at their cards, lay them down on the table, and make some tough decisions as the MLB trade deadline approaches. Do I, or don’t …
New York Mets Endure Legacy of Losing
No, I am not trying to say that there is a higher moral order to playing winning baseball, nor am I suggesting that those executives of winning teams graduated magna cum laude from MIT or honed their craft playing Stratomatic …
Mets, Yankees Trade Partners? Why Not?
Stop the world. The Yankees and Mets may actually consider doing business with one another at the trade deadline. Even thinking of such a transaction has the feel of blasphemy. Much as any deal between the Yankees and Red Sox. …
New York Mets Display Art of Futility in 16-Inning Loss
The New York Mets won four games in a row beating up on the Miami Marlins and the Minnesota Twins. Had the Mets won the extra-inning contest the club played Thursday night in San Francisco, they might have felt as …
The Real Strike Zone: Swinging for the Fences
Strike zones have come and gone over the years to suit the temper of the game. That’s because the strike zone has been a tool to tweak the hitting zone, adjusting offense as per the perceptions of MLB. This imaginary …
Phil Regan Hiring Brings Underperforming Mets Back to the Future
With MLB teams now choosing pitching coaches from colleges and other diverse sources, given the new science of pitching, only Brodie Van Wagenen and the New York Mets would have chosen an octogenarian. Even though that octogenarian had been a …
Dave Dombrowski, Brodie Van Wagenen: Help! We Need Relief!
This has been a maddening baseball season for Brodie Van Wagenen of the New York Mets since day one, and now that Dave Dombrowski and the Boston Red Sox were thoroughly mauled by the Yankees in London last weekend, he …
Chin Music is Back Thanks to Men in Black
There they are. See them? Behind each base. Those men in black are not Tommy Lee Jones or Will Smith, they’re MLB umpires. And they’re witnesses to the rebirth of chin music. The home plate umpire is the one who …
Steroids, Launch Angles and Spin Rates—Not My Grandfather’s Baseball
After more than a century, is the game played on baseball fields around the country still the same game as it was played 50 or 100 years ago? I’m afraid to say that what I see these days is not …
