USA Today looks at why, apart from simply being a baseball-mad country, Cuba is able to produce so much talent: “Everyone plays all positions until about age 15,” says Adelio Garcia, manager for this team of top 13- and 14-year-olds from the western Havana district of Playa. “They like kids with many skills.” “They” are […]

Things to read while you fume over the fact that a last minute hearing scheduled by your opponent in litigation is preventing you from being able to wear jeans to work today: Guest contributor Jon Daly looks at the major sports commissioners who walked the Earth in the 60s and 70s. You know, back when […]

The biggest danger of the opinion writing business is the risk of tying oneself up in logical and rhetorical knots in order to justify things you wrote days, weeks, or months ago when events in real time render those opinions, well, not entirely correct. Here’s some evidence of that: Writing about Jonah Lehrer’s book on […]

As a central Ohioan, I’m not sure if I can brag about this or not: Guys have a reason to high-five in Columbus and two other Ohio cities, named some of the manliest places in America. A new ranking says Cincinnati, Columbus and Toledo make the top 10 for manliness based on criteria such as […]

Royce the Hack — ShysterBall’s Foreign Correspondent from the Republic of Texas and daytime next-door neighbor of the Ballpark in Arlington — has a dispatch to warm you up on this late winter’s day: The grounds crew next door is in its usual pre-opening day fever. There is an armada of those little John Deere […]

Friend of ShysterBall Pete Toms has an article up over at the Biz of Baseball about sports marketing in the wake of Depression v2.0. It’s a comprehensive cataloging of thr furor over banks using TARP dollars — or not using TARP dollars if you deny the fungibility of money — for sports sponsorships. Read to […]

A descriptive tour of New Shea (I, like you, partially own Citi, so if I want to abrogate their naming rights, I should feel free to do so): For those fans who hated Shea Stadium, fear not: Citi Field is nothing like its predecessor, the last bits of which lie in ruins a few hundreds […]

At what point do editors start rejecting stories about Bernie Williams wanting to still play in the majors? I don’t think the dream of finding the Northwest Passage died this hard.

The WBC has begun, with Japan beating China 4-0 in the opener. For those of you who shut down the computer at 5 yesterday and didn’t see my last post of the day, here are the reasons why this is about as expansive as I’m likely to get with respect to the World Baseball Classic […]

From the Dept. of Things I Did Not Know, comes Jared Lansford, son of Carney, pitcher for the Athletics: Jared Lansford is on the A’s list to pitch today at Scottsdale against the Giants. The Giants’ hitting coach is Carney Lansford, Jared’s father. “I’ve been hearing about it the last couple of days,” Jared Lansford […]