I’ve lived without HBO for the past decade, so I’m just now watching “The Wire” on DVD. Great show, as everyone has said, even if it does cause people to get a really skewed impression of Baltimore, which is an underrated city in my experience. Of course, there is crime there: The full-sized statue of […]

Marty Noble either needs to get a life or be imprisoned for abuse of research assistants for this piece on the number nine in baseball. Not that it wasn’t a fun read. Still, MLB.com is really going overboard with this 09-09-09 thing. I thought the Romans purged all of the numerolgists after the First Council […]

Rangers 11, Indians 9; Rangers 10, Indians 5: Lots of runs, Marlon Byrd went 4 for 4 in the day game, blah, blah, blah, but I wanna talk about something else. As I mentioned before, I’m re-reading Nice Guys Finish Last. I’m being really pokey about it, putting it down, reading other stuff, forgetting it […]

The Giants have called up pitching prospect Madison Bumgarner. Is this evidence that (a) Brad Penny really wasn’t the answer; (b) evidence that Brian Sabean thinks he has his own David Price v.2008 on his hand; (c) evidence that the Giants are throwing in the towel in an effort to get the future some innings; […]

Three day weekends screw me up for a good five days: Was Shoeless Joe innocent? You won’t find that answer to that question in the linked article, but you will find some dirt thrown on the “Eight Men Out” version of things. Lou Gehrig: The Iron Horse’s Ass. OK, not really, but that’s probably how […]

I was reading PFT this morning and came across Carson Palmer saying that he was certain that sometime, maybe soon, a football player is going to die on the field from a collision. Then I read Florio’s followup comment: “The worst-case scenario will happen when two guys moving at maximum velocity crash their bodies together […]

And gets off with a nice three-game suspension: Detroit Tigers pitcher Fernando Rodney has been suspended for three games and fined for throwing a ball toward the stands following a game last week. During a postgame celebration on the field after Detroit beat Tampa Bay 4-3 on Friday night, Rodney threw the game ball toward […]

I do my best to steer as clear from politics as possible in this space. But at the risk of crossing the line, I link to an editorial that uses an extended analogy involving Major League Baseball to talk about the health care debate. The upshot: health care reform that involves a public plan would […]

Hey all — sorry, but there’s no ATH this morning. I got back from my weekend in WV later than I had planned last night, other stuff took precedence, and before I knew it, it was late and I just wasn’t able to get to the games. Apologies. There will be normal blogging otherwise today, […]

In honor of Labor Day, here’s the best bastardization of baseball stats in the service of a pro-union message I’ve read since breakfast. “So we’ll march day and night, by the left field light tower; they have the brats, but we have the power . . .” Or something. With that out of the way, […]