Here’s something to add to your reading list: Alyssa Milano is in love; she has been for some time. But the object of her affection isn’t the subject of tabloid gossip or an actor; in fact, it isn’t even a guy. It’s a game, a game of nine innings that uses a ball made of […]

Here’s a fun story about the time Deion Sanders maybe wanted to kick Buster Olney’s ass. Alas, it didn’t end in violence: So I returned to the press box before game time, not knowing about the Clippers’ team meeting and wondering whether Sanders’ anger had subsided and he thought it a waste of time to […]

Sabermetric writing and analysis was and remains an essential corrective to inane, old school sportswriter blather, but I like a little right-brained action too, ya know? Thank goodness then for Phil Bencomo, late of Baseball Toaster’s Cub Town, who has a new project in the works: As much as baseball is about statistics, it is […]

First it was baseball with Moneyball, and then football with The Blind Side. Now Michael Lewis focuses his attention on the undervalued in the world of basketball: The virus that infected professional baseball in the 1990s, the use of statistics to find new and better ways to value players and strategies, has found its way […]

This is so good it has to be phony, but via Sullivan, here is Edgar Allen Poe explaining why I decided to scratch the sports writing itch I’ve long had via blogging instead of going to journalism school and busting my hump on the beat for the past 20 years: ” . . . authors […]

Forget Joe Torre. His tell-all isn’t even the most interesting one to come to light this week: On the greatest day of his life, Matt McCarthy took a call from a Major League baseball scout named Byron, who told him he had been drafted to play baseball for the Angels. “Now, you went to Yale,” […]

A lot of folks linked to John Updike’s “Hub Fan Bids Kid Adieu” essay this week, myself included. Today HuffPo’s David Margolick analyzes it. That’s interesting enough and worth your click, but this passage is the best: Nowadays, when nostalgia is big business and every sports milestone is hyped, such an event would be covered […]

I’ve had about as much fun with the Joe Torre book as anyone, but this is profoundly stupid: The Yankees are considering including a “non-disparagement clause” in future player and managerial contracts in order to prevent any more tell-all books such as “The Yankee Years,” co-written by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci. Speaking on the […]

The latest Torre stuff: Johnny Damon’s lack of heart in 2007 brought players to tears or something: Interesting stuff on Pages 394 and 395 about Johnny Damon’s physical and emotional struggles early in the 2007 season, when a leg injury sapped him of his enthusiasm and he began to annoy old-guard Yankees. In a private […]

While most media attention has focused on the death of my cat, the world of letters lost someone else of note yesterday as well: John Updike. If you haven’t read it, the Rabbit series was pretty spectacular. And of course, as many baseball bloggers are noting today, in 1960 Updike wrote this fantastic piece on […]