Archive for International

TUCK! toons goodness every week!

Ron Rollins — writer of the most excellent Baseball Over Here — has found a whale of a pitching line from the Italian leagues. Even better: a Melvin Mora sighting! UPDATE: OK, that may not be Melvin Mora. At least unless he has rented a decommissioned Concorde jet and is moonlighting. My guess: Marco Mora. […]

Remember the Japanese schoolgirl (hello search engine-driven hits!) who got drafted to pitch in that independent league? She has made her debut: Japan’s first female professional baseball player made her debut Friday, striking out one batter in the ninth inning. Eri Yoshida, a 17-year-old who throws a sidearm knuckleball, took the mound during Kobe 9 […]

The Voyageurs of the Can-Am league may be adding a veteran to their staff: Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd, who has been known to say a lot, once said that he wanted to be “playing baseball at age 50 — if not professionally, for a semi-pro or local team.” Boyd thinks he was 10 years old […]

Hey, it’s not just cynical jerks like me who don’t like the WBC. Even those who are said to embrace it the most have their qualms: But the off-the-field contest between the two most powerful ball-playing nations — Japan and the U.S. — is a subject that Japanese league administrators and team management, local liaisons, […]

Sometimes I worry that my professional writing aspirations are hampered by the fact that I am mostly just interested in writing about baseball. Yeah, it’s the world to us, but if you look at the numbers of it all, baseball writing constitutes darn little traffic on the old information superhighway, relatively speaking. Will someone pay […]

Not everyone appreciates my little geek-out in response to the Evan Longoria news. Well, actually, no one does, but this guy appreciates it less than others: section 34 said… I can’t believe I wasted 5 minutes of my life here. What are you suggesting—that the US forfeit? In the semifinals? Because a couple players have […]

So there’s this part in “LOTR: Return of the King” where Denethor, who has descended into madness over the death of his eldest son Boromir , demands that his younger son, Farimir ride off in a suicide mission to retake Osgiliath, which has been overrun by the orc army. Or, um, that’s what some geek […]

This is an odd story. A bad English-Spanish translation cost the Cuban team the use of two of its relievers for its elimination game with Mexico on Sunday. They won though, so no harm no foul. And, as the article notes, it may even work to their advantage tonight as the two pitchers are once […]

Davy Johnson said that he’d rather forfeit the WBC than play someone out of position at catcher, fearing that such a thing risks injury. Why then did he have no problem playing my team’s catcher out of position in left field? Yes, I will grant that it’s easier to get hurt catching than it is […]