I was going to write something long and critical about Ryan Howard asking for $18 million in arbitration, but then Melky Cabrera’s crazier arbitration demand came along. Darn, it now seems that Melky and the Yankees have come to an agreement, thereby mooting all of the snark I had stored up overnight. Still, this is […]

The Peter Principle holds that, in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. Steve Phillips did that long ago, yet somehow keeps rising and rising: One of the longest-running acts in TV sports is getting a new cast member. ESPN will formally announce Wednesday that Steve Phillips will join Jon […]

Things to read while recovering from a night of watching people go to parties on CNN: I’ve heard an awful lot from Blue Jays’ fans about how unfair it is that they have to be in the same division as Boston and New York. Just yesterday I even had a commenter complain about this in […]

No, I’m not talking about anything they’ve done with the LaRoche brothers this week, I’m talking about banishing the ugly red vests: The Pirates’ red uniforms, which have drawn notable ire from the public since being introduced in 2007, will be no more. The Pirates will introduce a new alternate uniform to the public at […]

The guys at River Ave. Blues have a really sharp idea about how to fix the free agent compensation system so as to raise the price of free agents for teams like the Yankees and make life hurt less for the teams that, though no fault of their own, lose players to teams like the […]

From the “gee, I did not know that” department: The guy who has been the P.A. announcer for every inaugural parade since 1957 got the gig because of baseball: Charlie, the PR spokesman for the Washington Senators, got the inauguration gig because someone was impressed with the way he introduced President Eisenhower for the first […]

The Marlins still can’t seem to get their new park built: The campaign to bring the Florida Marlins a new ballpark in South Florida has stalled again. Votes by Miami and Miami-Dade commissioners that could lead to the new stadium have been delayed, in part because of the holiday season and Tuesday’s presidential inauguration. City […]

Not all of the mainstream press accepts the owners’ recent whining about salary caps at face value, and today the San Francisco Chronicle’s Bruce Jenkins takes a whack at it. A key thing to remember about salary caps: To make the Jason Kidd-to-Dallas deal work last year, the Mavericks had to re-sign Keith Van Horn, […]

Jim Rice: step aside, because this is what it means to be a feared hitter: A pair of 8-year-olds armed with baseball bats are being credited with stopping a man who had put a gun to a woman’s face and threatened to kill her The two boys came to the woman’s rescue on Sunday shortly […]

Jason at IIATMS has started rolling out all of the responses he got to his “what would you do if you were made Commissioner for a day” request. He got so much feedback that he’s going to break it down by subject. First up: relocation and territory rights, with a contribution from Keith Law and […]