The legendary Frank Deford checks in with an essay (listen or read) for NPR’s Morning Edition. The fact is, though, that (a) 2010 was a lousy sports year overall, (b) a really terrible sports year for the United States, and (c) 2011 looks like even more of a bummer. Mr. Deford continues to list the […]

Regardless of anyone’s holiday celebrating preferences, there’s one thing certain this time of year: Santa’s “naughty” and “nice” list causes otherwise normal people to do really crazy stuff. Have you heard of the “Elf on a shelf”? Families move that creepy thing around the house to make sure their children are so spooked out by […]

One of the more enjoyable books I’ve read this year is Dave Jamieson’s Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession. The book details the history of baseball cards, from their roots with tobacco to their association with gum to the boom and bust of the last 25 years. Earlier this month, I asked […]

The Phillies’ signing of Cliff Lee has produced “greatest rotation ever” conversations, mostly using the 1990s Braves starters as a yardstick. But we’re reminded today, with the death of Bob Feller, to dig a few decades more deeply. In 1954, Hall of Famer-to-be Feller was the No. 5 starter for a Cleveland Indians team that […]

We here in the THT family heard some good news, as Carlos Gomez, a former contributor here at THT, just became the international scouting director for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Obviously, we’re all delighted for him. He started out as a relief pitcher in the minor leagues who posted at Baseball Think Factory under the user […]

Now that you have finished downloading and installing the R software, it is time to try it out. There are no automatic functions in the R program. So all the data and functions have to be input manually using R code. The data can be entered by creating vectors. A vector can hold data by […]

“When he starts his windup, swing.” Allan Peters was overmatched. What kid wouldn’t be when facing a major league pitcher with a 100 mph fastball? Especially a pitcher who had gone 76-33 with a 2.88 ERA and 7.2 strikeouts per nine innings for the Cleveland Indians during the three seasons Al played for his high […]

One of the best players in recent times entered the world 15,000 days ago today. It’s a man who played in four decades and with three teams (though one for only a very short time). Griffey: now with almost three times as many days alive as total bases bashed out. It’s Ken Griffey Jr., who […]

Today’s big news is Cliff Lee. The internet is already littered with articles evaluating his contract with the Phillies or bemoaning/gloating over his decision to accept a lesser deal than the offers mounted by the Yankees and Rangers. The focus here will be a few steps beyond that. First we will look at the Phillies’ […]

Ever wanted to create “heat maps” like this. Or line graphs like this. Now here’s you chance! These graphics are made through the freely available software simply called R. A powerful software used by scientists, R can be a daunting program to use with its command-line interface that might not be too friendly to those […]