Twenty Hardball Times staffers made their predictions of how the 2011 postseason would play itself out. Some proved prescient, a few less so. Let’s take a look at the rankings to see whose guesses came closest to, and shortest of, perfection. Scoring was based on a 5-3-1 system similar to regular-season awards: If someone picked […]

Ten thousand days ago (a “day-versary” I like to call it), one of the most interesting trades of the 1980s occurred. On June 13, 1984, Cub general manager Dallas Green packaged some prospects to the Cleveland Indians for a proven veteran. Both sides got what they wanted out of the trade as the Cubs landed […]

Hardball Times copy editor Greg Simons is not one of those people the TV moguls feared would be put off by a Middle America World Series. He’s a lifelong Cardinals fan. As with Games One, Two, Three, Four, Five, and Six, we asked him to put on his red cap and share his observations as […]

How great was last night’s Game Six of the World Series? Well, let’s look at it for a second. On Monday, I debuted a system for trying to rank the overall quality and excitement of a World Series based on several factors that generally help make a postseason series memorable. Let’s apply that system to […]

Last week, Theo Epstein took over running the Cubs and Roy Smalley Jr. died. That got me thinking about Wid Matthews and Starlin Castro. Perhaps I should explain. I have spent my entire baseball consciousness following the Cubs, and they have spent that entire time without a championship. That hardly makes me unique among the […]

Hardball Times copy editor Greg Simons is not one of those people the TV moguls feared would will be put off by a Middle America World Series. He’s a lifelong Cardinals fan. As with all the previous World Series games, we asked him to put on his red cap and share his observations as he […]

With the World Series having shifted to St. Louis for good, we won’t be able to hear the catchy “Na-Po-Li!” chant echo throughout Arlington anymore. However, Texas’ catcher will still be heard and felt in a big way for the rest of the series and will likely be named series MVP if the Rangers close […]

With much talk in the last three days regarding the possibility of John Farrell moving from the Toronto Blue Jays to the Boston Red Sox, the issue of Farrell’s situation with the Jays seems to have slanted altogether. If I recall, it was only a matter of weeks ago that there was a sect of […]

Twenty years ago, one of the greatest games in World Series history occurred—a game that ended arguably the greatest World Series of them all. On Oct. 27, 1991, the Braves and Twins tangled in Game Seven of their hard-fought Fall Classic. It’s gone down in lore as the Jack Morris Game, as on that day […]

15,000 days ago, baseball’s first real stadium hosted its last game. In Philadelphia, it was first known as Shibe Park, and opened in 1909 as a state-of-the-art concrete facility that could host tens of thousands. It was miles apart from the rickety wooden places that previously held most clubs. The Philadelphia A’s played there from […]