A professional acquaintance of mine, Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register, has been a traveling baseball writer for 20-plus years and has covered games in all 30 of the current Major League Baseball stadiums. Not many people have done that. Journeyman ballplayers, traveling baseball writers who have done both leagues, and ultra fans, I […]

[Read more →]

While preparing for our annual fantasy league, the strongest unexpected impression I got, from examining 30 Major League teams … was how bad so many of them are. Baseball has a half-dozen no-hope teams right out of the gate. And probably closer to a dozen. And I am not thinking of 78-84 bad. I’m thinking […]

[Read more →]

The game we know from April through August changes markedly the final month of the season, due to Major League Baseball’s roster expansion. Limited to 25 players for the first five months, they can add eight, nine, 10, 15 extra players beginning on September 1, which allows for more one-dimensional players and a lot more […]

[Read more →]

August has been an ugly month for the Best Player in Ball. Through games today, Mike Trout looked like a slow, tired impostor who somehow had gotten access to Trout’s No. 27 jersey. With two games left in August, the Los Angeles Angels outfielder was 18-for-93. That’s a batting average of .194. With five runs […]

[Read more →]

When we left the country for Abu Dhabi, in 2009, the whole of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ season could be seen on TV by consumers who had even lower-end cable packages. This month, we came home during ball season … and I was able, for the first time, to experience the ridiculous situation — now […]

[Read more →]

It is beyond cliche, so much so that I will refer to it, for TV and radio news people to recite the title of the 1972 pop song — It Never Rains in Southern California — when it actually does rain in Southern California. Of course, it rains. Fifteen inches per year in Los Angeles, […]

[Read more →]

I was looking up some statistics on Josh Reddick, outfielder of the Oakland Athletics, in the marvelous online resource baseball-reference.com, and just above players’ numbers the site has a sort of “ticker” of where that particular player ranks, in baseball history. Josh Reddick, I noted, was #1439. And a bit to the right of Josh […]

[Read more →]

I heard the end of the 2014 World Series on Thursday morning in Abu Dhabi — Wednesday night in Kansas City, where the San Francisco Giants defeated the Royals 3-2 to win the championship for the third time in five years. I preferred the Giants. The Dodgers’ arch-rival, sure, but a National League team, and […]

[Read more →]

So, Game 1 is in the books, and if any Angels fan says he or she isn’t deeply worried, they aren’t being truthful. Unless they refuse to accept the reality of a concept often known as “momentum”. Momentum is elusive; it comes and goes, ebbs and flows. But when a team has it, you can […]

[Read more →]

The Dodgers clinched the National League West tonight by defeating the San Francisco Giants 9-1 behind Clayton Kershaw. Always grand to clinch against the Giants, and let them watch the team in blue celebrate. But, more important, the Dodgers winning the division, and avoiding the wild-card stuff, comes a week after the Angels secured the […]

[Read more →]