There are Jays fans outside of the GTA? Who knew? 
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Not necessarily a Jays fan, but I will always cheer for them over most of the rest of the detested AL East.
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For sure. And who thought that the Orioles and Rays were going to be the best teams in baseball this year?
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Once again, the White Sox have managed their way out of contention by the end of April. Sigh.
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“You cannot win a pennant in April, but you can certainly lose one.” - George Steinbrenner
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Just what the Jays needed to keep up with Baltimore and Tampa!
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I listened to a podcast from Jeff Passan, former MLB exec, on ESPN. He said the MLB is considering two expansion teams, and the top candidates are Nashville, Charlotte, Portland, Montreal, and SLC (if I’m remembering correctly). But MLB won’t move until Oakland and Tampa fix their stadium situations.
If the A’s go to Las Vegas, and Tampa moves to Montreal (my hope), that would leave four cities competing for two teams. I’m skeptical that Seattle would allow Portland to get a team, but what do I know?
It could be a fun two years as this all settles out.
Nashville just pledged $1.2 billion for the football stadium. Seems like a MLB stadium will have to be privately financed, unless Nashville is doing better than most any other city in America right now.
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Adding 2 teams, would they do 4 divisions of 4 in both leagues? Does one easternish, one westernish team matter, or more just one will be NL, one AL and with realignments doesn’t matter?
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If they go with 4 divisions, they would have to do something about wild card teams, which adds excitement. I don’t know how you would do that with 4 divisional winners.
I was thinking that they go back to two divisions of 8 teams. Those two winners get byes, while four wild card teams play for the chance to meet the divisional winners. That would six teams in the playoffs per league. Or baseball could add a round of playoffs for either 8 team or 4 team divisions. But it seems like baseball doesn’t want to get to the level of the NBA or NHL where nearly half the teams make the playoffs.
The most widely circulated and best-known sports image of all time. Babe Ruth in his final appearance of Yankee Stadium. A Pulitzer Prize winner to boot.
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Thanks for that photo. The story goes that the photographer that won the Pulitzer actually wanted to find a different spot to shoot the moment, but ended up with this angle by accident. Such serendipity.
Also, this is from Joe Posnanski’s essay about Babe Ruth in his Baseball 100. Some of the best sports-writing you will ever read.
SNIP
“Babe Ruth, with that swing, with that bat, I got him hitting .140. … I would strike Babe Ruth out every time. I’m not trying to disrespect him, you know; rest in peace, shoutout to Babe Ruth. But it was a different game. The guy ate hot dogs and drank beer and whatever he did. It was just a different game.”
— Adam Ottavino (Ed Note: Ottavino is a current reliever and had this quote when he was pitching for the Yankees.)
Here’s what I believe: At the center of Babe Ruth’s brilliance, his wonder, his immorality, is not the story of a tavern keeper’s son becoming a hero. It isn’t the story of a lovable and incorrigible kid calling his shot or hitting homers for sick children or eating hot dogs until he’s ill or of blurry and wild late nights.
No, at the heart of Babe Ruth, I think, is the story of baseball.
Yes, it’s corny. I know. But think of it: Baseball is a game that evolved in rural fields around America when the country was young. It was spread, often unwittingly, by soldiers looking for a moment of peace during the Civil War. The game was played for fun by men’s clubs, which is why they call baseball locker rooms “clubhouses.” Then these clubs began to pay the best players because they wanted to win.
The game’s rules shifted and changed until balance was found, until 90 feet seemed just the right distance between the bases, until the mound seemed best situated at 60 feet and 6 inches from home plate, until four balls became a walk and three strikes became an out and three outs became an inning.
Then came fly balls like cans of corn, groundballs that took room-service hops, a song about peanuts and Cracker Jack, crafty left-handed pitchers, umpires who shouted, “Play ball!” and managers who came out to take the ball from one pitcher only to give it to another.
And as all of this began to converge and knit together, baseball surprisingly had something that no other American sport — perhaps no other feature of American life — had: timelessness. This was true on the field, where time was measured by outs instead of clocks.
But it was true off the field, too, where Walter Johnson becomes Bob Feller becomes Nolan Ryan becomes Gerrit Cole; where Ty Cobb leads to Jackie Robinson leads to Pete Rose, Lou Gehrig leads to Cal Ripken Jr., Willie Mays leads to Mike Trout. The world around baseball progresses so rapidly, too rapidly, and it’s all but impossible to keep up.
But baseball, in a large way, stays constant. Still 90 feet. Still 60 feet, 6 inches. Still four balls and three strikes and three outs. They still call locker rooms clubhouses.
Sure, it’s not real timelessness. It’s a fairy tale we baseball fans tell ourselves. Ottavino is right. It is a different game. Ruth played in a time when black players were shut out. He played in a time before night games, before air travel, before television, before closers, before weight training, before anyone cared about nutrition, before exploding sliders, before 100 mph fastballs, before West Coast games, before a million other things.
But here’s the thing: Baseball is the game that lets you pretend time can stand still.
And that, at the heart, is the magic of Babe Ruth. He makes time stand still. Maybe it’s pretend. But it feels real. He hits a home run in 1927 and it feels as current and vibrant as if he did it last September. We see his record .690 slugging percentage and we set it side by side with Mike Trout’s .581. We see grainy black-and-white film of his big swing and his tiny-step, pigeon-toed running style and we imagine it in full color.
We believe in Babe Ruth because we believe in baseball. The question of “how good would Babe Ruth be now?” might be intriguing, but it entirely misses the point. Babe Ruth is great now, just like he was great in 1975; just like he was great in 1936 when he was elected to the Hall of Fame; just like he was great in 1927 when he hit 60 home runs; just like he was great in 1918 when he was throwing scoreless inning after scoreless inning in the World Series; just as he will be great 100 years from now.
Minutes, hours, months, years — those don’t count in baseball. Only outs count. “That’s only two strikes, boys. I still have one coming,” he shouted at the Cubs before his called shot. And that’s where time stands for eternity. Babe Ruth, forever, will still have one strike left.
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I’ve watched this documentary a couple of times. I always liked it.
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I hate the pitch clock. But mostly I hate the fact that it is needed.
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I appreciate all these suggestions, they’ve gotten me to think really hard about a new ball club for which to root. I’m also hoping that maybe the A’s will change their mind and not move to Vegas, but rather move to Seattle instead. Seattle really needs and deserves a Major League Baseball team.
Like the Mariners?
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Looking at the Mariners’ history, I stand by my comment.
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The A’s to Vegas looks like a done deal. All of the pieces are in place for it. That said, I don’t see the move as anything more than a venue improvement. The move alone won’t boost attendance of profitability - something the A’s must have to remain financially stable. In short, they can’t lose money because the ownership doesn’t have deep pockets, like the LA teams, the Giants, or the Yankees. They are a very small dollar team trying to compete with a league full of really big money teams. At least they had the 1970’s.
Salt Lake City is a stretch for MLB. I get the powers that be desire a team; and if they generated more attendance with their MiLB team, maybe they could make a stronger case. Today, they are likely 1-2 decades out from a team - even if the State pays for the stadium.
I have to agree with Dan Patrick, if these sports teams need public money to fund stadium work, the government entities participating in the funding ought to receive an ownership stake in the team. The days of payola have to end.
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A subtopic for this thread: I watched my 10 year old grandson’s team play last night. Taylorsville Baseball has gone with the Cal Ripken field dimensions, that is 50 ft pitching rubber to home plate and 70 ft base paths. Little League uses 45 ft and 60 ft, respectively. It’s extremely obvious that the Ripken field is too big for kids that age, and my concern is it basically hurts kids from actually learning the game.
My grandson’s team is awfully young; one 12 year old, one 11 year old, and the rest 10. They played a team with a lot of 12 year olds. A typical inning with the other team at bat saw 9 or 10 kids come to the plate. Lots of walks, followed immediately by steals of 2nd and 3rd on the next pitches. Leading off is allowed and no kids that age playing catcher can make that throw to 2nd (basically 100 ft) unless they’re simply a genetic freak of nature. Lots of bases given up by bad/ill-advised pick-off attempts as well.
There is a huge physical difference between 10 year olds and 12 year olds anyway. At least back in my kids’ day playing Little League there was a chance to compete a little on a 45/60 field. The 10 year olds are completely overmatched by the 50/70 field.
In the long haul I think this will drive more boys away from baseball, because it’s just not going to be fun. Add in some of the insane adults involved and I think they’re unconsciously ruining the game for kids.
(Yes, I know this is in “Pro Sports” as a category and may get corrected by the category cops, but it fits the topic of baseball.)
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Sounds like someone should join the Taylorsville Baseball board and have 12+ play on Cal Ripken fields and be able to swap it to little league dimensions for 10-11 (not in-game, separate teams). Or have teams not have such a range of ages. Some 12 year olds are ready for the step up (some not), but 10 probably not. Of course the mostly 12 year old team is going to usually be better than a mix of 10-12.
But maybe scoring a lot and the chaos is fun for kids (if evenly matched). Not good for a pitcher’s psyche, but hitters will have fun (if it’s not constant walks) and defense will have to get better.