This is why it’s a sucker’s game to follow the offseason rumor mill: The New York Yankees and Andy Pettitte are close on a deal that will bring the veteran left-hander back for a year, Major League Baseball sources told Buster Olney on Monday. The deal, sources told Olney, could be done as soon as […]

There was a time when every boy wanted to play ball for a living, and until they could, they’d play ball outside all day. At some point, every boy stopped playing ball outside all day, and began to play action-oriented computer baseball games inside all day. At some later point, every boy stopped playing simple […]

All of you deluded Braves fanboys who thought that Dayton Moore was dumb enough to trade Zach Greinke for Jeff Francoeur and a bucket of warm spit (or should that be reversed?) can finally kiss those dreams goodbye: The Royals reached agreement Monday morning with right-handed pitcher Zack Greinke on a four-year contract that buys […]

We already had one presidential post, so why not another? Yesterday Newsday had a nice rundown of the highlights of presidential baseball trivia. My favorite tidbit: Grace Coolidge — Calvin’s First Lady — kept her own scorebook. If paintings are any guide, she was quite a looker too. If I had been born 100 years […]

What all of the cool kids will be wearing soon: The Chicago White Sox are aiming to release a President Barack Obama-themed version of their cap in time for the start of spring training. The club has developed two prototype designs of its club hat with Obama marks on the side and back. The hats […]

FanHouse’s Andrew Johnson proclaims the Rangers to be the next Rays: Trying to find the next Tampa Bay Rays a year after their meteoric rise to the top of the American League is a bit of an insult to what the Rays accomplished in 2008. Going from worst to first in one season just doesn’t […]

Here’s an interesting article about Astros’ President Tal Smith’s second gig — or maybe first gig; it’s hard to tell — representing teams in arbitration cases: When it comes to salary arbitration in baseball, Smith has seen it all. He argued his first cases in 1974, the year baseball adopted the process, when he was […]

A couple of questions about Joe Torre’s new book: 1. Why write it now? No matter who has the moral high ground, doesn’t this sort of thing wear better after you retire? 2. Why the detached, third person narrative and cursory handling of his early years with the Yankees? I’m certain there’s a very interesting […]

The prosecutors in the Roger Clemens perjury case have already called Kirk Radomski before the grand jury, so one presumes that they intend to use him as a witness at any criminal trial against Clemens. They need to rethink that now: One week before Brian McNamee and Roger Clemens testified before a House committee at […]

The Yankees are sanitizing their new home with some sort of specialized disinfectant coating in order to prevent staph infections. Infectious disease expert Paul Sax, M.D. wonders if they’d be better off simply scrubbing the place down with some Comet. Then again, these are the Yankees, so if they’re going to solve a problem, you […]