Royce the Hack — ShysterBall’s Foreign Correspondent from the Republic of Texas and daytime next-door neighbor of the Ballpark in Arlington — has a dispatch to warm you up on this late winter’s day: The grounds crew next door is in its usual pre-opening day fever. There is an armada of those little John Deere […]

What’s shakin’ in the neighborhood? Jason at IIATMS has a couple of good pieces today. First is the one about media and steroids I linked this morning, but is worth linking again. Second is a close look at the incentives in Freddy Garcia’s contract, which Jason promises to be the first in a series of […]

I was a D.J. at a radio station for a few years in high school and college. Within the first few days on the air, I started to get hate mail and people calling to yell at me. I was only 16 at the time, and this bothered me a great deal. My boss, Bob […]

Three lessons to follow when using correlation and regression in baseball.

On Thursday evening I sat down for an audio interview with Rob Zeida of The Card Podcast. We talked about Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, obscure Atlanta Braves of the 1980s, blogging, herpes, Gaylord Perry and a lot of other fun stuff. The podcast can be found here (I’m episode 23). I’ll warn you, however: I […]

Yeah, I was in the show. I was in the show for 21 days once – the 21 greatest days of my life. You know, you never handle your luggage in the show? Somebody else carries your bags. It was great. You hit white balls for batting practice, the ballparks are like cathedrals, the hotels […]

A-Rod free for two Thursdays!

As I mentioned on Tuesday, I’m sort of knee-deep in the weeds this week, adjusting to a new job and all of the associated stress and upheaval that entails. Because of this — and as you’ve certainly noticed by now — I’ve temporarily cut the number of posts I usually run. Now, in addition to […]

Since yesterday’s post, A bunch of other guys have written their own “25 Baseball Things” piece. Click here for The Common Man’s. Here for Wezen-Ball’s. Click here for Joe Hojnacki’s at The Pitch. Longtime reader TC Shillingford, late of Mr. Thursday’s Curious Mechanism, emailed me his own 25 things. Many of them were interesting, but […]

Unemployment had me doing a lot of things I wouldn’t have otherwise been doing. Wearing slippers during all waking hours was a new thing for me, as was talking to the preschool moms about what was on sale and where each week. But perhaps the weirdest thing I did was spend a lot of time […]