In professional baseball we have all just witnessed a big bang-like collision between a false claim to a non-existing economic crisis and the wealthiest sports franchise on the face of the planet. The impact has birthed the unprecedented humiliation of the one of the game’s all-time greats. Derek Jeter, unfortunately, is the initial example of [...]

By Tom Kelly So when Major League Baseball made the decision to exclusively include umpires with World Series experience in this year’s fall classic did it make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?  Well it probably shouldn’t have, because all it did was assure us that those making the incorrect calls would do so [...]

By Ryan McGowan Mariano Rivera notched his 500th career save last weekend against the Richmond Braves New York Mets. Back in the 90’s, or even as recently as 2003, such an event would have been greeted in Red Sox Nation with snotty, sarcastic dismissals and whiny, insecure hating.  New England would have made a collective [...]

By Ryan McGowan It’s only April, of course.  And I know that you can’t win the division in April (but you could lose it – see New York Yankees, 2007). But is there any doubt after the Red Sox swept the Yankees (as well as their recent nine-game homestand) that the chasms between these two [...]

My first game there was a real blazer, in ’93. It was hot. The Yankees came back on the Angels, late. They were down 8-1 or something. Rallied and won. From my upper-deck seat, the ball appeared a snowball, flying around, serving the whims of gravitation. It was all I watched… the snowball in the blistering sun…. Slicing through the infield and the sliding men trying to grab it… the snowball… soaring over the fence as the crowd reacts favorably… the snowball… it was everything. I was only vaguely aware that the Yankees had won. It mattered little. I had just seen a show. And I was hooked.

  Hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtue. -Moliere I am the proud owner of a blue iPod mini that I received as a Christmas present in 2004. Now every time I use it, I feel like Josh Baskin toiling away on his turn-of-the-century Macintosh. The reason for this being that [...]

Would you believe it, back in 2005, there were actually articles proclaiming that the steroids era was over and that little ball was back? I kid you not. Jason Giambi, oh so hilariously shrunken on a Sports Illustrated cover, was just another symbol [they love those] for a bygone era. An article suggested that the combination of steroids testing and rising young pitching made the game more receptive to the talents of speedsters like Scott Podsednik and Juan Pierre. We had evolved beyond Jason Giambi. After a slow start, Giambi wound up crushing 32 home runs that very season, and casual baseball fans collectively just asked themselves who the hell Scott Podsednik is?

“There’s no salary cap. And until there is, the Yankees can max out their corporate card every day of the week and twice on Sunday.”