Sadaharu Oh

Check out this interesting article on Sadaharu Oh. Was he the all-time home run king of all baseball? https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/racism-and-mlb-a-little-justice-for-sadaharu-oh_us_5a2bd585e4b0d7c3f2622307

Coming Back From An 0-2 Hole

While I am definitely not a fan of either the Yankees or the Red Sox, I do appreciate the beauty of coming back from an 0-2 deficit in a five game series. Here are the nine 0-2 comebacks in a five game postseason series, courtesy of sportsonearth.com (http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/257800128/down-0-2-best-of-five-comebacks):

By the way, the last one on this list is my least favorite of these moments. There is a reason Joey Bats is highly disliked in the sport...

A True MLB Father-Son Moment

Yesterday, Red Sox manager John Farrell watched his son, Luke, pitch a scoreless ninth against his team. Luke is a relief pitcher for the Reds, and the moment was not only emotionally charged, but also historic. This is the first time in MLB history that a pitcher has pitched against a team managed by his father. In baseball, it is still possible to see something you've never seen before in any given game. However, it is rare to witness a single instance that has never happened in the long history of the majors. Plus, you have to love father-son baseball stories!

Rougned Odor and the Meaningless 30 Homer Season

My favorite article of the day comes from the Dallas News. Rougned Odor of the Rangers is having a year that is truly remarkable, and I mean 'remarkable' in the negative sense. Odor has thirty home runs on the season, but only an OPS+ of 68, which means that he is offensively 32% below the league average player. This is the lowest OPS+ for a 30 home run hitter in MLB history, besting the previous mark of 86.3 by Tony Batista in 2004. His all-or-nothing swings are giving away too many at-bats and costing him team offensive production from their second basemen. Is his approach fixable? We'll see, but his poor offense is hurting a team still in Wild Card contention. 154 Ks and a .206 doesn't justify 30 homers and 74 RBI.

Center Field at Griffith Stadium

I pulled up an article from MLB.com regarding the end of the center field mound, Tal's Hill, at Minute Maid Park. In the article, the writer included some historic examples of ballpark quirks. One of the examples is in D.C. at Griffith Stadium. Here is the write up:

When a fire destroyed a wooden baseball park in northern Washington, D.C., the owners of the Senators built a new steel structure in the span of half a season. But when they built what came to be known as Griffith Stadium, they were unable to convince the owners of five duplex houses to sell their property in center field. That's how one of the strangest center field walls in baseball was born, with a section of fence jutting directly back into the field at a right angle to accommodate the row of houses. The houses were so close to the field that one of them featured a yellow line of paint on its exterior as part of the stadium's ground rules. The landlords showed their entrepreneurial sides by constructing bleachers in their backyards. Griffith Stadium was demolished in 1965, but many of the homes on U Street are still standing today.

Until next time!

MLB Versus the Drag Queens

Check out this article in today's New York Post: http://nypost.com/2016/12/13/mlbs-new-rule-stop-making-rookies-dress-like-women/ The pic of Brad Ziegler dressed as Sailor Moon is awesome! Oh, and it doesn't shock me at all that Jeff Kent would have a tantrum about this back in '92.

Talk to you soon!

Baseball History Mural in Philly

I love it when communities embrace their baseball heritage. In Philadelphia, a baseball history mural is going to be painted on the side of a new urban youth academy building. Take a look at the mural, created by artist Mark Stockton:

According to the Passyunk Post blog (www.passyunkpost.com): "The portraits will be selected based on the level of connection to baseball, art and civic history in Philadelphia. The mural will primarily be broken into a color scheme of red, blue, green and yellow. The images represented in yellow will show the African Americans involved with the Negro leagues, blue will represent youth baseball, red will show Philadelphia baseball players and green will represent the creative and civic leaders with some connection to the sport."