Musings From Cooperstown

Earlier this week Shank took a trip to upstate New York:

Baseball’s split from its past feels more severe than previous shifts, and more observations from Cooperstown

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Old people think things were better in the old days. Young people like the way things are. It’s the natural order of life.

The Baseball Hall of Fame’s Induction Weekend brought this point home as I prowled the inner sanctum of the Hall’s plaque gallery, plus the ancient Otesaga Hotel where Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson were enshrined as the first Hall class in 1936.

Bet those hardball legends had quarrels with the way the game was being played at the time. Crusty old-timers always insist things were better in their day. Nap Lajoie probably told Ruth and Co. that the game was better in the 19th century, when men were men.

All that said, the current version of this universal push-pull is truly different. In the summer of 2025, baseball is largely unrecognizable to old-time greats and, even worse, today’s Hall of Famers increasingly feel estranged from the people who run the game. Analytics and new methods of teaching have removed the endearing layer of tutelage that’s always connected the sport.

DHL Dan CCLIII - Reinstatement

Shank weighs in on the bullshit decision of the current MLB commissioner to undo a determination by another commissioner:

Reinstatement of Pete Rose, others has this Hall of Fame voter wondering why worry about ‘character,’ and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while welcoming Chris Sale back to Fenway . . . and Alex Verdugo, too . . .

⋅ The Office of the Commissioner of Baseball was established in 1920 in the aftermath of discovery that eight members of the Chicago White Sox had taken gamblers’ money in exchange for throwing the 1919 World Series. There was concern that betting would kill the game. In 1921, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was installed as the first commissioner, hired to clean up the sport forever.

One of Landis’s first acts was to banish the White Sox players from the game, making it clear that betting on baseball was something you could not do if you intended to be part of the sport. It was a permanent banishment.

On Tuesday of this past week, commissioner Rob Manfred, at the request of President Trump, made a mockery of the office, reinstating known gambling violators Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and 15 others deceased individuals. Buffered with soft semantics (“permanent ineligibility” ends when you die), Manfred’s message to uniformed baseball personnel seems to be: Don’t worry too much about that rule you were always told was so sacred. It may not happen until after your death, but if you gamble on baseball you will eventually be reinstated by MLB. The commissioner will leave it up to others to decide if you are Hall of Fame worthy.

That's 100 percent right - character is supposed to matter for Hall of Fame eligibility and with respect to gambling on games youre involved with (either for or against your team), they broke written or moral rules, as the 1919 White Sox did. The moral rule, of course, is this - if you tank games and take money to do it, you're a piece of shit and have fully earned your banishment.

A Weekend In Upstate New York

Shank went to Cooperstown over the weekend and he has a few interesting stories to tell, like this one:

Danny Ainge almost returned to baseball after the Celtics traded him, and other discoveries from a weekend at the Hall of Fame

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Lingering thoughts after three days at the Baseball Hall of Fame on induction weekend ...

▪ Danny Ainge considered returning to the Toronto Blue Jays after Red Auerbach traded him from the Celtics to the Sacramento Kings in February of 1989.

Former Blue Jays general manager Pat Gillick broke this news to me at a large reception in the Hall’s sacred Plaque Gallery Saturday evening.

“Bet you didn’t know that Danny Ainge called me about coming back to baseball after Red traded him,” Gillick said. “I thought it was going to happen.”

“I considered it,” Ainge said Sunday over the phone from Utah. “I was intrigued because I really thought I could have succeeded in baseball.”

Read on for a few more tidbits like that one.

DHL Dan CLXXVI - Baseball Hall of Fame Musings

Shank's not too thrilled with the slate of recent inductees into Cooperstown:

Looking forward to voting for some slam-dunk Baseball Hall of Fame candidates in the coming years, and other thoughts

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Picked-up pieces while fondly remembering not-so-long-ago days when Red Sox and Patriots owners seemed to care more about winning than making money . . .

▪ Fred McGriff and Scott Rolen will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday.

These are good dudes with impressive résumés, but theirs are not names that come to mind when fans talk about baseball immortality. Rolen is a career .281 hitter who had only one top-10 MVP season in a 17-year career and went hitless in the 2004 World Series against the Red Sox. He was voted in by the BBWAA in his sixth appearance on the ballot. McGriff was overlooked in 10 tries with the writers, never cracking 40 percent of the ballots (75 percent is required) before gaining admission via the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee.

McGriff and Rolen were very good players but not first-round slam dunks of recent vintage such as Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jim Thome, Chipper Jones, Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Greg Maddux, and John Smoltz.

It looks like the attitude was 'well, we have to induct somebody, so here they are.'

This part was amusing, at least for me:

...

▪ When New York Post sports reporter Howie Kussoy sat down to interview Mets outfielder Tommy Pham, the former Red Sox pulled out his cellphone and recorded the interview right along with Kussoy. I’ve had this happen only once. When I interviewed Larry Lucchino and Tom Werner for a book I wrote with Terry Francona, the Sox officials brought Dr. Charles Steinberg so they’d have their own recording of the session. Dueling recordings. It felt like the Nixon White House.

I talked to Shank a few years ago over the phone. The first thing he asked me was whether I was recording the conversation. I told him I was not, but I'm going to take a few notes if he didn't mind, and he didn't. Someone's got the Nixon thing down pat, all right.

Rained Out

On Marathon Monday, Shank wove a few sports together and called it a column:

Two of sport’s best — Eliud Kipchoge and Shohei Ohtani — were in town, but rain fell on their parade

One can make a case that the world’s two greatest athletes were both in Boston Monday, performing less than a half-mile from one another.

But our sloppy spring weather was the ultimate winner. New England’s April remains undefeated.

Kenyan superstar Eliud Kipchoge, the undisputed greatest marathoner of all-time, finished a disappointing sixth in the 127th Boston Marathon, logging the worst time (2:09:23) of his epic career. His countryman Evans Chebet was the winner for the second straight year.

Meanwhile, over at ancient Fenway Park (forever 15 years younger than our Marathon), Shohei Ohtani, the Babe Ruth of the 21st century, pitched two hitless innings and cracked a couple of singles but his mound start was cut short by car-wash rains that repeatedly stalled play in a 5-4 Angels victory over the Red Sox.

Celebrate Good Times - Come On!

Yeah, I went with the Kool and The Gang lyric there, before Shank had his chance to do the same:

Regardless of Red Sox expectations, this is a day to celebrate the return of baseball

For one shining moment, let’s have no snark. No cynicism. No wiseguy remarks about bat-to-ball skills, spin rate, analytic geeks, standing ovations in Springfield, or payroll flexibility.

Let’s celebrate the start of another baseball season. The Red Sox are 0-0 and not yet poisoned by last place or false narratives.

You don't need the benefit of hindsight to realize that line is world-class bullshit. I mean it helps a lot, but whatever...

Almost 30 years ago, the Washington Post’s Thomas Boswell — their Gammons — released a book titled, “Why Time Begins on Opening Day.”

It’s a great phrase and reminds us of a long-ago day when baseball was king of New England and Opening Day was a legal excuse to skip school.

Happy New Year, everyone. The Red Sox are readying for their 123rd season opener Thursday (2:10 p.m.) at ancient, beautiful Fenway Park against the Orioles and we are in Full Rochie, Hakuna Matata mode.

For this one day only, we are all Bart Giamatti, Roger Angell, Ken Burns, and Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Ich bin ein citizen of Red Sox Nation.

I wonder if Shank realizes that line from JFK is actually a massive gaffe? The literal meaning of 'Ein Berliner' is 'a donut' / 'one donut'; the proper way for JFK to have conveyed his message in German is 'Ich bin Berliner', or 'I am of Berlin'; i.e., 'I'm one of you.'

Coexistence

I wonder if John Henry told Shank to knock it off with the relenting negativity for the 2023 Boston Red Sox?

With Red Sox, hope and realism can exist at the same time

FORT MYERS, Fla. — On my way back to spring training, I got into a small Twitter dustup with Red Sox mascot Jared Carrabis, a wildly popular baseball fan from Saugus who has turned his Sox love into a business empire.

The likable Carrabis landed a sweet gig with a betting company, has a billion Twitter followers, has his own NESN show, and the Sox love him so much he had his own duck boat station for the last championship parade. He was the official team moderator when fans revolted at Winter Weekend in Springfield.

Jared has been promoting the great “vibes” in (still undefeated!) Red Sox camp, and after Raimel Tapia’s homer in a 7-1 win over the mighty Tigers Monday, he wrote, “We went from the Red Sox are scrambling to put together an outfield to the Red Sox have too many outfielders and not enough spots REAL quick.”

Read on for the modern equivalent of a slap fight.

DHL Dan CLXI - Ramming Speed!

Shank's pretty happy about the recent modifications in Major League Baseball:

Getting baseball up to speed again is reason to rejoice, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while brushing my teeth in less than 20 seconds …

▪ We love baseball. But baseball has not loved us back in recent decades.

The game we grew up with became unrecognizable as MLB asked fans to endure interminable stretches of non-action and abject indifference. We had pitchers who would not throw the ball and hitters who would not step into the batter’s box. None of the players seemed aware that they’d brought a once-great game to a standstill.

Now everything has changed. We have a pitch clock, mandating action. To avoid being assessed an automatic ball, pitchers have 20 seconds to throw a pitch (15 if the bases are empty). To avoid an automatic strike, batters need to be in the box, ready to swing, with eight seconds left on the clock. Spring games are being played an average of 26 minutes faster. With more action.

Hallelujah.

Gotta say I agree with him 100%. Regular season games are tough to watch when they take three hours to play and we're well aware of how long typical Red Sox / Yankees games (and most playoff games as well) can take. These moves will save baseball's ass in the long run.

The Roger Clemens No Hall Of Fame Column

Shank sort of laments Roger Clemens' non-passage into the Baseball Hall of Fame:

Numerically, Clemens is one of the top 10 pitchers of all time. He won seven Cy Young Awards, seven ERA titles, and 354 games. He was MVP of the American League when he went 24-4 with the ‘86 Red Sox. He led his teams to six pennants and two World Series wins. He won 192 games for the Red Sox, tied for most in club history with Cy Young.

Clemens didn’t look suspicious until after he left Boston for Toronto. After going 40-39 over the last four years of his Sox career, he went to the Blue Jays and won back-to-back Cy Young Awards. He pitched ridiculously well into his 40s. Too well, maybe. Clemens went 18-4 with Houston at the age of 41, then compiled a 1.87 ERA when he was 42.

Everything went south for Clemens when his onetime trainer Brian McNamee cooperated with Senator George Mitchell’s investigation into baseball. Clemens’s name appeared 82 times in the infamous Mitchell Report. Former teammate Andy Pettitte also flipped on Clemens.

The David Ortiz Hall Of Fame Column

Or - The One Where Shank Belatedly Recasts His Doubts About Some Players In The Steroid Era:

David Ortiz’s election seems to be another sign of a shift in Hall of Fame voting philosophy

I'll spoil part of the fun - unlike previous years, Shank does not disclose his own 'voting philosophy' this time around. This helps to not explain his own potential 'shift' in voting philosophy.

History was made Tuesday night, as Barry Bonds — one of the top five sluggers who ever lived — and Roger Clemens — one of the top five pitchers who ever lived — were rejected by Baseball Hall of Fame voters for a 10th and final time and will be removed from the baseball writers’ ballot forever. Bonds and Clemens, neither of whom ever failed a drug test, presumably were bounced because both were suspected of PED use in the second half of their careers.

Meanwhile, David Ortiz, one of the great clutch hitters of all time and a certified Boston icon — and a player whose name was on a list of those who did test positive for PEDs (commissioner Rob Manfred later cast doubt about the test, which also fingered Sammy Sosa, Manny Ramirez, and Alex Rodriguez) — was elected in his first year of eligibility. Ortiz will be enshrined in Cooperstown, N.Y., July 24.

Welcome to the wild and wacky world of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Everybody loves Big Papi (except for the author of this column! - ed), including a commissioner desperately in need of the good publicity that certainly will accompany the induction of baseball’s Santa Claus. Ortiz is the only PED suspect who ever got a presidential pardon from the commissioner of baseball. But even hard-core Red Sox fans must see that Ortiz’s career curve is curious.

These are the facts: Ortiz’s name and age changed while he was in the minors. In 1996, when Ortiz was traded by the Mariners to the Twins, a Minnesota newspaper reported his weight as 190 pounds.

He was released by the Twins at the age of 27, then blossomed into an elite slugger in Boston in 2003, when the Sox listed him at 230 pounds. The 2003 season was also the year in which Ortiz tested positive for PEDs, according to the New York Times, along with Manny, Sosa, and A-Rod.

If you look at the picture in the Globe article (and others), you'd likely chalk up a lot of the weight gain to the area around his stomach.

Second - it's been pointed out many, many years ago by my co-bloggers Mike B. and David M. that most baseball writers (including Shank) looked the other way during the whole PED / steriod era, not to mention Shank's amply demonstrated hostility towards Ortiz, and it's my contention this retroactive denial of entry to all suspected PED users by these sportswriters is just ass covering. Let the worthy ones in and slap asterisks next to their names, if that's how we move on from this stuff.

DHL Dan CLXVI - The Turning Away

Shank takes a look at what the work stoppage in Major League Baseball's going to look like:

Baseball is giving fans another reason to turn away, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while waiting for Tom Brady & Co to launch a Sunday playoff tripleheader …

▪ Baseball owners and players don’t seem to care about you, the fans. This will be painfully obvious if they fail to craft a new basic agreement in the coming weeks.

Demonstrating zero urgency, the sides have talked twice in the last six weeks — a seven-minute session in early December and an hourlong Zoom session Thursday. The sides do not trust one another, which means a likely delay for the start of spring training and possibly the regular season.

It’s clear that owners care most about postseason TV revenue and would be happy to lose some of the 162 if they can get a favorable new deal. Meanwhile, ballplayers have made their disregard for fans clear with their insistence on maintaining a still-life pace of play that has turned off millions of baseball watchers.

Including this one.

Not So Hot Stove League

Since Major League Baseball's currently under a lockout, Shank (co-author of his book) talks to former Boston Red Sox manager Terry Francona about other baseball stuff:

Catching up with Terry Francona, who plans to be back in the Cleveland dugout

It is the end of 2021, the middle of baseball winter, and all of our Hot Stoves are Ice Cold.

So here’s a little baseball for you. Here’s what’s going on with Terry Francona — the best manager in Red Sox history — who was fired by the Sox exactly 10 years ago.

Francona averaged 93 wins in his eight seasons at Fenway, winning two World Series, taking the Sox to the playoffs five times, and playing in front of a full house every night. After the 2011 chicken-and-beer collapse, Francona gave way to Bobby Valentine, who gave way to John Farrell, who gave way to Alex Cora.

Cora was one of Francona’s Red Sox players. So were future managers Dave Roberts (Dodgers), Kevin Cash (Rays), Gabe Kapler (Giants), Rocco Baldelli (Twins), David Ross (Cubs), and Mark Kotsay (A’s). You can say that Francona’s managing tree has borne more fruit than Bill Belichick’s coaching tree. Cora, Cash, Roberts, and Kapler all managed in the playoffs in 2021.

Suicide Solution?

Shank writes about a potential upcoming work stoppage in baseball, which is always less harmful in the offseason:

The good news about Major League Baseball’s imminent lockout is that it has created an artificial free agency deadline for many teams looking to improve in hopes that therewill be a full 162-game season in 2022.

As of now, unless there’s a labor agreement between owners and the Players Association, all MLB business closes at midnight Wednesday. As a result, we’ve seen a frenzy of signings by aggressive teams intent on improving their chances for 2022.

Through Monday, there had been 16 free agent player agreements with guarantees of more than $20 million (no big splashes for the “deliberate” Red Sox, who spent the last few days buying an NHL team). In the past month, MLB owners have pledged more than $1.4 billion in guaranteed contracts, almost $1.2 billion since Friday.

I remember a few vague stories about a work stoppage / strike during the year and didn't take much stock in them, given that the game was / still is losing viewership / popularity and anything like a stoppage now would affect (read - hurt) all sides. Cooler heads have this one resolved well before spring training starts.

DHL Dan CLV - The Achy Breaky Heart

In the latest installment of the Picked Up Pieces column, Shank bemoans the lack of interest in baseball:

It still breaks my heart to see how far baseball has fallen

Picked-up pieces while waiting for someone other than Tony Massarotti or Lou Merloni to mention the Red Sox on Boston sports radio . . .

▪ I am a realist. I don’t bay at the moon wishing folks under 50 still read printed newspapers. I know that our printed product is enjoyed primarily by people who remember Dwight Eisenhower, daily Mass, Suffolk Downs, and an age when everybody knew who was heavyweight champ of the world. For the most part, this is Major League Baseball’s audience in 2021.

But it still breaks my heart sometimes.

Last Sunday, after attending a memorial service for a family member, I drove my brother back toward home, listening to Joe Castiglione (another hardball geezer like myself) delivering play-by-play on the Red Sox very important Game 162 in Washington. It was in the middle innings and the Sox were trying to dig out of a 5-1 hole.

Read on for Shank almost crying into a beer, but baseball's waning popularity is largely self-inflicted. Most of the Red Sox - Yankees games, for example, clock in from 3 to 4 hours with pitching changes out the wazoo. Until that's rectified, fans will keep tuned into other sports.

This part sticks out like a sore thumb:

The Sports Hub, Boston’s FM sports radio powerhouse, routinely mocks baseball and largely ignores the Sox, except for Massarotti’s short evening program during the season. 98.5 consistently dominates the ratings. It’s strictly business. The soul-crushing reality for us baseball guys is that a Boston sports station is not rewarded for talking baseball. So they don’t do it. It’s far better for business to talk endlessly about a 1-3 football team that hasn’t won a playoff game in three years. That’s the reality, people.

Here's what we wrote over three years ago about 'largely ignoring the Red Sox':

Shank appears for two hours on 98.5 The Sports Hub just about every week. If he feels there isn't enough baseball conversation, there's a way to address that problem - provide it when you do these appearances.

And now that he's off the Zolak & Bertrand show, he'll continue to provide the same level of baseball discussion - none at all. That's what happens when a sports columninst would rather go on the air and regurgitate the previous day's newspaper column instead of giving the fans what he believes they should get.

DHL Dan CXLIV - The Covid Column

Shank thinks all professional baseball players should get vaccines for Covid-19, AKA the Wuhan Flu virus:

Major League Baseball needs to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while nervously waiting for the first Olympic fiasco . . .

▪ Memo to Major League Baseball: Just get the COVID-19 vaccine, fellas. It’s not about politics or a government plot to put a microchip in your body. Risks? Of course. There are risks that you could choke on your steak dinner. Have you stopped eating?

This 'logic', as it were, is unpersuasuive. If you could choke on steak, wouldn't you simply stop eating... steak?

Enough with the boogeyman and the tin-foil-hat, science-denying. It’s pretty clear that the personal benefits from vaccination outweigh the potential risks. This is a public health issue. Stop piggybacking on the cooperation of the majority while endangering that majority (and yourself) by exercising your right to refuse. You have the “right” to push your way into a crowded subway car when you have the flu. How about stepping up for the greater good?

What other measures 'for public health' would Shank (and others) advocate mandating? Has he gotten the vaccine himself? Funny how he doesn't discuss that. Full discosure - because of prior heart attacks, I got two Moderna shots back in May.

Thank God smallpox and polio vaccines came along before all-knowing Dr. Google.

Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred has ordered a mandatory vaccination policy for those who work in his office. He should do the same with his players, coaches, managers, and clubhouse workers. Unfortunately, Manfred is a lawyer and knows he’ll never get a mandate past baseball’s all-powerful Players Association.

Another angle Shank doesn't consider - the FDA fast-tracked approval of these vaccines; last time I checked they have not undergone the full approval process, which can take years. In that sense they are considered experimental vaccines and I have no problem with vaccine skeptics. Too bad Shank disagrees with that notion because one fucking baseball game was cancelled on Friday night.

The Pedro Gomez Contribution

There's a book out on Pedro Gomez, the (now deceased) baseball writer and TV guy for ESPN. Here's Shank's contribution - another rip job on Curt Schilling.

(“Remember Who You Are,” a collection of essays about ESPN baseball reporter Pedro Gomez, who died in February, was released on Tuesday. This is the contribution to the book by columnist Dan Shaughnessy. Click here to visit the book’s website.)

Curt Schilling despised both of us. To his dying day — and it’s still painful to type those words — the thing I shared most with Pedro Gomez was our coveted claim as Schill’s two least-favorite baseball writers.

Our small club was formed during the 2001 World Series when Pedro called out the Diamondbacks ace on the day of the seventh game of the World Series against the vaunted New York Yankees. These were not normal times. America’s soul was ripped open when the Towers fell and the presence of the Yankees in the World Series became a metaphor for American resilience. The Yanks and D-Backs helped heal our country with a spectacular seven-game series, but in my capacity as a Boston Globe sports columnist, I was blissfully unaware of Schilling’s fraudulence and clubhouse divisiveness until he was called out by Republic columnist Pedro Gomez on the day of the most important game in Arizona’s franchise history.

The Ultimate Mercy Rule

In case you're wondering just how bad and unbwatchable professional baseball has become, look no further than this column:

Two games into spring training, and we have a solution for the 2021 Red Sox: The Little League Mercy Rule.

It’s a new preseason thing. If you are getting crushed by your opponent, you can stop an inning once your pitcher has thrown more than 20 pitches in a frame. Alex Cora ran up the white flag three times in seven innings of Monday’s 5-3 loss to the Braves and has invoked the slaughter clause four times in the first two games, both losses.

The Sox should petition MLB to make this an option during the regular season. No more jail-break innings. Everybody goes home feeling good about themselves, even on a day when you commit five errors and three times walk off the field before getting a third out.

But wait - it gets worse:

I watched on Fubo because the bosses at NESN have made watching the Sox harder than ever. NESN was dropped by YouTube TV last fall after negotiations between the two parties broke down. This meant that a large chunk of Boston baseball watchers had to scramble, and many steered toward Fubo, which just happens to be the top overall streaming service for futbol, offering 32 soccer channels.

Loyal baseball fans (remember them?) who dumped YouTube TV for a NESN carrier were doubly disappointed Sunday when the Sox exhibition opener against the Twins was not televised on the flagship. Imagine that. You have a sagging last-place team with little star power, aggressively cutting costs on player payroll … and you make it hard for your remaining loyalists to watch the team and perhaps learn the names of some of your faceless new players. Genius.

After paying my new streaming bill, and learning the bells and whistles of Fubo, I navigated around the menu’s soccer smorgasbord and found the Sox NESN broadcast at 1 p.m. I couldn’t wait to get a look at Garrett Richards’s vaunted spin rate.The view of JetBlue Park and the dulcet tones of Dave O’Brien made me warm all over. It was good to hear OB alongside Jerry Remy, who told us it was 84 degrees at the sunny ballpark. For a moment, I longed to be back in Fort Myers, but then O’Brien said he and the RemDawg were broadcasting from their Watertown studios, no more than a mile from where I was sitting on the Brighton/Newton border.

The view of JetBlue Park and the dulcet tones of Dave O’Brien made me warm all over. It was good to hear OB alongside Jerry Remy, who told us it was 84 degrees at the sunny ballpark. For a moment, I longed to be back in Fort Myers, but then O’Brien said he and the RemDawg were broadcasting from their Watertown studios, no more than a mile from where I was sitting on the Brighton/Newton border.

So there you have it - the Red Sox are again expected to be a poor team this year and when you can find the game on a local channel, the booth guys won't actually be at the park, which will be next to empty like they were last year.

Exactly what reason is there to watch baseball anymore?

DHL Dan CXXVI - The Next Grab Bag

I was expecting another semi-weekly mail it in job from Shank with this one, but I see some interesting things already:

Let’s not take the bats out of the pitchers’ hands completely, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering whether Charlie Baker will dispatch Ed Davis to clean up this vaccination chaos …

▪ Have we seen the last of pitchers in the batter’s box? Is Major League Baseball ready to adopt the universal designated hitter?

“I think it’s time,” J.D. Martinez said in Fort Myers, Fla. “I think everybody knows it’s time. Even the owners, the players, the fans, they know it’s time. Everybody loves offense.”

MLB and the Players Association have yet to agree on a universal DH for 2021, which means the upcoming National League season may be the farewell tour for pitchers hitting. The universal DH almost certainly will be implemented as part of the next basic agreement, which will be hammered out after the 2021 season.

Put me down as one with a fondness for pitchers hitting. How else would the world have discovered Babe Ruth?

It's worth a read - give it a go.

Baseball's Dying, But Not In The Way Shank Thinks

Shank takes note of the rather large numbers of former baseball players passing on:

Hearing that another baseball Hall of Famer died strikes me as a macabre metaphor for the sport I love.

Judging by the manner in which he writes about sports, I'll have to call bullshit here.

This has been a year of isolation, lockdown, fear, and death. The daily obits (“the Irish Sports Pages”) have been required, lengthy reading for old-timers like me. And October 2020 feels like the month of death.

In the darkness, we have a Cooperstown carnage. Joe Morgan died Sunday. Last week, it was Whitey Ford. The week before that, it was Bob Gibson. In September, Lou Brock. In August, Tom Seaver. In April, Al Kaline.

Shank goes on from there to chronicle what definitely looks like the many deaths of former MLB players, and it's sad to note. That said, the 'isolation, lockdown' that Shank bemoans is a completely, 100% self-inflicted wound by the honchos running MLB (and other sports, for that matter) by shortened seasons and especially the lack of crowds at the stadiums, making the game difficult, if not impossible, to watch.

And So It Begins

Well, that didn't take long, did it?

Source: Marlins’ game tonight against Orioles in Miami has been cancelled. Team still in Philadelphia.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) July 27, 2020

Feels like it’s over https://t.co/JTdqEUVdR8

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) July 27, 2020