Baseball

LOVE LIKE A TIDAL WAVE:

The Green Fields of the Mind (A. Bartlett Giamatti,)

The aisles are jammed, the place is on its feet, the wrappers, the programs, the Coke cups and peanut shells, the doctrines of an afternoon; the anxieties, the things that have to be done tomorrow, the regrets about yesterday, the accumulation of a summer: all forgotten, while hope, the anchor, bites and takes hold where a moment before it seemed we would be swept out with the tide. Rice is up. Rice whom Aaron had said was the only one he’d seen with the ability to break his records. Rice the best clutch hitter on the club, with the best slugging percentage in the league. Rice, so quick and strong he once checked his swing halfway through and snapped the bat in two. Rice the Hammer of God sent to scourge the Yankees, the sound was overwhelming, fathers pounded their sons on the back, cars pulled off the road, households froze, New England exulted in its blessedness, and roared its thanks for all good things, for Rice and for a summer stretching halfway through October. Briles threw, Rice swung, and it was over. One pitch, a fly to center, and it stopped. Summer died in New England and like rain sliding off a roof, the crowd slipped out of Fenway, quickly, with only a steady murmur of concern for the drive ahead remaining of the roar. Mutability had turned the seasons and translated hope to memory once again. And, once again, she had used baseball, our best invention to stay change, to bring change on.

That is why it breaks my heart, that game–not because in New York they could win because Boston lost; in that, there is a rough justice, and a reminder to the Yankees of how slight and fragile are the circumstances that exalt one group of human beings over another. It breaks my heart because it was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.

ALL IN THE WRISTS:

The Alabama Boy Makes Good: Hank Aaron, Legend of the Negro World ( Gerald Early, October 31, 2025, Common Reader)

I went to Connie Mack Stadium, Shibe Park to the older generation, fairly often as a kid, not to see the Phillies but to see the opposing team, especially the Dodgers (to see Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale pitch), the Pirates (to see outfielder Roberto Clemente), the Giants (to see Willie Mays and the majestic Juan Marichal), and the Braves (to see Aaron but also to see pitcher Warren Spahn and Eddie Matthews). I saw Aaron hit a home run at a game I attended. I will never forget how hard he hit the ball, and how effortless and graceful his swing. Oh, those magical wrists of his! I imitated that swing for a while when I played youth baseball. It made my wrists and forearms ache. That did not dissuade me. I finally stopped when one of the coaches I would hit better if I stopped doing a poor imitation of Aaron. My hands were big, so he would yell at me to just use my hands to hit, not my wrists. “Don’t lead with your wrists,” he would shout, “Just let your wrists follow your hands.” He was right. When I stopped imitating Aaron, I did hit better. I guess Aaron’s way of hitting worked for Aaron and probably nobody else, certainly not for star-struck kids of small talent like me. That is the way it is with great hitters, sui generis.

One probable cause of Aaron’s nearly unique wrist strength must have been the fact that he hit cross-handed (right below left) when he was a young player. (try taking a swing that way and you’ll get the picture)

OUR TEACHERS WERE GASLIGHTING US:

When Baseball Threw Physics a Curve (Brad Bolman, 10.22.25, Pioneer Works)

In October 1877, the Cincinnati Enquirer hosted a debate between two physics professors in Ohio over a broiling national controversy: Was there such a thing as a curveball?

Pitchers claimed they were throwing them, batters claimed they were missing them, and fans claimed they were seeing them, but a chorus of doubters argued that the “curved ball” was a physical and scientific impossibility. On one side of the Enquirer debate was Orange Nash Stoddard, a distinguished science professor at Wooster University, lovingly nicknamed the “Little Wizard” by students. On the other was Robert White McFarland, a mathematician and civil engineer at Ohio Agricultural, which we now know as Ohio State. Stoddard’s position: “There is no such thing.” McFarland’s: “There is a curve.”

At the end of the nineteenth century, baseball was rapidly professionalizing and growing in popularity. For many, its geometric diamond arrangement and the spectacular physics of bat and ball made it a truly scientific sport. In turn, fans, players, commentators, and even natural scientists used baseball to test theories about the natural world. How far could a hit ball travel? Could a thrown ball really curve? Although debates over the curve are known to fans and sports historians alike, they are usually understood in a narrative of progress: an old misperception of physics that inevitably gave way to scientific truth. But the curveball debate was more than that. It was an argument about the contours of our shared reality. Could baseballs really bend along their path, or was it all a collective delusion?

PAVING THE WAY:

80 Years Ago, a Jewish Radical and Two Negro League Stars Led a Crusade To Integrate Baseball That Paved the Way for Jackie Robinson: The little known story about Sam Nahem, Leon Day, and Willard Brown who in 1945 played on a field in the shadow of Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Germany and broke down historic barriers. (Peter Dreier, 9/07/25, Common Dreams)

Defying the military establishment and baseball tradition, Nahem insisted on having African Americans on his team. He recruited Willard Brown, a slugging outfielder with the Kansas City Monarchs, and Leon Day, a star pitcher for the Newark Eagles, both of whom were stationed in France after the war in Europe ended.

In six full seasons before he joined the military, Brown, who grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, led the Negro leagues in hits six times, home runs four times, and RBIs five times, batting between .338 and .379. Brown participated in the Normandy invasion as part of the Quartermaster Corps, hauling ammunition under enemy fire and guarding prisoners.

Day, who grew up in segregated Baltimore, was the Negro League’s best hurler with the exception of Satchel Paige and helped the Monarchs win five pennants. In 1942, he set a Negro League record by striking out 18 Baltimore Elite Giants batters in a one-hit shutout. Day also saw action in the Normandy invasion as part of the 818th Amphibian Battalion. He drove a six-wheel drive amphibious vehicle (known as a duck) that carried supplies ashore. […]

Back in France, Brigadier Gen. Charles Thrasher organized a parade and a banquet dinner, with steaks and champagne, for the OISE All-Stars. In Victory Season, about baseball during World War 2, Robert Weintraub noted: “Day and Brown, who would not be allowed to eat with their teammates in many major-league towns, celebrated alongside their fellow soldiers.”

Although major white-owned newspapers, and the wire services, covered the GI World Series, no publication even mentioned the historic presence of two African Americans on the OISE roster. Almost every article simply referred to Day and Brown by name and position, but not by race or their Negro League ties. One exception was Stars & Stripes, the armed forces newspaper, which in one article described Day as “former star hurler for the Newark Eagles of the Negro National League,” and Brown as “former Kansas City Monarchs outfielder,” hinting at their barrier-breaking significance.

If there were any protests among the white players, or among the fans—or if any of the 71st Division’s officers raised objections to having African American players on the opposing team—they were ignored by reporters.

STUFF PLUS:

The Curious Case Of Sidd Finch: He’s a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd’s deciding about yoga—and his future in baseball. (George Plimpton, 4/01/1985, Sports Illustrated)

The Met inner circle believes that Finch’s problem may be that he cannot decide between baseball and a career as a horn player. In early March the club contacted Bob Johnson, who plays the horn and is the artistic director of the distinguished New York Philomusica ensemble, and asked him to come to St. Petersburg. Johnson was asked to make a clandestine assessment of Finch’s ability as a horn player and, even more important, to make contact with him. The idea was that, while praising him for the quality of his horn playing, Johnson should try to persuade him that the lot of a French-horn player (even a very fine one) was not an especially gainful one. Perhaps that would tip the scales in favor of baseball.

Johnson came down to St. Petersburg and hung around Florida Avenue for a week. He reported later to SI: “I was being paid for it, so it wasn’t bad. I spent a lot of time looking up, so I’d get a nice suntan. Every once in a while I saw Finch coming in and out of the rooming house, dressed to play baseball and carrying a funny-looking black glove. Then one night I heard the French horn. He was playing it in his room. I have heard many great horn players in my career—Bruno Jaenicke, who played for Toscanini; Dennis Brain, the great British virtuoso; Anton Horner of the Philadelphia Orchestra—and I would say Finch was on a par with them. He was playing Benjamin Britten’s Serenade, for tenor horn and strings—a haunting, tender piece that provides great space for the player—when suddenly he produced a big, evocative bwong sound that seemed to shiver the leaves of the trees. Then he shifted to the rondo theme from the trio for violin, piano and horn by Brahms—just sensational. It may have had something to do with the Florida evening and a mild wind coming in over Big Bayou and tree frogs, but it was remarkable. I told this to the Mets, and they immediately sent me home—presuming, I guess, that I was going to hire the guy. That’s not so farfetched. He can play for the Philomusica anytime.”

Meanwhile, the Mets are trying other ways to get Finch into a more positive frame of mind about baseball. Inquiries among American lamaseries (there are more than 100 Buddhist societies in the U.S.) have been quietly initiated in the hope of finding monks or priests who are serious baseball fans and who might persuade Finch that the two religions (Buddhism and baseball) are compatible. One plan is to get him into a movie theater to see The Natural, the mystical film about baseball, starring Robert Redford. Another film suggested is the baseball classic It Happens Every Spring, starring Ray Milland as a chemist who, by chance, discovers a compound that avoids wood; when applied to a baseball in the film, it makes Milland as effective a pitcher as Finch is in real life.

Conversations with Finch himself have apparently been exercises in futility. All conventional inducements—huge contracts, advertising tie-ins, the banquet circuit, ticker-tape parades, having his picture on a Topps bubble-gum card, chatting on Kiner’s Korner (the Mets’ postgame TV show) and so forth—mean little to him. As do the perks (“You are very kind to offer me a Suzuki motorcycle, but I cannot drive”). He has very politely declined whatever overtures the Mets have offered. The struggle is an absolutely internal one. He will resolve it. Last week he announced that he would let the management know what he was going to do on or around April 1.

PLEDGE DUTY:

What’s brewing with Red Sox? A chaotic coffee run from two top prospects (Jen McCaffrey, Mar. 13, 2025, The Athletic)

“He’s like, ‘We have to get coffee for every single person in the org,’” Mayer recalled. “And I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ He shows me a list. There were 40 coffee orders already.”

Marcelo Mayer’s coffee run led to a big day at the plate. (Mike Watters / Imagn Images)
Like preparing for the next day’s opposing pitcher, they had to develop a game plan. They picked a Starbucks on Alico Road about 6 miles from JetBlue Park, and the night before, they drove there and asked for the manager.

“I’m like, ‘You better bring your A squad tomorrow morning at 5 a.m. because we’re ordering 76 coffees,’” Mayer said. “They weren’t just all black coffees, everyone had a separate order.”

Mayer and Anthony begrudgingly woke up at 4:30 a.m. to get to Starbucks right when it opened.

The four-person staff was well-prepared for the Thursday morning madness. But making the process more chaotic, Anthony had to read off each individual order and pay one at a time. That way each cup would have a player’s name on it and they could keep track of who had which coffee.

After about 20 orders, Anthony’s credit card was declined, with the company suspecting fraud due to the flood of successive coffee purchases. Mayer started paying.

Over roughly an hour, Mayer and Anthony watched as the Starbucks crew brewed, shook, pumped, steamed and stirred the coffees, organizing them into cardboard trays.

“They did a very good job of pumping them out,” Anthony said. “It was crazy.”

“You’d think they did that (large of an order) every morning,” Mayer said. “They were really good.”

A few unlucky customers came through the Starbucks drive-thru during the Red Sox coffee crush, but thankfully for the staff, no one else arrived in the store during the early morning madness.

When it was all said and done, the bill came to more than $600, which Mayer and Campbell split, making sure to leave the baristas a hefty cash tip for all their efforts.

In the chaos of their morning, Mayer didn’t think to use his Starbucks app to pay for the order, which would have earned him stars toward future purchases.

“I would have had free coffee for a month,” Mayer lamented.

MONEYBALL BEFORE IT WAS COOL:

Earl Weaver, Baseball Lout and Legend: REVIEW: ‘The Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented & Reinvented Baseball’ by John W. Miller (Matt Lewis, March 9, 2025, Free Beacon)

Behind the theatrics, however, was a guy who viewed the game differently. While everyone else was obsessed with batting averages, Weaver cared more about on-base percentage and timely home runs. He came to despise the sacrifice bunt (why give away an out?). He turned shortstops into power hitters, moving 6’4″ Cal Ripken Jr. from third to short and paving the way for future MLB stars like Derek Jeter. He platooned players before it was cool, squeezing 36 homers and 98 RBIs out of a three-man rotation in left field in 1979. This is to say, he re-created star players “in the aggregate.” Billy Beane and the Moneyball crew should’ve sent him royalty checks.

Where did this knack for data and analytics come from? Miller suggests it came from his Uncle Bud, a bookie who helped raise him in St. Louis. Whatever the inspiration, Weaver was thinking in probabilities decades before the sabermetric crowd made it standard practice. And he wasn’t just a numbers guy. He was the first manager to use a radar gun. His ingenuity even extended to the field itself. He had the Orioles’ groundskeeper doctor the field—muddying the basepaths to slow fast opponents, and hardening the infield to create tricky hops for bad defenders. It was brilliant, it was petty, and it worked.

He even helped develop a baseball video game that eventually led to John Madden Football. Think about that: Earl Weaver is at least partially responsible for the most dominant sports video game of all time. Not bad for a guy who looked like he spent his afternoons drinking Pabst Blue Ribbons and screaming at neighborhood kids to stay off his lawn.