I've written about baseball a few times before, and it's about time that the rightful sport of America steps back onto center stage.
So I present you with this year's first round of baseball links and stories. First, the baseball blogs and sites that I track regularly:
- BaseballAnalysts.com - a site with some of the best baseball analysis articles on the web
- BaseballMusings.com - more of a news blog but with a regular collection of great baseball articles from other sources
- BaseballThinkFactory.com - more excellent baseball analysis and the most intelligent baseball forums on the web
- JinAZ's Reds blog - great analysis of the Reds
- AmazingAvenue.com - a Mets blog that I'm pretty much following just to track the "Top 50 Mets of All Time" series
- 2006's All-Lucky Team - looks at the hitters who got the biggest breaks last year and probably should be avoided like the plague for fantasy drafts this year
- A Zumaya article - a pretty typical spring training article including a mention of his devestating ability to change speeds from a 102mph fastball to an 85mph change-up
- 2007 milestones - a look at what records we could see broken and milestones reached this year
- Cheater's Guide to Baseball - an Amazon book that looks like it might be fun to skim through
- a hometown article about Joe Mauer - and why I may be worrying about my first draft pick this year
- Article about Pedro Martinez - reminding us just how frickin' awesome some of these athletes really are...
His program for the day called for 25 throws at 45 feet, 50 at 60 feet, and 25 at 75 feet, the last distance an increase in length from what he had been doing the previous week.
Remarkably, at the two shorter distances, he threw to his personal trainer, Chris Correnti (who was formerly with the Sox as an assistant trainer), with his eyes closed. Why pretend to be blindfolded? The point was to help Martinez be consistent with his release point and feel free with his motion. It was impressive to watch him hit Correnti’s glove almost every time.
And this was no soft toss session. At one point, a New York writer sitting inside a media workroom not far from the field came out to investigate who was making someone’s glove pop so loudly.
2 comments:
As much as I abhor class basketball, I must say the venom in that website is insane. Also I believe I am liberal, yet I wish the class system in HS bball was gone. He kinda scare me :)
To ame:
The website was nasty and ridiculously over the top, agreed. I also know that I haven't seen much of the change take effect as I've been largely out of the state since it happened. I would imagine that at this point the anger is fading with most folks as the reality that this is the way it'll be pushes things to resignation and maybe sadness that things are different now than they were.
I think everybody can admit that something special was lost. At this point there's no reason to scream about it, no reason to yell, because it's not going back. Any push of "I'm gonna boycot forever" is just stupid.
To cmorin:
Baseball has shot itself in the foot for the past decade and a half - with labor issues, a strike that cost us a World Series, ignorance of the steroid issue for far too long, overemphasis on steroids now that they are paying attention, Pete Rose, Barry Bonds, big vs small market strife, and any of a half dozen other stupid and poorly managed issues.
But...
In spite of all that, Baseball is the only sport that could get Congress to step up and hold hearings. Baseball still has a revenue stream that seems nearly endless. Small market teams are making money now, and baseball is the only game in town for a large part of its season.
Baseball isn't American.
Baseball is America.
We care about baseball in ways that America doesn't care about the NBA or the NFL. Those leagues tinker with rules year to year, see teams go up and down with the wind, and are significatly more popular and better managed at the moment.
And still baseball is more a part of who we are as a nation than is the NFL or the NBA.
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