Baseball
Story Stream
Why People Are Still Obsessed With the Montreal Expos October 24, 2025
Over the course of a baseball season, every fan experiences some sort of loathing for their team. A winless road trip, a particularly annoying relief pitcher, a confounding manager who incorrectly zigs when he’s supposed to zag: It’s all baked into t...
The Bros of Indie Baseball October 14, 2025
I recently had the chance to go to a “Business Day Game” between Frontier League western division rivals the Mississippi Mud Monsters and the Schaumburg Boomers, and I couldn’t pass it up. Even more exotic, it was a rare morning game. Baseball in the...
Who Killed the Montreal Expos? October 13, 2025
I feel like I have a personal connection to the now-defunct Montreal Expos. I supervise tours at Wrigley Field for my day job, and not a week goes by that I don’t see someone sporting the stylized red E and blue B that form the team’s larger M logo. ...
Fields of Dreams October 03, 2025
I invited Alex Perez and Ross Barkanto join me for this episode of the podcast because I’d seen both of them write essays or posts recently reflecting on their days as baseball players. Ross, as you’ll hear, topped out as a decent high school player....
The Disenchantment of Baseball October 02, 2025
It was only a matter of time. Major League Baseball announced on September 23 that next year’s regular season would see the introduction of robot umpires for balls and strikes, a system already in use in the minor leagues. The robots won’t call every...
Is Baseball Broken? September 10, 2025
In 1965 Sandy Koufax threw a perfect game, finished the regular season with a 2.04 earned-run average and sat out the opening of the World Series because he wouldn’t pitch on Yom Kippur; Roberto Clemente led the majors with a .329 batting average and...
Why Former NFL All-Pros Are Turning to Psychedelics September 09, 2025
Roam the wide-open halls and cavernous showrooms of the Colorado Convention Center during Psychedelic Science, the world’s largest psychedelics conference, and you’ll see exhibitors hawking everything from mushroom jewelry, to chewable gummies contai...
Willie, Mickey, and the Duke — and perhaps Richie September 03, 2025
Every baseball fan knows the song “Willie, Mickey, and the Duke” about the three great Big Apple sluggers of the 1950s. It heralds their feats during one of the great eras of New York city baseball, a time when the Dodgers, Yanks and Giants led by Du...
Rob Manfred Can't Fix Baseball August 20, 2025
Let's fix baseball, because Rob Manfred can't. The MLB commissioner briefly talked Sunday about how expansion could lead to geographic realignment of divisions. I don't think he meant ditching the historical two "leagues" for an eastern and western c...
How Chili’s Won Gen Z August 13, 2025
In May I walked into a Chili’s Grill & Bar for the first time in a decade. I quickly adjusted to the sensory overload. My table was covered with a giant laminated menu, a paper tent pushing the restaurant’s margaritas and fajitas, and an electronic d...
The Running Life August 04, 2025
It felt, in my early adolescence, there was nothing more ruthless than running.For reasons I could not understand at the time, I had stopped being able to beat anyone in a race. In the fifth grade, I was among the faster boys in my class, and I delig...
The Extraordinary Mystery of the Tigers' Tarik Skubal July 14, 2025
THE IDEA HERE is to profile the Detroit Tigers' Tarik Skubal, the most dynamic and charismatic pitcher in baseball, a young man whose run of dominance over the past three seasons is approaching historic levels. This gig is pretty straightforward: We ...
Homestand July 10, 2025
Baseball is about community. That is how it became America’s game.And that is what inspired Will Bardenwerper to write Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America, a book I urge every baseball fan to read.This book is not jus...
Why America Needs Baseball July 07, 2025
In today’s landscape of sports and entertainment, many think that baseball—rather than our national pastime—is just one among an unlimited number of options. According to a survey done by Pew Research in 2023, when asked what they consider “America’s...
The Best Home Run Hitter Is a Guy Named Big Dumper June 27, 2025
Long before Cal Raleigh was a national sensation, when he was still making his way through the minor leagues, various scouting reports described him as “burly,” a “bigger-bodied guy,” or even a “certified Big Boy.” But this year, as the 28-year-old’s...
How the Cost of Youth Sports Is Changing the N.B.A. June 24, 2025
American sports come with implied narratives. The story of baseball is fundamentally nostalgic, connecting us to childhood and to the country’s pastoral beginnings. Football tells a story of manly grit, with echoes of the battlefield. Basketball is t...
Jaws Is Still (And Will Always Be) My Favorite Movie June 23, 2025
I’ll never forget June 20, 1975. The date is permanently tattooed on my brain for two reasons. First, it was the day that I turned six. If I shut my eyes, I can still picture my birthday haul from that year: A brand-new three-speed and a factory-seal...
So, Who’s the Best Player in Baseball? June 05, 2025
Last weekend, the Yankees played the Dodgers, which provided the perfect prompt to re-live last year’s World Series (much to the Yankees’ dismay). It also offered another chance to see, on the same field, the two best players in baseball: Shohei Ohta...
Interview #60: Will Bardenwerper June 04, 2025
Will Bardenwerper is an accomplished writer who has had his work published in many prominent outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Outside, and Newsweek. He published his first book, The Prisoner in His Palace: Saddam Hussein, His A...
A Big-League Bet on Pro Softball June 03, 2025
Kim Ng had big plans. For more than thirty years, ever since she was an intern for the Chicago White Sox, she had spent her summers working long hours. She eventually became an assistant general manager, first for the New York Yankees and then for th...
Carlos Santana, at 39, Remains Revered Teammate May 13, 2025
WASHINGTON – It is the kind of turnaround any ballplayer dreads, a most extreme version of the day game after a night game, and the Cleveland Guardians’ clubhouse reflected that harsh reality Wednesday morning....
How Major League Baseball Lost Its Soul May 07, 2025
Ihighly recommend Homestand, Will Bardenwerper’s new book contrasting the community-enhancing qualities of grass-roots baseball with the soulless corporate product that Major League Baseball has become – and it’s not just because I am a central chara...
Books and Baseball May 02, 2025
Several weeks ago, in sync with the start of Major League Baseball’s 2025 season, the University of Nebraska Press published David Krell’s 1978: Baseball and America in the Disco Era. It is the third such volume Krell has done, following 1962: Baseba...
The Life and Times of Hack Wilson April 28, 2025
In the days before television and certainly before social media, professional athletes and famous individuals in general were shrouded in mystique. What little the public knew about them came from the newspapers. When baseball emerged as America’s Pa...
The Wildest Fashion Show in Sports Is…Little League? April 23, 2025
I’m a rotten father. I haven’t bought my Little Leaguer a sliding mitt. For the unfamiliar: The sliding mitt is baseball’s strange yet omnipresent style accessory. It’s a long, padded glove designed to protect a base runner’s fingertips when sliding ...
