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Earl Weaver, Dead at 82, R.I.P.
Earl Weaver, full throttleThough a great strategist in and of what today is called small ball, his favorite play bluntly remained “the three-run home run.” His all-time winning percentage is .583. He...
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Predicting the 2013 Baseball Season
Forecasting baseball future, Kabbalah-style The 2013 baseball season, which opens on April Fools’ Day, promises to make a fool of all prognosticators. Nothing new in this. How could one imagine the...
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Home-run “Darby”
What will they think of next? Although we at the Right Off the Bat Project are hardly enamored of the mere distance baseballs are hit, like anyone else we do sometimes feel that size—as measured by...
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DH; or, Designated Hebrew
The first DH in baseball history unveils “his-story.” It’s been forty years (and two weeks) in the wilderness. Ron Blomberg became the first DH on April 6, 1973. From Atlanta and still living there,...
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1918 and All That
2013 was never in the wildest dreams of Ted Williams or his fansAnd in the end the only team left standing is the Boston Red Sox. I (Evander) doubt any major-league franchise and fan base have suffered...
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Smoky Joe Wood, Mort Cooper, Dick Wakefield, and Other Random Notes on...
Typical 1960s-stadium scorecard chronicles all the actionAs 2013 comes to a finish and activity at ROTB HQ reaches a feverish pitch (pun intended), I (Evander) would like “to close” (not Mariano-style)...
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2014 Major League Predictions
Putting away the snow shovel and dusting off the crystal ball….In time-honored fashion, and this being the ROTB Project blog-number 499, here come my (Evander’s) guesses for the 2014 Major League...
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The United States of Jeter
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps. And then the lighting of the lamps. As summer unofficially ends, the 2014 MLB season concluded with a terrific run of postseason playoff games, it seemed the...
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Little Red Scooter
Herb Score: one of the great Might Have Beens in baseball historyTo Martin’s Broad Agonistes, I note two Major League Baseball parallels: and our Right off the Bat is thus chockablock, many being...
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Not Cricket: “Bat Form”
Proponent-of-Moneyball Luhnow—victimized by success? Front-office personnel of the venerable St. Louis Cardinals franchise have plenty of explaining to do as the FBI investigates their hacking of the...
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Group Psychotherapy for Cleveland
The franchise of Feller, Score, and Thome: its fans wait till next year Nicholas Frankovich asks if Cleveland Indians fans require a big-couch session with a group psychotherapist. It’s a reasonable...
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Come Together this Bloomsday
Representatives Cedric Richmond, the Louisiana Democrat (right—go figure), and Steve Scalise, the Louisiana Republican, play during the Republicans’ 8-7 victory in 2016. The 2017 Congressional Baseball...
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Tab, Joe, Joe, and Joe
The original Mike Trout: Joe Hardy played by the late Tab Hunter The synchronicity of nostalgia. Events that rhyme in time. A circling of the sun. The revolution of the cold-blooded moon. Fantasy and...
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There Used to Be a Ballpark Again
Don’t let the discus-thrower throw you. It is one of the 1930s-style art-deco flourishes of a baseball stadium that today serves as a backdrop to cricket, Bangladesh-style. “How doth the city sit...
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Joe DiMaggio’s Second-longest Hitting Streak at 70 Years
Joe DiMaggio barnstorms (and instructs) in Japan following the 1950 World Series. As I (Evander) write this on July 16, today is 79 years since Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak reached its 56th and final...
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