Category: Baseball Musings

  • SABR 51: Chicago

    SABR 51: Chicago

    It’s been a few years since I had the time and brainpower to write up one of these recaps of a SABR convention! Of course there were no conventions for a few years in the pandemic, so last year’s one in Baltimore had been delayed twice. This year was Chicago, where we returned to the…

  • New baseball science fiction short story (free to read)

    New baseball science fiction short story (free to read)

    I have a new short story, free to read online at SABR.org! It’s a piece of near future science fiction told from the point of view of a female baseball pitcher making her debut on the mound at Fenway Park. It’s one of the few times I’ve gotten a chance to mix my baseball writing…

  • Playin’ the Blues: Umpiring, MLB Public Relations, and QuesTec

    Today I’m re-posting an old relic, mostly because I know you will all find it hilarious to see how antiquated the state of baseball technology was 20 years ago. I wrote this piece for Mudville Magazine (now defunct), after attending a session on umpires and technology at the SABR convention in 2002, when the QuesTec…

  • Pride Project: LGBTQ Pride and Organized Baseball: History in the making?

    Those of you who’ve followed my career through my various gigs at writing and editing in the baseball sphere, from the early days of the New York Yankees’ attempt at a website, stints at Gotham Baseball and Baseball Prospectus, to my current position as Publications Director for SABR, may have heard me say this before:…

  • A Series of Miracles (2017 ALDS Games 3 and 4)

    It struck me as we were walking from the parking lot to the Stadium today, for the second night in a row, that most successful postseason runs appear, in hindsight, to be a string of miracles. Sometimes they seem to be a series of small miracles, other times one or two big miracles come in…

  • An Appreciation of Knowledge-Seeking and the National Pastime

    This post originally appeared in the Spring 2017 issue of the Baseball Research Journal as my editor’s note/introduction. (The BRJ is the semi-annual research publication of the Society for American Baseball Research.) I’m reposting it here as part of #BlogMarch2017. I would like to take this space to express how grateful I am for SABR’s…

  • White Sox Player Panel at #SABR45

    One of the highlights of today’s SABR convention was the White Sox player panel. I also think I saw the best two presentations so far of the convention today, as well, but I’ll try to write up research presentations later! Right now, here are a couple of the amusing anecdotes and funny stories told by…

  • An Angelic Weekend at the Big Ballpark in the Bronx

    Thank you, Yankees, for another lovely weekend at the ballpark. Now that I’m not actively covering the Yankees or MLB as a member of the media, I get to be “just a fan.” This means I get to do fun stuff like enjoy the perks of being a season ticket holder at Yankee Stadium for…

  • First outing of the spring!

    Well, that was fun. I just took in my first baseball game of the spring. I’m not exaggerating when I say it has been a tough winter. It has been, in fact, the worst winter in the history of weather records in the city of Boston. We had both the most snow and the coldest…

  • SABR 44 Ends With a Flourish: A Fantastic Time at the Ballpark

    Today was the last day of the SABR convention in Houston. I think this might have been the best one I’ve been to since Boston in 2002, which was my first and therefore special. Every convention has had some outstanding things about it–Jim Bouton’s keynote in Seattle comes to mind–but this one was on a…