In baseball’s Age of Collaboration, the hot seat for managers should be viewed more as an oversized sofa, with front-office executives and statistical analysts all squeezing in. Firing the manager when others bear responsibility for shaping rosters and influencing decisions often amounts to blatant scapegoating. Perhaps that is one reason early dismissals are becoming less…
NEW YORK — The moment that defined a rivalry came 47 years ago Sunday. It was a cool fall night in the Bronx, Game 2 of the 1977 ALCS, and Hal McRae stood on first base. The Kansas City Royals were trailing the New York Yankees 2-1 in the sixth inning, but McRae had an…
There was a lot of good baseball this week. Elite pitching performances. One-run contests. Stars getting big hits in big moments. Thursday night’s Game 3 — New York Mets 4, Milwaukee Brewers 2 — was a true postseason epic. Back-to-back Brewers homers in the seventh inning. Pete Alonso going deep in the ninth to keep his…
BALTIMORE — The backslapping of goodbyes in the Baltimore Orioles clubhouse was deafening, the official obituary for a team that has been playing dead for months. This much is clear: The honeymoon is over. Last year, when this group was swept out of the American League Division Series by the eventual champion Texas Rangers, the…
By Cody Stavenhagen, Sam Blum and Stephen J. Nesbitt Before he was one of the most famed actors of a generation, Tom Hanks was a boy in the Bay Area. He could see the lights of the Oakland Coliseum from his family’s home in the Lower Hills. The A’s moved to Oakland when Hanks was…
CHICAGO — A mere mention of the year 1991 elicited a pained groan from Sandy Alomar Jr. as he leaned against a railing in the Cleveland Guardians’ dugout. Three decades have passed. Alomar played for seven teams across 20 seasons, appeared in 49 playoff games, won an All-Star Game MVP award and supplied a slew…
With the Pittsburgh Pirates out of playoff contention, first baseman Rowdy Tellez was playing for an opportunity to receive a $200,000 bonus based on plate appearances. He entered Tuesday with 421 plate appearances, four away from earning that additional bonus. For Tellez, the chance was dashed. With five games left in the regular season, the…
I actually have the NL Manager of the Year ballot this year, an award on which I think I’ve only voted once previously in my 15ish years in the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA), and certainly my least favorite one to vote on, because I don’t think there’s a good way to evaluate managers…
By now, much of the rage has passed. The takes have gone cold, the vitriol has been spewed, and all the jokes have been told about the dopey owner being born on third base and thinking he’s hit a triple. The Oakland Athletics will soon pass into history, which means the time has come to…
WAPPINGERS FALLS, N.Y. — The artificial turf at Heritage Financial Park is new. So is the right-field wall that opens wide enough for an 18-wheeler to haul concert equipment onto the field. The party deck is sponsored by a brewery that’s 10 miles away, giant windows have been installed around the corporate event space overlooking…
