Baseball

Back in the late 1930s, I used to observe a tall man, laboriously walking along Mechanic Street. Frank Bird’s affliction was that he was paralyzed on one side. Here was the story that I heard when I was a kid.

The old timers in town said that Mr. Bird had been a big league baseball player in his younger days. One extremely hot day he hit a home run. Immediately after scoring at home plate, he quenched his thirst with a drink of ice cold water. He went into shock and he remained partially paralyzed for the rest of his life.

On Friday November 20, Chien Ming Wang spoke to reporters in Taiwan about his questionable future with the New York Yankees organization. Wang has been plagued by injuries the last two years and is no longer the Yankees ace pitcher. 

When speaking to reporters in Taiwan, Wang said that the Yankees are his "first choice". But afterwards mentioned that he would be alright pitching for any other major league team. 

November 19th marked an important turning point in not only Tim Lincecum's baseball career, but his life as well. The 25 year old ace of the San Francisco Giants won his second NL Cy Young in as many years, becoming the first pitcher in Major League Baseball history to win back to back Cy Youngs in his first two major league seasons.

Baseball season at the major league level has been over for a couple of weeks now but for fans in Arizona there have still been games played in the Arizona Fall League. All of that ends today with the conclusion of the Arizona Fall League Championship.

The Arizona Fall League Championship pits the two teams with the best records facing each other at Scottsdale Stadium. For the sixth consecutive year one of those teams is the Phoenix Desert Dogs.

As a fan, I’m a believer. For this reason, I have been stressing that Mets fans should not overreact to what has happened since the playoff run in 2006.

The Mets collapsed in September two years in a row, then in mid-June the next, but the fact of the matter is, they still retain one of the strongest and most talented cores in baseball with David Wright, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, and Johan Santana.

I think any general manager in the league would take those four if they were starting a team.

It's really hard to argue with the way the Florida Marlins do business.

Despite having a payroll consistently at the bottom of baseball, in the last seven seasons, The Marlins have had five winning seasons and won a World Series.

They have a philosophy of building through the draft, develop their own talent, and once that talent gets to a point where they will make serious money, they trade them for more inexpensive talent.

One question, hundreds of answers: Which Royal had the greatest offensive season at his position?

Major League baseball has been asking fans this same question in an effort to choose each team's best-ever collection of stars.

They are calling it MLB 9s.

The National League MVP will be announced this week, and it will undoubtedly be handed to Albert Pujols.

With this year's race all but locked up, I wanted to take a look at a player who I consider to be the front-runner for MVP in 2010. 

At 25 years old, Matt Kemp has already put up impressive numbers that rank up there with some of the elite names in baseball history. 

• Year: 1928
• Record: 68-86
• Win %: .442
• Win % Change: -94
• Run Differential: -60
• Pythagorean Record: 72-82
• AL Finish: 6th of 8
• Manager: George Moriarty
• Best Transaction: Traded for Vic Sorrell.  Sorrell was never an All-Star, but the righty put together about a decade of solid starting pitching for the Tigers.  Sorrell won 92 games while with the Tigers and spent his entire big league career with the Tigers.  He retired with an ERA+102.  There have been worse pitchers to sport the Old English D.  Unfortunately...