History

The group of baseball bloggers known as Baseball Bloggers Alliance (BBA) announced today a partnership with former Yankees reliever Goose Gossage. The Hall of Fame reliever agreed to lend his name to the organization.

BBA is naming one of their annual postseason awards after Gossage. The award that goes to the top relief pitcher in each league will be called the Goose Gossage Award.

With Opening Day only six days away, I thought it would be appropriate to see what the record books have to say about the Cincinnati Reds on the first game of the year. At the present time, adequate records only take us back to 1952.

This game will be against the St. Louis Cardinals against whom the Reds are 8-7.

Since 1952 the Reds are 30-27-1 in their opening game. The lone tie was a 3-3 game against the Milwaukee Brewers in 2000.

Waite Hoyt won 22 games for the 1927 New York Yankees. Hoyt spent 10 seasons with the Yankees, winning 157 games before being sent to Detroit in 1930.

Although he played for many teams, including the three New York teams, Hoyt was a Yankee.

The Cocky Chicago Cubs

In 1938, Waite was pitching for the Brooklyn Dodgers against the soon-to-be National League champion Chicago Cubs.

It’s a tale of two teams, but three cities. And as Charles Dickens wrote, it’s a tale of the years they intertwined from the start, one enjoying a “season (or seasons) of light,” the other dreading a “season of darkness.”

The Atlanta Braves and Chicago Cubs always pop up on each other’s schedules at least twice, sometimes more, every year. But rarely do they begin a regular season against each other.

At first glance, it looks like baseball and competitive balance run on parallel lines. There are the Yankees with their 27 World Championships and the Pittsburgh Pirates who have not had a winning season since 1992.

Those two franchises met in the epic 1960 World Series when Bill Mazeroski won it with a Game Seven ninth-inning home run. 1960 was during a run where the Yankees played in 14 out of 16 World Series.

It’s the most romantic, glorified position in our most romantic, glorified sport.

Even when baseball was played with mushy balls by men wearing baggy uniforms and pillbox hats, and you traveled to the ballpark by horse and buggy or traipsed there by foot, center field was the glamour position.

Ty Cobb started it, pretty much.

Cobb used his freakish speed and sheer determination to patrol center. And he slap base hits all over the field at a robust .370-plus clip every season.

It was a portent of things to come.

Near the end of spring training, Jerry Koosman, who figured to be one of the New York Mets' starters in 1968, pitched six shutout innings against the San Francisco Giants at their Phoenix training facility.

The 23-year-old rookie from Minnesota faced only 20 batters, allowed a pair of harmless singles, struck out out three Giants, and allowed no walks.

Mets On the West Coast

The Mets began the 1968 season in San Francisco a week later.

More than a decade after the last Major League Baseball game was played in the Astrodome, the "Eighth Wonder of the World" still elicits memories from countless Astros fans who found their way to Houston's groundbreaking stadium.

The 'Dome never hosted a World Series, but it was the site of two All-Star Games, two emotionally draining National League Championship Series, and a cavalcade of remarkable pitching performances.