Opinion

I'll admit that I wasn't always the biggest Marcus Thames fan.

I hated his long swing. I hated how he played the outfield like a foreign exchange student in gym class. I even hated his name—and no, not his oddly pronounced last name.

Has there ever been a likable Marcus? Really? No...no there hasn't.

Jose Bautista is not what most people would consider a slugger, certainly not most fans of his former team the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Yet he has emerged with a league-leading 42 home runs so far in 2008, after working on his swing last year with Toronto hitting coach, Dwayne Murphy.

This unexpected power has led to allegations that Bautista has done what Roger Clemens, or possibly even A-Rod has done in using controlled substances. Despite the improbability of his breakout, I don't believe these charges.

Lou Piniella is home.

Sweet Lou, the manager of the Chicago Cubs and four other teams since 1986, has called it a career, and what a career it was.

Piniella ranks 14th on the all-time wins list for managers, he’s been a three-time manager of the year, and he won the World Series as manager of the Cincinnati Reds in 1990.

For the past week, the Chicago White Sox made no secret that they wanted Manny Ramirez to be their DH for the remainder of the season.

After some waiver formalities and some back and forth, yesterday they finally made it happen.

The White Sox acquired Ramirez yesterday on a straight waiver claim from the Los Angeles Dodgers. The White Sox will pay the remaining $3.8 million left on Manny’s contract.

It's official.

Manny Ramirez and the nearly $4 million left on his contract are heading to the South Side of Chicago to finish the season out for the White Sox.

Manny, of course, will play his first game for the White Sox against his former team, our Cleveland Indians.

It's unclear whether or not Manny will play tonight or debut tomorrow for the White Sox, but either way, it could prove to be an interesting conglomeration of personalities.

Aroldis Chapman is coming to The Queen City. As if the Reds' biggest division lead in 15 years isn't enough to have fans in a tizzy, this is the quintuple cherry.

"Look for the city of Cincinnati to explode when Aroldis does get the call." Back on March 6, those words were written in a Bleacher Report article.

Fact is, the New York Yankees love returning to the Bronx.

Why wouldn’t they love coming home, with a packed stadium full of fans?

The Yanks are tied for the first place, and they also share the best record in baseball and Yankee fans will cheer the team till the end.

The other team leading the pack is the Tampa Bay Rays, a 12-year-old franchise with loads of potential and hands-down has the best young talent in all of MLB.

With the calendar down to the last day of August, Major League Baseball is about to fire the starting gun on its stretch run.

In 1995, the owner of the Oakland Athletics, Walter Hass Jr., died. Successors Stephen Scott and Ken Hofman had watched Hass spend an abundant amount of money on players, and they wanted to go into an entirely different direction.

This has undoubtedly been the year of the pitcher. So far this season, baseball has seen three no-hitters, two perfect games, and five other no-hit bids have been lost in the ninth inning. Baseball has been introduced to fiery young aces such as Stephen Strasburg, Trevor Cahill, and Mat Latos, and now you can add one more to the list.

Today, the Cincinnati Reds are expected to call up left-handed Cuban sensation Aroldis Chapman.