The accepted folkways of the big league clubhouse escape me. Even having grown up watching a team whose acknowledged leader — the player whose mere presence was and is universally acknowledged to have transformed the attitude of all those around him — was a pitcher, I’ve been hearing all my life that a pitcher can’t […]

[H]ere, coming through the same tunnel as so many champions have walked before, the great man, Frank Sinatra, who has the phrasing, who has the control, who understands the composers, who knows what losing means as so many have, who made the great comeback, who stands still, enduringly, on top of the entertainment world.
—Howard Cosell, […]

One of the very silliest things a very silly man who has a very large audience ever said regarded Pedro Martinez in April 2005. Pedro Martinez’s former team was presenting world championship rings to its players from the year before on the same day Pedro Martinez’s new team was opening its home season. Some of […]

I’d had a vague plan to go see the Glory Days exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York today. It’s been on my to-do list since before it opened and it’s right up (or, technically, across town from) my alley.

But then I learned Pedro Martinez would be starting in Cincinnati. That’s enough […]

Podres to Conti to Pedro to Humber. Plus Koufax

floating around camp. Yes, it’s enough to make the heart sing. And Tom

Terrific hasn’t even shown up yet, assuming he still pops by to

dispense advice on grips and motions. We’ve got great pitching in the

past and in the future, and with Martinez on board, maybe at least […]