Just a quick post to say Happy Memorial Day and that it’s looking like it will be a good week for Baseball: Past and Present. Two new regular features will be debuting here, “Does he belong in the Hall of Fame?” which will run Tuesdays and “Different player/Different era” for Thursdays which will look at [...]
Archive for May, 2010
After my post yesterday on all-time durable pitchers, I emailed Fredrico Brillhart. Regular readers may remember that after I did a guest post on ballplayers who saw war combat, Brillhart emailed me wanting to know why there weren’t any Negro Leaguers. I figured he might like yesterday’s post, since my top durable pitcher is Satchel [...]
Looks like I was wrong about Roy Halladay
Posted: 29th May 2010 by Graham Womack in MLBTags: Roy Halladay MVP candidate, Roy Halladay perfect game
Back in November, when Roy Halladay looked on the outs with the Toronto Blue Jays, I wrote a post here saying teams would be wise to steer clear of him. It appears I was gloriously wrong on this one, worse than the time I predicted the San Francisco 49ers would win the NFC West and [...]
Nolan Ryan the most durable pitcher all-time? Not so fast
Posted: 29th May 2010 by Graham Womack in Historical topicsTags: nolan ryan most durable pitcher ever?
I was at an old-timers lunch recently in Sacramento, and a former big league scout named Ronnie King, who’s something of a baseball legend in my hometown, asked me who I thought the most durable pitcher all-time was. I thought for a moment and then answered Walter Johnson. He scoffed, said Nolan Ryan, and promptly [...]
I am working on a post about the most durable pitchers of all-time that should be up at some point late this evening or Saturday morning. In the meanwhile, enjoy this Baseball: Past and Present classic from July 2009, an imagining of one season in the life of baseball’s most dysfunctional team.
I got detailed, constructive feedback on this site today from an acquaintance at the San Francisco Chronicle. He started by saying, “The site looks great,” but proceeded to offer a number of solid suggestions. Among these tips: Try to post every weekday, and consider having regular ongoing series. Thus, starting next week, I am going [...]
It’s the Battle of the Area Codes: 717 vs. 415
Posted: 27th May 2010 by Graham Womack in Historical topicsTags: baseball players from 415 area code, baseball players from 717 area code, great baseball area codes, which area code has the most baseball players
A few days ago, I got an email from a reader named Fredrico Brillhart who saw my starting line-up of combat veterans for the Baseball in Wartime blog and wanted to know why I failed to include Negro League veterans. He sent information that seemed noteworthy enough to merit a follow-up post. Shortly after my [...]
Why getting a lot of Hall of Fame votes matters
Posted: 24th May 2010 by Graham Womack in Baseball Hall of FameI logged into my Google Analytics account this morning and was surprised to see that I got a bunch of traffic yesterday from a Web site called Baseball Think Factory. David Pinto of Baseball Musings linked to my post from Saturday proposing a new Hall of Fame metric, so I expected some spike, but this [...]
I got an email today from someone who read the guest post I did for the Baseball in Wartime blog about a starting line-up of ballplayers who saw combat. The reader had an issue with my post. He wrote: Hello Graham Womack, I read your guest post in the Baseball In Wartime blog. There was [...]
An open letter to Baseball-Reference and the statistical powers that be
Posted: 22nd May 2010 by Graham Womack in Baseball Hall of Fame, Big picture ideasTags: 15th and final year Hall of Fame BBWAA, Hank Gowdy 17 years on Hall ballot, new baseball stat Hall of Fame +/-, new Hall of Fame stat
To whom it may concern: On the heels of a pair of great Baseball-Reference blog posts this past week ranking the best pitchers and position players not in the Hall of Fame based on their Wins Above Replacement data, I may have created a new baseball statistic and found another way to gauge worthiness for [...]