With the 2011 baseball officially in the books, it is my pleasure to announce the second year of my project on the 50 best baseball players not in the Hall of Fame. I debuted this project last year (here’s how it came out) with a simple goal. Rather than have my rankings based on some [...]
Archive for October, 2011
Vote: The 50 best players not in the Hall of Fame, 2011 edition
Posted: 31st October 2011 by Graham Womack in Baseball Hall of Fame34
Tony La Russa himself wasn’t much of a ballplayer. The middle infielder hit .199 in 203 Major League plate appearances, toiling in the minors for most of his 16-year career in professional baseball. Maybe it was all that time on the bench that prepared La Russa for his managerial career. Because his teams seemed to [...]
After such a wonderful 2011 World Series, I’m mentally if not physically exhausted as I write this week’s column. All but game three were nail biting, nerve raking affairs even for someone who was not cheering for one team over the other. It was a shame one team had to lose but despite the obvious [...]
Dizzy Dean Stops the Tigers; Collects Big Endorsement Money
Posted: 28th October 2011 by Joe Guzzardi in MLBEditor’s note: With the St. Louis Cardinals heading into Game 7 of the World Series this evening (after a for-the-ages Game 6), Joe Guzzardi looks at what Dizzy Dean did with such an opportunity in 1934. _______________ Jay Hanna “Dizzy” Dean pitched just six seasons for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1932-1937 plus a single game [...]
What he did: Adam Darowski’s piece Monday on pitchers who could hit got me thinking about Don Drysdale. If Drysdale didn’t have the greatest year at the plate ever for a pitcher in 1965, it had to be somewhere close. Not only did he smack seven home runs with 19 RBI and an OPS+ of 140, Drysdale [...]
Night World Series Games—Okay in the Pacific Time Zone; in the East, Not So Much
Posted: 26th October 2011 by Joe Guzzardi in MLBYou can blame it on the Pittsburgh Pirates. I’m talking World Series night baseball which the Pirates kicked off in fourth game of the 1971 fall classic. Of course, the Pirates weren’t really at fault. Major League Baseball came up with the bad idea and introduced it that year. Most predicted that it wouldn’t fly. But [...]
If these baseball players had come out of retirement….
Posted: 25th October 2011 by Graham Womack in MLBI wrote a couple weeks ago about my adventures with a computer demo, Baseball Mogul 2012 that allows for great players to be unretired and used in simulation. I wrote of signing a 44-year-old Ted Williams to play for the 1963 New York Mets and how the Splendid Splinter hit about .350, perhaps taking advantage of the [...]
What Wes Ferrell has in common with Babe Ruth
Posted: 24th October 2011 by Adam Darowski in MLBTags: babe ruth pitcher outfielder, two-way baseball players
Editor’s note: Please welcome Adam Darowski. Adam is a loyal reader, a regular in the comments section here, and also a fine baseball history writer in his own right. He contributes often to Beyond The Boxscore and did a post about this site last year. Today, Adam covers one of the more interesting classes of ballplayers [...]
This 2011 World Series is thus far proving to be a showdown between two managers with polar opposite managing styles. Both got their teams to the big game but both did so with wildly different styles. Only time will tell which style is more effective I find it interesting the contrast in styles as both [...]
It started on Tuesday evening when I couldn’t log in to this Web site to schedule a post by Joe Guzzardi for publication. I emailed the friendly tech guys here, and for the next day and a half, they couldn’t figure out the issue that was keeping my site from loading, save for an error [...]