Is anyone having more fun at anything that Jake Marisnick is having playing baseball right now? Make sure to watch after the catch for a) Marisnick’s smile as he runs back to the dugout and b) the reaction of pitcher Colin McHugh.
Continue reading →Benji Brand intubates in Namibia. Go full-screen for sure, it’s gorgeous even when it pixelates a bit.
Ignore the screechy noise at the opening; lasts only a few seconds. After that, just the natural sound. Mesmerizing. H/t the omnivorous Tim De Chant.
When David Ortiz hits a home run, his leisurely trot around the bases is just shy of a professional wrestlers ring entrance. The crowd goes wild, his bat is raised for the first three steps, pyrotechnics follow, music roars, somewhere a Yankee fan is being clobbered with a steel folding chair.
Ex-MLB pitcher Dick Haythurst, on why the so-called unwritten rules of baseball, like those about post-dinger strutting, are bullshit.
A Major League Pitchers Guide To Baseballs Bullshit Unwritten Rules.
The clip above comes via a wonderful Nick Paumgarten post at The New Yorker. As Paumgarten notes, it’s rare that film or TV captures the horrifying speeds — 70 to 90 mph at the Olympic level — at which downhill skiers actually race. Seventy to ninety, going down ridiculous slopes, with nothing controlling your speed […]
Continue reading →A friend sent me a nice post by a fellow named Pat Lackey, at the wonderfully named Pirates site “Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke”. Lackey lightly laments baseball’s failure to award any Pirates a Gold Glove award. Then he says why he thinks the award is silly and the Pirates’ defense great: Because […]
Continue reading →In honor and anticipation of Opening Day, I bring you Sandy Koufax, which is really all any baseball fan should need. This post mashes up two separate entries I filed three years ago about Sandy Koufax, who is — don’t argue, you’re wrong — the greatest pitcher ever.* I’ve taken parts of both those posts, […]
Continue reading →[Sept 13, 2011] Last night’s US Open final showed brilliantly what makes today’s men’s game so exciting: Much as I love the serve-and-volley game, these long, kinetic, full-court exchanges of sharply angled groundstrokes make great viewing. How on earth, you ask yourself, are Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic hitting the ball so hard and keeping it […]
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