Introducing A Blog About Baseball
First of all, if you’re reading this, you’re likely either my dad, my girlfriend or one of my closest friends. For your support, I want to thank you, it means a lot to me that you would read—or at least click on—my silly little baseball blog. I know that y’all (with the exception of my dad and one or two of my friends) are not the biggest fans of baseball, but I hope that you find something entertaining in this project. If you know me, you know that I love this sport. I love it at every level. Little League to MLB and every level and every country that makes up this game.
In this post, I want to talk about the “why” of this project, and also give you a preview of some of the things that I plan to write about. Baseball is something that I share with the most important person in my life, my dad. But it is also a chess match, a display of incredible power and speed, a delivery vehicle for stories that have shaped history, and something that is also just silly and fun. I hope you enjoy taking this journey with me, let’s have some fun and talk about baseball. I want to make this an accessible blog for people at any level of baseball fandom. There will definitely be discussion of advanced metrics and maybe a few statistical deep dives, but I hope to communicate everything in a way that makes sense to those of us who don’t listen to every episode of Effectively Wild while creating our own ridiculous leaderboards on StatHead.
I decided to start this blog because my relationship with baseball has meant a lot to me throughout my life. It was a bond first forged with my dad in our rectangular side yard where he threw me tens of thousands—if not hundreds of thousands—of pitches. It wasn’t exactly a fair matchup, he lobbed tennis balls to me while I crushed pitches with a metal tee ball bat. His ERA was probably in the hundreds, but those are the most cherished memories that I have.
Like many of us, my dad is the one who I have to thank most for my love of the game. He is the most important person in my life and has been the most influential force in everything I do. From our early days in the yard, he went on to coach my Little League and Babe Ruth teams, including All-Stars in the summer, and fall ball afterwards. One of my core memories involves a fall ball game where I grew up in Connecticut, it must have been about 25 degrees in late October. After passing me handwarmers and keeping me supplied with hot chocolate from the snack bar, he took me to Five Guys after the game and I remember sitting in the car holding the warm bag tightly to try and defrost my hands and bring some warmth back into my body. I couldn’t tell you who won the game. I couldn’t even tell you what position I played. I can tell you that I had fun and that my dad was there with me.
When I played high school baseball, my dad managed to make it to every single game despite being a single father with two kids playing spring sports. When I played travel ball in the summer it was the same, he was at every game recording every plate appearance so we could watch it back after the game. Even this year, we trekked up to Cooperstown to visit the Hall of Fame and went to a Yankees Dodgers game for his birthday. Every time we talk on the phone, one of the first topics we cover is whatever the topic du jour is in MLB news.
Baseball is a great sport, the mechanics of the game are interesting and entertaining. But it’s also a story telling device. Whether it is the story of my dad and I’s relationship, or that of labor strife in America, or the fight for equal rights for Black, Asian, and Latino people here in the United States. These stories still aren’t over either, Black participation in baseball has been steadily declining. We still have not had an openly gay player in the majors. And it is still a cis-male dominated sport. Religious differences? Baseball has that in spades, just ask the Dodgers how their Pride Night went last year. Baseball is a microcosm of every part of American life, politically, economically, and socially, we as a nation are reflected in the sport. Our warts, our flaws, but also the best parts of us.
The economics of the game impact us as fans in ways deeper than we are often willing to reconcile with. The A’s departure from Oakland due in large part to a greedy owner who is little more than a caricature of a trust fund baby is a great example but so is the systematic disinvestment and contraction of the minor leagues. Growing up, we couldn’t afford more than one or two games per year at our closest MLB teams—the Yankees and the Red Sox—because they charge extortionist prices. What we did have, though, was a healthy MiLB ecosystem. Just up the road from where I grew up, we had the Norwich Navigators, then the AA affiliate of the New York Yankees, and we saw many members of the dynastic Yankees make their way up through there, or make rehab starts there. I still have the bobbleheads from when Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens, and Bernie Williams made trips through Norwich on their way off the injured list. After the Navigators, we had the Connecticut Defenders, the AA affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, in the years before they won three World Series in five years, the Defenders hosted the likes of Madison Bumgarner, Brian Wilson, Brandon Belt, and Travis Ishikawa (that’s for you baseball sickos). When they left for Richmond, the Connecticut Tigers, a short season A affiliate of the Detroit Tigers, took over the stadium lease. While there weren’t a ton of big leaguers that came through there, we did get the New York Penn League All Star Game in 2013, and there were a fair few players who saw time in MLB. We were also a short drive from the AAA affiliate of the Red Sox in Pawtucket. My dad and I saw Mookie Betts and Aaron Judge play there long before they were perennial All Stars and MVP contenders. These teams brought baseball to our communities in a way that was affordable and accessible. They’re all gone now, and just the Hartford Yard Goats remain.
In this blog, I hope to bring all of these things together. I want to talk about the stories that make the game so compelling. Both those that highlight the athleticism of the greatest players ever, but also those of the unsung heroes of the game. I want to talk about my favorite players like Dick Allen, Dustin Pedroia, John Olerud, Rajai Davis, and Jesse Hahn. But I also want to talk about the stars of the game today, Shohei Ohtani has put together the best power/speed season in the history of the game and he isn’t even pitching! Aaron Judge is threatening a second 60 home run season, and he’s doing it by batting behind the second coming of Ted Williams in Juan Soto. Chris Sale has found the fountain of youth and we even saw the return of the knuckleball this year thanks to Matt Waldron. Jose Ramirez might sneak into the 40/40 club, joining Shohei. And the likely MVP runners up in Bobby Witt Jr. and Francisco Lindor have put up historic seasons that would go down as some of the most dominant if it weren’t for Ohtani and Judge breaking the scales. I’m also definitely going to write a post about Boof Bonser, obviously. I also want to talk about the ugly parts of the game, the exclusion of those baseball does not deem worthy, the control of ownership over labor, the massive heists that billionaires have pulled off over taxpayers to fund new stadiums and infrastructure projects, and the rampant bigotry that still finds a home in the clubhouses and stands in the game.
Baseball is awesome. Warts and all. I hope you come to see the sport the way I do. And if you don’t, that’s okay too. I hope I can teach you something interesting or that we can learn something new together. I really appreciate that you’ve chosen to spend some time with me reading about a silly little sport that I care too much about.
