Fill in answers as in a crossword -- except the answers are numbers. For rows or columns with multiple clues, enter answers consecutively. The sum will equal the red total at the end of each row/column
What does the perfect power hitter look like? Does he have Babe Ruth's legs, Hank Aaron's wrists, Mickey Mantle's arms or Ted Williams' mind? Does the perfect strikeout artist have Greg Maddux's brain, Walter Johnson's fastball, Sandy Koufax's curve or Pedro Martinez's changeup? Does the slickest-fielding shortstop have Ozzie Smith's legs, Cal Ripken's build or Shawon Dunston's arm?
If you've ever had a boss you thought was a jerk, this one's for you.
Over the course of my 15-year career, I have lived the dream. My dream. I've covered all four major sports; attended multiple World Series and All-Star Games; surfed with Barry Zito, traveled in a pickup truck with Jet and Cord McCord; watched Ken Griffey Jr., Cal Ripken and Frank Thomas take BP; engaged in late-in-their-life interviews with Minnesota Fats and Walter Payton. Should I never leave my home again, I'll do so knowing I've experienced the ultimate pleasures of sportswriting.
Jeff Kent perpetually wore the kind of grave face that made you expect the next thing out of his mouth would be, "License and registration, please." He was, in fact, the son of a cop. "Hence," he said upon his retirement last week, "the mustache."
Baseball writing cowboy Tracy Ringolsby brought up an interesting point at the winter meetings about why Rickey Henderson should get 100 percent of the Hall of Fame vote. Henderson, of course, will not get 100 percent of the vote because NOBODY gets 100 percent of the vote*. It's one of those bizarre quirks of the baseball writers' voting, bizarre because at some point there were some among the baseball writers who started to take PRIDE in the quirk, started feeling gratified by the fact that Willie Mays and Babe Ruth and Mike Schmidt and Tom Seaver and Stan Musial and Hank Aaron did not get every vote. I guess they thought (think) of themselves as guardians of the gate.
From free concerts to fresh blue crabs, summertime in the Washington area can be a lot of fun.
This summer is a little less hectic for Cal Ripken. The Hall of Famer -- he was inducted last August with Tony Gwynn -- will be part of TBS' coverage on July 6th's (2 p.m. ET) MLB All-Star Game Selection Show. SI.com checked in with the TBS analyst this week to get his take on the first half of the season, his first-half MVPs, Josh Hamilton and Chase Utley.
The news star credited his success to his father – and was devoted to his son
In a way, the 2008 Hall of Fame ballot sent out last month by the Baseball Writers' Association of America was another Dear John letter to a pretty special, and largely vanishing, breed of player.
Fill in answers as in a crossword -- except the answers are numbers. For rows or columns with multiple clues, enter answers consecutively. The sum will equal the red total at the end of each row/column
What does the perfect power hitter look like? Does he have Babe Ruth's legs, Hank Aaron's wrists, Mickey Mantle's arms or Ted Williams' mind? Does the perfect strikeout artist have Greg Maddux's brain, Walter Johnson's fastball, Sandy Koufax's curve or Pedro Martinez's changeup? Does the slickest-fielding shortstop have Ozzie Smith's legs, Cal Ripken's build or Shawon Dunston's arm?
If you've ever had a boss you thought was a jerk, this one's for you.
Over the course of my 15-year career, I have lived the dream. My dream. I've covered all four major sports; attended multiple World Series and All-Star Games; surfed with Barry Zito, traveled in a pickup truck with Jet and Cord McCord; watched Ken Griffey Jr., Cal Ripken and Frank Thomas take BP; engaged in late-in-their-life interviews with Minnesota Fats and Walter Payton. Should I never leave my home again, I'll do so knowing I've experienced the ultimate pleasures of sportswriting.
Jeff Kent perpetually wore the kind of grave face that made you expect the next thing out of his mouth would be, "License and registration, please." He was, in fact, the son of a cop. "Hence," he said upon his retirement last week, "the mustache."
Baseball writing cowboy Tracy Ringolsby brought up an interesting point at the winter meetings about why Rickey Henderson should get 100 percent of the Hall of Fame vote. Henderson, of course, will not get 100 percent of the vote because NOBODY gets 100 percent of the vote*. It's one of those bizarre quirks of the baseball writers' voting, bizarre because at some point there were some among the baseball writers who started to take PRIDE in the quirk, started feeling gratified by the fact that Willie Mays and Babe Ruth and Mike Schmidt and Tom Seaver and Stan Musial and Hank Aaron did not get every vote. I guess they thought (think) of themselves as guardians of the gate.
From free concerts to fresh blue crabs, summertime in the Washington area can be a lot of fun.
This summer is a little less hectic for Cal Ripken. The Hall of Famer -- he was inducted last August with Tony Gwynn -- will be part of TBS' coverage on July 6th's (2 p.m. ET) MLB All-Star Game Selection Show. SI.com checked in with the TBS analyst this week to get his take on the first half of the season, his first-half MVPs, Josh Hamilton and Chase Utley.
The news star credited his success to his father – and was devoted to his son
In a way, the 2008 Hall of Fame ballot sent out last month by the Baseball Writers' Association of America was another Dear John letter to a pretty special, and largely vanishing, breed of player.
On the morning after the nightmare, and three weeks before the wildfires would close in on him like the devil's breath, Trevor Hoffman awoke to the sound of children's laughter. The lilt in the voices of his three boys -- Brody, 11, Quinn, 10, and Wyatt, 8 -- felt soothing but like a balm over burns, which is to say that the sweetness only masked the pain.
It may seem that the moment the Colorado Rockies' season turned into a scene out of Rocky ? on the verge of being knocked out, only to get up and come out swinging ? was Todd Helton's walk-off home run against the Dodgers in the second game of a doubleheader on Sept. 18. After all, that swing catapulted Colorado to its third straight win in what became a 21-of-22 victory run that landed the Rockies ? the Rockies! ? in the World Series.
Rockies general manager Dan O'Dowd, criticized for years in his adopted hometown, isn't wasting time with any "I-told-you-sos.'' Instead, he is doling out only "thank yous.''
The Chicago Tribune requested a change in personnel (MEMO TO TBS: BRING ON BARKLEY). The New York Daily News suggested a new acronym (TBS: TOTALLY BLAND SNOOZFEST). The reviews from the Los Angeles Times (FRANKLY, TBS WHIFFS BY USING THOMAS) and New York Times (AN ERROR-PLAGUED GAME, BUT FROM THE BROADCAST BOOTH) were equally telling.
Early in the evening, just about suppertime on the first leg of a lifelong-overdue Cooperstown pilgrimage, the voice is pure country. It's the voice of baseball in America. No, not Vin Scully, silly. It's the small-town Virginia radio voice of Cliff Dunn.
Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn combined to play 5,441 regular season major-league games, none of which involved the two of them playing against one another. Their lives and baseball careers ran parallel tracks all the way to Cooperstown. Born three months apart in 1960, they each played their entire careers with one team -- their hometown team -- before those careers ended one day apart in 2001, only to begin new careers in amateur baseball and ultimately to be honored on the same day this summer, July 29, with induction together into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Excerpted from CHANGE UP: An Oral History of 8 Key Events That Shaped Baseball, to be published by Rodale Books in March 2008. � 2007 by Larry Burke and Peter Thomas Fornatale with Jim Baker. Permission granted by Rodale Inc.
The abundance of good-hitting shortstops is one of the most compelling storylines in baseball, but it's not exactly new.
Thank you for mentioning Earl Webb's doubles record -- 67 in 1931. It seems to go unnoticed compared to baseball's other long-standing records (Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hit streak being the biggest). I've been following it this year, and there are three candidates with a decent chance: Magglio Ordonez (35), Chase Utley (34) and Dan Uggla (32). Think any of them will break it? -- Josh, Newark, Del.
Cal Ripken Jr. will always be known for his consecutive games played streak, but it may surprise many people that just two years into his big-league career, he already was planning for life after baseball.
People around baseball, and especially those around Baltimore, used to talk in near reverence of something called the "Oriole Way." In a loose kind of definition, the Oriole Way was a blueprint for winning, proven in the team's amazing run through the 1960s, '70s and stretching into the early '80s.
Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter has an idea that seems to make sense, especially after a trying first week in baseball in which the Indians had seven games either snowed out or relocated to a different time zone, stars such as Johnny Damon, Hideki Matsui and Victor Martinez were hurt trying to play baseball in football weather, and fans, when they bothered to show up at all, sat through miserable conditions to watch something that did not pass for major league-quality baseball.
Before Cooperstown honors Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken later this year, the Hall of Fame duo will be suiting up for another team.
Cal Ripken, who displayed remarkable drive during his Hall of Fame baseball career, will drive the pace car at next month's Daytona 500.
The real story of last week's National Baseball Hall of Fame voting is not that Mark McGwire only got 128 votes -- it's that Dante Bichette received three. I didn't realize that the Bichettes were voting this year.
Last year the Baseball Hall of Fame engraved 88 words onto the plaque summarizing the career of relief pitcher Bruce Sutter. That's about a dozen more words than were used -- combined -- on the plaques of Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson and Babe Ruth, all members of the Hall's inaugural 1936 class.
One beautiful spring training day in the mid-90s I asked Cal Ripken why baseball players were not getting the kind of national endorsement deals and warmth afforded NBA players. Ripken looked off into the blue sky for a moment, looked back at me and said, "That's an interesting question. Let me think about it and I'll get back to you with an answer. Are you going to be here tomorrow?"
Wandering past one of the display racks in the children's section of a major bookstore chain Saturday morning, I saw a youth paperback with Ken Griffey, Jr., Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire on the cover.
Issue date: September 11, 1995
Some young sports players are being pushed harder than ever to make the play, make the team, and in some cases, strive to make the pros. What did today's Major League players do to get where they are and what advice can they offer to those who are just starting to feel the pressure?
Once a year, baseball-card collectors gather for the granddaddy of all sports collectible conventions - the National Sports Collectors Convention.
Brooks Kieschnick is the only baseball player of the last half-century to both pitch and play a position on a regular basis.
The walls of Graham Bensinger's bedroom are plastered with pictures of famous sports stars -- a layout shared by tens of thousands of other teenage males across the United States.
In 1995, baseball "Iron Man" Cal Ripken Jr. slammed through legend Lou Gehrig's "unbreakable record" of 2,130 consecutive games played.
BEST NEW ARTIST AWARD
Andy Borowitz is crazy. By choice.
It never hurts to have friends in high places, as Matthew Modine found out.
Twenty years ago this July, Chip Mason, CEO of Legg Mason, took his Baltimore investment-banking firm public. It has been an impressive two decades for Mason and the company. Sure, this period coin...
It's late, and I'm trying to get some work done, but the Orioles are locked in extra innings with Toronto. I can hear the broadcast of the game just behind the screen of my word processor. With one...
DOES FRANK SINATRA OWN SHARES IN MUTUAL FUNDS? I confess I've been wondering, since every time I've heard him croon "It was a very good year" lately, I can't help but think he's describing 1995's f...
A FRIENDLY SUGGESTION
Dear Mr. Statistics: Browsing through the Statistical Abstract, as is my wont, I observe that the number of humans working for the Department of Agriculture has risen by 363% since 1932, a period i...
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