Dunkirk NY – I’ve never been a Brett Gardner fan. That’s mostly because of his overall demeanor. I’ve never seen a player work so hard to be mediocre. His vaunted intensity and approach to the game has always garnered a certain attention, as has his “veteran presence.” I much prefer the intensity of a player like D.J. LeMahieu. Continue reading →
Dunkirk NY – When it comes to writing, I am always of two minds. The first is that I feel I have something to say, and writing it down will help clear it up. The second is that I have nothing to say, and writing it down really won’t make a damn bit of difference. So I tend to dawdle, getting the urge to write, and then suppressing that urge. It leads to less posting. But I’ve been cleaning my attic the last four days in anticipation of insulating it, and so perhaps this post will be the mental part of that, purging the attic of my mind (with apologies to the Grateful Dead). Continue reading →
Dunkirk NY – I came across this article from the website Deadspin the other day, and it got me to thinking about the state of the game. I submitted a comment for the piece, and as I finished writing it, I thought it might work out to be a decent blog post. The articles discusses several theses for why baseball is not as popular today as it was in years past, and it mainly uses data to make its various cases. It’s a good article, but the one aspect of baseball I think it missed is the cultural aspect. Times have changed, and while baseball has made efforts to change with those times, in its essence it’s still a 19th-century pastoral sport that has a 150-year history behind it. To ask the question “What’s the matter with baseball?” may possibly come down to only one answer: nothing. It’s simply dying. Continue reading →