Coming off a 34-9 season and its third NCAA national tournament appearance in five years, the baseball team is a powerhouse poised for another terrific season. Coach John Casey, now in his 32nd season managing his alma mater, has high hopes for this spring."Last year is last year; this is a new ...
In the New York Times last week, writer Jon Ronson chronicled the swift demise of a woman named Justine Sacco at the hands of a ruthless Twitter mob. With each successive tableau, Sacco makes her way gradually from antagonist to victim, her situation reaching a nadir, perhaps, when she is disowned ...
After wrapping up one of its better seasons in recent memory on Thursday with a loss against the University of New Hampshire (UNH), the club baseball team is now looking ahead to the fall with hopes of both improving and expanding.
After giving up six runs in three?plus innings on March 23 against Christopher Newport, senior Kevin Gilchrist saw his ERA balloon to 7.71. Just like that, one of the Jumbos' aces from last year had seemingly disappeared from the starting rotation.
In its first 10 games, the baseball team has scored more first?inning runs than it did all last season. If this seems like a surprise to some of the Jumbos, you'll have to forgive them. They've been too busy opening 2012 on a blistering pace.
While friends and classmates will be partying at Spring Fling Saturday on the President's Lawn, the baseball team will be keenly focused on working toward its second consecutive NESCAC East division title at Huskins Field.
Heading into Friday's contest at Campus Field in Hartford, Conn., the baseball team sits in a tie with Trinity atop the NESCAC East standings. But by the time the last out is recorded on Sunday, only one of these squads will retain first place.
The first round of the 2010 playoffs began and ended with Texas Rangers left−hander Cliff Lee beating the Tampa Bay Rays. But there was plenty of drama and top−notch pitching sandwiched in between.
The words are well known in baseball circles. At the time, they seemed genuine. Now, they are simply infamous:
What a week in the world of sports. Butler almost pulled off the greatest run ever in NCAA Tournament history, the UConn women secured their place in history, Tiger Woods is coming back to play the Masters, and Donovan McNabb is now a Redskin.
When you think about the most important people in baseball history, there are a few very famous men that come to mind: Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Roberto Clemente, Hank Aaron, Ty Cobb.
Alex Rodriguez and the New York Yankees shook off the Philadelphia Phillies with ease last night, beating them 7-3 to win the World Series in six games. It was the Yankees' first championship in nine years but their 27th overall, a major league record.
It seems that I am slowly trying to change Major League Baseball into the NFL. Several weeks ago, I made the case that baseball should become the fourth and final major sport to adopt a salary cap and, this week, I'm suggesting that it needs to implement instant replay in order to regain some of the credibility that it has frittered away over the course of this year's playoffs. We all know the scenarios by now. In the top of the 11th inning of Game 2 of the ALDS, the Minnesota Twins' Joe Mauer hit what most of the world clearly saw as a ground-rule double. The only problem was that Phil Cuzzi, the left-field umpire who was closer to the play than anyone else, inexplicably ruled it foul. The Twins lost the game, lost their spirit and lost the series to the New York Yankees. In Game 4 of the ALCS, third-base umpire Tim McClelland watched a bizarre play unfold directly in front of him in which both the Yankees' Jorge Posada and Robinson Cano avoided third base like the plague while Angels catcher Mike Napoli tagged both of them out in quick succession. For reasons unbeknownst to everyone but himself, McClelland ruled Posada out but decided that Cano should have the base. Of course, there were other calls that made even a neutral observer want to throw his shoe at the television. And the Yankees were not the sole beneficiary. The Angels themselves received some generous umpiring in the ALDS that raised the ire of the Red Sox bandwagon, and there were a number of head-scratchers in the NLDS between the Phillies and Rockies. This, however, is not an aberration. Although the calls made by Cuzzi and McClelland were egregiously lousy, the MLB regular season is always littered with similar rulings that either go unexplained by the league's front office or are brushed away with the standard line, "It's part of the human element of the game." In a rare departure from his otherwise fiercely stubborn approach to his job, Commissioner Bud Selig agreed last year to implement instant replay for disputed home run calls. As an Orioles fan, my first reaction was, "Twelve years too late, Bud;" but as a general baseball fan, I wondered why he singled out the resolution of those types of controversies as the most crucial to the outcome of the game. Over a year later, I'm still wondering the same thing. Disputed plays on the base-paths strike me as far more common and far more important to get right, and there are a whole host of other things — like whether or not an outfielder trapped a ball or got his glove underneath it — that merit a second look. The argument most often heard against instant replay for baseball, aside from the "human element" nonsense, is "it impedes the flow of the game." Now, I'm not sure about the rest of the world's baseball fans, but I would gladly exchange five minutes of my time for the knowledge that it was only my team's ineptitude, not anyone else's, that lost a game. If baseball really wanted to speed things up, it would extend the strike zone back to what it's supposed to be instead of insisting on the heart-shaped box that it's become. No, the calls made by Cuzzi and McClelland did not singlehandedly lose the game for the Twins and Angels. But they could have, and that's what matters. I'm not suggesting that everything be open to replay — balls and strikes, for example, should still be unreviewable — and I'm not suggesting that teams should be able to call for limitless reviews. A reasonable and fair replay system, like the one in the NFL, would go a long way toward ensuring that everyone goes home confident that skill and execution carried the day. In the end, isn't that what baseball's integrity is all about?
The Mets opened up their new digs yesterday while the Yankees will hold their home opener on Thursday. Citi Field and the new Yankee Stadium are state-of-the-art stadiums that will serve to relieve the somewhat dilapidated Shea and old Yankee Stadium. Nevertheless, even putting sentimentality aside, it's kind of ridiculous that these monstrosities were built. The Yankees and Mets have boasted two of the highest payrolls in the game for years, and per Forbes they are the two of the three franchises that, along with the Red Sox, generate the most revenue in baseball. So they've been doing just fine with whatever dumps they play in. But in their never-ending effort to make the almighty buck, the teams turned to the city to help the poor Steinbrenners and Wilpons fund sweetheart deals for new ballparks. The Yankees originally received around a billion dollars in tax-free bonds before going back to the city for another $370 million. This is taxpayer money. Sure, a handful of new permanent jobs were created (around two dozen — many more were promised) and a lot of temporary construction work was enabled, but $1.4 billion? The dealings between the Bronx and the Bombers were underhanded, too. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) cried corruption on the disparity in the appraisals of land, as the $204-million figure the city used, which was set by a city agency, strongly differed from the $40-million estimate by an appraiser. As a taxpayer, I feel that I own part of these stadiums. I won't say that I deserve free admission, since that wouldn't be realistic. I understand that in addition to paying for the stadium, I will also deal with raised ticket prices. That's all part of the deal that I implicitly agreed to upon my taking residence in New York City in first grade. However, I will say that when I do buy my own tickets, I ask for a helmet of Dippin' Dots on the house. Those are delicious. That is all. The new stadiums cost the city $500 million, and the city is giving both the Yankees and Mets discounts of at least $500 million over their 40-year leases. The Mets, though, while not costing the city as much money as the Yankees, do face other problems. Citibank purchased the new stadium's naming rights for $20 million per year over 20 years. Before the Mets could even break the tape on the new ballpark, Citibank was bestowed $45 million in bailout funds. And Citibank's not even relinquishing its naming rights! That means I'm paying for the naming rights to the field. I would like it from now on to be called the J-Breeze Thunderdome. That is all. There's an even worse problem going on in Florida. I would never trash Larry Beinfest and Jeffrey Loria's business acumen. The Marlins continually operate at a positive income and understand how the revenue curve and franchise appreciation and all that good stuff work. Hey, Donald Sterling operates his franchise as a business, a money-making one, but that doesn't stop people from hating him. Anyway, what the Marlins have done is receive public financing for a stadium that will cost the city $2 billion. Miami needs a new stadium. The Marlins' attendance figures were embarrassing, and that's not simply a matter of them fielding an embarrassing team. The stadium was located in the middle of nowhere. But that's no reason to have the city pay for your mistake. So the Marlins have done what the Nationals and Yankees and Mets have all done in recent years, except they've taken it to an extreme. The city will finance three-fourths of construction, which should be completed by 2012, while the Marlins will keep all stadium revenues. And all this is happening with the economic crisis in the forefront of our minds. Again, I don't blame the teams. The Yankees, Mets and Marlins are within their rights to ask for every penny they can get from their respective cities. But whoever's running these joints — Bloomberg in New York or Flo Rida in Florida, I don't know — whoever it is that's allowing this excessive spending to happen under their nose while every city in America is swirling in financial turmoil is being irresponsible. I just think attention must be paid.
