Why do you like baseball?
Brilliant reader Frank: “Taking my dad and daughter to games; Dad and I show her together why we love the game.”
Brilliant reader Jim: “Two on, no one out in the bottom of the ninth, trailing by one run – and a game that seemed over is now very much in play.”
Brilliant reader Joe: “Roberto Clemente – his right field play, his arm and how no one challenged him. And exactly 3,000 hits before his heroic death.” (JP: Of course it should have been more. But Joep is right. Three thousand hits is a perfect number for the perfect player.)
Brilliant reader Matthew: Bryan Shaw is officially listed as a switch-hitter. He never had a record appearance.
It’s really amazing that this ridiculously silly idea that Mike Schur and I had a few years ago to open baseball cards on the PosCast – and somehow do it so we could raise money for ALS research and care – has raised almost $300,000 for the wonderful people at the Eleanor and Lou Gehrig AL(C)S Center in Columbia, Project Main Street and, now, Team Gleason. Mike may make some pretty good television shows, and I’ve written a few books, but it’s very clear that our real superpower is making people give us excuses to do things we like to do.
I mean, Mike called me one day and said, “We should travel the world and go to cool things and write about what it means to be a fan.” And Dutton Publishing said, “Sure, we’ll pay you for that.” BIG FAN comes out on May 19th! Order signed copies now! We will announce the tour dates at the end of this month.
But raising money for these great charities by opening baseball cards – something we would have done anyway – I mean, that’s next level stuff. We can’t thank you enough. Already this year, we raised over $30,000 for Team Gleason, with more podcasts to come. This week’s PosCast is with Tom Haberstroh, and he’s incredible as always.
Next week we’ll open 1974 Topps cards featuring…Bob Costas!
“Hey Skitch,” Lenny says That thing you do“how did we get here?”
The way this works is simple enough: Donate to Team Gleasontell us your favorite team or player or whatever you want. You automatically end up in a drawing; at the end we (I say we, but it’s mostly Mike) put together giant boxes filled with the coolest things you can imagine. Your favorite cards! Signed books! Strat-o-Matic games. Merchandise. Prizes galore.* Mike always goes WAY over the top when putting these boxes together. That’s why it always takes so long to get them out.
But we always figure it out, and I promise you won’t be disappointed.
*Brilliant reader James has just entered a great prize; it is a 2012 Topps Tribute Lou Gehrig World Series Gold Game, uses Bat 17/25. I might just buy this card myself by donating $500 to Team Gleason, it’s that awesome. If you want to outbid me, do it!
The more I learn about Team Gleason and the ways they improve the lives of people with ALS, the more awed I feel that I can help in small ways. When you look around you, it is sometimes difficult to feel hope. But Buck O’Neil has always said that there are more good people than bad, far more helpers than hurters, and I believe that.
Here’s Steve Gleason:
You never know what you’re going to find at Costco. I guess that’s the miracle of Costco. I mean, of course you’ll always find mayonnaise jars big enough for holiday homes and free samples of things made with chickpeas (I’m allergic to chickpeas, so I know this for a fact). But surprises abound, and last week we found one of those surprises.
It’s this ridiculously realistic looking football made of chocolate.
I don’t really care about this year’s Super Bowl. I suppose I’m against Robert Kraft, because that seems kind of fun*, but I have no real role in the game. I really like Drake Maye. He grew up a few miles from here.
Anyway, while I don’t specifically care about the Super Bowl, I’m certainly not immune to the Super Bowl being a national holiday, so we bought the chocolate football.
*OK, time for an old-fashioned Posterisk where I disappear into an afterthought.
As I was writing this, The Athletic broke the story that Robert Kraft – like Bill Belichick – will do not will be elected to the Hall of Fame this year. As I have writtenthis is probably not an explanation at all, but is instead due to a stupid math error the Hall of Fame made. They created a system that almost certainly attracted some criticism. I suspect SOMEONE in his veteran class will get picked, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if no one does.
But dismissing Kraft leads to this opinion I’ve built:
I think all owners – ALL OWNERS – should be removed from all Halls of Fame and no one should ever be re-elected.
I don’t say that because I hate sports owners. I just don’t think you should be able to buy your way into a Hall of Fame. I realize this is naive, and that almost all Hall of Fames only exist because people have bought into them. But still…
Robert Kraft might be a great sports owner, which means he’s willing to spend some of his billions to win. Good for him. He receives countless gifts for this. Trophies! Flattery! Wealth! They hand him the Super Bowl trophy FIRST for crying out loud. He doesn’t need to be inducted into the Hall of Fame because he spends money on people who play really good football.
The Hall of Fame should be for the people who played the game, who coached the game, who made the game better.
It’s true that if you get rid of all the owners, you’ll lose some good ones, like Bill Veeck. That’s how it goes. I think owners should be able to qualify for the Hall of Fame in other capacities – so for example, Lamar Hunt should still be in the Hall of Fame for founding the AFL and Branch Rickey should be in the Hall of Fame for inventing the minor leagues and signing Jackie Robinson.
But because you are the owner? No.
I’ve often written about how absurd it is that Tom Yawkey is in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He wasn’t even a good owner. But this Robert Kraft thing reminds me: It’s an abomination that someone like Walter O’Malley is in the Hall of Fame.
His plaque reads:
“An influential and visionary owner who inspired baseball’s move west in 1957.”
So he’s going into the Hall of Fame for driving the Dodgers out of Brooklyn in a shameless cash grab? Wasn’t the money enough? Owning Dodger Stadium (and all the pain it caused) wasn’t enough? He deserves to be honored for making himself unimaginably rich?
All owners from all Halls of Fame.
The Washington Post announced Wednesday that they are essentially closing one of the largest athletic departments in American history. And just for fun, the man who started his quest to become a gajillionaire by selling books is also closing the book department. I mean, why not? Irony is dead at this point.
As I wrote recently, the Washington Post’s sports section — the section of Wilbon, Kornheiser, Povich, Boswell, Jenkins, Solomon, Feinstein, Kindred, Culpepper, Leavy, Clarke, Svrluga, Sheinin and on and on — was the best of the best. It was an inspiration to every kid who ever got into this crazy business.
To close it down because of money?
When all you have is money?
I just don’t get it. No way. I don’t want billions of dollars, but I think about it sometimes, and you know what I would do besides all the obvious philanthropic stuff?
I would buy Sports illustrated and bring it back to glory.
I would buy the Washingtonpost and build a great sports department.
I chose a different city every week and made takeout free for a day.
I would pay every library fine in America.
I would buy scorecards and those great little pencils for every ballpark in America.
I would pay all ticket costs.
I would make coffee for free at airports before 10am
I would buy every closed movie theater in America, fix them up and turn them into single-screen temples – with special events too.
I would make every national park free. And Mason Via is great See it while you can would be my official song.
I would make sure that every kid at his first big league baseball game got a ball, a program, a hat and an autograph.
Just think how much fun that would be! Seriously, it would be for the best. I’d say all this would probably cost me $4 or $5 billion up front, maybe another $2 billion a year. A drop in the bucket for the man who just euthanized the Post.
I’ll never understand why billionaires wouldn’t have more fun with their money.*
*Just for fun, why not post one thing you would do if you were a billionaire in the comments? I’m looking for fun stuff, but I’d also like it to be something you could actually do if you were worth, say, $50 billion.
Richard Waite, who prefers not to share his Bluesky posts publicly, asked a fantastic question:
What’s your favorite song with a long title, say at least six words?
He suggests Pearl Jam’s “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town,” which is indeed a fantastic song.
There are some obvious ones. The Rolling Stones’ You can’t always get what you want feels like the classic of the genre.
I just stopped by (to see what condition my condition is in). by Kenny Rogers was absolutely fantastic (and makes beautiful use of parentheses) even before it was published Big Lebowski.
Every little thing she does is magic … Please, please, let me get what I want… Stuck in cellphone again with the Memphis Blues… You can look (but you better not touch)… there are so many good ones.
But one song immediately jumped out at me, and I hadn’t heard it in years, and when I went back and listened, it took me back to my youth. I’ve been down, baby!
I love this song so much. So much. Everything about it. But especially this verse:
Ma Theresa has joined the mafia
And happy with her full-time job
#days #pitchers #catchers