The National League’s two worst teams are slogging their way through lost seasons on philosophically divergent tacksOne of the happiest moments of this lost summer for the New York Mets came last week, when Jeff McNeil made his major-league debut as a pinch-hitter in the eighth inning of Tuesday’s 6-3 win over the San Diego Padres and lined a single to center field.McNeil, a 12th-round draft pick in 2013, grinded his way through the farm system to get to the majors, but even his success in making it to the top could not be a universally feel-good story because of the way the Mets handled him, claiming publicly through manager Mickey Callaway that he was “purely a second baseman”. McNeil...
MLB is already at work to ensure next year’s London series between the Yankees and Red Sox is as authentic as possibleMajor League Baseball has staged regular-season games in Japan, Australia, Mexico and Puerto Rico. But nothing the league has attempted overseas comes close to the scope of what it plans to do when the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox cross the pond to play two games next June.“This will be our biggest (international) project yet,” Phil Bradley, the players’ union’s special assistant for domestic and international events, told the Guardian this week. Related: Will Yankees-Red Sox in London break the NFL's UK stranglehold? Continue reading...
The best player of his era is making a compelling case for the greatest season in baseball history. So why aren’t more people talking about it?Anyone with even a passing interest in baseball knows that Mike Trout is, and has been since not long after breaking through as a teenager in 2012, the best player in the sport in a way that defies easy categorization. The Los Angeles Angels’ center fielder does most baseball things exceptionally and none of them badly. He hits for average (.306 career batting average, sixth among active players) and he hits for power (.571 slugging percentage, first) while playing in a park that favors pitchers. His patient plate approach routinely lands him among the league...
A society’s century-long distrust of sports betting can be traced to the night of 21 September 1919, when the Black Sox went nationalAmerica’s century-long distrust of sports betting can be traced to the night of 21 September 1919. That’s when several members of baseball’s Chicago White Sox met with gambling boss Arnold Rothstein in a New York hotel room to throw the following month’s World Series. Related: UK bookmaker values rise by over £1.5bn as sports betting to be legal in US Continue reading...
Former Channel Five baseball co-host David Lengel believes Major League Baseball can make a splash in Britain despite a late startFor the tightly knit baseball community scattered throughout the UK and Ireland, Tuesday’s announcement from Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred and London mayor Sadiq Khan was as big as it gets: the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox will play a pair of regular-season games at London’s Olympic Stadium in June 2019.For folks like myself, co-hosts Jonny Gould, Josh Chetwynd and others who passionately represented the sport on Channel Five’s baseball coverage from 1997 to 2008, the chance to finally see America’s national pastime on British soil is a champagne moment. Related: Red Sox and Yankees confirmed to...