Andrew Kerth 
Get to a ballpark early and you will see the warmup ritual every team runs through: position players stretching their arms out to 90 feet and back, pitchers airing it out in long toss until the ball is carrying 300 feet across the grass. It is one of the few moments when you see just … Read more
A team can play a night game on the East Coast, then show up for a day game on the West Coast the very next afternoon. Over a 162-game season spread across the entire country, that kind of schedule only works with serious travel logistics. But the way a team gets from city to city … Read more
Major League teams play it safe with names like the Yankees, Dodgers, and Cardinals. The minor leagues? They threw the rulebook out the window and decided to have some fun. Down on the farm, you will find teams named after trash-eating raccoons, jumbo shrimp, flying squirrels, and prairie dogs, and the wilder the name, the … Read more
In the late innings of a close game, with the season on the line, a manager will sometimes send a fresh face to the plate in place of a struggling hitter. That substitute is a pinch hitter, and the move is one of baseball’s most dramatic and strategic weapons. Some of the most famous moments … Read more
Major League Baseball has 30 teams, but they are far from evenly spread across the country. A handful of states pack in multiple clubs, while most states have none at all, and some of America’s biggest cities are still waiting for a team. So which states actually have MLB teams, which ones do not, and … Read more
Nine innings, nine players. It is one of baseball’s most familiar numbers, so woven into the game that most fans never stop to ask where it came from. But baseball was not always played this way. In its earliest days there were no innings at all, just a race to a target score. So why … Read more
Every July, the NBA reappears two weeks after the Finals in a form that confuses casual fans: Summer League, where the box scores feature one famous rookie, a dozen names you’ve never heard, and none of the stars. What is it, who’s actually playing, and do the games mean anything? Here’s the full explainer — … Read more
The cutter is baseball’s great optical illusion: a pitch that looks exactly like a fastball for 55 feet and then, in the final blink, veers a few inches toward the pitcher’s glove side, off the barrel, onto the hands, and, in the case of its greatest practitioner, through more bats than any pitch in history. … Read more
Every September 1, MLB rosters grow — but not the way older fans remember. The modern rule: teams expand from 26 to 28 players (with a cap of 14 pitchers), a tightly rationed version of the old September free-for-all, when clubs could summon their entire 40-man roster and playoff races were decided against opponents fielding … Read more
