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
Has anyone ever won the Home Run Derby back-to-back? Yes — exactly twice in the event’s four-decade history: Ken Griffey Jr. in 1998-99, and Yoenis Céspedes in 2013-14. That’s the entire list, which tells you how hard repeating is in an event where eight of the world’s best power hitters swing under identical conditions. Pete … Read more
Every Home Run Derby, the same mid-broadcast question sweeps living rooms: wait, who’s that pitching? The answer is one of the event’s best quirks — there is no assigned pitcher. Every hitter brings his own: a batting-practice coach he’s seen ten thousand pitches from, a bench coach, a personal hitting guru, a brother, and in … Read more
Every July, the same argument: does the Home Run Derby ruin swings? The “Derby curse” is baseball’s most durable folk belief — born the summer Bobby Abreu hit 41 Derby homers and then nearly stopped homering entirely, fed by a generation of second-half slumps, and stubbornly resistant to the statisticians who keep explaining it away. … Read more
Every Home Run Derby, the same mid-broadcast question sweeps living rooms: wait, who’s that pitching? The answer is one of the event’s best quirks — there is no assigned pitcher. Every hitter brings his own: a batting-practice coach he’s seen ten thousand pitches from, a bench coach, a personal hitting guru, a brother, and in … Read more
It is one of the most common questions casual fans and youth-baseball parents ask: do baseball players actually wear protective cups? With baseballs flying around at 100 miles per hour and foul tips deflecting in every direction, it seems like an obvious yes, but the real answer is more nuanced and depends heavily on the … Read more
Every July, mid-Derby, millions of viewers ask the same question: do these count? The short answer is no — not one of the hundreds of home runs hit in a Home Run Derby counts toward anything in a player’s official statistics. Josh Hamilton’s legendary 28 in 2008 appear nowhere in his career record. Kyle Schwarber … Read more
The most-watched Home Run Derby ever is the one everyone would have guessed: 2008, when Josh Hamilton hit 28 first-round homers into the old Yankee Stadium night and 9.1 million people watched him do it. What almost nobody knows is that the list this record sits atop just became a closed book: 2025 was the … Read more
If Tuesday’s All-Star Game is tied after nine innings, there are no extra innings. Instead, baseball deploys the most entertaining tiebreaker in American sports: a home run swing-off — three hitters per side, three swings each, most homers wins the game. It sounds like something invented on a playground, it was written into the actual … Read more