The 2026 MLB All-Star Game is at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia on Tuesday, July 14, the city’s first Midsummer Classic in thirty years, and the anchor of a stacked All-Star week that includes the Home Run Derby, the Futures Game, and, for the first time in the same city and same week, the MLB … 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
Does the MLB All-Star Game count for anything? The short answer: not anymore, not in the standings, not for playoff position, and, since 2017, not for World Series home-field advantage either. The Midsummer Classic is once again what it was born as in 1933: an exhibition. But the long answer is more interesting, because for … Read more
The MLB All-Star Game has crowned an MVP every year since 1962, and the list doubles as a tour of baseball history’s showcase moments: Willie Mays owning the Midsummer Classic, Bo Jackson’s leadoff missile, Ichiro’s inside-the-park home run, Mariano Rivera standing alone on the mound in his farewell, and, most recently, Kyle Schwarber winning the … Read more
Shohei Ohtani’s fastest pitch in Major League Baseball is 101.7 mph, a four-seam fastball thrown on June 28, 2025 against the Kansas City Royals. The pitch came in just his third start back from his second elbow surgery, which is the part that made jaws drop: most pitchers spend a year after an elbow operation … Read more
Shohei Ohtani’s medical chart may be the most consequential document in baseball. The two-way experiment that produced four MVPs and the sport’s biggest contract has also produced two elbow surgeries, a shoulder operation, a knee procedure, and two full seasons without pitching, and every new twinge sends a shiver through Los Angeles. That includes this … Read more
There has never been a stat page like Shohei Ohtani’s. Every other player in baseball history gets one career line; Ohtani gets two, and both of them read like a Hall of Famer’s. Through early July 2026, he sits at 298 career home runs at the plate, a career ERA under 2.80 on the mound, … Read more
Shohei Ohtani holds the second-largest contract in the history of North American sports, a 10-year, $700 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers. And in 2026, his paycheck from that team is $2 million, less than 17 of his own teammates make. It’s the strangest arrangement in professional sports, and it’s entirely by design. The … Read more
We review the best sunflower seeds using our 5-category process to determine which we think are among the best. Having played baseball and been around the game for many years, I’ve had my fair share of sunflower seeds. Baseball and sunflower seeds go hand in hand. Especially for those who prefer to eat sunflower seeds … Read more
No name carries more weight in the baseball card hobby than Mickey Mantle. Alongside the T206 Honus Wagner, Mantle’s cards are the cornerstone of the entire collecting world, and for good reason: he was the most popular player of the post-war “Golden Age” of card collecting, a switch-hitting Yankees icon with 536 home runs, three … Read more