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
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