Winning the World Series is the goal, but just getting there is an achievement that many franchises have never managed. Reaching the Fall Classic means surviving a long season and a gauntlet of playoff rounds to claim a pennant, and some teams have done it dozens of times while others are still waiting for their … Read more
Every offseason, baseball fans see headlines about players “going to arbitration” or “avoiding arbitration” with their team, often attached to eye-popping salary numbers. It sounds like a courtroom drama, and in a way it is. But what actually happens in salary arbitration, who is eligible for it, and why does it matter so much for … Read more
One of the best things about baseball is that the sport refuses to throw away its past. Walk into Fenway Park or Wrigley Field and you are standing somewhere a fan from 1920 would still recognize, watching a game on ground that has held more than a century of it. No other major American sport … Read more
Baseball is a game of big numbers, but not every ballpark is built to pack in a huge crowd. While Dodger Stadium seats 56,000, the smallest park in the majors holds barely a fifth of that. Some of these intimate venues are temporary homes in transition, while others are beloved classics where the small size … Read more
Baseball names its best pitcher award after a man who won 511 games — a number so far beyond anything possible in the modern era that it functions less as a benchmark and more as a monument. Cy Young pitched until he was 44 years old, threw complete games the way today’s starters throw four-inning … Read more
Every July, the game stops pretending baseball is about pitching for one night. Eight of the biggest power hitters in the sport step into the cage and just swing. No defense, no strategy, no stolen bases. Pure distance and volume, counted out loud while a crowd loses its mind in a stadium that was built … Read more
Baseball is the only major sport played without a clock. No buzzer, no horn, no timer ticking down — just outs, and when both teams run out of ways to get them, extra innings. Then more extra innings. Then, sometimes, a few more after that. Most extra-inning games resolve themselves in the 10th or 11th. … Read more
Baseball has never had a 7-footer. That’s the strange thing about a sport where size is supposed to be everything — the NBA has had dozens of players taller than 7’0″, but in nearly 150 years of major league baseball, nobody has ever cracked that mark. The average big leaguer stands around 6’2″, and anything … Read more
The most runs ever scored by one team in a College World Series game is 24, set by Florida in a 24-4 rout of LSU in the 2023 finals — a performance that included six home runs and a record-tying 23 hits. That broke a 66-year-old mark of 23, set by Notre Dame in a … Read more
Here’s a contrast that sums up baseball’s pay scale: Shohei Ohtani earns $70 million a year. The bat boy who hands him his bat earns about $10 an hour. They’re standing in the same dugout, wearing the same uniform, and one of them is making thousands of times more per game than the other. And … Read more