Latest news with #Sliders
New York Times
06-06-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
For Rockies lifer Warren Schaeffer, turning around the majors' worst team is personal
Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of baseball. When Jake Bird pitched in Triple A for the Colorado Rockies, his manager, Warren Schaeffer, noticed him playing chess on his phone. Schaeffer engaged him for a few games, and it wasn't close. Advertisement 'He's a lot better than me, and he took it to me,' said Bird, now a setup man for Schaeffer in the majors. 'He's just really smart. He's willing to see what guys like, willing to learn and communicate.' Schaeffer, 40, has spent 19 years in professional baseball, all with the Rockies, half a lifetime in checkmate. He replaced Bud Black as manager on May 12, and the Rockies lost 17 of their next 19 games. Winning baseball has always been elusive in Colorado, where — as Sports Illustrated's Steve Rushin once wrote — the team wears the colors of a bruise. For the folks who take pride in working there, this is the biggest challenge yet. 'This is extremely personal to me,' Schaeffer, a former minor league infielder, said before a game in New York last weekend. 'It's all I think about, day and night. I've only ever been a Rockie, and the Rockies have never won the West. The Rockies have never won the World Series. These are all things that are very, very important to me, and I think the opportunity is ripe at the moment to start building for that.' A few hours later, against the Mets, the Rockies led off by striking out on a pitch-clock violation. After a homer, the next 17 batters went down in order. The lopsided loss closed out May and clinched the team's 22nd losing series in a row, a major league record. The Rockies fell again the next day, becoming the first team ever to lose 50 games before winning 10. But that game was more competitive, the sixth out of seven losses decided by one or two runs. Losing is never acceptable, Schaeffer emphasized, but with actual victories in short supply, it helps to recognize moral ones. 'Well, we need to, because if you're just determined by the letter at the end of the game, we'd all be crushed,' said Clint Hurdle, who led the Rockies to their only pennant in 2007 and returned in April as a coach. Advertisement 'I mean, this is rare air. We were in an Uber the other day in Chicago and the driver had a White Sox hat on. We were having a conversation and he goes, 'By the way, will you guys start winning some games? Because it took us 60 years to beat the record last year, so people would actually talk about us for a little bit.'' The Rockies could still smash the 2024 White Sox's modern record of 121 losses in a season; they will greet the Mets at Coors Field on Friday with a 12-50 record, which works to a 131-loss pace. But things finally started turning this week in Miami, where the Rockies swept a three-game series from the Marlins. Schaeffer saw it coming. 'We're going through a gauntlet of a schedule right now,' he said. 'It's just — the difference is in the margins, the in-game execution on a more consistent level to take those one-run games and flip them. Honestly, I don't think we're far off from winning games because the past two weeks we've been playing good, solid baseball.' This is the Rockies' seventh losing season in a row since 2018, the last time they reached the playoffs. The last two years were the worst in franchise history, each with more than 100 losses, but there was reason to expect at least some improvement. Three veteran starters — Kyle Freeland, German Marquez and Antonio Senzatela, who make $38 million collectively — were all finally healthy. They've made all their starts but gone 4-25 with a 6.37 ERA. Some young position players offered hope; shortstop Ezequiel Tovar and center fielder Brenton Doyle won Gold Gloves last season and first baseman Michael Toglia slugged 25 home runs. All have regressed, with Toglia now in the minors. 'It was kind of the perfect storm,' general manager Bill Schmidt said, mentioning the struggling rotation and several injuries. 'I thought we'd play better defense, but at one point we had four shortstops in the IL. I mean, even the guys we brought from the minor leagues went on the IL; I had to go out and get Alan Trejo, who used to play for us, just to have a shortstop. Advertisement 'It is what it is. We're trying to get better. I feel bad for our fans. They're loyal, they care. Our ownership's good, they care. We've got to turn it around somehow.' Schmidt disputes the idea, widely held around the league, that the Rockies are too insular, too loyal to their employees and prospects to cultivate new voices or accept the reality that they've fallen behind other organizations. But Hurdle, who guided Pittsburgh to three playoff berths in the 2010s and re-joined the Rockies in December 2021 as a special assistant, concedes that it's a valid point. 'There's too much information out there, there's too many other teams doing things well in areas that we could use improvement to not knock on some other doors,' Hurdle said. 'And I think we're doing more of that. We have added to the R&D staff, because three years ago it was pretty much non-existent and now we've got (about) 20 people and it's become more real. We put ourselves probably behind the pack in some areas and it's made it tough. Now we're catching up, and it is tough to play catch-up, initially.' Institutional knowledge can be important, of course, and Schaeffer — technically the interim manager, as Hurdle is an interim hitting and bench coach — managed several of the Rockies in the farm system. Only one manager in the majors, the St. Louis Cardinals' Oli Marmol, 38, is younger than Schaeffer, who looks as if he could still play. 'He's just a super hard-working dude who gets the most out of players,' outfielder Sam Hilliard said. 'Guys want to play hard for him, guys want to work for him and win for him. And he always makes it clear, like: 'This is the standard we want to hold you to. I know we've lost a lot this year, but we can't get into that rhythm of, 'Oh, we lost again, it's OK.' It's never OK.'' Every team needs outside ideas to grow, Schaeffer said, but he'll fiercely defend the purple and black. He said he would always be grateful to owner Dick Monfort for paying the minor league staff in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic led to the season's cancelation. And he's still a bit astonished that the Rockies hired him in the first place; Schaeffer hit just .214 in their system, then became a Class A hitting instructor. Advertisement 'He was a grinder,' said Schmidt, the Rockies' lead scout when the team drafted Schaeffer from Virginia Tech in 2007. 'His baseball IQ was real good. There are certain types of guys you identify: they're baseball people.' In Colorado, the baseball people are trying to avoid baseball infamy, celebrating subtle improvements in hopes of more winning weeks. 'It'll be a summer of coaching and teaching,' Hurdle said, 'and we're gonna have to have a lot of patience.' The Seattle Mariners announced this week that they will retire Randy Johnson's No. 51 in a ceremony during the 2026 season. It's a long overdue honor for Johnson, whose extraordinary pitching in 1995 helped save baseball in Seattle. Johnson, whose 4,875 strikeouts are the most ever by a lefty, shares 51 in Mariners lore with Ichiro Suzuki, who asked his permission to wear it when he signed with Seattle after the 2000 season. Johnson, by then, was pitching for the Arizona Diamondbacks, the team he represents in the Hall of Fame. 'He had written a nice letter asking if he could wear the number 51, knowing that I had worn it for 10 years, and I had no problem: 'Wear it and enjoy it,'' Johnson said on Monday. 'And then he went on to have a Hall of Fame career. But there really was never any significance to me wearing the number 51.' The Mariners will actually retire the number twice: first for Suzuki on Aug. 9, after his ceremony in Cooperstown. That's how Johnson wanted it. 'I know the significance of Ichiro and his accomplishments, and I didn't want to interfere with his Hall of Fame induction this year or his number retirement this year,' Johnson said. 'And so the one contingent factor that I had was that if this was going to happen, that I didn't want to take away anything from his deserving day, and it would have to be done a different day, a different year.' Advertisement Johnson, who wore 51 with Arizona, switched as a New York Yankee because Bernie Williams already had it; his children suggested 41, to match his age at the time. He also wore 57 briefly with the Montreal Expos and pitched two games for Seattle while not wearing 51. Mired in a five-start losing streak in July 1992, Johnson reversed his digits and wore 15 for a start at Yankee Stadium. He walked nine that day, lost again, and switched back to 51. The next season, he wore No. 34 for a start at the Kingdome on Sept. 26, when he reached 300 strikeouts in a season for the first time. Johnson wore 34 that day to honor Nolan Ryan, who had suffered a career-ending elbow injury on the same mound four days earlier and was instrumental in turning around Johnson's career. During that frustrating 1992 season, Texas Rangers pitching coach Tom House invited Johnson, a fellow USC alum, to watch Ryan throw in the bullpen before a game. Ryan demonstrated the proper way to land in a pitcher's delivery — on the ball of your foot, not your heel — and Johnson used the tip to streamline his momentum to the plate and finally harness his overpowering stuff. After leading the majors in walks in 1990, 1991 and 1992 (each time with at least 120), Johnson never walked 100 again. He went 75-20 over the next five seasons and was on his way to becoming the last pitcher to earn 300 victories — maybe ever. 'I think if someone's going to do it, it'll be Justin Verlander,' Johnson said. 'And then after that, I don't think you'll probably see that happen again.' Verlander, 42, is winless in 10 starts for the San Francisco Giants this season and is on the injured list with a strained pectoral muscle. He has 262 career victories. Wade Miley returned to the majors this week for the 15th season of a highly eventful career. Miley, who had Tommy John surgery in February 2024, rejoined the Cincinnati Reds when Hunter Greene landed on the injured list with a groin strain. Advertisement Miley, 38, was a rookie All-Star for the Diamondbacks in 2012. He's never made it back to that stage, but along the way — with Boston, Seattle, Baltimore, Milwaukee (twice), Houston, Cincinnati (twice) and the Chicago Cubs — he's done a whole lot of other stuff. That includes some things he can't really do anymore. Miley once homered in a game in San Francisco, long before the NL adopted the designated hitter. In 2018, he started consecutive games for the Brewers in the NLCS — the first as a surprise opener, when he faced just one hitter. That won't happen again because of MLB's three-batter minimum rule. Miley recently offered a memory of five different achievements — well, technically four, and another that wasn't memorable at all. Hitting a home run in 2013: 'What made that one really, really cool was that none of us had gotten a hit yet. And when I got off the bus, right when I got to the clubhouse, for whatever reason, I was like: 'I'm hitting a freaking homer today!' I don't know if I was calling my shot — I was just talking (smack), I probably did that before every game.' Giving up Adrián Beltré's 3,000th hit in 2017: 'There was pressure in that moment. I went 3-0 (in the count) and I was getting booed. I was like, I've gotta throw him a strike. And then he got me. But it was cool, it's a very special hit for him and I get goosebumps looking back. He signed some stuff for me, and I've always been a huge Beltré fan. So that was cool. Félix Hernández was upset with me, though, because they were coming in the next night and he was due to face him. They're like best friends and he had told him not to get it off me.' Starting as an opener in the 2018 NLCS: 'I knew the plan. I didn't necessarily love it, but that's what we thought would be the best. It was weird, being able to do that for a warm-up and get to a decent intensity, knowing I'm starting the next game as well. There was a fine line of how hard I went at it.' Throwing a no-hitter for the Reds in 2021: 'What stands out about that was the excitement it brought everybody, the way the team embraced me afterwards and how it was so special for them. I'll never forget turning around, watching Kyle Farmer throw across the diamond, Tucker (Barnhart) just being in my lap. I couldn't believe how soon they all got to me.' Advertisement Pitching an immaculate inning in Arizona on Oct. 1, 2012: 'I don't even remember doing that. Where was that?' You're excused, Wade. Nobody else seemed to notice, either. The broadcasters weren't even narrating the action: The Marlins have employed 114 first basemen in their 33-year history, from Jeff Conine (1,014 games) to Jack Winkler, who made his major-league debut last week. Only one earned a measure of infamy simply by catching a foul ball. That was Peter O'Brien, who played for seven teams as a pro but reached the majors with only Arizona and Miami, hitting .209 from 2015 to 2019. As the Marlins' first baseman on Sept. 29, 2018, O'Brien had the distinction of ending the career of the Mets' captain, David Wright. With his career effectively over because of spinal stenosis, the 35-year-old Wright returned to the Mets for two games at the end of the 2018 season. In the last, he was scheduled for two plate appearances and walked in his first. When he came to bat again, the 43,298 fans rose from their seats at Citi Field. Wright took a ball, then swung at a high fastball, lofting it toward the first base stands. O'Brien drifted over, unsure of how close he was to the wall. He stuck out his glove and snared it, as the crowd howled. 'Part of me felt bad for O'Brien as I walked back to the dugout, staring at my bat, a goofy grin on my face,' Wright wrote in 'The Captain,' his memoir with Anthony DiComo. 'Most of me was just stunned. Was that really it?' It was. But at least O'Brien got a cool souvenir from it. A Marlins clubhouse attendant scrawled a note on a baseball, ripping O'Brien for making the catch — and adding Wright's signature. When O'Brien found it at his locker and learned it was a prank, he sent the ball to the Mets' clubhouse for the real Wright to sign. Wright did, and added an inscription of his own: 'No, really. You should have let it drop.' Don Drysdale worked 3,270 1/3 innings in his 1957-68 prime, the most in MLB in that stretch. It's also about 1,200 more innings than the major-league leader in the dozen seasons before 2025, Max Scherzer, who threw 2,073 1/3. As you may have noticed, times have changed. Drysdale, a towering figure who spanned the Dodgers' Brooklyn and Los Angeles eras, is the subject of a riveting biography published earlier this year: 'Up and In: The Life of a Dodgers Legend,' by longtime Orange County Register columnist Mark Whicker. This week marks the 57th anniversary of the sixth and final shutout in Drysdale's 58-inning scoreless streak. Advertisement Another Dodger, Orel Hershiser, broke the record in 1988 with 59 scoreless innings to end the regular season and eight more to start the playoffs. Both pitchers paid dearly with their shoulders: Drysdale was finished in 1969, at age 33, and a shoulder reconstruction saved Hershiser's career in 1990. Here's Drysdale cashing in on his streak with a cheeky ad for Vitalis in 1968, co-starring San Francisco Giants manager Herman Franks. It plays on Drysdale's reputation for loading up his turbo sinker. Cheating used to be so fun. 'Vitalis has no grease, and spreads easily through your hair,' the announcer intones. 'If we all used Vitalis, we could help put an end to the greaseball.' (Top photo of Warren Schaeffer: Dustin Bradford / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Malaysian Reserve
07-05-2025
- Business
- Malaysian Reserve
The Ultimate Combo: White Castle and Heelys Team Up to Introduce Fun, New Footwear Available May 15
The merger of food and fashion results in White Castle-branded shoes on wheels COLUMBUS, Ohio, May 7, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Move over fries and cheese sticks. White Castle has a new sidekick, and this one has wheels. The shoes blend menu-inspired visuals and White Castle's recognizable color palette with Heelys signature style. The family-owned business, founder of The Original Slider®, is partnering with Heelys, the company behind the original wheeled shoe, to introduce a limited-edition collection of White Castle branded Heelys shoes. The shoes will be available exclusively on Heelys website beginning May 15, also known as National Slider Day in recognition of the burger that turned White Castle into a household name. 'Just like our Sliders, these shoes are one-of-a-kind, craveable and made for memorable moments,' said Jamie Richardson, vice president at White Castle. 'We're always seeking fresh and fun ways to satisfy cravings beyond the menu. Partnering with Heelys to design these exclusive shoes does just that.' The shoes, available in two colors, blend menu-inspired visuals and White Castle's recognizable color palette with Heelys signature style. The first version is white with royal blue trim and laces and splashes of orange, while the second version is Night Castle inspired black with orange trim, white laces and splashes of royal blue. Both versions feature the White Castle logo on two sides, a tongue that looks like a Cheese Slider, and small illustrations of Sliders, fries and soft drinks. This is a limited-edition drop, so fans are encouraged to get these shoes before they're gone. Both the lighter white version and the darker black version are available in sizes youth 13 to mens 13 and cost $75 plus tax and applicable shipping fees. 'White Castle is a fun and authentic brand, so it's been really exciting to work with them on this collaboration,' said Sara Arbelaez, social media and partnerships strategist at Heelys. 'The design turned out so well. We know White Castle Cravers are going to enjoy flaunting their love for Sliders wearing this unique and playful version of Heelys.' Heelys are shoes with removable wheels located in the heel. The wheels transform the shoes into stealth skates, giving users the freedom to seamlessly transition from walking or running to skating by shifting their weight to the heel. When the wheels are removed, the shoe performs just like any other footwear. About Heelys Heelys encourages kids and people of all ages to explore their world and lead active and healthy lifestyles through movement, whether it's walking, running or skating. With Heelys, it's your choice. Heelys dares its wearers to be themselves and encourages them to make their own place in the world! About White Castle® White Castle, America's first fast-food hamburger chain, has been making hot and tasty Sliders since 1921. Based in Columbus, Ohio, the family-owned business owns and operates about 340 restaurants as well as a retail division providing its famous fare in freezer aisles of retail stores nationwide. As part of its commitment to offering the highest quality products, White Castle owns and operates its own Slider Provider meat plants, bakeries and frozen-Slider retail plants. White Castle has earned numerous accolades over the years including Time magazine's 'Most Influential Burger of All Time' (2014, The Original Slider®) and Thrillist's 'Best Plant-Based Fast-Food Burger' (2019, Impossible™ Slider). In 2021, Fast Company named the fast-food pioneer one of the '10 Most Innovative Dining Companies.' White Castle is known for the legendary engagement of its team members and has received the Great Place to Work® Certification™ for an extraordinary four consecutive years spanning 2021–2024. White Castle is beloved by its passionate fans (Cravers), many of whom compete each year for entry into the Cravers Hall of Fame. The official White Castle app makes it easy for Cravers to sign up for the CRAVER NATION REWARDS™ loyalty program, access sweet deals and place pickup orders at any time. For more information on White Castle and how to Follow Your Crave, visit View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE White Castle
New York Times
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Sliders: Eugenio Suárez is streaky, superstitious — and now he's made his mark on baseball history
Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of baseball. Sportswriters often honor a player with a 'Good Guy' award for cooperation with the media. Eugenio Suárez won it last year from writers covering the Arizona Diamondbacks. He also won it a few years ago, in Cincinnati. His personal mantra is 'Good Vibes Only,' and by all accounts he lives it. Advertisement 'Geno is the same guy every single day — the epitome of it, literally,' said the Mets' Jesse Winker, a teammate with the Reds and Seattle Mariners. 'He's happy every single day, man. He's a great teammate, a great person, just a great dude to be around. And he uplifts everybody.' Given all that, it seemed likely that Suárez would be up for a chat about one of the greatest offensive performances in baseball history. He belted four home runs against Atlanta last Saturday, becoming just the 19th player ever to do it. Yet, when the Diamondbacks arrived at Citi Field on Tuesday, Suárez kept quiet. He chatted amiably with fans on the field, and politely accepted a reporter's congratulations on his big game. But an interview? Well, that wasn't happening. The Diamondbacks said that Suárez had done some interviews the last time he was in New York, at Yankee Stadium in early April, when he had five home runs through the season's five games. Then he plunged into a three-week tailspin: a .139 average (10-for-72) with one home run in 21 games. Sports scientists have yet to determine the jinxing powers of your humble Sliders correspondent. But Suárez was taking no chances. Superstitious, perhaps? 'Might be,' said Joe Mather, the Arizona hitting coach. 'Sometimes over-talking about what you're doing can really mess you up. It's a real thing at times and not at others, but if a player is feeling it, then I don't fault them.' When you're as streaky as Suárez, 34, you'll do anything to limit the lulls. Consider last season, his first with the Diamondbacks. Suárez entered July hitting .196 with six home runs in 80 games. His OPS was .591. It was reasonable to think that his roster spot was in peril. A lot of money was at stake: Suárez would either make $15 million in 2025 or get a $2 million buyout if the Diamondbacks declined his option. But there was also professional pride for one of baseball's stealth sluggers. Advertisement In the past 10 seasons (2016-2025), Suárez ranks fifth in the majors in home runs, trailing only Aaron Judge, Kyle Schwarber, Manny Machado and Nolan Arenado. He has five seasons with at least 30 homers, peaking with 49 in 2019, and never wants a day off. Suárez played all 162 games for the 2023 Mariners. He joined Arizona in a trade that November, but struggled to justify his playing time for the first three months of last season. Manager Torey Lovullo had to be blunt with Suárez: If he wanted to play every day, he had to work harder. 'I called him in, I'll never forget,' Lovullo said. 'I just said, 'Look, you've got to practice a little bit differently. You've gotten to a certain point in your career where your age tells you that you have to do things a tiny bit differently.' So we talked about getting on a program through the course of the week and following it, offensively and defensively, with some high-intensity training — and he did. He and the hitting coach just figured it out and that's when he got hot.' Earlier in his career, Mather said, Suárez could 'kind of wake up, roll out of bed and hit.' Last summer, he wanted to help Suárez re-train his fast-twitch movements and reaction times by working daily with a high-velocity machine in the batting cage. Suárez responded, hitting fastballs better than he had in a full year since 2019 — .290, with a .499 slugging percentage. From July on, he reclaimed his status as one of the sport's most dangerous hitters, slashing .312/.357/.617, ripping 24 homers and driving in 69 runs — the most in the majors from July 1 on. Included in that stretch were four four-hit games and four five-RBI games. The only other player in the past century with four of both after July 1: Babe Ruth. 'It was as good a second half as I've ever seen,' Lovullo said. 'I mean, it was awesome. It reminded me of J.D. (Martinez). J.D. seemed like he was hitting a home run a game there for the month of September (2017). But that's what he can do. He just has to be stubborn to what his strengths are, and he's figured that out.' Advertisement Martinez was the last major leaguer before Suárez with a four-homer game, doing it for the Diamondbacks at Dodger Stadium on Sept. 4, 2017. It made an impression throughout the organization. 'I remember when J.D. Martinez was with us, he hit four homers in 2017 — I was at the (Dominican) academy, and I saw it on TV,' shortstop Geraldo Perdomo said. 'And seeing that in real life, it's kind of crazy. I was talking with a couple of my teammates: 'What about if (Suárez) hit the number four right now?' And he did. It was special to see that. It sucked because we lost, but this is baseball and you never know what's going to happen.' The last four-homer effort to come in a loss was by Atlanta's Bob Horner in 1986, in a game when the Expos' Al Newman — a popular utility infielder of the era — hit his only career home run. The Diamondbacks recovered after Saturday's loss with a win on Sunday and a series victory in New York. Alas, despite keeping a low profile before that series, Suárez went 1-for-12 against the Mets and headed to Philadelphia for the weekend with a .196 season average. But thanks to the scorching start and a night for the ages, he also had 10 home runs, tied with the Yankees' Aaron Judge and Seattle's Cal Raleigh for the most in the majors. The Los Angeles Dodgers, who seem determined to be first in everything, barged into the lead on an unwanted list at the last possible moment on Wednesday. OK, so it's not a record they'd like to have. But still, when Jack Dreyer and Tony Gonsolin started the Dodgers' final two games against Miami this week, it made the Dodgers the first team ever to use 11 different starting pitchers before May. Besides Dreyer and Gonsolin, the Dodgers have used Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki for six starts each, Tyler Glasnow and Dustin May for five, Landon Knack and Blake Snell for two and Ben Casparius, Bobby Miller and Justin Wrobleski for one apiece. Glasnow and Snell are on the injured list with shoulder inflammation, while Knack, Miller and Wrobleski are now in the minors. Advertisement According to the Elias Sports Bureau, only five other teams have used 10 starters before May: the 1912 Browns, 2002 Cardinals, 2021 Blue Jays, 2021 Rays and this season's Milwaukee Brewers, who have burned through Freddy Peralta (seven starts), Chad Patrick (five), Quinn Priester and Jose Quintana (four), Tyler Alexander (three), Nestor Cortes, Tobias Myers and Elvin Rodriguez (two) and Aaron Civale and Logan Henderson (one). The difference between the Brewers and the Dodgers (and the 2021 teams) is that none of Milwaukee's 10 starters was designed to be an opener. The Dodgers have used Casparius and Dreyer in that role, but have another reinforcement coming back soon: Clayton Kershaw, who is recovering from toe and knee surgeries, threw 66 pitches for Triple-A Oklahoma City on Wednesday in his third rehab start. Uniform numbers were not standard across MLB until the early 1930s. Sixteen franchises were around back then, which means that many players cannot be honored with a retired number. A few teams do include long-ago greats alongside their numbered brethren: Ty Cobb in Detroit, Rogers Hornsby in St. Louis, John McGraw and Christy Mathewson in San Francisco. And then there's Philadelphia. The Phillies now honor five Hall of Famers from the time before numbers. Grover Cleveland Alexander and Chuck Klein were already included in a display above the outfield concourse at Citizens Bank Park. On Thursday — the anniversary of the franchise's first game in 1883 — three 1890s stars joined them: Ed Delahanty, Billy Hamilton and Sam Thompson. Owners John Middleton pulled the curtain over their names (and block-P logos) in a pregame ceremony, calling them 'extraordinary superstars' in a scoreboard segment. He's not wrong: Delahanty hit .400 three times; Hamilton held the majors' stolen-base record from 1897 to 1977 (with 914); and Thompson, a .331 career hitter, once drove in a record 61 runs in a month — a record. Thompson also knew how to rock a mustache, with a panache memorialized in his Philadelphia Inquirer obituary in 1922: 'Although great changes took place in the game during Thompson's stay in the big show, he always stuck to his long sandy mustache. Old time fans never forgot the habit Sam had of curling up his mustache just before he came up to hit and probably many a pitcher carried the picture to his grave of Thompson walking slowly up to the plate, with his short black bat tucked under his arm, while one hand was busy curling that long mustache before he took a cut at the ball.' Advertisement Doug Glanville might be the king of all baseball media. After a nine-year playing career for the Cubs, Phillies and Rangers, from 1996 to 2004, Glanville has forged a distinguished second act on just about every communications platform. His transition to the other side came naturally. 'I felt a certain camaraderie with the media,' Glanville said. 'They weren't my teammates, but I got just as much enjoyment from talking to the writers and people who were interviewing me, because they provided so much context and history and perspective that I found valuable to shaping how I thought about something or how I approached something. So that was always a draw to me.' Glanville — who is also an adjunct faculty member at the University of Connecticut's Neag School of Education — shared his thoughts on the joys and challenges of five mediums: writing a book, broadcasting on TV and radio, podcasting with The Athletic's Jayson Stark, and managing his new Substack, Welcome To Glanville, which opened for business in March. Radio: 'The surprise of radio is, you would think because you have to talk all the time, you can talk about anything. But I think you have less time to talk versus TV, because you have to paint the picture. It's too important to describe what's happening. So you can't just be like, 'Let me take three pitches now to talk about something, where TV you can get away with that because people are seeing. And with the pitch clock, it became even harder, right? Because it was like, 'OK, this guy's working really quickly. I don't have as much room to tell these stories, I guess.' But I love working with my play-by-play, whoever it is, but Jon Sciambi … Roxy Bernstein, Mike Cousins, Beth Mowins, doesn't matter. I have such a great respect for all of them and what they do.' Television: 'The best advice I got was from Gerry Matalon, he was a talent officer at ESPN. You'd come in after (a show), almost (for) an autopsy of it. So one day I walked in and he has both his hands in fists with his arms outstretched. I was like, 'Well, what's that?' He's like, 'Just tap them.' So I tap and he opens both hands and there's Starbursts in each hand. One of them is pristine, it's in the wrapper, and the other one looked like it'd been run over by a car, still in the wrapping. So he asked me, 'Which one do you want?' I was, like, 'Well, obviously this one is all wrapped.' And he's like, 'Same content, different packaging. It matters how you deliver. This is a communications job. This is not a baseball job. There's a bunch of people that play baseball that can then talk about it. But can you communicate it? Can you deliver it? Can you sell it? Can you share it? That is where you need strategy, skills, practice, and I'm going to give it to you.' That was how it went. From that day forward, I learned this is a communications job. I love baseball and I can talk about baseball, and I do, but it's not enough for me to be like, 'I played the big leagues.' You have to convey information, you have to reach people, you have to be clear.' Book writing: 'The hardest part is that I realized I'm an essayist real quick. Because if I have to sit down and someone says, 'Hey, write this whole chapter 15,000 words,' I get kind of lost in my own words. I'll get like 5,000 words in and say, 'Wait did I say that before? I might have said that already.' And this is how good my publisher was. He said, 'Look, write the whole book as a chain of essays. Then we'll categorize those essays, make chapters of them, and then we'll fuse them together. So that's how I wrote it. I wrote in, like, 52 pieces and then bridged it together. Because I figured out pretty quickly that it was just hard for me to just write a chapter.' Podcasting: 'I just love talking to people. I love learning, and any chance you have to talk to anybody, new or not new, I feel like you learn so much. It's a real chance to explore that curiosity. … It's current events, it is live — well, not live in the exact sense, but it's straight talk and it's recorded as-is, and we just get to talk to these amazing people around the game.' Advertisement The Substack: 'I think what Substack has given me is the ability to just write freely and not be in the box. The box will tell you baseball is only relevant in these places, and that I reject that 100 percent. It's a proxy for life. It's teamwork. It's sport. It's social justice. It's change. It's anything — it's cookies, it's aliases (on the road). As a player and having these experiences, I felt that baseball deserves to be showcased in all these ways. And it's harder to pitch to each individual place and say, 'Hey, I have this idea.' It's more like, 'Hey, give me your one-off piece and I might call you in four years and ask you to write another one.' I just think it's hard to be able to be a conscience of something, because you don't get the rhythm. I like that these publications are getting many different kinds of voices. There's an ensemble that I appreciate. But I think as a person trying to write consistently, that's pretty hard today. … So I think Substack is freedom, and it's also an elevation of baseball. I refuse to limit it to just, 'Oh, I hit .350 this week.' There's so much more to baseball, and I've witnessed it firsthand in my life.' Daulton Varsho's stumbling, tumbling catch in Toronto this week is rightly being considered among the best plays ever. All that was missing was a compelling game situation: Varsho did it in the fourth inning of a game the Blue Jays were losing by five runs. For both degree of difficulty and historical importance, it's hard to beat the catch of DeWayne Wise's life, which saved Mark Buehrle's perfect game on July 23, 2009. Two of our weekly features join forces this week in honor of Wise, an Immaculate Grid superstar who produced a highlight clip for the ages. Wise played for six teams from 2000 to 2013, appearing at every outfield position and twice as a pitcher. He qualified for the left-field/right-field square in Monday's Grid, but made his biggest impact in center on a midweek afternoon against the Tampa Bay Rays. Inserted for defense in the top of the ninth inning, Wise got his chance immediately when Gabe Kapler drove a pitch to the wall. Wise, who was playing shallow to guard against a bloop single, raced back, leaped, reached over the fence to pull back the ball, then bobbled it as he fell — and caught it with his bare hand, mid-tumble. 'It was crazy, man,' Wise said a week or so later, when I talked with him in Chicago. 'That situation, a dead sprint out there. Every time I look at that I just get chills, like, wow, how did I make that catch?' Here's something else to give you chills: Wise made his leap in front of a mural of Billy Pierce, a star White Sox lefty who once lost a perfect game on the South Side with two outs in the ninth. (Top photo of Eugenio Suárez: Norm Hall / Getty Images)
New York Times
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Sliders: For ‘The Simpsons,' MLB's gambling ties make a perfectly cromulent premise
Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of baseball. Nothing celebrates life's absurdities quite like 'The Simpsons,' the longest-running sitcom in television history. For nearly 800 episodes since 1989, it's been an animated masterpiece of satire, gleefully skewering pretty much every topic imaginable. Itself included. Advertisement 'It's hard to do, but we look at what's in the news and we make a comment on it a year and a half later,' said Joel Cohen, an executive producer. 'That's our policy.' A little over a year ago, the big news in baseball was the scandal involving Ippei Mizuhara, the interpreter for Shohei Ohtani, who stole more than $16 million from Ohtani to cover his gambling debts. Inside the Simpsons writers' room on the Fox Studios lot in Los Angeles, an idea started to percolate. 'Matt Selman did a bit in the room where he was pretending to be Otani's interpreter, like misinterpreting everything Ohtani said to cover his own betting,' said Michael Price, another executive producer, referring to 'The Simpsons' show-runner. 'So he was like, 'Uh, yeah, yeah, everything's great!' We thought it would be really funny if Moe became that guy, and that's where the Macedonian part came in. Like, why would a (baseball star) want to come to Springfield? And then Joel had the idea that Moe was Macedonian, and it just sort of made sense.' In the Simpsons-verse, it's natural to picture Moe Szyslak, a scheming bartender with a sketchy past, entangled in a gambling scandal. Springfield does have a pro baseball team called the Isotopes (that's where the Albuquerque Triple-A team got its name), and if the show could break canon and make the 'Topes an MLB franchise … well, Price and Cohen knew they were onto something. That's the genesis of 'Abe League Of Their Moe,' which airs Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on Fox. Jamie Demetriou voices Aeropos Walkov, who yearns to bring his two-way talents (.358 average, 2.03 ERA) to the majors. He studies hype videos from every team — Chris Rock promotes the Mets, Danny Trejo pushes L.A. — but only the Isotopes court him with an actual Macedonian speaker. Walkov chooses Moe, and a team with just two fans — Grampa Simpson is the other — suddenly becomes a hot ticket. Grandpa even convinces Bart to join him at the ballpark, which is covered in ads for gambling sites. Advertisement To Grampa's horror, Bart becomes hooked on sports gambling. To Moe's horror, Walkov does, too. When the repentant star calls a confessional press conference, Moe tries to cover it up with misinterpretations and winds up taking the fall. For Price, the co-runner for the episode, the Ohtani vehicle was a chance to comment on MLB's embrace of legalized gambling as a revenue source. The Ohtani/Mizuhara story has faded from the headlines, but the league has retained its partnerships with betting sites. (The Athletic has a partnership with BetMGM.) 'Gambling — like all things, I guess, is fine in moderation — but people get their lives destroyed by this,' Price said. 'And in the Ohtani deal, the official story is that Ohtani wasn't doing it, (Mizuhara) was — but even in that version of it, it's ruined this guy's life. It's a really horrible thing, and (the fact) that it's just promoted so baldly, I think, is not great.' It's been almost 15 years since the last baseball-themed Simpsons episode, 2010's 'MoneyBart,' in which Lisa uses analytics to manage Bart's Little League team. The show's famous softball episode, 'Homer At The Bat,' aired in 1992, and one-off jokes are peppered through the series — a comic book called 'Radioactive Man Meets The Kansas City Royals,' a ventriloquist's dummy who imitates Vin Scully, a barrage of pretzels injuring Whitey Ford, and so on. In Sunday's episode, random references abound. 'We had a goal when we first started writing it — Joel said, 'Let's aim for this to somehow have a joke about every one of all 30 teams,'' Price said. 'I don't know if we succeeded or not.' 'We stopped checking, but we think we might have hit every team,' Cohen added. 'If any team isn't offended, let us know and we'll send something up on Signal or something.' Besides Demetriou, Rock and Trejo, the episode features Fox's Kevin Burkhardt, MLB Network's Kevin Millar, SNY's Steve Gelbs — and me! The other guys have speaking roles. My character merely gasps, too stunned by Moe's chicanery to ask a question at the press conference. But that's me, all right, along with Anthony DiComo of who is also drawn into the press conference scene. Price — a diehard Mets fan whose brother, Bill, is a former sports editor of the New York Daily News — decided to animate some media members who are known to be fans of the show. For me, it's more than the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. It makes up for a gaffe I've never lived down. Advertisement About 12 years ago, I got an email from a producer for the movie 'Million Dollar Arm.' I opened it on my phone, scanned it too quickly and forgot about it. Turns out, the email was an invitation to actually appear in the movie. Other baseball reporters, including our own Jayson Stark and Ken Rosenthal, did just that. I let the pitch sail by. I've still never been in a movie, but now I don't care. This is better, even if my character didn't get to meet Homer. He's barely in this episode, however, and wouldn't remember me if he were. 'We wanted to really focus it on Moe and Grampa, so there wasn't a lot of room for Homer,' Cohen said. 'But I'll say this: Homer gets more drunk in this episode than he's probably ever been in any episode. So you could make that your headline: 'Homer Simpson, the drunkest episode ever.'' Griffin Canning was not expecting to win a Gold Glove in 2020. He made 11 starts for the Angels in that shortened season, going 2-3 with a 3.99 ERA, and didn't remember any spectacular plays. But because teams played so few opponents that season, Gold Gloves were determined strictly by analytics, without input from coaches. And the numbers said Canning was best, and they weren't wrong. Canning, now thriving for the Mets, also stood out for his fielding at UCLA. While he did not grow up playing multiple sports, Canning regularly shows his agility on comebackers and has an exceptional pickoff move, especially for a right-hander. Right back at Griffin Canning as he completes 6 strong innings! — SNY Mets (@SNY_Mets) April 18, 2025 Canning went 6-13 with a 5.91 ERA last season, leading the AL in earned runs allowed (99), and the Angels quickly traded him to the Atlanta Braves for Jorge Soler. With Canning eligible for salary arbitration, the Braves let Canning go and the Mets signed him for $4.25 million. Now Canning is 3-1 with a 3.12 ERA in five starts, so he's been a good investment — good as Gold, perhaps. Advertisement 'I won a Gold Glove in college, too, so that's something I want to win every year,' he said. 'I was a finalist last year, but if you have a (lousy) year, you don't really get the favoritism to win.' Never lose the position player in you: 'Like most guys, I played a position in high school; I played all over — shortstop, second base, center field, third base. I went to UCLA and playing West Coast baseball, there was a lot of small ball, a lot of bunting, a lot of emphasis the inside game — stuff going on the infield, like getting over to first base, being able to field your position, being to get off the mound and field a bunt. It was just kind of my outlet once I got to college — not playing the field anymore, it was just fun for me to be able to do that. I just took it really seriously and prided myself on being able to field my position. I worked on it a ton in college, so kind of just something that got ingrained in me.' Never let a potential out get by you: I'm pretty twitchy, I can jump a little bit, (and) once the ball is off the bat, if you watch, I'm always reaching, trying to see if I can get that ball. It's just like a habit. Any way I can find an out, that's something I'm gonna try to do. I try and remind myself to kind of look behind me and see where we're playing, like the shifts and stuff. But for the most part, it's just instinctual to try to get the ball. Zack Greinke was a role model: 'I know early in his career he was a pretty dominating pitcher, but as his career got on he wasn't necessarily the biggest, hardest-throwing guy. He was just a pitcher — changed speeds, understood the game really well and fielded his position really well, too. He was just someone I kind of gravitate towards because I kind of compare myself to him.' Today's rules mean a renewed emphasis on fielding: 'Holding runners, all those little things I think have come back into the game a little bit more now with the pitch clock and the pickoff rules and stuff. You've got to be on top of holding runners a little more and being quick to the plate, stuff like that. But it's tough now with all the video out there now. Teams are really good at picking up little things you might do when you're going to pick over.' MLB's Gold Glove comes with a perk: 'It's pretty much the same trophy (as in college), but I get a gold label on all my gloves now, and you can only get this label if you win the Gold Glove. So that's cool.' A 30/30 season has long been the benchmark for power and speed. It's been done 72 times by 47 different players, including Shohei Ohtani, José Ramírez and Bobby Witt Jr. last season. But it happened only once before 1956, by a guy who never achieved either mark in any other season. He was Ken Williams of the 1922 St. Louis Browns, and he qualified for Tuesday's Immaculate Grid, which asked for a player with a 100-RBI season and a 6-WAR season. Williams met those thresholds easily (155 runs batted in, 7.9 WAR) while smashing 39 homers and stealing 37 bases. Advertisement The St. Louis Post-Dispatch was most impressed. Williams' SABR biography includes this poem from the paper's L.C. Davis: Whose name is on every tongue? Ken Williams Whose praises are now daily sung? Ken Williams Who is the rooter's joy and pride? Who gives the pesky pill a ride? And separates it from its hide? Ken Williams Who is our most admired youth? Ken Williams Who makes the fan forget Babe Ruth? Ken Williams Who is the guy so calm and cool? Who swings his trusty batting tool? And knocks the pellet for a gool? Ken Williams Williams' efforts helped the Browns to a second-place finish at 93-61, the best of their 52-year stay in St. Louis. And while 1922 was a career year, Williams had several more strong seasons and finished at .319/.393/.520. The problem, historically, is that Williams did not become a regular player until age 30, after serving in World War I. He collected only 1,552 hits and got almost no consideration for the Hall of Fame, roundly rejected by the writers in the 1950s and by a veterans committee in 2003. Still, Williams has a case. Of the 51 players who appeared in 1,000 or more games in the 1920s, Williams ranks fifth in OPS at .947, behind Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, Harry Heilmann and Tris Speaker. He's eighth in WAR for the decade, and everyone else in the top 14 has a plaque in Cooperstown. Thirty years ago on Friday, Major League Baseball finally returned after a devastating work stoppage that cancelled the 1994 World Series and bled into 1995, when owners tried to unilaterally impose a salary cap. The season nearly began with replacement players until future Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor — then a judge with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York — issued an injunction against the owners, bringing back the real players for a hurried spring training. Advertisement The first game took place in Miami on April 25, 1995, with the Florida Marlins hosting the Los Angeles Dodgers. A sold-out crowd of 42,125 saw the Marlins lose, 8-7, but it sure beat the 'exciting, competitive alternative' that 'Late Night With Conan O'Brien' had devised eight months earlier. A team of 8-year-olds faced off against a team of 80-year-olds including Carl 'Oldy' Olson, who hit a ball out of the infield but may have broken a hip. The Turbo Ninjas beat the White Stockings, 8-5, in a game that featured 26 errors and a bench-clearing brawl. 'They really went at it,' said O'Brien, narrating the action. 'This makes really young people look bad and really, really old people look bad. It doesn't do much for the game. I don't know, I thought the whole thing was shocking and very sad.' (Top photo from 'The Simpsons': Courtesy of The Simpsons™ and ©2025 20th Television)
New York Times
18-04-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Sliders: For MLB umpire Mark Ripperger, a ‘very good' game turned out to be perfect
Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of baseball. Mark Ripperger had played two years of high school baseball in Escondido, Calif., when he decided, as most 16-year-olds do, that he'd like to make some money. His parents and friends suggested he find a job in a field he loved, and the field he loved was baseball. Advertisement He thought about umpiring Little League games, but instead hooked up with a high school umpires association, taking assignments far from home to avoid any conflicts of interest. After graduating, when Ripperger was allowed to work games at his alma mater, Escondido High School, objectivity came naturally. 'I'll tell you, that kind of comes out of you immediately,' he said, 'especially if you go into this and you want to do well.' Last Thursday in Kansas City, Ripperger did the job as well as it can possibly be done: He worked a perfect game behind the plate. The Umpire Scorecards website, which uses MLB data from Baseball Savant to track umpires' accuracy, reported that the Royals and Twins took 136 pitches that day, and Ripperger called all of them correctly. Umpire: Mark RippergerFinal: Twins 2, Royals 3#MNTwins // #FountainsUp#MINvsKC // #KCvsMIN More stats for this ump 👇 — Umpire Scorecards (@UmpScorecards) April 11, 2025 Ripperger, a full-time umpire since 2015, did not realize at the time that he'd done a flawless job. 'There are times when I walk off the field and I don't feel like I was very good that day, and I ended up being very good,' he said. 'And there are days when I walk off thinking that I just nailed it, and I wasn't as good as I thought. So, no, not during that Thursday did I feel that way. I was certainly not expecting this sort of outcome when I walked off the field. I felt very good about my performance, very good about my game. But I certainly didn't think it was that.' The perfect game is an unofficial feat — Umpire Scorecards is not affiliated with MLB — but Ripperger's stands as just the second in the 11 years of Statcast data. The other was by Pat Hoberg in Game 2 of the 2022 World Series in Houston. Hoberg, who has since been fired for violating MLB's gambling rules, declined an interview request during that World Series. Ripperger, too, was initially reluctant to talk about his achievement. Umpires almost always prefer to stay in the background. Advertisement But they are also proud of their profession and aware of the criticism that comes with it. The perfect game was a chance to commemorate a job well done. 'I kind of like to just fly under the radar — do my job the best I can and not really be in the spotlight,' Ripperger said. 'That's for the players. I know that our successes are not celebrated very much, whatever they are, and our blunders make us look not in a great light, I guess. I'm flattered about all this stuff, but at the same time, I'm just one of 76, and all those guys have great games as well.' Even so, Umpire Scorecards ranks Ripperger among the best. Of the 75 umpires who had worked the plate at least three times through Wednesday, he ranked third in accuracy at 95.93 percent, trailing only Derek Thomas (97.24) and Will Little (95.96). Ripperger, 44, felt an instant, indefinable connection with umpiring. His first instructor — while he was still in high school — was Mike Winters, a major-league ump from 1988 to 2019, and he bonded with amateur umpires who took the job seriously. 'We had weekly meetings, and after the meetings I would go to a restaurant and hang out with them,' Ripperger said. 'They'd go have a drink and I'd sit there with them at the restaurant and drink my water — or Pepsi or Coke or whatever — and listen to their stories. And I just fell in love with the job.' It's a steep climb to the few MLB jobs available, and Ripperger — who started professionally in 2003 — worked for years in the Arizona Rookie League, the Northwest League, the Midwest League, the California League, the Eastern League, the Hawaii Winter League, the Venezuelan Winter League and the Pacific Coast League. He made his MLB debut in 2010, five years before his full-time promotion. His fraternity strives for perfection while understanding it will (almost) always elude them. Advertisement 'We are trying to get everything right, and sometimes we don't — but it's not for lack of effort,' Ripperger said. 'We have an incredibly hard job and we know it's thankless, we really do. We know many people don't care for us. 'But the one thing I hear a lot is that we aren't held accountable. That kind of bothers me sometimes, because we are held accountable, mostly by ourselves. We hold ourselves accountable for the job that we do, but then we also have supervisors and Major League Baseball that tell us how we can be better and (how to) help us, and they hold us accountable as well. We are very dedicated to this job and we love it and we do our best to get everything right, knowing that we always won't.' Baseball tested the automated ball-strike challenge system in spring training and could implement it in official games next season. That possibility, Ripperger said, does not impact the way he calls a game. The notion that umpires tailor their strike zones to personal preferences, he added, is a myth. 'I don't see that from anybody, and I don't believe anyone has that mindset,' he said. 'I believe everyone is trying to get everything right that they possibly can with the zone that's written in the rulebook.' Umpires are graded each game for accuracy on ball-strike calls, safe-out calls, and so on. MLB considers those grades for postseason assignments, while also seeking a balance of veteran and less-experienced umpires for each crew. That way, younger umpires can be ready for future leadership roles. As nice as it is to get a laudatory social media post from an independent grader, it's not what an umpire dreams about. Ripperger worked his first World Series last fall, and had the plate for the final game of the season at Yankee Stadium. 'I relished that opportunity and wanted that opportunity since I started this — kind of like the player that wants to hit the home run like Freddie Freeman did in Game 1, the grand slam to win the game,' he said. 'This was what I envisioned, working the World Series — albeit Game 7 instead of Game 5, but it was still the clinching game, just doing it — and I did it. It was unbelievable, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.' On Tuesday at Citi Field, Howie Karpin will work his 1,500th game as official scorer. In that role, he keeps a precise accounting of each game, with daily decisions on hits or errors, wild pitches or passed balls and so on. He also announces and documents the many oddities that can arise. Karpin has had his share of those, including two of the 15 unassisted triple plays in major-league history, by the Athletics' Randy Velarde in 2000 and the Phillies' Eric Bruntlett in 2009. But until a soggy and blustery night this month at Yankee Stadium, Karpin had never gotten to invoke the 11 essential words of rule 9.17 (b) (2): four innings of a game that lasts five innings on defense. Advertisement Those words made starter Robbie Ray the winning pitcher for the Giants on April 11, even though he failed to work the five innings that are almost always required for a starter to qualify for a victory. The Giants took the lead for good in the top of the first that night and beat the Yankees, 9-1, in a rain-shortened game that was called after the Giants batted in the top of the sixth. The timing of the stoppage was critical. Had San Francisco taken the field for the bottom of the sixth, Karpin could not have awarded the victory to Ray, who was pulled after four innings. But because the Giants played only — and exactly — five innings on defense, Ray's effort was enough for the win. The rule has been invoked only nine other times in the division play era and just once since 2009, for San Diego's Joe Musgrove in Cincinnati three years ago. (The others to win that way, since you're surely wondering: Wilbur Wood, Bob Forsch, Mike Griffin, Richie Lewis, Larry Luebbers, CC Sabathia, Chris Michalak and Drew Carpenter.) Official scorers once had more leeway in determining which pitcher gets the victory. The rulebook did not specify a five-inning minimum for starters until 1950; before then, hundreds of starters who did not go five were awarded wins. Does Karpin like the rule the way it is now? He smiled and said it's not his job to like or dislike the rules he applies. 'I like that I knew it,' he said. Trea Turner holds the major-league record for most stolen bases in a season without getting caught, with 30 for the Phillies in 2023. But a minor leaguer named Tyler Tolbert had actually doubled that total the year before, with a 60-for-60 season for Class-A Quad Cities. He took the team's name, River Bandits, literally — and insists he beat every tag. Advertisement 'There's always close calls,' Tolbert said. 'But as a base runner, I'll always say they made the right call.' Tolbert reached the majors on March 31 when the Kansas City Royals promoted him as a pinch-running specialist, a role Terrance Gore filled for their World Series teams in the mid-2010s. Through his first six games in the majors, Tolbert was 4-for-4 on stolen base attempts. A 13th-round pick from the University of Alabama-Birmingham in 2019, Tolbert was born in 1998 — the year of the fabled Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa home run chase. There's been only one 75-steal season in his lifetime, by the Mets' Jose Reyes, who stole 78 in 2007. While Tolbert is encouraged by rule changes to promote base stealing — 'I think the game's going back to the old days, with speed,' he said — he explains below why gaudy individual totals might not be coming back. Speed is enough, at first: 'As a kid I was just quick. I paid attention to how to run bases, but as I got older in high school I started learning a little bit more and in college I learned a lot more — a foundation of what to look for, how to prepare to steal a base. Because when you're an amateur, you just kind of outrun the ball.' In the pros, you need more: 'One, just to be fearless. You can't be scared, honestly. If you're scared to get picked off or anything, you're already in trouble. Two is just to know who the pitcher is and who the catcher is, identifying the matchups. And then we have a 'go' key, and we're just trying to get a jump every time. Even when I'm not in a 'go' mode, like I'm not trying to steal right here, in my mind, I'm still trying to get my rep in, so I'm ready at any time.' Pay attention to the dirt, and protect your fingers: 'I slide headfirst. But the dirt does matter. I've noticed at Yankee Stadium, the dirt holds water, so it's gonna stick a little bit more. So I might slide closer to the bag. I've jammed a few fingers and thumbs, for sure, but that was before the sliding mitt.' Advertisement Don't expect a 100-steal season anytime soon: 'I feel like (it's) because pitchers are getting quicker and the catchers here are elite. You have more scouting reports, you have more data, more accessibility to tendencies. Also it's a long season, and to steal a base, that's exerting a lot of energy. And say the pitcher's really quick, if (the runner) can score from first on a double, why risk getting thrown out? If he can get a ball in the gap, you're going to score. So you've got to know your matchups and know what the situation calls for.' Listen to the greats: 'I loved Rickey Henderson. That was my dad's favorite player. I used to watch highlights of Rickey, the Man of Steal. And I remember when I was like 11, MLB Network, Diamond Demo. He was talking about stealing bases and he talked about a few things that have always stuck with me. I can't tell you my secrets, but he said something I still use to this day.' "Who taught you that? I've never heard that!" Rickey = the 🐐 — MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) December 22, 2024 When you're pursuing an MBA at the Wharton School — while climbing the executive hierarchy of an MLB team — it's best to finish your assignments on time. When you're a volunteer contributor to Sliders, you can take your time. So we're giving the busy Sam Fuld, the Philadelphia Phillies' future president of business operations, a pass on his recent Immaculate Grid homework. Fuld, the former outfielder for the Cubs, Rays, A's and Twins, missed our deadline to send in a theme from the April Fool's Day grid, which had spaces for any nine players in MLB history. But he came through eventually. Fuld, who was born in Durham, NH, and attended Phillips Exeter Academy, chose nine players who were born in New Hampshire or attended high school there. They include a Cy Young Award winner from Exeter (Chris Carpenter), an All-Star lefty from North Conway (Jeff Locke) and a lifetime 1.000 hitter from Concord (Matt Tupman, who was 1-for-1). Not many major leaguers share their last name with a holiday. There's Steve Christmas, a catcher from the mid-1980s, but almost anything else is a stretch. Gary (New Year's) Eave? Coby (Cinco de) Mayo? Not quite. Then there's the holiday coming up on Sunday … which brings us to Luke Easter, a prodigious 1950s power hitter. Easter had started in the Negro Leagues with Buck Leonard and the celebrated Homestead Grays, and signed with the Cleveland Indians in 1949. Advertisement 'Had Luke come up to the big leagues as a young man,' Cleveland slugger Al Rosen told the Smithsonian magazine, decades later, 'there's no telling what numbers he would have had.' Easter was 35 years old when the 1950 season began and went on to smash 292 homers for the decade. He had three big power seasons for Cleveland before a 10-year stint as a prolific home run hitter in Class AAA. Easter's biggest years came in Buffalo, where he became one of the city's first sports icons. Easter was 40 and hobbled when he joined the Bisons, but his raw power remained. In three full seasons with Buffalo, he belted 113 homers — 'Easter Eggs,' they called them — and became a charter member of the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame. 'Buffalo fans have always worshipped their sport heroes,' his plaque reads, 'but few have ever attained the near-mythical status accorded Bison great Luke Easter.' The Bisons — now a Toronto Blue Jays affiliate — include Easter's No. 25 among their three retired numbers. Here's a short video they put together about him last year: (Top photo of Mark Ripperger: Josh Boland / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
