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Category Archives: Baseball Musings

Philosophizing on the game, as player, spectator, writer, historian, and more.

SABR 40: awards and John Schuerholz speech

Here we are at the SABR Awards Banquet. The eating is mostly over with, and now president Andy McCue is reading off the results of various awards that were given earlier this year, including some to high school students for historical society prizes and the like, and working up to the Seymour Medal. We’ve just […]

SABR 40: day two, post three

Do Batters Make Slumps Worse by Trying to Escape Them? Jeff Switchenko, with several co-authors Hitting with RISP: Real differences between players by Eric Van Are Outs Made on the Bases More Harmful than Other Types of Outs? David W. Smith

Jim Joyce reactions

RT @ed_price: When will Major League Baseball hold umpires accountable? Why can't they be demoted or fired like players, managers or GMs? # RT @BloggingBombers: Wow. The entire press box at Yankee Stadium is howling about the worst call ever made. #

Umps Care, they really do

It’s not every day you get to talk to a major league umpire. Today I got a chance to have an extensive interview with Jim Reynolds who has been a major league ump for more than ten years, to help kick off the UMPS CARE charity auction online. (Auction kicks off today onlinewith some truly […]

This Moment in (Blogging) History

This has been an interesting decade to be a baseball writer. Once upon a time, in a storied era of American history, sportswriters were the creme de la creme of all writers. New York City had dozens of newspapers and even smaller cities boasted multiple papers, often with multiple editions per day. Newspapers were the […]

Talking Baseball with Baseballisms

Joe over at Baseballisms interviewed me recently about The 50 Greatest Yankee Games, a book I really would like to revise now that there is another championship to add to the tally… He recaps the interview in text here: http://baseballisms.com/podcast-author-cecilia-tan.html and then you can listen to the podcast of it, which runs about an hour […]

World Series Magic

It’s time to talk about signs and magic. In other words, do the Yankees have fate on their side? Every championship year seems to have its thread strung with some gems that presage special things happening. In 1996 the magic moments were things like Dwight Gooden pitching a no-hitter after all the adversity he had […]

ALCS Game 5: Pitching, Pitching, Pitching

It was a game in which 280 pitches were thrown, but it was the very last one that decided it. It was a game in which no pitcher was happy. In tonight’s game, Phil Hughes took the loss, and in postgame interviews put all the blame on his own shoulders, but the Yankees’ six-run uprising […]

Bottom of the Ninth

You could start a club this winter for elite closers whose blown saves sent their teams to early ends. Jonathan Papelbon, Huston Street, and Joe Nathan can start a therapy group. Or maybe they just need one more to make a golf foursome. What people are forgetting is that Mariano Rivera could join that group. […]

If I Voted for Manager of the Year

As a member of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, I am putting in votes for season awards. You’ve already seen my vote for AL Cy Young Award (Zack Greinke), but for me the end votes are sometimes not as important to me as people’s reasons for voting, or not voting, for various candidates. When it comes […]