I'm thrilled that 42 is smashing baseball movie box office records like so many weak sliders, and seems poised to bypass Moneyball soon as the all-time champ. If anything, it may help pave the way for more (and better) baseball films, a genre decidedly lacking in unforgettable classics. This isn't...

I learned of the death of the Boston Phoenix on Twitter today. It seemed fitting, coming just a few months after a morbid e-mail exchange I had with Peter Kadzis, one of the Boston alternative weekly paper's final editors. Earlier, I had Googled John Ferguson, a great editor and wonderful...

Adrian Gonzalez, his new home Dodger whites practically glowing against the brilliant green turf, jogged back to the dugout after clubbing a pitch from Miami's Josh Johnson deep into the right field stands. It was his very first at bat in LA, and only the second pitch he saw. Coming...

The conventioneer was in his 60s, wearing a ball cap, glasses and trim little white beard. Like me, he was at the Marriott City Center in Minneapolis last week to attend the yearly gathering of SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research. Barry Bengtsson of St. Paul was...

Arcadia is a pleasant little town at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, just east of Pasadena. Inside the Arcadia Public Library, around the corner from the main desk and just before the children's section, a host of very rare items are on...

Baseball lends itself to book form so effortlessly because day and in and year out, the game wears fantastic drama on its sleeve. In the mood for a sprawling Russian novel? Let's go with a history of the Cubs. Fast-paced action thriller? Any book on the 1967 American League race...

Nothing gets the baseball blogosphere more riled up than a good old annual debate over players' Hall of Fame credentials, so to save time down the road, I thought I would jump ahead 25 years. Look for the following piece in the January 2037 issue of Baseball Kindle Digest ...

Having just endured six days in a hospital, I've been moved to write something about how far our medical profession has advanced since the bygone days. Luckily the recent discovery of a long-buried diary of Confederate General John Bell Hood illuminates this for us. Having survived an arm wound battling...

As a lifelong Red Sox fan, their swan dive from the top of the American League East in 1978 is still the most devastating baseball event for me. They recovered beautifully in the final week, winning their last eight games to tie New York on the final day, so when...

Well, let's see...

Heard notorious sports agent Scott Boras address (and actually charm) a packed ballroom of baseball fans and media about his early playing days. Heard a presentation called Fielder Jones, the Offensive Efficiency Paradox of His Hitless Wonders, and How They Stunned the Cubs in the 1906 World...

Late the other night I drove a Nash coupe about five miles to my old Hollywood apartment, to see if the 1947 version of me was home. Sadly, Sunset Boulevard ended at a roadblock, because Formosa Avenue wasn't mapped out by the game developers who created L.A. Noire.

No matter....

With apologies to Edgar Allan Poe...

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless evening in the early summer of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone in my Saturn, through a singularly dreary tract of L.A. county; and at...

In today's overly crowded world of TV sports viewing, April and May are my favorite months. The baseball season is dusting off its cleats and swinging to life, while hockey and basketball are filling our plates with non-stop playoff games. It's hard to know what to watch.

Thankfully, one of...

I spent a good two hours at Santa Monica Beach this weekend, but, weirdly enough, didn't have to endure alien meteor showers.

It's also strange that I've been up to the Griffith Park Observatory about a dozen times since I've lived out here and not once did I experience...

I first see the line while crossing Fifth Avenue: dozens of grown men in multi-colored parkas and baseball caps, waiting patiently in sub-freezing temperatures to honor their hero.

I won't lie. I'm one of them.

It's Saturday the 12th, the 50th anniversary celebration of Strat-O-Matic Baseball, the highly realistic and...