Two years of college French did nothing for my ensuing 50 or so years of baseball coverage. Given the explosion of Latin players in the majors, two years of Spanish, three years, why not four years, would have been of far greater benefit.

But I have finally found a use for my French: Plus ca change, plus c’est la même chose

This is an old proverb familiar to French students and other French-speaking people, meaning the more things change the more they stay the same.

How does it apply here? I refer you to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

After they loaded up on expensive players for last season, beginning it with a club record $216 million payroll, the Dodgers struggled to a …

Keep reading...

In a column last month, I wrote about the system in which Major League Baseball accepts appeals from clubs of official scorers’ rulings.

I offered two criticisms of the system: 1, I don’t care for someone (Joe Torre, executive vice president of baseball operations) sitting in an office and determining whether a play was a hit or an error by watching video replays), and 2, I especially don’t care for MLB keeping Torre’s decisions secret.

Nothing has changed with the system since the column appeared here, but it prompted an e-mail from Bruce Winkworth of Raleigh, N.C., who offered a candid insight into the job of an official scorer. I reprint it here:

Keep reading...

In the 25 years he has been banished from baseball, Pete Rose has probably uttered the phrase “second chance” as many times as he had hits (4,256) in his record career.

“If they gave him another chance, I would bet he would do the right thing,” Tommy Gioiosa said. “With Pete, I think he gambled out of boredom. He wanted to have fun. It was a big price to pay.”

Paul Janszen offered another view of Rose, who was thrown out of baseball for life 25 years ago today. Janszen and Gioiosa were two of the names most prominently linked to the 1989 John Dowd investigation that resulted in Rose’s banishment by Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti.

Mimicking Rose’s oft-stated position, Janszen said …

Keep reading...