What makes a player a good baserunner? Speed helps for sure but there have been many adept, even good baserunners who have lacked foot speed. Picking up the ball, knowing the field, taking longer leads and reading the move home of the pitcher are all important if not underused skills.…
Partly because baseball has been around the longest, there have been more MLB players who played other professional sports than pro athletes from other sports playing MLB baseball. Baseball players were not paid much in the early part of the 20th century and being paid for two sports beat out…
Do you know the 10 oldest ballparks currently in use in MLB? Sure you'd expect Fenway & Wrigley but some of the other names might surprise even the most knowledgable fans. How about groundskeeping and the differences between baseball parks? Baseball is really the only major sport in which the…
Ichiro Suzuki has the all-time #MLB record for hits in one season with 262. He broke George Sisler's 84 year-old record of 257 in 2004. Since then there have been a number of 200-hit seasons recorded by players but the number is decreasing. And we talk about why that is…
Do you recognize the photo of the AL Rookie-of-the-Year from 2004? Jackie Robinson won the very first Rookie-of-the-Year (for both leagues) in 1947. Since then one team has dominated ROY selections. Can you guess which team it is? We talk about the Hall-of-Fame Rookies of the Year as well as…
Good teams always seem to have a guy or two who's a versatile utility player. This helps keep the roster efficient since a good utility player can cover a variety of field positions. We discuss that being a versatile player is a good thing but overall a utility player is…
Bench-clearings still happen fairly often in #MLB. Actual bench-clearing brawls are less common due to the players being suspended, losing pay, and generally hurting the team. But in the heat of the moment a batter can snap when a high hard one goes right at his head or upper body.…
It's a new season already and the start of a 2nd season from Almost Cooperstown! Only 10 months after the delayed start of the 2020 MLB season, here comes the 2021 season. A planned 162-game season that is sure to test the pitching staffs across both leagues. 7 inning double-headers…
Before our podcast started, we like so many others, sat around and talked about baseball. What recently got us going was the idea that Ty Cobb's .366 career batting average back before and after the 'Dead-ball' era was fattened up by facing tired pitchers in innings 7/8/9. Pitchers today rarely…
Thanks to Mark Rickard for the show concept! With some sense of certainty this will be the last year in MLB in which there will not be a DH in the National League. This will be negotiated as part of the upcoming Collective Bargaining Agreement between the Player's Association and…
Remember there used to be a MLB statistic for GWRBI - Game Winning RBI's? The one that gives your team a lead it never relinquishes. Because players could get the GWRBI conceivably (and in reality) in the first inning @MLB junked it after 1988 which was about 8 years too…
Pitchers don't often get hit by line drives and get it to the skull even less frequently. But it does happen, as much as 2 - 3 times per season. We note a number of well known current MLB pitchers that have been the victim of a shot to the…
The 2020 World Series ended up being a very exciting and interesting one. Seven game series have a way of being just that much more memorable. An anti-climatic game 7 can take away from the overall greatness of a World Series. We start with the 1960 World Series which was…
Here at Almost Cooperstown we believe there's room for more at the Inn. We're not talking about boxing BTW! When it comes to Gold Gloves (only awarded since 1957), a player who is a borderline Hall of Famer (an 'Almost' guy we like to say), can be pushed over the…
Every second people use expressions borne out of baseball lingo and lore. We know there are Yogi Berra-isms and Dizzy Dean's oddball expressions, but what about normal everyday conversational responses? There are many of them that are used everyday and a surprising amount of food/dining references. America's Pastime does intersect…
No we don't actually HAVE a vote but if we did... On January 26 the votes for the 2021 Hall of Fame will be announced. Hopefully the ceremony in Cooperstown, NY will take place this summer. Actual voters can vote for up to 10 players that have played 10 years…
As fans know, there was no Minor League (or college) baseball this past season. To make things more challenging MLB has made the biggest changes in MiLB in nearly 60 years. The farm systems developed by Branch Rickey in the 1930's are nearly unrecognizable today. There are many notable Minor…
The last teams to come into MLB are now 23 seasons old (1998 the Rays and D'Backs). For 60 years there were only 16 teams in MLB. After the Dodgers and Giants moved in 1958, expansion really began to take off in 1961 with the Los Angeles Angels and another…
In the pre-1900's days of professional baseball teams did not travel all that far to play games which often were played on Sunday afternoon. By 1901 with the birth of the American League, teams traveled by train and even by boat. No other sport to this day has scheduled road…
Just like the MLB season, we made it through this our last episode of Season 1. We talk a bit about the excellent Dodgers-Rays World Series and reminisce over the short 60 game season. If you have an idea for an episode you can email us at almostcooperstown@gmail.com or our…
A baseball game can be started with a few players, ball and a bat. Organized baseball started in the 1850s and there were no baseball gloves. We don't talk much about gloves and catcher's equipment but we do talk about how far technology in baseball has come and how it…
There was even a movie about it - Mr. 3000 with Bernie Mac. Yes he actually swung a bat. 3,000 career base hits has been am almost guaranteed ticket to Cooperstown. The only players that have 3,000 hits and are not in the Baseball Hall of Fame are either active,…
Future Hall of Famers as you'd expect are not normally traded at the height of their careers. But it does happen for a variety of reasons. Being a future HOF'er, being traded and then winning a World Series with the new team has to be a very special feeling for…
We talked about the National League teams best player ever in the franchise in Ep. 20. Since franchises can move around there are questions about teams like the A's (Philly, KC, and Oakland) and the 'new' Washington Senators (1961-71) who moved to Texas and the 'old' Washington Senators who moved…