"The Eastern Stars" by Mark Kurlansky

The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macoris by Mark Kurlansky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The subtitle of The Eastern Stars is accurate, but incomplete. As with just about everything Kurlansky writes, there's a whole lot of background leading up to the main theme. The book is certainly about baseball changing San Pedro, but it's also about everything else that impacted San Pedro and the rest of the Dominican Republic, as well as quite a bit of baseball history.

The early chapters are largely about the origins of the city of San Pedro, and how it became a production powerhouse in the sugar industry. That industry helped form the city's baseball roots in many ways, including factory-sponsored teams that were early places to discover talent. The middle and later chapters focus more on baseball, including quite a few stories of individual players. There's still plenty about the changes in San Pedro, though, and how the city has changed over the decades.

For me personally, the subject matter is a perfect match. I've visited the Dominican Republic a few times, and baseball is easily my favorite sport. I found Kurlansky's meticulously researched details fascinating: about the town of San Pedro and the Dominican Republic, the sport of baseball, and many of the key figures involved with both.

Having said that, I could see how someone who isn't quite as interested in one or both subjects might not find this book as interesting as I did. If you're not into either of those subjects, this book probably won't change your mind. But I think anyone curious about either the Dominican Republic or baseball history would find The Eastern Stars a good read.

What a Series

Holy Cow.

I've seen a lot of baseball games. The best ones don't always come in the biggest moments. But this season's World Series is certainly going to be hard to top.

Cleveland's run through the post-season has been all about great pitching. The games they won in this series followed that script. A total of two runs given up across all three. You expect better-than-average pitching from a team that makes it to the post-season and through multiple playoff rounds, but even by that standard the Indians pitching was spectacular. But in a long seven-game series, good hitters have a chance to adjust as they see the same pitching repeatedly. The Cubs' bats came alive as the series went on, particularly in the last two games.

The Chicago pitching was plenty good during the post-season, too. I was particularly impressed with Kyle Hendricks, and not just because of his performance in game 7. This is a guy who came into the season as the 5th starter on the Cubs staff, and all he did was lead the National League in ERA and win 16 games over 190 innings. By the time the post-season rolled around, Hendricks was third in the rotation and manager Joe Maddon felt comfortable lining up his starters to put him in game 7. And he did the job, giving up only 1 earned run over 4.2 innings.

When Jon Lester took over on the mound in the fifth, that also brought David Ross into the lineup. And 39-year-old "Grandpa Ross" (as his younger teammates call him) promptly hit a home run, making him the oldest player ever to go deep in a World Series game 7. This whole year has been full of great moments for Ross, who had announced that he'd retire after this season. Can't finish off a career much better!

Aroldis Chapman has been great closing games since he came to Chicago, but in game 7 he couldn't get the job done. Maybe that's because of all the work he's been doing recently, including pitching in game 6 even though the Cubs were up by 5. I can't say I agree with Maddon's pitching change decisions through this series, but getting the win in the end is what counts, even if that happened more due to the bats than the pitching in the final game. It's fitting that Mike Montgomery ended up with the game 7 save, considering all the good pitching he's done in the post-season out of the bullpen.

For Cleveland fans, I'm sure it's tempting to write off a season as a failure when your team loses. You can't get much closer than being down to a single game for the championship, though. Especially in baseball, where a single game is such a toss-up, and particularly when it goes to extra innings! Even great teams tend to lose around a third of the time. There's disappointment in losing the seventh game of a World Series, but no shame.

For Major League Baseball overall, I'm not sure this year's World Series could have gone much better. Usually, the conventional wisdom says that you want two teams from big markets to draw in the most viewers. Chicago is big enough, but usually you want to see at least one coastal team. This year, though, the fact that neither team had won the championship in so long made it compelling viewing for sports fans from all over. Also, it's always best for the popularity of the sport when the drama is high, and this series didn't disappoint. From a tense 1-0 Indians win in game 3, to two Cubs wins in elimination games 5 and 6, to the winner-take-all game 7 that goes into extra innings - hard to draw it up any better to keep maximum interest from the fan base.

I always miss baseball over the winter, but this will be a much happier off-season than usual. It may take me until spring to get used to hearing "World Champion Chicago Cubs!"

Dear Grandma - How about those Cubs?

Dear Grandma Scott - It's finally happened. The Cubs are playing in a World Series.

I don't have a lot of memories of you, since you passed away when I was still a teenager. Much of what I do recall is from the last part of your life, when you lived with my family but were mostly confined to your own room. I didn't see much of you other than mealtimes, and not even that when your lifelong heavy cigarette smoking led to your hospitalization and eventual passing. But that was the end, and I prefer to remember earlier times.

Before the sports media explosion of the last decade or two, it wasn't nearly as easy to be a serious sports fan as it is now, particularly if you didn't live in a team's home area. There was no Internet to look up all the bits of information about every player, no streaming video to watch individual games from across the country (and world), and cable TV options were much more limited. The Chicago Cubs were an exception, though, thanks to WGN Sports broadcasting a large number of their games. Our family didn't watch a lot of TV, but when you lived with us, my mom made sure we had cable so that you could see the Cubs games.

You sitting close to that little black-and-white TV in your room, turned up loud to help you hear it, the voices of Harry Carey and Steve Stone - that's how I best remember your time living with us. I was more interested in reading and games and music than in actually sitting down to watch a baseball game, so we didn't actually watch very many games together. I still heard plenty, though. Thanks to you (and mom, who got it from you) I knew all about baseball, and in particular the Cubs. And I followed your example in becoming a life-long fan.

We all know that it hasn't been easy. Even those who know nothing else about baseball can tell you that the Chicago Cubs have a ridiculously long World Series drought. Much of the time the team was just bad, and even when they were good the playoffs never went well. From what I remember, though, the winning (or lack thereof) wasn't what you focused on. Whether the team was in contention or losing 100 games, you'd be watching. Sure, it was great when they won, but the important thing for you was hearing Harry and seeing Wrigley Field and watching the games played.

The current Cubs would be both easy for you to recognize, and completely different. Wrigley Field has gone through some changes, but it's still the same hundred-year-old park with the ivy walls. They've built up an amazing roster, largely with young players that could be around for years. There's no Harry in the broadcast booth, but his face still looks down on the field, and manager Joe Maddon is a kindred off-the-wall soul. They've always sung "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" during the 7th inning stretch at Wrigley, and now there's a song after every win, too.

Over the next couple of weeks, as Chicago and Cleveland (yes, the Indians made it too) play for the World Series title, I'll be watching. And I know you are, too.

Love,
Your Grandson Sam

MLB Division Series

Seems like they were in a hurry over in the American League, where both division series ended in sweeps. But neither National League series was a one-sided affair.

I'm not surprised by anything that happens when the Toronto Blue Jays and Texas Rangers face off, though I wouldn't have predicted a sweep. The Jays offense came to play, jumping out to big leads in both of the first two games, which is not an easy task against Cole Hamels and Yu Darvish. Toronto was down in the third game but again the offense came through, forcing extra innings. Some shaky Texas defense and good Toronto baserunning led to the walkoff, series-clinching win.

Three losses in a row for Boston, on the other hand, was a major surprise. Most of the year, the Red Sox were scoring ridiculous numbers of runs and pitching fairly well. I kept expecting them to struggle at some point, and it just didn't happen. Well, now it has, at the worst possible time for them. Worked out well for the Indians, though. Two close wins and one big shutout has Cleveland in the championship series.

The Cubs just barely won their first game against the Giants, just a single run scored in a great pitching duel between John Lackey and Johnny Cueto. In game two, Chicago starter Kyle Hendricks was injured by a line drive (fortunately no broken bones) and had to come out. Travis Wood came in and did a solid job in relief, and provided some offense with a home run in another Cubs win. But then the Giants won game 3 in San Francisco, despite Jake Arrieta driving in more runs (3-run homer) than he allowed (2). The Chicago bullpen blew the lead in the 8th and then allowed a walk-off score in the 13th. But in game 4, the Giants bullpen returned the favor by blowing a 3-run lead in the 9th, sending the Cubs on to their second championship series in a row.

I didn't watch much of the Dodgers-Nationals series, but I did see game four. The Nationals won two of the first three, so it was an elimination game for Los Angeles. Clayton Kershaw started on short rest and was pretty impressive after a shaky first inning. He had a 5-2 lead in the 7th, but couldn't quite finish off that inning, and after he left the Nationals tied the game. So the Dodgers had to rally late to win and force a fifth game in Washington, which I'll likely be watching Thursday night.

Regardless of who wins that fifth game in Washington and both championship series, some team is going to break a fairly long World Series drought. Most baseball fans know the Cubs last won in 1908, but it's been a long time for the Indians also - the last Cleveland title was in 1948. It's been since 1988 for the Dodgers, Toronto hasn't won since 1993, and the Nationals franchise hasn't even played in a World Series (in either Washington or Montreal). Some team's fans are going to get a celebration that hasn't been seen in at least a generation.

MLB Wild Card Games Deliver

Well, those Wild Card games certainly lived up to the hype.

Earlier this week when I posted about the upcoming MLB Wild Card games, I was half-expecting one or both of them to be a blowout. In the AL, you had a ton of run-scoring potential on both sides. The NL looked like a great pitching matchup on paper, but how often do those actually work out in real life? Fortunately, both games turned out to be great baseball.

The AL game did come down to home runs, though it wasn't the high-scoring shootout you might expect. Six of the seven runs in the game came off the long ball, including the final three on a walk-off blast by Edwin Encarnacion in the 11th inning. The big story in this game was Oriole manager Buck Showalter choosing not to use Zach Britton, the best reliever in the game this year, with baserunners on in that final inning. But well before that, the Orioles had plenty of chances to go ahead...always the case when a game goes into extra innings...but Toronto was able to hold them off.

In the NL game, the pitching was as good as advertised. Madison Bumgarner and Noah Syndergaard matched zeros through seven innings. The Mets went to their bullpen after that, and Giants third baseman Conor Gillaspie drove in the only runs of the game with a home run off Mets closer Jeurys Familia in the top of the ninth inning. Bumgarner ended up closing out the game with yet another shutout performance in an elimination game...he did the same thing to the Pirates in 2014.

So we had one game where the manager chose not to use his best reliever, and lost the game on a home run...and one game where the manager chose to use his best reliever, and lost the game on a home run. Managing a baseball game is no easy task.

While I like the Orioles and would have liked to see them advance, I'm not unhappy that the Blue Jays are moving on to face the Texas Rangers in the AL division series. Who doesn't want to see those two meet up again in the playoffs, after last year's dramatic division series and the bad blood from earlier this year? I'll be pulling for the Blue Jays to win again.

Cleveland and Boston are playing in the other AL division series. I don't particularly care for one or the other, but I suppose I'd rather see the Indians win. Better another midwest team advancing than the Red Sox, if only to avoid hearing endlessly about David Ortiz in his last postseason. I do hope ex-Detroit-Tiger Rick Porcello does well for Boston, though.

As for the NL, can't say I'm enthusiastic about the Giants going to Chicago to face my Cubs. San Francisco can't seem to lose every other season, having won the last 3 World Series in even-numbered years. And it sure would have been nice to have a chance for revenge against the Mets after they eliminated the Cubs last year. But it's the Giants now, and this year's statistics do favor the Cubs. Here's hoping they can live up to it.

In the other NL division series, I don't really have a particular favorite. Regardless of who wins between Washington and Los Angeles, I'll be hoping they lose in the next round, ideally to the Cubs.

Should be quite a week of baseball in the division series. Looking forward to all the dramatics!

A Day Off, then MLB Wild Cards

One brief day off, then the MLB playoffs get started.

I was hoping that Monday wouldn't be a day off. We might have had a Tigers-Indians game today, if Detroit had managed to beat the Atlanta Braves and either Baltimore or Toronto had lost. No luck on any of those, so the Tigers missed the postseason by 2.5 games. Rough ending for the Tiger offense, who managed only 3 runs in the final two games. You have to beat the bad teams to have a shot at the playoffs, and Detroit wasn't doing that down the stretch.

We could also have seen a game today if the Giants and Cardinals had ended up tied for the second NL wild card spot. But San Francisco beat the Los Angeles Dodgers to grab that spot, even though St. Louis won as well. For a while it looked like the Giants were going to fade enough in the second half of the season to miss the playoffs, but they did just enough to squeak in on the final regular season day.

The wild card games this year couldn't be much more evenly matched, at least as far as regular season records are concerned. Both AL teams have 89 wins, and both NL teams have 87. The games will be in Toronto and New York since the Blue Jays and Mets won the season series against their opponents, but it was only by one game in both cases.

I had thought the Blue Jays would win the AL East, but losing 16 games in September kept them from keeping up with Boston. The Orioles were slightly better, losing only 12 games in the final month, staying just ahead of Detroit. Both of these teams are sluggers, so this game could well be decided by who hits more home runs.

The story in New York will be the pitching matchup. Madison Bumgarner for Giants, and Noah Syndergaard for the Mets. Those are the top two NL pitchers in ERA that don't play for the Chicago Cubs, and both are in the top 5 in the NL in strikeouts. Combine that with the fact that both New York and San Francisco are in the bottom half of the NL in offense, and this could be a real pitcher's duel.

Of course, now that I've said that, we'll probably see a 1-0 game in the AL and a blowout in the NL. Because baseball.

Chicago Cubs, NL Central Champions

The Cubs have clinched the National League Central Division Championship for the first time since 2008! Time to start worrying about the post-season.

Chicago clinched the division last night, when the St. Louis Cardinals lost. Not exactly how you want to do it, since the Cubs lost their game earlier in the day to Milwaukee. A Cubs fan is almost as happy when the Cardinals lose as when the Cubs win, though - we'll take it.

It'll be at least a few more days before anyone else has a division title. The Washington Nationals and Texas Rangers could each win their divisions sometime in the next week, though it may take a bit longer. Cleveland would likely be next after that, unless Detroit gets its act together and beats the Indians a bunch of times in their 7 games over the next two weeks. The NL West and AL East might come down to the last weekend of the season.

As a Cubs fan, I'm naturally predisposed to look at ways that things could go wrong. So, here's some bad news:

• Since the Cubs last won the division in 2008, no NL Central champion has won the World Series. 
• Chicago is likely to play the wild card winner in the first playoff round. The Giants, Mets, and Cardinals are the front-runners for that spot. Cubs combined record against those teams this year: 13-16.
• The Cubs haven't won an NLCS since 1945. Four attempts, four losses. (And the less said about 2003 in particular, the better.)
• The pressure. The Cubs are actually favorites to win it all, which adds the weight of expectations to the already pressure-packed playoff atmosphere. And of course just being the Chicago Cubs, with their 100+ years of losing, is a whole world of pressure all its own.
• Home field advantage is important in the World Series. Due to the (incredibly stupid) rule that the All-Star Game winner gets home-field advantage, the American League champion will have that advantage this year.

Having said all that...this could still be the year. Expect the worst and hope for the best, always a useful attitude, and especially for Cubs fans. Bring on October!

MLB: Down the Stretch

It's September, and that means MLB pennant races. Although that's sort of an outdated phrase, since winning the pennant requires winning at least two post-season series. September these days is about the race to the wild card and division titles.

With around 20 games left, half the divisions are already just about wrapped up. In the AL West, the Texas Rangers are up by 8.5 games over the Houston Astros, and in the NL East the Nationals have 8 games on the New York Mets. Then there's the NL Central, where the Chicago Cubs have a 16 (!) game lead on the St. Louis Cardinals. It will take a collapse of epic proportions over the last few weeks for any of those teams to lose the division.

The AL Central and NL West aren't totally out of reach yet, but it's getting close. Cleveland leads Detroit by 6 games, and the Los Angeles Dodgers have 5 games on the San Francisco Giants. All those teams play one another several times down the stretch, so it's possible a miracle could happen. But I wouldn't hold my breath.

The real race to watch is in the AL East, where Boston, Toronto, and Baltimore are all clustered together at the top. There's a bunch of games left between those three teams, so it could go to any of them. I still think Toronto has the best chance, like I said back in May, but that's certainly nothing more than a guess.

Then we have the wild card races. I don't like the single-game wild card playoff much, since any one game in baseball doesn't tell you a whole lot about which team is better - it's more about which side has one or two players get hot that night. But I do love the race to those wild card spots at the end of the regular season. A whole lot of fans can get excited about their team's chances even if they're way behind in the divisional races. It's good for the game, even if someone does have to go home after just one game in the post-season.

If I had to guess right now, I'd say that Boston and Detroit will get the AL spots, and St. Louis and New York in the NL. But there are several other teams in each league that have good shots at those spots. If we're lucky, maybe the races will be extremely close and we'll get a game 163 or two. It'll be fun to see how it all works out down the stretch.

The 87th MLB All-Star Game

The American League all-stars beat the National League all-stars last night in the 87th MLB All-Star game, 4-2, in San Diego.

Normally, I'd watch the MLB All-Star Game on TV, since it's one of the few games that are still shown on broadcast television. The vast majority of baseball games are on cable TV now, even including much of the playoffs. MLB.TV fills in much of the gaps, but not all. Non-cable subscribers like myself simply can't (legally) watch certain games. But the All-Star game has to this point stayed on broadcast channels.

This year I happened to be on the road, driving around the Chicago area on my way back to Michigan. It just so happens that ESPN does the radio broadcast of the All-Star game, and there's a Chicago station that comes in pretty clearly for a long distance. So I got to listen in, which for baseball is a perfectly good alternative to watching.

Jon Sciambi and Chris Singleton are the announcers for most of ESPN's MLB radio broadcasts, and they did a fine job. I'm not as used to them as I am to the Detroit duo of Dan Dickerson and Jim Price, or the Chicago north-side team of Pat Hughes and Ron Coomer, but it's nice to listen to some different voices occasionally anyway. Though they did have a few awkward moments when the action on the field paused for various All-Star game extras, such as the Stand Up To Cancer pause.

I was pulling for the National League, so the final score was a little disappointing, but the game itself was great. I was very happy when Kris Bryant put the NL in front with a home run in the first, of course. The AL took the lead with some home runs of their own in the second inning, though. They'd never give up that lead, but the NL had plenty of chances so the game was still interesting the entire way through. For an All-Star game, I'd much rather have a game that's close than a blowout with no drama, even if my preferred side loses.

It was a little odd that the game was held in a National League park, but the American League was the home team. Just a quirk of scheduling, I assume. The announcers were saying that San Diego was such a nice venue that they'd be happy to come back every year, but I suspect there's a lot of other team owners who are anxious for their own chance to host the Mid-Summer Classic!

Two more days and it's back to the long grind of the baseball season for the second half. This All-Star game was a nice break in the middle.

MLB All-Star Final Vote

The MLB All-Star voting is over, and the results look mostly reasonable. For the next few days, there's one last vote for the final spot on each team.

The All-Star voting process certainly has its quirks, as I've mentioned, but it seems to have worked fairly well this year. The starting lineups for both squads have fairly heavy representation from just a few teams, but it doesn't appear to be ballot stuffing by one team. The Red Sox, Royals, and Cubs simply have a lot of players who are having great years.

There's one last voting process before the final rosters are set. Each year, each league chooses five players and puts the last roster spot up for a popular vote. The MLB website lets you vote a bunch of times, which is silly, but other than that I think it's a good idea. Adds some publicity and gives one more player a chance to be selected.

In the American League, I'm partial to Detroit second baseman Ian Kinsler in the final vote. Largely this is because I'm familiar with his work from all the Tigers games that I've watched. I don't doubt that the other candidates are deserving as well, but none of them stand out as having a much better year than Kinsler.

On the National League side, I voted for Colorado shortstop Trevor Story. He's one of the more impressive rookies this year, starting with a bunch of home runs early in the season to make a name for himself, and continuing to do well since. It can't be easy coming into Colorado at Troy Tulowitzki's old spot as a rookie, but Story has handled it well. The other candidates are also deserving, particularly Giants first baseman Brandon Belt, but you can only vote for one.

Just about a week left before the All-Star game takes place in San Diego. It's just an exhibition, but I still look forward to it. Looks like we'll have a fun group of players to watch again this year.

Happy Canada Day!

July 1st is Canada Day, celebrating the formation of the country back in 1867.

I live in Michigan, but not near enough to the Canadian border for it to be a significant presence. So why do I know it's Canada Day? Baseball, of course. Every July 1, the Blue Jays play an afternoon game, even on days when everyone else is playing at night. (Well, at least on years when they're at home that day.) I first noticed it a few years ago when I started subscribing to MLB radio broadcasts through MLB.com. This year's game is against the Cleveland Indians, which makes it especially interesting since they've won 15 games in a row.

There was a good amount of ceremony pre-game, much like you'll see at all the USA stadiums on Monday for the 4th of July. Giant Canadian flag in the outfield, various armed services members doing the national anthem and presenting the flag, and even several members of the Canadian Olympic team introduced on the field. They also showed a list of all the Canadian players around MLB, and it was pretty long. Not all the kids in Canada are growing up to play hockey!

I'd never really looked at the history of how Canada was formed, so I figured today was a good time to at least read the Wikipedia page. Almost 100 years after the American Revolutionary War, Canada became an independent county through the British North America Act of 1867 (now called the Constitution Act). There wasn't a war involved, although there had been uprisings 30 years earlier which started the process that eventually led to independence. Unlike the USA, Canada stayed in the British Commonwealth. There's never been a civil war in Canada like the USA's War Between the States, but the province of Quebec has had a couple of referendums on secession. Neither was successful, and Quebec seems to be content to stay as part of Canada for the time being.

My personal experience with Canada is fairly limited, just a few visits over the years. Most notably, I went up to Toronto for LASIK eye surgery way back in 2000, when it was still a fairly new procedure. My eye doctor here in the USA recommended that I make the trip since the doctors there had much more experience with the process, and it worked out great.

Happy birthday to our neighbors to the north! May the Canada Day celebrations be safe, plentiful, and a whole lot of fun.

MLB All-Star Voting

The All-Star Break is only a couple of weeks away. The voting for starting position players has been going on for weeks now, and ends later this week.

MLB's All-Star voting process makes very little sense. First, the process starts after only a month or so has gone by in the season. It's hard to tell who is having a decent year based off such a short time period. I generally wait until near the end of June, to get the best idea of which players are actually playing well. Many votes are cast well before that, though, largely due to the constant advertising at ballparks, on game broadcasts, and on the MLB website.

Also, for some reason they want you to vote 35 times, with a maximum of 5 times each day. I suppose forcing you to come back across seven different days could drive some traffic to their website, although I suspect anyone willing to come back to vote every day is a person who already hits MLB.com on a daily basis. But the 35 votes total makes no sense. It drives up the total vote numbers, I suppose, but also is an obvious invitation to hackers that want to stuff the ballot box.

I don't suppose it really matters that the process is silly, since the whole thing is just a fan popularity contest anyhow. I generally try to vote for players actually having good seasons, rather than just picking all the players off my favorite teams or the biggest names. But that clearly isn't the way many people do it, which leads to things like Yadier Molina leading for NL catcher, despite multiple other NL catchers (Wilson Ramos, Jonathan Lucroy, and Buster Posey come to mind) having much better years.

Fortunately, the voting process only matters for the starters. The players and manager get to figure out the rest of the team, so players having really good years generally get to make an appearance, even if they don't get to start. There's always a few players who have a good argument for inclusion that aren't chosen, but not too many.

Regardless of the ridiculous process or the possibility of good players missing out, I still enjoy the All-Star voting process. There's always a player or two that jumps out from the list of statistics, surprising me with how good they're doing in the season thus far. That's a good enough reason to spend a few minutes looking over the player list and picking those having the best year.

MLB First Quarter: American League

Most MLB teams are playing their 40th game this week, which makes this the one-quarter point of the 162-game regular season. Today, a quick overview of the American League thus far.

The AL East wasn't expected to be especially strong this year, so of course it has two of the top three teams thus far. The Baltimore Orioles are performing well above expectations, both on the mound and at the plate. The real story thus far, though, is the Boston Red Sox, who have scored a ridiculous number of runs and are batting just under .300 as a team. I suspect both clubs are going to regress to the mean at some point, possibly even before the All-Star Break.

The rest of the East is under the .500 mark. That's disappointing for the Toronto Blue Jays, who won the division last year and certainly looked primed to do the same again. They should improve, especially at the plate - too many good hitters to be below average. Both the Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees are sitting near the bottom of the league in hitting, and unless that improves they'll be fighting for the AL East basement spot all year.

In the AL Central, the Chicago White Sox appear to be the team that they were supposed to be last year. Great pitching, led by Chris Sale's excellent start, has them well ahead of the pack. Their offense hasn't been great; if that picks up, the Pale Hose may never look back. The Cleveland Indians are very close to Chicago in offensive production, and they have solid pitching...just not as good as the division leaders thus far. Last year's World Series champion Kansas City Royals are hovering around the .500 mark thus far, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a big winning streak from them at some point.

At the bottom of the central are the Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins. I follow the Tigers pretty closely, which has been a painful process thus far this season. They've found ways to lose games in every phase, from shaky starting pitching to blown saves to poor hitting. The roster is better than the record indicates, if they can just get everyone into gear. Detroit has been saved thus far from the basement spot by an even worse Minnesota team, who lost their first nine in a row and just recently got their win count into double digits. The Twins have some young players who need some development time and are likely to get it in the majors this year.

Out in the AL West, the Texas Rangers are looking strong. Largely this is due to an offense second only to those amazing Red Sox in run scoring. If their pitching improves, and with Yu Darvish coming back it should, then Texas will be tough to beat. The Seattle Mariners are giving it a shot, though. The Northwesterners will also need to pick it up on the pitching front if they want to keep up with the Rangers.

Down in California, things don't look great for either the Los Angeles Angels or Oakland Athletics. The Angels have Mike Trout, but the most of the rest of the team is aging and/or performing poorly. Oakland's offense isn't terrible, but they can't score enough to keep up with all the runs being given up by the pitching staff and the worst defense in the league. Finally, there's the Houston Astros, also having trouble with run prevention. Whatever was working for their pitching last year hasn't carried over to this season, leading to a cellar spot in the AL West thus far.

If I had to guess, I'd say that Texas is the most likely to end up staying on top of their division. The White Sox have a pretty good chance as well, and I expect that Toronto is going to find their way to the top of the East. But it's only been 40(ish) games, and there's a long summer ahead. Just about everyone (ok, maybe not the Twins) has time to turn things around.

MLB First Quarter: National League

Most MLB teams are playing their 40th game this week, which makes this the one-quarter point of the 162-game regular season. Today, a quick overview of the National League thus far.

Right at the top we have the Chicago Cubs, with the best record in all of MLB. I've been a Cubs fan for a long time, and I'm still mildly shocked to be saying that, even after more than a month to get used to it. The Small Bears are scoring plenty of runs and their pitching has been incredible. No Cubs fan wants to risk a jinx, but saying "this could be the year" actually looks likely!

The remainder of the NL Central doesn't look a whole lot different than last year. The Pittsburgh Pirates and St. Louis Cardinals are making respectable showings, and the Milwaukee Brewers and Cincinnati Reds are bringing up the rear. Both the Pirates and Cardinals lost some key players from last season, so it's unlikely we'll see a repeat of three playoff teams in the division. Either one could get hot and challenge for one of the wild card spots, though. The Brewers don't have much in the way of bright spots this year, and that goes double for the Reds - they've already set a record for consecutive games with a run allowed by the bullpen.

The Washington Nationals have the second-best record in the NL, leading the East. Everyone picked Washington last year to be the best team in baseball, but outside of Bryce Harper (and Max Scherzer's two no-hitters) it was a disappointing campaign. So far this year, the whole team is playing the way it was supposed to last season. The New York Mets are following closely, almost entirely on the strength of their great pitching. Their offense has been mediocre, not yet showing signs of the way they scored runs at the end of last year. The Miami Marlins are close behind as well, following almost exactly the opposite formula as the Mets: good hitting, mediocre pitching.

Then we have the Philadelphia Phillies and Atlanta Braves. Both of these clubs are rebuilding and are supposed to be terrible this season. The Braves are following the script, with the worst record in baseball. But someone forgot to tell the Phillies how bad they are, because they're finding ways to win. Most notably, they have a couple of really impressive young starting pitchers. It's unlikely that this kind of run will last all year, but at least for now Philadelphia is playing well above their potential on paper.

The NL West is the closest division in baseball, with all five teams within five games. Unfortunately, that's because they've all been pretty bad. The San Francisco Giants are leading largely because of a recent winning streak that took them above the .500 mark. The Colorado Rockies and Los Angeles Dodgers are barely above .500, which is probably about right for the Rockies but a disappointment for the Dodgers. LA needs to get better offensive production to catch up to the Giants.

Below the .500 mark, we have the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres. Arizona's pitching has thus far been much worse than one would expect, which explains their struggles. If that changes, they could make up ground in a hurry. The Padres, on the other hand, aren't likely to see a lot of improvement. The roster hasn't improved much (if at all) from last year's 74-win team.

Jinx or not jinx, I have to say the Cubs look like an easy lock to stay on top of the Central. In the East, the Mets have a chance if they can figure out an offense, but I think the Nationals are likely to out-hit them. And it's really anybody's game out West, where the Giants, Dodgers, and Diamondbacks could all win the division - just a matter of which team figures out how to play up to potential.

Congratulations, Bartolo Colon

Bartolo Colon hit a home run this weekend. And it was amazing.

Colon's home run has already become a baseball card.

It's always notable when a pitcher does something interesting with the bat. Largely that's the rarity value, since most pitchers don't do much in their plate appearances. This was especially true of Colon, who is a career .092 hitter. Since he first pitched in the major leagues in 1997, he's had 228 at-bats, and managed only 26 hits. None had left the yard. He's been so inept at the plate that articles have been written about people laughing at his swings.

There was no laughter on Saturday when Colon took a James Shields pitch over the left field fence in San Diego. OK, maybe some laughter, but it was the happy kind that you use when the impossible has just happened. It's worth listening to all the different announcers call it: the Mets TV crew, their radio crew, and best of all the Spanish-language broadcast. It took 30 seconds for Colon to round the bases, and I don't think he was purposely extending the trot - that may be his top speed for that distance. The Mets cleared the dugout as if a rookie had just hit his first long ball, before coming back up the tunnel to swarm Colon in congratulations.

Further adding to the rarity value of this particular home run is the fact that Colon is just a couple of weeks shy of his 43rd birthday. I pay special attention when older athletes do well, now that I'm on the upper side of 40 years old. Peyton Manning winning the Super Bowl at 40, Tim Duncan in the NBA playoffs at 40, Jaromír Jágr still playing hockey at 44. And Bartolo Colon rounding the bases for the first time at almost-43.

But forget the home run for a moment. Bartolo Colon overcomes the odds every time he takes the mound. There aren't a lot of age 40+ pitchers, and even fewer who are 5'11" and 285 pounds. Those are the official stats, anyway; I suspect they may have lost 15 or 20 pounds on the scale somewhere. Colon throws his fastball 80% of the time, and it's usually around 89 mph, which is average at best in today's major leagues. You'd think MLB hitters would be hitting that stuff like it was batting practice, but Colon manages to get guys out. He won't be winning the Cy Young, but he's managed 10+ wins each of the last 4 seasons and already has 3 this year.

So congratulations to Bartolo Colon. For the home run, certainly, but even more for just being what he is. Describe him as overweight, aged, inept with the bat - just so long as you also call him an MLB pitcher, and a successful one.

The Final Year of Vin Scully Broadcasts

I've been watching quite a few Los Angeles Dodgers games this year. Not for the team itself, but for their broadcaster.

Vin Scully has been broadcasting various sports for almost 70 of his 88 years. That's not just longer than I've been alive - my parents weren't even born when he started. He's been with the Dodgers since 1950. I don't have any particular feelings one way or another about the Dodgers (outside of my Midwesterner mild dislike for anything from New York or Los Angeles), but I'll watch their home broadcasts just for a chance to hear Scully call the games.

I enjoy the older broadcasting style for baseball games, with just one announcer and minimal "sideshow" segments (by which I mean anything not about the game at hand: interviews, scoreboard updates, etc). Almost no one other than Scully does the single announcer format any more. Most television broadcasts (and some radio) have taken to including those sideshow segments, but not Dodger games that Scully is working.

Listening to Vin Scully call a baseball game almost always includes a bit of a history lesson. Baseball is a slow game with plenty of time to tell stories, and there's no one else in broadcasting with more stories. The viewer might hear how a particular play reminds him of something Jackie Robinson or Don Drysdale did many decades ago, or an anecdote from the days before pre-recorded commercial breaks when a beer cooler ice on a hot summer day melted and spilled all over the unfortunate announcer on the air. I'm often doing other things at the same time as I'm watching the game, but a Vin Scully story usually grabs my full attention for a few minutes.

It's amazing to me how well truly gifted sports announcers fill the hours of a game with constant commentary. Listening to Vin Scully call a game isn't just a chance to hear stories from long ago, or descriptions of the current game. He has background on every player, comments on every play, something to add for any situation. Sure, other announcers do the same things, but few (if any) in the business today are a smooth as Scully. Just about every other broadcast uses two-man teams, and even so many of them have more dead air in a typical game than Scully's solo work.

Vin Scully has said he'll retire at the end of this baseball season. I can certainly understand why, at almost 90 years old. Nonetheless, I can't help being sad to see him go. It'll be the end of an era, and his work will be missed. Meanwhile, I'll take every opportunity this year to turn on a home Dodgers game for his last year on the air.

Watching Baseball

Now that the MLB regular season is underway, I'm spending a lot of time watching (or listening to) baseball games. Ideally the Cubs or Tigers, but I'll put most any game on in the background when I have the opportunity.

In the past few years, I've done a lot more listening to baseball games than watching them. Through the MLB At-Bat app (or their website), $20/season gets you all the radio broadcasts for every team. Baseball is a sport that lends itself well to radio, being slow enough to describe in detail and with so many stories and stats to fill the time between pitches. If I'm doing something else with a game on in the background, I'd much rather have the radio than the TV broadcast.

This year, T-Mobile was kind enough to give all of its customers the opportunity to watch all the MLB TV Premium broadcasts for free. I wouldn't spend the $109 that MLB wants for a season of out-of-market TV broadcast streams, but since it was free...sure, why not? That "out-of-market" bit is the main reason I wouldn't want to pay. I could see Cubs broadcasts, but since I live in the Tigers market area, all the Detroit games are blocked. (Yeah, I could mess around with VPN or proxies to get around the block, but it's just not worth the hassle when I can just listen to the radio instead.)

I mostly watch on my Fire TV. There's an app for MLB.TV Premium, which works fairly well. There's also a Kodi MLB.TV add-on, which works pretty well. This year, I mostly use the app, but in the past I've used Kodi more. If you don't have MLB.TV Premium, you can still use the Kodi add-on to listen to the radio broadcasts, but the Fire TV app has trouble with that. When I'm not at home, the MLB At-Bat app works well on my phone.

While I watch/listen to the ball games, I'll usually have something else going on. Cooking, cleaning, or other household chores when I have to; reading, Internet browsing, or playing games otherwise. Star Realms and Ascension in particular are great for inning breaks, or maybe Hearthstone while I listen to a radio broadcast. I know some people complain that baseball is too slow to be interesting, but for me that just means it fits nicely with doing some other things at the same time.

Opening Day!

Opening Day! It's about time. Five months without baseball is five too many.

I know it's a common complaint that the baseball season is too long, but I miss it during the off-season. When you've had a game to follow (almost) every day for six months, seven if you're lucky and they're good enough for the playoffs, it leaves a hole when it ends.

My teams are the Chicago Cubs and Detroit Tigers. Mom and grandma made sure I was a Cubs fan from birth, and I adopted the Tigers when I moved to Michigan almost 20 years ago. Being in different leagues, they rarely meet head-to-head, so pulling for both is pretty easy. If they did end up playing one another for anything significant, I'd be ecstatic - good news for me no matter who wins!

This year feels a bit different than usual since the Cubs are actually favored to win. It's been a good long time since there's been significant hype in the pre-season for the small bears. The last few seasons, there's been a lot of talk about how the team is building and is "just a few years away." Well, now that time is here, and it's a nervous feeling for a Cubs fan. Disappointment is the one constant over the last 100+ years of Cubs history, but this could be the year to change it!

Things are not nearly as rosy on the other side of Lake Michigan. The Tigers had a few really good years recently, with four straight division titles and a World Series appearance. But it's been a downward spiral since, missing the playoffs last year and not looking particularly good for this season. Still, spring is all about hope in baseball, and anything can happen.

Play ball!

Baseball Suggestions

It's dead time in the world of Major League Baseball. There are a few free agent signings, but mostly nothing is happening until spring training in another month or so. Seemed like a good time to think about how the game could change for the better.

I was thinking about baseball largely because I ran across this story, about Commissioner Rob Manfred talking about bringing the designated hitter rule to the National League. I've thought for years that the two leagues needed to have the same rules. My preference would be to eliminate the DH entirely in both leagues, but anyone with a basic understanding of baseball politics and finances knows that will never happen. Too many players have longer careers because of the DH position, too many agents make more money from that, and too many owners are happier with more offense in the game. So the next best thing is to put the DH in the NL, to make the rules consistent.

I'd also like to see MLB make some tweaks to the replay review process. Outside of ball/strike calls (more on that in a bit), there's no reason to restrict replay on any play. If it happened in the game, it should be reviewable. Once a review is complete, umpires should explain the resulting decision, similar to how it works in the NFL. It doesn't have to be great detail, but at the very least they should say whether they're letting the call on the field stand because there's not enough evidence to overturn it, or if the call was verified to be accurate. And if the call is changed, it would be great to hear exactly what evidence caused the overturn.

As for balls and strikes, I know we're not going to see automation or review any time soon. But I'd at least like to see MLB looking into the technology. Last year, a couple of independent league games used an automated strike zone. MLB could organize a committee to look at the technology and study exactly how it might be used in the future.

In the playoffs last year, we saw how easy it is for a player to get injured on plays at second base. Rule changes to protect the pivot man on double plays should be considered. I know there was a review of that particular play, but I think MLB needs to be looking at rule changes to avoid the situation in the future.

This one is pretty minor, but it's one of my pet peeves about baseball scoring: we need a "team error". When a ball drops in the middle of three fielders, any one of whom could have caught it if they'd communicated properly, the batter shouldn't get a double. Figure out a way to assign the error to all the players involved, or the team at large.

Another minor one: when a batter checks his swing, the home plate umpire should always ask for help from the first/third base umpire. There's no good reason for the home plate umpire to be calling that play from behind the plate, when his colleague has a much better angle. The good umpires almost always ask for help on the close ones anyway, but there's no good reason not to simply make it a rule to ask every time.

Here's something that does not need to change: playoff seeding. When the top three teams in the NL were all from the Central division in last year's playoffs, it created a situation where one of the top three teams was out after a single wild-card playoff game. Yes, that was unfortunate, but it's not going to happen very often. One outlier year isn't a good reason to change the system.

What does need to change with the playoffs is the silly rule about the All-Star game determining home field advantage in the World Series. Get rid of that, use team records to determine home field just like every other series.

We all know baseball changes come extremely slowly, so I don't expect to see very much change this year. But I hope MLB is considering all of these things, which in my opinion would only improve a great game.

World Series 2015: Someone has to win

I'm a firm believer in the idea that if you're going to watch any kind of sports contest, you should pick one team to cheer for. I don't buy the "it doesn't matter who wins, I just want to see a good game" argument. (Though I may have used it in the past. Consistency is overrated.) It doesn't matter if you know anything about the teams, or how you pick which side you're on. If you have something invested in the outcome, even if it's nothing more than that you like one set of uniforms better, it's more fun to watch.

So why watch at all, if I have to search for reasons to prefer one side or the other? Championship series have the best drama, with every moment magnified. You never know when you'll see an improbable comeback, or a great performance in front of the biggest audience of the season. But most importantly, it's the last baseball I'll see for months!

The Mets have a lot going against them in my personal baseball franchise rankings. They start well down the list simply for being from New York. (Los Angeles teams get the same treatment.) Then there's the fact that they beat my Chicago Cubs in the NLCS. They've had all kinds of iffy things going on with their ownership in recent years (though that is getting better). Did I mention they're from New York?

The Royals aren't much better. They took the AL Central title this year from my second-favorite MLB team, the Detroit Tigers. I was enjoying watching the Houston Astros make an improbable playoff run this year...until the Royals pulled off a crazy comeback in game 4 of their ALDS, and finished the Astros off in game 5. The Toronto Blue Jays were exciting to watch, making a run with all of Canada behind them, before the Royals beat them in the ALCS. At every stage of the season, the Royals have beat some other team that I'd rather have seen advance.

That's not to say that neither team has anything good going for them. Both have exciting players, particularly pitching (mostly starters for the Mets, mostly bullpen for the Royals). There's the insanity that is Daniel Murphy's postseason for the Mets, and the insanity that is Ned Yost's managing style for the Royals. A Mets win would make cross-town-rival New York Yankee fans sad, and a Royals win would make Missouri-state-rival St Louis Cardinal fans sad. All good things.

As for who I think is actually likely to win, well, that's a toss-up. Seven games may sound like a lot, but in baseball terms it's a blink of an eye. Even the worst teams can win four out of seven at some point in their season. The great young starting pitchers of the Mets might completely shut down the Royals hitting. Or the Kansas City bats might eke out enough runs to take the lead into the late innings, and then their great bullpen locks it down. Or maybe we'll all be surprised and there will be a few shootout games that look more like the Kansas City Chiefs are playing the New York Giants. You'll see a whole lot of predictions around the sports world, and some of them will be right, but only by chance.

So what's the deciding factor here? Clearly, we need to go to the mascots.

In case there's any confusion, that's New York on the left.

A guy with a baseball for a head vs the king of beasts? (Albeit one with a strangely deformed skull structure.) I don't think there's any contest here. Royals it is!