Happy Thursday, everybody. I’m seeing the finish line on my next book SEASONS — there it is, just beyond the hill — but let’s take a few minutes this morning to give you an expanded ABS Challenge Scorecard and, for you Clubhouse members, a few things I’m hearing around baseball including, maybe, possibly, hopefully, conceivably some good news regarding the seemingly inevitable lockout at the end of the season.

Here we go!

The ABS Challenge Scorecard

• Total challenges: 1,082. Challenges have been successful 582 times (54%).

• Batter challenges have been successful 47% of the time.

• Fielder challenges (almost always catchers) have been successful 60% of the time.

For the second straight day, the overall challenge percentage was below 50% — I believe this was the first time that’s happened this season. I mean, challenges were still successful 47% of the time, so the closest calls still feel like a coin flip. But maybe umpires are settling in a little bit?

Here are all the challenges of the day. Purple are batter challenges, gold are catcher challenges (once again, there were no pitcher challenges; there have only been 21 pitcher challenges all year).

Let’s tell a little story behind five of the weirdest ones:

Challenge 1: Toronto’s Braydon Fisher on the mound, Milwaukee’s Joey Ortiz at the plate — the home plate umpire is Chris Guccione. This is the seventh inning, Toronto leads 1-0, and it’s the first pitch of the at-bat. Guccione calls it a strike. This is exaclty the sort of bad strike call that, in years past, would have been entirely overlooked or credited to catcher Brandon Valenzuela for excellent pitch-framing.

“You don’t see many calls like that,” the announcing crew said, but the truth is that we actually did see plenty of calls like that. If you watch the pitch, what I think will strike you is just how normal that call seemed. Catchers are REALLY good at making balls look like strikes.

Challenge 2: New York’s Clay Holmes is on the mound, the Dodgers’ Max Muncy is at the plate, and the count is 1-0. Edwin Moscoso is the home plate umpire, and this slider comes in and is an obvious strike — so obvious that Mets’ catcher Francisco Alvarez is shocked that it wasn’t called a strike. He catches the ball, begins to toss it back to Holmes, and then does a classic movie double-take when he doesn’t hear the strike call. He then challenges, and it’s overturned.

Challenge 3: This one is also from the Brewers-Blue Jays game; Chris Cuccione had a rough day. Dylan Cease is on the mound, Gary Sanchez is at the plate, and this thing isn’t even close to a strike. Sanchez immediately challenges, and the call is immediately overturned. No fuss. No muss.

Most of the challenges, of course, are very close — too close for the human eye to assess accurately. I do believe that Major League umpires are, almost without exception, the very best in the world at what they do. But they cannot compete with 12 Hawk-eye cameras that capture the 3D path of the pitch from every angle. Heck, sometimes they even miss obvious pitches, like this one.

Challenge 4: Here’s a fun one — this is from the Atlanta-Miami game, Andrew Nardi is pitching, and Ozzie Albies is at the plate. Your home plate umpire is Adam Beck. This is on an 0-0 count, Beck calls it a ball, and it’s OBVIOUSLY a ball — nobody should know this better than Marlins catcher Liam Hicks, who catches it and rather desperately jerks his glove back into the zone to try and steal a strike.

Nobody can believe it when Hicks then challenges the call.

“Oh come on!” the Braves announcer says, and that’s the right reaction. This is what you might call a frustration challenge — the Marlins had given up three runs in the inning and now trail 6-0. This is a fun part of the ABS system; you sometimes see catchers and batters let emotions get the better of them. There’s still humanity in our robo-ump world.

Challenge 5: This comes from the Pittsburgh-Washington game, Carmen Mlodzinski on the mound, Luis Garcia Jr. at the plate, 0-2 count. Umpire James Hoye calls it a ball, and Pittsburgh catcher Henry Davis tries desperately to steal strike three. But he makes two mistakes. First, his frame attempt was a bit sloppy — he pulled his glove upward and did not take into account that the pitch was both low and outside. It was a pretty easy ball call for Hoye. And then Davis sheepishly challenged it, knowing, I’m sure, that it was a ball. I’d call this more of a hope challenge than anything else.

OK, now I have a couple of thoughts I want to share with the Clubhouse about stuff I’m hearing. Come on down, the door’s open below.

And if you ever feel like joining us in The Clubhouse — not for more, exactly, but to be a bigger part of our world — we’d love to have you.

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Happy Wednesday, everyone. Today’s birthdays include the wildly underrated Willie Davis — I think you could make a compelling argument that over the length and breadth of his 18-year career, Willie Davis was at least comparable to each and every one of the Veterans Committee selections, going back more than a decade.

No, he didn’t walk much, so his .312 lifetime on-base percentage stands out.

And, as his teammate John Roseboro — who had no use for Davis — said: “He never hit .330, and he should have.” There was a lot of this sort of talk surrounding Davis throughout the 1960s, talk that suggested he should have been better. Frank Robinson talked about how often he missed cutoff men. Davis apparently was not always an easy man to like.

That last part might help explain why people tended to see the worst in him. But Willie Davis was a glorious defensive center fielder who chased down everything; he knocked almost 2,600 hits, he stole almost 400 bases, and he did it all while playing in the worst hitters’ ballpark during the worst hitters' time. Baseball Reference has him with 60.8 career WAR. That’s six more wins than this year’s veteran’s ballot electee, Jeff Kent.

Got a couple more announcements on the BIG FAN Tour, which is now a month away!

We have lined up all of our guest moderators for each stop.

• We’re at The Strand in New York on Monday, May 18, and we will be joined by Seth Meyers! Unfortunately, that show is sold out, though we will be giving away a couple of tickets here on JoeBlogs — stay tuned.

• We’re at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge on May 19, and we will be joined by two-time Casey Award winner Howard Bryant! There will be FIVE Casey Awards on one stage, plus whatever awards that Mike Schur guy has won.

• We’ll be joined by the great Gerald Early at the St. Louis Library on May 20, which is super exciting for me because (1) Gerald is my hero and (2) I did an event with Gerald for Why We Love Baseball, and it might be my all-time favorite event.

• We will be joined by Jason Kander at Unity Temple on the Plaza in Kansas City on May 21, and it will be very exciting just to watch Jason and Mike go at it the way they always do on the PosCast. Incidentally, this is the greatest graphic ever — with Jason peering out of a little circular window and the wonderful tagline: “With Jason Kander!”

  

• Finally, on Friday, May 22, we will be in Los Angeles — at the Hermosa Community Center, to be exact — and will be joined by the amazing Colin Hanks.

Thanks for reading that, if you did. And thanks for skipping that, if you did. Just thanks for being here. Time now to jump into The Clubhouse for the ABS Challenge Scorecard and our way-too-early National League breakdown.

If you’re a Clubhouse member, come on down — the door’s open below.

And if you ever feel like joining us in The Clubhouse — not for more, exactly, but to be a bigger part of our world — we’d love to have you.

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Happy Tuesday! We’re 16 games into the baseball season, which means it’s time to do our semi-annual series (I’m pretty sure I’ve done this before): What if the baseball season were only 16 games long? We’ll do the American League today!

The ABS Challenge Scorecard

• Total challenges: 971. Challenges have been successful 530 times (55%).

• Batter challenges have been successful 47% of the time.

• Fielder challenges (almost always catchers) have been successful 61% of the time.

Monday was another crazy accurate day for the catchers — they got 18 of 25 challenges right.

Catchers are just SO much better at calling balls and strikes than umpires.

Even that one seemingly terrible challenge down on the bottom left was actually a really good challenge because of the situation. That came in the ninth inning of the Washington-Pittsburgh game; Pirates reliever Evan Sisk was closing out a 16-5 laugher. He struck out Keibert Ruiz on three pitches. He struck out Joey Wiemer on three pitches. And then he got ahead 0-2 on Luis García Jr.

Pirates catcher Henry Davis challenged that pitch because Sisk was going for an immaculate inning.

I’m sure Davis KNEW it was a ball, but at that point, absolutely, if you have a challenge left, you definitely use it. The pitch was obviously confirmed as a ball. Sisk struck out García on the next pitch.

American League

Playoff teams: Baltimore, New York, Cleveland, Minnesota, Texas, Tampa Bay.

MVP: Chandler Simpson, Tampa Bay Rays

Close race between Simpson, New York’s Ben Rice (.362/.508/.745), Boston’s Wilyer Abreau (leads league in bWAR because he’s slugging .597 and playing his usual awe-inspiring defense in right), but at this point all races are won by Simpson.

I’m absolutely in love with Chandler Simpson’s Baseball Savant chart:

I mean, seriously, what the heck is that? Simpson has the best square-up percentage in baseball and the lowest hard-hit percentage in the game. He basically never strikes out — three whiffs in 15 games so far — but also has zero barrels all year. He doesn’t have a double or a home run, but he has two triples.

He’s hitting .403.

How does he do it? Right: Chandler Simpson can fly. He’s probably the fastest player in the league — Bobby Witt Jr. will be up there, I’m sure — but he’s DEFINITELY the player who flaunts his speed. He chops, bunts, bloops, and pokes the ball all over the field. Outfielders play him so far in, it’s laughable, but you know what? It doesn’t matter. He has become a reason to tune into random Rays games; every Chandler Simpson at-bat is just this happy adventure.

Cy Young: José Soriano, California Angels

Soriano has made four starts this year, and he has allowed one run — that on a Drake Baldwin home run. He is, at the moment, allowing THREE HITS PER NINE INNINGS. Here’s his Baseball Savant chart:

I show you this for a very specific reason: I have been talking a lot about my next-next book SEASONS, which will come out in 2027 and is a countdown of the 50 individual seasons that echo the loudest. I just finished writing No. 1 on Monday (yay me! I’m going to celebrate tonight!), and while I still have a couple more weeks of work, I’m now definitely closing in. It’s a wonderful feeling for an author when you hit that point where you can actually see the finish line.

Anyway, not to spoil anything, but I was writing a chapter on Dwight Gooden — I imagine it won’t surprise you that his season will be in the book — and it was striking to me how often people wrote that he had a “blazing 90 mph fastball.” Now, the radar guns were different in the mid-1980s, but still, a 90-mph fastball the very peak of our baseball imaginations.

José Soriano throws a 98-mph fastball, and it’s like, meh, so does everybody else.

Soriano’s 98-mph four-seam fastball is actually his third-favorite pitch. He throws his sinking fastball just slightly slower — it averages 97 mph, and nobody can hit it. Then he throws a knuckle curve that batters swing and miss about half the time. He also has a split-fingered fastball as a fourth pitch against lefties in particular, and he throws a slider to righties as a fifth pitch — nobody’s gotten a hit off that pitch yet this year.

I mean, pitchers today are warlocks.

Best team: New York Yankees (probably)

Being honest, no AL team has established any sort of dominance so far — they’re all just kind of meh. The Yankees are a little less meh than the rest. Their starting pitching has been terrific, and if Ben Rice keeps hitting like this, then that lineup with Judge, Rice, Bellinger, and a rejuvenated Giancarlo Stanton is pretty darned scary.

The Yankees are 1-6 in one-run games so far, so you wouldn’t expect that to last — which is why I do think the Yankees are the best team in the league so far — but one-run games are mysterious things.

Worst team: Houston Astros?

The default answer is the Chicago White Sox, and that’s probably the right answer — but, I don’t know, at least there’s a little, um, I wouldn’t call it “buzz,” but I find myself checking in on the White Sox now and again to see how Munetaka Murakami is doing or to watch Luisangel Acuña run — that kid can motor.

I can’t even watch the Astros. It’s like watching a sitcom that stopped being funny or interesting a decade ago. They’ve lost eight in a row — a couple in walkoff fashion — and I imagine they’ll turn things around at least a little bit. But all in all, it might be time to blow things ups there and start anew.

Surprise team: Minnesota Twins

You can’t be too surprised when any team — no matter how good or bad — wins 10 of 17 games. But this is our conceit, and the Twins are currently tied for first in the American League Central at 10-7. I’m not exactly sure what they’re doing right. It starts with Taj Bradley, who has pitched brilliantly in his first four starts. I’ve always liked Taj; maybe this is his coming-out party.

Biggest disappointment: Boston Red Sox

The 6-10 record is disappointing for sure, but what feels worse is that the Red Sox just seem to be flatlining. I thought the Sox would feel young, energetic, exciting — Roman Anthony! Marcelo Mayer! Garrett Crochet! Cedanne Rafaela! Wilyer Abreu! Some of those guys have been good, some have struggled (Crochet got rocked Monday), but the overall vibe is just kind of, well, it has the vibe of a team that has been selling off parts ever since winning the World Series in 2018. It’s early. Things can turn around. But this isn’t the start they wanted.

Fortunately, Boston fans are likely to be very patient and understanding.

Happy Monday, everybody. I ramble a bit this morning about batting averages and the difficulty of winning a golf major vs. a tennis grand slam. I’m very close now to finishing my final numbered chapter on SEASONS — my countdown of the individual baseball seasons that echo the loudest!

There’s still quite a bit to do because there will be several unnumbered chapters that I’m excited about. But I’m writing my No. 1 season right now, and when I finish that (hopefully today!): Yeah, I’ll be feeling pretty good.

The ABS Challenge Scorecard

• Total challenges: 932. Challenges have been successful 506 times (54%).

• Batter challenges have been successful 47% of the time.

• Fielder challenges (almost always catchers) have been successful 61% of the time.

We are starting to see some real day-to-day consistency in the challenge percentages. Over the weekend, batters got a little less than 45% of their challenges right. And catchers got 62% of their challenges right. It’s still SO early in the season, but we’re using this challenge scorecard to see if we can spot any early trends, and it seems to me that the challenge system might help pitchers more than it helps hitters.

It’s a bit of a mixed bag, but here’s what we’re seeing compared to last March/April.

• Batting average and slugging percentage are down.

• Home runs are noticeably down.

• Strikeouts are up somewhat.

• Walks are WAY up, though.

We’re going to talk about our pal Tom Tango and his never-ending fight with batting average in a minute, but to whet the appetite, it’s worth mentioning that overall runs, so far, are NOT down. That anemic 375 slugging percentage — which, if it holds up, would be the second lowest for any April in 34 years — is offset by what would be the highest walk rate in baseball history.

Maybe you’ll find this chart interesting, maybe you won’t:

Batter’s performances in April:

• 2026: .235 average, .375 slugging, 3.8 walks, 0.94 HR, 4.34 runs

• 2025: .242 average, .392 slugging, 3.4 walks, 1.06 HR, 4.34 runs

• 2024: .240 average, .385 slugging, 3.3 walks, 1.01 HR, 4.38 runs

• 2023: .247 average, .407 slugging, 3.3 walks, 1.13 HR, 4.59 runs

• 2022: .231 average, .369 slugging, 3.3 walks, 0.90 HR, 4.03 runs

It’s especially interesting to me to compare 2022 and 2026 because the core numbers are similar, but because hitters are walking so much more, they’re scoring quite a few more runs.

No matter how much we talk about the importance of walks, I suspect we still underplay the value.

In fact … let’s get into that with Tom Tango.

Tango’s Forever War

If you’ve been following this space for a while now, you know that my great pal Tom Tango has no use for batting average. I don’t mean that loosely; he truly believes that batting average does nothing but deceive fans when they’re trying to evaluate a hitter’s value.

His now famous example is this: Take two players —

• Player 1: .315/.365/.510

• Player 2: .260/.365/.510

Now ask yourself: Which player is more valuable?

We’ve written about the Tango Conundrum before, but he just put the example back up on social media to see if fans have made any progress on understanding. And, to his dismay, it seems like fans have gone BACKWARD in their understanding.

This time, he found that:

Fifty-nine percent of fans calculated that Player 1 is clearly more valuable.

Eleven percent of fans calculated that Player 2 is clearly more valuable.

Twenty-one percent of fans decided that it was too close to call.

Before I tell you again what Tango has found the answer to be, we should probably explain why fans are so tempted to say that the player with the much higher batting average must be more valuable: It’s the simple assumption that a single is worth more than a walk. And that assumption is correct. A single, in many instances, IS worth more than a walk. A single can move a runner more than one base. A single can advance (or score) a runner on second or third (or both). There also might be some hidden value to singles over walks that we can’t calculate. I’ll leave that to you.

A single is worth more than a walk — so all other things being equal, the higher batting average MUST be more valuable, right?

Of course, that’s not how this math works — all things are NOT equal. And this is why a sizable percentage of fans calculated that the LOWER batting average must be more valuable. See, if there’s a big difference in batting average but their slugging percentages are the same, that means the lower-average hitter has more extra-base hits. Nobody would argue against a double being worth more than a single or a home run is worth more than a double.

Here’s a real-life example:

• In 2004, Ivan Rodriguez hit .334 and slugged .510. He hit 123 singles, 32 doubles, 2 triples, and 19 homers.

• In 2019, Bryce Harper hit .260 and slugged .510. He hit 77 singles, 36 doubles, 1 triple, and 35 home runs.

Pudge had 46 more singles and an extra triple. That’s 49 more bases. But Harper had four more doubles and 16 more home runs. That’s 72 more bases. Harper did get about 50 more at-bats that year, but I’m not actually comparing Pudge and Harper (Harper’s year was much better offensively because he walked 99 times to Pudge’s 41), I’m just reiterating how the math works.

So you have one side betting on singles being worth more than walks.

And you have one side betting on those extra base hits being worth more.

But Tango’s point is that the whole argument is wrong. His point is that the walks and extra base hits basically cancel each other out. His point, again, is that batting average is pointless, that including it in the slash line doesn’t add anything at all.

Instead of having one player with a .315/.365/.510 line and one with a .260/.365/.510 line, Tango believes that when it comes to evaluating hitters, you only need .365/.510. The batting average is not just excess; it clouds analysis.

I’ve been telling Tom for years that it's a losing battle; that batting average is too big a part of baseball’s history and American culture. Way back in the 19th century, the Father of Baseball — Henry Chadwick — decided he HATED walks, believed them to be the fault of sloppy pitchers, and determined they should not be included in batting average. He was wrong. But that choice has rippled through baseball for 150 years. Batting average ain’t going anywhere.

Plus, there’s an aesthetic value there. Maybe the two hitters in the Tango Conundrum are worth the same, but that doesn’t mean that we will like them the same. Some will prefer the high average hitter, the Don Mattingly type. Some will prefer the slugger, the Darryl Strawberry type.

But as far as the hitters’ values go? I have little doubt that Tango is right.

What’s harder — a golf major or a tennis grand slam?

I’ve been enjoying the Nothing Major tennis podcast featuring the last generation of American tennis stars — Sam Querrey, Jack Sock, John Isner and Stevie Johnson — and the other day they tried to answer the classic listener’s question:

What’s harder to win: A golf major or a tennis grand slam event?

I love this question and have thought about it many, many times. I will start by telling you that the quartet unanimously agreed that a tennis slam is significantly harder to win, and I totally get why they said that: none of them has won a major. I do not mean that cruelly; that’s the title of their podcast.

And I think that in the context of Querrey/Sock/Isner/Johnson, they are totally right. I mean, all four of them were FANTASTIC players. Utterly fantastic.

• Johnson moved beautifully on a court, won four titles, and topped out at No. 21 in the world.

• Querrey had a huge serve, a big forehand, won 10 titles, beat Andy Murray at Wimbledon, and he topped out at No. 11 in the world.

• Jack Sock had a forehand that defied description, won four titles including the prestigious Paris Masters, was a doubles champion at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the Olympics, and topped out at No. 8 in the world.

• John Isner might have had the greatest serve in tennis history. He won 16 titles, reached the semifinals at Wimbledon, twice made the quarters at the U.S. Open, and topped out at No. 8 in the world.

I feel quite certain players THAT accomplished in golf would have won a golf major. I think if you see the question as: “What is harder for a top 25 player to win?” the answer is definitely and obviously tennis.

Just last year, J.J. Spaun, who was ranked 25th in the world, won the U.S. Open.

That’s fairly common in golf.

No player ranked 25 in the world has won a tennis slam since, yikes, I don’t even know — maybe Gáston Claudio in 2004 when he won the French Open? Tennis used to have these sorts of surprise winners now and again, but ever since Federer/Nadal/Djokovic (and now Sinner/Alcaraz) well, as Ferrari says in Casablanca, “it would take a miracle and the Big Three outlawed miracles.”

So, from that perspective, absolutely, the Nothing Major guys got it just right.

But what about from the perspective of the very, very best players on earth? That is to say: The PGA Championship and French Open are coming up in the next few weeks. The top five golfers in the world, as I write this, are:

1. Scottie Scheffler

2. Rory McIlroy (congrats to Rory for another green jacket!)

3. Cameron Young

4. Justin Rose

5. Tommy Fleetwood

And the top five tennis players in the world, as I write this, are:

1. Jannik Sinnner (just overtook Alcaraz by winning in Monte Carlo — he looks unstoppable)

2. Carlos Alcaraz

3. Alexander Zverev

4. Novak Djokovic

5. Felix Auger-Aliassime

Now, you tell me — if you had to bet on the next major winner coming from the top five, would you bet on the golfers or the tennis players? It’s not even close.

Or, even more to the point, would you bet on Scheffler/McIlroy or Sinner/Alcaraz?

There’s no question. Scheffler/McIlroy certainly could win the PGA Championship. I’d put their chances, though, no higher than, what, 25%? Lower? There’s a reasonable chance neither one will even contend because that’s how golf works.

The chances Sinner or Alcaraz win the French Open? I mean, the way those two guys are playing, the gap they’ve put between themselves and the rest of the world, that’s probably 90%. It’s pretty close to an even-money bet that they face each other in the final again — like they did in last year’s French Open, and also last year’s Wimbledon, and also last year’s U.S. Open.

Yes, it’s much harder for a good player to win a tennis slam because to do it, you have to beat the very best tennis players on earth one-on-one. You’re not playing the course. You don’t have four days to round your game into shape (Scottie Scheffler barely made the cut at the Masters, and he almost won the thing anyway). You have to start over each time you play.

But I’ll bet if you asked McIlroy or Djokovic which is easier, they’d both tell you winning a tennis slam is easier.

Happy Friday morning from the airspace between Los Angeles and home. Here’s a photo a friend of a friend posted of Bruce Sprinsteen’s show at the Forum last night. See if you can spot our special guest star wearing the Dodgers cap.

As you know, our book BIG FAN comes out in a little more than a month — a book about what it means to be a fan — and I was thinking all day on Thursday about why I’m so excited for people to read it. Thursday was a pure fan day. I was in Los Angeles to join a friend (and his son) and see my favorite musical artist perform songs that, with only one or two exceptions, I’d seen him perform many times before.

We spent much of the day talking about how excited we were. On the way to the Forum, we stopped at In ‘N Out, which I love. When we got to the arena, we were surrounded by all these passionate Springsteen fans who just wanted to talk to anybody and everybody about how excited they were to see him, how much Bruce means to their lives, how they first saw him at the Stone Pony or in Chicago or Cleveland, when they were so much younger, and how a Bruce show still thrills them now that we’re all so much older.

Fandom unites us in such beautiful ways.

That, of course, is the heart of sports, the same feeling we get at a ballgame. We wear similar versions of the same thing, and we talk to each other like we go back many years. All the time, but especially now, when everything has the power to divide us (Including, alas, Bruce Springsteen), fandom unifies us. Makes the world feel smaller.

Hey, you know the words to Badlands, too?

Hey, you love Christian Yelich, too?

Hey, you get extra nervous when your hockey team is up 3-1, too?

Let’s be friends.

No. Let’s be BEST friends.

That’s why Mike and I wrote BIG FAN, to get at that feeling, where it comes from, how it moves us, to find all the joy and unity and passion and collective panic we could find chasing fandom around the world. The beer-soaked insanity of the World Darts Championship. The plonk-plonk madness of a professional pickleball tournament. The sauce-smeared chaos of a football Sunday at Buffalo Wild Wings. The swirling love of a stadium of people singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” at a Liverpool match. The almost holy reverence of a baseball game played on top of the world.

I am so excited for you to read BIG FAN, which is available for preorder now.

And I’m even more excited to see you on the road during our upcoming BIG FAN tour. We are starting at the Strand in New York (with Seth Meyers) on May 18; unfortunately, that show is completely sold out. I have received more than a dozen texts from friends asking if there’s a way I can get them in; I’m certainly going to try. But there is some exciting news on that front: Brilliant Reader Adam got two tickets and now can’t make it — he would like to give them away to another Brilliant Reader. So we’ll have a little drawing for two tickets. I’m not sure how it will work yet, but if you’re interested, drop us a line here, and we’ll figure it out.

We’re in Boston on May 19 with an amazing guest to be announced soon. Then we’re in St. Louis on May 20 — tickets are going bananas there, which is so fantastic. In fact, as of right now, St. Louis is outselling our May 21st event in Kansas City, which, I don’t know if this changes anything, but Jason Kander will be joining us on stage in Kansas City.*

*There is a possibility that Kander’s appearance — and his profound love of the song “Centerfield” — will actually push St. Louis over the top in the I-40 matchup with Kansas City. I’ll keep you updated.

Finally, on Friday, May 22, we’re in Los Angeles with Colin Hanks.

Time now to jump into The Clubhouse for the ABS Challenge Scorecard and a thought or two about the impossible Mason Miller — and whatever else comes up while we fly over, I don’t know, somewhere. You know what I love? Those maps they have on international flights that show exactly what you’re flying over in real time. I’d like to believe like we’re flying over some kids waving at us.

If you’re a Clubhouse member, come on down — the door’s open below.

If you’re a free reader, thank you as always for being here. If you ever feel like joining us on Fridays — not for more, exactly, but to be a bigger part of our world — we’d love to have you.

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Happy Thursday from Los Angeles. Wednesday was such a perfect weather day here that it actually gave me the words to describe the perfect weather day (or at least my perfect weather day):

A perfect weather day is one where you can wear a light jacket or not wear a light jacket, and you’re comfortable either way.

I love light jackets. This doesn’t work all that well in North Carolina, which rarely has perfect weather days — but does have lots and lots of warm days where a light jacket feels like a thermal blanket — but I love the jackets all the same. I am constantly in search of the ideal light jacket. Every time I’m in a store, I try one on, and Margo always says, “You already have a bunch of jackets,” and I do, but I haven’t found the one yet. I know it’s out there.

I didn’t find a light jacket in LA, but I did buy a blue/light blue Dodgers cap that has this cool 60-year patch on the side. I’ve thought before, and I’m thinking again, about getting a cool cap from every single baseball team — all 29* — and just wearing a different one every day. Here’s why: Whenever I wear a baseball cap — especially one that feels out of place wherever I happen to be — someone will come up to me and want to talk about that team. A baseball cap is the greatest conversation opener in the world. Even the shyest Padres, Rockies, Twins or Brewers fan will definitely walk up to you at an airport if they see you wearing their team’s cap.

Baseball caps bring the world together, I think.

*We know which cap I will not get and never wear … but I will say that if you are a Yankees fan and you see me somewhere and want to talk about Jazz Chisholm** or how said it is that Don Mattingly is not in the Hall of Fame or the fact that Brian Cashman has been their GM since 1873, hey, I’m always up for some baseball talk.

**My friend Jon Hock, Yankees fan deluxe — it really is amazing how many of my great friends are huge Yankees fans — predicts that Chisholm will have the worst ABS challenge percentage in baseball this year. So far, Jazz is 1 for 3, but it is true that both of his misses were pretty obvious strikes.

As mentioned a few times, I am currently in the final lap of writing my next-next book SEASONS, which will count down the individual seasons that echo loudest through the years. I’m spending today in the world of Dwight Gooden, so that will be fun, and then I’m going to see Bruce Springsteen tonight, so that will be fun. I’m just saying that today should be a very fun day.

Anyway, while I finish the book, I will be doing daily quick-hit posts — built around the ABS Challenge Scorecard. Clubhouse members will be getting the ABS scorecard and a few extra thoughts every day. Today’s one of those Clubhouse days.

Of course, if you’d like to become a Clubhouse member, we’d love to have you:

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Hi everybody. I’m at the airport super early this Wednesday morning, heading to Los Angeles for a little work and also to see Bruce Springsteen tomorrow night. So far, I haven’t had the experience my friend Brian had at Nashville airport on Tuesday as he flew out to LA.

Yeah, that’s Brian on the right.

He apparently was happy to just shake hands, but Bill Murray was taking selfies with everybody. Can’t blame him. That’s a sweet Chicago Cubs City Connect cap.

Anyway, just as a reminder, I’m writing an ABS Scorecard — along with whatever random thoughts come to mind — each morning while I finish up my next-next book, SEASONS, a countdown of the 50 individual baseball seasons that echo the loudest. We’ve also brought back, by popular demand, Kathleen’s Korner, where our intrepid editor Kathleen gives her own rundown of stuff that’s catching her eye.

Clubhouse members will get one every morning, but there will be plenty for everybody. Of course, if you’d like to become a Clubhouse member, we’d love to have you:

Also, tickets are going fast for our upcoming BIG FAN Tour. Our New York stop is already sold out, but there are still some tickets available in Boston (well, Cambridge), St. Louis, Kansas City, and Los Angeles. We’re starting to announce the guests we’ll have at each stop; happy to say that in LA, we’ll be joined by the amazing Colin Hanks, which will be incredible.

The ABS Challenge Scorecard

• Total challenges: 653. Challenges have been successful 351 times (54%).

• Batter challenges have been successful 48% of the time.

• Fielder challenges (almost always catchers) have been successful 59% of the time.

Batters had their best day in quite some time — they challenged 36 pitches, a season high, and were successful 19 times. It was the first time in a week that hitters were successful more than half the time.

Here are the hitters’ successful challenges (ht to Tom Tango for showing me how to make the boxes more specific):

And here were the hitters’ unsuccessful challenges:

I show you both to point out just how close these pitches are. There are a few stray pitches in the overturned box — particularly the cluster of low pitches — that are relatively clear, but look at that confirmed box. I mean, every one of those pitches is right on the edge. I would say there was not a single bad challenge all day.

I’m coming around more and more to the idea that what we’re really learning here is that baseball pitchers, yeah, they’re REALLY good. They put the ball on the black time after time after time, which doesn’t just challenge hitters, it also challenges umpires.

I mean, look at this strike three pitch by Aaron Civale to Austin Wells. That’s the purple ball right this hovering at the top of the zone in the confirmed box. That pitch, like so many big league pitches, looks absolutely unhittable to me, especially if I’m a lefty hitter like Wells. It’s “only” 93 mph, but it’s moving like the Jeffersons, and it looks too high and too far inside to hit. The umpire calls it strike three. Wells challenges. And the pitch is a strike by a millimeter. We talk about perfect pitches. That’s a perfect pitch. And these guys throw a lot of them.

The Hard Math of Batting .300

Let me say up front that I am — like pretty much everyone else — bullish on the future of Roman Anthony. He’s off to a bit of a rough start in 2026, but it’s just the start, and I feel sure that he will come around and be a star.

That said, I don’t think he will bat .300 or win a batting title, as many predict.*

*This idea came out of a text exchange with Mike Schur, who is the world’s biggest Roman Anthony fan. I love Anthony too, but nowhere near Mike’s level, and when he said that Anthony would be a .300/.400/.500 hitter, I thought, “Well, wait a minute on the .300 part.”

Hardcore baseball analysts would tell you that it doesn’t even matter if he bats .300 or wins a batting title, that those are outdated ways of looking at baseball, and I mostly agree. But as long as we track such things, it seems worth talking about what it actually takes to hit .300 in today’s baseball.

Roman Anthony strikes out a lot. He might cut that down as he goes, but he struck out a lot in the minor leagues, and he struck out a lot in his terrific rookie season, and he’s striking out a lot this year so far. The strikeout thing seems baked into his game. And when I say he “strikes out a lot,” I’m not saying that he’s Mark Reynolds or Adam Dunn or James Wood or anyone that extreme, but it seems like 150 strikeouts a year is baked into his batting style.

It’s hard to hit .300 when you strike out 150 times in a season.

Not impossible. But hard.

How do you do it? Well, in baseball history, there have been 20 players who have hit .300 or better with 150 strikeouts.

Method 1: Hit a lot of home runs. No, a LOT of home runs.

Home runs are hits. That’s obvious, but what I mean is that they are, for the most part, subject to the whim of defense or bad luck. Sure, a Jo Adell might come along and steal a home run from you or the wind might take one away. but in general a home run is a home run is a home run.

The highest batting average in baseball history for a player with 150 Ks is .331 — that’s what Aaron Judge hit last year. He did that in large part by hitting 53 home runs. Second on the list is Sammy Sosa’s .328 in 2001. He hit 64 home runs last year. Sosa and Judge have each hit .300 with 150 Ks three times.

Shohei hit .310 in 2024. That year, he hit 54 home runs.

I don’t think Anthony has that kind of power. I do expect him to develop power as he goes, but not home run champion power. I guess we’ll see.

Method 2: Hit for a very, very high BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play).

Last year, in 302 plate appearances as a rookie, Anthony hit .292, which is why Mike and others are so confident that he will be a .300 hitter. Do you know what his BABIP was? I did not: It was .404, the second-highest in baseball behind only Jonathan Aranda.

BABIP involves many factors, including how hard the ball is hit. And Anthony definitely hits the ball very hard, which is why so many of us predict superstardom. But it also involves luck, a lot of luck, and that might explain why Anthony’s actual batting average might have been .292, but his Statcast™ expected batting average was .257.

Anyway, that .404 BABIP is probably not sustainable.

But he won’t need to have quite that good a hitting luck. He could go the Mo Vaughn route. Vaughn hit .300 or better three times with high strikeout totals, and, sure he hit a bunch of home runs (35, 39, 44), but those totals might be in Anthony’s future. The key for Vaughn were high BABIPs, topping out at .384 in 1997. One connection here is Fenway Park; seemingly every ball Vaughn put in play at Fenway in those days was a hit.

1995: .365 BABIP at Fenway

1996: .435 BABIP at Fenway

1997: .420 BABIP at Fenway

So maybe Anthony will follow that route.

Method 3: Cut down the strikeouts.

This is the most likely way for Anthony to become a .300 hitter — he certainly has the batting eye and deep understanding of the strike zone to cut down his strikeouts. And it’s not like he has to cut it down a lot. Only 20 different players have hit .300 with 150 Ks, but 74 players have done it with 125.

There are two issues to overcome. First, I arbitrarily chose 150 strikeouts for Anthony; so far, he looks like a guy who strikes out much more than that. Small sample size, obviously, but he has struck out 100 times in his 82 big league games. And in the minors, he struck out 310 times in 303 games.

Second, I sincerely doubt that it’s Anthony’s goal — or the Boston organizational goal — for Anthony to be a .300 hitter. If it happens, great. But what they want is for him to be a productive hitter, with lots of walks and increased power. And accomplishing that is, in some ways, counter to him becoming a .300 hitter, where he would have to put more balls in play. This, in a nutshell, is the story of the game as everyone knows plays it. Batting averages are all-time lows, and part of that is because pitchers are so darned good, and there are so many of them.

But part of that is that there’s no real incentive to hit .300 anymore. Look at Juan Soto. After he hit .351 in the COVID season and following it up by hitting .313/.465/.513 in 2021, the Ted Williams comparisons were everywhere. But he’s very, very different from Ted Williams. Since then, his strikeouts have gone way up, and his batting average has gone way down — he’s a .269 hitter the last 4-plus seasons.

But when you throw in the walks and added home runs, you get one of the best hitters in the game. That’s the North Star here for Roman Anthony. And that’s why, in the end, I doubt that Anthony becomes a .300 hitter no matter how good he gets.

Kathleen’s Korner

• On this day in 1974, Hank Aaron hit home run No. 715 to pass Babe Ruth as the all-time career home run leader.

• Last night, the Braves and Angels game was interrupted by a bench and bullpen-clearing fight. Jorge Soler and Reynaldo López were both ejected. Atlanta won 7-2, but whew. That felt like it came out of nowhere.

• The Pirates signed 19-year-old shortstop Konnor Griffin to a 9-year extension. Huge vote of confidence by the team right after his debut, but it sure seems like he has the stuff.

• The Blue Jays had a baffling sequence last night with two errors that allowed Alex Freeland to reach base.

• In a more positive, but still odd sequence, the Blue Jays’ Double-A affiliate, New Hampshire Fisher Cats, scored eight runs without a hit in the second inning. They finished with 10 runs on one hit that inning.

Happy Tuesday after the NCAA National Championship Game, everybody. While I’m on the record as a devout Michigan loather — there’s even a point-counterpoint chapter about this in BIG FAN (Coming out May 19, you can preorder now!) — I must admit that my enmity doesn’t really cross over to the basketball team. I’m not saying I LOVE Michigan basketball because I don’t, but I don’t have any of the same childhood bitter feelings about them that I have about the football team.

Fan hatred — Clemenate, as I have dubbed it* — is totally irrational.

*Clemenate (KLEM-a-nayt), verb, to hate an athlete or team in an entirely healthy, fun sports way (rather than hating them in a crazed, stalking, loaded gun, insane sort of way).

By the way, Michigan’s title did inspire this self-aware bit from Mike Schur about his 18-year-old son William:

I am in the final stretch (fingers crossed!) of finishing my next book, SEASONS, and will be doing some quick hit posts — building around the ABS Challenge Scorecard — until I’m done. I figure that’s better for everybody than just taking the next little while off.

Clubhouse members will be getting one every day. Today’s one of those Clubhouse days.

Of course, if you’d like to become a Clubhouse member, we’d love to have you:

Read more

Happy Monday after Easter, everybody. I hope you found chocolate in your eggs and love in your hearts. I am in the final stretch (fingers crossed!) of finishing my next book, SEASONS, and will be doing some quick hit posts — building around the ABS Challenge Scorecard — until I’m done. I figure that’s better for everybody than just taking the next little while off.

Clubhouse members will be getting one every day. But there will be plenty for everybody.

Of course, if you’d like to become a Clubhouse member, we’d love to have you:

The ABS Challenge Scorecard

• Total challenges: 542. Challenges have been successful 299 times (55%).

• Batter challenges have been successful 50% of the time.

• Fielder challenges (almost always catchers) have been successful 60% of the time.

Here are Sunday’s challenges:

I am keeping a daily chart of challenges, and even though it’s only a three-day blip, I am going to suggest that we might be seeing a trend:

• Friday: Batters’ success rate 42%; Catchers 56%.

• Saturday: Batters: 48%; Catchers 65%

• Sunday: Batters 44%; Catchers 64%*

*I’m saying “catchers” here rather than “fielders” because pitchers have more or less stopped challenging. All in all, there have only been 13 pitcher challenges all year, less than half have been successful, and I’m thinking we’re pretty close to eliminating the pitcher challenge. There were zero pitcher challenges on Sunday.

I don’t know if this means anything at all, but it’s worth watching. If catchers end up being WAY more successful at challenges than batters, well, it seems to follow that the ABS system will help pitchers more than it will help hitters. That doesn’t seem ideal when batting averages are already near all-time lows.

At the same time, though, walks are up. Pitchers generally walk more batters in the early part of the season than during the warmer months, but so far, teams are walking 3.76 times per game, which is the highest rate since the 1940s. Again: None of this matters yet; the season has only just begun. But it’s worth keeping an eye on just how dramatically ABS will change the game. It FEELS dramatic because, for the first time ever, we are seeing walks turned into strikeouts, and vice versa; we’re seeing at-bats extended, and we’re seeing at-bats suddenly ended. That feels like a massive thing. But it’s all still sorting itself out.

If I were doing WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL PART DEUX, I would obviously and of course include Jo Adell’s incredible game on Saturday when he took away three home runs. There’s something so wonderful about a home-run robbing catch — so wonderful that for the Joy of Baseball podcast that Molly Knight and I will be doing*, we chose this beautiful piece of artwork.

*Yes, Molly and I will still be doing the podcast; other projects for both of us have pushed us back a little bit, but we have already recorded the first one, and we are lining up more, and we will definitely be talking joy of baseball with some fabulous people.

The first two home run-saving catches by Adell are wonderful but similar — he went back to the short wall in right field there in Anaheim, leaped with his right shoulder facing that wall, and took the home run away with backhand grabs. Beautiful. Awesome. But, again, similar.

The third one, however, will be played and replayed forever. J.P. Crawford smashed a high fly ball down the right field line. Adell raced over, stretched his arm into the crowd as he jumped, and somehow caught the ball as he tumbled into the stands.

Fan Kayleigh Kraus got the shot for the ages.

Seriously, and I mean no offense to the wonderful Harmon Killebrew, but THAT should be the MLB logo from now on.

Jo Adell was once one of the biggest prospects in baseball; maybe THE biggest. In 2019, as a 20-year-old, he rose from Class A all the way to Class AAA, and he flashed power, speed, defense, the whole thing. You might not know it unless you live in the greater Anaheim area, but Adell crushed 37 home runs in 2025. That’s special. He also posted a .293 on-base percentage, struck out five times more than he walked, and was by more or less every defensive measure well below average in the outfield.

He’s still just 27. Still, it seems unlikely that, all in all, Jo Adell will become the star people hoped he might be.

But the beautiful thing about baseball is that one impossible game can make you immortal.

Jo Adell robbed three home runs in a single game. No baseball fan will ever forget that.

I’m a sucker for stuff like this — back when Twitter was Twitter, I used to do these sorts of exercises all the time. So — deplurize a movie?

My first shot was: “Singin’ in the Drop.”

Which, you know, that’s not bad.

Then I tried “The One Commandment,” which you know, fits our Passover season.

I tried out a few others in my mind:

“One Bride for One Brother.”

“An Angry Man.”

“The Magnificent One.”

“Star War,” (of course).

“Snow White and the Dwarf.”

“Goodfella.”

And then a few others joined in. Matthew offered up “Thelma or Louise,” which is wonderful. Michael gave us “Lion of the Yankees,” which is really good.

I think my favorite, though, comes from Perry: “Indemnity.”

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So because 92% of you voted for it — yikes! — I’m going to give you a very short ABS Challenge post every day for the next couple of weeks, and we can reevaluate from there. I’ll try to keep it lively and try to make it more about baseball and less about the ABS system itself. We’ll see how long we can keep this going.

First, I’d like to thank all of you — our BIG FAN event at The Strand in New York with Seth Meyers on May 18 is now completely sold out. True, I didn’t need the word “completely” in that sentence, but “completely sold out” just sounds cooler than regular old “sold out.” I am told that tickets in Boston (well, Cambridge), St. Louis, Kansas City, and Los Angeles are going fast. Come on out. We’d love to see you.

The ABS Challenge Scorecard

• Total challenges: 343. Challenges have been successful 189 times (55%).

• Batter challenges have been successful 52% of the time.

• Fielder challenges (almost always catchers) have been successful 58% of the time.

Wednesday was a great day for challenges, particularly for the hitters. In all, there were 57 challenges, 34 successful for a 59% success rate.

I’ve marked the two worst calls in red. Unfortunately, they were both made by the same home plate umpire, Andy Fletcher, in the Royals-Twins game. Fletcher had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Fletcher called the red ball well inside the strike zone a ball; Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers immediately challenged it, and it was overturned for a strikeout of Salvy Perez.

The red ball outside of the strike zone was called a strike by Fletcher; the Twins’ Austin Martin challenged it, the call was overturned, and it ended up being a bases-loaded walk.

The Austin Martin walk was interesting. As my pal, Royals announcer Ryan Lefebvre, said during the broadcast, this was a break from baseball as we knew it. See, the Royals were leading 12-1 at the time. And often during out-of-hand games — especially on miserable days, and it was miserable in Kansas City on Wednesday night — umpires would expand the strike zone to move the game along. Few seemed to mind back then.

Well, those days are over now. Every pitch has to be called by the book, or it can and will be challenged, and ABS doesn’t care about the score or if it’s raining or if it’s a getaway day or if it’s 105 degrees.

There were ELEVEN challenges in this game, a new record, and most of them were by the Twins, who have become the most aggressive challenger in baseball. They challenged nine of Fletcher’s calls, overturning eight. The Twins still lost the game 13-9, but remember, they were down 12-1 at one point. With the challenge system, teams are more likely to fight on, I think, even in seemingly lost games.

First, here’s your weekly BIG FAN update:

The BIG FAN Tour — for our book about what it means to be a fan — is coming next month. Mike and I are planning to have a special guest — or special guests — join us at each stop to moderate or just offer their own perspective on fandom. We are talking with some very cool folks. We’ll see how it all goes.

And here’s our first announcement. We’ll be at The Strand in New York City on Monday, May 18, and we’ll be joined by Seth Meyers!

I’m told that there are only a handful of tickets left, so if you’d like to join us, you might want to grab your ticket as soon as possible.

We should soon have some guest star confirmations for Boston, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Los Angeles. And, yes, we’re talking about adding new cities, too.

As always, it would be great if you preordered the book. You will hear authors talk all the time about how important preorders are to a book's success; it really is true. I’m so proud of this one; I think it’s nothing but pure joy on the page. I really believe it will make you happy, and not just because Mike made me go to a pickleball tournament or because we opened up 1978 O-Pee-Chee baseball cards in a Virginia warehouse that contains the world’s largest collection of sports cards.

The reviews are now beginning to trickle in, and they’re very kind. Kirkus calls it a “treat for the sports fanatic.” Booklist calls it “entertaining, humorous, and thought-provoking.” And my wife Margo calls the book “bigger than I was expecting.”

Oh, and finally, we have now just about finished the audiobook. Mike and I narrate, and it also features such great voices as Nick Offerman, Ellen Adair, Cord Jefferson … and our daughters, Ivy Schur and Katie Posnanski, who read the chapter they co-wrote about what it means to be a Taylor Swift fan.

Thanks for sticking with me through all that. Now, let’s talk again about the thing that is obsessing me about baseball these days: The ABS System.

The ABS Scorecard:

• Total challenges: 286. Challenges have been successful 155 times (54%).

• Batter challenges have been successful 49% of the time.

• Fielder challenges (almost always catchers) have been successful 59% of the time.

Here were Tuesday night’s challenges:

The worst challenge was by Cincinnati’s Dane Myers, who challenged that purple pitch in the lower part of the zone. It was called a strike, he challenged; it was a strike by more than three inches.

The worst call was against the Yankees’ Trent Grisham — it’s that super high pitch more than three inches above the zone. Home plate umpire Alonzo Márquez called it a strike.

Let’s talk about C.B. Bucknor making one of the worst calls in MLB history (this video calls it THE worst call in MLB history, which it might be, but I think that could be recency bias. I mean, just as a starting point, C.B. Bucknor has been in baseball for a long time).

In the Rays-Brewers game, Jake Bauers lined a shot to the right side, and Tampa Bay second baseman Ben Williamson made a diving stab for the ball. He was only able to knock it down. He jumped back up and made a wild throw to nobody as Bauers ran through the bag.

I was actually semi-watching this game live — watching it with no sound while I worked on my next book — and I saw the Rays walking over with the ball to tag Bauers. And then I saw a close-up of Bucknor and thought, “Oh no. Really? C.B. Bucknor again?”*

*In case you missed it, C.B. Bucknor missed TWENTY ball-strike calls the last time he was behind the plate:

When Bauers was called out, I assumed that Bucknor had ruled that he had tried to head to second base after the throw-away … but the replay clearly showed that he did not do that at all. So I actually couldn’t even figure out what the call was.

It was even dumber than I could have imagined.

He had ruled that Bauers missed first base.

Now, I’m being completely serious when I say this: I do not believe that in the history of baseball ANYBODY in that precise situation — running all out down the first base line, trying to beat a throw, with no first baseman or other fielder in the way — has ever missed first base. It’s a pretty big bag. It’s bigger now, in fact, than it used to be. It’s unclear why or how the runner even COULD miss first base in that situation.

But Bucknor ruled that Bauers missed first base.

I knew instantly — just as you did, if you were watching — that Bucknor was definitely wrong.

Look: I’m no C.B. Bucknor fan. I mean, I don’t have anything against him other than the fact that countless people in the game have told me that he’s the worst umpire in the business; heck, Carlos Marmol told him to retire THREE YEARS AGO. But I don’t have anything personal against him, so when he said that Bauers missed first base, I found myself quietly hoping that Bauers ALMOST missed first, you know, just to make the call a little bit less embarrassing.

No such luck. On replay, you see that Bauers stepped SQUARELY on the bag, like right in the middle, like it was unmissable. Utterly unmissable.

Of course, replay instantly overturned the call because that’s the world we live in. Egregious mistakes by umpires are now baked into the system. C.B. Bucknor incomprehensibly says that the guy missed the base; the guy clearly didn’t miss the base. The game goes on.

This — the replay challenge — has been part of baseball for a good while now, but the Automated Ball Strike system is new, and I thought it would have a pretty big impact on the game.

I’m now realizing it is forever changing the game.

There’s no going back from here.

The funny thing is, it is changing the game in a different way from what I expected. I thought about the ABS system as the first stage of robo-umpiring — where balls and strikes are called by cameras, lasers, artificial intelligence, and whatever else is in the Statcast™ stew. And, yeah, we might be heading there soon.

But what is really happening, at least for now, is that baseball is being umpired more and more by the players themselves.

The players never had any say whatsoever in how a baseball game was officiated. The very word “umpire” comes from the old French word “nonper,” which literally meant “an odd number, not even.” The whole point of the umpire is that in a dispute between two people, the umpire was not even; he was above the others, and his word was to be treated as law.

That was put in concrete terms in the very first National League constitution in 1876:

“The umpire is the sole judge of play and is entitled to the respect of the spectators, and any person hissing or hooting at, or offering any insult or indignation at him, must promptly be ejected from the grounds.”

Umpires had a nice century-plus run as the sole judge of play. No, they couldn’t eject every single person who hissed or hooted; that would have often meant ejecting an entire stadium of people. And, particularly in the early days of the game, they were under constant assault, often physical assault from players and fans.

But their calls were final.

“Yesterday that might have been a ball,” the umpire says in the post-credit scene of “A League of Their Own.” “Tomorrow it might be a ball. But today, it’s a strike.”

That was the attitude of the umpires. How many ball and strike calls do you think they missed over 150 years? It’s incalculable even if you don’t include Eric Gregg’s missed calls in that Livan Hernandez game. And yet, even a complaint from the dugout or batter could be met with an automatic ejection.

And now, all of a sudden, players can do more than complain about a ball-strike call. They can immediately challenge it, say in front of everyone, “No! You are wrong!” And then the umpire has no choice but to stand there as an animation magically appears on the scoreboard — and on television sets everywhere — that shows, more often than not (at least so far), that, yes, the umpire WAS wrong.

And the umpire has to sheepishly take back the ball-strike call.

Here’s the thing that it all exposes: Umpires are just guessing on the close ones. I don’t care how good an umpire you are — and I do believe these umpires are, for the most part, absolutely terrific at what they do — there’s no human way to determine if a pitch is a millimeter off the plate or a millimeter on the plate. It’s not possible.

Sure, some of the missed calls have indeed been egregious — as a big league umpire in today’s world, you simply cannot miss pitches that are balls or strikes by three inches — but those will likely get cleaned up over time. The millimeter calls will never get cleaned up because eyesight and judgment are just not that precise.

For now, MLB is letting the players have their say by challenging, and that has been fun — challenges now seem to be among the most popular parts of the game. But there are only two incorrect ABS challenges per team, so challenges have to be used sparingly and judiciously, and the obvious question is: “Why? If you know with almost perfect certainty whether a pitch is a ball or a strike, why would you ever let the home plate umpire guess?”

The answer, I think, is that MLB doesn’t really know in what direction they want the game to go. They know — they HAVE to know — that the Day of the Umpire has passed, and that the game will be officiated very differently in the years ahead. And I have been saying for a while now that ABS for every pitch is coming.

But maybe not. Maybe, instead, the game will turn more and more umpiring duties over to the players themselves. Maybe they will continue to say, “Yes, the umpires are imperfect, but we’re sticking with them because they’re a part of baseball, and it’s YOUR JOB to correct them when they mess up. If you don’t correct them, that’s on you.”

In other words, C.B. Bucknor will be out there again tonight, whether you like it or not. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, will be to fix his mistakes.

Let’s talk about the first weekend of the ABS system!

Well, first, let’s meander about the weekend — and especially Mike Trout. He will come back up in the Automated Ball-Strike portion of the essay, but let’s start here by saying that Trout had a wonderful weekend — six hits (including a couple of bombs) and seven walks in 20 plate appearances. His current slash line is .462/.650/.1.573, which, you know, is pretty good.

I mean, no, it’s not Washington’s Joey Weimer, who is 6-for-6 with a triple, two homers, and two walks for the fairly striking 1.000/1.000/2.333 slash line. A 3.333 OPS? That would be a record!*

*The maximum OPS is 5.000, and it has been done seven times, most recently by Houston’s reliever Gustavo Chacîn in 2010, when he homered against Washington’s Luis Atilano in his only plate appearance of the season.

You could also argue that Chicago’s Munetaka Murakami is off to a hotter start — Murakami has homered in each of his first three games, and that’s very exciting because Murakami was a home run sensation in Japan. There were a lot of scouts who did not think that Murakami’s power would transfer to America, which might be how he ended up on the White Sox in the first place. The scouts could still be right, of course. But you’d have to say that early evidence points Murakami’s way.

Cleveland’s Chase Delauter smacked two home runs in his big-league debut, and he leads the league with four. Sal Stewart is having fun in Cincinnati; he has seven hits in his first three games, four of them extra-base hits. Christian Yelich has been locked in, hitting .600, and he hit a pinch-hit homer on Sunday as the Brewers came back from, like, a 48-run deficit to the White Sox. I don’t remember the actual score.

At the same time, Shohei is hitting .125, Judge is hitting .154, and over the weekend the Blue Jays acquired a 22-year-old infielder named Dub Gleed, which, in case it isn’t obvious, means that there’s a baseball player named DUB GLEED, and also you should know that Dub Gleed is from a place called American Fork, Utah, and, yes, I will immediately begin writing a limited series about Dub Gleed from American Fork, Utah. I have no choice.

But we were talking about Mike Trout.

On Opening Day, Trout hit one of the most perfect home runs I’ve ever seen.

The pitcher was AJ Blubaugh — whose name merits a minor role in my soon-to-be-written limited series “DUB GLEED: An American Fork Tale” — and threw a 96 mph fastball on the inside half the plate, and Trout turned on it, and while there have been many longer home runs (estimated 403 feet) and some harder-hit home runs (though 109-mph exit velocity ain’t too bad), this one was visual perfection. The balance. The crispness of the compact swing. The violence of it all. Flawless.

Of course, we all know that Trout — even with his wrecked body as he approaches his 35th birthday — is capable of such moments in isolation. His problem has been staying healthy enough to keep doing it. When the Angels announced that they were going to have Trout play center field every day, the already steep odds of him having his first healthy season in what’s approaching a decade seemed to only get steeper.

And, alas, those odds are still steep. All we Trout fans can do is hope.

But there is something fun we can take away from the first weekend of baseball.

Mike Trout LOVES the ABS challenge system.

In general, hitters have not done all that well with the ABS system so far … which is, you know, a bummer. The last thing the game needs is a new rule that will INCREASE strikeouts and REDUCE hits, but so far that’s exactly what the ABS system is doing. Here’s the rundown:

• 165 total challenges

• 78 by the batters — who were successful 42% of the time. They were able to flip 12 strikeouts and gain six walks.

• 97 by the defense (all but five by catchers), and they overturned SIXTY-ONE calls (63% success rate), flipping 20 strikeouts and overturning six walks.

Yikes. Sure, it’s one weekend, we’re still in March, let’s not jump to any panicked conclusions here. But batters hit .231 over the weekend, and the strikeout rate jumped to a terrifying 9.56 per nine innings. Sure, it's cold weather. Yes, pitchers start the year ahead of hitters.

And, of course, everyone — especially umpires — is still getting used to this whole ABS thing, and adjustments will be made. Adjustments MUST be made. Umpires will absolutely get better at calling balls and strikes because they have no choice; it’s humiliating having important ball-strike calls overturned, especially when you get SIX OF THEM overturned the way the annually maligned C.B. Bucknor did on Saturday. That’s unsustainable. You adapt, or you retire.

We can’t even begin to know the full impact of ABS yet.

But we do know this: Mike Trout loves the ABS system.

He challenged FOUR calls over the weekend. Four. That’s the most of any hitter. And you can see: He is getting a huge kick out of this. On a 1-0 count on Saturday, Bobby Abreu threw him a high pitch that was called a strike by home plate umpire Ben May. Trout challenged, got the ball call, and drew a walk.

On Sunday, in the ninth inning, he got TWO strike calls by home plate umpire Brennan Miller overturned. On the first pitch of that at-bat, Miller called a high pitch a strike — that was one that Astros catcher Christian Vasquez (a longtime pitch-framing maestro) pulled in for the call. Trout tapped his helmet and got it overturned.

Then, on a 3-1 count, Vazquez again brilliantly framed Abreu’s high pitch for a strike, Trout tapped the helmet again, and was given the walk.

That just felt SO satisfying. It was so great to watch an all-time great hitter completely turn around an at-bat because of his superior knowledge of the strike zone.

Trout wasn’t unerring over the weekend; he missed one strike call that caught the very top and very outside edge of the zone — I mean, maybe a millimeter of the ball was in the zone. But even that felt like a great challenge; the umpire had NO IDEA that was a strike; he just got lucky.

Here are the four pitches that Trout challenged, so you can see just how close that last one was:

I’m more convinced than ever that now, with the genie out of the bottle, the clock for a full-fledged ABS system — with every ball and strike called automatically — is close. Very close. The umpires are great at calling the vast majority of ball-strike calls because most are pretty obvious. But on the close ones? They’re just guessing. So far, 57% of all challenges have been successful, which is … awful for umpires.

As I say, I expect umpires to get better and for that number to come down, but it’s not at all clear what all this will do to the game. At least, for now, Mike Trout’s having fun.

Baseball is upon us! Sing it from the rooftops! Here is your weekly splash of joy!

What is your favorite ever baseball card?

From Brilliant Reader James: This beautiful Lou Brock card was the final card that my best friend and I needed to complete the 1976 Topps collection. I was nine years old. After collecting 659 of the 660 cards in the set, we spent weeks buying packs and discarding the doubles into a huge shopping bag. We had 22 Wilbur Woods. Finally, we traded over 800 doubles to some kids down the street for the Brock card.

From Brilliant Reader Dan: August 11, 1987 — My aunt gives me a baseball card collecting kit for my 10th birthday. Mike Greenwell arrives and instantly becomes my favorite player. The 100 copies of this card do NOT pay for my college education as I expected.

From Brilliant Reader Michael: I am an O's fan, but my favorite card of all-time is still my Frank Thomas 1990 Topps #1 draft pick card. I was 6 years old when I pulled this card in a regular old pack of 1990 Topps cards. A few years later, my buddy and I would get the Beckett every month, and fill notebooks handwriting the current prices of all our cards — most were like $1.25, $3.60, occasionally we'd have a $10 or more and that was a big deal. I will never forget seeing that Frank Thomas card worth $1,100 coming off back-to-back MVPs. It became my most prized possession.

Fridays are Clubhouse days around here. The Clubhouse is where the conversation opens up — where we go a little deeper, wander down a few side roads, have friendly arguments, chat over the weekend, and share some joy. Today, we’re going to ramble for a while about opening day and unveil the first class of the Baseball Fun Hall of Fame … plus whatever else comes to mind.

Wait, the Baseball Fun Hall of Fame? You betcha! I mentioned it in Wednesday’s essays ranking all 30 teams in order of fun, and then put up a survey asking you to name the most fun player at every position. More than a thousand of you filled it out! Crazy. So now I’m going to name the inaugural class of the Baseball Fun Hall of Fame, which will also be the most fun team ever put together.

Here we go!

I should add that this will be my team … and the only consideration is fun. Did I take your suggestions under advisement? Absolutely! Will I still have Duane Kuiper in the first class?

If you’re a Clubhouse member, come on down — the door’s open below.

If you’re a free reader, thank you as always for being here. If you ever feel like joining us on Fridays — not for more, exactly, but to be a bigger part of our world — well, now that the baseball season is upon us, there couldn’t be a better time.

Read more

Baseball season is starting! There are season previews everywhere you turn — my favorite is Joe Sheehan’s, so much fun, sign up today! — so there really isn’t much I can add to that space.

But a couple of weeks ago, I got a text from my friend Justin Halpen listing off some teams that he’s most excited to watch this year — the FUN teams.

And I thought: Oh, that could be cool — what if I just ranked the teams not in the order of how they’ll do (which I don’t know) but based on how FUN they are (which I also don’t know but have opinions).

So here we go. I’m going to borrow a system from another friend — Tom Haberstroh’s five-star system. Sign up for his newsletter too!

Here is the star system:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Appointment watching; so fun, super fun.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Lots of fun players make them a daily watch

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Fun enough. If you're searching for a game to watch, check ‘em out

⭐️⭐️ Sort of fun? Maybe one of two players you have to see.

⭐️ Meh. Not a lot of fun.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Teams

Appointment watching, so fun, super fun

Los Angeles Dodgers

Yeah, sorry, I didn’t want to start with the Dodgers … but the Dodgers have Shohei, so they’re the most fun team in baseball by default. Plus, you add Mookie … Freddie … Yoshi … Kyle(y) — well, you already know, the Dodgers have the best and most fun players because, um, the Dodgers bought the best and most fun players.

Does that cut into the fun? Maybe yes. I don’t know — can a team be the most fun AND most disliked at the same time? I think it’s possible. Jordan’s late-era Bulls pulled it off, I think. Steph’s Golden State Warriors pulled it off, I think. The Kansas City Chiefs were, for a while, incredibly fun and wildly disliked. And, hey, the Dodgers will be fun to root against: That’s a thing, too.

Sacramento Athletics

Whoa, you didn’t see this one coming, did you? But this is true: The A’s will be an absolute blast in 2026, I think. My Springsteen pal David Forst somehow finds a way, inside all that craziness, to make his teams a blast.

The A’s lineup, led by the absolutely incredible Nick Kurtz, will score a bajillion runs. I mean — Kurtz, Jacob Wilson, Shea Langeliers, Brent Rooker, et al. They’re going to swat. Kurtz could be an MVP candidate RIGHT NOW. Centerfielder Denzel Clarke is one of the most exciting defensive players in memory; every night, that guy seems to perform some new David Copperfield illusion. Their pitching is not there yet, but that only adds to the fun — we should get nightly slugfests, especially in that Sacramento ballpark.

Kansas City Royals

I don’t know that any general manager really thinks about making a team “fun.” Unfortunately, that’s not the job … the job is to win and then insist to everybody that winning — and only winning — is fun.

But if any GM thinks about a higher ideal of fun, it’s got to be Kansas City’s J.J. Picollo. J.J. is a sports fan. We’ve had some great fan conversations through the years. And I think that helps. No, the Royals didn’t get Bobby Witt Jr. because he’s kettle-corn-in-an-amusement-park fun, but he is all that — he’s as fun as anybody in baseball. Great plays. Blazing speed, Long home runs.

And he’s surrounded by a merry band of men like Vinnie Pasquantino, Maikel Garcia, Cole Ragans, and Jac Caglianone (even his NAME is fun to say — especially if you pronounce it Cag-lee-ah-NO-nay, which is wrong technically but right audibly). They also have baseball’s senior citizen of fun, Salvy Perez, who just inspires happiness. I don’t have any idea if this team can compete in 2026, but it will be fun to find out.

Arizona Diamondbacks

Yeah, I said it. The Diamondbacks are right up there with the most fun teams in baseball. First of all, Corbin Carroll is a whole barrel of monkeys all by himself. He does everything. He’s my darkhorse MVP candidate this year — though, to be honest, with Shohei in the league, EVERYONE ELSE is a darkhorse MVP candidate.

Then you add Ketel Marte, who is awesome, and Geraldo Perdomo, who is awesome, and Nolan Arenado, who was awesome and might find some of that old juice.

Toronto Blue Jays

I have probably had more fun in my life watching Vladimir Guerrero hit baseball than anybody else. So it’s REALLY something that his son, Vladdy Jr., is just about as much fun to watch hit. This guy’s a whole bag of peanut M&Ms every time he comes to the plate. He alone would make the Blue Jays a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ team.

But then they have Alejandro Kirk. I mean, if there was a 24-hour Alejandro Kirk Truman Show channel where you just watched that guy live his daily life, I’d watch.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Teams

Lots of fun players make them a worthwhile daily watch

Boston Red Sox

Sure, I’m all caught up in the Roman Anthony hype. He gives off all these wonderful Joey Votto vibes — never swings at a bad pitch, always hits the ball hard, there’s a beautiful purity to the way he hits. We’ll see how the power comes in, but for now, he’s 21 years old and every at-bat feels like a fresh adventure.

I haven’t loved many things the Red Sox have done over the last decade, but I’ve got to say that now, even beyond Roman Anthony, they’ve got a lot of fun players. Cedanne Rafaela is a wonder in center field. Garrett Crochet is exciting every time out. Sonny Gray and Willson Contreras are cheery veteran pickups. Some of the kids, like Marcelo Mayer, still have potential. I don’t know if they will come together as a team, but hey, set a course for adventure, your mind on a new romance.

Atlanta Braves

I’m not entirely sure what to make of the Braves as a contender in 2026. Last year was dismal and unquestionably NOT a lot of fun. But Ronald Acuña seems to be healthy — I sure hope he’s healthy — and he automatically puts them at the head of the class. Add in Chris Sale and Spencer Strider, both thrill rides on the mound. Strider just struck out 11 in five innings in a spring training game, all of them on curveballs.

Am I wrong in thinking that Matt Olson is fun? I couldn’t exactly describe WHY he’s fun … but I think he is.

New York Mets

Here’s your fun-related question of the day: Is Juan Soto a fun player?

On the plus side, you know, he’s a master craftsman at work — in our book BIG FAN (coming May 19 — preorder now!), I make the case that watching ANY master craftsman at work is endlessly fun. I would watch the best bus driver in the world parallel park an 18-wheeler all day long.

And … isn’t that kind of what Juan Soto does? He parallel parks 18-wheelers. He never swings at a bad pitch, he rarely misses a mistake, and he does that super fun little shuffle dance after holding back on a pitch that just missed. Heck, last year he led the league in stolen bases.

But on the other hand, he does walk a bajillion times, and walking is not fun. The numbers tell you he’s a well-below-average outfielder. I lean toward him being fun, but it’s not an easy call.

Fortunately, the Mets have Francisco Lindor, a first-ballot Fun Hall of Famer.*

The Mets also now have Bo Bichette, who is pretty fun himself and has a name that sounds almost exactly like Boba Fett. Can’t get more fun than that.

*I know what you’re saying: “Hey, is this JoeBlogs or isn’t it? Where is my list of who is in the Baseball Fun Hall of Fame?” Well, for you Clubhouse members … it’s coming Friday!

In fact, I’ve put together a survey — takes only a couple of minutes — where you can nominate your Baseball Fun Hall of Fame team. I’ll take all your picks, throw them into the blender, mix in my own thoughts, and unveil the Baseball Fun Hall of Fame in Friday’s Clubhouse.

Take the Baseball Fun Hall Survey

Cincinnati Reds

Elly de la Cruz … Elly de la Cruz … Elly de la Cruz.

I’m not 100% sure that Elly de la Cruz is the most fun player in baseball — I mean, this is a league with Shohei and Bobby Witt Jr., and Paul Skenes and Kyle Schwarber and a bunch of others. We’re in a Baseball Fun Renaissance.

But I think Elly de la Cruz MIGHT be the fun of them all, simply because he — more than anyone else, including Shohei — might at any moment do something so absurd, so wonderful, glorious that you will remember it for the rest of your life.

If you are just sitting around thinking, “Hmm, I’ve got an hour to kill here, what team should I watch,” you simply cannot go wrong turning on the Reds and waiting for Elly de la Cruz to do something that will get you to jump out of your recliner.

It stinks that Hunter Greene, who is a joy to watch pitch, won’t be back until probably July after he had bone chips removed from his elbow, but when he does come back, the Reds will have two of the most fun players in baseball.

Oh yeah, I forgot, the Reds got Eugenio Suarez back. And Tito manages them. The Reds have ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ fun potential.

Philadelphia Phillies

The Phils are getting older, so maybe some of the fun is beginning to fade. Bryce Harper, for example, used to be a lot more fun, I think. Maybe that’s just the after-effects of the World Baseball Classic, where Harper — even after he hit the awesome homer against Venezuela in the championship game — came across like a wet mop.

Where was the Bryce Harper who did the soccer slide when the Phillies played that game in London? I want him back! I want the “That’s a clown question, bro,” Bryce again.

But even if Bryce is not as joyful and fun-loving as he used to be, this is still a wonderful band of slugging goofballs led by First Ballot Fun Hall of Famer Kyle Schwarber.

Let’s also give it up to another First Ballot Fun Hall of Famer, Trea Turner, who still slides the way Gregory Hines danced.

Seattle Mariners

OK, not to bring up the whole WBC bummer thing yet again, but here’s hoping Cal Raleigh ditches that persona and returns to being the Big Dumper we all fell in love with in 2025. You know — that 8-year-old kid on the video who was laughing and singing “I’m the home run derby champ!”

Julio Rodríguez is, of course, a Super Fun All-Star. Randy Arozarena is a blast, Josh Naylor offers some underrated fun.

And you know who is truly enjoyable to watch? Bryan Woo. Check him out when you get a chance.

Chicago Cubs

Look, the Cubs will always be at least a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ fun team because a day game at Wrigley Field, no matter how good or bad the Cubs are, is always going to be one of your most fun days of the year.

Does Pete Crow Armstrong make them a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ fun team? Not quite, I don’t think. He’s definitely fun, but he’s also prone to going into slumps that make you wonder if he’s all right.

As for the rest of the Cubs, they’re fun enough. Dansby Swanson is fun to watch at shortstop. Alex Bregman, Ian Happ, and Michael Busch are fine. If this team has a fun secret weapon, I’d say it’s Nico Hoerner. That guy, on a nightly basis, will do something in the field or something on the bases or something at the plate that gets the heart pumping.

Milwaukee Brewers

The Brewers are always underrated in every way, and I’d say they’re an underrated fun team too — they’re worth watching on your MLB app now and again. Brice Turang is really fun. Sal Frelick is really fun. Jackson Chourio is really fun. I don’t know if Christian Yelich can ever be the ultra-mega-superstar he was before the injuries, but he’s come back a long way, and that’s fun.

Now they’ve also got Jacob Misorowski pouring in 100 mph fastballs.

Oh, and one more thing: The Brewers announcer Brian Anderson is one of the very best in the business.

Baltimore Orioles

OK, listen, I’m going out on a limb for you, Baltimore. For the last two years, there was no team in baseball LESS fun than the Orioles. It’s no fun watching big prospects fall apart. It’s no fun watching a front office fritter away its golden opportunity.

But — and maybe this is just wishful thinking — I have this weird feeling that it’s going to be a fun year around Camden Yards. I have this weird feeling that Adley Rutschman will find himself again, that Pete Alonso will hit many, many bombs, and that Gunnar Henderson will compete for league MVP.

It obviously doesn’t have to go that way. And even if it DOES go that way, the pitching staff could ruin the fun even if it DOES go that way. But it’s March, dammit, and weird feelings are to be respected in March. Anyway, Gunnar alone is worth the watch.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Teams

Fun enough. If you’re searching for a game to watch, check ‘em out

Pittsburgh Pirates (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ when Skenes pitches)

Konnor Griffin starts the year in the minor leagues, so they will move up to at least a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ team when he arrives.

So why watch the Pirates on days when Skenes is not pitching? I guess the best answer is Oneil Cruz. He’s kind of a lottery ticket version of Elly de la Cruz. That is to say, most of the time you watch him, he will strike out on some terrible pitch or commit some ghastly error in center field. But when the numbers come in, the jackpot is enormous — he’ll launch some 7,000-foot home run, or he’ll throw a 120-mph laser from center, or do something else you’ve never seen before and will probably never see again.

When Paul Skenes does pitch, the Pirates are the best watch in all of baseball.

Oh, and if you live in Pittsburgh or are visiting? PNC Park is my favorite ballpark in the game. You’ll have fun there no matter who is playing.

Detroit Tigers (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ when Skubal pitches)

The Tigers don’t have an all-or-nothing Oneil Cruz type who might pay off in a big way, but they do have a bunch of guys who are kind of fun to watch — you know, guys like Riley Green, Kerry Carpenter, Dillon Dingler, Framber Valdez. The Tigers — sans Skubal — are like a reliable sitcom that will never have you rolling on the floor in laughter but will generally offer a pleasant diversion to pass the time.

Then, when Skubal pitches, BLAMMO, they’re Arrested Development, Curb, Parks and Rec, and Community all rolled into one.

Also, Jason Bennetti calls the action, which is just a joy.

Texas Rangers (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ when deGrom pitches)

Yeah, I think Jacob deGrom is still a showstopper.

The Rangers have two players who I think can make them a great watch. The first is Corey Seager, assuming he’s healthy, which, I readily admit, is a big assumption. If Seager can just get healthy for a few more seasons, he will be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. He’s that great. He also hasn’t played 125 games in a season since 2022, so you’ll need to check the injury list before tuning in.

The other is Wyatt Langford. I’m SO bullish on Wyatt Langford. I think he’s about ready to break out into an MVP candidate. I mean, that’s not an especially risky prediction when you consider that he was a 6 bWAR player in 2025. But I think the ceiling is a lot higher than that. The ceiling is a 30-30 Gold Glove outfielder who walks 100 times and makes like nine fence-busting catches because that guy is utterly fearless. They don’t call him “Evel Knievel” for nothing.

By the way, is Evel Knievel the most fun daredevil ever? I think it depends if you consider Harry Houdini more a daredevil and less a magician. There’s an argument to be made that way. I’d rank them like so:

1. Harry Houdini

2. Evel Knievel

3. Philippe Petit

San Diego Padres

On the PosCast this week, we had special guest Mike Vaccaro — his new book Bosses of the Bronx just launched to much acclaim — and we talked at some length about the old Electric Football game. To me, no game ever had as big a game between how much fun it LOOKED to play and how little fun it actually WAS to play.

The Padres are the Electric Football of teams. They certainly SHOULD be fun. I mean, they’ve got plenty of exciting players — Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, Xander Bogaerts, Jackson Merrill — and then they’ve got Mason Miller throwing laser beams to close things out. It should be a blast. But for some reason, at least for me, it doesn’t quite take off.

Tampa Bay Rays

The Rays seem to go out of their way to NOT be fun. That’s their whole thing. They figured out, years ago, that the only way for a team that spends like 13 bucks on payroll to actually win is to drain all the fun out of the game and beat teams out of sheer spite.

You like starting pitching? TOO BAD! We’re going to start this relief pitcher you’ve never heard of and let him go one inning.

You like hits? TOO BAD! We’re going to shift our defense around so that there’s definitely a defender EXACTLY where the ball will be hit.

And so on. I can’t blame them. In fact, I kind of admire them for it.

Every now and again, though, a super fun player sneaks through their defenses. Randy Arozarena was like that. Now, it’s Junior Caminero. He has the fastest bat in all of baseball, so every at-bat with him is a Great Gatsby party. He might hit one 600 feet! He might swing at a pitch 10 feet outside! You just never know!

⭐️⭐️ Teams

Sort of fun? Maybe one of two players you have to see.

New York Yankees

We never hide our anti-Yankees bias here at JoeBlogs … but this is an honest rating. The Yankees are not fun. Aaron Judge is fun, sure, he’s the greatest hitter we’ve ever seen, seriously, the absolute best. He performs nightly miracles.

Judge is the only reason this is not a ⭐️ team.

These Yankees minus Judge are melba toast. They are a dentist’s waiting room. These Yankees are beige carpet, airplane peanuts, a line at the DMV, a movie trailer that seems to show the entire movie, and those first 10 minutes of any Zoom call when the host says, “We’ll wait for others to join.”

I’m completely serious about this. The Yankees are one-dimensional, play meh defense, and they have NO speed at all. Do you know who the fastest player on the Yankees is by sprint speed? I’ll give you a bunch of guesses; it won’t matter. It’s Jasson Dominguez (95th in baseball). After that, it’s Anthony Volpe (145th).

Let me be clear: I am not saying here that the Yankees will not win; I suspect they will win. I think they could absolutely take this division. But only a true Yankees fan will appreciate them. And I don’t think even true Yankees fans are excited about watching them play … except when Judge steps to the plate.

San Francisco Giants

Great, we’re kicking off the 2026 baseball season with two ⭐️⭐️ teams on Netflix. That’s the MLB fun machine at work.

The Giants do have some fun-adjacent players. Logan Webb absolutely could win the Cy Young this year; he’s baseball’s greatest workhorse, and he led the league in strikeouts in 2025. Matt Chapman plays terrific defense at third base and puts up 5 or 7 WAR pretty much every year. Rafael Devers can flat-out rake. Luis Arraez might win another batting title.

But you know it just won’t be fun — you know they’ll finish a bland 81-81 or thereabouts because they always do. Maybe it’s this: The Giants are Asia. No, not the continent. The superband. Remember Asia? They put together four superstars from different prog rock bands and looked to take over the music world. It didn’t quite work out that way (all apologies to you “Heat of the Moment” fans).

At least the Giants still have Kuip in the booth.

Cleveland Guardians

Oh, what to do with the Guardians? I mean, look, José Ramirez is a Super Fun All-Star, absolutely. And watching him carry this team on his back is great.

But it’s a sequel. It’s not just a sequel, it’s a sequel to a sequel to a sequel. I guess they made ten Saw movies, and Saw XI has been in the works for some time, so I guess there’s an audience for the same story, if the story’s good enough. For me, though, I’d like to see a fresh take on Cleveland baseball.

One bit of bonus fun for Cleveland: You can check in on them any time this year and find yourself asking this question: “Wait, when did the Guardians get Rhys Hoskins?”

Minnesota Twins

Byron Buxton didn’t just have a chance to be a great player … he had a chance to be on the all-time Baseball Fun Team. I mean, it would have been tough for him to displace Willie Mays in center field, but when Buxton was right, when he was at his athletic peak, my gosh, there was nobody like him. He was like a faster Eric Davis (who is in the Fun Hall of Fame, by the way).

All the injuries robbed us of that version of Byron Buxton, but he can still be fun.

As for the rest? Royce Lewis might stay healthy, maybe. Twenty-three-year-old Luke Keaschall showed some promise. No, it’s not a lot, but they’ve got a beautiful ballpark, and Minnesota summers are absolutely perfect, and for those of you young enough to not yet worry about heart attacks, the Juicy Lucy is there for your eating pleasure.

Houston Astros

Watching the Astros now is, I imagine, what it must have been like going to see Dead & Company play because you were a big Grateful Dead fan. Like, Dead & Company wasn’t the Grateful Dead, but it still had one original member — the late Bob Weir — and it played the same music, and it probably felt pretty much like seeing the original.*

*I don’t know this firsthand because I’m not a Grateful Dead fan, but I will tell you that for our book BIG FAN — yes, another plug, coming out May 19! Preorder now! — Mike Schur DID go to a Dead & Company show, and it’s one of my favorite chapters.

So, the Astros still have Jose Altuve, and they still have Carlos Correa, and they still have Yordan Alvarez, so the old Astros experience is still here, if you’re into that. For everybody else, this is still a good team to boo for past transgressions, I suppose.

St. Louis Cardinals

The Cards are probably more of a ⭐️ team than a ⭐️⭐️ team … but I’m going to give them the extra star because for all those Cardinals fans who have had to endure the maybe-we’re-trying-to-win-maybe-we’re-not blahness of the last couple of years, this team will likely be a lot more fun.

They’re going young, building for tomorrow. Masyn Winn is a joy to watch play shortstop, and J.J. Wetherholt looks like the sort of hitter St. Louis will fall in love with.

⭐️ Teams

Meh. Not a lot of fun.

California Angels

It used to be you could say, “Well, hey, at least they have Mike Trout.”

And, sure, they still do have Mike Trout, one of the best who ever lived, but I fear watching him play now is like watching a once-great Hollywood star perform “The King and I” at your local theater while you gnaw on a very tough chicken breast. The Angels insist he will play daily center field, which seems to me a very, very bad idea. And even if, dare to dream, he somehow stays healthy out there and somehow finds a little bit of his old magic, well, this team is obviously going nowhere, so it will still offer a constant reminder that Mike Trout has never won a single playoff game.

For shame, Arte Moreno. For shame.

Colorado Rockies (⭐️⭐️⭐️ team in person)

Um, you know, Ezequiel Tovar is, um, and Brenton Doyle in center is, um, no, I can’t do this, I can’t think of a single reason to watch the Rockies on television unless you just watch to see if they can break the record for most losses in a season. I’ll tune in now and again because, as I have mentioned a couple of times here, my friend Maddy went to prom with Rockies manager Warren Schaeffer.

But that’s television. If you’re in the Denver area, I can’t more highly recommend that you go see them in person. A Coors Field experience is all sorts of awesome, and even with the humidor, you’re certainly going to see a lot of runs (most of them by the opposing team, but those count, too).

Chicago White Sox

Yeah, it’s pretty bleak on the South Side. But I do enjoy watching Colson Montgomery play, and I think we’re all modestly interested to find out of Munetaka Murakami can bring some of his Japanese super-slugger energy over to the U.S.

Maybe the White Sox could bring back those old uniforms with short pants. That would be fun. Or Disco Demolition night?

Miami Marlins

I almost left the Marlins off because (A) I totally forgot they existed and (B) I didn’t think you would notice. But then I thought: No, there is something to say about this franchise!

I’ll let you know when I think of that something.

Washington Nationals

There are some individual players worth watching. James Wood strikes out more than anyone else, but he also hits bombs. Jacob Young is a defensive dynamo in center. C.J. Abrams has the makings of a good player.

But when you put it all together, I think the Nationals are the most miserable watch in baseball, thanks to an ownership group that just doesn’t seem to care at all. I mean, in the last decade, this team had Bryce Harper, Juan Soto, Trea Turner, Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, Kyle Schwarber … now they are about to go into another rebuild to make up for the last rebuild. It’s all pretty dreary.

But there must be something fun going on in Washington, right?

Wait. Found it. May 7 will be “Weather Day at Nationals Park.”

What is Weather Day? Glad you asked — in addition to a thrilling game between the Twins and Nationals, students will get an interactive pregame weather presentation led by local meteorologists. This is a very real thing that I am not making up.

So see you all at the park on May 7!

If you haven’t yet, jump in and make your picks for the Baseball Fun Hall of Fame — I’ll unveil it Friday in the Clubhouse.

Those of you who have been with us for a while know that we have a Non-Fiction Book of the Month Club here at JoeBlogs! Yeah, it’s been a while. That’s my fault entirely. Our intrepid book editor, Talia, and our awesome book panels have been working. This was supposed to be our January Book of the Month.

But I’m hoping that now we are back on track.

Before I hand the microphone over to Talia, let me offer up a couple of book thoughts myself.

1. Barnes & Noble is having a special preorder offer for members — if you type in PREORDER25 at checkout, you can get, I don’t know, BIG FAN (out May 19) for 25% off the regular price PLUS you will get your usual 10% off for being a member. So that’s like, um, I’m not good at math, but, like, that’s some money off!

2. My pal Mike Vaccaro’s new book, The Bosses of the Bronx, about the House of Steinbrenner, is now officially on sale. Mike and I talk to Vac on this week’s PosCast.

Oh, and one last thing: Talia has put together a survey for anyone and everyone who would like to be on a book panel and a part of our Non-Fiction Book Club. Now that we’re back up and going, I can promise you that it will be a lot of fun. There really aren’t many non-fiction book clubs out there — in the clubs, it’s mostly romance and fantasy and romantasy and fantance and all that.

And, look, I love fiction. But, obviously, I believe there’s something very special about non-fiction, something about true stories that, when told well, lift us up and break us apart and remind us what it is to be human.

Anyway, fill out Talia’s survey. Come be a part of this.

OK, let’s hand this thing over to Talia, finally. Sorry it took so long!

Book of the Month: Labrynth of Ice: The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Exploration

The Panel: Destiny of the Republic

The Members: David Matson, Jonathan Levey, Scott Rose, Frank Ackerman, Jeff Hilzinger, Matthew Hemmer, Andrew Lachow, Bill Carmichael, Benjamin Burnham, Alan Elias

The Book: Labyrinth of Ice: The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Expedition by Buddy Levy

Content Warning: This book contains mentions of suicide, discussions of mental illness, some upsetting scenes involving sled dogs, and graphic descriptions of injuries, death, and general human suffering. It can be a difficult read at times, so take care when encountering any topics that may be particularly sensitive to you.

Supplemental Reading:

• For an incredibly important reinvestigation of the murder of Emmett Till that refuses to look away and unearths long-hidden truths: The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson

• For some historical potpourri: One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson

• For fans of Transformers — only non-sentient cars become non-sentient planes, and also it’s World War II — The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War by A.J. Baime

• For those of you who read Tommy Tomlinson’s wonderful Dogland and thought, “I wish Striker was a horse,” Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand

• For a look at the lives of West Point cadets: Absolutely American by David Lipsky

• For an Old West range war, 21st century style: The Crazies: The Cattleman, The Wind Prospector, and a War Out West by Amy Gamerman

Happy New Year, everyone (Joe Note: See, I TOLD YOU this was supposed to run a while ago). Welcome to the first Book of the Month of 2026! My resolution is to make more of my hopes and dreams for this club a reality.

Please keep an eye on your email for panel assignments! I’ll start by inviting the people I already have on my list; if your interests or desired level of participation have changed in any way, please let me know ASAP so I can adjust accordingly.

I’d also like to remind everyone that JoeBlogs still has a Discord Channel (really!) and it’s open for business. I’d really like to get that hopping this year as well. If you’re not a Discord member: Here’s your invitation!

If Discord is not your thing, please email me, and I’ll send you any relevant updates (but I encourage you to join! It’s an easy sign-up and a great way to chat with everyone).

Now let’s talk about Labyrinth of Ice.

Here’s panel member Bill Carmichael’s delightfully succinct submission message:

“It is an incredible adventure read. Levy is extremely talented when it comes to narrative nonfiction.”

Bill was totally right. Labyrinth of Ice is a detailed account of the 1881 Lady Franklin Bay Expedition led by Lieutenant Adolphus W. Greely of the U.S. Army.

The goals of the expedition were relatively simple:

1. Establish “the northernmost of a chain of a dozen research stations around the Arctic” as part of the International Polar Year effort.

2. Look for the men of the USS Jeannette who had gone missing two years prior on their own voyage to the North Pole.

3. Attain Farthest North, snatching the honor from Britain, the holders of the record for three hundred years.

But it was the 1800s. So nothing was really simple, except for, like, growing an incredible mustache and then dying.

If you’ve ever seen a film by the Coen Brothers, you’ll likely be familiar with this idea: everything that can go wrong will go wrong, especially when there is some sort of ludicrous plan to get rich quick or steal your love rival’s wife.

Here, though, the expedition was meticulously planned, with contingency plans set, resupply ships scheduled, previous failures studied … and still, pretty much everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

You’ll get to experience the story from a few perspectives, including: Greely and his expedition team, the men chosen to lead various rescue attempts, and (maybe my favorite) Greely’s devoted wife, Henrietta.

When resupply and rescue missions failed, and the government seemed ready to give up on what they considered a lost cause, Henrietta worked tirelessly to bring her husband and his men home. She reached out to valuable friends and connections working in the government and in the news to build a campaign that put Greely’s name and predicament in the headlines. This eventually reached President Arthur himself. Oh, and she did all this while taking care of two young daughters.

Labrynth of Ice is a remarkable (and incredibly well researched) tale of survival and resilience, but it’s also heavy with unimaginable loss and suffering. If you’ve ever wanted to be made particularly grateful for your favorite reading chair, blanket, and steaming mug of tea, Labyrinth of Ice will help you get there.

And it’s exactly what a JoeBlogs Book of the Month should be — I had to remind myself again and again that it is, in fact, a true story. When you have a story of men stranded on miles-wide ice floes, bulletproof walruses, shipwrecks, threats of mutiny, and literal kegs of lime juice, you’ll also catch yourself thinking this sounds like something only Hollywood could dream up.

The one thing that always feels true is the painfully slow government action and finger-pointing.

I was positively riveted by Labyrinth of Ice, and blasted through hundreds of pages like a steamer through pack ice (arguably with even more efficiency, and fortunately without sinking to the bottom of the ocean).

Name a year. Any year. What’s that you say? Did you say 1972? OK. I was 5 that year.

Here’s what I remember about 1972 off the top of my head.

In 1972, the Oakland Athletics won the first of three consecutive World Series. Johnny Bench won the National League MVP award, his second MVP, and, of course, Dick Allen won the American League MVP award. That was the year Dick Allen appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated with a cigarette dangling from his mouth as he juggled three baseballs.

There was not actually a story about Dick Allen in that Sports Illustrated. In those days, just because you were on the cover of the magazine did not necessarily mean there would be a story about you inside.

Obviously, I could do a lot more baseball — in 1972, the BBWAA voted Sandy Koufax and Yogi Berra into the Baseball Hall of Fame. One other player, too. I’ll remember it before we get to the bottom. But let’s move on from baseball.

In 1972, the Los Angeles Lakers finished 69-13 — the best NBA record until the Jordan Bulls — and won the NBA title. That was Jerry West’s one and only title as a player.

The starting five of the 1972 Lakers was Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Gail Goodrich, Happy Hairston, and Jim McMillan. In my memory, I tend to put Elgin Baylor on that team, but if I remember correctly, Baylor retired early in that season because of injuries.

Of course, everyone remembers that in 1972, the Miami Dolphins went undefeated. They would go on to beat Washington in the Super Bowl 14-7, but that was 1973. The Pittsburgh Steelers won their first playoff game in 1972, and that was the Immaculate Reception game.

The five players most involved with the Immaculate Reception were Terry Bradshaw who made the pass (and was immediately knocked sideways so he didn’t see anything that followed), Frenchy Fuqua (the intended receiver), Jack Tatum (who deflected the ball 10 yards backward), Phil Vilapiano (who was supposed to be covering Franco Harris but raced toward the ball instead) and Franco Harris (who caught the deflected pass just inches above the ground and scored the game-winning touchdown).

The bar where the Oneders perform their soon-to-be hit song “That Thing You Do,” in the movie of the same name, was called Vilapiano’s after Phil.

The 1972 Olympics were in Munich, and are remembered, obviously and tragically, for the massacre of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes and coaches, killed in a terrorist attack by Black September. At that Olympics, Mark Spitz won seven gold medals, gymast Olga Korbut thrilled and delighted the world, and American Frank Shorter won the marathon.

The 1972 Winter Olympics were in Sapporo, Japan. I don’t have any other specific memories from that Olympics. I’m pretty sure that Dorothy Hamill won the figure skating in 1976. And I seem to recall that Peggy Fleming won in 1968.

The Boston Bruins beat the New York Rangers in the Stanley Cup final in 1972. I long thought that the famous photo of Bobby Orr flying through the air was from that 1972 Stanley Cup, but no, that was from 1970, when the Bruins played the Blues.

Jack Nicklaus won the 1972 Masters, and I believe that’s the one he won wire-to-wire. Nicklaus also won the U.S. Open that year, at Pebble Beach.

Billie Jean King won three of the four tennis Grand Slams in 1972. The only one she didn’t win was Australia. I don’t remember if she actually competed in Australia that year.

UCLA won the NCAA men’s basketball national championship, but that’s easy; they always won it in those years. They went undefeated. Bill Walton was the big star on that team, of course, but I believe that team had Henry Bibby and Jamaal Wilkes on it, too. Jamaal was known as Keith Wilkes then.

Riva Ridge won the Kentucky Derby. I know this because I once read a story about one of my writing heroes, Bill Nack, and it said that he could name every Kentucky Derby winner ever. So I tried to memorize every Kentucky Derby winner ever too. I didn’t get very far. But for some reason, Riva Ridge in 1972 sticks out on my mind.

Richard Nixon beat George McGovern in a historic landslide in the 1972 Presidential election. Nixon won 49 states. The only state McGovern won was Massachusetts. He didn’t even win his home state of South Dakota. If memory serves, he didn’t even come close to winning his home state of South Dakota.

Of course, there would be just a bit of controversy about how Nixon handled that election.

I said that thing about trying (and failing) to memorize every Kentucky Derby winner ever. Well, I actually DID memorize every Oscar-winning movie ever. I had that on my resume for a while, and interviewers would constantly test me. I’d fail that test miserably now. But a lot of it has just stuck in my brain.

So I know that The Godfather won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1972.

And I also know that the winner at the Academy Awards HELD in 1972 was The French Connection.

Other movie things: Marlon Brando won best actor, and Liza Minnelli won best actress for Cabaret. That meant that Liza won one more Academy Award than her mother, Judy Garland, though Judy Garland won something called the Juvenile Academy Award, which was given occasionally by the Academy for special performances by actors under 18. Shirley Temple won the first Juvenile Academy Award.

The No. 1 television show in 1972, I’m pretty sure, was All in the Family.

The No. 1 song might have been “American Pie” by Don McLean. It also might have been that Roberta Flack song, I might get the title wrong, but it’s the “First I Ever Saw Your Face,” song.

For a while, yeah, I tried to memorize the No. 1 song from every year.

Early Wynn. That was the other guy elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972.

So why do I tell you all this? Is it merely to show off my awesome memory? I hope not. And I don’t think my memory is that awesome anyway. I’ll bet, if you’re of a certain age, you remembered most of this stuff too, maybe even all of it.

No. I tell you this because I was thinking this morning that my mind is filled with so much useless information. Maybe yours is too. We remember so many things — long ago summer lyrics, long discarded lineup cards, half-baked facts that might or might not be true, names of random celebrities like Foster Brooks and Fred Travalena and Nipsey Russell and Charo, telephone numbers that stopped ringing decades ago — that mean nothing to no one, not even ourselves.

What do those memories crowd out?

What have we forgotten that could help us? Save us? Soothe us?

I don’t know the answer to that. But I do know the Cy Young winners in 1972.

PASSWORD …

(Normally, I include the password here, but we’re opening up The Clubhouse to everyone today! If you know the password, put it in the subject line for your responses to proudly display your Clubhouse badge!)

The Clubhouse is now in session. Welcome, everyone, to our open edition!

The Clubhouse, which appears every Friday, is where the conversation opens up — where we go a little deeper, wander down a few side roads, have friendly arguments, chat over the weekend, and share some joy. It’s loose, it’s a little weird, it’s very communal, and today we’re opening it up for everybody. I hope you all like it; we’d love for you to be a part of it.

And today, I think, yeah, I’m going to announce what my next book will be about.

Subscribe now

Baseball is happening! Here’s your weekly splash of joy.

What is your favorite ever baseball card?

From Brilliant Reader Alan: My favorite card is the 1969 Topps Roberto Clemente card. This was my first year of collecting (at age 8), and Clemente was one of my favorite players. I was, however, confused that Topps printed his name as “Bob” Clemente. Did he really go by Bob? HE WAS THE MOST UN-“BOB”-LIKE PLAYER EVER!

From Brilliant Reader Jason: The 1975 Topps Boog Powell “Sign From God” card. Boog was obviously known for his slugging ability, but this card shows him receiving some heavenly help fielding a fly ball at first. A true golden glove.

From Brilliant Reader Skye: In Zach Neto’s Topps Pro Debut 2023 "Farm Fresh Futures" card, he is twenty times larger than the barn at the bottom. He is jogging somewhere; his face suggests going back to the dugout after grounding out. He is playing for the Rocket City Trash Pandas.

Joe: Fantastic, fantastic entries continue to pour in. This will be a fun series to follow!

It’s the Ballad of Marco Scutaro!

Our dear friend — and Brilliant Reader — Matt the Electrician has a new little record out called “Let’s Play Two” with two baseball songs on it. They’re both absolutely fantastic, but I will say my favorite is The Ballad of Marco Scutaro, which is, like, maybe the greatest baseball song ever? It has a special guest on it too — another brilliant reader. I won’t ruin the surprise.

Anyway, Matt will be in San Francisco performing next week, and he will be selling the amazingly cute 45s (I have one; it’s the best). But you can also stream the song wherever you stream your music, or, even better, you can buy the album for just a couple of bucks over at Bandcamp and support one of our great American singer-songwriters.

It’s the ballad of Marco Scutaro! It’s the ballad of Marco Scoooooo-taro!

Vac’s The Bosses of the Bronx is almost out!

Second, I want to speak from the heart to you Yankees fans for a moment — it AMAZES me how many Yankees fans we have as part of our community here, since I spend, I don’t know, roughly 38% of my time here and on the PosCast bashing the Yankees and talking about how much I want them to lose.

I’m not apologizing for that — I will no doubt keep doing that — but I’m so happy with how the vast majority of Yankees fans take that stuff in stride and even seem to, I don’t know, enjoy it? There’s a confidence and swagger that so many Yankees fans have that I both admire and envy; it’s like they WANT you to loathe them because they know that they’re the best and, frankly, you SHOULD loathe them if you were unlucky enough to be born rooting for any other team.

That swagger, alas, is beginning to crack as the Yankees act less and less like THE YANKEES all the time. My brother Mike Vaccaro has written the absolutely perfect book for you Yankee fans who pine for the chaotic, absurd, hilarious, and overwhelming time when George Steinbrenner ruled. And at the same time, he has written the absolutely perfect book describing how the House of Steinbrenner has fallen. The Bosses of the Bronx comes out Tuesday. If you hate the Yankees, you’ll get a huge kick out of it; it’s just so much fun. If you love the Yankees, I assume you’ve preordered it already.

Buy "The Bosses of the Bronx"

BIG FAN Updates

I’m told tickets are going fast for the first week of our BIG FAN tour, which is awesome to hear. Mike and I are in the process of lining up super-cool special guests to moderate at each spot — we’ll start announcing those folks when we get them finalized — so I would say that even though this is all still two months away, if you would like to get tickets, now is the very best time.

• New York, The Strand, Monday, May 18

• Cambridge, The Brattle Theater, Tuesday, May 19

• St. Louis, St. Louis County Library, Wednesday, May 20

• Kansas City, Unity Temple on the Plaza, Thursday, May 21

• Los Angeles, Hermosa Beach Community Theater, Friday, May 22

I’ll also remind you that you can preorder BIG FAN more or less everywhere you can preorder books, and you can preorder signed books from Barnes and Noble and various other places. But if you’ve been following along, you know that over at Joseph-Beth, we are having a super-special promotion where you can preorder a signed book, and you will have a chance at getting one of a number of limited editions where we add special messages or get a celebrity to sign the book as well.

Here is the prized 1 of 1 — signed by Kristin Bell AND Ted Danson:

There are a bunch of other cool customized limited editions as well. You can preorder from Joseph-Beth here.

MLB joins with Polymarket because, you know, why not?

Thursday, MLB named Polymarket the league’s “Official Prediction Market Exchange,” which is, you know, exactly as Kenesaw Mountain Landis would have wanted it.

In the past, I have not been especially sympathetic to the argument that, because MLB now embraces gambling, this should somehow let Pete Rose off the hook for his various gambling sins. But it gets harder and harder to see the space between what Pete did and what Rob Manfred and the league do on the daily.

There’s something else I want to say here, but I want to be careful to make sure it doesn’t sound like I’m patting myself on the back: Over the last few weeks, JoeBlogs has received multiple pretty lucrative offers to partner with prediction markets and gambling sites. The money is flowing out there. We are fortunate here that, because of your support, we can turn all that stuff down and continue to be an independent splash of joy for you. Thank you for that.

You (and millions of others) also support MLB, so it’s not like they need the Polymarket money. They just want it.

Our Pal Ken Rosenthal maybe misses the point?

I love me some Ken Rosenthal; I just think he’s the best.

But I guess he was on a show with my American Polish Sports Hall of Fame classmate (well, I won the media award; he was elected), A.J. Pierzynski, and they got into a whole bit about the absurdity of the narrative that the U.S. players didn’t care as much as players on the other WBC teams.

The key exchange:

A.J.: “Can we put to bed the narrative, please, that the U.S. didn’t care as much as the other teams, just because they didn’t show it? And they play a different game than the U.S. people are brought up playing, right? It’s more emotional. It’s more showy. That’s fine. That’s the way it is … can you please put that narrative to bed?”

Ken: “Actually, I tried on the broadcast the other night, and it’s a ridiculous narrative. And it’s so funny to me, A.J., that 10 or 15 years ago, when we were still in the period where the unwritten rules ruled, right? The reaction of players from Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, like all the guys who would act like they did, some of the Americans too, that was looked down upon. Now, if you DON’T ACT LIKE THAT, it’s looked down upon. And the idea that these didn’t care and weren’t trying to win as hard as they could is absurd.”

I wanted to put all of this in there because it seems to me A.J. and Ken were dancing around the REAL topic, but spent their closing argument hammering home something absolutely nobody thought. I don’t know a single person who thought the American players didn’t care or weren’t trying to win. Not one. And by turning the argument into THAT — into “caring” or “will to win” — I think they are only doubling down on what the U.S. problem was in the first place.

It certainly wasn’t that they didn’t want to win. They definitely wanted to win. It was that they were dour sourpusses who brought Cobra Kai sweep-the-leg energy into this joyful tournament. I’ve already said what I can say about all that, but I will add this: The Italian team was made up of Americans. They had the time of their lives. So it isn’t about other countries’ players being more “emotional” or “showy.” It’s about a conscious U.S. decision to play “you want me on that wall/you need me on that wall” games instead of fun, happy, jubilant baseball.

Maybe they felt like playing that way gave them their best chance to win the tournament. If that’s how they felt, well, they were wrong.

My Next Book: Seasons

I’ve been spending (and will be spending) every waking moment writing my next book — and because that has been so much on my mind, I’ve dropped a bunch of hints here for a while. I realize that’s not entirely fair, so today I’m going to tell you just a little bit about it.

The book will be called “Seasons.”

And it will be a book about the greatest individual seasons in baseball history.

Well, “greatest” is not the right adjective. I don’t want to get too deep into it because I’m still heavy into the writing, but it will not simply be a countdown of the highest WAR seasons or anything like that. No, it will be the individual seasons that echo. I could give you a whole bunch of examples (well, 50 examples right off the top of my head), but I imagine you would prefer to guess.

I will tell you only this for now:

1. It has been SUCH a blast to write, to go back to these incredible seasons and stories.

2. Even though this book will feature a countdown of sorts, it’s VERY different from The Baseball 100 and the Why We Loves. I mean, it’s still about stories and wonder, so in that way it’s the same. But there’s something I purposely do in this book that, I think, makes it entirely new.

Now, I'd better go work on it so that it can actually come out in 2027.

In the moments after Venezuela’s utterly wonderful 3-2 victory over the United States in the final of the World Baseball Classic, I found myself wondering: Why was this tournament so absurdly awesome? Why did it draw bigger numbers than any regular season game, and most playoff games, and even the All-Star game? Why was it the talk of social media?

Why is it that I have friends, moderate baseball fans at best, who were OBSESSED with the WBC, who were constantly texting me to chat about the Italian baseball players taking shots of espresso and kissing each other on the cheeks, or the Mexican players putting a giant sombrero on the head of the guy who hit a home run, or that fun thing the U.S. team did where they … I’m just joking, they had no fun at all this entire tournament.

Some of it is obvious, I suppose. Nationalism. The knockout format. The post-Olympic glow. The fact that these were, for the most part, the best of the best playing.

But I think there’s something bigger going on here.

I think there’s something the WBC has unlocked that Major League Baseball, mostly, has not.

It’s that three-letter word again: Joy.

In thinking about what MLB could take from the WBC to bring more joy to the game, I want to stay away from the format stuff. Sure, MLB’s 162-game season and 12-team playoffs make up an absurd combination. There are too many games for too many playoff teams. One of the reasons the WBC captured attention is that the whole tournament was short, easy to follow, and had clear stakes every single day.*

*Clear to everyone except U.S. manager Mark De Rosa.

But MLB’s season serves a different purpose; it offers us baseball every day. You could argue, I suppose, that this is an archaic design that no longer matches the American attention span (or the durability of pitchers’ elbows), but 70-plus million people attend the games annually, and baseball is the No. 1 show on television in many local markets throughout the summer, so it’s working for a lot of people and, anyway, the format ain’t changing.

But that’s OK, because I don’t want to talk about the format.

I want to talk about how the WBC made us feel.

Here’s something that might or might not be unrelated: Do you know about the Pasquatch? I imagine you do: In Kansas City, they call Vinnie Pasquantino “Pasquatch,” and for a while now, whenever Vinnie gets on base, this Big Foot will come bolting out of the Royals Hall of Fame and stomp around joyfully. OK, that’s kind of awesome.

But here’s the TRULY awesome part:

For a long time, the Royals refused to acknowledge it.

People would ask about the Pasquatch, and the Royals would say, “We don’t know what you’re talking about,” and “We didn’t see him,” and “I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as a Pasquatch.”

The Royals now acknowledge the Pasquatch, which was probably inevitable. I guess they even had a Pasquatch necklace giveaway this past year. All that’s fine. But it was so much better when they refused to acknowledge him. That was something very funny, and very cool, and VERY Kansas City.

If you wanted to catch a glimpse of the Pasquatch, you had to go to a Kansas City baseball game and hope.

I think that touches on what made the WBC such a delight: Every team was different. They played differently. They celebrated differently. They danced differently. They reflected their nation’s pride. Winning mattered, sure, but winning wasn’t everything. Playing was everything. Enjoying the moment was everything. This was baseball bursting with color, life, energy. Each hit was a party. Each run was a carnival.

And all the while, you had the loaded and glum U.S. team as a contrast, as if they were determined to represent the dreariest possible way to play baseball. The MLB way. Nobody ever seemed to even smile. Cal Raleigh wouldn’t shake hands with Randy Arozarena. A lot has been written about the militaristic vibe this team disseminated (undoubtedly WITH the express written consent of Major League Baseball), but one thing that really struck me was how wrong they got it.

“You never want it to get lost why you’re doing this, whatever that why is,” USA manager Mark DeRosa said after being asked why he had a former Navy SEAL who claims to have killed Osama Bin Laden speak to the team rather than, say, Ken Griffey Jr., George Brett, or someone like that. “And a lot of people – like Paul Skenes said to me when he signed up for this, ‘I want to do this for every serviceman and woman who protects our freedom,’ and that’s why we wear USA across our chest.”

Yeah, that’s backward. The servicemen and women who protect our freedom, sure, that’s why THEY wear USA across THEIR chest.

You are playing baseball. A kid’s game.

You are getting paid a small fortune for playing that kid’s game.

You are surrounded by applause and fanfare and a clubhouse filled with some of the best players on earth.

You are sacrificing nothing.

You can salute each other like children playing war games, and you can speak platitudes about freedom, but doing so, to me, misses the whole point. Freedom for what? If you believe deeply in American freedom, then you must believe in those things that make freedom worthwhile, no? What are those things? How about teachers who dedicate their lives to educating our children? How about the Grand Ole Opry? The Apollo Theater? Broadway? How about the first responders who arrive in the bleakest moments?

How about Casablanca and Sinners and Singing in the Rain?

How about the neighbors who mow the lawn of the elderly couple two houses down? How about the waiter or waitress who remembers your order at the diner, the bookstore owner who is dying to tell you about a book you will absolutely love, the bar band breaking into “Sweet Caroline,” and the way everyone in the place sings along? How about the crossing guards who know every kid’s name, the auto mechanics who tell you that, actually, the fix was a lot simpler than you thought, the mother who brings orange slices for everyone at Little League games?

How about chili in Cincinnati, pizza in New York, clam chowder in New England, hot dogs in Chicago, a Polish Boy in Cleveland, barbecue in Kansas City, gumbo in New Orleans, fajitas in Texas, fish tacos in San Diego?

How about road crews out there in the blazing heat, holding up traffic and testing our patience, while they’re paving tomorrow’s paths? How about the electricians and plumbers and heating and air folks who make problems go away? How about high school marching bands on a Friday night, the reserved shelves at the Public Library, the way you can recognize every baseball diamond from a plane flying 10,000 feet over a city?

How about The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye and Where the Crawdads Sing and Charlotte’s Web?

And how about playing for THAT?

That’s what made the WBC feel special to me. You had players playing this wonderful game for the joyful things that they cherish all around them. Well, we can bring that to MLB, can’t we? Can’t the Phillies play for those things that make Philadelphia great? Can’t the Rockies play for those things that make Denver great? Can’t every team find something happy and fun and life-affirming to build around? Can’t baseball be a celebration of us? That doesn’t seem so hard to me.

A few people noticed that several of the U.S. players immediately took off their silver medals after having them draped around their necks. That made me sad. I know they wanted to win the thing. I know they felt the pressure to win the thing as tournament favorites. I know that for many of the best athletes, the only point is winning.

But is it? Do you know that SEVEN MILLION PEOPLE in Italy watched a bunch of happy Italian Americans play baseball against Venezuela even though it was at 5 a.m.? That’s bananas. We can rarely get seven million Americans to watch what is supposed to be our national pastime in prime time, and the United States is six times larger than Italy.

What drew them in? National pride? Sure. The newness of it all? No doubt.

But also: When Team Italy played baseball, it looked like a hell of a lot of fun.

“We just wanted to thank the fans,” Vinnie Pasquantino said when asked why the team hung around after the game. “The Italian fans. The Venezuelan fans. It was so loud.”

As he spoke, a Pasquatch did not come out and stomp around. Or maybe one did. I couldn’t say.

Hi Everyone!

So this week, I’ll be narrating the audiobook for BIG FAN — Mike has already read his parts, and now it’s my turn. That means the newsletter will be a little bit light this week. Narrating a book is fun — this will be the third consecutive audiobook I’ve read — but utterly exhausting. It always amazes me how much a few hours of reading aloud my own words will drain me.

BIG FAN — the book and the audiobook — comes out on May 19.

There’s a very famous strike zone story that has been connected with Stan Musial, Ted Williams, Ty Cobb, and others. I’m not sure the story ever happened, but if it did happen, it probably involved Hall of Fame umpire Bill Klem and Hall of Fame second baseman Rogers Hornsby.

It goes a little something like this: A young pitcher, maybe even pitching in his first game, throws what he thinks is a good pitch to Hornsby. The Rajah doesn’t swing, and it’s called a ball. He throws another pitch he likes, Hornsby takes it, and the pitch is called a ball again.

He starts screaming at Klem, who looks at him with a fatherly gaze.

“Son,” Klem says, “when you pitch a strike, Mr. Hornsby will let you know it.”

I couldn’t help but think about that story again on Sunday during the United States’ unsatisfying 2-1 victory over the Dominican Republic during the World Baseball Classic. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Juan Soto led off against Garrett Whitlock. Here’s what the at-bat looked like:

Yes, home plate umpire Corey Blaser rang up Soto on a pitch that wasn’t even close to a strike, and while this wasn’t what made the game unsatisfying — as most of you know, a worse call was yet to come — it really struck me wrong. I couldn’t even believe how much that call ticked me off.

And I think I’ve figured out why: There are some people out there who are opposed to automatic strike zone calls because they don’t want to lose the humanity of umpiring. Well, what does “humanity of umpiring” even mean? What do we believe that human beings do better, perhaps, than the robo-umps that are exponentially more accurate?

I suppose if that question has an answer, it would be that human beings can embrace what my favorite chess content creator, Levy Rozman, calls “superseding concepts.” That is to say that an umpire can take into account the situation, the conditions, the flow of the game, the importance of the moment, the spirit of the rule, and make a call based on all of it, rather than just embracing the microscopic difference between safe and out, strike and ball.

An example of this is the player who steals a base cleanly, but whose foot bounces a millimeter off the bag while the fielder keeps on the tag. The runner is technically out, but I don’t believe that the out call fits the spirit of the rule. A human umpire could call the runner safe. That would be an example of the “humanity of umpiring.”

But, of course, human umpires WILL NOT call the runner safe because they are bound by instant replay. So the humanity of umpiring has already been taken out of the game … except for ball-strike calls. And with the Automated Ball Strike challenge system coming in 2026, that last bit of humanity will begin to disappear.

Is that something worth mourning?

Well, it’s not if, in the eighth inning of a tight and exciting one-run game between the United States and the Dominican Republic, Corey Blaser thinks he knows the strike zone better than Juan Freaking Soto.

We don’t need that kind of humanity.

That wasn’t Blaser’s worst call of the night, nor the most devastating.

In the bottom of the ninth, with the tying run on third base, Mason Miller and Geraldo Perdomo locked in a breathtaking eight-pitch at-bat. This is as good as it gets; the hardest-throwing pitcher in baseball vs. one of the most disciplined players in the game. Perdomo became a star last year, in large part because he almost never swung at bad pitches and almost never swung and missed — he was 95th percentile and above in chase percentage, whiff percentage, and strikeout percentage.

This was a battle of wills. Miller started off with a pitch high and way above the strike zone. Then Miller threw a 101 mph fastball at the very top of the zone — maybe a strike, maybe a ball. I don’t know what ABS would have registered; I think it was probably a ball. Blaser called it a strike. He might have been right.

And then Miller threw another 101 mph fastball over the heart of the plate, and Perdomo took that for strike two.

Miller missed badly with a fastball, then tried to get Perdomo to chase a slider down and away. Perdomo did not bite. The count was full. This is one of the reasons why we watch baseball: to watch that ancient battle between, as my friend Jon Hock calls it, “a man with a rock and a man with a stick.”

Miller threw a 101 mph fastball at the top of the zone in almost exactly the same spot as the second pitch — if anything this one was even closer to being a strike. Perdomo fouled it off.

Miller threw a 101 mph fastball over the heart of the plate. Perdomo fouled it off.

And the eighth pitch was a slider. And …

That is one of the most egregious strike three calls you will ever see.

And it was called for the FINAL OUT OF THE GAME AFTER AN EPIC AT-BAT BETWEEN TWO TITANS AND ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? That’s why we need human umpires? So they can override correct calls and wreck legendary baseball games?

I saw a few people write that Sunday’s game was basically one long advertisement for the ABS Challenge System. That sounds about right to me.