
What If Vin Scully Had Been a Yankee?
The greatest free agent the New York Yankees ever failed to sign was a skinny redhead from the Bronx. He spent two years as an outfielder on his college team, hit only one home ru...
Major League BaseballDaniel Brown, San Jose Mercury News
Andrew Keh, New York Times
Jayson Stark, ESPN
Jeff Passan, Yahoo! Sports
Tim Elfrink, Miami New Times

When she heard Angel Villalona would be back with the San Jose Giants this season, Donna Musgrave didn't wait to be asked. She called to insist that Villalona should stay in he...(full article)

It feels as if their names have been entwined for ages — by coaches and team officials, by columnists and television hosts, by fans and former players — but not until Tuesday...(full article)

Does anybody out there know the rules of baseball? Seriously. If ever there was a year that made you wonder about that, this would be the year. We've seen Jean Segura run the bases...(full article)

Two days after the (expletive) hit the carpet, it finally hit the fan. Talk to any veteran Oakland Athletics player, and the raw sewage backup that spilled into the O.co Coliseum...(full article)

The first thing Porter Fischer spotted was the trunk of his silver Corolla. It was wide open. Then he noted a bashed-in passenger window and shattered glass littering the parking...(full article)


The greatest free agent the New York Yankees ever failed to sign was a skinny redhead from the Bronx. He spent two years as an outfielder on his college team, hit only one home ru...

The Nationals’ season is nearing its midpoint. Game No. 81 is scheduled for June 30 in New York. It is understandable that some may be starting to think this stuck-in-the-mud pa...

From 1941, when the Dodgers were in Brooklyn, until 1981, when the team was long established in Los Angeles, the Yankees and Dodgers battled it out in 11 World Series.  ...

It has become an annual baseball rite to wonder whether the current version of the Yankees has devolved into their 1965 forefathers. Or should that be grandfathers, because a dyna...

In the Baltimore Orioles’ clubhouse Monday afternoon, I showed Manny Machado the list of major leaguers with 60 or more doubles in a single season. It looked like this: ...

Reality finally seems to be catching up with the New York Yankees. The scene is, by now, a familiar one: a team with a payroll north of $228 million desperately trying to cut cost...

Nationally televised games don't count any more in the standings than your regular local-TV games, but when the Giants or A's are on Fox or ESPN, there are some broader implica...

The Red Sox have rolled through the first two and a half months of the season, but trouble is brewing. This isn’t just a knee-jerk reaction to losing 3-of-4 to the Orioles t...

Yasiel Puig should be an All-Star this year. Please do not mistake this for some grand troll job. On the contrary, it is a rational plea to Major League Baseball to bring legiti...

PITTSBURGH -- I had heard that the Pittsburgh Pirates, long-storied National League franchise, but victim of 20 straight losing seasons, were returning to their older, more succes...

CLEVELAND -- Watching Stephen Strasburg at Progressive Field on Sunday, you couldn't help but flash back to the madness that was his previous outing in that building. His first...

Here's one way to define a great organization: 20 of 25 St. Louis Cardinals have played every game of their Major League careers for just one organization. One big league manag...

If it seems like we’re experiencing an extraordinary number of extra-innings games early in 2013 season, it's because we actually are experiencing an extraordinary number of extr...

The Los Angeles Dodgers are not going to be bailed out by their next television deal. Owners Mark Walter, Stan Kasten, Peter Guber and Magic Johnson, whose group bought the team la...

The official part of Wednesday, June 5, for the Washington Nationals began at 7:06 p.m., when right-hander Dan Haren fired a fastball to Omar Quintanilla of the New York Mets, and ...

You want answers, I’ve got answers, courtesy of sources familiar with the suspensions that baseball issued Friday for the Dodgers-Diamondbacks brawl. • Why only 10 games...

On Tuesday night, in the bottom of the ninth inning, Jim Johnson found himself in a spot of trouble. That, in and of itself, is nothing remarkable for the closer of the Baltimore...

Young Orioles third baseman Manny Machado is wowing the American League with his bat, but he's even more elite with his glove. A.J. Pollock wasn't supposed to be the D-backs' cente...

Regardless of whether people think the game is too slow, too boring or too complex, baseball at its highest level is a gorgeous outpouring of skill and athleticism. It can simply...

It's time. The Rays should do it today. They should do it now. Call up Wil Myers from the minors. Bring the kid up from Triple-A Durham, put him in rightfield and let the future s...

And to think, Bud Selig almost managed to pull off the impossible: being admired. Major League Baseball's commissioner, in office since 1992, has never been particularly popular. ...

eliever Ryan Madson missed all of 2012 after Tommy John surgery, but signed with the Angels expecting to be healthy to begin the season. It hasn't happened, and he doesn't seem ...

Team chemistry, baseball graybeards insist, is as overrated as the game's obsession with pitch counts. Winning is what it's all about, not the clubhouse schmoozing, hugging and m...

Season by season, Ryan Braun meticulously applied the polish much in much the same fashion Alex Rodriguez had before him. It became caked on, coat after coat just as Braun and his ...

Although sports are often filled with what are called do-or-die moments, no single touchdown, no hit, no throw and no slap of a puck that didn’t cause grievous injury h...

You've heard of the Battle of Gettysburg, the Battle of Waterloo, the Battle of Wounded Knee? Tuesday night at Chavez Ravine, the Dodgers and Diamondbacks fought the Battle of the ...

Yasiel Puig didn't get a hit or make a spectacular throw on Tuesday night, but he might have changed the Dodgers' season. Less than three weeks ago, the Dodgers were said by their ...

In the storied 127-year history of the Pittsburgh Baseball Club — which is to say, that portion that preceded Sid Bream being safe — this franchise, fantastically, has never ...

Ryan Braun has a problem. His right thumb is sore. Braun, the star left fielder for the Milwaukee Brewers, has tried everything: a batting glove with extra padding, a new kind of ...

I had the stuff. I just didn't have the heart. Or, more precisely, I always had the stuff, which was why I never had the heart. I didn't need it. Then, in the arrogance of youth,...

As anyone who follows baseball knows, Mariano Rivera has built his career on one pitch. A cut fastball, or “cutter,” it travels at 90 or 92 miles an hour, and then, a few feet...

On Saturday afternoon, Yankees lefthander and franchise fixture Andy Pettitte allowed only one run in seven and a third innings against the Seattle Mariners. That wasn't anything...

In the summer of 1976, when I was a mere pup, covering the first of what would become 16 Olympic Games — nine summer, seven winter — I had my first brush with the effects of p...

I know, it stings. You wrapped up your work week with a feeling that you had not entertained since the latter stages of 2011. The Phillies were a game over .500, good enough for s...

When he visited the Oakland clubhouse a few weeks after brain surgery and happily wore a helmet adorned with a drool cup last year, Brandon McCarthy thwarted all attempts and pred...

Here's the thing about the 2013 Twins: they weren't supposed to be any good. And true to expectations, they aren't. But the path they have taken to get there is surprising, even t...

Whenever the questions turn to drugs, Bud Selig has two talking points. First, Selig inevitably says that baseball has the toughest drug policy in American sports. This is true...

Since the Red Sox’ 13-game stumble last month, when they went 4-9 but were made to feel like they’d gone 4-90, they have lost only one of eight series. Their streak continued ...

When baseball went through ’Roid Hell in the ’80s, ’90s and into the last decade, the union stonewalled on testing. The union has done almost a one-eighty since then. Why? Be...

There was bonus baseball in abundance Saturday afternoon. The Blue Jays and Rangers battled for 18 innings, and the Mets and Marlins cracked the 20-inning mark for the first time s...

SAN FRANCISCO—Things weren't looking good in the bottom of the seventh inning at the San Francisco Giants' home ballpark. "This will be a bad one," said usher Chauncey Greer, sha...

The Nationals entered the season under Manager Davey Johnson’s “World Series or Bust” banner, boasting a roster both experts and Nationals officials believed had ...

For the first 1,495 at-bats of his career, Chris Davis looked like a thousand big, lumbering, mediocre sluggers before him. He didn't run well and didn't field well. He had a terri...

The 2013 amateur draft kicked off with 73 picks Thursday night, and it will continue with the remaining 1,100 or so picks on Friday and Saturday. Much like the MLB season, baseball...

Each time a city wins a sports championship, the local fans’ hearts swell with pride. With Slate’s comprehensive championship map, you can tell exactly how swollen they are. ...

The only thing that is not fun for the Dodgers right now is watching the scoreboard. They keep winning - lately, in their final at-bat. A.J. Ellis' single in the bottom of the 11...

Six pitchers combined to throw 273 pitches Monday afternoon, but two pitches in particular created the most excitement at Kauffman Stadium. One was a borderline pitch that could ...

Less than 24 hours after being rejuvenated by Chipper Jones' thrilling walk-off home run, the Braves returned to Turner Field and provided some indication that they might have es...

When the story of the Washington Nationals’ 2012 season is written, it’s expected to hold plenty more celebratory moments with which they cannot just mark their organ...

The Reds have entered that rarified air. They’ve done something that the 35 teams that have come and gone since the back-to-back World Champion teams were unable to do. The...

Don’t tell the St. Louis Cardinals that Pedro Alvarez is an on-again, off-again hitter. There’s been no such thing as “off” for the Pirates’ third ba...

NEW YORK — Marcus Stroman, regarded as one of the Toronto Blue Jays’ top pitching prospects who spent part of this season with the Vancouver Canadians, has been sus...

The six runs the Rays racked up in the first two innings Wednesday, and the eight overall, including a pair of homers from Evan Longoria, served as makeup — well, maybe to ...

The Cubs’ new deal with shortstop Starlin Castro, for seven years and $60 million, officially has been completed after weeks of peaceful negotiations. Castro, who will...

With their flickering playoff hopes hanging in the balance Tuesday, the Pirates showed they still can pack a punch. The Pirates routed the St. Louis Cardinals, 9-0, and moved back...
Things were set up so perfectly for the Washington Nationals on Tuesday night. Sure they were trying to stop a losing streak, trying to return to the winning side of things they&...

Jose Bautista felt no pain, but he could feel a tendon slipping and sliding in his left wrist. A specialist in Cleveland confirmed his suspicion. The Toronto Blue Jays slugger wi...

Josh Beckett was decent in his Dodgers debut. On this night, though, he needed to be dazzling. The right-hander tried to keep the Dodgers in the game until the team's recently ob...

For the fourth consecutive time in a big August game, Pirates starter A.J. Burnett came up small Monday night and the club lost another game it badly needed, 4-3, to the St. Loui...

Oh, I suppose it would be easy to carve up Erik Bedard for getting crushed again. He’s the one the capacity crowd of 36,626 booed off the field Sunday at PNC Park after giv...

The Orioles had their focus on Joe Saunders since he was on the free-agent market this offseason, and the club had been discussing the possibility of acquiring the left-hander in...

Chris Davis stood at his locker this spring -- in his first full season with the Orioles -- eager for the opportunity to get consistent at-bats and prove that he could be a succe...

A.J. Pierzynski best summed up the wackiest victory of the White Sox's successful season. "From the lowest of lows to the highest of highs in about a two-minute span," Pierzynski ...

No official word has been offered as to why Ryan Dempster needed to step away from the Texas Rangers over the weekend, but whatever caused his hiatus clearly wasn't a distraction...

Just one of 162? Baloney. It was Clayton Kershaw versus Madison Bumgarner in mid-August for first place in the National League West in the teams' first meeting since the Dodge...

The Washington area has waited a long time for pennant-race baseball deep in the summer. Then the opening game of the biggest series of the season to date for the Washington Nati...

Xavier Paul and Ryan Hanigan may not carry much juice in fantasy baseball, but the two Reds loomed large in the real world Sunday afternoon. Pinch hitter Paul started the ninth i...

In a bizarre attempt to avoid a 50-game drug suspension, San Francisco Giants star Melky Cabrera created a fictitious website and a nonexistent product designed to prove he inadve...

The Red Sox clubhouse has turned into Goldilocks, the players searching for the bed that is not too hard and not too soft, but just right. Last September, the clubhouse trampled ...

With Pablo Sandoval back, the Giants finally have the 3-4-5-6 portion of their lineup set up the way management envisioned when it dealt for Hunter Pence. When Melky Cabrera, Bust...

Down another outfielder, Charlie Manuel briefly contemplated life Monday with no certainties. Solutions are in short supply for the season's final seven weeks, a time when the st...

Monday marked the first of two starts CC Sabathia will miss during his stay on the disabled list. So far, so good. David Phelps gave the Yankees five solid innings, while Nick Swis...

A visitor to Fenway Park last summer asked, "What are the numbers up there on the right-field roof?" He was told that they were the retired numbers of Red Sox Hall of Famers Ted W...

A'musings on a steamy afternoon as the dog days of August pose a myriad of unanswered questions to a baseball season that's winding down much too soon. And as the song goes, next m...

The typical season for Detroit Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera goes like this: He puts up MVP numbers. Then he doesn't win the MVP. The most-valuable-player award always eludes Cabr...

Better days are ahead for Ryan Dempster over his next two months as the Texas Rangers' rotation rental. But that's based solely on the assumption that things can't go much worse th...

Zack Greinke traded to Angels: Starting pitching is the name of the game when it comes to postseason play and the Halos went out and got the best starting pitcher on the market....

When this season started, Ben Sheets was a youth-league coach in Louisiana and Kris Medlen had pitched 2 1/3 innings in 20 months, the byproduct of Tommy John surgery. The...

This season is a hunt for individual meaning now, with no wild-card race to create a common purpose. And few Mets will live as meaningful a day this summer as Ike Davis did Satur...

In the past 24 hours, the Dodgers parlayed the five tools of Hanley Ramirez and the five tools of Matt Kemp. Don Mattingly can do the math and it comes out like this: five plus fiv...

Cole Hamels wandered aimlessly around the infield grass Friday night after his $144 million arm failed once again. He peeked toward center field, and not yet knowing the ball's f...

Special occasion that it was, the Astros sure made tying the franchise record for consecutive losses feel special. There was absolutely nothing normal about this 6-5 loss to the P...

The season hasn't worked out like the Brewers hoped. But at least the Zack Greinke Derby is shaping up to be a real winner for them. With Cole Hamels off the market, Matt Garza n...

It looks like Dan Haren's problems are behind him – but in a good way now. Haren returned from his first trip to the DL of his career and pitched six strong innings as the A...

Unlike any other player in the Pirates’ clubhouse, Jeff Karstens can remember those ugly, brutal days. He was around for the 95-loss season in 2008, the 99-loss team in &rsqu...

The heroes change each night for the A's. The results remain the same. On Saturday, it was Jarrod Parker becoming the latest rookie starter to shut down the New York Yankees. It...

White Sox general manager Ken Williams said that Brett Myers was acquired for bullpen depth, not to replace Addison Reed as the closer, despite his valuable experience in that r...

Yorvit Torrealba, still sleep-deprived after the birth of his daughter last week, made an alert decision before the Texas Rangers took the field for the first time Saturday. The ...

John Lannan had experienced most every slice of the Washington Nationals’ history, but Saturday night, tinged with desperation for his teammates, felt fresh and new for him...

If they didn't already have baseball's highest prices, the Red Sox might have been able to get away with charging extra when they come home Monday night to play the Chicago White...

Scott Rolen's bat still has a little life in it. Rolen's two-out RBI single in the eighth inning lifted the Reds to a 4-2 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals before a sellout cr...

Just like his teammates, Yovani Gallardo is well aware of how important it is for the Milwaukee Brewers to play well to start the second half of the season. On Sunday afternoon h...

The crowd of 42,171 knew the stakes maybe more than the pitcher did. From the moment Tim Lincecum led the Giants onto the field Saturday night, the fans seemed intent on coaxing a ...

Because there are so many baseball games, it’s tricky to ascribe any lessons to any single game. But the doings Saturday, I submit, showed us the 2012 Braves for better and...