Almost Cooperstown

Send us Fan Mail Why don't players bunt? Is it a lost art in baseball?  Was baseball better when there were 8 teams in each league and only one league champion that would represent the league in the World Series?  We debate and contemplate whether today's baseball is the best it's ever been. The athleticism of modern players is at the highest level ever and we question if players ar...

Send us Fan Mail Mike Rizzo is back in for the Nationals, and Chaim Bloom is out for the Red Sox. Cole Ragans fell down for and on the Royals, and a knuckleballer finally reappeared and got a win in MLB. Have you ever pondered the paradox of the LA Angels - a team struggling despite housing the sport's finest player for nearly a decade? We unpack this baseball enigma and explore the Hall of F...

Send us Fan Mail The Marlins won 47% of their games and 2 WS when they were the Florida Marlins. Once they changed their name to the Miami Marlins they win at a 43% pace and have only made the playoffs once in the pandemic season of 2020. This week we dive into the Marlins who are fighting for a playoff spot this season.  They are the fastest expansion team to win a World Series doing that in thei...

Send us Fan Mail Since the division races and wild card chases have not changed all that much from last week this week we talk about the also-rans. The teams that are waiting for next year or even the years after that.  We also talk about the rookies and there are some really good ones. The George Kirby story is more interesting than you might think. We've added a YouTube Channel.  Here is th...

Send us Fan Mail Babe Ruth & Barry Bonds. They are two of the greatest hitters who ever played and that cannot be argued.  Who was better?  That depends on your point of view so we decided to argue - Mark mostly for Ruth, Gordon mostly for Bonds.  The more we talked about their statistics the more impressive they became! We've added a YouTube Channel.  Here is the link to the Almost Coope...

Send us Fan Mail What was the signature moment of the past week in #MLB? Was it Alex Cobb's near no-hitter?  Bryce Harper's 300th HR?  Ronald Acuna's 121.2 MPH home run - the hardest hit ball in 5 years?  We talked about all of those and the state of the races in all the divisions in our weekly TWIB update! We've added a YouTube Channel.  Here is the link to the Almost Cooperst...

Send us Fan Mail Thankfully bloodying a fellow MLB player is no longer something of which to be proud. That was the case in the earlier days of baseball.  Baseball is still played hard and sometimes it still can get dirty but on the field dirty play happens much less frequently.  With the advent of the Universal DH, pitchers no longer have to worry about batting against an opposing pitcher right a...

Send us Fan Mail Which was the bigger story this week - Shohei Ohtani's UCL injury ending his pitching for 2023 and into 2024, or Stephen Strasburg's retirement?  Strasburg's story is one of what could have been.  Ohtani is THE story of this season and what will happen given that he is due for a new MLB contract. The races have settled in and while a lot can happen in the next 30+ g...

Send us Fan Mail Are players less weird today than they used to be?  Surely today's players with their understanding of social media are more sensitive to public opinion.  We already had episode 106 'Baseball Oddballs' https://www.buzzsprout.com/1066072/4412837 in which we talked about Bill 'Spaceman' Lee and Bill Veeck to name a couple.  No midgets in this episode but the...

Send us Fan Mail We often discuss historical aspects of baseball and we love doing that, but we're fans and we watch what's going on in baseball at the moment.  So this week we're starting a weekly Monday wrap-up show on what happened in MLB last week.  We will try to keep it to 15 minutes and of course we will drop our regular episodes on Thursday as always. We've added a YouT...

Send us Fan Mail Kind of a loaded question isn't it? In this episode we start with a short run through what's interesting in MLB this past week.  Then we discuss the history of baseball commissioners before current commissioner Rob Manfred. Manfred truly raises the ire of so many baseball fans. Is he the same, better, or worse than his predecessors?  We talk about all 10 commissioners in...

Send us Fan Mail Entering the AL East in 1977 the Blue Jays did not always play inside. Like most expansion teams they started slowly but won a World Series (actually 2 back to back) 16 years after their founding.  The Jays have had some HOFers and also some bizarre incidents in their history.  A fun team to root for and talk about!  We've added a YouTube Channel.  Here is the link to the Alm...

Send us Fan Mail The trading deadline has passed and for some teams making bold moves has brought their fans hope for the rest of the season and the playoffs. We talk about baseball mascots - the history, the oddity, and a few bizarre events involving well-known mascots. But we had to let our Mets angst out too and we recorded this the day before the end of the trading deadline so the sell-off of...

Send us Fan Mail We admit that we're already addicted to the Immaculate Grid MLB. Now there's NFL, NBA and soon NHL!   It's hard and that's the cool thing!  We had a great time talking again with Sean Forman founder of Baseball Reference and Sports Reference who joined the podcast to talk about the acquisition of Immaculate Grid, how fast it came about and the opportunities for...

Send us Fan Mail When your team is having a less than great season you start thinking about fall and winter sports earlier than when your team is doing well. With the Mets moribund season coming up on 2/3 thru, we're already looking ahead to what we will watch other than baseball while the regular season runs its course. Football training camps open this week, it seems hockey players are alre...

Send us Fan Mail We're joined by HOF expert & baseball historian David Metter - @CooperstownDave if you follow him as we do.  One can gain entrance to the Hall of Fame by combining different aspects of their baseball contribution. For some it could be as a player and manager (Lou Piniella and Davey Johnson and eventually Dusty Baker).  For others like baseball executives and even umpires...

Send us Fan Mail In a season full of changes there also have been a bunch of surprises. Like the Cincinnati Reds, Texas Rangers, and Arizona Diamondbacks. Not to mention the Mets, Padres, and Cardinals. The Braves continue to dominate and the Rays just find new ways to win.  We were wrong and it's Jon Gray not Sonny Gray is pitching for the Texas Rangers this season.  Gray areas always screw...

Send us Fan Mail Met fans like us are still smarting from the 2015 loss in the World Series to those overachieving Royals.  Entering the AL as one of 2 expansion teams in the league in 1969 (the Seattle Pilots now Milwaukee Brewers was the other), the Royals got good fast with a winning record only 4 years after their birth and reaching the AL playoffs multiple times in their first 10 years.  Winn...

Send us Fan Mail We recorded on Father's Day weekend & hope all the Dads had a great day!  It's interesting that MLB player father's almost always outperform their MLB player sons. Except for Barry Bonds & Roberto Alomar at least!  It must be both amazing and challenging to grow up the son of a MLBer.  You get advantages but also compared each and every day!  We've adde...

Send us Fan Mail The 1st MLB All-Star game was played 90 years ago in 1933.  As it is today the American League played the National League.  The players really wanted to win the game since they were paid more if they did win and league supremacy was much more important than it is today.  Even if the MLB ASG is the best of the 4 major U.S. sports,  could it be made better by making a few changes? ...

Send us Fan Mail With more than a third of the 2023 MLB season played there's still hope for most of the teams to claim at least a Wild Card slot. Is being in 1st place June 1st a key to a guaranteed playoff spot?  Well mostly yes.  But as we've seen teams can even below .500 after May and still make the playoffs and even win or play in the World Series (Nationals, Braves, Phillies).   A...

Send us Fan Mail A question was posed from a listener - Nile A.  What does a baseball manager actually do?  Besides sit and watch the game?  Baseball has managers, Soccer has team managers, but football, basketball, and ice hockey all have coaches. Why are baseball team leaders called coaches until the players turn professional? We answer those and other questions related to 'what does a base...

Send us Fan Mail When it comes to doing a deep dive on our favorite team we could have spent hours. But we kept in mind that listeners may not love the Amazin's as much as we do.  We didn't even talk about the greatest managers in NY Met history. (Gil Hodges and Davey Johnson headline with Yogi, Bobby V, and TC right behind. You can hear the pain in our voices, and the hope!  We've...

Send us Fan Mail HOFer 'Candy' Cummings is credited with 'inventing' the curveball.  But as you'd expect a pitcher's fastball has almost always been the #1 pitch.  Pitchers throw more varieties of pitches today than ever before. They have to because hitters are so good!  We talk about how different the average pitcher arsenals are today versus 50, 100, and 150 years a...

Send us Fan Mail As long as baseball has been played people have bet on the game and events during the playing of games.  Today we see updated betting lines posted during coverage of the games!  A far cry from when bets were made through a casino or a bookie!  We ask the question are baseball bettors real fans of the game? Do they watch the game the way non-betting fans do?  Betting on baseball is...