inthedougout

As soon as I had my first son, Mason, I would joke with my friends that we were going to train him to be a left-handed pitcher.  A Southpaw.  Daddy's retirement fund.  Maybe even daddy's unfulfilled dreams. Oh, how dumb I was. In the years since, I have been lucky and blessed enough to have two additional sons.  I've also gone on to coach several youth teams.  It started out fun.  We were learning together, growing, developing.  After a year or so, the hyper competitiveness kicked in.  The attitude of the players changed into "haves" and "have nots" very quickly.  Some kids would hold themselves in higher regard because they made a certain travel team.  The other kids inevitably felt excluded for no good particular reason. It bothers me.  The expectation is that my son needs to play on the travel team.  Somehow, I'm not fostering his development if he's not spending multiple nights practicing and entire weekends ...

Dude, where's my ball? Last week, Albert Pujols reached a significant career milestone: 2,000 RBI.  It's pretty easy to forget just how good of a player Albert Pujols really was.  I'm going to get in trouble with the #smrtbaseball crowd for throwing out these statistics, but, as these are the most commonly understood metrics... he hit north of 400 home runs and 1200 RBI in his first ten seasons with the Cardinals.  He averaged an OPS of 1.050.  His batting average easily cleared .300 and at its peak, his average eclipsed .350.  Those are spectacular numbers, elite numbers .  He really hasn't quite been the same since , however.  His decline is possibly historic in the sense that he's declined in a way that not many have.  Injuries took their toll, emptied his pockets of everything he had (i.e., the ability to hit opposite field, running for extra base hits, and so forth).  That decline is quite possibly why hitting 2,000 RBI is so imp...

There are quite possibly too many stories to pick from these days -- but, like a good buffet, let's try and touch on as many of these as we can.   CC Sabathia is a member of an elite group now .  He's the 17th pitcher to throw 3,000 strikeouts and is only the 3rd lefty to do so.  He's in the same conversation as Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, Steve Carlton.  The question raging now, however, is where does CC Sabathia fit on that list?  Some argue he's not elite, but how can you make that statement when it's in the company of elite talent?  You're either elite, and doing elite things, or you're not.  CC Sabathia may not have had the status or stature of some of the people on that list, but that's in large part due to the way he played the game: slow, steady, and consistent .  He's only won 20 games once in his career, but  he is on the verge of winning 250 games for his career.  His ERA was never particularly elite, but, he has a...