The Only Rule Is It Has to Work

But sabermetric orthodoxy, based on complex run-scoring simulations, says that the number-two batter—who makes almost as many plate appearances as the leadoff man, but bats with more runners on base—should be the club’s best hitter, instead of the high-contact, good-bat-control, move-the-runners-over type that teams have been sticking there since t

Urgency is a hell of a drug.

There’s a relatively new cliché about failure in baseball that I like a lot more: The other guy lives in a big house, too. Not all failure corresponds to a lack of effort. Or a lack of desire. Or a lack of preparation. Or a lack of skill. We lose, sometimes, because the other guy is also really good.

And they owe it to what Baseball Twitter would call a TOOTBLAN, “Thrown Out on the Bases Like a Nincompoop.”

We learn two things: Baseball is really hard, and Ben and I might be smart.

“The last few games I’ve been getting a few more high fives in the dugout, people starting to talk a little more. You gotta earn it. It’s not given. Everything is earned.”

Once I started trying to win an argument, I found myself rotating every fact to suit my position. This was true of the facts that came out of my mouth and also of facts that went into my ears, which I heard only deeply enough to deflate or reposition. Conversation became an exercise in bullshit.

Yet the Barry Bonds of the Pacific Association was considered a borderline candidate for high-A, which is three levels below the big leagues. Baseball is hard.

Some aspects of Sean’s baseball background are the same as every other professional player’s. He remembers swinging one of those short plastic bats with the big barrels when he was barely old enough to stand, and he grew up going to his father’s rec-league softball games. By the time Jack Conroy stopped playing, Sean was old enough to start, and hi