Before I joined professional baseball, I started umpiring in San Diego, California. I worked 155 games in a five-month season. For three years in a row, I was working tripleheaders on Saturday and doubleheaders on Sunday.
I was showing early symptoms of becoming a professional baseball man. I was lying to the press.
A comparison of the average professional baseball salary to the national average salary over the last one hundred years shows that for the first fifty years, 1920-1970, baseball players held a steady multiple of about 3.4 times the national average income.
I wanted to be a professional baseball player.
If they had rankings in baseball, maybe I would have been able to do the math and figure out my chances of being a professional baseball player versus a tennis player. But that was the decision-maker for me, I just thought I was better in tennis.
Baseball is a public trust. Players turn over, owners turn over and certain commissioners turn over. But baseball goes on.
As a junior in high school, I had some injury problems with my arm and shoulder from baseball, so I didn't play quarterback as a junior. I played a little wide receiver, linebacker, and safety.
My eight years in Detroit, obviously, were my most successful years managing. I think that Pittsburgh and Detroit are probably very, very similar. We kinda rekindled the fire of baseball in Pittsburgh. We did the exact same thing in Detroit.
Finally, for all of us but a lucky few, the dream of playing big-time baseball is relinquished so we can get on with grown-up things.
So who or what is to blame for baseball games that go on forever? Two oft-cited culprits are constant replay calls and batters who leave the box in between every pitch to adjust their gloves and helmet and shin guards and elbow pads and then knock the dirt off their cleats before working up their stride for the next at-bat.
I'll say it again: you've got to put the argument back in the game. They're trying to make baseball mechanized, a machine. They're ruining baseball.
Baseball is like driving, it's the one who gets home safely that counts.
Anyone interested in becoming a professional umpire and becoming eligible to work in the minor leagues must attend one of the two umpire schools sanctioned by Major League Baseball.
Baseball is the president tossing out the first ball of the season. And a scrubby schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm.
You can't second-guess baseball. You can't second-guess yourself.
In the glory days of Orioles, when I was a newbie baseball writer for the Post, the roster of talkers was as good as the everyday lineup. Singy - Ken Singleton - Flanny, and Cakes - the underwear spokesman Jim Palmer - were my go-to guys, occupying stalls along one wall of the shabby chic clubhouse.
When I was growing up, the first thing I wanted to be was a cowboy. That lasted till I was about ten. Then I wanted to be a baseball player. Preferably shortstop for the New York Yankees.
I built a baseball field in the lower part of our property and I'm always working on that. I got a wheelbarrow, a pick and a shovel, and I started to build a baseball field during writers' strike. We have boys and girls come over and we have clinics in the spring. It's called The Strike because it's named for the writers' strike.
Baseball is played by all countries now, and softball, too.
I've been an athlete my whole life. I've played every sport, including soccer, baseball, softball, basketball.
