Fifty years ago, as 1969 was winding down, Paul Newman and Robert Redford were in the theaters as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Yes, that was fifty years ago. The Oscar for the best song that year came from the movie (played while Paul Newman showed off his bicycling skills). More on this in […]
I thought my collusion topic would be good for one post. But I kept getting intrigued by side stories. Oliver Wendell Holmes. Curt Flood. Catfish Hunter. Kirk Gibson. Andre Dawson. All those commissioners. Marvin Miller. The Brothers Fehr. Others who you will see below. So it has taken three posts. I don’t know what the […]
As we left Part One, the players had won free agency status in the Messersmith case, leading to the owners and players entering into a collective bargaining agreement (CBA). One of the key CBA provisions required that free agency be an individual right so that players could not band together for leverage (as Don Drysdale […]
The sports pages and news pages are filled with “collusion” talk. But the Russians are not coming to Hot Stove. Just baseball.
In November of 2019, John Sherman and a group of local investors purchased the Kansas City Royals for $1 billion. Everyone was happy. The new buyers. The seller. The players. The fans. The sportswriters. Sherman and his investors were ingrained in Kansas City – the business sector, civic affairs and philanthropy. We celebrated our good […]
It’s time for the annual Hot Stove spring training post. Pitchers and catchers were set to report on February 15. Position players on February 20. It would be time again to recite Dan Quisenberry’s poem on the “rituals of spring training,” and report on my friends at the games in Surprise, Arizona.