Missives of a Baseball Milquetoast

There hasn't been much noise in the baseball world outside of the massive deal signed by Vlad Guerrero and the Toronto Blue Jays with his first homerun of 2025 being delivered right after the ink was dry on the agreement. It is still too early to pass judgement on what the season holds but I can't help but wonder, does the slow start mean Vladdy's power beginning to fade already? I must admit I am envious of Toronto getting so much production out of their first baseman but despite having a much lower batting average, I am quite content with the output Wilmer Flores has produced for my San Francisco Giants. He went 0 for 4 in the game I saw between the Giants and Yankees last Sunday but what is most important is the  electric Giants series win. I've got my first New York Mets games of the year lined up this weekend as the St. Louis Cardinals make their first and only trip to CitiField and I am looking forward to some lively games. The Pittsburgh Pirates are visiting Quee...

I can hardly believe it has been a full two weeks since Opening Day and yet, I can tell my honeymoon period might be winding down. I seem to be taking for granted that baseball games are being played every day because I have already forgotten to set my fantasy rosters a few times so far. To be fair this past week was an extra busy one for me but thankfully I carved out some time to make it to my first game of the year at some point this weekend for at least one of the three games between my San Francisco Giants and the New York Yankees. As long as the weather in the Bronx cooperates, the only thing I need to consider is what hat to wear. In previous times when the Giants came to town, I wore hats featuring some of the different variations of the current San Francisco logo as well as retro New York Giants caps which have elicited a few "Mets Suck!" taunts from Yankees fans who clearly do not know their baseball history. Lucky for me I don't wear hats for other people's...

With Opening Week of the 2025 MLB regular season in the books, I am thrilled to report I have  gorged on as much baseball as I possibly could. I am also happy with my  San Francisco Giants' 5-1 record although it is a shame that is only good enough for third place in the NL West as the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers hold records of of 7-0 and 8-0, respectively. Sadly the Atlanta Braves were unable to hand the Dodgers their first loss this past Wednesday night and are now 0-7 to start the season giving them the worst record in baseball. The Braves have 155 more games to play so this slow start does not necessarily negate the preseason prognosticators who predicted expected their season totals finishing second only to the Dodgers. I am amused how the "0" in their win column aligns with 404 Day which is an unofficial holiday in Atlanta celebrating the city's first area code while a  404 error is a HTTP status code when a webpage or resource cannot be found....

The long wait for baseball's return is over! The 2025 MLB regular season has begun for every team except for the Colorado Rockies and Tampa Bay Rays, who face off today at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa. I have written enough about the Rays lately, so I'd like to focus on my favorite team, the San Francisco Giants, who won their first game of the season today! Celebrating my team on the first post of each season should be a tradition I follow going forward because it sets the tone for things to come. Thankfully, I have no shortage of Giants hats to write about! And instead of flaunting one of their recent World Series on-field caps, I selected one with the iconic wordmark that debuted in 1983 which was actually a bleak point in Giants history. When I see this logo I envision it as a chest back or large patch on a very specific satin Starter jacket which I think a kid on my school bus had in 1987. Thinking back on it, he might have been the first Giants fan I ever met an...

Since last week's post the time zones in baseball have been out of whack considering Spring Training was in full in effect for all 30 teams but then the regular season began with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs facing off for a two-game series in Tokyo the following Tuesday. Before the series, both teams played and lost an exhibition matchup against the  Hanshin Tigers ( previously known as the Osaka Tigers) and both won exhibition games against the Yomiuri Giants who  were known as the the  Tokyo Kyojin when they began play as an independent team before becoming one of the four inaugural members of the Japanese Baseball League  in 1936. Sadly for me and all San Francisco Giants fans out there, the Dodgers won both games and will have an undefeated record for about a week! And  now that the teams are back in the States, they're about to switch back into Spring Training mode to play more exhibition games this coming weekend. All that back-and-forth...

Apologies for starting this week's post with a math lesson, but it's Pi Day so I must mention the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is referred to by the Greek letter “π” and has an irrational number value, which means it continues on into infinity. However, I am assigning it a rational number value of 3.1415926535 to save space here. Mathematics enthusiasts have celebrated that wacky number on March 14 (also written as 3/14) every year since 1988 as Pi Day which provides enough pretext for eating copious amounts of pie, whether they be sweet, savory or even both. The last time March 14 fell on a Friday was in 2014 and unfortunately I did not have the idea then to dedicate a post to it like I did this year! The only pie-related baseball caps I am aware of are the Lehigh Valley IronPigs "Shoofly" alternate or the Portland SeaDogs "Whoopie Pie" identity and I am not jazzed enough about either one to make a special purchase for this post so ...