54 Years Of Spring Training Memories
ALSO: COLOR COMES TO 'THE NEW BASEBALL BIBLE' 2025 EDITION
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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
Ippei Mizuhara, former interpreter for Shohei Ohtani, has been sentenced to 57 months in prison plus three years of supervised release and ordered to pay back to the Dodgers’ star almost $17MM in restitution for theft and fraud . . .
Despite considerable fan mail to the contrary, Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred does not blame the free-spending Dodgers for hurting the game . . .
Late-signing slugger Pete Alonso is virtually certain to become a free agent again this fall when he exercises the opt-out clause in his two-year, $54 million Mets contract (he turned down a $71 million guarantee in a three-year deal) . . .
A former Met, newly-minted Hall of Famer Billy Wagner, will receive another honor when the Houston Astros retire his No. 13 in August . . .
Speaking of numbers, Miguel Rojas has allowed Roki Sasaski to take his No. 11 but hasn’t yet decided what he will give the infielder to balance the swap . . .
According to the annual PECOTA predictions of Baseball Prospectus, the now-healthy Atlanta Braves will win the NL East, the only division in baseball the site believes will have three teams with at least 88 wins . . .
The same computerized guru also suggests all three American League wild cards from last year (Detroit, Cleveland, and Kansas City) will miss the playoffs this time . . .
The Tampa Bay Rays may not be long for the place with Tropicana Field disabled and new-ballpark negotiations between city and team stalled over funding, which the team says it can’t afford . . .
Jim Edmonds, who won eight Gold Gloves in center field and spent a dozen years broadcasting Cardinals games, had some negative comments about the club after leaving the team’s booth.
Leading Off
Spring Training is a Special Time of Year
By Dan Schlossberg
I never knew Rogers Hornsby. But we shared a common love for baseball and a distaste for everything else.
Asked what he planned to do during the winter, Hornsby said, “I’ll look out the window and wait for spring.”
He once hit .424 in a season and wound up with a .358 lifetime mark. Maybe that’s because he refused to watch movies because he wanted to protect his eyes for the art of batting.
Like Hornsby, I look out the window and wait for spring too. To me, there’s no sport worth watching between the last out of the World Series and the first ball thrown after pitchers and catchers report.
For six glorious weeks, baseball will enjoy its best time of the year.
Fans even come to watch calisthenics! And many team workouts are free.
Spring training should be a national holiday. If not for the whole six weeks of exhibition play, at least the day pitchers and catchers report.
It’s July 4, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and Mardi Gras all rolled up into one giant party. Maybe Groundhog Day and Purim too. And certainly my May 6 birthday, which was shared by the late Willie Mays.
Exhibition games consume most of March and the last 10 days of February — as MLB seeks to prevent its postseason tournament from stretching into November — and athletes who disdain autograph hounds during the season often show more hospitable attitudes during the spring.
There’s no pressure on players with set positions and most don’t even accompany their teams on road trips. Even at home, it’s rare to see anyone play a full nine innings.
Since 1971, when I began covering the Florida Grapefruit League, I’ve interviewed Steve Garvey and Cal Ripken Jr., shared a golf cart with Bobby Cox, watched Jane Fonda walk her dog behind the Braves’ press trailer, and even broadcast an inning of a Dodgers-Astros game at the invitation of Houston broadcaster Milo Hamilton, for whom I was ghostwriter for his Making Airwaves autobiography.
As part of a ballpark book-signing gig, I also got to throw out the first pitch at Champion Stadium, the Disney World facility the Braves called home before moving to North Port, on the Gulf Coast.
Every spring, it seems, there are memorable interviews: youthful and thoughtful Twins manager Rocco Baldelli last year, for example.
The best thing about spring training is the weather: invariably hazy, hot, and humid. That’s a refreshing change from the frigid February conditions that make the shortest month seem like the longest month.
Spring training became a tourist destination relatively recently. Fans come down to get a sneak preview of teams who train in ballparks that look familiar — jetBlue Park has a miniature version of Fenway Park’s Green Monster — but on a much smaller scale.
Fans clad in shorts and bikini tops are closer to the action and to each other. And teams try to attract them between innings with a string of commercial events, such as races on the field and the shooting of T-shirts, hot dogs, and stuffed elephants (the symbol of sponsor Nozzle Nolen) into the stands from circling golf carts.
It’s all in good fun and nobody takes it too seriously. Not the players, not the managers, and not even the fans (who thankfully seem to drink less alcohol during the day than they might at night).
This spring, most teams will give extended auditions to rookies whose salaries (the minimum is now $780,000) make payroll management feasible. With more than 100 veterans still unsigned, players will realize that they need to sign sooner, stop worrying about what the other guy got, and accept contracts that contain less years and less dollars.
In Florida, two teams share two different ballparks — Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter rotates between the Cardinals and Marlins, while Ballpark of the Palm Beaches houses the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals.
That makes life easier, especially since the Mets are not too far distant in Port St. Lucie.
Celebrities come to spring training too. John Goodman, a diehard fan of the St. Louis Cardinals, comes to Jupiter every year, for example. And former players, many now employed as scouts, are also scattered in the stands behind home plate.
Too bad spring training — or at least its laissez-faire approach to both baseball and life — can’t last longer. It’s by far the best part of the baseball calendar.
Here’s the Pitch weekend editor Dan Schlossberg is also the editor of Here’s the Pitch 2025, an ACTA Publications paperback packed with essays by 15 different members of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America [IBWAA]. Dan’s email is ballauthor@gmail.com.
Cleaning Up
Color Photography Gives Update of Old Book New Zing
By Dan Schlossberg
It began as The Baseball Catalog in 1980. First produced by Jonathan David Publishers, a family-owned Long Island outfit that specialized in Judaica, the oversized illustrated paperback was an unorthodox history of baseball — with something on every page to make readers say, ‘Gee, I didn’t know that!’
Best described as one-stop shopping for the baseball fan, it was both a coffee-table book and a bathroom book, something to pick up in the middle, read backwards, and still get a quick pick-me-up out of the deal.
The book contained a myriad of memorable photographs, many never published in book form previously, and information on a variety of topics not typically found in a baseball book: peanut vendors, scouts, train trips, baseball in other countries, and female players, coaches, owners, reporters, broadcasters, and umpires.
As the game grew, so did the book. Like a desirable free agent, it took on topics, pages, chapters, and publishers, going from its humble Long Island origins to Triumph Books in Chicago and then to Sports Publishing, a division of Skyhorse, in New York.
Now it’s added color.
Like Walt Disney, who gave his fan base the Wonderful World of Color when most of the country was still stuck in the black & white of the ‘50s and early ‘60s, The Baseball Catalog came of age. Variously called The Baseball Almanac, The Big Bodacious Book of Baseball, The Baseball Bible, and The New Baseball Bible, it contained color only on the cover.
Til now.
The 2025 edition, a hefty 515 pages, includes a detailed index, and dozens of color pictures, scattered throughout the book.
The Cubs celebrate the end of a 108-year-old world championship drought? It’s now in full Cubbie blue.
Freddie Freeman, in Dodger blue, chats with his Atlanta successor, the red-draped Matt Olson, on the cover of the Trades chapter.
James Fiorentino paintings of Ted Williams and Aaron Judge are in color too. So’s the bronze Mel Allen plaque that hangs in Monument Park at Yankee Stadium.
Also in living color are a close-up picture of Shohei Ohtani and his bilingual dog Decoy. Juan Soto is in color too, along with Max Fried, Bobby Witt Jr., the enormous green scoreboard of Wrigley Field, and such Cooperstown icons as Bob Gibson, Babe Ruth, and the newly-minted Ichiro, who launched his U.S. career with simultaneous MVP and Rookie of the Year awards.
Even a ticket to Joker Marchant Stadium, long-time spring home of the Detroit Tigers, carries the torch of color.
Readers are certain to be as thrilled as Dorothy was when her tornado-ravaged Kansas farmhouse fell from the sky into Munchkin Land and the start of the yellow brick road.
For me, seeing my biggest and best book made into something even better gave me a feeling I had not experienced since Francisco Cabrera’s two-out, two-run single in the ninth gave my team — Atlanta Braves — a come-from-behind victory in Game 7 of the 1992 National League Championship Series against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Turn any page, or dive in anywhere, and the hi-resolution color seems to jump off the pages.
Thank you to the artists, photographers, and designers, and typesetters who made it all possible. And to Chip Caray, John Thorn, and Al Clark for their first-person forewords.
_____
Here’s the Pitch weekend editor Dan Schlossberg is editor of Here’s the Pitch 2025 [ACTA Publications] and writer for forbes.com, Memories & Dreams, Sports Collectors Digest, USA TODAY Sports Weekly, and many other outlets. Now on book tour, Dan can be contacted by emailing ballauthor@gmail.com.
Timeless Trivia: Can Healthy Braves Resume Their Battering Ways?
After losing a half-dozen players for at least two months each in 2024, the now-recovered Atlanta Braves have the potential to revert to the juggernaut they were that summer. That was the year they led the majors in hard-hit balls, hammering 219 with an exit velocity of at least 110 mph.
#Matt Olson not only set single-season franchise records for home runs (54) and RBI (137) but was the first Braves player to lead the majors in those two departments since Hank Aaron did it during his MVP season of 1957 . . .
#Austin Riley had a club-record 13 home runs in the first inning and had more homers (37) than any other third baseman in the majors . . .
#Ozzie Albies reached career peaks in home runs and RBI while becoming one of just seven second baseman with multiple 30/100 seasons . . .
#And Ronald Acuña, Jr. had franchise records for runs scored (149) and stolen bases (73) while recording the only 40/70 season in baseball history . . .
He became the first man since Joe DiMaggio in 1937 to compile at least 200 hits, 100 RBI, 145 runs scored, and 40 home runs . . .
En route to a unanimous MVP award, the Venezuelan right-fielder led both leagues with 217 hits, 149 runs, 383 total bases, 73 steals, and a .416 on-base percentage — not too shabby for a leadoff man.
Know Your Editors
HERE’S THE PITCH is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Benjamin Chase [gopherben@gmail.com] handles the Monday issue with Dan Freedman [dfreedman@lionsgate.com] editing Tuesday and Jeff Kallman [easyace1955@outlook.com] at the helm Wednesday and Thursday. Original editor Dan Schlossberg [ballauthor@gmail.com], does the weekend editions on Friday and Saturday. Former editor Elizabeth Muratore [nymfan97@gmail.com] is now co-director [with Benjamin Chase and Jonathan Becker] of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, which publishes this newsletter and the annual ACTA book of the same name. Readers are encouraged to contribute comments, articles, and letters to the editor. HtP reserves the right to edit for brevity, clarity, and good taste.
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