Babe Ruth is poised to hit another home run, only this time on the sports memorabilia market when the bat he used to slug No. 500 nearly a century ago hits the auction block on Wednesday. Known as the "Sultan of Swat" during a storied ...
MLB players, San Francisco coach Hensley Meulens reflect on Shohei Ohtani's 2018 campaign
Around this time four years ago, during the last tour of Japan by major league players, the MLB world at large got its first real glimpse of Shohei Ohtani. After pitching an inning of relief in the opener of that 2014 Nichibei Yakyu series, Ohtani, ...
Patience with young players yielding returns for Red Sox
Patience is a virtue, they say. But it is one rarely exhibited in MLB, especially when it comes to rookies. Be good or be gone is usually the modus operandi practiced by most big league ball clubs in dealing with their younger players. Go great guns ...
Hiroshima mayor Matsui calls Carp an integral part of city
Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui was there in person at Tokyo Dome to see the Carp capture the Central League pennant. The baseball-mad residents of his city might make it hard for him to do the same should the Carp be on the verge of ...
Fighters face Ruthian dilemma with young star Otani
What is a team to do when its best pitcher is also its best run producer? The answer is to have him swing the bat as often as possible — even if the pitcher is 22-year-old Shohei Otani and has a record-setting 163-kph fastball. That, ...
Warriors, Kobe serve up unprecedented drama to end season
Now THAT was one fantastic finish to an NBA regular season. Not even the spoil-sport antics of San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg "Sourpuss" Popovich could ruin it (MAS will explain later). Instead of having to snooze through the usual dreary ending to six long months of ...
Exploring quirky history of season schedules
Is a 162-game professional baseball season too long? Is a 143-game schedule too short? Is a 154-game calendar just right? According to a Bleacher Report article by Jacob Shafer last month, this could be the final year for Major League Baseball's 162-game format that has been in ...
Visit to Cooperstown brings back memories of youth
Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. Check. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Check. Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. MAS can now put a check in that box as well. He recently completed a personal Hall of Fame hat trick by journeying ...
Flood of retired numbers can lessen significance
You probably saw the article last week with the news the New York Yankees will retire the uniform numbers of former players Andy Pettitte (46), Jorge Posada (20) and Bernie Williams (51). That brings to 20 the total of retired numbers by the Yanks, ...
Jordan's global impact transcended racial, economic boundaries
The Japan Times will be running excerpts from Hall of Fame writer Sam Smith's new book "There Is No Next: NBA Legends on the Legacy of Michael Jordan" over the next few months. This marks the first installment. * * * I began to think of ...
One exhilarating summer brought to fact-filled life
It had to happen. After books about individual decades came books about individual years. Now we get the book about a single season. Bill Bryson's "One Summer" is the story of just four months — June to September 1927 — in the life of ...
The special investigation squad of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office has arrested a former president of Pacific Consultants International, a Tokyo-based consultancy for overseas construction projects, and three others on suspicion of bribery in connection with a project in Vietnam financed by the ...
