Billy Paultz Reconsidered

Just because it’s an obvious idea doesn’t mean it’s not a good one: “Remembering Harry Kalas - Wonderful Stories from Friends Celebrating a Great Life” is a new book I’d recommend even if Friend of BPR Gordie Jones wasn’t involved in the project. It includes remembrances from everyone from Harry’s kids to a frat brother […]

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Today’s Sunday News column, plus a couple additions observations at the bottom:
 The Phillies’ Raul Ibanez has 21 home runs through Friday, among overall offensive numbers that, if the season ended today, would make him a serious candidate for National League MVP.
He’s 37, and has never hit more than 33 homers in a season, and more […]

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It seems legitimate to me to wonder how much PEDs actually work - how much they actually improve performance.
In that vein consider the following piece by FOBPR Bill James. In it, James comes up with a method of rating the most unusual careers in baseball history by assigning point values to a variety of very […]

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Bill James on A-Rod:
“Baseball allowed a situation to develop in which it was in the self-interest of players to use steroids. Now we are very angry with people because they did what the system rewarded them for doing.”
That’s about it. It was possible to be, uh, let’s go with not unsympathetic to A-Rod until the […]

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Here’s a wonderful idea that’s never going to happen: when a player tests positive for PEDs, he’s banned from the sport for a year, and his team is ineligible for postseason play in the same year.

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We are blogging live from the living room, where Roger Clemens is about to testify (not in my living room, on ESPN) and Bob Ley has just assured us “there’s going to be drama.”
9:38- ESPN just reported what was obvious to a lot of people- Andy Pettitte gave new testimony, damning to Clemens, in exchange […]

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Roger Clemens’ team of lawyers and agents released a report last month that purported to prove Clemens’ career arc and late-career success was not that unusual, and do not suggest PED use. In a piece in today’s New York Times some professors from Penn’s Wharton School of Business deconstruct the report and find that, unsurprisingly, […]

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