It is absolutely awesome that we are witnessing Ohtani and Judge existing in their primes at the same time. It might get old eventually, but right now it’s just so cool (and I’m not a fan of either of their teams!).
And Cal Raleigh. 
The Pirates have fired manager Derek Shelton after a 7-game losing streak.
Chet Lemon has died.
Lemon’s career is much too forgotten now; he was a terrific player.
He had a long career and I think only two teams. Whitesox and Tigers?
Yup!
In the early '80s, a friend of mine played a lot of APBA Baseball, and we created a four-team all-league. Lemon was a regular on my teams; he was a very good player in that era.
RIP, Chet.
For some reason, he’s my earliest baseball memory and first jersey number I memorized, 44 with the White Sox. RIP, Mr. Lemon.
Lemon once made 512 putouts in the outfield in one year. That is still the all time American League record.
Sure, the White Sox are terrible again this season. But they’ve got both Obama and the Pope. Who have the Cubs got?
I’m going to catch a Pirates game in early June against the Astros. I don’t have much hope that it’ll be a good game, but I like adding to my tally of stadiums when I can.
Also, this is more of a Cafe Society post, but the spring 2025 anime Catch Me at the Ballpark is a delight. An anime that’s not really about baseball but the kinds of people you see at a game.
Sorry to let you down, but the Pope is a Cubs fans despite being from the South-Side. Oh, I see this might have been mis-reported yesterday. It looks like he is a White Sox fan.
Yesterday Jasson Dominguez hit three home runs including a grand slam for the Yankees. Two from the left and one from the right. They have been waiting for him to live up to his potential. Hopefully this is a good sign of things to come.
He was at the World Series in 2005. Definitely a White Sox fan.
The biggest question regarding Dominguez is whether or not he remains a switch hitter. .943 OPS as a lefty and .552 batting righty so far this season. He wasn’t so hot against left-handed pitching in the minors, either. Otherwise, I like what I see. He’s just turned 22, after all.
Lost a lot of Minor leaguer time to injury also. He is still learning, just in the majors.
Yeah 22 with one Tommy John already.
Judge is doing other worldly things at the plate. Grisham is having a career year with big hits in big situations. Bellinger is only hitting .215 and that’s up from what it was. They need Dominguez or Cody to start hitting steady. Better to have too many outfielders doing well than too few.
According to a meme from Stats Perform:
"After last night’s game, the Dodgers became the only MLB team in the modern era to:
Take the lead
then trail by 2+ runs
then lead by 5+ runs
then trail by 3+ runs
then lead by 3+ runs
all in the same game."
Too funny, the Rays are giving away souvenir ponchos to celebrate their first ever rain delay at home!
After watching the game last night in Sacramento I think it’s safe to say that the Rays win the who is playing in a better minor league stadium contest.
Yeah when I saw that Judge was batting .397 so far this year I honestly thought it was a misprint. I refreshed the page and it went up to .401.
Although nobody can finish .400 in this day and era, it would still be nice to see Judge or some other batter give it a run for the season. Ted Williams has been lonely since 1941.
When I was a teenager, both Rod Carew (1977) and George Brett (1980) made some pretty serious runs at .400. The last guy who got close was Tony Gwynn, and that was over 30 years ago now (1994). It would be cool to see someone be able to seriously contend for it, but the nature of the game right now probably makes it even less likely in 2025 than it was for Carew, Brett, or Gwynn.