HOMEbaseball

HOMEbaseball is a daily anti-analytics running diary that orbits the Major League Baseball universe providing sometimes insightful, halfway irrelevant and always inane ruminations about baseball's past, present, and god help us, future. Follow us on Twitter:@varsityoptimism @timmoore2

[homebaseball]

I wouldn’t wish Spring Training on my worst enemy. This kitchen cannot be Gabe Kapler-approved.

(via AJ Ellis’ Twitter @ajellis17)

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To, Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Minnie Miñoso.

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A few words on Josh Hamilton

While the news of Hamilton's recent relapse is an absolute tragedy, it has very little to do with his baseball career and contract, the Los Angeles Angels or your blog. It has everything to do with the nature of addiction, his family and his own search for peace and recovery. If what you choose to bring to the conversation isn't rooted in those three things, you're part of the problem.

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Did you miss us?

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I'm at the Old Timers' Game at Dodger Stadium and it's totally wrinkling my brain.

[bicentennialboogie]

Montreal Expos President John McHale and newly-anointed Expos skipper Dick Williams take Reggie Jackson on a tour of the new Olympic Stadium in the fall of 1976. The Expos wooed Reggie hard, and the superstar slugger might have signed a free agent deal with them if George Steinbrenner hadn’t stepped in — and if Canadian customs officials hadn’t embarrassed Reggie during his visit by announcing that they’d discovered marijuana in his luggage. “I didn’t know it was illegal in this country,” said Jackson, who also claimed that the weed wasn’t his.

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Dan Epstein's new book on the 1976 season is out now!! He started this tumblr to get the word out and he is posting some unreal bicentennial gems.

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Who cares if there's a rain delay when you've got friends like these?

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​I woke up this morning and thought "Hey, there really should be a big picture of Eddie Guardado on this page", so here is a big picture of Eddie Guardado.

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It's almost midnight at Nationals Park and it's the bottom of the 4th inning. This guy has a backwards Joe Beimel jacket on. 

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Here’s a little gem from Former Expos coach and big league manager Jim Tracy regarding the early development of Vlad Guerrero in Jonah Keri's eternally amazing Expos history Up, Up and Away.

Felipe Alou seemed to have the right idea.

(also, Hipster Puig)

[homebaseball]

If we can't believe in Nick Punto, then what can we believe in, y'know?

[ladodgers-deactivated20190611]

Right before SVS did this: atmlb.com/1i4aQuu

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Be still my heart. It's been a wild 11 hours in Dodgertown.

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A not-so-brief history of earflapped batting helmets courtesy of Paul Lukas' in-depth Uni-Watch column on baseball uniform firsts and lasts.

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Miguel Montero, Sergeant-at-Arms of the Right Way to Play Army. BUBBLE UP!

(photo from @Marc_normandin via Fox Sports AZ)

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Twitter, ladies and gents.

[homebaseball]

MORNING ACTIVITIES 4/30

Is it at all possible that the Dog Days of the Major League Baseball season have arrived early? Is it at all possible that we have traded in sweltering heat for bitter cold (or, for the purposes of where I am located, still sweltering heat)? 

Or maybe it's the fact that an 80 year-old racist codger took over the world for 72 hours and for a brief moment I was sucked back into the hellacious orbit of the NBA. It was rough. I wrote all about it on my personal Tumblr. It was the first moment in the last 8 months where I've broken the chain in baseball consumption and it felt awful. Like I was cheating on a lover I actually, truly, deeply cared about. It also didn't help that the Dodgers were inclement weathered-out in Minneapolis (seriously- who's bright idea was non-geographic rival interleague baseball in April anyway?).

It DOUBLY didn't help that the weather gods have unleashed their wrath on Los Angeles, whipping up dry Santa Ana Winds and near-100 degree temperatures, turning my sinuses into slush and effectively rendering me useless to do anything.

Weird shit is happening all over. Bryce Harper's "hustle" has cost him 6-8 weeks after breaking his thumb and requiring surgery. Jose Abreu might be a video game. There. I said what no one want's to say. Jose Abreu, current masher of baseballs across the American League is nothing but a viral advertisement for MLB 14: The Show (IN STORES TUESDAY!!!).

Aside from the Brewers, A's and possibly the Braves (who have had a lot of help from fluky good starting pitching), no one is particularly playing well. Everyone seems like they were marginally surprised when the season began nearly four weeks ago, but lo and behold, it's mothereffin MAY tomorrow, and I'm gonna watch me a Dodgers/Twins doubleheader, which just leads me to question the whole bizarreness of the world even more.

I'm happy to be back in baseball world. I've learned my lesson. I paid my price (I watched Joey Crawford STEAL the ball from Kevin Durant and ICE him at the free throw line. Legitimately incredible.). Now back to more important things, like early season Major League Baseball. 

[nbaoffseason]

Banned. For. Life. See ya, asshole.

[homebaseball]

INTERSPORT SOLIDARITY.