Mark Wolfson has been a television producer and director since 1969, and has worked in sports television since 1976, when he set up his own production company in Los Angeles. In the ensuing 24 years, he’s worked on just about every sport, even the World Wrist Wrestling Championship from the Queen Mary. Mark produced and…
The new Pacific Bell Park in San Francisco is a lovely place to watch a baseball game, interesting and quirky, if lacking in the history that only time will help it accumulate. In all the media coverage of the new ballyard, though, what doesn’t come across is just how goofy the park is. Pac Bell…
Ray Ratto has been one of the finest sports writers in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years, first with the San Francisco Chronicle and more recently with the Examiner. The rest of the country got their first taste of Ray’s work in the late, lamented National. In addition to his local work, Ratto…
A few years ago, in his Guide to Baseball Managers, Bill James suggested it might be a good idea to include job-specific data on the backs of baseball cards for managers, as a way of increasing our understanding of what managers do. The Stats Major League Handbook has, for some years, included charts of what…
Slithering Along The NL West has become a tale of two teams, and including the Giants at this point is admittedly something of a stretch. At the All-Star break, the BP staff posted its collective choices for the best in the majors, and also analyzed the divisional races and tried to anticipate the rest of…
For the past few years, it’s been difficult to write anything new about the San Francisco Giants. The same topics keep raising their heads: Brian Sabean, Barry Bonds, Dusty Baker and the new ballpark. A third of the way into the 1999 season, nothing has changed on this front. Sabean has been relatively quiet so…
Major league baseball came to San Francisco in 1958 when the Giants, with Willie Mays, joined the Dodgers on their move west. Despite Mays’ undeniable brilliance, local fans wanted a hero they could call their own, and Mays carried New York baggage with him. So when a 20-year-old rookie named Orlando Cepeda hit a homerun…
There is a wonderful scene in the movie Under Fire, written by Ron Shelton a few years before he became famous in baseball circles for Bull Durham. Nick Nolte and Joanna Cassidy are American journalists in Nicaragua during the last days of the Somoza regime. They meet up with some Sandinista revolutionaries, who immediately latch…
TOP TEN TEAMS Yankees Braves Astros Red Sox Padres Indians Mets Giants Orioles Angels A handful of great teams and lot of not-so-hot teams. The wild- card "pennant races" really are a sham. The Braves and the Giants going down to the last day with 100+ wins, that’s a pennant race. One which wouldn’t have…
A headline for a recent Baseball Weekly cover story described Dusty Baker as an "inspirational manager" in charge of "overachieving Giants." The article included gushing praise from players, fellow managers, and even an opposing general manager who stated that Baker "handles people like nobody I’ve ever seen … I’d get rid of my own guy…
Top Ten Teams 1. Yankees: First in majors in runs per game, first in AL in fewest runs allowed. 2. Braves: I still don’t believe in Galarraga, though. 3. Astros: Moises Alou? 4. Rangers: Proof that pitching isn’t 75% of the game. 5. Indians: Don’t blame them for the crappiness of the rest of the…
After 60 games last season, the San Francisco Giants were 34-26 and in the midst of a surprising season that saw the team win the NL West despite allowing more runs than they scored. Many of us attributed their success to nothing more than luck, and we assumed the team would collapse towards the center…
I had a chance to see Toronto outfielder Shannon Stewart in person recently, when the Jays came to Oakland. What I picked up, among other things, is that he is very fast. He also happens to be a good baseball player, so we aren’t talking Vince Coleman here. In the game I attended, Stewart belted…
Henry Schulman is the Giants beat writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. He has been a sportswriter for 10 years and a professional reporter for 18. He started covering the Giants for the Oakland Tribune in 1988 and moved on to an afternoon paper, the San Francisco Examiner (1993-98), before starting at the Chronicle this…
Here are some picks from various BP authors about who they think will crash and burn, and who will break out this year… Steven Rubio The idea is a simple one: name the three players most likely to crash in 1998, and the three most likely to have a breakthrough season. The only guy I’m…
One of our readers (and occasional contributor), James Kushner had some reflections on Steven Rubio’s Abstract Progress: Dear Steven Rubio and other Baseball Prospectors: I’m writing in response to your article “Abstract Progress”, which decries the lack of influence that Bill James and his theories have on “the minds of the average fan or baseball…