There are twenty-six letters of the alphabet. There are twenty-six players on a Major League Baseball active roster. So I had an idea. How good of a baseball team could I compile in which every player’s last name begins with a different letter? It’s pretty simple—I get one guy whose last name begins with A.…
St. Louis Bullpen is having a St. Louis-themed e-trivia night. Come play with us.
On Tuesday, June 30, 2020, at 7 p.m., the finest minds in the St. Louis area will be gathering to engage in a trivia contest to determine who has supreme knowledge of St. Louis sports. And those of us who weren't invited to that are gonna have a trivia night of our own. Sign up…
The New All-Century Team
In 1999, Major League Baseball unveiled its All-Century Team to commemorate the best players of the 20th century. This was a watershed moment in baseball analysis for me—in an era where balloting was done by paper and submitted via mail, my dad was insistent that the ballot be taken seriously, and thus I, a ten-year old,…
Five terrible St. Louis Cardinals who lasted longer than the Confederacy
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, the United States of America is engaging in a long-overdue reevaluation of our history of racism. To say that this was provoked by the Floyd murder, while technically true, undersells the story. This was the culmination of years of protests…
The Summer of ’98 Made Me a Baseball Fan
The first baseball game I ever attended was on September 5, 1998. I was 6 years old at the time, and went to the ballpark with my dad to see the hometown St. Louis Cardinals take on his favorite team growing up, the Cincinnati Reds. I’m sure my dad was secretly hoping I would become…
If Bill DeWitt Jr. isn’t lying to you, he should prove it
I do not personally know how wealthy Bill DeWitt Jr. is, because I do not know him, and because I have never seen his financial records. The first result of a Google search of his name indicates that he is worth $4 billion, as are most of the successive results, but again, I do not personally know…
The Cardinals Hall of Fame’s slow descent into irrelevance
I was born five and a half years after Keith Hernandez’s tenure with the St. Louis Cardinals came to an end. I was far too young to have watched Keith Hernandez finishing out his career with the New York Mets and Cleveland Indians. All I have is the historical record of who Keith Hernandez was.…
The Greatest Cardinal championship belt
Asking who the greatest St. Louis Cardinal is at a given moment can be a bit of a tricky question because, honestly, it's hard to weigh the factors to call somebody the greatest. But I want to try it anyway. One easy solution would be to look at the team's leader in Wins Above Replacement…
At some point, baseball isn’t worth it
My favorite part of watching football is when the quarterback throws a ball in a spot where only the receiver can catch it and the receiver defies what we think we know about acrobatics to complete the reception. My least favorite part of watching football is the unavoidable fact that the sport is destroying its…
The eight greatest unmade “Last Dance”-style St. Louis sports documentaries
That ESPN’s documentary series The Last Dance, a ten-part recollection of the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls, has become a worldwide phenomenon is a perfect storm of events. We are in the middle of an international pandemic that has stopped all sports dead in their tracks, it is largely the story of possibly the most popular athlete in…
