Latest news with #Sliders
New York Times
25-07-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Sliders: For new Baseball Hall of Fame class, growing the game means rethinking the way in
Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of the game. COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. – Billy Wagner broke his right arm twice when he was 5 years old. He started throwing with his left hand instead and soon realized it was loaded with thunderbolts. Wagner's 100 mph heat was a rarity in his time and led him, eventually, to a Hall of Fame induction ceremony this weekend in Cooperstown, N.Y. Advertisement Baseball may be a game of imitation, but breaking your dominant arm while hunting for velocity would be extreme. 'I would avoid that path,' Wagner said last week, on a Zoom call with reporters. 'I mean, that's a little painful.' The sad fact is that too many aspiring pitchers shred their arms, anyway. When Wagner and CC Sabathia — who also goes into the Hall on Sunday, with Ichiro Suzuki, Dick Allen and Dave Parker — consider the future of their craft, the wide-ranging impact of youth development concerns them. 'I think some of these guys are coming into the game broken,' Sabathia said, adding that the 'insane' outbreak of Tommy John surgery starts with overuse at the younger levels. 'That was something that my dad fought against for me for a long time. He recognized that my arm was special, (and) he never let anybody pitch me more than one time on a weekend.' Sabathia then outlined his plan for his 14-year-old son, Carter, who is 6-foot-2, 170 pounds and throws 85 mph. 'If I put him in the Perfect Game circuit right now, we'd be flying around everywhere, every weekend for him to pitch, and I won't do it,' Sabathia said. 'He plays third base, he plays center field, and he only pitches here with his local team in Jersey, and we'll get reps that way…. He's going to play other sports, and he's going to be as diverse an athlete as possible.' Wagner — whose son, Will, is an infielder for the Toronto Blue Jays — has coached high school baseball in Virginia for years. He sees the same problems as Sabathia. 'When they get to the major-league level, they're running out of what we call runway,' Wagner said. 'And so they're injured because they've done all this massive training to get to that point, to chase their dream.' He added: 'At the lower levels, there needs to be more joy in what we're doing to grow the game. It's not a job. We don't need to take lessons every single day to make the perfect swing. The swing comes because you're out in the backyard throwing up rocks and hitting them off a bat. You're playing sandlot baseball, you're playing Wiffle ball.' Advertisement The rising expense of youth baseball has made it harder for lower-income families to afford. That's part of a multifaceted issue affecting the makeup of MLB rosters, which included just 6.2 percent Black players on opening day, down from a peak of more than 18 percent in the 1980s. Sabathia is the first Black AL/NL starter elected to the Hall since Fergie Jenkins in 1991, and the third, with Jenkins and Bob Gibson, to record 3,000 strikeouts. Of the 20 pitchers with a 20-win season since Sabathia last did it, in 2010, only David Price is Black. 'I'm excited to be able to get up there and talk to (Fergie) about what it means, (but) the one thing that keeps crossing my mind, though, is like: who's next?' Sabathia said. 'I feel like, through the Players Alliance and some of the efforts that we're putting together for this next generation, I almost feel even more responsible now to be on guys about being that next Black Ace, whether it's Taj Bradley or now Chase Burns or Hunter Greene, or whoever else. I don't want to be the last Black pitcher to win 20 games, be in the Hall of Fame, to do all these things.' Sabathia has stayed involved in MLB as part of the Commissioner's Ambassador Program, a group that has caused 'tension and an awkwardness' with the union, as The Athletic's Evan Drellich reported this week. To Sabathia, the open exchange of ideas is all positive. 'You can go to Rob (Manfred) and talk about whatever kind of problems you have,' Sabathia said. 'That's something that we didn't have when I was playing. I never got a chance to have the commissioner come and sit in the clubhouse and kind of go over what's happening during the season. So I'm trying to do whatever I can to help grow the game and point the game in a positive direction.' The other living inductee this weekend, Suzuki, now serves as a special assistant to the chairman of the Seattle Mariners. He suits up before many games, refining his technique so he can help current players with theirs. To Suzuki, preserving the immeasurable aspects of baseball is vital to the essence of the sport. Advertisement 'Baseball is a game of human beings playing against human beings, and to have the passion and the energy that is created by that is something that I really hope is still part of the game,' he said through an interpreter. 'That's what I really value and is very important to me.' Hobby shops line Main Street in Cooperstown, with treasures great and small, so it's fitting that baseball cards helped build the museum at the end of the block. The Hall of Fame was around long before the memorabilia craze of the late 1980s and early 1990s, of course. But as Marq Evans explains in 'The Diamond King,' a compelling documentary released this year, a surprisingly profitable relationship between Donruss cards and the Hall brought a windfall that paid for new administrative offices and an expansion of the library. Evans set out to tell the story of Dick Perez, the prolific artist who painted more than 400 portraits for a series of 'Diamond Kings' cards that appeared in Donruss sets from 1982 to 1996. Along the way, he learned how several connections — like the puzzle pieces within each pack — combined to grow the Hall of Fame. 'The Hall was a place I had wanted to go to my entire life, but it's hard to get to from Eastern Washington, where I grew up,' Evans said. 'So it was just really fascinating to hear that this artist and this company, Perez-Steele Galleries — and really the Diamond Kings — played such a part in making the place as magical as it is.' Perez began painting portraits of Hall of Famers for the Hall to sell as postcards in 1979. The next year, a federal judge ruled against Topps' monopoly of the baseball card industry, allowing Fleer and Donruss to sell cards starting in 1981. Bill Madden — a New York Daily News writer who also worked with Donruss and keenly followed the collectibles business — knew of Perez's Hall of Fame postcards and thought something similar could work for Donruss. Frank Steele was friendly with the Hall's then-chairman, Ed Stack, and negotiated a deal between the card company and the museum. Advertisement The Hall would make Perez its official artist, endorse the fledgling card company and receive an escalating scale of royalties from every pack sold. Nobody knew how lucrative the relationship would be. 'The first year with Donruss, in 1981, they sold like $1 million worth of cards, and the Hall of Fame got some royalty off that, which was very small,' Evans said. 'And then just a couple of years later, they were doing like $80 million in sales — and not only, of course, is the royalty off that a much larger number, but the higher it went, the royalty percentage also went up. So all of a sudden, the Hall of Fame has a ton of money that they did not expect to have.' Eventually, the oversaturation of the card market led to Donruss' demise. But Perez's work continues, and the Diamond Kings' legacy survives in the form of a permanently endowed internship program now in its 25th year. Peggy Steele, who owned and operated Perez-Steele Galleries, said that 33 alumni are returning this weekend to help with induction ceremonies. 'We always felt like you give back where you make it,' she said. 'That's where the Hall continues to benefit. If we hadn't had that relationship, it never would have happened.' Tom Hamilton was born in Wisconsin in 1954, a year after Major League Baseball arrived in Milwaukee. The Braves would leave for Atlanta while Hamilton was still in grade school, but the Brewers arrived in his high school years, giving Hamilton a new team — and another set of broadcasters — to follow. Hamilton, this year's Ford C. Frick Award winner for broadcasting excellence, has spent 36 seasons bringing the Cleveland Indians and Guardians to his radio listeners with gusto and verve. But his formative influences are all from Wisconsin: Earl Gillespie, Merle Harmon, Bob Uecker, Gary Bender and Eddie Doucette. 'Those were five incredible radio play-by-play guys in the three sports that I did: basketball, football and baseball,' Hamilton said recently. 'I didn't realize it, but it was like grad school.' Advertisement Here are some thoughts from Hamilton on each of the five voices who set him on his path to Cooperstown. Earl Gillespie: 'I got to do University of Wisconsin football with him for one year, and for me, that was like winning a jackpot. He was a guy that I had grown up — I don't want to say emulating, but a guy I had so much respect and admiration for as a broadcaster because he did the Braves. When they went to Atlanta, he wanted to stay back in Wisconsin. Then he did the Packers and Badgers on radio. So to do a year of University of Wisconsin football with Earl was kind of like: 'I'm playing center field next to Hank Aaron.'' Merle Harmon: 'Listen to Merle Harmon's football calls. He was the voice of the Jets when Joe Willie (Namath) won the Super Bowl. He was really good. He initially was the No. 1 guy for the Brewers, and Bob was the No. 2 guy. And the only reason Merle gave up the Brewers (was because) he was going to do the Olympics for NBC in 1980. He had to give up the Brewers to do it.' Bob Uecker: 'Well, he was so funny — none of us can be that — but I don't think Bob's ever been given credit for how good he was at play-by-play. He was phenomenal, to the point that when I started going out on my own and doing games, I had to make sure I wasn't imitating Bob — you know, 'get up, get out of here, gone!' There's only one Bob. But I think because he was so accomplished in everything else and is noted for the movies, the beer commercials, Johnny Carson, I don't think he got enough recognition for being an incredible play-by-play guy on radio.' Gary Bender: 'He was at Madison, he was a sports anchor, but he did Badger football and Packer football. And then he went from Madison to be the main guy for CBS. He did the Final Four, the North Carolina State-Houston game. And the one thing about those four guys — Earl, Merle, Bob, Gary Bender — they were as good of people, if not better, than they were broadcasters. And they were incredible broadcasters.' Eddie Doucette: 'I never got to know Eddie, but he was doing Milwaukee Bucks basketball on radio when they had Lew Alcindor and Oscar Robertson. And Eddie, oh my god — energetic creativity. He's the one that came up with the 'jack-knife jumper' and 'into the low post in the toaster to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.' He came up with Bobby 'The Greyhound' Dandridge, and the 'sky hook' for Kareem. I've never been that creative, but those are all terms he used. That's why I always said about Hawk (Harrelson): 'When people are imitating your calls or your vocabulary, that sets you apart from everybody.'' The 75 percent threshold for election to the Hall of Fame serves two purposes. It's a high enough figure to be a landslide, but low enough so a few misguided voters can't influence the outcome. The result is what matters — in or out? The rest is just details. Advertisement Of course, one detail of Ichiro Suzuki's election has generated plenty of conversation: He fell a single vote short of joining Mariano Rivera as the only unanimous electees to Cooperstown. That very fact shows that there's always been a lot of curious, stray votes among the hundreds in each election. The point is that Suzuki cleared 75 percent. And while there's no excuse for even one voter to pass over such a decorated candidate, remember that writers used to be really, really stingy. Consider the case of Yogi Berra, who hit 30 homers twice and batted .300 four times, qualifying him for the center square of last Saturday's Grid. Berra did pretty much everything else, too: three MVP awards, 10 World Series titles, 15 years in a row as an All-Star, the life of a legend. Yet when Berra first came before the Baseball Writers' Association of America, for the 1971 election, only 242 of 360 voters checked his box — 28 shy of election. Could you imagine? In fact, nobody was elected on that 1971 ballot, which featured 16 players who eventually would get plaques. 'Sure I'm disappointed,' Berra told Dick Young of the New York Daily News. 'But then, DiMag didn't make it his first year, either.' At the time, only four candidates had been elected on the first ballot since the initial class of 1936: Bob Feller, Jackie Robinson, Ted Williams and Stan Musial. Some fairly decent players — Jimmie Foxx, Mel Ott and, yes, Joe DiMaggio — were forced to wait their turn. Players now must wait five years to be included on the ballot, but DiMaggio, who retired after the 1951 World Series, was deemed eligible in 1953. Yet the writers made him get in line behind Dizzy Dean and Al Simmons, who both made it on their ninth try. DiMaggio fell 81 votes short. In 1954, DiMaggio missed by 14 votes, with Bill Dickey (ninth ballot), Rabbit Maranville (14th) and Bill Terry (14th) getting the call. DiMaggio finally made it in 1955, and Berra got in easily on his second try, in 1972, with newcomer Sandy Koufax and 300-game winner Early Wynn, who had been denied three times. 'It is great to make it, whether it takes one, two, three or four years,' Berra said then. 'It doesn't matter.' It's been 10 years since a newly elected Hall of Fame duo matched up precisely with their years in the game. Randy Johnson and John Smoltz, from the class of 2015, both started in 1988 and finished in 2009. Now it's CC Sabathia and Ichiro Suzuki, who made their MLB debuts in 2001 and played their final games in 2019. Advertisement When speaking about Suzuki, Sabathia often mentions a game that served as a fulcrum in his career. On July 30, 2005, with Cleveland, Sabathia took the mound in Seattle after one of his worst starts ever: an eight-run shelling in Oakland. It brought his ERA to 5.24 and prompted a meaningful bullpen session with Indians pitching coach Carl Willis. 'I was trying to learn an out pitch,' Sabathia recalled last week. 'I was getting to two strikes and I was getting a lot of foul balls. I couldn't get a strikeout. And we went down to the bullpen in Oakland and he taught me how to throw a cutter, and it came out like an 82 mph slider. And I was like, 'Oh, this thing is good. I'm taking this into the game.'' Against Suzuki in Seattle, however, Sabathia's new cutter/slider met its match. 'I throw him a slider, (he) hits it off the window in Safeco,' Sabathia said, referring to a second-level restaurant at the Mariners' ballpark, then known as Safeco Field. 'I was like, 'All right, you know, that's Ichi. I could keep throwing this thing.' Comes back up later in the game, I throw it to him (on a 1-1) pitch, he takes it deep again. 'But that ends up being, like, the best pitch of my career, right? It changed my career, being able to throw that pitch. And he just peppered it off the window.' Sabathia was right about his new pitch. He lost that day in Seattle but went 9-1 over the final two months in 2005, a stretch that marked the beginning of a 7 1/2 year prime. Before that start in Seattle, Sabathia's career ERA was 4.26. From August 2005 through the end of the 2012 season, it was 3.10. All he needed was to weather Suzuki's two homers and keep his confidence in the new pitch – which, apparently, was easy to do. After all, as Sabathia said, 'That's Ichi.' (Top photo, l-r, of Suzuki, Sabathia and Wagner in January 2025: New York Yankees / Getty Images)
Yahoo
21-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
'Best in town' takeaway visited by food hygiene inspectors
A takeaway in Swindon has been rated five stars by the Food Standards Agency, solidifying its 'best of the best' reputation. Sliders Food & Takeaway first opened on Cricklade Road in December 2023, but was recently given a new life after changing ownership. The takeaway was visited by the Food Standards Agency on July 19, 2025, for an unexpected food hygiene inspection, but according to Sliders, there was no stress, as the business prides itself on being top-notch. "You don't know when they're coming because they just turn up and want to see all your paperwork, expect your fridges and freezers and things like that," the owner, who doesn't wish to be named, told the Swindon Advertiser. "We're really happy to say that we were rated five stars. "Our previous food hygiene rating was also five stars, and to be honest, we would be really upset if we got anything less. "We want to be top standard. It's not just about the food inspection; we want to be known as a five-star place all the time." Sliders' food hygiene has been rated top notch (Image: Sliders) The takeaway, which offers smash burgers, milkshakes, skin on fries, wings, onion rings, dessert waffles and more, was first set up with the idea of filling a gap in the market. The company prides itself on using fresh meat from a local butchers, and cementing itself as a local company. "At the time there wasn't so much out there and I just had a passion for good food and making people happy," the owner added. The takeaway company is based on Cricklade Road (Image: Google Maps) "We have been open a little while, but it's just changed ownership now, so it's just me running it now. "We just had our new website launched, and we've got good regular customers and walk-ins, and we've just done a couple of markets like the Tadpole Farm Primary School fete as well. "It's really lovely to link up with local schools and communities. We'd just love for people to come and give us a go." Recommended reading: The best pubs to visit in Swindon at the weekend Restaurant launches special menu inspired by iconic 90s sitcom Closure confirmed for beloved Chinese buffet From reviews left on Sliders' JustEat page, it's clear that the Food Standards Agency isn't the only one rating this takeaway five stars. One reviewer, commenting on May 8, 2025, said: "Cracking food and some of the best burgers we've had in a while. Will definitely be ordering from here again." Another, on May 30, declared the takeaway's offerings the "best burgers in town."
Daily Mirror
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Rare 100% Rotten Tomatoes sci-fi show is now available to stream
Sliders was a 90s sci-fi show that was given a new lease of life after it was cancelled by Fox, and its star Jerry O'Connell has opened up on its revival Sci-fi buffs and fans of shows akin to The Big Bang Theory are in for a treat, as a beloved 90s classic is now available to stream absolutely gratis. The series Sliders, which explores the adventures of a group traversing various parallel universes via a wormhole, was conceived by Robert K. Weiss and Tracy Tormé. Initially broadcast on Fox for its first three instalments, Sliders was then shifted to the Sci-Fi Channel where it concluded with two additional seasons. Although it was initially cut by Fox, the show wrapped up in February 2000 and has since been lauded by critics far and wide. Sliders boasts a formidable 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers praising its enduring appeal season after season, reports the Express. Flick Filosopher endorsed the show, stating: "This is compulsively watchable popcorn TV, fluffy and fun, more compelling in the aggregate than each individual episode might be, with little clues sprinkled here and there that contribute to a larger intrigue." Additionally, the Chicago Tribune complimented the series: "It looks good, a smart, imaginative, often humorous exploration of what it would be like to be trapped traveling from one version of Earth to another, trying to get home." Jerry O'Connell, who starred as Quinn Mallory, discussed the series' pivot in narrative and style and its eventual resurgence post-cancellation during an interview with Yahoo Entertainment. He remarked: "I do think that Sci-Fi at that time was looking for darker science fiction fare with an emphasis on heavy special effects makeup. "The people who invited us to the party left the party, and that was disorienting. Some of our cast members felt abandoned. "Some pretty great people like Marc Zicree, Richard Compton, and David Peckinpah did come on to the show, but everything had just changed directions." He was only 25 when he wrapped up the show and, after being given the chance to direct a few episodes, he tried to recapture its original allure. The star added: "If you notice, in the episodes I direct, I did manage to get us back to sort of that thought-provoking, parallel-universe fun that made the show popular to begin with." Sliders is now available for free viewing on Pluto TV's Sci-fi Series channel.
New York Times
11-07-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
‘Once in a generation' – The All-Star throw that rocketed Dave Parker to Cooperstown
Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of the game. They had been teammates for one day, nearly four years earlier. One hit a game-tying homer and drove in the go-ahead run with a walk. The other nailed two runners on the bases with some of the most hellacious throws anyone had ever seen. Advertisement Dave Parker, the fielder, was the Most Valuable Player of that 1979 All-Star Game. Lee Mazzilli, the hitter, was not. Reunited with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1983, Parker reveled in the reminders. 'If you knew the Parkway, he was a trash talker, in a good way, to everyone,' Mazzilli, a Met in 1979, said by phone this week. 'It didn't matter who you were. It was always a good back and forth. I'd say, 'Yeah, the only reason you won it was because you misjudged the ball!'' Actually, Mazzilli said, Parker lost a Jim Rice pop-up in the roof of the Seattle Kingdome, only to recover it — in foul territory by the right field bullpen mounds — and fire a one-hop strike to third base to nail Rice. But that play, in the seventh, merely foreshadowed an even better one in the eighth, when Parker unleashed a rocket, on the fly, to cut down the go-ahead run. It was the kind of moment that sent a signal from the spire of the Space Needle to the halls of Cooperstown. And while it took decades to receive that message, the Hall of Fame finally elected Parker last December in a vote by the Classic Baseball Era committee. He will be inducted on July 27, four weeks after his death from Parkinson's Disease at age 74. 'He had a cannon,' said Larry Bowa, the National League's starting shortstop for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1979. 'Not only did he throw good, the ball was always low, one-hop to the catcher. It was of those where you say: 'Once in a generation.' 'He took a lot of pride in defense, he could steal bases, hit home runs, hit for average. And he had that saying: 'When the leaves turn brown, I'll be wearing the batting crown.'' Parker had indeed won the NL batting title in 1977 and 1978, his MVP season, when he also led the majors in OPS (.979) and won his second of three Gold Gloves. Keith Hernandez, then with the St. Louis Cardinals, followed Parker as batting champion in 1979 and was co-MVP with Pittsburgh's Willie Stargell. Advertisement When Parker's Pirates won the World Series that fall, it further cemented a status widely shared by Hernandez and his peers. 'He was the best player in the game from '78 to the early '80s,' Hernandez said last week. 'I can only speak for myself, but he was the best player in the game.' Hernandez made the last out in the top of the eighth inning in the 1979 All-Star Game, after Mazzilli's leadoff homer off Jim Kern had tied it, 6-6. Leading off for the AL in the bottom of the eighth was Angels catcher Brian Downing, in the only All-Star appearance of his career. Downing played 20 seasons and actually compiled more bWAR than Parker (51.5 for Downing, who walked a lot, compared to 40.1 for Parker, who didn't). This was Downing's best season, and he made the most of his chance with a single off future Hall of Famer Bruce Sutter, a master of the split-finger fastball. After a sacrifice bunt, an intentional walk and a strikeout, Graig Nettles came up. Here's how the play looked on NBC: Downing, 74, lives on a ranch in Texas now and said he has never watched any highlights from his career. But, he said in a rare interview late last year, the details of the Parker play are etched in his memory. We'll let Downing describe it in full: 'Okay, so I'm thinking Bruce Sutter and Graig Nettles — just looking at the way Sutter throws it and Nettles' swing, he's going to either hit a hard ground ball up the middle for a hit, a hard grounder to right for a hit or, more likely, a one-hop drive right at frickin' Parker in fairly shallow right on a fast Astroturf field. 'So I'm going to get the best lead I can without getting picked off, and I'm going to get as good of a secondary lead as I can, which I've always done. And I have to assume he's going to hit that line drive on one hop, which, to my chagrin, that's exactly what happened. Advertisement 'I got as good a jump as I could get. I'm happy with all that because I was ready for it. And I made the turn and now I'm coming around third. And I have no problem with violence. Full speed, I don't care. But as I'm coming, I'm thinking of the Pete Rose play (with Ray Fosse in 1970) and all that, I don't want to hurt somebody. Because if you run into a catcher, which I was at that point, you're out 99 percent of the time, automatically. You're not knocking it loose unless you're Bo Freaking Jackson. And my theory when I was on second is that I'd have to run into him, assuming there's going to be a play at the plate. 'But from my vantage point coming around third, the front of the plate was wide open, if not the whole plate. And I don't even see Gary Carter because I'm concentrating on the plate. He's at least a full step away from the plate. So the plate is wide open and I'm going to take a headfirst dive, which I've always done, and try to grab the top, left-side corner. And at that point, when I start to do that, he's not around. 'So I'm in the slide, and all of a sudden he comes up and blocks my hand off. Carter made an awesome play. I was headed to a wide-open plate, and I never saw any of that. It was just like a magic trick. It showed up on me, there it is. I thought it was something I've done many times — headfirst, grab the plate before they can get me — and it didn't happen because two Hall of Famers made Hall of Fame plays, both of 'em.' Two years earlier, in 1977, Parker had recorded 26 outfield assists, a total unmatched in the major leagues since. Most runners knew better than to bait Parker, who gleefully accepted the challenge. 'I loved throwing out runners,' he said in December, in his conference call with reporters after the Hall of Fame election. 'And if they kept running, I would hit him in the back of the head with the ball.' In interviews after the All-Star Game, Parker said that he had wanted to make a one-hop throw to the plate, but it took off. He credited Carter — as Joe Garagiola did, effusively, on NBC — for saving the play. Carter, who was then with the Montreal Expos, told reporters it was 'the biggest play of my career.' Like Parker, Carter relished the spotlight. He would win two All-Star MVPs himself, in 1981 and 1984, but this one belonged to Parker, who was brash enough to tell his Pirates teammates, before leaving for Seattle, that he would win it. Advertisement In 'Cobra,' his 2021 memoir with Dave Jordan, Parker said that when commissioner Bowie Kuhn handed him the trophy, it meant more to him than his batting titles. 'I carried that thing through the dugout, up the stairs to the clubhouse, out the stadium, back through the doors of the Olympic Hotel,' Parker and Jordan wrote. 'It sat beside me on the hotel bar while I cooled out with some of the fellas. I might've even bought it a drink. I stared at the trophy before I fell asleep. I carried it through Sea-Tac Airport like a damn Cabbage Patch doll. 'If you've ever won something you really wanted and everyone mocked you for holding on to it for days, guess what. I was right there with you, baby.' Parker won't be there in Cooperstown for the biggest honor of all. But he always knew his day was coming. When asked in December if he considered himself a Hall of Famer when he played, Parker had no hesitation. 'Without a doubt,' he said. One month ago Friday, the Mets' David Peterson fired the first shutout of his career, a six-hitter with no walks and six strikeouts in a 5-0 victory over the Washington Nationals. He seemed bound for another in Baltimore on Thursday, but manager Carlos Mendoza pulled him with a 1-0 lead after a leadoff single in the eighth. 'You're already in the eighth inning, 90 pitches,' Mendoza explained later, after the Orioles came back off Ryne Stanek for a 3-1 win. 'He did his part.' OUTS RECORDED AFTER THE SIXTH INNING THIS SEASON BY METS STARTERS David Peterson: 25 Everyone Else: 8 — Tim Britton (he/him) (@ July 10, 2025 at 1:56 PM Mendoza's decision – despite Peterson's reasonable pitch count – highlights the relative disappearance of the shutout, something only seven others have accomplished this season: Cincinnati's Andrew Abbott, Detroit's Tarik Skubal, St. Louis' Erick Fedde and Sonny Gray, San Diego's Michael King and Stephen Kolek and Texas' Nathan Eovaldi. Advertisement Baseball, then, is on a single-season record pace for fewest complete-game shutouts. Last year, teams threw 321 shutouts but pitchers went the distance just 16 times, tied with 2022 for fewest in a full season in AL/NL history. No active pitcher has more than three in a season, and the active leader, Clayton Kershaw, hasn't had one since 2016. Peterson, a first-round pick from the University of Oregon in 2017, threw 106 pitches in his shutout, seven shy of his career high from 2023. After Thursday's start, he is 6-4 with a 3.06 ERA, and his 109 innings easily lead the Mets' battered pitching staff. Here's Peterson with a few thoughts on the increasingly rare pitching gem. Strikeouts and shutouts don't always mix: 'I'm trying to go as deep as I can in every game. My goal is if I can go all nine, then I'll go all nine. But there's a lot to do with pitch counts and workload management and all that stuff that kind of gets in the way of guys getting to that position. A lot of people are fascinated with chasing the strikeouts and doing all this and doing all that. There's a price to pay that comes with that, which is usually the pitch count goes up if you're going to be trying to chase punchouts.' His last shutout, in 2017, was a big one: 'It was very special — I struck out 20 guys. It was like 128 pitches, I think. (Writer's note: Actually 123.) I knew (the strikeout total) because earlier in the year I had struck out 17 against Mississippi State, and after the eighth inning, I overheard somebody say where I was at. But it wasn't really like a thought in my mind until I overheared something.' Overanalysis hurts the cause: 'For me growing up, watching guys in the '90s and 2000s, they would be regularly at 110 pitches in a start. But now I feel like teams can take so many things into account, they probably overanalyze the situation a little bit: 'Well, he went 100 last start and he's getting close again now, and where are we in the season?' I think early in the year somebody had a chance to get a complete game, and they got pulled at like 85 pitches or something like that. So it feels like there's a lot more factors that work against it.' It helps to be a student of pitching: 'Andy Pettitte was a huge guy that I watched growing up — Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez, all those guys. It didn't really matter for me, left or right. Josh Beckett, (Jered) Weaver for the Angels. And then Kershaw, (Max) Scherzer, (Justin) Verlander, that next wave, I felt like there was such an abundance of good starting pitchers to watch. There's a ton of guys and everyone did stuff differently and they had their own way of going about it. I felt like you could learn a lot from people just in terms of the individuality of their pitching style or the mechanics or how they go about the game on the mental side.' Advertisement One for the trophy case: 'Pete (Alonso) gave me the final out and then I got the lineup card, too. It was special for me and it was especially special to share with my teammates, because you only see it every now and then. As the game changes, some of those things get held in a different regard over time.' The Chicago White Sox's All-Star next week will be pitcher Shane Smith, a Rule 5 draft choice who earned the spot with a 2.37 ERA in his first 13 starts. Alas, Smith has lost his four starts since then, with a 12.33 ERA. It will be another year without a South Side Cy Young Award winner. The White Sox franchise has had only three, including Early Wynn, who fit last weekend in the square for a Cy Young winner with 200 career wins. Wynn, who shares a name with the stat (or a pronunciation, anyway) actually collected 300 exactly on his way to the Hall of Fame. Wynn won the MLB Cy Young in 1959, followed by LaMarr Hoyt (1983) and Jack McDowell (1993), who won the AL awards. Those were the only years the team made the postseason from 1920 to 1999, and the similarities don't end there. All three Cy winners led the majors in victories — Wynn and McDowell were 22-10, Hoyt 24-10 — and all three had an ERA over 3.00. They also rated lower than you'd think, analytically, collecting fewer than 5 bWAR in their award-winning seasons. The deserving winners, by bWAR: Larry Jackson in 1959, Dave Stieb in 1983 and Kevin Appier in 1993. Then again, this stuff tends to even out over time. The White Sox have had three pitching bWAR leaders in the Cy Young Award era, and all fell short: Wilbur Wood in 1971, Britt Burns in 1980 and Dylan Cease in 2022. If you're looking for a summer beach read, no matter how many times you've read it, 'Ball Four' always delivers. There's never been a more hilarious, insightful peek into the life of a ballplayer than Jim Bouton's diary of his 1969 season as a reliever for the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros. In the years that followed the book's publication, Bouton, who died six years ago Thursday at age 80, became a celebrity, appearing in movies, working as a sportscaster, writing more books and turning inventions like 'Big League Chew,' with Rob Nelson, into reality. Advertisement Lesser-known, perhaps, is Bouton's sitcom, also called 'Ball Four,' which ran for five episodes on CBS in the fall of 1976. Co-created with TV critic Marvin Kitman and sportswriter Vic Ziegel, Bouton starred as a pitcher for the fictional Washington Americans. 'We wanted 'Ball Four,' the TV show, to be like 'M*A*S*H,' only in a locker room,' he wrote in the 1990 update to his seminal book. 'Instead it turned out more like 'Gilligan's Island.'… We were first in the American League and last in the hearts of our countrymen, according to the Nielsen ratings.' Officially the show ranked 76th in the ratings, and as you can tell from the opening credits, there was little star power in the cast. Bouton auditioned his old Pilots teammate Gene Brabender for the role of 'Rhino,' but it went instead to a retired football player, Ben Davidson. 'Our main problem with the show was a difficulty in conveying reality,' Bouton wrote. 'The CBS censor wouldn't let anybody spit, burp, swear or chew tobacco. Any similarity between the characters in the show and the real ballplayers was purely coincidental.' The credits open with an exterior shot of RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., and an interior shot of Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. A shirtless Bouton chuckles to himself as he writes in a diary, while game footage (from the Vet) mixes with scenes of clubhouse hijinks. And naturally, this being the 1970s, there's a delightfully cheesy theme song: There's a boy in me who comes alive each summer/Won't you come play ball with me? (Top photo of Dave Parker after the 1979 MLB All-Star Game: Associated Press)
Yahoo
05-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Major Burger Chain Announces a Change People Will Love
Summer is the perfect time to get outside an enjoy a fantastic burger, even though any season, really, is good for burgers. The summer season also brings late nights, because the sun is out so late, so the partying and fun tend to go into the early hours of the morning. When that burger craving hits late, there are usually limited options about what to do about it. Some grocery stores are open late, but who wants to grill a burger at midnight? Now, one major burger chain has announced a change that starts now, and it should help those who are hungry late at night. White Castle has been around for more than a century at this point. "In 1921, Billy Ingram launched a family-owned business with $700 and an idea, selling five-cent, small, square hamburgers so easy to eat, they were dubbed Sliders and sold by the sack," the company states on their website. Now, White Castle has announced expanded hours and special late-night deals to those in its loyalty program. Starting on the Summer Solstice, which was June 20 and marked the end of spring, the chain in offering new hours, branded merchandise and discounts with its Craver Nation Rewards loyalty program. According to White Castle, 91 percent of its restaurants will now be open until 1 a.m. or later, and 72 percent are open 24 hours a day. That's the most late-night hours White Castle has offered since 2020. Also, for the themed merchandise, visit White Castle's House of Crave site. "White Castle has always been there for our Cravers when it matters most — even when the clock strikes midnight and beyond," Jamie Richardson, vice president of White Castle, said in a statement. "Night Castle isn't just a moment in time — it's a state of mind. Whether it's summer nights, weekend outings or just a craving that won't quit, we're proud to be the place people turn to for craveable flavor, great value and unforgettable memories."Major Burger Chain Announces a Change People Will Love first appeared on Men's Journal on Jun 22, 2025
