In case anyone missed it yesterday with the food and the football. Some baseball content for folks to enjoy this weekend!

Retrosheet is pleased to announce its second semi-annual release of 2025, which includes play-by-play files for the 1910 and 2025 seasons, box-score files for the 1898 season, and a deep dive into the 1935 Negro League season. www.retrosheet.org/fall2025rele... Enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving! I am thankful for the community here. Bluesky isn’t perfect but at its best it’s the absolute best of what social media can be: the day we got a Chicago Pope, Game 7 of the World Series. I’m thankful that I got to share those moments with y’all.

My wife was in high school in the Chicago suburbs for this Super Bowl. She has told me the tale of “New England, the Patriots and We” many times but I had never heard it before. My God, it’s every bit as “glorious” as she described it!

From BR Bullpen: Leonard's nickname was "Prison Face" until 1987. After he asked to be called Jeffrey instead of Jeff, his teammates changed his nickname to "Penitentiary Face." Hahaha

One of the all-time great nicknames: Penitentiary Face

General history: Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Lincoln book: Team of Rivals. And a friend from college wrote a book, “We Saw Lincoln Shot”, which is a collection of first-person accounts. Baseball History: The Pitch that Killed (1920 season; Ray Chapman) and “Our Team” by Luke Epplin (1948 Cleveland)

Produced one of my alltime favorite baseball memories. youtube.com/shorts/DVe4K...

Show me a list highlighting the fragility of being a major-league pitcher! Good luck, Paul!

This is a great read! Compiling the games from this tour was one of my favorite things I’ve done for Retrosheet (or, really, anywhere). www.retrosheet.org/NegroLeagues...

Interesting ballot. I see three possible ways this goes. (1) Steroids are not disqualifying - Bonds and Clemens elected (2) Steroids are disqualifying, give us clean stars - Murphy and Delgado are elected (3) The electorate is split between (1) and (2) - nobody is elected

Man, what a tough way to lose for the Blue Jays! Well, congratulations to the Dodgers! Outstanding postseason!!

Golden pitch! Double play or a home run would both end the World Series.

Attaboy, Vladdy!!

Holy shit! This game has everything!

Is Yamamoto really the best option here. I know he’s an ace. But he threw 96 pitches YESTERDAY!

Okay, Wrobleski hit a Blue Jay so a Blue Jay hit Wrobleski. Seems fair. All square.

Well, I was not expecting a bench-clearing incident in Game 7 of the World Series!

Wow! Man, I love watching great defense!

My wife went to high school with Wrobleski’s dad. She had a little crush on him (she’s sitting next to me reminiscing).

The baseball gods really dislike intentional walks. I approve!

Tough and weird game-ending inning for the Blue Jays. But, hey, Game 7! Those are always fun!

The baseball gods did NOT like that intentional walk to Ohtani!

Trey Yesavage struck out all 9 Dodgers at least once tonight, a feat that Herm Krabbenhoft dubbed a “pitcher’s cycle” sabr.org/journal/arti...

I was a soft-tossing left-handed Orioles fan in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Needless to say, I was a huge Scott McGregor fan!

I just posted this to SABR’s mail list but thought y’all might like it too. There are four players in Retrosheet’s database who hit 3 HR in one game as a batter and had 10 K in one game as a pitcher (not necessarily the same game): Shohei Ohtani and three Hall-of-Famers. (cont.)

Congratulations to the Toronto Blue Jays! Condolences to the Seattle Mariners and their fans. They had a helluva season. What a great series!

If I did this right, the only game in Retrosheet’s database in which a pitcher struck out 10 or more batters and hit more home runs than he allowed hits was on June 6, 1921 when Bill Gatewood threw the first no-hitter in Negro National League history. retrosheet.org/NegroLeagues...

That was a sad day for 11-year-old me. But this is a gorgeous painting!

This used to be a thing. www.retrosheet.org/courtesy.htm

Retrosheet has added two new research papers - from Herm Krabbenhoft and Mike O'Brien - and has added Mike O'Brien's website, tracking his Base Movement Percentage statistic, to our list of Retrosheet data users. www.retrosheet.org/resources/re...

I’m a Cubs fan but this is hilarious. I love that the Pope is a baseball fan from Chicago!

I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Sarah Lange in real life. But she’s one of my favorite people on Baseball Bluesky.

Apparently, the discourse tonight is about rooting for the visiting team at a baseball game. I’ve done this a few times and always enjoyed it and enjoyed the folks there with me (mostly rooting for the other team, of course).

If the Brewers beat the Dodgers, I believe this would be the World Series to involve two teams younger than me (I was born in 1968, one year before MLB went to divisions). The ALCS matchup is between the first two expansion teams that I remember starting.

Congratulations to the Milwaukee Brewers! Go make the NL Central proud!

These are the gladdest of possible words: Hoerner to Swanson to Busch Trio of bear cubs and fleeter than birds: Hoerner to Swanson to Busch Ruthlessly pricking their gonfalon bubble, Making a Brewer hit into a double, Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble, Hoerner to Swanson to Busch.

Congratulations to the Mariners and their fans. Fantastic game!

Orval Overall references always demand a repost. Related, Swanson to Hoerner to Busch fits perfectly into that famous poem: Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble, Making a Brewer hit into a double, Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble, Swanson to Hoerner to Busch.

This round of playoffs has worked out very nicely. We get one series winner each of four consecutive nights: Blue Jays, Dodgers, TBD, TBD.

It’s fairly common, of course, for children to rebel against their parents - hah, Dad, I’ll show you, Mr. Cubs fan: go, White Sox! But I’m greatly amused that Hal Steinbrenner’s rebellion against his “3 managers per season” father is to never fire a Yankees manager.

Tomorrow is the 77th anniversary of the Steve Gromek/Larry Doby photo from the 1948 World Series. I wrote about it today--its importance in "Our Team" and how a research discovery almost sunk the climax of my book. Enjoy. substack.com/home/post/p-...

This really highlights how remarkable the Brewers win today was. Scored first - Cubs Homers - 3-0, Cubs % of Brewers runs scored via HR - 0% Final score: Brewers 9, Cubs 3 I suppose someone has to be the “2” in 7-2!

Fun scoring quirk just happened. Officially, Alex Vesia just struck out Will Benson even though Vesia never threw a pitch to Benson.

Sometimes I wish I lived in the alternate universe where he didn’t have a stroke.

Having grown up a fan of the Washington Football Team and then living the majority of my life in Chicago, a Dallas - Green Bay game in which neither team wins is absolute perfection!

Oh, man! My dad (Lutheran pastor) got that in the mail. I took it to college with me and we all enjoyed the hell out of it. My favorite was one friend who stuck a Bible in his backpack the day it was supposed to happen “in case there’s a test and it’s open book”.

My first neighborhood Jewel. Reminds me of a story. Wendy and I got back from our honeymoon Saturday night. So, Sunday morning (June 28, 1992), I head down to Broadway to walk to Jewel and am unable to do so, because the Gay Pride parade was in full swing coming down the street!

Sometimes you just have to tip your cap to an elite pitcher pitching elitely. My goodness, Hunter Greene! Throwing 101.5 in the 9th inning! And helluva pitching performance on the other side by Colin Rea - that’s a tough loss! I don’t feel terrible about the Cubs starters heading into the playoffs.

Retrosheet is seeking volunteers to help with game entry of box-score data for the 19th Century and Negro Leagues. If this sounds like something you would be interested in, please email me at [email protected].