Tagged: baseball

Oakland A's pitcher Travis Blackley was watching video of the Texas Rangers this summer, preparing to make a start against the league's premier offense, the very one standing in the way of the A's and the American League playoffs. Blackley was deep in study, identifying tendencies, looking for weaknesses in the reigning pennant winner's armor. He looked at a season's worth of at-bats, contemplated dozens of pitchers' approaches.

Every crime scene hides a story.  On this week's This American Life, hear about crime scenes and the stories they tell. 

Sometimes criminals return to the scene of their misdeeds—to try to make things right, to try to undo the past. Katie Davis reports on her neighbor Bobby, who returned to the scene where he robbed people and conned people...to coach Little League.  Wednesday at Noon on KALW.

HANA BABA: Sports aren’t for everyone. And baseball, in particular, can be a hard sell. The baseball season has 162 games, and these games feel like they last forever – the players always seem to do a lot of standing around and spitting, never much actual playing.

So why is it the national pastime? Any fan might tell you it’s about the skill of the game – strategy combined with athleticism.

But it’s more than that.

JON MILLER: My dad was a baseball fan, a sports fan, and in those days the games were on the radio. And he always had a ballgame on the radio.