I’m not, generally speaking, a superstitious person, unless there is a no-hitter or perfect game in progress. I don’t worry about breaking mirrors or black cats crossing my path, because, well, superstition is superstition, and in most other cases a Friday the 13th would pass me by without ...

Hiroki Kuroda has been excellent in his four seasons pitching on these shores. While he has posted only one winning record, his 3.45 ERA and excellent control speak for his abilities. He is also two months from turning 37 and made about $12 million last year, a figure likely to rise through free agency. Pretend ...

Hiroki Kuroda has endured a tough season in Los Angeles, but he's the top starting pitcher on the market as the trade deadline approaches. (AP) There’s no Cliff Lee to be had at this year’s trade deadline, but as sure as God made little green apples, the Yankees have taken an interest ...

A portrait of Duke Snider by Sports Illustrated's great Hy Peskin. Cliff already hit most of the high notes in rounding up the three takes on Duke Snider offered by Steve, himself and myself at SI.com and Baseball Prospectus, but I’d just like to add a few more points, sharpening some of what ...

That headline should really be “looking back at Duke Snider,” since none of us was alive when he played his last game. Still, Snider, who passed away on Sunday at the age of 84, looms large in the collective baseball memory for his central role in what is generally described as baseball’s ...

Prior to the non-tender deadline, Russell Martin came within spitting distance of becoming a Yankee (AP). The stroke of midnight on Thursday night/Friday morning was an important deadline in the baseball industry. By that point, teams had to decide whether or not to offer contracts to the players under ...

THINKING OF MY FATHER From Jerome K. Jerome’s “Three Men in a Boat” (1889): I went to my medical man… He opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn’t expecting it—a cowardly thing to do, I call it—and immediately afterwards ...