Photo credit Courtesy photo/Kelly O'Connor “I try to explain, and people are like: ‘WHAT happened?????’” -- Charlie Zink, August 8, 2018 The game itself—the one played 10 years ago today, August 12, 2008—was unquestionably one of the strangest in Red Sox history, arguably even in baseball history. Consider the basics: - In the bottom of the first inning, the Red Sox took a 10-0 lead over the Texas Rangers, sparked by two 3-run home runs by David Ortiz.  - The Rangers rallied

Doug Clark is 1-for-11 in his major league career, his lone hit coming in 2006 for the A's.  Lisa Blumenfeld/Getty Images In Hermosillo, Mexico, it is 81 degrees a little after 7 p.m. MT on Thursday night. The stands of the new estadio are packed and raucous. Flags waving. Songs ringing out. Cerveza flowing. Two outs, top of the first inning of the Caribbean Series championship, Latin America's great baseball theater. Up steps left fielder Doug Clark for the Yaquis de Obregon

Matt Torra was invited to spring training this year with the Rays.  Mike Janes/Four Seam Images via AP Images Matt Torra has the seven-year itch. No, his marriage to the former Jessica Reed appears to be in great shape. If you ask Torra about his minor league odyssey, you will hear him talking about his wife, their toddler, Isabel, and the second child who is swinging some bats in the on-deck circle. The Torras live together in North Carolina during the season, and afterward

"At the end of the day, Knocking on Heaven's Door gives us the rarest of sport literature: the true baseball story...that tells us the truth about the game without sugar-coating its unpleasantries or removing its warts--while somehow still managing to make us love it all the more." Since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, baseball has had more than its share of apologists to proclaim the game's virtues and unique qualities-how the game lends itself to narrativ

For most people, the words "minor league baseball" conjure up a bucolic scene of a warm, summer evening, a small crowd gathered around a green diamond, sipping cold beer, enjoying an intimate game, with between-innings silliness from costumed mascots and various contests and promos. None of that is inaccurate, but it is, at best, only half of the story. Marty Dobrow's Knocking On Heaven's Door peels back the Field of Dreams veneer, and shows us the other side of life in the b

From Publishers' Weekly Dobrow's first book is a beautifully written, meticulously orchestrated account of the families, common agents, notable triumphs, and devastating failures of half a dozen talented young men who want to play in the Major Leagues. A veteran sports writer, Dobrow reveals an insider's instinct, a high level of compassion, and finds the drama in the dream of "making it big." Minor Leaguers have to make ends meet, often for years, and learn how to embrace a