- Baseball season is now just nine days away, at least for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks. At Dodgers Blue Heaven, check out some photos showing the transformation of Sydney Cricket Ground into a baseball diamond for the two teams’ Opening Day series in Australia.
- At Sports Illustrated, Tom Verducci is comparing Diamondbacks’ rookie pitcher Archie Bradley to a young Dwight Gooden.
- Stefan Sevenson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram tells a story about the time Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington paid a Major League Baseball fine in pennies. The best part? It cost him about $45 to ship 20,000 coins to the league office. (found via Hardball Talk)
- In the New York Times, Peter Kerasotis shares some of Julia Ruth Stevens‘ memories of her father, Babe Ruth. The most interesting part is Stevens’ theory that Ruth was prevented from becoming a major league manager because he would have integrated baseball more than a decade before Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson.
- Finally, at 2 Guys Talking Mets Baseball, bloggers James Preller and Michael Geus discuss when the Mets should trade Matt Harvey. (If the Mets are adopting the Tampa Bay
DevilRays’ payroll, I hope they do adopt their business model too. I’d hate to see a player like Harvey was in 2013 traded away, but I do not want to see a repeat of how the Jose Reyes situation played out for any reason.)
And going off-topic for a couple of minutes, here’s a Vanity Fair video of some of the stars of HBO’s Game of Thrones offering their thoughts on which character should rule the Seven Kingdoms:
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