'Etta Express keeps on rolling

For a small school from a small town in southeastern Ohio, Marietta College sure makes a lot of noise every May. The Pioneers are at it again this spring, advancing to the Division III World Series after winning the Mideast Regional over the weekend, giving the defending national champs their 22nd regional title and a shot at their sixth Division III crown.

Longtime coach Don Schaly earned legend status for building the 'Etta Express into a powerhouse and winning three championships in his 40 years at the helm. What will that make Brian Brewer if he can guide Marietta to a third title in just his ninth season as Schaly's replacement?

Even ardent fans of college baseball may not be familiar with either man, given that Marietta's fiercest rivalries are with Ohio Athletic Conference challengers Otterbein and Heidelberg and not Florida State or LSU. The Pioneers don't see a lot of air time, at least not until the postseason, when they show up almost annually in the D3 World Series.

Araton finds new angle in Driving Mr. Yogi

"We made too many wrong mistakes."

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

"If people don't want to come out to the ball park, nobody's going to stop them."

"I never said most of the things I said."

Yogi-isms help explain America's love affair with Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra. The current "Greatest Living Yankee," he has worn that mantle well by not wearing it at all, humbly deflecting the praise that his predecessor, Joe DiMaggio, demanded. Yogi's approachability and everyman attitude have endeared him even to Yankee haters and spawned an entire subset in the publishing industry, with an endless array of Yogi quote books and numerous biographies of the three-time American League MVP who earned 10 World Series rings in a 15-year stretch.

What can there possibly be left to say?

A hero--and a premise--too good to be true

Bryce Harper has got nothing on Joe Castle. The 19-year-old wunderkind of the Washington Nationals is a bum when stacked up against 1973’s rookie phenom. Then again, so was Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, and every other player to ever lace up cleats and step onto a ball field.

Summoned in July to fill in at first base for the Cubs, Castle proves a one-man dynamo, leading Chicago out of the tight pack in the National League East into first place, laying waste to the circuit by hitting .488 in 160 at-bats and bombing 21 home runs, including three in his first three trips to the dish. After opening his major league career with hits in his first 15 at-bats, Castle goes on to hit safely in 19 consecutive games, establishing another big league record.

His surefire, first-ballot Hall-of-Fame career is curtailed after just 38 games by a fateful fastball to the face, courtesy of New York Mets pitcher Warren Tracey, a journeyman drunk with a mean streak as long as his hopscotch resume. Despite his denials, Tracey is suspected of having thrown an intentional beanball. His son Paul isn’t just convinced; he actually foresaw the incident, watching in horror from the stands of Shea Stadium as his father flattened his hero.

Pitcher dishes insight into anxious life of a minor league rookie

Imagine the anxiety a fledgling professional ball player faces. At the plate with two strikes battling filthy sliders in front of a hostile crowd. Out on the mound with the tying and winning runs on base and the other team’s best hitter digging in. Maybe the farm director’s in the stands, analyzing his every move as the team weighs who moves on and who moves out.

That’s nothing compared to the stress of reporting for duty in the first place. As Eric Pettis describes his first day with the Williamsport Crosscutters in Just a Minor Perspective: Through the Eyes of a Minor League Rookie, it’s more like your first anxious day at a new school or workplace than you might have pictured.

“Duncan and I stepped out onto the floor of the lobby and saw eight faces with the same look of bewilderment and anxiety,” Pettis writes. “Eight faces so similar, yet so foreign. These were my new teammates. I had been on so many teams before and met so many new players for the first time, yet this seemed different. This time there was no quiet rumble of getting to know one and other. In fact, there was no conversing at all.”

Baseball Detective sleuths out the optimal lineup

Admit it. At some point you've thought you could put together a better batting order than your favorite team's manager. Why is he batting Ichiro first when he's better suited for third on a team with no other offensive threats? Why does Brandon Phillips hit cleanup so much when he's more effective higher in the lineup? And why doesn't everyone hit the pitcher eighth?

David H. Martinez was intrigued by certain managerial choices as well. In his short e-book Baseball Detective: Unraveling the Mystery of the Batting Order, Martinez cites Felipe Alou's decision to bat Barry Bonds fourth in 2004, despite a historical preference for hitting a team's best hitter third. Five times during the season, Bonds watched from the on-deck circle while a teammate made the last out in a close game. What if he were hitting one spot higher? Would he have driven in the tying or winning run in a couple of those? Would he have seen more pitches to hit instead of walking 242 times? Two more wins would have given the Giants the wild card spot that went to the Houston Astros.

Search for answers wears on father, son, readers

The steroids era has left an indelible stain on baseball, like a splotch of mustard on a silk tie. Generations from now, baseball fans will still look back on the 1990s and 2000s as a PED-fueled power bonanza that rewrote the record books and shrouded many of the game's stars in suspicion.

Major League Baseball would like to imagine the sport's drug problem is a thing of the past, with new testing measures in place to catch and punish players seeking an unfair edge. As proof, it can cite slugger Manny Ramirez, whose churlishness has given way in his critics' eyes to his drug use. Manny being Manny has taken on a new connotation, given his two highly visible suspensions, including one last spring that led to a temporary retirement.

But what of the young fans, who admired Ramirez for his hitting heroics? How ready are they to move on from the steroid era and ignore the blot it left on the national pastime? Youngsters are reminded regularly about right and wrong, fair and unfair. Cheating should never be rewarded, right?

Veeck's best-selling bombshell turns 50

It’s been 50 years since Bill Veeck unleashed his autobiography Veeck—as in Wreck on the literary world. As popular with readers as it was reviled by baseball executives, the book climbed best seller lists in the summer of 1962 and has never faded from sight. In 2002, it claimed a place on Sports Illustrated’s list of the Top 100 Sports Books of All Time, ranking 33^rd.

Veeck—as in Wreck is still as entertaining today as it was in the ‘60s, though time has tempered some of the harsh criticisms of the baseball establishment. Biographer Paul Dickson, in his forthcoming release Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick, notes sportswriter Red Smith described it upon its release as “380 pages of aggravated assault.” Many observers felt Veeck had gone overboard in pummeling Commissioner Ford Frick, with whom Veeck rarely saw eye to eye.

But Veeck had sufficient reason to take the offensive, having basically been run out of the game in the mid ‘50s after trying to relocate his St. Louis Browns to a city that would support them. As Dickson notes in his Prologue, “he spent a lifetime challenging baseball’s staid establishment, cultivating enemies the way others cultivate friends.” Simply put, the other owners resented his showman’s approach to running his clubs, and it got very personal.