Mormon Baseball

While I don’t have past data, except for last year, it looks good that where two Mormons were drafted into professional baseball last year, this year there were three. And, perhaps more interesting, where last year’s draftees were both BYU players, only one of this year’s three played at BYU. The other two have just graduated from high school and have commitments to play at colleges.

Read the rest of this entry »

As baseball reaches the half-way point in the season and the all-star break, the number of Mormons in the majors stands at 13, including two remaining on the DL and two who just returned from the DL. But the prospects for more reaching the majors this year isn’t strong.

Read the rest of this entry »

This past week, baseball phenom Bryce Harper briefly topped twitter’s trending topics when he characterized a reporter’s question as foolish. The Toronto-based reporter had asked Harper (who, in case you don’t know, is a 19-year-old LDS player in his rookie year) if he was going to take advantage of Canada’s more liberal drinking laws (which allow drinking at 19 instead of 21) to celebrate his home run during the game, and if so, what brand of beer he would drink.

Harper replied, “I’m not answering that. That’s a clown question, bro.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Professional baseball calls them transactions, and the Mormon players in professional ball saw quite a few of them this past week, even though the immediate performances didn’t exactly match what happened. The As’ Adam Rosales was sent down to AAA after poor performances at the plate, and promptly played much better. Red Sox pitcher Clayton Mortsensen was called back up to the majors to take the place of Josh Beckett despite a poor outing last week. But these inconsistencies don’t appear in the case of Jeremy Guthrie, who has had repeated bad outings for the Rockies this year, leading to indications this week that the Rockies are trying to trade him to the Toronto Blue Jays, who are desperate for starting pitchers because several starters are now on the DL.

In contrast to these moves, the active players in MLB are doing fairly well.

Read the rest of this entry »

[I’m testing this to see how much time it takes to compile — so at a minimum I’ll try doing it for a few weeks. I’m not sure the format is great either, so any suggestions are welcome.]

Many of the Mormons active in the majors were on the DL this week — including Jacoby Ellsbury, Kyle Farnsworth, Roy Halladay and Matt Lindstrom, but all four are working their way back to health and activity. In the mean time, Bryce Harper continues to perform at the major league level and at something beyond what was expected of the 19-year-old phenom — perhaps the only area where his play is below what might be hoped is his batting average, which is holding at .282, although he should eventually be a better than .300 hitter. I continue amazed at how well he has lived up to expectations.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Last Natural by Rob Miech

A review of The Last Natural: Bryce Harper’s Big Gamble in Sin City and the Greatest Amateur Season Ever by Rob Miech. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2012. 356 p. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

The title ‘The Last Natural‘ packs a lot of meaning and connotation into a few words. While ‘natural’ clearly refers to the inherent talent that Bryce Harper seems to have, there are a few other connotations, at least in baseball. Since Harper arrives at what might be considered the end of the “steroid era,” it could be a kind of pessimistic reference to Harper’s eschewing drugs since ‘natural’ can also mean pure or unchanged. It could also be a nod to Bernard Malamud‘s novel The Natural, perhaps the finest work of fiction about baseball and the source for the Robert Redford film of the same name.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jacoby Ellsbury

I’m late preparing this information for 2012, but since I’m going tonight to a game for the first time this year, I thought I’d better get this information together and post it. After a good year last year that saw two Mormons in baseball’s All-Star game and at one point perhaps 13 active players who are Mormon, the prospects for this year look promising, but not at the level of 2010.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jack Morris

I’ve been a bit remiss in keeping up with my interest (OK, perhaps mania) with Mormons in sports. Baseball selected the newest members to the Hall of Fame early this month, and both men and women’s soccer have had their drafts, but I’ve missed them both. So, its time to catch up.

Read the rest of this entry »

Roy Halladay

While 13 Mormons are among the 750 active players on Major League Baseball rosters at this point, just two (of 68 players) are on the rosters for tomorrow’s All-Star game. And with one player in each league, there is no clear team to root for in tomorrow’s game.

Read the rest of this entry »

Matthew Neil

Last week Major League Baseball held its most important annual draft, indicating interest in more than 1,500 possible players. As far as I can tell, just two of them are Mormon, down from 6 last year.

I’ve diligently searched the list of those drafted for other Mormon players, but I wasn’t able to identify anyone as Mormon, based on articles and web pages that turned up in my searches. Of course, there are likely some who are Mormon, but I couldn’t find any indication of that.

Read the rest of this entry »