Baseball and The New York Times

It seems to me that The New York Times is doing a good job with longer and more detailed pieces, as well as more in-depth analysis.  Two recent examples:

Now Pitchers Have the Power by Tyler Kepner, July 4, 2014.  This piece, by the always reliable Kepner, is an intelligent analysis of how pitchers are now ruling the major leagues:  Strikeouts continue to rise; walks and home runs continue to decline; and the major league batting average, .251, is the lowest since 1972, the year before the creation of the designated hitter. The increased use of the shift (see my recent posting on that subject) has also been a factor.  Buck Martinez, former manager and catcher, says of 1968, when the major league batting average was .237 and Denny McLain won 31 games, "It was a beautiful game.  Every pitch was meaningful. Now it's home runs, home runs, home runs."  But that is changing as the so-called steroid era is ending and fans are getting more educated, with attendance still high, and one hopes that more and more casual fans, who have grown up on home runs, will learn to appreciate the beauty and subtlety of the stolen base, the sacrifice bunt, hitting to the opposite field, the hit-and-run. The abolition of the designated hitter at this point is probably too much to hope for, unfortunately.

Jim Brosnan, Who Threw Literature a Curve, Dies at 84 by Bruce Weber, July 6, 2014.  Brosnan's book, The Long Season, was published in 1960, based on his diary he kept as a major league pitcher, and was a big influence on me, a kid who loved to read and who loved baseball but had never related books to the national pastime.  Here was a pitcher who could think and write, temporarily keeping me interested in baseball when my attention had started to wander to literature.  The Times continues to publish thoughtful and intelligent obituaries and Weber beautifully places Brosnan in historical context, being influenced by Lardner and Malamud and in return influencing Jim Bouton, Roger Angell and others.