All About Baseball with Byron Copley

This episode of All About Baseball exists because I met a man named Ed in an Italian restaurant. Ed soon introduced me to Tim Manners, who, in collaboration with Hall of Fame pitcher Waite Hoyt, authored Hoyt’s memoir in 2024 — 40 years after Hoyt died in 1984. That is just the beginning of this…

Detroit Tigers’ manager Mayo Smith moved Gold Glove center fielder Mickey Stanley to shortstop in the 1968 World Series, with only 68 innings at the position under his belt. Many sports writers, baseball people, and even members of the Tigers’ team initially questioned the move. This episode of All About Baseball presents the case that…

On March 18, 2024, Nick Goerg (George) launched a website and app called RateGame, which has helped thousands of sports fans share their personal experiences about specific games — including Major League Baseball — in a way that preserves the wonder and the joy being a sports fan that originated from our childhood. Ironically, a…

Dale Alexander played Major League Baseball for the Detroit Tigers and the Boston Red Sox from 1929 to 1933. He achieved a lifetime batting average of .331, with 2,450 plate appearances. Throughout his career, Alexander exhibited humility and gratitude — even when he was summarily benched in April, 1932 by Tigers’ manager Bucky Harris and…

Currently, the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) limits, as an example, a 34-inch bat’s minimum weight to 31 ounces. It’s called a “Drop 3” bat because the weight in ounces is three “units” less than the length of the bat (34 inches; 31 ounces.) Beginning in the spring of 2028, high-school baseball…

George ” Sparky” Anderson managed the Cincinnati Reds (1970-1978) and the Detroit Tigers (1979-1996) his way. Though Sparky was not a fan of the math- and probability-driven savants that introduced new metrics and measures of a team’s and ballplayer’s performance, his approach to on-field strategy aligns quite neatly to the principles that men like Bill…