Over/Under: Reactions to Andy Pettitte, Retirement, Playoffs, Hall of Fame

Yesterday afternoon, Andy Pettitte announced, to the apathy of just about everyone not in the 212, that he was retiring from baseball at age 38, after 16 years in The Show. It was the final step of was a Favre-like will-he-won’t-he back and forth between Pettitte’s camp, the Yankees, his friends, former players, current players, bloggers, and the like.

Despite still having something left in the tank, he walked away from the team that was more than willing to pony up a nice chunk of change to give the lefty ample opportunity to make another run at the postseason and at a sixth World Series ring.

You know, let’s stop there. Right there, at the postseason. Because as far as Andy Pettitte is concerned, that’s the conversation. His career in the regular season, while fine and more often good than not while ever-so-briefly touching upon greatness, isn’t really worth talking about – especially when there is more than an entire season’s worth of postseason games to ponder over. And that, my friends, brings us to the narrativeREAD MORE

Soapbox: Major League Baseball & Instant Replay, Upon Further Review

[Ed Note: Dash Treyhorn was a regular contributor at The Fightins (RIP). Follow him on Twitter]

Imagine, for a moment, that it’s the final weekend of the baseball season, and two teams atop the same division, both with the same record, are playing for one final playoff spot. It’s late in the game, and the game is knotted at four runs apiece. In the bottom of the ninth, with the go-ahead runner on second, the batter smashes a double that stays just fair down the third base line, which easily scores the runner from second to win the game, and the division, on the final game of the season.

Or did it?

What if the third base umpire made the wrong call and instead ruled it a foul ball, sending the only-moments-earlier-hero back to the box? What if he strikes out, and the visiting team goes on to win it in the tenth inning? What if?

Of course, what I described didn’t actually happen. At least, not in that context. In August, the Florida Marlins were the victim ofREAD MORE

Over/Under: Media Reaction To Baseball’s Newest Hall of Famers

[Ed Note: Over/Under is a recurring series chronicling the media's reaction to big stories in sports. Today's effort by Dash is focused mostly on the players who did get in to the Baseball Hall of Fame. For more on Jeff Bagwell's first-year snub, check out our Call of the Day post.]

In the past few years, since I really became more of a student of the game — at least from a non-player’s perspective — I’ve taken a particular interest in the Hall of Fame, and more specifically, how players are selected. I’ve come to determine that it’s an inherently flawed system that allows writers to be the gatekeepers. At first blush, it seems like a fine thing to do, because after all, writers cover the game and it’s not as if though they are letting a 22-year-old from the blog-de-jour vote on these things. However, all things being equal, we know that having writers vote on this is foolish, seeing as how they harbor biases – both good and bad – and they don’t necessarilyREAD MORE

Over/Under: Media Reaction To The Cliff Lee Deal

Just over 24 hours ago, one of the biggest signings of the year unfolded right in front of our eyes, and if you’re anything like me, you couldn’t move away from Twitter fast enough, lest you miss some nugget of information to speculate upon; a morsel of a rumor that was hardly enough to satiate until the big news broke that Cliff Lee spurned both the Texas Rangers and New York Yankees to return to the Philadelphia Phillies, as part of one of the greatest rotations of this era.

The reactions, not surprisingly, were all over the place. For the most part, the Phillies and GM Ruben Amaro got high praise for sneaking in under the wire and getting a deal done in the exact opposite fashion than that of the Rangers of Yankees, who used very public negotiations in the proceedings. But some criticized the deal, claiming it’s too much money for an aging pitcher on an aging team, while others used it as a perfect jump off point to compare Lee to another athleteREAD MORE

Hit a Lot of Dingers? Clearly, Steroids is the Reason.

If it’s baseball season in the 21st century, you can be relatively certain that someone, somewhere, is saying something stupid about a player who is having a career year.

This year, it’s Damien Cox, a Toronto Star hockey writer who most were not familiar with, at least not until this past weekend, when he suggested that Jose Bautista’s ascent to 40 homers requires the mandatory line of questioning that starts and ends with “Did he use PEDs?”

In the blog entry, titled “Gotta At Least Ask the Question,” Cox makes comparisons to Brady Anderson’s 50-homer season, Bautista’s desire to get paid after this season (“That would motivate any player to find a way to improve his stats,” writes Cox), and the legacy of PED-abuse that Toronto has left behind, thanks to the likes of Roger Clemens, Gregg Zaun, and Troy Glaus. READ MORE