Game Of Baseball

Say whatever you want about the gulf in political philosophy between the United States and Cuba, but one can always find commonality in the great game of baseball.Take last night's exhibition between the Orioles and a Cuban all-star team, for instance. From the third-floor broadcast booth at Oriole Park, Josh Lewin was bemoaning how badly the home team was playing on American television.And one door over in the next booth, Hector Rodriguez, one of three Cuban television announcers, was doing the same thing, albeit in Spanish.

For many who sit behind the microphones in a booth or pound out copy in a press box, covering baseball is a pleasant diversion or, at most, a means to an end, a stop on the way to something bigger.That's not the case for Bob Costas, the signature voice of NBC Sports, who feels for baseball as passionately as anyone could and who rhapsodizes as eloquently about the game as anyone who has spoken or written about it.With that passion and care as a backdrop, one can easily empathize with the pain and anger that Costas feels over the direction baseball has gone in the recent past.

It's difficult to believe when Abner Doubleday chased the cows out of the pasture and was overtaken with an attack of inventive inspiration, while in the act of conceiving the game of baseball, that he had anything in mind resembling jumpball. That's what the Baltimore Orioles have in their new home park. Part jumpball, part baseball.Maybe Doubleday should have considered the aspect of jumpball when he put the grand old game together on that summer afternoon in 1839. It admittedly adds an exciting dimension.

In the seven years since NBC last telecast a World Series, the game of baseball has changed, and not all for the better. But one thing hasn't changed: NBC is and should always be the broadcast network of record for the national pastime.The fact that baseball is willing to let NBC walk away after this Fall Classic is over speaks volumes about the intelligence of those who run the game, but the Peacock network is going out with a blaze of glory.Though NBC and ABC are each televising the Series through the auspices of The Baseball Network and are sharing production equipment and facilities, it is NBC that has clearly shone during the first two nights, performing as well last night for Game 2 as Atlanta's Greg Maddux in Game 1.If he didn't before, Bob Costas, in his first World Series, last night clearly established himself as the rightful heir to the rich heritage of NBC baseball play-by-play men that stretches back to Curt Gowdy and Vin Scully.

When the rosters for Major League Baseball's All-Star Game were announced, only 10 black players, including the Orioles' Adam Jones, were among the 64 picked for the American League and National League rosters. Among the 16 players chosen as starters by fan vote, only Derek Jeter of the Yankees is African-American. The 1979 All-Star Game, by contrast, featured 16 African-American players, including seven starters and seven future Hall-of-Famers. In 2009, a little more that 10 percent of all Major League Baseball players are black - the first increase in more than a decade but still a far cry from the close to 30 percent mark achieved in the mid-1970s.

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Retirement apparently hasn't disrupted Cal Ripken Jr.'s game. The former Orioles great can still sidestep controversy and offer carefully measured responses to the media like a seasoned pro. While at baseball's winter meetings here yesterday to discuss Ripken Baseball's new partnership with the synthetic surfacing company FieldTurf, Ripken inevitably was peppered with questions about the upcoming National Baseball Hall of...

I can honestly say that writing an advice column was not something I envisioned doing. That being said, I am very excited about it and look forward to hearing from parents, coaches and young athletes each week. Since retiring from baseball after the 2001 season, I have focused a lot of my energy on youth sports and growing the game of baseball at the grassroots level. This has energized me more than I would have imagined. I am very passionate about it. Just like many of you, I am a dad. My daughter, Rachel, will be 16 next month, and my son, Ryan, is 12. I coach each of their basketball teams and pay very close attention to Ryan's baseball team.

Watch Ken Griffey slam home runs to the warehouse, make impossible catches over the wall and throw laser-beam strikes to the plate long enough and you'll be lulled into thinking that the game of baseball should always be this easy.It's not, of course, and it never has been. But Griffey is so unbelievably good, at such a young age, that it looks that way."In Little League, I had always been the best player. I had my father [Ken Griffey Sr.], so it was a little bit easier and I knew what to expect," said the Seattle center fielder.

The Orioles went 5-2 on a three-city West Coast trip and lost two games in the standings to the Boston Red Sox.That doesn't mean they are whining."I'm not worried about the standings," Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmeiro said. "So what if someone wins the West with 80 games and we win 90 and are not in it? You've got to deal with what you've got."Palmeiro prefers to look at the upside of playing in baseball's glamour division."It keeps us sharp," Palmeiro said. "We don't have room to relax.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - When retired baseball slugger Mark McGwire refused Thursday to discuss allegations that he took steroids during his career, he lost more than just a chance to clear his name. He lost some respect within the baseball world, some adulation from adoring fans, and now he could lose a stretch of Missouri highway that bears his name. A year after McGwire's historic 70-homer season in 1998, a five-mile stretch of Interstate 70, from St. Louis' western edge to the Illinois border, was renamed "Mark McGwire Highway."