By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
OAKLAND — These are unnerving times. One minute you’re worried about virus droplets, the next about everything going up in flames. If the Oakland Athletics on Saturday seemed to have more on their minds than picking up a ground ball, well, even good teams have their bad games.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The weather is fine enough, the low 80s. Perfect for spring training, perfect for baseball. But what a terrible time, and that’s beyond the jolting reality that Don & Charlie’s, great ribs, great history — Babe Ruth’s autograph among the dozens — has closed.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
Angels, Astros, Dodgers, Mike Trout Email Article By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
OAKLAND — A hit batsman, a wild throw, a few hits — not a lot in the great scheme of things, but more than enough in any single game, especially one that lasts four and a half hours and in which a star reliever fails to pitch like a star reliever.
Copyright 2019, The Maven
By Art Spander
Special for Newsday
TEMPE, Ariz. — The long-awaited debut in a major league uniform of Shohei Ohtani, nicknamed the “Babe Ruth of Japan” because of his skills as both a pitcher and a batter in that nation, might have been less than what was imagined but perhaps was what should have been expected.
Ohtani, who signed with the Los Angeles Angels in December — forgoing a chance to join the Yankees — was the starting pitcher in Saturday’s Cactus League game against the Milwaukee Brewers and worked 1 1⁄3 innings. He threw 31 pitches, gave up two hits and two runs (one unearned), struck out one, walked one and threw a wild pitch. One of the hits was a double, the other a home run.
Copyright © 2018 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
TEMPE, Ariz. — He is young, gifted and unsatisfied. Mike Trout of the Angels has been described as the best player in the game, which only makes him want to get better.
"I keep thinking about putting up good numbers," he said recently. Not the numbers in a bank account. The ones in the record books.
Copyright © 2014 Newsday. All rights reserved.