Kuzul

Oscar Wilde likely never met an umpire.

Certainly he wasn’t speaking of baseball’s arbiters when he said, “The only thing worse than being talked about, is not being talked about.”

Wilde, the famed Irish writer and poet, got it all wrong when it comes to the men in blue on the baseball diamond.

For an umpire, the worst thing is to be talked about.

Anonymity is paradise. It’s the reverse of the “Cheers” theme: “Don’t you wanna go where nobody knows your name?”

They’re like offensive linemen. Everyday spent as an unknown is a win. The nightmare is to have your name on everyone’s lips when they leave the ballpark.

The trick is to be on your game at all times while maintaining that coveted, nameless status. It doesn’t matter how many times you got it right. It only takes one misstep to undo everything. Years of work can go down the drain in an instant. Then, the world of anonymity comes crashing down, exposing you fully.

Just ask Jim Joyce. Or Don Denkinger. Or Dave Pallone.

Pallone, a big league umpire in the 1980s in the National League, got involved in a row with Cincinnati Reds’ manager Pete Rose in April 1988. There was a play at first base. Pallone ruled that Reds’ first baseman Nick Esasky pulled his foot off the bag while receiving a throw, which beat the base runner.

Rose begged to differ.

TV replays showed that Pallone probably got the call right—not that that matters all the time, depending on where the game is played.

This particular game was played in Cincinnati, so Rose’s vehement argument stirred the pot and whipped the fans into a frenzy. Maybe Rose was incensed because he had money riding on the game.

It got worse, when things got physical.

Pallone jabbed a finger at Rose, who jabbed one of his own back. Pallone tossed Rose from the game. Then, Rose deliberately bumped into Pallone, which is about as “no-no” as you can get. Players and other umpires had to step between the two combatants as the situation looked to be getting out of hand.

The Reds fans were beside themselves. After Rose stormed off the field, Pallone was pelted with objects hurled from the stands. It got so bad that it was decided that Pallone should be removed from the game as well—for his own safety.

The league rearranged Pallone’s crew’s assignments to keep them away from games played in Cincinnati following the Rose incident.

Pallone survived that game, but his name was dragged through the mud.

A couple years ago, after speaking with me about that game, Pallone let me in on an umpire’s rallying cry.

“We may not always be right,” he told me, “but we’re never wrong.”

Denkinger was another whose umpiring career was tainted because he lost anonymity.

Denkinger’s Waterloo occurred in the 1985 World Series, when he erroneously called the Royals’ Jorge Orta safe at first base on a play where it was pretty clear—even to the naked eye—that he was out. The call was crucial, enabling the Royals to pull out a come-from-behind victory over the St. Louis Cardinals that greatly aided in the Royals winning that World Series.

Don Denkinger, in St. Louis, had the same Public Enemy No. 1 status that Dave Pallone had in Cincinnati.

Or the same status as Jim Joyce had in Detroit.

Joyce picked an awful time to be human.

Joyce, as you no doubt know, was the first base umpire in Detroit on that fateful June evening in 2010, when Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga came within one out of baseball immortality.

Galarraga had retired the first 26 Cleveland Indians hitters that night. Just one more out without incident, and the kid would have a perfect game—still one of baseball’s greatest individual feats.

An Indians hitter named Jason Donald hit a weak but tricky ground ball to first base. Miguel Cabrera gloved it and made the tenuous but timely throw to Galarraga, hustling from his mound to cover the base. The pitcher’s foot beat Donald’s to the bag by a toe, but Galarraga won the race. His perfect game was complete!

Except that Joyce, whose arms appeared for a fraction of a second to want to make the “out” call, inexplicably ruled Donald safe.

I maintain to this day that something went haywire in Joyce’s motor skills and he called Donald safe when he really intended to call him out. I deduced that after watching the replay several times.

Regardless, Galarraga’s perfect game was ruined. The next batter made an out, which only served to further enrage the Comerica Park crowd.

TV replays clearly showed that Donald was out. FSD analyst Rod Allen’s voice was tinged with despair when he saw the replay for the first time, as we did at home.

“Oh no! Jim Joyce! No…” Allen said, almost with as much sorrow for the umpire as for Galarraga.

Allen knew that once that replay got out, Joyce would be in a world of hurt. Years of big league umpiring—good, reliable umpiring—were about to fly out the window.

As an umpire is expected to do, Joyce fiercely defended his call on the field—to Galarraga, to Cabrera and to manager Jim Leyland, who raced to the first base area to plead the typical losing argument.

After the game, Joyce saw the replay. He was, at that moment, the most tormented man in America.

“I just cost that kid a perfect game,” Joyce would explain to the media, his voice cracking.

Despite Joyce and Galarraga’s touching meeting at home plate the next day, when the two men shook hands, there was no way that anonymity and Jim Joyce would be anywhere near each other, ever again.

Major League Baseball is on the verge of expanding its relatively limited use of instant replay for the 2014 season. Taking its cue from the NFL, MLB will allow managers to use challenges—one prior to the seventh inning and two afterward, until the game ends.

Pallone, in a Facebook comment to me, wrote simply, “Why don’t we just use robots!!”

I understand Pallone’s stance (he absolutely detests FSD’s so-called FoxTrax, which supposedly determines electronically if a pitch was a ball or a strike), especially given that he is a former big league umpire.

But there’s also something to be said for getting the call right, and for returning good umpires back to anonymity.

Had replay been in use in the Pallone, Denkinger and Joyce plays, calls would either have been upheld or reversed, conclusively. In both scenarios, the umpire is off the hook. He can’t be vilified if he got the call right, and if he got it wrong, there can be no complaints because the league would reverse the decision, according to the video.

You think Jim Joyce would rather be known as a fine umpire with a distinguished career, or the guy who ruined a perfect game?

Instant replay would have returned him to the former.

I say use the damn thing already.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Don’t spend too much time committing current MLB records to memory. From now through the end of 2013, there could be a handful of new teams and individuals rewriting history.

Career and single-season marks set by Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth, Nolan Ryan and Cy Young seem to be completely safe. While it’s technically possible for several players to beat Joe DiMaggio’s famous hitting streak or for the Houston Astros to lose more games than any previous team, the odds are ridiculously slim.

If you’re going to generously spend a few moments skimming this article, it ought to be filled with records that are both intriguing and attainable. We found 10 of them that fit that criteria.

*All stats updated through the games as of Aug. 9.

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If I had myself a private audience with the Pope of the Tigers, Jim Leyland, I’d pretty much just have one question for him.

The question wouldn’t be about his team’s bullpen, or why his catcher can’t hit or what the deal is with that 3-9 record in extra innings. I wouldn’t ask about Nick Castellanos’ potential, or what we should expect from Bruce Rondon or why his catcher can’t hit.

The subject wouldn’t be his smoking or whether Miguel Cabrera is the best he’s ever seen or why his catcher can’t hit.

I’d have one question, and it would go like this.

“What was it like when the Pittsburgh Pirates were winners?”

Leyland ought to know. He remains the last Pirates manager to guide the Bucs to a winning record. It happened in 1992, before Bill Clinton was elected president—the first time.

The Pirates were three-time defending National League East division champs after the 1992 season. The World Series eluded them all three years, but they were a pretty decent group of ballplayers, led by none other than Barry “Before and After” Bonds.

Leyland was a young 47 in the 1992 baseball season. His voice wasn’t as gravelly. Sports talk radio wasn’t nipping at his heels. From 1990-92, Leyland’s baseball year would go like this: Win the division, lose in the playoffs. That was pretty much it.

In 1993, the Bucs finished below .500, at 75-87. Pittsburgh baseball fans probably figured ’93 was a bump on the log, a blip on the screen, a good old fashioned fluke.

It turned out to be a 20-year bump/blip/fluke.

The Pirates became the Keystone Kops of baseball. They were the National League’s Washington Generals. Baseball’s version of the Los Angeles Clippers.

Leyland was fired after the 1996 season, on the heels of four straight losing seasons. His successor was none other than Gene Lamont, Leyland’s coach on the Tigers for the past eight years. Lamont lasted four years as Pirates manager, and he gave way to Lloyd McClendon, who also has been on the Tigers’ coaching staff since 2006.

Cue the spooky music.

So will the Pirates only be losers for as long as Leyland, Lamont and McClendon are together with the Tigers? Is there some sort of curse? Because we all know that sports fans love a good curse.

If the Pirates are cursed, it’s been the curse of poor drafting, questionable trades and free-agent busts.

The past 20 years of losing records have been deserved. You don’t play 162 games and call your end result an aberration. And you especially don’t lose for two decades and blame it on outside forces.

The Pirates have been losers since 1992 because they haven’t had very many good players. And they haven’t had very many good players because they haven’t done a good job of beating the bushes—in this country and elsewhere—in finding them.

The few so-called stars that the Pirates have had since 1992 have all eventually bolted Pittsburgh for greener pastures—which has been just about any team you care to name—or have been traded in lopsided deals.

So it’s been 20 years of win totals in the 60s or 70s—which is appropriate, because prior to Leyland’s arrival as Pirates skipper in 1986, the last time the Pirates enjoyed real success was in the 1960s and 1970s.

Pittsburgh has seen its share of bad baseball. The Pirates teams of the 1950s were mostly dreadful. Joe Garagiola, who played on some of those horrid Pirates teams in the ’50s, used to while away many minutes of dead air in his broadcasting career recalling those years, when Pittsburgh was home to the absolute worst that baseball could offer.

Then came the resurgence in the 1960s, starting with the 1960 World Series win over the mighty New York Yankees. The Pirates fielded pretty good teams throughout the decade, then continued winning in the 1970s, adding two more world championships to their total (1971 and 1979, both against Baltimore).

The well ran dry until Leyland took over and built the Pirates into a mini-dynasty from 1990-92. Actually, it was more of a National League East dynasty, but it was still pretty impressive.

The Pirates, in recent years, have teased their fans into thinking that the string of losing records may be ending.

In 2011, the Pirates were 54-49 on July 28. They trailed the first place Milwaukee Brewers by just 1.5 games in the NL Central (where the Bucs moved in the mid-1990s when baseball re-jiggered itself). August was nigh and the Pirates were in the thick of things!

You heard it all back then as giddy writers and fans had visions of the playoffs dancing in their heads. The ugly duckling was turning into a swan and all that rot.

A 10-game losing streak ensued, and just like that, the Pirates were the Pirates again. They were 54-59 and had sunk to fourth place, 10 games out. They finished 72-90, which was how they usually finished. The only difference was the 103-game tease that accompanied it.

In 2012, the Pirates did it to their faithful again.

July 28 once again was the team’s undoing.

In a spooky coincidence that only the Pittsburgh Pirates could pull off, the Bucs for the second consecutive year saw their high water mark come on July 28. For on that date in 2012, the Pirates were 58-42 and just two games behind the first place Cincinnati Reds. This was even better than 2011’s 54-49 on July 28.

Again, Pirates fans had cause to believe that the streak of losing seasons, which at this point stood at 19 years, was about to end. The 2012 Pirates had some players, most notably star center fielder Andrew McCutchen, who was being mentioned in league MVP talk.

So naturally, the Pirates stumbled and bumbled their way to a 21-41 finish (9-22 after August 29), to end up at 79-83.

The streak of losing seasons reached an even 20.

Have you looked at the standings lately? Pirates fans sure have, and you can forgive them for being as doubting as Thomas.

As I write this, the Pirates are 56-38. Someone named Jason Grilli (remember him?) was just on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine, for his closing exploits and for his role in leading a terrific bullpen that calls itself The Shark Tank.

July 28 is eight days away.

Something tells me that Pirates fans will be watching the remainder of this season with one eye closed. Also appropriate, given their logo is a pirate with an eye patch.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Dave Rozema was a fun-loving, gangly pitcher of baseballs who never met a clubhouse prank he didn’t like. He was perpetually 13 years old. He went through his career stifling a giggle.

Rozema, who pitched for the Tigers from 1977-84, could be impetuous, and not always at the most convenient moments.

In fact, it was an act of indiscretion that hastened the end of a once-promising career.

In May 1982, Rozema was 25, six years into a career that saw him become one of the Tigers’ most reliable starters and long relievers, even though he threw a fastball that was so misnamed, it would bounce off a window.

In ’82, Rozema was off to a fine start. He was 3-0 with an ERA of 1.63 when the Minnesota Twins visited Tiger Stadium on May 14, 1982.

The game turned into a bean ball war. It started when Detroit’s Chet Lemon was hit in the wrist by a pitch from Pete Redfern and charged the mound in the fourth inning. The benches emptied, naturally. More on that practice in a little bit.

Lemon was ejected, and Redfern left the game due to injury. Someone stepped on him with their spikes during the melee.

Rozema came on to pitch in the ninth inning. He twirled three scoreless frames.

In the bottom of the 11th, Minnesota’s Ron Davis brushed back Detroit’s Enos Cabell, who didn’t take kindly to it. Cabell made menacing gestures and started toward the mound. Naturally, the benches emptied.

But this row was much worse than that in the fourth inning. It got nasty real quick, tempers having run hot for seven innings.

The field was littered with 50 players, about a dozen coaches and four measly umpires. It was another overrun of the men in blue who were charged with keeping law and order.

The melee was completely out of hand within moments.

Then Rozema committed the act of indiscretion that would end his season and indirectly affect the rest of his career.

For whatever reason, Rozema targeted the Twins’ John Castino, who was engaged with a Tiger near the Twins dugout.

Making like Jackie Chan, Rozema took several loping steps and then launched into a karate kick against Castino that placed Rozema’s body parallel to the ground.

The ill-advised move tore Rozema’s knee to shreds.

He was done for the season.

On the way to the hospital, Rozema was unaware initially that his partner in crime, good buddy Kirk Gibson, had won the game for the Tigers with a walk-off homer off Davis. In a twist of irony, Rozema became the winning pitcher, his leg immobilized in an ambulance.

Rozema was done for 1982 thanks to the karate kick. His career was over by the end of April, 1986. He was not yet 30 years old. The major knee surgery required after his foolish Jackie Chan maneuver didn’t help his pitching at all.

Football and hockey, much more violent sports, don’t put up with the nonsense of players joining in the fray that goes on between two combatants. Neither does basketball.

In other sports, if you leave the bench, you’re suspended. No questions asked. Fines are levied, too.

Hockey, for all its dangerous speed and its strange justice of giving a guy two minutes for something that he’d get three years for, had he done it off the ice, has managed to basically legislate the bench-clearing brawl out of its sport.

The “third man in” rule ejects any player who intercedes in a scrap between two fighters. The NFL doesn’t take kindly to players leaving the benches, either.

Basketball, with its players’ close proximity to the patrons, especially frowns on multiple players going at it.

Yet baseball, the sport with the least physical contact between players, has condoned the bench-clearing fracas for over 100 years.

If a batter so much as looks at a pitcher oddly and takes a step or two toward the mound, players from both sides leap to the top step of the dugout. Another stride by the batter, and the dugouts empty.

And, to add to this absurdity, the bullpens empty—guys jogging in from 400 feet away. So that makes 50 players and all the coaches on the field of play—because two guys have a disagreement.

These aren’t necessarily benign meetings.

Witness Rozema and his karate kick. Bill Lee of the Red Sox hurt his arm in a fracas in 1976 when a bunch of Yankees and Red Sox players ended up piled on top of him. The Tigers’ Dick McAuliffe went after Chicago’s Tommy John in 1968 and John messed up his arm in the ensuing rumble.

Often, the players injured in these melees are not the ones involved in the original tiff.

Why does baseball allow its benches to empty so routinely, with such impunity?

You got a beef, Mr. Batter? Take it up with the pitcher—but make sure to drop the bat first. All you other guys? Watch.

The Dodgers and the Diamondbacks were involved in a rumble a week or so ago, and it included a takedown by Dodgers manager Don Mattingly of D-backs coach and former Tiger Alan Trammell.

A manager tackling a coach? Aren’t those guys supposed to be playing the roles of peacemakers? What’s next, the second and third base umpires going at it?

At least there were some suspensions in the Dodgers/D-Backs brawl. But that’s nothing in the big picture.

Alas, nothing will change. Change doesn’t come very easily in baseball, which is without question the most tradition-ingrained sport of them all, even if said tradition is self-destructive in nature.

Baseball’s slogan ought to be, “Because it’s always been that way.” That’s been the ready-made excuse since the 19th century for not correcting the ills of the game. Just ask Jackie Robinson.

Baseball can get rid of these silly bench-clearing exhibitions, which only serve ill will and offer up dangerous potential for injury.

It would be very easy to do so.

Yet it won’t ever happen. Why? Because it has always been this way.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Entering the 2013 season, hardly anyone chose the Colorado Rockies or New York Yankees to contend for pennants. Both have shocked the baseball world by overcoming depth and injuries concerns, but we’ve seen plenty of that throughout MLB history.

The teams featured on this list made journeys all the way to the World Series despite being perceived as underdogs prior to Opening Day. Each slide reflects on previous seasons to explain why there was pessimism, identifies the difference-makers who made the pennant possible and states whether or not the team was victorious in the Fall Classic.

Every generation has had its unlikely successes.

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Tucked onto the corner of 18th and Vine Streets in Kansas City, Missouri sits one of the more culturally significant museums in the United States.

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) tells the story of how these segregated leagues evolved from creation until eventually being fully integrated with Major League Baseball.

Podcast to be Named Later had the privilege Monday afternoon to interview NLBM President Bob Kendrick about the museum, the Negro Leagues themselves, pioneers such as Jackie Robinson and Buck O’Neil, along with the legacy and stories that still mean so much today.

The foremost impression you get from hearing Kendrick speak is his obvious pride. From the first question forward, you discover the smile on his face when all you hear are words.

When asked what he hoped people would take away from the museum, he answered:

“You will walk away with a newfound appreciation for just how great this country really is.”

Kansas City was the birthplace of the modern Negro Leagues. Rube Foster, an extraordinary pitcher in his own right, organized the Negro National League a block and a half away from the museum in 1920 at a local YMCA. His story could (and should) come right out of Hollywood.

“He did everything. A great player, great manager and a great owner. And—believe it or not—he died in an insane asylum.

Kansas City was also home to the Monarchs. Their most famous player—among Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell and Ernie Banks—was Robinson, of course, who played his rookie season there in 1945.

The stars of the recent movie “42,” including Harrison Ford (Branch Rickey) and Chadwick Boseman (Robinson), put on a fundraising screening in Kansas City that drew over 1,400 viewers.

Kendrick explains the impact:

“We could not be happier to see the film be so successful at the box office. We owe a great deal of gratitude to the folks at Legendary Films and Warner Brothers…for making this epic opportunity happen for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.”

The cornerstone of the museum is the “The Field of Legends.”

Twelve life-sized statues adorn this field and are positioned as if they were playing a game of baseball but, as Kendrick explains, reaching it is not easy.

“You have to earn that right and you do so by learning their story. By the time you bear witness to everything they endured to play baseball in this country, the very last thing that happens is now you can take the field. In many respects, you are now deemed worthy to take the field with 10 of the greatest baseball players to have ever lived.”

The Kansas City Royals have also embraced the continued influence the Negro Leagues still play in modern society.

Recently for a Sunday game at Kauffman Stadium, fans were encouraged to “Dress to the Nines.”

Instead of the usual ballpark attire, fans dressed in formal clothing like they did for after-church doubleheaders generations before.

Not only was there an overwhelming response, other clubs with rich Negro Leagues heritage such as Washington and New York are considering such events in the future.

The Museum, and Kendrick himself, portray the establishment and success of the Negro Leagues as a celebration.

When asked why the history of the Negro Leagues was important to remember, his response was short and profound:

“Because it is the history of this country.”

Podcast to Be Named Later was privileged to speak with Bob Kendrick. Listen to the interview here or by visiting the website. Enjoy.

Follow @P2BNL_Podcast

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Popular 2013 World Series picks like the Los Angeles Angels, Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays have stumbled out of the starting gate, but we have come to expect MLB disappointments over the past 10 years. Read on to refresh your memory.

It would be premature to criticize anybody at the quarter pole, so this list only includes teams from the past decade of full seasons. All the following underachievers made their supporters suffer sometime from 2003-2012. They were ranked by the disparity between spring training expectations and actual awfulness.

Either because of injury, aging, dysfunction or a combination of three, they didn’t validate the preseason hype.

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How much of an impact do early season trades make? They occur infrequently and usually do not involve big-name players.

The MLB trend is to anticipate the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline and strike a deal on or before that date. It’s one of the most exciting days during the baseball season, as contending teams look to land a player for their playoff push while cellar dwellers dump stars for prospects.

So why aren’t there any titillating transactions in April? 

For one, most teams craft their rosters in the offseason, and it may take more than a few weeks in April to step into the rhythm of success. Also, with such a small sample size of games, determining the problem that a trade would solve is not always possible.

Plus, those non-contending teams who could provide a worthy veteran or power bat are not willing to raise the white flag on a young season, succumbing to more dominate teams and crippling the fan base.

All that said, here are the five greatest, if not the smartest, April trades of all time.

(H/T to articles written by Bleacher Report’s Doug Mead, Joel Reuter and Ely Sussman)

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The funny thing about baseball’s unwritten rules is that they find themselves written down eventually.

And, just to be sure, I’ll prove it:

Don’t steal a base when leading by six runs in the eighth inning.

Don’t try to break up a no-hitter with a bunt.

Don’t make the first out at home plate.

Don’t walk the leadoff hitter.

Don’t walk the pitcher, no matter where he’s hitting.

Don’t swing at the first pitch if you make an out doing so.

Swing at the first pitch because it might be the only good one you see in that at-bat (yes, some of these are contradictory).

Don’t swing at a 3-0 pitch, unless your last name is Aaron, Mays, Cobb or Ruth.

Don’t perform a home run trot that takes longer than the National Anthem.

Don’t bet on the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Don’t root for the Yankees.

To name a few.

Oh, but there is one more of these “unwritten” rules, and it’s about to be violated—and right here in Detroit.

Tigers manager Jim Leyland is taking the unwritten rule book and throwing it out the imaginary window.

He’s flipping a bunch of baseball people the bird, and frankly, I love it.

The unwritten rule that Leyland is about to break says that you can’t have “closer by committee.”

The unwritten book says that every team must designate one pitcher, and one pitcher only, to serve as the closer. This is a corollary to the other unwritten rule that says the closer cannot be used earlier than in the ninth inning.

Leyland is trashing this “one closer” unwritten rule. He plans on doing so as soon as the curtain is lifted for the 2013 season on Monday, in Minnesota.

The Tigers experimented with breaking yet another closer-related rule, but that plan has been scrapped.

The Tigers were going to violate the “you can’t have a rookie closer and expect to win a World Series” rule, when they experimented with 21-year-old Bruce Rondon in spring training to be their ninth inning guy.

The roly-poly, cherubic-faced Rondon smiled a lot, but he smiled more than he got hitters out, so he’s being returned to Triple-A Toledo for, as they say, “more seasoning.”

With the cashiering of erstwhile closer Jose Valverde after his playoff meltdowns, the Tigers are now left with the dreaded “closer by committee.”

The unwritten rule says that no MLB manager can dare to consider such a thing without disastrous results.

I, for one, can’t wait to see how this shakes out.

I have been a proponent of my own unwritten axiom, which states that any big league pitcher on a 25-man roster ought to be able to get three outs in the ninth inning.

Call me crazy. Fit me for a straitjacket. Force me to listen to Roseanne sing the National Anthem on an endless loop. I don’t care.

It’s not that I believe closers are overrated. I believe the closer’s circumstances are overrated.

Think about the closer’s job. He starts every appearance with a clean slate—bases empty and nobody out. To qualify for a save, his team can be as many as three runs ahead when he enters the game.

He waltzes in from the bullpen under no real duress. There isn’t a fire he has to put out. In a sport where his bullpen brethren preceding him are often dancing on a high wire with no net, the closer’s job, in comparison, is that of a school crossing guard. He just has to make sure no kid runs into the street and gets clobbered by a Mack truck.

Yet closers are held in such high esteem that the mere thought of a manager calling his bullpen coach in the eighth inning and saying, essentially, “Surprise me,” is thought to be folly.

Shouldn’t any big league reliever be able to get three outs once or twice a week without his world crashing down?

Leyland and the Tigers are about to find out.

When Leyland spoke of closer by committee earlier this week, he wasn’t kidding. The manager named just about everyone in his bullpen when discussing who could close games for the Tigers in 2013.

Which is exactly as it should be.

I have a hunch that Leyland, Mr. Old School himself, is going to have a blast with his closers committee, for as long as it lasts. I think he’ll revel in the freedom—and challenge—of determining who to summon to close games, based on a myriad of criteria.

And if it works, that unwritten rule can be torn up—imaginary paper and all.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

When it comes to ballplayers, “the greatest of all time” is a touchy subject. There have been many great ones, and trying to whittle the list down to one definitive GOAT is an exercise that will give you brain aches.

If only there was an easier way…And to this end, I have an idea.

Well, to be honest, college basketball has an idea that I’m stealing. To determine who’s the best among many, college basketball rounds up the top 68 contestants, seeds them, puts them in a bracket and then goes until “One Shining Moment” starts playing.

If there was to be a bracket of the 68 greatest ballplayers of all time, it would look a little something like this…

Old-Timers

Post-Integration

Next Wave

Modern

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