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🔥 FIRST PITCH — Hall of Fame
Winter Meetings are here.
Phones are buzzing.
Owners are pacing.
Scott Boras is somewhere lighting cigars with contract offers.
Spring Training is 65 days away. Clock’s ticking, fellas.
Toronto clearly got the memo — and a fresh pile of cash.
• Dylan Cease — $210M
• Cody Ponce — $30M
• And now they’re circling the biggest fish in the lake: Kyle Tucker.
⚾️ Cooperstown — The Reckoning
This weekend, the Contemporary Era Committee decides who gets the Hall call.
Barry Bonds. Roger Clemens. Don Mattingly. Jeff Kent. Dale Murphy. Carlos Delgado. Fernando Valenzuela. Gary Sheffield.
Do Bonds or Clemens finally get in — or will the PED clouds keep them out?
We’ll find out Sunday. Fireworks pending.
🔥 Red Sox vs. Yankees — New Fuel
Sonny Gray — former Yankee, now Red Sox — poured a little gasoline on the rivalry:
“It’s easy to hate the Yankees.”
He didn’t exactly love his Bronx experience.
Best of luck with that new fanbase, Sonny — they’ll boo their own mom if she grounds into a double play.
🇯🇵 Lastly — The Imai Whiplash
Remember Tatsuya Imai, the Japanese ace who said:
“Dodgers? Nah, I’m good.”
Giants fans thought he was theirs — perfect fit.
Now the rumor mill says San Francisco’s not interested.
Say what? Come on, SF.
Don’t leave that door open for L.A. to change his mind.
We’ve seen that movie. It ends in tears.F
Should Barry Bonds & Roger Clemens be elected to the Hall of Fame? |
🟢 THE GOOD — Tyler Rogers
Right-handed submarine pitcher.
Throws the slowest fastball in Major League Baseball.
Eighty-three. Fricking. Miles. Per. Hour.
And somehow? Tyler Rogers is one of the most valuable relievers in the game. Go figure.
In a league where bullpen arms are hired flamethrowers — 98 or don’t bother knocking — Rogers shows up with the same velocity your nephew brings to JV tryouts. And he’s a coveted free agent.
It’s ridiculous.
It’s beautiful.
It’s baseball.
The ball leaves his hand 1.18 feet off the ground.
He wasn’t just good in 2025 — he was Statcast’s No. 1 free-agent reliever across all-pitch metrics.
Ahead of the fireballers.
Ahead of everybody.
Sure, he’s 35. Sure, every year brings the threat of that velocity dipping into “my kid throws that in Little League” territory. But none of that matters.
He’s an alien disguised as a reliever.
Some smart front office is going to sign him and shrug:
“Yeah, we’ll take the guy who breaks the rules.”
Because in a sport obsessed with velocity, spin rate, and 99th-percentile everything…
Sometimes the nastiest thing on the planet is 83 miles an hour released from the basement floor.
🔴 THE BAD — Clase-Ortiz Trial
Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz are officially heading to trial — May 2026 in Brooklyn — on charges they took bribes from gamblers to influence pitch outcomes.
Prosecutors say bettors profited $400–460K off the scheme.
Investigators pulled hundreds of gigabytes of evidence from devices.
Both pleaded not guilty and are out on bond.
And because baseball can’t stay out of its own way — the trial starts just as the season is getting underway.
Baseball’s worst nightmare.
Not PEDs.
Not sticky stuff.
Not trash cans banging in the night.
Straight-up game manipulation for gamblers.
If this is real?
Baseball itself is on trial.
Can fans trust what they’re watching?
Can the league?
And the scariest question of all —
is this just the tip of the iceberg?
💊 THE UGLY — Tyler Skaggs
The Tyler Skaggs wrongful-death civil trial dragged into its eighth week — and it’s brutal.
The defense says Skaggs alone was to blame — “the ringleader,” they argued — not the Angels, not anyone else. They painted him as addicted and reckless, claiming the team had no idea Eric Kay was dealing pills.
Text messages told their own story — Skaggs swapping painkillers with teammates, even asking Matt Shoemaker for one during a game.
“Waddup Shoe, anyway I can get one of those pain pills from you so I can take it during the game haha.”
Carli Skaggs took the stand again, pushed to admit her husband was addicted. She wouldn’t.
“I don’t believe he was addicted,” she said.
The Angels’ lawyers showed a 2018 exchange about constipation — a side effect of opioids.
“Damn babe what that from… all the pills.”
Kay is already serving 22 years for supplying the counterfeit oxycodone pills laced with fentanyl that killed Skaggs. The rest is playing out in court — a sad, unwinnable story for everyone involved.
🚙 One for the Road — Holy Lumber
Finally… we all know what a massive White Sox fan Pope Leo is.
Seriously — the man might be the only guy in Vatican City who owns a Paul Konerko jersey.
So in this season of giving…
what do you give a Pope who has it all?
How about a Nellie Fox.
On his first international trip aboard “Shepherd One,” CBS News correspondent Chris Livesay handed His Holiness a piece of South Side nostalgia — a bat once swung by the White Sox legend.
A stunned Pope Francis looked at the bat and joked:
“How did you get this through security?”
Pope Leo was born in Chicago.
Bleeds black and white.
Teases Cubs fans like it’s a spiritual obligation.
Nellie Fox — 15-time All-Star.
2,663 hits.
So yes — the Pope now owns a weapon of baseball salvation.
Blessed be thy barrel.
John Boxley
High N Tight
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