Baseballs

BASEBALL URBAN LEGEND : The nickname "Giants" for the baseball team was coined by a celebratory outburst by their manager after a rousing victory. In 1882, John B. Day and Jim Mutrie found themselves fielding two very interesting offers. The two major baseball leagues, the National League (NL) and the American Association (AA) both wanted Day and Mutrie's minor league team, the New York Metropolitans, to join their respective leagues. Day and Mutrie found an interesting solution...they accepted both offers!

Bobby Bonds, one of the first major league baseball players to hit 30 home runs and steal 30 bases in a season and father of one of the most prolific home-run hitters of all time, died Saturday. He was 57. The father of Barry Bonds, who could surpass Henry Aaron as baseball's all-time home-run leader as soon as the 2005 season, died shortly before 9 a.m. after battling lung cancer and a brain tumor for nearly a year.

Summer's the time for wearing baseball caps, but this season the soft hats with the long bills are no longer just for taking out to the ballgame. Baseball caps are everywhere, from the fashion runways of Milan to the streets of Los Angeles. Hollywood's beautiful people--including Janet Jackson, Madonna and Eddie Murphy--are wearing baseball caps as symbols of their street-wise chic.

As Bill Singer pulls a lever on the transformer box at UC Irvine, he illuminates both the baseball field and his own role as a citizen. Once known as the Singer Throwing Machine, a 20-game winner with both the Dodgers and Angels, Singer is an anomaly in an era when pampered players have developed a reputation for taking their money and never being heard from again.

In the fall of 1993, Michael Jordan — often regarded as the greatest player ever to shoot a basketball — shocked the sports world by announcing he was retiring from the NBA. Then he stunned fans again by deciding to pursue his long-held dream of playing pro baseball. Within months, the then-31-year-old high-flying guard known as "His Airness" was bobbling easy flies and swatting at bad pitches as a struggling right fielder for the minor-league Birmingham Barons. This surreal fillip in sports history, which ended up bisecting Jordan's phenomenal NBA career, forms the basis of "Jordan Rides the Bus," director Ron Shelton's documentary that premieres Tuesday on ESPN.

The Dodgers will celebrate their 100th anniversary season without the most celebrated pitcher in franchise history, as Sandy Koufax confirmed Tuesday that he has severed his ties with the organization. Koufax, a Hall of Fame member who served as a minor league pitching instructor since 1979, said he has resigned because he is weary of the job. Although Dodger officials called it a one-year sabbatical, Koufax said he has placed no time frame on the resignation.

He was a baseball player with a contradictory name. In a 17-year Hall of Fame career with the Cincinnati Reds, Johnny Bench almost never sat on one. Bench was a workhorse. Starting in 1967, and becoming arguably the best catcher ever, he played in 2,158 games, an average of 127 a season. That's a lot of squatting. He had his ways of communicating when enough was enough. "We were playing the Dodgers in Cincinnati one time, and the game the night before had gone on until something like 1 in the morning," Bench says.

Seattle Mariners' scout Myron Pines has a different perspective when it comes to evaluating potential major league players. While most scouts are content to sit in the stands and watch, Pines gets a closer look--from the dugout. Pines is in his seventh season as baseball coach at Santiago High School, where he helped turn around a struggling program. Last year, he led the Cavaliers to their first outright league championship since 1969.

Todd Crosby has seen the world since leaving Woodland Hills two years ago, and the world has seen him. The world likes what it sees. Crosby, the starting second baseman at the University of Hawaii, is currently playing for the United States national baseball team--which was known last summer as the U.S. Olympic team. He has started 28 of the 29 games the team has played over the past six weeks in Japan, Korea and the U.S.

The Angels are one of the richest and most successful franchises in Major League Baseball — in fact, in all pro sports. They're valued by Forbes at $554 million (up 6% from a year ago), carry the fourth-largest player payroll in the major leagues, and at this point in the season rank fifth in per-game attendance. As they're very much in the hunt for their division lead, it's quite possible that lucrative post-season games will be added to the schedule. So why are they trying to nickel-and-dime their stadium ushers, ticket sellers and janitors?