"Guessing what the pitcher is going to throw is 80 percent of being a successful hitter. The other 20 percent is just execution."

'I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.'

- Baseball legend Babe Ruth (1895-1948)

How Shohei Ohtani made baseball fun again

To rise to the level of Major League Baseball in recent decades, a player needs to become a specialist in at least one of the sport's many skills: hitting, pitching, throwing, running, fielding. For decades, this specialization has made a so-called...

'Sometimes the biggest problem is in your head. You’ve got to believe you can play a shot instead of wondering where your next bad shot is coming from.'

- Golf great Jack Nicklaus (1940-present)

A sophisticated data analysis found that stadiums with roofs or in cities that regularly have sunny skies are the easiest for outfielders to play in.

Statcast, MLB's sophisticated real-time data analytics system, runs machine learning models in the 23-second gap between every pitch.

Some athletes warm up with equipment from other sports

Baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani uses a cricket bat; his teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto throws a javelin. Quarterback CJ Stroud shoots free throws. The reasons are partially physical (it's good to exercise different parts of your body) and partially mental (it's nice to take the pressure off with someone else's game).

Explore the data behind every Major League Baseball player's success rate with ABS, its new tech-assisted challenge system.

Inside MLB's robo-umping experiment

Human umpires call roughly 94% of pitches right overall, but performance reduces on borderline pitches in high-leverage moments, the calls that shape game outcomes most. A professor and historian analyze early experiments with the full "robot ump" system that helped shape MLB's decision to implement a compromise "challenge" system.

A quote by athlete Walter Payton

"When you're good at something, you'll tell everyone. When you're great at something, they'll tell you."

'A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.'

- Jackie Robinson, the first Black MLB player (1919-1972)

Visualize how changes to lineups, driven by modern analytics, could have changed one of MLB's most iconic moments.

Explore some of the best baseball books, including Michael Lewis' influential 'Moneyball' and Bob Uecker's autobiography 'Catcher in the Wry.'

A quote from sports journalist Stuart Scott

"In football, as in life, the hits you don’t see coming are the ones that do the most damage."

100 moments that shaped baseball history

Published in 2018 by baseball historian Jacob Kornhauser, this list examines the defining moments throughout more than a century of play on the field, from Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis purportedly throwing a no-hitter while on acid to Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier.

A history of the rare, chaotic moments when MLB batters charge the pitcher on the mound

They typically occur when a pitcher has slung a pitch a little too close to the batter—though the exact causes vary, from quick tempers to longstanding grudges. No definitive account of these infrequent but highly visible incidents has existed, so sportswriter Jon Bois compiled data on 264 such moments between 1950 and 2025. The resulting 23-minute video explores the rich narratives leading to these charged events.

Some say baseball's drug problem goes back to the late 1800s

At age 32, pitcher James “Pud” Galvin was feeling tired and decided to take "the Brown-Séquard elixir," which contained a testicular fluid from dogs and guinea pigs, believed to invigorate tired bodies. It might've worked: Galvin pitched a two-hit shutout the next day.

'When you come to a fork in the road, take it.'

- Baseball great Yogi Berra (1925-2015)

A quote from Mark Cuban

"Talent without effort is wasted talent. And while effort is the one thing you can control in your life, applying that effort intelligently is next on the list."

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to a health condition

Gehrig's diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease that now bears his name, forced him to retire early. Weeks later, he spoke with gratitude and stated, "For the past two weeks, you have been reading about a bad break. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." Gehrig died at the age of 37, about two years later.

Henry Chadwick invented the box score in 1859—and wrote off walks as a pitcher's failure

Sabermetrics, the empirical analysis of baseball statistics made famous by 'Moneyball,' redefined how people evaluate baseball players, overturning a century of assumptions about which metrics matter most.

Fourteen ways to make baseball cool again

Baseball, while commonly known as America's pastime, gets a bit of a bad rap for being long, slow, and boring. Here are fourteen fun ideas to make the sport more interesting to combat dwindling attendance.

Check out a list of the top 100 players in baseball history, from Barry Larkin to Babe Ruth.

A 1930s card game birthed modern fantasy sports

"National Pastime" used the statistics of real Major League Baseball players to determine a winner, creating the template for the modern fantasy sports model.

In 1970, Pittsburgh Pirates' pitcher Dock Ellis threw a no-hitter—a rare feat that was just the 174th in MLB history—while high on LSD.

'The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.'

- Roger Bannister (1929-2018)

Sidearm pitchers—who throw the ball at an odd angle, sometimes very close to the ground—are a rarity in modern baseball, which often makes them more difficult for batters to hit.

Watch Hank Azaria perform classic sports rants as 'Simpsons' characters

The actor has voiced some of the show's most beloved characters, including Moe Szyslak and Chief Wiggum. In 2025, he joined "The Rich Eisen Show" and used those voices to reimagine some of the sport's world's most ridiculous speeches.

MLB pitchers were charged with benefiting from sports betting

In November 2025, two pitchers for the Cleveland Guardians were charged with coordinating with sports bettors to enrich themselves and others. In many instances, they shared the kinds of pitches they would throw at specific points in the game. Bettors then placed money on those actions.

A visual guide to identifying baseball's pitches, from common pitches like 'fastball' and the 'change up' to specialty types, like 'cutter' and 'slurve.'

'Practice, which some regard as a chore, should be approached as just about the most pleasant recreation ever devised.'

- Legendary athlete Mildred "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias (1911-1956)

'I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.'

-Comedian George Burns (1896-1996)

In 1985, New York Mets star Keith Hernandez said 40% of his MLB peers used cocaine, highlighting an open secret about drug use in the league.

A quote by Roger Federer

"There is no way around hard work. Embrace it."

A quote from Robin Williams

"There’s no shame in failing. The only shame is not giving things your best shot."

'In my experience, each failure contains the seeds of your next success—if you are willing to learn from it.'

- Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen (1953–2018)

An eephus is a high-arc pitch usually thrown by position players filling in for pitchers in blowout games.

Some of the 'Jeopardy!' host Alex Trebek's best quotes

"The secret to happiness, of course, is not getting what you want; it's wanting what you get."

'Keep working on a plan. Make no little plans. Make the biggest one you can think of, and spend the rest of your life carrying it out.'

- President Harry Truman (1884-1972)

The best predictor of success.

Leaving a high-flying job in consulting, Angela Lee Duckworth took a job teaching math to seventh graders in a New York public school. She quickly realized that IQ wasn’t the only thing separating successful students from those who struggled. Here, she explains her theory of “grit."

'The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.'

- Former President Theodore Roosevelt's (1858–1919)

'It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.'

- Legendary boxer Muhammad Ali (1942–2016)

Aaron Judge asks Yankees fans about Aaron Judge

In this 2017 clip from the Tonight Show, Aaron Judge asks Yankees fans what they think about Aaron Judge — and some of them don't realize they're talking to the actual Aaron Judge.

Measuring which nation has the most baseball fans

It's known as America's pastime, but just how devoted are Americans to baseball? FiveThirtyEight outlines several metrics indicating Puerto Rico may have the most devoted fanbase. See how they used an adjusted metric to rank the world's biggest...

Watch some of the best moments from All-Star Game history, including Cal Ripken's final All-Star at bat, an Ichiro inside-the-park home run, and more.

Baseball legend Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak, which ended at 56, cost him a sponsorship deal with Heinz.

Understanding college basketball's guru, UCLA's John Wooden

John Wooden coached UCLA to an unprecedented 10 NCAA titles, including seven straight from 1967 to 1973. He studied the characteristics that made people successful and, in 1948, created his iconic triangular diagram with 25 common behaviors. This article unpacks the 25-block framework that makes the "Pyramid of Success" and shows how Wooden's off-court wisdom shaped future champs like Bill Walton and Steve Kerr.

Catching up with hobby icon Sy Berger

In 1952 baseball card company Topps printed two series of cards. The first series sold well, but the late-season series, numbered 311-407 and included Mickey Mantle, didn’t. Read the first-hand account of how Topps couldn't’ even give the late-season series cards away and dumped an estimated 500 cases into the Atlantic Ocean in 1959. Decades later, it created a scarcity that drove the price of that Mantle card to $12.6 million.

'The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.'

- Boxing champion Muhammad Ali (1942-2016)

A quote by Magic Johnson

"Celebrate the life you had, not the life you could've had."