The Year's Most Essential Baseball Article

In my opinion, too much attention is given, too much praise and ass-kissing is heaped upon baseball players who too often are really shitty human beings--the people who, despite my love of the game, have largely kept me at a distance from the diamond since I hung it up. Nobody needs to read a Ferlinghetti-esque love diatribe about a man who hit the game-winning home run, and who makes millions of bucks on top of it, unless there is a genuine human being behind the glory.

You probably saw this already, but on the main page of ESPN's MLB page is a great story about a great man who worked behind the scenes loyally for about 20 grand a year. To boot, he extolled the virtues of a method of practice that I took to heart as a kid, from little league through high school--it made me smile to remember all the hours I spent in the high school gym and behind the elementary school's brick exterior fielding grounders and short hops for hours after school. What happened to Tony Lucadello is a shame, the way he was treated is a shame...I can't remember the last time something baseball-related made me cry, but this did it: Story about Tony Lucadello by Gare Joyce