Excerpt: "Money Don't Matter"

"The money doesn't matter. It's not about whether the marginal cost of a win on the free-agent market is five million bucks or $7 million or $13 million; it's about that framework no longer being the way to evaluate signings. The extra dollars a team might spend to bring a player into the fold -- and turn a contract from a sabermetric win to a sabermetric loss -- are meaningless in the big picture because there's just no other good application of those dollars. The opportunity cost of not signing the player isn't 'having the money to sign someone else', it's 'having cash and no good way to use it.'"

Excerpt: "The Awards"

"In going over the ballots at BBWAA.com, I was most taken by the affiliations. It was just five years ago, at the 2008 winter meetings, that the BBWAA first opened its membership rolls to writers who made their living online. Christina Kahrl and Will Carroll of Prospectus, along with ESPN.com's Rob Neyer and Keith Law, were the first to be admitted. It's 2013 now, and in addition to Law with ESPN.com and Carroll with Bleacher Report, voters for the major awards came from places like FOXSportsWest.com, Yahoo!, CBSSports.com and MLive.com. I don't want to make a virtue out of necessity -- this is happening in no small part because newspapers are dying and the BBWAA needs members -- but it's a pretty significant change in a short time. I'm not ten years removed from having Rich Levin refuse my request for a winter meetings credential to my face with a team representative at my side backing the request, so seeing Will and Keith voting on awards…I've seen the revolution up close. It's something we should celebrate. (Now, if the organization would just drop its archaic objection to MLB.com's professional and dedicated pool of writers….)"

Excerpt: "Our New Overlords"

"I don't believe the differences between 2011 and 2012 and 2013 were about soft factors. I believe it was those five guys being more healthy and effective this year, collectively, than they were in the previous season and the last month of '11. Those five were among the Sox' top nine players in the regular season, and four were among the team's top five. The Red Sox' three best players in the postseason were Ortiz, Lester and Ellsbury. Remember that 2011 collapse? Lester had a 5.40 ERA and Buchholz didn't pitch. In 2012, Ortiz played 90 games and Ellsbury played 74. In 2013, those numbers were 137 and 134. Pedroia played 19 more games than he did last year. Lester and Buchholz combined to be high-ERA innings munchers in 2012; this year, they had a 2.98 ERA in 49 starts. (Farrell may deserve some credit here, as the two pitchers show a with-Farrell/without-Farrell split.) Heck, John Lackey was ineffective for Francona, unavailable to Valentine and had a 3.52 ERA in 29 starts under Farrell."

Excerpt: "World Series, Games Five and Six"

"Game Seven is a dinner and a movie with your new bride. It's fun, it's exciting, there's no place you'd rather be, and you know exactly how the night is going to end. Game Six…Game Six is buying a drink for the cute girl on the other side of the bar, all upside and anticipation."

Excerpt: "World Series, Game Four"

"Finally, there's the play that ended the game. There's no excusing Kolten Wong getting picked off first as the meaningless third run with two outs in the ninth. I think it's worth laying out how it happened, though. This wasn't 1926, with Babe Ruth getting caught stealing to end the game. Wong wanted to go first to third on a single, first to home on a double -- at that, not the way he should have been thinking -- but he didn't get picked off because of aggression. He wasn't taking a huge lead. What happened was that Uehara timed his throw to first perfectly, sending the ball over early, as Wong was stepping towards second to establish his lead. Wong, not expecting a throw at that point, had no hope of getting back, with all his momentum headed towards second. The timing of the throw is why it caught Fox's producer by surprise -- it was a baseball play during what usually is a lull between pitches, a time Fox feels the need to fill with faces, eternally, rather than anything about baseball. "

SU2C

MLB does nothing as well as it does its work for Stand Up To Cancer, promoting the fundraising, research and collaboration organization throughout the year and spotlighting it during the World Series. The moment at the Series when everyone in the park stands up is emotional. I've been there. I was at the first one, in 2009, and it's incredible to realize that everyone, I mean everyone, has been touched in some way by this evil disease.

The moment was personal this year.

A friend of mine at the game sent me that picture last night. He'd written my mother's name on a placard and held it up. I couldn't do it myself, because I'm here in New York, where my mother is recovering from surgery last week that we hope moved her from cancer patient to cancer survivor. She's down a lung, but she's also down a rather large tumor, a trade you make every time.

If you've read me much, you know that I get my love of baseball from my mother and my late grandfather. He taught me how to bat left-handed, she taught me how to throw. She was a tomboy growing up, and I still can remember her occasionally playing stickball when I was a kid. She loves sports, just recently got a 60-inch TV to better watch them. Even at sixtymumble, she's an avid golfer with a regular game at Mosholu Park on Saturdays, one she had to put aside last summer as she endured first pneumonia related to the cancer, then the diagnosis, a regimen of chemotherapy and now the surgery. One of her golf buddies came by to see her last Wednesday after the surgery, and they were already talking about next spring, talking about their games.

That's my mother. Her mental game throughout this has been fantastic -- a hell of a lot better than mine, I'll tell you. When she was diagnosed in July, her only question was, "What do we do?" When the initial plan of surgery gave way to chemo -- and the associated effects -- she handled them without complaint. Eight weeks into chemo, mom was doing well enough to be at Yankee Stadium the night of Mariano Rivera's final appearance, standing and cheering, no outward sign at all that she was two months into the process. She was particularly happy with her outfit.

That's not the look of someone getting beaten by cancer. That's the look of someone kicking cancer's ass.

Today, mom is working on her breathing, working on getting her strength back, working on getting her endurance back, working on getting home so she can do all these things while watching golf in its flat-screen, HD glory. She's working. She was never a victim of cancer, not for a second. I've seen my mother do a lot of things, and I knew she was strong, but what she's done over the past four months has left me without words.

As the cameras scanned the crowd last night, as I thought about Mike holding up that sign, I didn't come close to keeping my composure. (No pics, sorry.) I thought about July 9. We were sitting in the office of her primary doctor, a pulmonary specialist, and hearing that her life was about to change. I was staring at the floor, holding her hand, shaking like a leaf. After the doc was done explaining his diagnosis, you know what mom did?

She stood up.