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The date Jan. 9 is significant insofar as baseball is concerned because the objectively wonderful TV show "Home Run Derby" first took to (s)wing. In commemoration of this important day, let us take a look back at the first episode, which featured Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, who, as it turns out, were both good at baseball-related tasks and duties. Come with us, won't you?

Edgar Martinez, a seven-time all-star, should be in the baseball Hall of Fame, but support for his candidacy has been waning over the past three seasons. “I’m not surprised that my percentage went down,” Martinez said a year ago. “We just have to wait and see for the future.” The biggest knock on his enshrinement is that he played as the team’s designated hitter and thus had little to no impact on the defensive part of the game. However, he still deserves to be in. For starters, the American League has required a designated hitter ever since the 1973 season,...

Tuesday wasn’t Curt Schilling’s day to be elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame and the Boston Red Sox former great believes his politics are one reason he fell short of the necessary number of votes. Schilling’s former teammate, Pedro Martinez, was elected, along with Randy Johnson, John Smoltz and Craig Biggio. Although he and Smoltz have similar stats, Schilling fell 240 votes short.

Stu Miller, the former Giants pitcher who committed perhaps the most famous balk in All-Star Game history, has died. He was 87... Miller played 16 years in the majors for the Giants, St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies, Baltimore and Atlanta. He led the National League in ERA in 1958, had the most saves in the NL in 1961 and the American League in 1963 and won a World Series title with Baltimore in 1966. But he is most remembered for his All-Star Game performance at windy Candlestick Park in 1961. He was called for a balk in the ninth inning...

Biggio, Smoltz, Johnson, Martinez.

NEW YORK (AP) — Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz appear to be shoo-ins for election to the Hall of Fame in what is shaping up as the baseball writers' biggest class of inductees in 60 years. When the Hall of Fame reveals the results Tuesday at 2 p.m. on the MLB Network, holdover Craig Biggio and perhaps Mike Piazza could join those three first-ballot pitchers who were utterly dominant in a hitters' era of artificially bulging statistics.

They just don't make them like this anymore.

WASHINGTON — At a dinner in one of Fidel Castro’s palaces in 1999, Castro and several of Major League Baseball’s senior executives discussed one of the few bonds between Cuba and the United States: baseball. The executives, including baseball’s commissioner, Bud Selig, were there for an exhibition game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Cuban national team, as part of an effort by President Bill Clinton to thaw relations. As the dinner stretched into the early hours of the morning, Castro regaled Selig with tales from the history of Cuban baseball and fantasized about what would happen if the United...

The Jackie Robinson West sluggers from Chicago’s struggling South Side became national celebrities this summer when they hit and pitched their way to the Little League World Series and took home the U.S title. But now the adults who put together the team — parents, coaches and league administrators — face allegations they violated Little League residency rules by stacking the lineup with All-Star ringers from the suburbs to create a “super team” that became champs.

The Jackie Robinson West sluggers from Chicago’s struggling South Side became national celebrities this summer when they hit and pitched their way to the Little League World Series and took home the U.S title. But now the adults who put together the team — parents, coaches and league administrators — face allegations they violated Little League residency rules by stacking the lineup with All-Star ringers from the suburbs to create a “super team” that became champs. http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20141216/morgan-park/jackie-robinson-west-broke-residency-rules-suburban-league-claims

NEW YORK — The highest-ranking Hispanic woman in a management position at Major League Baseball headquarters said in a lawsuit on Thursday she has faced discrimination there for two decades. Sylvia Lind’s lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks unspecified damages for what she describes as a failure by the league to consider, interview, appoint and promote qualified Hispanic women to managerial and executive positions. Lind, 48, says the league has created a hostile work environment for her because of her age.

For the first time in Major League Baseball -- or in any major professional sport, actually -- a game official has come out as gay. It's veteran MLB umpire Dale Scott. Outsports.com has a lengthy feature on Scott, so definitely hop over there if interested in the full version. The basics are that Scott has long been out to colleagues but it wasn't made public. He was profiled in Referee Magazine back in October and sent them a photo to use with Scott and Michael Rausch, Scott's domestic partner of 28 years. The two were recently married.

Joe DiMaggio would have turned 100 on Tuesday, so it seems appropriate to remember him as I do — as the finest baseball player I ever saw play our delicate little game. Bobby Doerr, the Hall of Fame Red Sox second baseman, once told me his teammate Ted Williams was the best hitter of their time but that Joe was the best all-around player. I grew up rooting for the Yankees as a kid in New Haven and, much later, when I got to know Joe well, I never failed to feel as if I were in the presence of...

It was a milestone day around here, perhaps the greatest doubleheader sweep in Southland hardball history. Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw. American League and National League Most Valuable Players. The Angels and the Dodgers sitting alone atop the baseball world. In the middle of November. Too bad this isn’t the end of October.

Trout wins his first MVP.

Alvin Dark, who was an All-Star shortstop and captain of the New York Giants' pennant-winning teams in the 1950s and later managed the team to a pennant in San Francisco, but who later found himself shadowed by controversy over his attitude toward black and Latino players, died on Thursday at his home in Easley, S.C. He was 92.

Vin Scully is fine with the idea of mentoring his potential successor in the Dodgers' broadcasting booth ... "I would hope something would be developed for the future," Scully said. "I wouldn't want to leave them in the lurch." ...

Giants defeat the Kansas City Royals 3-2 in Game Seven to win the World Series.

The San Francisco Giants win the World Series over the Kansas City Royals 3-2.

May the best team win