Well, here we are. The beginning of another season at Top Of The Third. The wintery off-season is over and we are full throttle into the Grapefruit and Cactus League Exhibition Schedules. After a successful 2016 season (our first full season blogging about the game we love after a half-year in 2015) we will focus on making 2017 just as fun.
Here’s a look at what’s ahead in
the upcoming eight months of baseball. To begin, the entire month of March we
will feature profiles on all 30 Major League Baseball Teams. Last year, we
previewed each team and how we thought they would do in the upcoming season.
Since there’s countless websites and magazines that do all of that, I figured
it would be pointless to follow suit, so we’re shaking things up a bit this
year. Each team profile will feature some cool figures and facts (for example,
the year the team was established, how many World Series they’ve won, etc…) as
well as who I think is the best player on the current roster and who’s the
greatest player in franchise history.
As we move into April, we’ll get
into an important part of MLB’s history. April 15 will celebrate the 70th
Anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s baseball debut, the abolishment of “Gentlemen’s
Agreement” and the end of Baseball’s segregation. We will start with a
five-part series on the career and life of Jackie Robinson that will focus on
his youth, the college football days at UCLA, playing in the Negro Leagues and
Major Leagues, and end up with his contributions to the Civil Rights’ Movement.
But we won’t stop with Jackie. A
closer study of the Negro Leagues and its importance to the National Pastime
will envelop most of April and May. A three-part series on the history of the
Leagues, a look at the 25 best Negro League players of all time and the ten
most popular teams.
June is up in the air as I haven’t
decided what to do during that month. July will be similar to last year with
All-Star week and Hall of Fame Week. In August, we will look at the 55th
Anniversary of the 1962 Los Angeles Angels, a second-year team that bucked the
expansion expectations and challenged the Mantle and Maris-led Yankees for the
American League Pennant.
As the playoff chase heats up in
September, it will be a good time to look back 50 years at the 1967 Boston Red
Sox and the “Impossible Dream.” October will feature the 25 Greatest Comebacks
in Postseason History.
And we will continue “This Day
In Baseball History,” as well as book reviews, our following of Delhi, Ontario’s
Brock Dykxhoorn as he begins his third full season in professional baseball and
hopefully we’ll get a chance to offer more opinionated pieces on the current
events in today’s game.
Looking forward to sharing
another great year of baseball with all of you.
Follow us on Twitter at @topofthethird
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