I (Evander) am listening to the Yankees broadcast as this unseasonably, downnright cold (at Right Off the Bat HQ) Memorial Day weekend gets off the ground: the unofficial beginning of summer and all the great baseball stuff that goes along with the “boys” of the season that Roger Kahn wrote about.

The amazing Matt Moore of the Tampa Bay Rays is pitching. He has pitched with a youthful level of success unmatched by any lefty hurler since (Who else?) Babe Ruth.

This was in 1917.

Moore’s record is not the only astonishing thing about him. Imagine: He was not selected by any club till the eighth round of the major-league draft. What were the other twenty-nine teams doing? Napping? In fact, what was Tampa Bay—a franchise probably selecting early in the first round in that year—thinking thro rounds one to seven?

(On a separate note of serendipity, thanks go to Martin for enlightening me on the UK-kids’ sport of French cricket. Incidentally, I can’t believe how smart kids are in France…only three-years old and already they know how to speak French. Smart maybe: except, perhaps, for not cottoning to cricket or baseball—a reality that drove Ruth nuts, during his voyage thro Paris in the springtime of 1935, especially among the boys of US-embassy personnel.)