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Yasiel Puig celebrates his game-breaking homer Saturday.

Love him or hate him (and the Dodgers), Yasiel Puig is a talented and exuberant baseball player.

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The Fenway Park scoreboard pretty much tells the
story, in one game, of the 2018 season for both the
Boston Red Sox and the Baltimore Orioles.

The Baltimore Orioles have lost more games this season (115) than the Boston Red Sox have won (107). I would like to say that they're not really that bad, but ... they kinda are.

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Yankees manager Aaron Boone gets into a catchers
crouch during an argument with umpire Nic Lentz Friday.
The argument resulted in Boone's ejection.

The arrival of replay review largely ended the era of demonstrative arguments between managers and umpires.

On Friday, Aaron Boone did his part to bring them back.

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Hunter Dozier of Kansas City gets doused after his
walk-off homer Friday night against Cleveland.

Occasionally I hear people grumble about bad teams celebrating after a win. I'm not one of those.

Yeah, Kansas City is having a rough season. It's not September yet and the Royals have lost 90 games. Baltimore's record is worse, but K.C.'s run differential suggests that it's the Royals, not the Orioles, who have the worst team in baseball.

Hunter Dozier is hitting .217 with a .275 on-base percentage and .328 slugging percentage. This is ... bad.

On Friday night, he and his teammates had a good game and they beat a quality team. They deserve to celebrate.

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Houston pitcher Carter Pitts listens to manager Dave Rook
after after committing a fielding error that allowed a run to score
in the first inning a Little League World Series game Thursday.

I wonder if I'm the only one dubious of the wisdom of putting 12- and 13-year-olds' games on national television.

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Johan Santana dons the Twins Hall of Fame blazer
with assistance from Rod Carew.

Johan Santana declared during his pregame speech that he is indeed retired as a pitcher now.

So he has accepted the reality. It's been six years since he last threw a competitive pitch. For a few years teams would extend minor league offers in hopes that he could find his way back, but those offers eventually dried up.

For a few years, he was as good as it gets. Santana nights at the Dome were magical, and I seldom passed up the opportunity to watch him work.

Pitching in the majors takes its toll. Santana' star burned brightly, and then it burned out.

But I will long remember his mastery of the changeup, the heat of his fastball, the sense that anything was possible when he took the mound.

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Eduardo Escobar tweeted out this image Friday after he was traded by the Twins to Arizona.

I can't decide whether to laugh or cry.

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Pittsburgh first baseman Josh Bell reaches for
a wild throw Friday as Cincinnati's Michael Lorenzen
near the bag.

This magic moment -- the falling helmet and the reaching glove so perfectly aligned with the back of Lorenzen's head.

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George Rusch, 4, of Alexandria, Va., swings
 a bat at the virtual reality home run derby
Saturday at the All-Star FanFest in Washington.

I'm old. I have no experience with virtual reality and no real interest in trying it. "Real" reality is challenging enough for me.

That said, he looks like he's having fun.

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Didi Gregoius tries -- and fails -- to complete a double
play over Atlanta's Ender Inciarte on Wednesday.

I sometimes wonder what the large cadre of foreign players make of the obsentacious displays of patirotism major league baseball is given to.

Inciarte is from Venezuela. Gregoirus was born in Amsterdam and raised in Curaco; he is officially a knight in the Dutch order of Orange-Nassau.  Yet here both are, playing baseball in the United States while wearing gaudy stars-and-stripes accented duds.

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The Baltimore Orioles marked the
press box seat for the Annapolis
paper with a memorial before Friday's
game. One of the murdered
reporters occasionally covered the O's.

You probably know that I work at a community newspaper. So I can identify with the people at the Annapolis newspaper -- those who were killed on Thursday and those who honored their slain colleagues by, as one said on Twitter, putting out the damn newspaper.

It didn't happen at the The Free Press. That doesn't mean it can't. We have certainly angered people with our coverage in the past, and I certainly hope we anger people in the future, because if we don't, we're not doing the work the way it should be done.

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Curtis Granderson and umpire Mike Muchlinski
are in agreement on the call on his double Tuesday.

Curtis Granderson, known in these parts as the greatest of the Mankao Mashers, is having a decent bounceback season with the Toronto Blue Jays.

He's become a platoon player at age 37 -- just 20 plate appearances against lefties coming into Friday's play -- and having his at-bats focused on right-handing pitching has resulted in a sharply improved on-base percentage.

This is the Grandy Man's 15th major league season and his fifth team. I was, frankly, a bit surprised he got an offer during the winter. He's lived up to it, probably in part because he's not getting overexposed.

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Capitol Police Special Agents Crystal Griner, left,
and David Bailey, right, assist U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise
 to his position at second base at the start of the
annual Congressional Baseball Game

All three in this photo were injured in the shooting last spring at the Republican team's practice session. Scalise, whose position as majority whip makes him the No. 3 leader in the Republican caucus, has had multiple operations.

He started the game for the GOP and made a play in the field before coming out after a few pitches. Which is excusable considering that he uses a cane to get around. 

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Charlie Culberson looks into his dugout last Sunday
after hitting his second walk-off homer of the homestand.

Charlie "Clutch" Culberson. The utility infielder has eight home runs in his major league career, and half of them have been walk-offs.

One came when he was playing for the Dodgers. It happened to be Vin Scully's final call as the Dodgers' broadcaster.

This is the sixth season Culberson has been in the majors, but -- so far -- it's the first that he hasn't also spent time in the minors. He's not a star, not a regular, not truly an established major leaguer -- but he's had some spectacular moments.

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Pittsburgh pitcher Trevor Williams
makes the catch on a popped up bunt
on Thursday. 

Here we see a pitcher startled by the necessity of doing something other than throw a pitch.

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Dexter Fowler left the game Friday after
being hit in the knee by a pitch.

What really attracted me to this photo is the good look it provided of the camouflage socks the players were wearing with the special Memorial Day Weekend uniforms.

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Jose Inglesias takes a pitch in his back
on Mother's Day.

There are weeks when the photo pickings appear particularly puny, and in those weeks I tend to gravitate to a few standard shots.

One is the "point-of-impact" hit-by-pitch.

This is one such week, and this is one such photo.

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The Seattle Mariners celebrate James Paxson's
no-hitter in Toronto.

New week, new Ichiro photo. And there's a lot here to unpack.

Ichiro's in uniform, but he's not really part of the team anymore, so while everybody else is in a mass hug of James Paxson, he's set apart but still there. I wonder how awkward it is around him these days.

His pose brought to mind the famous "Christ the Redeemer" statue that overlooks Rio de Janeiro, as if he is supplying his blessing to the celebration.

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The great Ichiro Suzuki's 2018 season is done, but
his playing career -- probably -- isn't quite over

Ichiro Suzuki is no longer on the active roster of the Seattle Mariners. He is a "special assistant to the chairman" of the team. But he will still don a uniform before games, take part in batting practice, shag fly balls -- then, when the game begins, vacate the field and dugout.

He's not officially retired. The M's will open the 2019 season with a short series in Japan against the Oakland Athletics, and it appears the plan is for Ichiro to get a few at-bats in that series as a final coda to his brilliant career.

Ichiro is 44, and his days as a star or even as a regular are well in the past. Last year he came one hit short of the record for pinch hits in a season, which suggests that he was still a useful player, if only in a bit role.

But what a player he was at his best. I'm glad I got to see him play.

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Ronald Acuna Jr. hits his first major league home run.

The Atlanta Braves called up the consensus top prospect in the minors last week. Ronald Acuna Jr. won't turn 21 until December, and the Braves have the two youngest players in the majors in their lineup (the other being second baseman Ozzie Albies).

Age matters. As Jay Jaffe explains in this Fangraphs piece, ANY playing time in the majors at 20 --Acuna's age, and Albies's age last year -- signals a rare talent. Acuna, simply by reaching the majors this year, has at least a 5 percent chance of reaching the Hall of Fame. Ditto Albies.

Their career arcs will be interesting to follow.