Over at Sports on Earth, Jorge Arangure Jr. has a story about Brian Roberts:

I walked into the Yankees spring training clubhouse on Monday and saw Roberts in pinstripes and the image just didn’t fit. I told Roberts how bizarre it was to see him in that uniform.

“It’s weird for me too,” he admitted.

Roberts was surrounded by reporters prior to Tuesday’s game because he was about to face his old team. It seemed a perfect time to catch up on his spring. Roberts, who missed most of least season and has sparingly played in the last four seasons because of injuries, spoke of the massive differences this spring training has been from previous ones.

“It is just different to be the guy in the back that no one knows about or cares about,” said Roberts. “I think that does help guys at times when you are trying to get back on your feet.”

[Photo Credit: AP]

Over at SB Nation Longform, here’s Jorge Arangure Jr on Brooklyn’s Field of Dreams:

In East Brooklyn, carved out among an urban dystopia of car washes, donut shops and fast-food joints sits an unlikely baseball field, the main field at City Line Park.

Although no one will mistake it for a professional field, the surface is almost immaculate. The infield dirt is well groomed and the foul lines are painted in perfect symmetry. In stark contrast to the dull grays of the surrounding streets and concrete sidewalks, the grass is a lush, rich green.

As much as a baseball diamond cut into a cornfield in Iowa, its presence here seems out of place. Yet if that place is known as the Field of Dreams, then surely this park in Brooklyn, at the corner of Atlantic Ave and Fountain Ave., is the Field of Broken Dreams.

Tonight gives Phil Hughes vs. Wade Davis, the former Tampa Bay Ray. (In fact, there are familiar faces starting for the Royals all weekend: James Shields and Ervin Santana.)

Over at Sports on Earth, Jorge Arangure Jr has a nice piece on Hughes:

“If you pick up on things that hitters were trying to do to you, and you don’t really have anything to combat that, then I guess you start thinking about ways that you can start incorporating new pitches into what you do,” Hughes said.

The easiest solution, and the one that would require the least amount of drastic makeover, would be for Hughes to transform his cutter into a full-fledged slider. The two pitches aren’t so different. They both move sideways. The slider is just a more drastic version of the cutter.

“I think at the time I wasn’t pitching horribly,” Hughes said. “It was just something that I wanted to incorporate. I felt it would be better if I did do that. I felt it would be a good pitch for me because it would be a little bit of a change of pace, just off the slower curveball that I throw, four seam fastball and change up. I felt it was something that came out of my hand like a fastball.”

Brett Gardner CF
Robinson Cano 2B
Vernon Wells LF
Travis Hafner DH
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Jayson Nix SS
Lyle Overbay 1B
Chris Nelson 3B
Chris Stewart C

Never mind the BBQ:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Old One Eye]

Over at SB Nation’s Longform, here’s a good one by Jorge Arangure Jr:

No kid who grew up near the border in either San Diego or Tijuana was unaware of what that simple line in the sand meant. It was the great divide: the difference between the land of opportunity and the land of ambiguity.

Tijuanenses, as we called ourselves, loved our city, but we were fully aware that the town served more as a passageway than a destination. Many of those who stayed in Tijuana had no choice. They couldn’t cross the border, either legally or illegally. Tijuana became the city of the stranded.

The border shaped everything around us, and although we may not have realized the extent of it until some of us moved elsewhere, being a border kid was an experience unlike any other in the United States or Mexico. There is a duality of life, a duality of identities, and a duality of geography that permeates everything. Every Mexican kid who grew up on either side had relatives who crossed the barrier every day, who wanted to cross it, or crossed it themselves. The border was as familiar as a sibling, a part of everyday life, never too far away, and sometimes just plain irritating. Rarely did a day pass by without someone mentioning the length of the wait at the border.

Yet despite the hassle – or perhaps because of it – those who live on either side of the border, and the people who live near it, are unique, sharing an identity only with each other.

There is a long profile on Ivan Nova by Jorge Arangure Jr. over at ESPN. Check it out.

[Photo Credit: AP]