The San Diego School of Baseball was backed by hitting stars such as Tony Gwynn and Alan Trammell, but it was the pitching minds that gave the early 1980s baseball camp its charm — and its legacy.

Brent Strom and Tom House had been teammates at the University of Southern California and then, later, journeyman pitchers in the major leagues. Aside from lineage, they also shared deep-seated hunches that there was more to learn about baseball than previous generations had taught.

So when the day’s instruction was over, they sat in the dugouts of Grossmont College or ventured to a local watering hole, tossing ideas back and forth: the things they loved about the game, the things they thought were wrong, the things they wanted to change.

Once, during a baby shower for another coach’s wife, the men were scolded when they were found in the corner of a room, playing back film of pitchers. They were all obsessives, and the San Diego School of Baseball was their offseason oasis — a place where they could gather and discuss, without judgment and scorn, some of the very concepts that decades later would alter the balance of baseball.

“A summit,” House called it, “of smart baseball minds.”

Before PITCHf/x and Statcast could measure progress, before internet message boards and…

BOSTON — It’s not uncommon for kids to go out to the backyard and play catch with their dad.

What is uncommon is when the dad is a former big-league pitcher.

And when Dad happens to have been a longtime practitioner of the tricky and dreaded knuckleball, that’s off-the-charts unusual. But so it was with the late Tim Wakefield and his two kids, Trevor and Brianna. Like most dads, he played catch with the kids. Like hardly any dads, he taught them how to throw a knuckleball.

Which brings us to Fenway Park, Tuesday afternoon, Opening Day, Red Sox versus Baltimore Orioles. The Red Sox held a pregame ceremony in memory of Wakefield and his wife, Stacy, both of whom died of cancer over the past six months. The club also remembered longtime Sox president Larry Lucchino, who died last week.

When it came time for someone to throw out a ceremonial first pitch, it was Brianna Wakefield, an 18-year-old high school senior who’ll be headed to Boston College this fall, who toed the Fenway rubber. Now for everyone who was at Fenway Park on Tuesday afternoon, for everyone who was watching on television, for everyone who was listening to Hall of Fame-bound Joe Castiglione call the game over the radio, the answer to your question is yes, yes, yes, of course Brianna Wakefield took a very Tim…

The Hall of Fame is made for players like Adrián Beltré. As a pure hitter, reliable slugger and slick third baseman, Beltré had few peers: No other infielder in the history of baseball has 3,000 hits, 400 homers and five Gold Glove awards. Beltré, now 44, was a lock for the Hall of Fame.

As a first-time Cooperstown candidate, Beltré did not need to follow the breathless tracking of public ballots this winter. Yet he still could not feel secure, he said, until his wife and son assured him on Tuesday that election day looked promising. He could savor it.

“That made me relax a little bit more, and I kind of forced myself to try to enjoy this moment,” Beltré said from his home in Southern California, moments after achieving his sport’s greatest honor. “It was going to be a nice moment, and probably the last moment in baseball that I was going to accomplish, being at the pinnacle of the game.”

Beltré had company at the summit on Tuesday, with Todd Helton and Joe Mauer joining him in the new class of Hall of Famers. Former manager Jim Leyland, elected by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee last month, will also be inducted at the ceremony July 21.

Candidates must receive 75 percent of the ballots from 10-year members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of…

You always remember your first.

First car, first love, first job.

For a generation of baseball fans, their first real-life hero was an everyman from Arkansas who made his major-league debut at age 18 in the second year of the modern-day Baltimore Orioles’ existence and grew with a burgeoning fan base until he was a household name, an American League MVP, a World Series MVP, a Hall of Famer and Baltimore’s favorite adopted son.

Brooks Calbert Robinson, the original Mr. Oriole, died Tuesday, according to a statement from the team.

A Statement from the Robinson Family and the Orioles:

“We are deeply saddened to share the news of the passing of Brooks Robinson. An integral part of our Orioles Family since 1955, he will continue to leave a lasting impact on our club, our community, and the sport of…

— Baltimore Orioles (@Orioles) September 26, 2023

He leaves behind his wife of 62 years, Connie, their four children (Brooks David, Chris, Michael and Diana) and a legion of fans throughout the world.

He was 86 years old.

“All of us at Major League Baseball are saddened by the loss of Brooks Robinson, one of the greats of our National Pastime and a legend of the Baltimore Orioles,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a Tuesday statement, later adding, “I will always remember…

HOUSTON — His team had struck out something like 18 or 19 times and, after the final one, Brandon Hyde couldn’t find his hitting coach. Other members of the 2006 Greensboro Grasshoppers gathered their belongings and boarded a bus bound for the team hotel in Augusta, Georgia.

Hyde’s wife, Lisa, accompanied him on the trip, so the newlyweds drove back on their own. On their way, on a traffic-filled highway, a figure appeared in full uniform.

“We’re driving along a busy area of Augusta — it’s not the greatest neighborhood in the world — there’s Joe in his uniform walking to the team hotel because he was so mad that he just wanted to go home,” Hyde said.

The Hydes pulled over and picked up Joe Espada, an excitable first-year coach enraged by a poor performance, a problem he sometimes shared with his boss. The 33-year-old skipper and his 32-year-old hitting coach considered every loss personal, every player’s slump something they needed to fix. That the Grasshoppers grinded their way to a 68-69 record only enhanced those instincts.

“We were both a little younger, a little more emotional at that time,” Hyde said this week. “We took losses really hard and we took individual player or team success or failures extremely hard. We kind of commiserated…