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…

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…

Rachel Balkovec, the first woman to manage in affiliated baseball, has left the New York Yankees for an even bigger task — leading the Miami Marlins’ minor-league player development, according to a league source.

Balkovec, 36, had been the Yankees’ Low-A manager for the 2022 and 2023 seasons, guiding some of the organization’s brightest prospects, including Jasson Domínguez, with whom she had an especially close relationship. Domínguez reached the majors last year at age 20. Balkovec went 122-136 with a .473 winning percentage.

“The best person on the job was Rachel. It’s a credit to her,” general manager Brian Cashman told The Athletic in 2022.

The Yankees hired Balkovec as a minor-league hitting coach in November 2019. She had previously worked with the Houston Astros and St. Louis Cardinals in strength and conditioning.

Balkovec was a softball catcher at Creighton University and the University of New Mexico, graduating with a degree in exercise science.

She joins the Marlins as the club undergoes changes in its front office. GM Kim Ng departed after owner Bruce Sherman planned to hire a president of baseball operations to work as her boss. Ultimately, the team hired Peter Bendix from the Tampa Bay Rays to fill the role of president. The team had let go of Geoff…

Josh Beckett savors the outdoors. Hunting and fishing fill up much of his retirement days. Some are spent playing golf with his 5-year-old son. It’s a simple but sweet life with his wife, Holly, and their three children on a small ranch outside of San Antonio, Texas.

As his son drains putts on the green, Beckett notices something. A carefree disposition in the child. A lack of pressure. Beckett sees a younger version of himself. His mind is brought back two decades, back to when he was a 23-year-old starting pitcher for the Florida Marlins.

“Maybe there’s some validity behind not knowing what you’re doing,” Beckett told The Athletic in a phone interview.

One recent morning, Beckett is on the road driving. As he steers through the Texas roads, he’s keen to open up about the 2003 Marlins. His answers are drawn out, his tone enthusiastic. Certain memories bring laughter. Time may have passed, but the magnitude of his accomplishment isn’t lost upon him.

Wednesday marks the 20th anniversary of the night Beckett cemented his place in baseball history: Game 6 of the 2003 World Series against a Yankees lineup that featured Derek Jeter, Alfonso Soriano, Jorge Posada, Jason Giambi and Bernie Williams. Starting on three days’ rest with his team one win from the franchise’s…

ARLINGTON, Tex. — When Kim Ng was hired to lead the Miami Marlins in November 2020, it made national news. She was on “Today” and got a text message from former first lady Michelle Obama. The weight of being the first woman and the first person of East Asian descent to serve as general manager of an MLB team meant everything she did was a headline.

Women in the industry, and some outside of it, texted me at the time about the gravity of the moment — how it was about time, and why did it take so long, and would this open the door for more women in sports, particularly baseball?

Privately, we all hoped the most you can hope for when a woman from an underrepresented group enters a high-profile position in a male-dominated world: Please be good enough to keep your job.

But it was how that job ended that truly speaks volumes.

Kim Ng was a reluctant trailblazer. Now, she’s a certified badass.

There are only 30 MLB teams. Only 30 people who truly lead a baseball operations staff. And Ng —who declined her part of a mutual option for 2024— walked away the minute it was apparent she was no longer going to be one of them. She did it without (to our knowledge) another job in hand. She did it matter-of-factly, telling The Athletic’s Tyler Kepner that she and owner Bruce Sherman…

Less than two weeks after the Marlins’ return to the postseason, shocking news came out of Miami on Monday that general manager Kim Ng will not return to the club in 2024. Here’s what you need to know:

• Marlins chairman and principal owner Bruce Sherman announced that although the club exercised Ng’s team option to return for the 2024 season, she declined.
• Ng told The Athletic that she and Sherman discussed his plan to reshape the Marlins’ baseball operations department last week. “In our discussions, it became apparent that we were not completely aligned on what that should look like and I felt it best to step away,” Ng said.
• The Marlins hired Ng, MLB’s first female GM, in November 2020.

What else Ng said

“I wish to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to the Marlins family and its fans for my time in South Florida,” Ng said. “This year was a great step forward for the organization, and I will miss working with Skip and his coaches as well as all of the dedicated staff in baseball operations and throughout the front office. They are a very talented group and I wish them great success in the future.”

Just spoke with Kim Ng, who stepped down as Marlins GM this morning. She said: “Last week, Bruce (Sherman) and I discussed his plan to reshape the…

CINCINNATI — The trade deadline, veteran Miami Marlins catcher Jacob Stallings noted Wednesday, can be “weird.”

Stallings was in the lineup this year on Aug. 1 for a game scheduled to start just 40 minutes after the deadline passed. The Marlins had already gotten third baseman Jake Burger earlier in the day and closer David Robertson a couple of days earlier.

Then, as Stallings was getting ready for Sandy Alacantra’s start, he heard the Marlins had made a trade to acquire his former teammate in Pittsburgh, Josh Bell. The news broke on Twitter at 6:09 p.m. and the Marlins didn’t announce it until after the first pitch.

“I was kind of shocked,” Stallings said of hearing the news before the game.

As Stallings was processing Bell, he looked into the stands and saw his wife, Amy Beth.

“She just had this huge smile on her face during the game because she knew we just traded for him,” Stallings said. “We’re big Josh Bell fans.”

There were a few more fans in the Marlins’ clubhouse Wednesday after Bell hit two homers — one from each side — in the Marlins’ 5-4 victory over the Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ball Park, including a three-run homer to tie the game in the eighth inning.

Bell had four hits and drove in two in his first game as a Marlin, a…

If you have questions about the future of your team’s live games on your local cable, satellite or digital provider, particularly those on Bally Sports channels, we’re here to answer with what we know so far.

Diamond Sports Group, the Baltimore-based corporate parent of the 19 Bally Sports channels that air 47 NBA, MLB, NHL and WNBA teams, announced Feb. 15 that it would skip a $140 million debt payment due that day and use the month-long grace period as part of its effort to financially reorganize itself.

Many observers interpret the move as a precursor to a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, though that is not a certainty. Diamond has $8 billion-plus of debt, incurred as part of parent Sinclair’s 2019 purchase of the regional sports channels, and lost $1.2 billion in the most recent fiscal quarter.

“Certainly more likely that they will file bankruptcy because they did not make the payment,” said Schuyler Carroll, a bankruptcy attorney who is not connected to Diamond. “But not necessarily that they will file bankruptcy. They are still continuing discussions with their creditors to try and avoid bankruptcy. But those can often be difficult.”

Diamond in a Feb. 15 statement said it “intends to use the 30-day grace period to continue progressing its ongoing…