New York Times, Monday, May 13, 2019

Fun Google facts:

1. Homer Simpson was "inducted" into The Baseball Hall of Fame in 2010.
2. One of Mitt Romney's relatives, L.C. Romney, had a park named after him that was featured in the classic baseball movie, "Sandlot."

As far as I know, Bat Masterson, Diamond Jim Brady and D.H. Lawrence never played the game.

I, on the other hand, played — and played badly. On defense, I was stationed in right field (a PeeWee League no-man's-land). On offense, my lifetime batting average was .000. To opposing teams, I was known as an "easy out" while my team complimented me for having a "good eye" — a term used by parents and coaches to encourage boys like me who were too terrified to do anything other than rest the bat firmly on their shoulders and pray for a walk. Why did I play? Quite simple, really. We had great post-game snacks.

Not much has changed since then. Whether I'm playing baseball (badly) or just creating a baseball-themed puzzle, I still enjoy a good snack. Mmmm.

Cool finds, five guys whose first names are baseball terms. I'm a big "Simpsons" fan, so it was a head-slap moment to realize that HOMER SIMPSON could, of course, fit into the mix. I'll always think of MITT ROMNEY as "Mittens," but of course he's right at home in today's DIAMOND grid. Er, square grid. About a diamond. You know what I mean.

The revealer, DIAMOND JIM BRADY, didn't feel sharp enough at first. I got that a DIAMOND is where you can find a DH, HOMER, BAT, MITT. But it made me wonder if DIAMOND was hinting at the four other baseball terms arranged in the shape of a diamond?

Man, do I overthink things.

It's a fine revealer, and perhaps even clever, given how one of the five theme terms sort of describes the set. I might have preferred MLB or a more Monday-straightforward BASEBALL as a revealer, though.

Monday smoothness took a bad hop. R AND R is slightly better than others of its ilk, i.e., S AND P or B AND B, since I've occasionally seen R AND R written out. But such an olio of OLEO, TITER, TROI, ESTAS, EERO, AKINS, ESSEN. All reasonable(ish) entries for later-week usage; not so much for early-week territory, where not scaring off newbs is of paramount importance.

So, what happened? Biggest issue is the horizontal long fill of DEVIANCE / AVIATORS crossing METAPHOR / MAMMA MIA. The latter two give a lot of color to the puzzle, but the former don't do much, and they cause so many problems. I'd have broken up the horizontal long entries, as they're too big to fill around, without needing a lot of crossword glue.

Overall though, a fun theme. It made me wonder why I'd never put those five guys together. Now I'm curious to see how they'd play on the baseball diamond together.