Author: The Baseball Zealot

Monday catchup

It’s tough being a Cubs fan who has Albert Pujols on his APBA league team.  It’s even tougher when you find out he’s out for six weeks.  My favorite headline today… Rays to miss play against Pujols  Yeah, I’m sure they’re heartbroken. 

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Chad Cordero retired. In other news, Chad Cordero was still playing baseball.

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On a personal note, I just attended my first roller derby event Saturday.  The Twin City Derby Girls are making a go at it in Champaign-Urbana and from the attendance this weekend, it seems pretty popular. 

I can see why.  It’s quite exciting what with fast-paced action, healthy looking women going at each other, and even a campy atmosphere.  I even began to understand the rules after a while.  I’ll be back for more.  A few more photos from Saturday’s event.

Nasty weather at the College World Series tonight

The tornado sirens are blaring tonight in Omaha during the College World Series postponing the games and flights from the local airport are even being evacuated.

Brian from College Baseball Daily uploaded this video of the sirens going off at the CWS tonight.

 

…and here’s a pretty nasty looking photo of the sky.

get somewhere safe everyone. 

[update] looks like they are going to actually resume the current game tonight at 10:45pm.

Putting Jack McKeon’s age in perspective

Eighty year-old Jack McKeon has been put in charge of the Florida Marlins.  I’d say he’s the “new” manager but that just doesn’t sound right.  Just to show that he’s in charge, JMac has already benched Hanley Ramirez for one game because “didn’t like the way that Ramirez was running during Sunday’s game”.

Just how old IS Jack McKeon?  Let’s put it in perspective:

  • Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Lefty Grove were all in their prime when he was born.
  • For that matter, Pete Alexander was still pitching when he was born.
  • McKeon managed now-retired manager Lou Piniella when Lou was with the KC Royals in 1973.
  • Had Bobby Cox returned to manage the Braves, he would still be 10 years younger than McKeon.
  • Finally from Deadspin, of the 671 managers in all of MLB history, over 23% of them started AND finished their managerial tenures during McKeon’s career.

McKeon’s appointment is indeed an interim one but here’s hoping for a lengthy one.   

Links to ponder or ignore

For a quick WTF, here’s a photo of John McGraw with a baby leopard in his arms.  Even more amazing, he’s actually smiling.

I collaborated a tiny bit with PitcherHit8th.   Yes, they’re a Cardinals blog and podcast but they do a good job over there and it’s worth a plug.  If you’re a Redbird fan, check them out.

Interesting bit of digging by Illinois Loyalty.  Seems that the firm that was hired by the University of Illinois to consult them on the search for a new Athletic Director (Parker Executive Search) was paid $90-105 grand by University of Tennessee to do the same job.  No word on how much the U of I is paying but I bet we’re not getting a discount.

Finally, some are pushing for the Pirates to be the lucky (?) ones to move to the American League.  What now, when they are having a winning season?  The Pirates haven’t had a winning record this late in the season since 1999. 

Former ump wins medical settlement

From Law Firm News Wire, former MLB umpire Mark Hirschbeck won a settlement from Wright Medical Technology for a faulty hip device that was placed inside him.  The device was shown to have a faulty defect.

a month after surgery, as Hirschbeck was at home watching TV, he heard a pop. Reports show that the ceramic hip had exploded. The former ump later found out that Wright had paid thousands of dollars to a foundation that Keggi helped run and also doled out a trip to a Bahamas conference for him. Many surgeries, and even a hip infection, left Hirschbeck permanently disabled and unable to be in the sport in which he loved officiating.

Mark Hirschbeck umpired in the majors for 15 and was one of the umpires in the 2001 World Series.

Is building a new park going to help attendance?

Athletics Nation has a interesting post about what exactly happens to attendance to MLB ballgames after the team builds a new stadium.  The results aren’t what you might suspect or even necessarily consistent. 

Not surprisingly, attendance is up in the initial year but after that, the data is mixed and in some cases, such as San Diego’s PETCO Park and New York’s Citi Field, the figures drop drastically.  Of course, many factors figure in to this… team performance, city demographics, but as Athletics Nation tries to point out, building a new stadium is not a cure-all for dwindling fan attendance. 

Cubs affiliate pokes fun at LeBron

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

This Thursday, the Peoria Chiefs who are a Cubs’ single-A affiliate, will be holding a LeBron James NBA Championship Replica Giveaway night.  “Replica Rings” (in other words, air), will be given out to fans.

The Chiefs said they are "looking into" whether they can skip the fourth inning to poke fun at James, who scored just 18 points during the fourth quarter in six NBA Finals games.

"We aren’t sure if the league will allow it," Peoria president Rocky Vonachen said in a statement. "But if LeBron doesn’t need to show up for the fourth, maybe we won’t either."

All in good fun, I guess. Anything to take their mind off their parent organization.

Book Review: Satch, Dizzy & Rapid Robert

satchdizzyrapidrobertI’m in the middle of reading a pretty decent book right now.  It’s called Satch, Dizzy and Rapid Robert: The Wild Saga of Interracial Baseball Before Jackie Robinson authored by Timothy Gay. 

Unless we’re baseball historians, most of us have the notion that interracial baseball simply did not happen before Jackie Robinson’s momentous year when Branch Rickey made the decision to integrate baseball.  Gay’s book, Satch, Dizzy and Rapid Robert documents in detail how blacks and whites played the game of baseball throughout the 20th century, mostly manifesting itself in barnstorming sessions after the American and National Leagues had finished their seasons. 

Gay covers in detail the careers of Satchel Paige, Dizzy Dean and Bob Feller (hence the name of the book) even above and beyond the interracial baseball angle.  We get a quite thorough bio of each of their lives.  That said, I think Gay uses the three as a vehicle to discuss the issue of barnstorming baseball between whites and blacks and how it affected both Negro Leagues and “white” baseball.  Gay talks about Negro Leaguers Oscar Charleston, Turkey Stearns, Cool Papa Bell as well as white ballplayers such as Mickey Vernon, Leo Durocher. 

I have just finished the chapter on Bob Feller which I found fascinating mostly because I’m surprised how little I knew about him.  His media-perceived arrogance, his financial shrewdness, and his opposition of the reserve clause, for example.  Our family passed by his hometown of Van Meter, Iowa last year and didn’t have time to stop.  We’ll be going by there again this summer.  This time, I’ll insist.

Timothy Gay’s book, Satch, Dizzy and Rapid Robert: The Wild Saga of Interracial Baseball Before Jackie Robinson is published by Simon and Schuster.  It’s definitely worth a look for anyone who is interested in baseball history or even race politics.