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Award named for Olerud; 2010 College HOF inductees chosen

John Olerud got an award named after him yesterday.

The College Baseball Foundation announced today the creation of the John Olerud Two-Way Player of the Year Award to be presented annually as part of the College Baseball Awards Show.

Olerud (right) who is now a member of the College Baseball Hall of Fame, was a pitcher and first baseman, and a pretty good one at that, with Washington State University in the years 1987-1989.

Speaking of the College Baseball HOF, the 2010 inductees have been chosen. Leading the way was former Met Dave Magadan who hit .525 as a senior for the Crimson Tide. That was 1983, the year he was Baseball America’s Player of the Year.

Also on the list:

Alan Bannister from Arizona State. He was a .355 career hitter.

George Sisler (you might have heard of him): He hit .445 his sophomore year and .451 his senior year for Michigan.

B.J. Surhoff who played for North Carolina from 1983-1985. Career BA of .392.

Others include: Bob Bennett (Fresno State, coach 1977-2002), Eddy Furniss (LSU, 1995-1998), Don Heinkel (Wichita State, 1979-1982), Charles Teague (Wake Forest, 1947-1950) and Richard Wortham (Texas, 1973-1976).

The induction ceremony will take place on July 1.

The effect of International MLB players

There’s a new study out confirming that Major League Baseball teams increase their fan base and their ticket revenue by having international players on their rosters.

Perhaps it’s a no-brainer but this study from the University of Michigan spells it out and does the math for us. The research was done over the years 1985-2005. While there was initial prejudice at first, fans warmed up to international players and by end, there was shift to the polar opposite, that is, a slight prejudice towards teams without international players.

To put numbers on it, each international player added to an MLB team could mean over a half million in ticket sales based on 2000 data.

The preference peaked in 2000 when each international player added approximately $595,632 to ticket sales, the study showed. The average MLB team that season showed 10.8 foreign-born players on its roster and garnered an average of $6 million in additional revenue, the paper said.

Of course, if these numbers just reflect ticket sales, I can only imagine what kind of effect they may have on media such as television, cable, and online advertising.

Brent Mayne getting the facts wrong and getting all the attention

If you hadn’t heard, one-time catcher and current blogger Brent Mayne has had quite a day on the Internet. Everyone’s a-Twitter about the catcher who was pretty much unknown outside hardcore baseball circles.

The story goes like this (now pay attention because the details are important in this story. Baseball fans won’t let you get away with anything). Mayne went out on a limb and admitted that when JT Snow came up for his very first at-bat in the majors, Mayne told him what pitch was coming. Mayne tells us that after he told Snow that a “fastball outside” was on its way, he smoked a double to left.

What controversial thing to say. And good for him for coming clean, right?

Except it didn’t happen.

Mayne should know better (and probably does) than to get one by baseball fans. It didn’t take long before someone posted the boxscore of JT Snow’s first game. How strange that Snow was 0 for 5 in his appearance.

So either:

A) Mayne is clueless about the all-encompassing expansiveness of the Internet. He’s a former ballplayer just talking about the old days and didn’t realize that he JUST MIGHT be fact-checked.

B) Just the opposite… Mayne is shrewd businessman who knows how to drive traffic to his website which in turn will increase sales of his books and other products.

I’ll just give him the benefit of the doubt and say it’s (A) though I’m jealous of all his web traffic for a stupid story that wasn’t true.

To be fair, Mayne has issued a correction/retraction. The article rambles and is all over the place (you’ve read my stuff so you know what I’m talking about). JT Snow was “playing for the Yanks” and he knows for sure it was “towards the end of the season”. He’s even “sure it was JT”.

He’s not so sure about the double thing, though. Might have been an out or something.

I’m ready to let this thing die. I’ve given it more room on this blog than it probably deserves.

BDD’s Top Prospect Compilation

For those who want to keep up on baseball prospects, you might want to head on over to Baseball Digest Daily.

They’ve done the tedious work of compiling the top prospect lists from many (yes, many) blogs and media outlets for each MLB division and put into one spreadsheet for to peruse.

Nice work, BDD.

If you want check it out, you can download the Excel spreadsheet from Baseball Digest Daily’s site.

Check BDD later for updates, too.

Fair value for Ryan Theriot

Ryan Theriot and the Cubs will be heading to arbitration it seems. Which is probably doesn’t bode well for The Riot, as much as I like him, doesn’t look so great on paper. My bet is that arbitration will go down in favor of the Cubs and the $2.6 million figure.

Which in a way, is a shame. The Cubs have gotten a steal the past two years with Theriot and his sub-mil salary. He’s been a solid, full-time infielder. His average took a dip last year mostly because (rumors say) he was taking swings for the fences). True enough, the homers increased (from 1 to 7) but so did the strikeouts (58 to 93) and the OBP dipped (.387 to .343). Management has reportedly talked to Theriot at the end of last season about reverting to making more contact.

When I read that Skip Schumaker signed recently with the Cardinals for a two-year deal worth $4.7 million I was reminded immediately of Theriot’s situation. Ok, they’re not of exactly the same value but they are close. Young middle infielders who hit for decent average.

I’m not about to take sides in this battle but at the same time, I will say this: the Cubs have gotten more than fair value from Theriot the last few years. Maybe it’s time for payback.

Around the Zealot horn: Lou Boudreau and APBA

I’m feeling lazy on this cold Saturday night so here are a couple good articles from the Zealot network from the past few days worth reading:

As you may have already read, I took part in the Kiwanis Sports Trivia Championship last weekend. What I didn’t mention in my article was that there was only one University of Illinois baseball trivia question asked all day. Being a huge UI baseball fan, you would think I would have gotten it right but Murphy’s Law took effect here.

Sheepishly, I’m learning all I can about the question’s topic and writing about it. It’s all there in Lou Boudreau and Darrin Fletcher: not a trivial mistake at the Illinois Baseball Report.

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If you are an APBA Baseball fan, you might want to check out The APBA Blog’s 10 Tips for Trading in an APBA League. It’s getting to be that “hot stove” time of year for our league not to mention many other APBA leagues around the nation. It’s not rocket science but some of us (myself included) need to be reminded of some of the basic tips and suggestions on how to deal with others when trading in an APBA league.

Though this piece is geared toward the APBA game, I’d wager that 90% of it applies to traditional fantasy leagues as well.

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Speaking of APBA baseball and APBA leagues, our Illowa APBA League is finishing up its 35th season. I’ve finally redone and updated our league web site. IAL awards winners have just been announced and playoff spots determined.

If you’re a fellow APBA player, check us out.

Another chapter in the Upper Deck story

Last August, I wrote about the deal between MLB and Topps and how it was arranged that Topps would have exclusive rights to MLB logos and graphics.

Now there seems to be another chapter to the story.

MLB is now suing Upper Deck for trademark infringement for using its logos on its cards without permission.

It said Upper Deck’s cards improperly feature various sport and team logos, and that some 2010 packaging featuring New York Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter may confuse consumers because of its similarity to authorized packaging used in 2009.

MLB wants to halt sales of the cards and seeks “triple and punitive damages”.

I’m all in Upper Deck’s corner for the non-competitive deal that MLB made with Topps last year but surely Upper Deck didn’t think they could get away with this. MLB (and Topps for that matter) would be keeping their eyes on them for any trademark infringement. And sure enough, they caught them with their hand in the figurative cookie jar.

Kiwanis Sports Trivia Championship: Wait till next year

Shawn and I took part in today’s C-U Kiwanis Sports Trivia Championship at the Hilton Garden Inn. There were a few words we could use to describe our performance today. Among the printable ones are “humiliating”, “pitiful”, and “put in our place”.

No, we didn’t do very well.

But we DID have fun and the Kiwanis event’s purpose was to raise money for a couple good causes, most notably the Don Moyer’s Boys and Girls Club.

“Captain”. I like the sound of that.

Here’s page 1 of the General Baseball round questions (click to enlarge).

Shawn and I did pretty well on the General Baseball round. I’m embarrassed to say we did better on the St Louis Cardinals round than the Chicago Cubs round (ouch). I was happy I got this one right: “What are the dimensions to centerfield in Wrigley Field?” 400 feet.

The judges tabulating the scores.

A representative from the “Dave’s Guys” team accepting the $1000 check prize.

Kudos to “Dave’s Guys” who won it all. It was a good fight. It came down to a two-way tie at the end and a tie-breaker was necessary. The tie-breaker was brutal, it seemed. Ten questions, no multiple choice. We knew that both teams had deserved to be there because the Championship came down to one question. “Dave’s Guys” had to answer EVERY question in order to win it all. Congratulations to them.

Event Organizer Jim Sheppard

MC Brian Barnhart

Thanks to the Kiwanis for a great time. Jim Sheppard (former PA announcer of the Illini) did a great job organizing the event. Brian Barnhart (broadcaster for the Illini and former broadcaster for the Angels) used his awesome voice as the MC. Thanks also to my good friend and teammate Shawn, who at least made it fun and answered the questions I couldn’t.

The Kiwanis say they plan to do this again so we plan to avenge our mediocre performance.

Saturday links

They’ve gone through physical training. They’ve fine-tuned their hitting, pitching and fielding skills. Now, MLB rookies must go through a special class to “prepare them for life under the lights: how to live with the attention”.

In other words, don’t post incriminating photos on the Facebook and Twitter, rubes.

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A few years ago, it was hard to get any info at all on winter league action. Not so much anymore. Teams are getting ready for the Caribbean Series.

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The Pirates unveiled a statue of Bill Mazeroski at PNC. Word has it, Maz was pretty teary-eyed at the event. The statue depicts him hitting his famous homerun against the Yankees in the 1960 World Series. I’m not a Pirate fan but I’d rather have it showing his fielding prowess. Your thoughts?

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On a personal note, tomorrow is my big day at the Kiwanis Sports Trivia Championship. My friend Shawn and I are team are teaming up to hopefully going to show our sports trivia prowess (or embarrass ourselves trying). Wish us luck!

Redding thinks Mike Basick is pretty groovy

There have been rumors before but Tim Redding came right out and said it. On the radio.

He accused former teammate Mike Basick of throwing a fat pitch to Barry Bonds when Barry broke Hank Aaron’s career homerun record.

"I mean, the guy that gave it up, I never want to speak ill of anybody," Redding said. "Mike Bacsik is a stand-up guy. He’s a little quirky, but he’s a nice guy, means well. I think he wanted to give it up. And he can say what he wants in defense or whatnot, but doing the chart, I mean, every ball that Barry hit, the ball was center cut, right down the middle, fastball. You know, I think maybe inside he was thinking he was going to get a little bit more publicity. Maybe, you know, publicity and some money out of it, appearances, stuff like that. But it is what it is. I would have had no problem giving it up. The next night I actually gave up the new record. I gave up a home run [to Bonds] that night, his first at-bat, he kept one fair down the right-field line. And I was the next new record, until the next guy gave one up."

As a curious aside… F.P. Santangelo was one of the radio co-hosts interviewing Redding. Always wondered what happened to F.P.