Looking at the Game of Baseball from all ends of the Spectrum
Not only did Albert Pujols win three MVP awards this decade, he also can lay claim to the â00s Triple Crown according to ESPNâs Jayson Stark. He lead all National Leaguers in batting average, homeruns and rbis for the decade.
The last person to do that was Ted Williams in the 40s.
For those in Champaign-Urbana, if youâve given thought to taking part in the C-U Kiwanis Sports Trivia Championship on January 31 but havenât signed up yet, I encourage you do so.
I posted info about it a few weeks ago or you can go directly to the Sports Trivia Championship web site.
They are looking for more participants so if youâre interested, sign up!
Chicago White Sox reliever Scott Linebrink was a subject of a photo in the Boston Globeâs annual gallery of The Big Picture photos. If you have seen any of the Boston Globeâs galleries in past years, you know that these photographs are the yearâs best of the best in news, science and society. I really encourage everyone to take a look at them. You wonât regret it.
Here is the direct link to the photo with Linebrink. As was the photographerâs intent, Linebrink himself is a bit fuzzy (a bit like his performance with the Sox this year) in the background but the ball which seems to be hurling towards the camera is crystal clear.
Nicely done by AP photographer Issac Brekken.
This animated short about Dock Ellisâ no-hitter while he was on LSD definitely has its elements of humor. But creator James Blagden from No Mas, a NY-based repository of sport and cultural art, did his homework, too. Doc Ellis and The LSD No-No was fueled by research done by Blagden.
He scoured interviews done with Dock Ellis a year before he passed away last year. In those interviews, Ellis pretty much a moment-by-moment account of his infamous no-hitter. Apparently, Blagden used much of this info in this animated short.
Oh, Dave Cash is quite the funny in the video, in my opinion.
Cluke passed on a link to a pretty neat web site, www.crosley-field.com, all about the Redsâ former stadium.
Scroll on down and youâll find a treasure trove of great photos of the stadium itself but also some of the greats (and maybe not-so-greats) who played in Crosley. There are also related scanned news clippings and interesting stories.
Great find!
Bud Selig has announced the formation of a 14-person committee that will discuss all âon-fieldâ matters. Selig claims there are no âsacred cowsâ and top of his list is âpace of gameâ.
What is interesting is the composition or perhaps what is lacking from from the committee. Here is list:
George Will
The good news is that have some current managers on the committee. Though as the as the article points out, there will be no current players or umpires submitting their feedback. In my opinion, if youâre going to be talking about issues that relate to on-the-field or gameplay issues (for example, oh I donât know⌠pace of game), it wouldnât be a bad idea to get some input from players.
And to not include any umpires is beyond me. After all, they will be the ones who will be enforcing any rule changes, if any.
And mark my words, there will be some. Because if Selig says âpace of gameâ will be among the first topics discussed, those arenât just idle words. Heâs making a definitive statement that something will be done about pitchers like Jonathan Papelbon.
âŚand really, George Will? I respect his knowledge of baseball but whenever I hear his name in the context of the sport, I canât help but think of this SNL video.
The Fort Worth Star Telegram reports on a rather shocking story with some relevance to us baseball fans. Four middle-management employees were terminated from their positions at Fidelity Investmentsâ Westlake, Texas office because they were in a fantasy football league.
Some points need to be clarified:
1. The specified reason these four men were fired was that they violated the companyâs gambling policy.
2, Cameron Pettigrew, the main point person of the fantasy league who has worked for Fidelity for over 2 years, says the league was careful about not using company email to facilitate the fantasy league.
But again, Fidelityâs big beef was the gambling issue.
3. Pettigrew pointed out that the gambling policy was âpoorly communicatedâ to employees. Since management was known to engage in leagues themselves, there seemed to be mixed messages.
4. Most importantly in my mind, there were no warnings given and no less stricter penalties meted out before the four employees were let go.
Pettigrew DID say company resources were not used but Fidelity found out when one employee used a work IM to message someone else and mentioned the league. Thatâs how they found out about everything.
There are always two sides to every story (letâs face it, Iâm sure there was some talk of the league during company time) but still, Iâd like to hear Fidelity talk their way out of this one.
Assuming that Fidelity is being sincere and that the true reason for terminating the employees was because of gambling (it IS the Bible Belt, after all), it does seem pretty invasive, heavy handed and uncompromising (most employers I would think would issue a warning to a otherwise productive employee).
What are your thoughts? Does your workplace allow fantasy leagues or âfriendlyâ sports pools of any sort?
At the end of each year, Google (as well as other search engines) does an analysis on what was searched on for that year. Rising trends, falling trends, trends in all aspects of our society. Google calls this trend analysis project âZeitgeistâ and they just released their results for 2009.
Looking at the fastest rising trends in the United States overall, weâre not going to find anything baseball related, sorry. Actually, nothing sports related. Twitter, Michael Jackson, and Facebook headed up the top ten of general keywords. Among fastest FALLING was âolympicsâ but that makes sense as 2008 was naturally a big year for it and it was going to trend downward.
What IS more relevant to our interests as baseball fans is search trends within the realm of sports. Fortunately, Google does parse that out for us. Here are some of the highest searched keywords within United States in sports.
Among baseball teams, there are no surprises. Thereâs a reason for that East Coast bias:
Taking a look at all sports stadiums, three baseball parks make the list:
The Yankeesâ ballpark gets the #1 nod for a couple reasons, Iâm sure. One, their move to a new stadium. Two, they won the World Series. And three, well, theyâre the Yankees.
Interestingly, no baseball managers made the top 10 list of sports coaches. Nor did any baseball rivalries. Both of them were dominated by college, NBA and football.
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1. red river rivalry (texas vs. oklahoma) 2. michigan ohio state rivalry 3. unc duke rivalry 4. colts patriots rivalry 5. vikings packers rivalry 6. bears packers rivalry 7. georgia florida rivalry 8. giants dodgers rivalry 9. lakers celtics rivalry 10. steelers browns rivalry |
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Interesting that the Packers get searched on two different rivalries.
Thereâs more info at the Google Zeitgeist 2009 web site.
Itâs cold as heck out there but itâs a good reason to celebrate baseball. The APBA Game Company has begun shipping their disks for the 2009 Baseball season.
While our APBA league (and many others) play the dice and cards version, the disk gives us an idea what the cards will look like. Those of us in leagues all around the country have been waiting with bated breath to see how our teams will shape up for the coming year.
Rob Moore has an article celebrating the fact over at The APBA Blog.
Joe Posnanski of Sports Illustrated wrote an article on those players who got between 15 and 20 votes in their first of eligibility for Hall of Fame consideration. âOne-and-doneâ he calls them. Good enough to get more than a few votes but not enough to remain on the ballot for subsequent year.
Itâs a list littered with players who were more than fair, in my opinion. Players like Lou Whitaker, Joe Carter, Ted Simmons (youâll get a lot of arguments from Cardinals fans on this, I know), Rusty Staub, and Al Oliver.
One player on the list who I saw a lot growing up was thirdbaseman Bill Madlock. âMaddogâ has some interesting stats in way. Posnanski makes the point that eleven players have won four or more batting titles. Of those, ten are in the Hall of Fame. Bill Madlock is not. That said, I get the sense Posnanski wasnât necessarily bemoaning Madlockâs omission from the Hall.
Madlock had a career .305 batting average to go along with his four batting titles. While he had that going for him, his stats look good-but-not-great otherwise. Bill Madlock usually hit the double digits in homeruns but never passed the 20 mark for a season. His highest was 19 in 1982 for the Pirates. Not much of a doubles hitter either from the looks of it. He passed 30 only twice.
He had decent speed also sometimes hitting double digits in stolen bases. Only once though did he pass 20 when he stole 32 this time in a split season in 1979 between the Pirates and Giants.
In essence, Maddog earned his paycheck by winning batting crowns.