Baseball Blogs and Web Sites | The Baseball Zealot

New website: Baseball-Lingo.com

Over the weekend, I started up a new blog. It’s called Baseball-Lingo.com and it’s devoted to the jargon, slang and terminology of baseball.

I’ve seen a lot of baseball glossaries with lists of terms and short definitions on the web. My vision is to delve more deeply into each entry, looking into the origins, usages, and history behind the words we use to describe the game we love. You can read the About Page for more detail on what my mission for the website will be.

Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Seamheads contest

Seamheads (which has one of the coolest banner images for a baseball website) is now holding a contest. The prize? An Xbox360 version of MLB2K11. The contest? Coming up with the best nickname for an active Major League player.

Says Seamhead Mike Lynch:

“I want the nickname to be creative, clever, colorful and say something about the player. And it doesn’t matter if he already has a nickname; if you can come up with something better, by all means submit it. You can submit as many nicknames as you want for as many players as you want. The contest will run from April 19 to May 20 and the winners will be announced on Memorial Day (May 30).”

Chris Berman need not apply.

Trend toward visual baseball data

This postseason, the baseball blogosphere (guh, I wince when I use that word but it fits here) has had a fascination with presenting data in a visual fashion. It seems to be a trend to almost move away from traditional numbers tables and go to more eye-pleasing visual presentations. The Hardball Times has a whole series of them during the 2010 postseason (a good example is their Paintomatic series).

But THT isn’t the only ones to incorporate this new brand of “visual baseball data”. You can find examples of this at The Biz of Baseball and even Baseball Reference’s blog.

Seamheads contest

Over at Seamheads.com, they’re holding a fun contest. Guess the old-timey baseball players whose photos make up their website’s banner.

I can tell you now that one of them is a gimme and few more I know right off the bat. Others have me befuddled, though.

Go ahead and give it a try. The winner gets a free Seamheads t-shirt or mousepad.

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.

Ballplayers and websites

I ran across this article on Dugout Central entitled The Art of Catching by none other than former catcher Brent Mayne. The byline at the bottom included a link to brentmayne.com. Go figure. Yeah, he plugging a book but the site is rife with come cool stuff including his take on Mark McGwire’s latest admission on steroids. He also has a podcast with some interviews (I’m planning on listening to the one with Rich Amaral).

I’m a little leery when it comes to MLB ballplayers and blogs or websites. Somehow, I get the idea they are either ghost-written or under heavy monitoring. Mayne’s however seems on the level. First, he’s retired and probably can say what he wants. Second, his writing style and content appears “unofficial” looking (i.e. he writes like he might speak). Third, he’s selling a book and makes no bones about it. But instead of putting a quick template website up and forgetting about it (I’ve seen this countless times even by writers), he’s actually updating it. Kudos.

Speaking of ballplayers and websites, Willie Mays is having some issues with a website. A domain name, in particular. According to domainnamewire.com, Mays is filing to get williemays.com under his control. Currently, the domain name is owned by a company called Global Access which resides in the Isle of Man. The website is purely a money making venture for GA as it includes links to ticket outlets (this probably goes without saying but I encourage anyone who goes there to NOT buy tickets from those links).

Mays has asked the World Intellectual Property Organization to arbitrate the matter on his behalf.

Take part in Baseball Reference’s survey

The invaluable stat resource Baseball-Reference.com is conducting a survey now on how they can improve their site. If you use B-R, I encourage you to hop on over there and fill out their survey form.

I just took it myself. It took me just 5 minutes to fill out but it does ask some great questions especially in terms of what areas you would like for them to focus their energies on in the future.

So, if you can spare five minutes of your busy day, take Baseball Reference’s Survey.

Bus Leagues contest

Here’s quick plug for a contest at one of my favorite minor league blogs, Bus Leagues Baseball. They’re giving away a copy of Joe Posanski’s “The Machine”.

The rules of the contest are stated simple enough in the post so saunter on over there and take a stab at winning a copy.

Helpful search tip on Baseball Reference

Sean Forman has implemented a new search modification to his Baseball Reference database.

For those searching on a common player name (or part thereof), you can put the word “the” in front of the search term and the database will bring up the most popular searched player.

From B-R’s blog:

I just added a mod to the search box on the site. With the addition of all of the minor league pages, getting to someone like Alex Rodriguez’s page via a search “A Rod” returns like 50 people. Now, if you type in “the A Rod” it looks through our db and returns the most popular major league player who matches the search “A Rod”. Adding “the ” to the front of any player search will send you to the most popular player matching that search.

I did my own test. I searched for “ramon martinez” and got back three results including two minor leaguers. When I searched for “the ramon martinez”, it took me directly to the page of Ramon Martinez who pitched for the LA Dodgers.

This trick works with initials too though your mileage may vary. “the jason v” did return Jason Varitek as I intended it too. For that matter, so did “the j v”.

Anyway, this mod might save a few mouse clicks for those of us who search Baseball Reference’s database on a frequent basis.