The Baseball Zealot

Votto best up North, eh?

Today, Joey Votto received the 2010 Lou Marsh Award which honors Canada’s top athlete.

Others in the running for the award were: Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews, Scott Virtue and Tesse Moir, Georges St-Pierre, Alexandre Bilodeau, Christine Nesbitt and Joannie Rochette.

Just to provide some perspective, some of Votto’s countrymen in the MLB include Jason Bay, Jason Morneau, Ryan Dempster and Jesse Crain.

For those interested (I was so I looked him up), Lou Marsh was an Ontario-born athlete of a renaissance nature. In the early 20th century, he was a sprinter, played rugby, sailed, among other sports. He followed up his athletic career by becoming one of Canada’s premiere boxing and hockey referees.

Wood on coming back to the Cubs: “nothing is impossible”

Kerry Wood addressed the issue of the possibility of being a Cub again. "Nothing is impossible. We’ll see how things play out.", he said according to the Trib.

I liked Kerry Wood. I still do. Talent and upside aside, he represents Cub mentality even two years after he left the team. Most Cub fans I know think of him fondly. It’s reported that even Jim Hendry has a soft spot for Wood.

Bring him back, I say.

Metrodome “snow thud”

Sounds like crews are already on the ball and are inspecting the damage of the “snow thud” at the Metrodome last Sunday.

This isn’t the first time this has happened at the Humpdome.

Commission chairman Roy Terwilliger says it’s the fourth roof collapse since the stadium opened nearly 30 years ago, all caused by heavy snow.

Interesting personal angle with me. The University of Illinois baseball team (who I blog about at Illinois Baseball Report) just came out with their schedule last week and the team is/was scheduled to play at the Metrodome in mid-March at the newly formed Metrodome Tournament.

Gives a new definition to “Tournament jitters”.

Will Big Mac see Cooperstown in 2011?

When a St Louis Cardinal blog does one of those “Will Mark McGwire get into the Hall of Fame?” polls, I just yawn. There’s no point in relying on the data. But when an AL team blog like the Blue Jays’ Blue Bird Banter does one, I pay a little more attention.

If you trust the Jays’ fans intuition, Big Mac has a long row to hoe. At this writing, the Nos have it by a 62% to 37% margin. And despite how I feel about the matter, I think they’re right. The bad publicity and quite honestly the bad choices by McGwire have put him where he’s at and 2011 won’t be a HOF year for him.

My prediction? McGwire will eventually get into Cooperstown but it won’t be for a few years (assuming he maintains his vote minimum). If not, the veterans committee (if it still exists then… that’s another story) will shoo him in when the time comes.

Garvey interested in the Dodgers?

Steve Garvey, former squeaky clean (then not so squeaky clean) LA Dodger firstbaseman, is part of an investment group who is looking into acquiring his former team.

But Frank McCourt, who is still vying for sole ownership, claims:

"There are some great treasures out there that people would love to buy, the Dodgers among them," McCourt spokesman Steve Sugerman said. "But, like the Mona Lisa and the Pacific Ocean, the Dodgers aren’t for sale."

It seems to be a situation that the more one denies the inevitable, the more it may come true. But will it be Garvey and Co who will end up with the goods? None other than Mark Cuban has expressed interest in the Dodgers, as well.

No financial details have been made public.

Currently, Garvey is serving as member of the board of directors of the Baseball Assistance Team and consults for the Dodgers.

Joe P’s tribute to Santo

If you haven’t seen it, check out Joe Posnanski’s tribute to Ron Santo on SI.com.

For many years, Ron Santo’s identity was wrapped up in being left outside. He was, simply, the greatest player not in the Baseball Hall of Fame. This is not to say that he was a better baseball player than Dick Allen or Minnie Minoso or Bert Blyleven or Ken Boyer or numerous other terrific players who have not yet been elected and inducted. That is a matter opinion. This is not to say he was a more egregious oversight than any of these players or others. That, too, is opinion.

Very well played.

PS here is the AP report on Ronnie’s funeral and wake.

Ron Santo passes away

My friend Tyler called me Friday afternoon with the sad news that Cubs broadcaster and former third baseman Ron Santo had died. It had been such a busy day, I hadn’t heard the news reports.

Tyler lamented, “I wonder now will they induct him in the Hall?”

I don’t think he was insinuating that players should be inducted on the basis of sympathy (although no doubt, others may feel that way). However, it would be a sad irony if he did get his invite to the Hall posthumously. Mr Santo made no secret (though he did it with such humbleness) that he wished to get to Cooperstown.

I’ll be honest… Santo was not my favorite broadcaster behind the mike. I don’t think I’m alone in that. He was entering an modern era that was not his. That said, as a representative of the Cubs, a liaison to the public, a go-between from baseball to Joe and Jane Public, there was no one better. He was as real as it gets in this media-phony world of broadcasting. His love for the Cubs was atypically genuine. For that, I will miss him.

Local Kiwanis now taking registrations for 2nd annual Sports Trivia Championship

If you live in the East Central Illinois area, you might be interested in the 2011 Sports Trivia Championship put on by the Kiwanis Club of Champaign-Urbana.

Details are at the Kiwanis’ Sports Trivia Championship website but here’s the skinny:

Date: January 30, 2011
Time: 2-5pm
Location: Hilton Garden Inn, Champaign, IL
Entry Fee: $25

There will be prizes of course, with the winning entrant or team winning $1,000. The Baseball Zealot entered a team in the Sports Trivia Championship last year and quite honestly, fared quite poorly. Well, at least now there’s room for improvement.

The deadline for registration is January 14th.

Things always look better after an Illini win

I may have come off as a tad grumpy when I insinuated that the Big Ten modifications to Wrigley Field for the Illinois-Northwestern football game were a “joke”. Funny what an Illini 48-27 win and a Mikel Leshoure 300+ rushing performance can do to temper one’s opinion.

Bleed Cubbie Blue’s Al Yellon, who attended the game, had a more positive spin on the whole affair:

But when the Cubs, Northwestern, Illinois and the Big Ten put on a spectacle as entertaining as today’s 48-27 blowout by the Illini over the Wildcats, it shows off Wrigley to a national audience as the terrific place it is…

…For those of you who cried, "travesty", "joke" or "disaster" yesterday when the rule changes were announced, I say: kwitcherbitchin. Playing every offensive series facing the west end zone had absolutely no impact on the flow of the game. The officials seemed briefly confused the very first time they had to reposition the ball, but after that it all went smoothly.

Boy, it’s almost like Al’s talking to me. I will indeed kwitmybitchin’.

Rumor has it that there was a lot of good-natured Cubs-Sox trash talkin’ going on between the Illini players. No word on which contingent was larger.

Congrats to the Illini who are in line for a bowl bid for the first time since 2007.

A closer look at World Series art

Seiler is a Chicago based artist who was commissioned by Major League Baseball to do some art for the 2010 World Series program. That’s quite an honor!

On his blog, It’s Funny Because It’s True, Seiler writes about his experience but mostly breaks down each piece art (almost literally as he zooms in and shows segments of each piece art).

If you’re a baseball art fanatic, this is definitely worth looking at. For me as the old saying goes, I don’t know art but I know what I like. And I kinda like this.