If you don’t know who Michael Jordan is, you have either been in a coma for the last thirty years or you have come from another planet (although even people from other planets knew who Jordan was in his prime). It’s his 50th birthday today. Go below the jump for stuff on him:
Late Friday (but posted early Saturday), I found some old videos of International League baseball, circa 1932. Well, more of them are being uploaded, so here they are:
Rochester Red Wings (Billy Southworth, Specs Toporcer) vs. Buffalo Bisons (Bubbles Hargrave, Heinie Mueller)… with play-at-the-plate action near the end:
Red Wings vs. Toronto Maple Leafs (Rip Sewell):
And also some video from the 1931 “Little World Series” between the Red Wings and St. Paul Saints (the Red Wings won the series 5 games to 3, and this is from game 8). Keep an eye open for what appears to be a cameo by Cardinals GM Branch Rickey at 2:57 with two other dignitaries I can’t quite recognize (anybody who can help me out with this would be much appreciated) :
Today’s picture is from the Flickr stream of “Barnkat” and is used under a Creative Commons license.
In it, we see Reggie Jackson, in all of his afro’d glory, talking to Bill North during Spring Training, 1973.
It’s time again for World Baseball Classic news! Go below the jump for the latest:
Somebody on YouTube has been putting up videos from the 1930s of the Rochester Red Wings. These are home videos, somewhat haphazardly edited but of good quality,
Here, for example, is a video (somewhat haphazardly edited) of games between the Rochester Red Wings and Newark Bears in May, 1932. A rare, close-up view of Minor League Baseball in a era long ago. Among the players in this game include Newark’s George Selkirk, Red Rolfe and Dixie Walker and Rochester’s Specs Toporcer (the first known position player to wear glasses on the field). Hall of Famer Billy Southworth was a player-manager for the Wings at this point of 1932 as well, although I don’t see him at all in this video (although I might have missed him during the various cuts).
Shortly after I wrote that previous paragraph, a video of Opening Day from 1932 was put up, between Rochester and the Jersey City Skeeters. You can see Southworth in this one, as well as Jersey City’s Clyde Barnhart, who had been a regular of Pirates teams in the 1920s, and Jo-Jo Moore, who would later be a 6-time All-Star with the Giants. As a Rochesterian, it was also neat to see a advertisement for the “Zweigle Bros.”, considering that they continue to provide the Red Wings their hot dogs to this day.
Is it a problem that I could identify Justin Verlander and I think Phil Coke based simply on Verlander’s profile and I-Think-Coke’s facial hair (unless Todd Jones is now a coach for the Tigers or something…)?
This image is under a creative commons license and was taken by Roger “HueyTaxi” Dewitt.
The IBAF (International Baseball Federation) has a list of World Rankings for baseball, but that is a list for the production of national teams- not how successful a baseball country is at producing MLB players, or producing the best MLB players. Nor does it take into account how well teams from those countries do in competitions like the Caribbean Series.
The Continuum Baseball Rankings do that differently. Using an ELO rating system, the Continuum Rankings takes into account a few factors:
1. The IBAF rankings
2. The amount of MLB players produced
3. The amount of win shares of MLB players by country
4. Game results by both national teams and representative teams (such as a league champion in the Caribbean Series), as well as overall tournament performance (coming in first in a tournament, for example, versus coming in third or fourth).
Now, here’s how ELO Rankings work: each team has a rating (originally all the teams had their rating set as 0, but after running the first 3 parts of the rankings I used the rankings it produced for the first tournament covered with the Continuum Baseball Rankings- the Caribbean World Series). Based on how high or low one team’s ranking is compared to another, the winner or loser of a game is awarded anywhere from 0 to 15 points OR loses 0 to 15 points. The number of points awarded depends on the quality of the two teams. More impressive wins get more points, for example.
Note that the following rankings are just for fun, they are not scientific and are not meant to be definitive whatsoever. I have no background in statistics, and my knowledge on the ELO ranking system comes entirely from reading about it and such. Even the math itself was done using another website, not a personal calculator or spreadsheet.
Also, note that I counted just the Netherlands (and added together Netherlands, Curacao, Aruba. etc. into one for the Win Shares and Number of Players) for this, not each of the countries in the Kingdom of the Netherlands individually, just for simplicity.
So, go below the jump for the current ratings (calculated February 14, 2013 but posted on February 15, 2013):
Sorry about the lack of updates last night. So, after the jump, the latest World Baseball Classic News:
In honor of Valentine’s Day, here’s a picture of an advertisement of Bobby Valentine selling food in Japan back in 2007:
This is under a Creative Commons license, and was taken by “Jpellgen”.
Today’s World Baseball Classic news is available after the jump (due to length):
The Baseball Continuum 