Category Archives: All-Encompassing

The Strangest Stadiums: Weird Parks Themselves

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One of the reasons why baseball is different is because of how the playing field’s dimensions are different in essentially every ballpark. However, this can also lead to some weird stadiums. I mean, we’re talking utterly bizarre, stadiums or fields that almost certainly didn’t have baseball in mind when they were created, or parks that are extremely different from the usual image we have in our minds of what a baseball stadium should look like. And, of course, there are also ballparks that have really weird stories behind them (those will come later).

Take a look (after the jump, of course):

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Putting baseball money in perspective

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$5.6 Billion: The amount of money ESPN is spending over a eight-year extension of their MLB broadcasting rights.

$700 Million: The average per-year cost of that deal.

$695 Million: The current GDP of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, given current exchange rates, according to the CIA World Factbook.

$1.85 billion: The value of the New York Yankees in 2012, according to Forbes. This is tied for third in the world, behind only Manchester United and Real Madrid and tied with the Dallas Cowboys.

$1.81 billion: Forbes estimate of the approx. value of the four most valuable NHL teams (Maple Leafs, Rangers, Canadiens, Red Wings) in 2011… combined.

$1.68 billion: Forbes 2012 estimate of the combined value of the NBA’s two most valuable teams (the Lakers and the Knicks).

$321 million: The value of the Oakland Athletics in 2012, according to Forbes. This makes them the least valuable MLB team. This still would put them sixth in the NHL and 19th on the list of Forbes’ most valuable soccer teams in the world.

$3,440,000: Average salary of an MLB player.

$2,921,713: 2011 prize money of Yani Tseng, the best female golf player in the world.

$1.2 million: Babe Ruth’s highest yearly salary ($80,000 in 1930-31), adjusted for inflation. This would make him about the 20th highest-paid player on the 2012 Yankees, behind David Robertson and just beating out Raul Ibanez.

$480,000: Minimum salary of an MLB player.

$400,000: Salary of the President of the United States.

$244,228.72: Honus Wagner’s 1912 salary of $10,000, adjusted for inflation.

$2.35 million: Cost of the T206 Honus Wagner baseball card that once belonged to Wayne Gretzky.

$2.88: The price of a ticket, adjusted for inflation, to the 1858 game between All-Stars representing New York and Brooklyn, believed to have been the first game where admission was charged.

$28: The cheapest ticket available on the Mets website for a upcoming game against the Braves. The All-Star game is in Flushing next year, and it probably will be even more expensive.

In other words: There is a lot of money in baseball, and it’s only gotten richer over the years.

 

How Baseball is Different

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Baseball is a weird game, completely unlike anything else in the North American sportscape (with the exception of it’s children) and like few other sports in the world, period.

For example:

Baseball can, literally, last forever: There is no limit to the number of innings in most competitive leagues (in certain parts of Asia, there are ties, and in some international competitions there are runners that start on the bases after 11 or 12 innings, but those are exceptions). There have been baseball games that have gone 25 innings, 26 innings and then called only because of curfew, and the professional record: 33 innings. In theory, if you played an infinite amount of baseball games, you would eventually have a game played that would continue until the end of the universe.

There are, of course, other sports that can go far past their ordinarily defined bounds. Tennis, for example, has had some very, very long matches, and basketball and playoff hockey have seen games that go several overtimes, but it still happens the most in baseball.

The defense has possession of the ball: Only other bat-and-ball games, such as cricket, have a similar situation. When there is a interception or fumble recovery in football, the defense has the ball, in a way, but that is more a case of the defense becoming the offense.

It is built upon failure: Can you imagine if a NFL quarterback made only three out of every 10 passes? He’d be run out of the league, possibly with pitchforks. But in baseball, somebody who hits three out of 10 balls safely is good, and somebody who hits four out of 10 is a legend.

You can avoid the best offensive player: In football, you can try to kick it away from Devin Hester. In basketball, you can try to foul a big man. But only in baseball can you just, well, pass the biggest offensive threat entirely, by giving him an intentional walk. You can even do it with the bases loaded- it’s happened a few times, including to Nap Lajoie, Barry Bonds and (most recently) Josh Hamilton.

The field is different everywhere: While the diamond itself is the same everywhere, every ballpark has different quirks and dimensions that can affect the game. Fenway Park is completely different from Yankee Stadium, which is different from Dodger Stadium or Camden Yards. No other sport has that. Can you imagine if Soldier Field had a semi-circular end-zone and wider goal posts, while Lambeau’s northern half was only 25 yards long with an extremely narrow goal post while the southern side was normal? What if Madison Square Garden had the NCAA three-point line while Boston had the hoop a little higher up? Well, that’s basically what baseball is like: every playing field has differences.

There are, of course, other differences… can you think of any?

Things that still haven’t happened in baseball

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From Tom Haudricourt’s twitter feed:

The thing about baseball is that it has such a long history, and has had so many different styles of play over the year, that it’s rare that something is truly unprecedented. Zack Greinke starting three straight games (due to getting ejected early in one game, starting the game before the All-Star Break, and now starting the game after the All-Star Break) may be the first time it’s happened in almost 100 years, but the mere fact it had happened before (probably many times- pitchers before the 20th century often started consecutive days) is a testament to how many things have happened in baseball.

So what hasn’t happened on the Major League Level?

Well…

(jump)

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Sunday Links and a preview of the next week

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Some links that caught my eye and a preview of what will be on the Baseball Continuum in the week ahead.

On Friday, Miguel Gonzalez of the Orioles defeated the Angels for the first win of his MLB career. He did it while wearing a glove bearing name of his old friend and teammate, the late Nick Adenhart.

The bad news is that Giancarlo Stanton is out of the All-Star Game and Home Run Derby due to knee surgery, but the good news is that Bryce Harper will be the one replacing him in the game…

…and Andrew McCutchen, possibly the most underrated player in baseball, will be replacing him in the Derby. He’s no Stanton, but he can still drill the ball.

The United States National College Team and Cuba’s National Team have renewed a series that had been dormant since the 1990s.

The All-Star Game has been held in Kansas City twice before: 1960 and 1973.

Coming this week on the Baseball Continuum:

  • Projections for Team Canada in the World Baseball Classic
  • An argument that Moneyball is a book that has shaped modern America
  • Thoughts on the Home Run Derby and All-Star Game
  • The first episode of this season of The Franchise airs (including the debut of the Continuum’s Ozzie Guillen swear-word scorecard)
  • A review of The Amazing Spider-Man
  • And who knows what else?

Projecting the Puerto Rican 2013 WBC Team

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Puerto Rico isn’t the baseball factory it once was. Once Puerto Rico was included as part of the draft, it ceased to produce as many prospects and as a result the entire culture of baseball on the island has suffered. Thankfully, this might be changing as MLB has helped set up baseball academies on the island, and it appears to be working: Carlos Correa was the top pick of this year’s draft, and he was an alum of the Puerto Rico Baseball Academy.

However, despite this, Puerto Rico still has some advantages in the tournament. For one, many of the players will have also played winter ball, so will be more fresh and ready than some of the other teams. For another, it’s possible that the Puerto Ricans will be hosting a part of the tournament- they have the past two times- and if so they will no doubt have a rabid fan base behind them. And, finally, they will have Carlos Beltran, who is still a good enough player to be able to turn a game around single-handedly.

So, anyway, with all of this in mind and after much research, I’ve put together a possible roster for the Puerto Ricans:

  • Any player coming off a major injury or who has a history of injuries is unlikely to participate. This is especially true for the pitchers.
  • Players that will be on new teams are less likely to participate, but shouldn’t be completely ignored, with the exception of pitchers.
  • Teams are made up of 28 players, of which 13 of them must be pitchers and two of them catchers.
  • The pitch count rules make relievers extremely important.

More after the jump.

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Bizarre Baseball Culture: Doll Man fights the Baseball Bandits

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It’s time for another installment of Bizarre Baseball Culture, where we look at some of the weirdest uses of the National Pastime in the history of pop culture (no matter how low or high-brow). This time, continuing the series of unusual old comic book adventures that featured baseball, we have the story of Doll Man and the “Baseball Bandits.”

Read more after the jump.

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Bizarre Baseball Culture: Amazing Mystery Funnies #22 has exploding baseballs

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There is a story that, during one of their several hundred attempts to assassinate or overthrow Fidel Castro during the 1960s, the CIA considered sending him baseballs that would, after a time, explode in his face.

With that in mind, perhaps the story featuring the “Fantom of the Fair” in Amazing Mystery Funnies #22 has more truth to it than it appears.

(more after the jump)

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Ballplayers who gave everything

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On this Memorial Day, it is as good a time as any to mention some of the ballplayers who gave their lives serving in America’s armed forces. The DeadBallEra site has a list of those who died while serving America, and there is also a good site entirely about Baseball in Wartime (primarily focused on WWII), but here are some notables (although, in the end, everyone who gives the ultimate sacrifice is notable). Not all of them died in combat, but all of them died while in military service or (in the case of people like Christy Mathewson) as a result of those actions:

  • Eddie Grant was a Harvard-educated infielder who spent time with Cleveland, Philly, Cincinnati and the Giants. On October 15, 1918, he died after being wounded by a artillery shell in the Argonne Forest of France. His unit had been fighting to rescue the “Lost Battalion” that had been pinned down by German forces. He was 35. A memorial to him was placed in the Polo Grounds (it is one of the plaques that can be seen in the expanded version of the Willie Mays catch photo), and a replica of it is now apparently in San Francisco.
  • Larry Chappell was a light-hitting outfielder in the 1910s who was at one point part of a trade for Shoeless Joe Jackson. In 1918, he died while in Army service only a few days before the armistice from the Spanish Flu pandemic that killed tens of millions of people. He was 28.
  • Ralph Sharman was a young outfielder who did well in a September stint with the Phillies in 1917. After the ’17 season, however, he was inducted into the army. He died in May, 1918 when he drowned while in Alabama, where he was undergoing training. He was only 23.
  • Christy Mathewson had retired from pitching by the beginning of America’s involvement in WWI, and was manager of the Cincinnati Reds. He left the club in the middle of the 1918 season, going to France, where he served in the Army’s chemical division. While there, he suffered the effects of poison gas, which left him with various respiratory ailments, including the tuberculosis that took his life in 1925.
  • Elmer Gedeon, who had had a cup of coffee with Washington in 1939, died while piloting a B-26 Marauder over France on April 20, 1944. He was 27.  He was one of only two people with Major League experience who died in WWII. The other being…
  • Harry O’Neill, who was a catcher in one game (with no plate appearances) for the Athletics in 1939. He was killed by a sniper on Iwo Jima on March 6, 1945.
  • Bob Neighbors, who had a cup of coffee with the Browns in 1939. In 1941, his baseball career came to an end when he had a poor season and, perhaps more importantly, lost his wife of only six months in a car accident while he was away on a road trip. He signed up for the United States Army Air Force after Pearl Harbor, and became a career military man from that point on. He went Missing In Action (and presumed dead) in 1952 when his B-26 went down over North Korea. He was both the only MLB-experienced man to die during the Korean War, and the last to have died in active service, period.

Of course, there were plenty of players who never made it to the big leagues who died in the line of duty, some of whom may have one day become Major Leaguers if not for the cruelty of war:

 

To them and all who have given the ultimate sacrifice, and to those who made it home, we salute you.