Category Archives: Uncategorized

Uganda, the LLWS, and a milestone for African baseball

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If there is one continent out there that can truly be said to be untouched by baseball, it is likely Africa. Baseball is, of course, popular in North America, Asia, and parts of South America. There are small professional leagues in Europe (mainly the Netherlands and Italy) and Australia. But Africa, birthplace of humanity, is in some ways the final frontier of baseball. Only South Africa has any sort of baseball tradition, playing in the first two World Baseball Classics and producing several minor leaguers over the years, most notably Gift Ngoepe, the first black South African to play professionally, who was featured in a Sports Illustrated article a few years ago. South Africa, however, is one of the most advanced nations in Africa, and has, since the end of Apartheid, been more-or-less a country that has avoided much of the strife and war that has plagued several African countries.

The same cannot be said for Uganda, which makes the accomplishment of the Ugandan Little League team all the more special.

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Ozzie Guillen is silent, Jose Reyes’ streak ends, and Eritrea comes into play in the 6th episode of “The Franchise”

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First off, let me show you the “Carlin Word” count for Wednesday’s episode of The Franchise for Ozzie Guillen:

(this space intentionally left blank)
…..

There weren’t any. The total number of times he’s used a swear word on The Franchise remains at 105. On average, Ozzie Guillen swears about once every two minutes.

So, there you go, people-only-here-to-read-about-Ozzie-Guillen-language. Now, everyone else, go after the jump to read my observations

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Further Thoughts on Melky Cabrera’s Steroid Suspens— HOLY COW, ANOTHER PERFECT GAME!

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Well, as I said yesterday, Melky Cabrera, having a career year that seemed too good to be true, apparently… was too good to be true. He was busted for PEDs- increases testosterone, to be more exact. His suspension severely hurts the Giants and casts a serious pall upon his season thus far, including his All-Star MVP.

But, lucky for Melky Cabrera, Felix Hernandez proceeded to throw a perfect game, totally distracting everybody from the fact that, well, Melky Cabrera had been busted for PEDs. And not only did he throw a perfect game, he struck out 12 doing it! That’s almost in Cain/Koufax territory! I mean, just look at what the AA Mariners in Jackson, Tennessee (including Felix Hernandez’s brother) did when they saw it. There is nothing that gets baseball to come together quite like a good perfect game. Perfect games to baseball fans are what NASA landings are to space geeks, what a 3-overtime playoff game is to NHL fans, and what the Winter Olympics are to fans of curling. It instantly gets our attention, all of our attention.

So, well, Melky Cabrera is one lucky person. Well, other than having his free agent stock plummeting and missing the rest of the season. But at least he wasn’t the biggest story of the day. So, uh, good for him.

The Players v. Bobby Valentine (AKA The Palace Hotel Mutiny)

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Baseball is full of stories of teams that turned on their managers. In the early 1950s, for example, the St. Louis Browns were so happy that Rogers Hornsby had been fired that they gave Bill Veeck a trophy in appreciation (whether they actually did or if it was another Veeckian publicity stunt is up for debate). But rarely have there been revolts quite as slow-motion and public as the one unfolding in Boston, which is worthy of a comedy movie, a sort of reverse-Major League in which a team of All-Stars and colorful characters goes below even lowered expectations. Oh, and instead of Lou Brown, this team is managed by Bobby Valentine.

Although this clubhouse drama has been going on all year, it has once again been burst into the forefront thanks to a report by Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports that revealed that several major Red Sox players blasted Valentine during a meeting with club officials on July 26 at New York’s Palace Hotel (or maybe it was just some meetings about the overall poor performance of the club, but it seems like the accounts of it being a player revolt outnumber those accounts). This post has been created to summarize the details and provide levity to such a spectacle. Much of the information in this posting can be found in Passan’s tour de force.

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My roster projections so far for the 2012-2013 World Baseball Classic (as of Aug. 14, 2012)

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For those of you who want to see all of my projections for team rosters in the 2013 World Baseball Classic, here’s a list of those I’ve done so far, in order of when I did them, as well as what teams are coming up and I have begun researching and assembling (in a order that is subject to change):

  1. United States of America
  2. Dominican Republic
  3. Venezuela
  4. Mexico
  5. Puerto Rico
  6. Panama
  7. Canada
  8. Australia
  9. The Netherlands (coming soon)
  10. Nicaragua (coming soon)
  11. Colombia (coming soon)
  12. Taiwan/Chinese Taipei (coming soon)
  13. Cuba (coming soon)

?. Japan and Korea (will be up shortly after it becomes official that they will take part- the Japanese union is in a money dispute with the WBC, Korea is undergoing labor strife over the fact that the Korean League is going to expand by only one team instead of the two expected)

2013 WBC Projections: Australia

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Australia is sort of a weird country when it comes to baseball. Plenty of people play it, but it’s an afterthought on the national level. They have lots of professional players and even a professional league of their own, but haven’t really produced any full-fledged stars. Internationally, they play well but rarely great, although sometimes they shock the world and do better than anybody was expecting them to. I think it’d be safe to say that baseball in Australia is vaguely like men’s soccer in America, especially when it isn’t a World Cup year. Maybe a bit lower. It exists, there is a league, and there certainly are some good players and a devoted fan-base, but it’s an after-thought unless somebody does something really good.

Anyway, the Australian roster is filled with professionals or former professionals, mostly from the minors and overseas but with a some MLB players here and there.The Australians have a lot of guys who can play anywhere, and as a result, you’ll see some positions where there are no dedicated players of that position.

Keep in mind that this set of projections was made over a long period of time, and while I have tried to keep it up to date, there still may be a stray out-of-date stat or piece of information here and there.

So, after much research, the Australian national team can be found under the jump. The usual rules apply:

  • 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.

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Getting a lay of who is still in it, who isn’t, and who could get back into it

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Well, with the Olympics now over, it’s time to return to 100% baseball mode. Okay, 97% baseball mode. You never know when I might decide to go off on a tangent about football or the movies or something.

But right now, all baseball. With the season about to enter it’s last month-and-a-half of madness, it’s time to figure out where all the teams are and who, exactly, still has a shot at reaching the playoffs. With the addition of the second Wild Card, this means more teams than previous years have at least an outside shot at the postseason. Of course, that doesn’t mean every team has an outside shot. So, here are how every team can be classified, in rough order of least to most chance of reaching the playoffs.

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Cool Website of the Undetermined Amount of Time: SABR’s Biography Project

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One of the great places on the baseball-related internet is the Baseball Biography Project run by SABR (the Society of American Baseball Research). It is exactly what it says it is: a project to put up biographies of baseball figures. Most of them are short-but-sweet, but some are longer, more in-depth

They range from the obvious (Babe Ruth and Willie Mays) to the famous-because-they-are-obscure (Eddie Gaedel and Moonlight Graham) to the downright I-haven’t-ever-heard-of-them obscure (picking randomly: Tom Hernon and Pat Purtell).
A good way to waste time while soaking up some sweet baseball knowledge.

Baseball Public Service Announcement: Manny Machado

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We interrupt this regularly scheduled blog for a special Baseball Public Service Announcement to inform you of Manny Machado of the Baltimore Orioles, who hit two home runs in just his second MLB game. That, by the way, made the 20-year-old the youngest person to ever have a two-homer game in either his first or second game.

Go after the jump for more.

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Episode 5 of The Franchise is Wives’ Day

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Episode 5 of The Franchise (Miami Marlins edition) is definitely different from the previous episodes. For one thing, by now everybody knows, in the aftermath of the trade deadline, that this team isn’t going to be the paradigm-shifting one that Jeff Loria had hoped it would be for Miami baseball. The opening title sequence, which once had people talking about how this was going to be the Marlins team that was going to go against the best of the best and change everything, now has more reflective quotes about how it hasn’t gone so well and they are trying to fix things. For another, this episode is focused heavily not on the players, but rather their wives. Go below the jump for more, as well as this week’s Ozzie Guillen counter.

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