Due to their early season opener in Australia, the Arizona Diamondbacks start Spring Training a little early, with pitchers and catchers reporting today!
Some interesting articles you should look at…
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As I work along on the next Bizarre Baseball Culture, I’ve been distracted by some great baseball articles along the way. Check them out:
Over at Slate: William Edward White was the son of a slave, but he was of mixed race and lived his life as a white man… so does his one appearance in 1879 “count” for being the first African-American major leaguer?
Michael Clair looked at the time Michael Bolton made a softball video. It may well be even weirder than Sammy Sosa Softball Slam.
And, finally, Jonah Keri tries to figure out what is going on with the Orioles.
“Bizarre Baseball Culture” still under construction
The next installment of “Bizarre Baseball Culture” remains under construction. I know I said it’d be out today- Tuesday- but I guess I underestimated the time it would take me. Either that, or it was not I who posted that message from the future yesterday, but rather an alternate-universe doppleganger. One of the two.
Until then, here’s a picture from the next installment:
Message from the Future
Aside
Hello! This is your blogger speaking to you from THE FUTURE to tell you that tomorrow there will be a new BIZARRE BASEBALL CULTURE involving TIME TRAVEL!
Be excited.
The Oh-Crud-I-Forgot-To-Write-This-Until-The-Last-Minute Super Bowl Prediction
By all accounts, the weather in NJ will be fine, so I’m going to go with Manning and the Broncos tonight. Once, in the past, I would have gone with the defensive advantaged team, but the NFL has changed, and that is no longer true. So, advantage Broncos, uhm… 27-24.
For the Super Bowl, here’s George Carlin again with “Baseball and Football”
This is at least the third time I’ve posted this, but it’s still funny.
Famous For Something Else: Russell Wilson
As amazing as it seems, I have never had Russell Wilson of the Seahawks as a “Famous For Something Else” entry. Oh, I had a post in which I put up his minor league numbers, but it wasn’t a “Famous for Something Else”. So, without further ado, Russell Wilson’s minor league statistics:
| Year | Age | Tm | Lg | Lev | Aff | G | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | SB | CS | BB | SO | TB | GDP | HBP | SH | SF | IBB | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 21 | Tri-City | NORW | A- | COL | 32 | 143 | 122 | 18 | 28 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 11 | 4 | 6 | 16 | 36 | .230 | .336 | .377 | .713 | 46 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2011 | 22 | Asheville | SALL | A | COL | 61 | 236 | 193 | 40 | 44 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 15 | 15 | 2 | 35 | 82 | .228 | .366 | .342 | .708 | 66 | 2 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 2 Seasons | 93 | 379 | 315 | 58 | 72 | 9 | 8 | 5 | 26 | 19 | 8 | 51 | 118 | .229 | .354 | .356 | .710 | 112 | 6 | 11 | 1 | 1 | 0 | |||||
It should be noted that Wilson has not officially retired from baseball. Oh, sure, he probably won’t ever play again (although he has said he might be interested in hanging out with the Rangers next Spring Training to take BP, after they had picked him up in the Rule 5 draft as a publicity stunt), but he still appears on a Major League organization’s depth chart, if only as a “just-in-case” possibility.
Of course, even if he did want to be a two-sport athlete, it’s highly unlikely that he’d be able to pull it off, and not just because of his career .229 BA. The fact is, it’s more-or-less impossible to imagine an NFL quarterback also playing another sport, given both his importance to his team and how involved the QB is to football’s strategies and tactics. Bo Jackson was a running back- important, but not the type of person who needs to know every play in the book. Same goes for Deion Sanders (who, admittedly, always had the NFL as his higher priority except for when his MLB team was in the playoffs), who while an important part of every defense he was in, was hardly as indispensable as a quarterback is to a NFL team.
The only way I could maybe see it happen would be if the QB was a starting pitcher who only worked early in the week. But even that is a bit of a stretch.
Quick Aside
Aside
In the next few days, there will be some football stuff leading up to the Super Bowl… but also a Bizarre Baseball Culture!
Random Video: Albert Pujols was/will be on Sesame Street for some reason
Albert Pujols will be on Sesame Street this week, apparently. Would have made more sense two or three years ago, but, hey, Albert’s a good guy who does a lot of charity work, so why not? How did he do?
Ehhh. Don’t quit your summer job, Albert.
By the way, according to Muppets Wiki (easily one of my top 5 wikis), this makes Pujols the 11th MLB player to be on Sesame Street, not counting the time Mark Fidrych hung out with Big Bird on Sports Illustrated‘s cover or the time that Elmo showed up at a Yankees’ exhibition in Japan. Sadly, no relief pitchers are amongst them.
Book Review: “The 34-Ton Bat” by Steve Rushin
The 34-Ton Bat: The Story of Baseball as Told Through Bobbleheads, Cracker Jacks, Jockstraps, Eye Black, and 375 Other Strange and Unforgettable Objects isn’t the first book of it’s kind. By which I mean, it is not the first book to look at baseball based on how things related to it- helmets, hot dogs, and the like. For example, there were two books called Game of Inches that not only looked at off-the-field innovations, but on-the-field ones as well.
However, 34-Ton Bat is one of the best written- in this case, by journalist Steve Rushin. While Game of Inches covered more, Rushin ties together the many pieces of baseball miscellanea into something of a story, connecting both personal experiences- such as working at Metropolitan Stadium as a kid- and old stories- such as the long-forgotten shooting death of a man in the Polo Grounds seats- to objects connected to them, and the history of those objects.
The death at the Polo Grounds, for example, leads to a discussion about the seats themselves and also some more tangential developments. For example, as time has gone on and Americans’ weight has increased, seats have become wider. In addition, the NYPD were the ones who investigated the fan’s death, and starting in 1877 that same police department had been handing out medals for valor that included a charm in which the letters N and Y were interlocked- providing the likely inspiration for the Yankees’ logo.
The book is filled with such wonderful connections, and for the most part they flow and fit perfectly. You would think it strange to somehow connect urinals, radio broadcasts, beer, naming rights, and the national anthem, but in one chapter Rushin does just that, not making it seem forced at all. In fact, he makes such leaps seem logical in nearly every chapter of the book.
This isn’t to say the book is perfect. At times, it will feel like Rushin is spending too much or too little time on some subjects. In other cases, it feels like some interesting things that could have been covered weren’t (for example, I don’t recall seeing much on catching masks and how they have slowly evolved into the goalie-like masks of today). Still, those are just small nitpicks. If you like baseball, and especially are interested in the history of some of the objects and traditions connected to it, you should give 34-Ton Bat a read.
The reviewer received his copy of the book as a holiday gift from family.
The Baseball Continuum 