2016 #Blogathon For Charity Update!

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Hello everyone. A few updates on the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon for Charity, benefiting Roswell Park Cancer Institute:

  • Over 40 people have agreed to take part in the Blogathon, meaning we are close to having enough people to have TWO WHOLE DAYS of submitted content here. These people range from relative unknowns all the way up to published authors, and are coming from various countries, fandoms, and areas of expertise. I’ve added many of them (or the places they blog at) to the blogroll!
  • Next off, I’m proud to announce that Out Of The Park Developments, creators of Out Of The Park Baseball, have agreed to contribute three copies of OOTP to be given away as raffle prizes for people who donate! I have also heard from others who will be contributing prizes, which I will reveal as we get closer to the blogathon.
  • I will, however, tell you another thing that I will be contributing to the Blogathon raffle! It’ll be a Andre Dawson Living Baseball Card! The Living Baseball Cards are something I did a review of a few years ago, and I’ve had Andre’s LBC ready for a giveaway like this since then! So this should make a neat little prize to somebody who donates.
  • Finally, remember that if you would like to contribute to the Blogathon- whether in the form of a piece or as some sort of raffle prize- you can contact me at djgwriter@yahoo.com.

Thank you!

The Best Tweets of Day 1 (and partly Day 0) of the 2015 Winter Meetings

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Yes, it was the first day of the Winter Meetings yesterday. This year, it is in the Gaylord Opryland, which, like the TARDIS, is bigger on the inside than it is the outside.

And that means a lot of Baseball Twitter got lost, found interesting things, or became one with nature:

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However, eventually stuff started happening. For example, as I mentioned yesterday, the Veteran’s Committee failed to elect anybody. Chad Finn was quite disappointed they ignored one of the best old-timer candidates:

 

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsOthers, while less funny, got their point across:

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//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsThe biggest story of the day, though, was the strange (and sad) case of the Aroldis Chapman trade. It started innocently enough, with Ken Rosenthal (as is tradition) breaking the story:

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But slowly, issues came up, like the fact that the Dodgers would have a logjam in back of the bullpen, which was part of what led to the many problems in Washington last season. Man, we were so naive:

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsHowever, later it became more ominous:

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Okay, so… more teams involved? Okay, so it’s just more complicated, right?

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsOkay, so the Dodgers leaked the deal, kind of shady, but…

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And, after that…. well… I think Jen Mac Ramos speaks for all sane people here:

 

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Yes. The trade is not what is important here anymore. It is, at the very most, a very distant secondary topic. And even that is stretching it. And anyone who says otherwise should probably reconsider their priorities. Yes, Aroldis Chapman has one of the best fastballs of all time. But that is not what is important. What is important is what happened in October and the safety of those around Chapman. Hopefully, a robust investigation by MLB will go into this incident and an appropriate punishment will be passed down, unlike the half-assed measures done by the NFL, where true action has only been done when pictures have come out.

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Come back tomorrow for more of the best Tweets from and about the Winter Meetings. Hopefully they will be more light-hearted.

Yes, there are some long-dead white guys who still belong in the Hall of Fame

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Today, the Veteran’s Committee once again failed to induct anybody. This year, it was the “Pre-Integration Era” panel doing the voting. That in itself is a bit of a problem, as (despite the name) it only focuses on the white portion of the pre-integration days, under the logic that Sol White and other deadball-era Negro Leaguers went in during a special election. This, along with the fact that these guys are long, long dead, have made some people call for the end of this “era” in the Hall of Fame voting.

I can definitely see the reasoning, and it definitely needs to be changed, but the idea that everyone from the ancient days of baseball who is worthy is in the Hall of Fame is flawed. Yes, 95% of fans would have no idea who they are, but that isn’t a reason not to include them.

For example:

  • Doc Adams helped make baseball as we know it…. baseball as we know it. He even created the position of shortstop. Him not being in the Hall of Fame is sad, a result of not having good publicists like Alexander Cartwright had and more research coming into focus over the years after the time where there would have been people who remembered him.
  • Bill Dahlen had a 42-game hit streak, was among the leaders in most offensive categories at his retirement, and was one of the better defensive shortstops of his day.
  • Wes Ferrell, one of the few players on the Pre-Integration Ballot who was entirely in the 20th century, has one of the best JAWS scores by pitchers not in the Hall of Fame, and also has the record for most HRs by a pitcher in a career (non-Babe Ruth category, obviously).
  • Harry Stovey was one of the few players of the 19th century who could be called a power-hitter, hitting 122 career HRs, becoming the first player in history to have 100, and at one point holding the single-season HR mark (with 14).
  • And, finally, there’s Pete Browning. Pete Browning is like my pet overlooked 19th-century ballplayer. Browning’s career .341 batting average is 13th overall, and was one of the greatest hitters of the American Association and the short-lived Players League. Also, he is indirectly responsible for the creation of the Louisville Slugger, as he went to Hillerich and Bradsby for custom-made bats after one of Hillerich’s bats helped him break out of a hitting slump in 1884. Browning, amazingly, didn’t even appear in the latest VC ballot. This- and the fact he isn’t in already- probably came about because his best years came in the American Association and Player’s League, not the National League, and history, as they say, is written by the victors.

 

So, I say get those guys in… and then drastically change how this is done:

  • Make it open to Negro Leaguers as well. Yes, the 2006 inductions did a great job bringing in some of the older Negro League greats from before integration, but there is no reason why they shouldn’t still be considered.
  • Make this committee a less-common occurrence. Have it every six years, instead of every three years. Allow the “Golden Era” and “Expansion Era” votes be more common to make up for the difference.
  • Either make the committee entirely made up of just experts of the era, or have a slightly lower threshold for election.

So, yeah, that’s what I think.

We’ve now got a countdown to the #Blogathon on the site now

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Hey everybody. Housekeeping announcement:

 

Over to the right here (possibly below an ad) is the new countdown to the First Annual Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity. Right now we are over a month away, but as we get within a month, you’ll see it count down day by day.

Announcing the First Annual Baseball Continuum Blogathon for Charity

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Hello everyone, it’s Dan Glickman, your writer and host here at the Baseball Continuum. Today, I am writing to let all of you know of an exciting and hopefully helpful upcoming event, to begin on January 29, 2016: The First Annual Baseball Continuum Blogathon for Charity!

What, exactly, is the blogathon? Well, it’s simple and takes a page out of the blogathons of some previous years held by Michael Clair over at Old Time Family Baseball. In essence, it is a collection of baseball content put together by people from across the baseball internet, all to raise awareness and funds for charity. Some might be big long articles, others might be short jokes, and still others could be works of art or music. But for two to three days (depending on participation), the Baseball Continuum will (hopefully) be stuffed to the gills with baseball content, and, more importantly, will help raise money for a worthy cause.

That “worthy cause” is one that I know has affected seemingly everyone: cancer. It’s likely that all of us have known somebody who has suffered from it, and too many of us have personally lost somebody we love. Just last year, for example, I lost my grandfather- a devout baseball fan- to a form of the disease. I first heard of his death just as the Wild Card game between the Royals and Athletics began, and only hours before I had been talking to him about who was going to win. I’m sure many of you have similar stories.

And so, in this inaugural year, all money raised will go to the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation, which is the charitable arm of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Roswell Park, located in Buffalo but with affiliations across New York and the world, is America’s oldest cancer center, specializing in research and treatment. The RPAF is rated four stars by Charitynavigator.com, and donations will, according to their website, be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Fittingly, Roswell Park has a close relationship with the State University of New York at Buffalo, where my late grandfather studied to become a pharmacist. 

So, here’s how the Blogathon will work:

  • On January 29, starting at midnight, I will be posting at least 24 new pieces of content on the Continuum. These will range from short stupid ditties to big long features.
  • Then, starting on January 30 and going until we run out of stuff to run, some of the best baseball fans, writers, bloggers, artists and analysts on the internet will take over, bringing a caboodle of content that will hopefully inform, amuse, and entertain readers from around the web. If you are interested in contributing a piece, please e-mail me at djgwriter@yahoo.com with the subject title of “Blogathon” (or something similar to that) and I can give you further details. In addition, I will be reaching out to many of you in the coming days and weeks to see if you may be interested in contributing, so if you are a noted personality of Baseball Twitter or the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, check your in-box!
  • At the end of the campaign, anybody who donated at least one dollar will be eligible to win prizes, such as a copy of the 2007 installment of the immortal comic book, AAA Baseball Heroes. If you have something baseball-related that you would like to contribute, please let me know through my e-mail, djgwriter@yahoo.com.
  • Donations will open on a GoFundMe page about a week before the beginning of the blogathon and will close about a week after.

 

Thank you, and please look out in the coming weeks for more updates on the The First Annual Baseball Continuum Blogathon for Charity!

 

Links this week at @HOVG!

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Click here for the latest links at Hall of Very Good!

Breaking OOTP, Episode 4: The Seattle MARIOners vs. Pablo Sanchez and the Backyard Kids

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In BREAKING OOTP, I push Out Of The Park Baseball to it’s limits in various scenarios. Some will answer questions, some will settle scores, and some will push Out Of The Park Baseball to it’s very limits, to see if I can literally cause the game engine to beg for mercy.

Last time, we made the Seattle Mariners be full of Mario and Donkey Kong characters. This week, though, we have a exhibition series between the MARIOners (minus any Mariners) and… the Backyard Baseball kids (shown here to be on the Dodgers, because reasons)! Yes, Mario vs. Pablo Sanchez. At stake: The title of GREATEST VIDEO GAME BASEBALL TEAM OF ALL TIME.

Or something like that. Go below the jump, and be sure to check the previous post to see how I created the Mario characters- I used an almost-identical process for the Backyard Kids:

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2015 now the most-viewed non-WBC year in the site’s history!

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Yesterday, 2015 became the most-viewed year in the Baseball Continuum’s history that did not involve the World Baseball Classic (which is one of my specialties). Thank you, readers!

Over @HOVG: Wisdom!

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Wisdom (but no links) went up on Hall of Very Good yesterday. Check it out. It’s about tanking in baseball.