Winter Meetings 2014 Tweets of the Day (December 8, 2014)

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Throughout the 2014 Winter Meetings, I’ll be showcasing the best tweets. Here are yesterday’s.

The Veterans’ Committee didn’t elect anyone. This was an outrage that Old Hoss Radbourn would not let stand… until he thought about it a little:

Meanwhile, the entire proceedings are in some ways being held up by the fact that everyone is waiting to see where Jon Lester goes, and also how much he gets. Problem is, the news on him. It’s been Lester, Lester, Lester. So much, in fact, that I think poor “Yakyu Night Owl” may have gotten a bit confused (or, more likely, he was just making a joke about the Lester-thon):

Meanwhile, the Athletics are getting rid of everybody in one of those firesales that Billy Beane has every few years. It continued yesterday, with Brandon Moss and (although not yet official) Jeff Samardzija leaving town. These are like Marlins firesales, only slightly less aggravating for baseball in general and the Athletics always end up back in the playoffs in about two or three years anyway. Still, Jessica Kleinschmidt had a warning for all fans of the Athletics:

Oh, and Marc Normandin poked fun at one of the great off-season cliches: “Kicking the Tires”:

 

Come back tomorrow to see Tuesday’s best Winter Meetings tweets.

Over at “Hall of Very Good”: “Wisdom and Links” vouches for Ichiro, gives links, says best MLB alums of College Football Playoff Teams

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It’s another new “Wisdom and Links” over at the Hall of Very Good! It has a pitch to teams to sign Ichiro, has it’s usual links, and has the best MLB alum for each College Football Playoff team. Check it out.

The Countries That Have Had Only One Visitor To My Blog (as of 12-6-2014 at 12:24 PM ET)

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Screen Shot 2014-12-06 at 12.22.51 PMStep it up, French Polynesia.

Famous For Something Else: Herman Wedemeyer (College Football HOFer and ‘Hawaii Five-O” Actor)

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Herman Wedemeyer was a All-American football player at St. Mary’s College and would later go on to be elected to College Football’s Hall of Fame. He also played two years of professional football and was a politician in his native Hawaii- where he also dabbled in acting, appearing as “Duke” Lukela in 143 episodes of the original Hawaii Five-O.

However, he also had a brief baseball career, playing in 15 games in 1950 for Sal Lake City in the Pioneer League, where he played alongside future MLB player Mike Baxes and also Wally Yonamine, who would be the first American to play in Japan after WWII.

Here are his stats:

Year Age AgeDif Tm Lg Lev G AB H 2B 3B HR BA SLG TB
1950 26 2.8 Salt Lake City PION C 15 48 12 0 1 0 .250 .292 14
1 Season 15 48 12 0 1 0 .250 .292 14
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 12/6/2014.

THIS YEAR’S MYSTERY TEAM WILL BE THE ███████

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Next week, the Winter Meetings begin in Orlando San Diego. And while we no doubt will see funny images on MLB Network like Kevin Millar hanging out with Goofy at the Zoo and Brian Kenny trying to explain to Captain Jack Sparrow the Chicken why the win stat must be sent to Davey Jones’ locker  the slaughter, ultimately, it will be about one team. What team is that? Why, it’s the ██████████████!

Here’s how it will happen, of course:

The ██████████████, after all, will no doubt be the ones that will be rumored to be signing ███████████ on the first day, and the team that will be behind the massive three-team trade involving ██████████████████, █████████████, and ██████████████, which will feature ███████ and top prospect ███████, amongst others. Everybody will think the deal is nuts, but some will praise the ███████████’s GM, █████ ██████████, for his initiative and brilliant thinking. Others will call for his firing.

Meanwhile, the ██████████████’s current star, ███████ ███████, will then make a funny comment on Twitter about how he fell asleep in his █████████ home a few hours ago and is honestly wondering if he missed anything, and then make a second comment saying that this is the first time he heard about the ███████████ trade. It’ll be retweeted by everyone and become a meme, with people talking about how “█████████ is sleeping, make sure you do your deals now” or what-not. Everyone will be sick of it within 48 hours and it will then be resigned to the dustbin of baseball memes.

Then, however, a lull will fall upon Orlando San Diego for most of the second day. Instagrams of Joe Maddon walking around EPCOT SeaWorld and Alex Rodriguez showing up for reasons beyond mortal minds will fill the void while Ken Rosenthal is forced to tell Twitter people that A) he is taller enough to ride Space Mountain than a panda bear so stop asking and B) he’s too busy to go to Disney World the San Diego Zoo right now. But then, the ██████████████ will be rumored to have been talking to Scott Boras. But about who? The speculation will go throughout the day, until finally, we hear that █████████ has signed a deal! Except, it’ll turn out that that report is actually a fake account, and that ██████████ is actually going to somebody completely different.

Overnight, people will start talking about how lots of pizza is arriving at the ██████████████’s suite, and wonder whether this is proof that ██████████████ will be signing ████████. Nothing will really materialize, but, hey, it’ll kill time.

Then, later on, the ██████████████ will make that one final splash, signing ██████████. People will instantly declare them to be World Series favorites…

….and then, in 2015, they’ll miss the playoffs.

Whoops. Well, at least the ██████████████ will always have their great 2014-2015 offseason to remember.

(This article was originally published last year– hence the crossed-off parts)

Bizarre Baseball Culture: “CHALLENGE OF THE HEADLESS BASEBALL TEAM!”

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In Bizarre Baseball Culture, I take a look at some of the more unusual places where baseball has reared it’s head in pop culture and fiction.

This is gonna be fun. Today, I take my first look at a quintessential part of Bizarre Baseball Culture: “Strange Sports Stories”. A short-lived DC Comics anthology banner that popped up a few times during the 1960s and 1970s- at one point even having it’s own book for six issues- it’s title told you everything you have to know about them: they were sports stories that were strange. Sometimes they would be sports mixed with magic. Other times it would be sports mixed with science fiction. No matter what, though, they were most definitely bizarre. And, so, by definition, all baseball installments of “Strange Sports Stories” are going to be Bizarre Baseball Culture.

And we’ll begin with the very first “Strange Sports Stories” story, from waaaay back in December 1962 or January 1963 (it’s cover date was January, but comics often come out before the cover date, so it likely was already out in December- if not even earlier, as the GCD says it was on stands in late October), in The Brave and The Bold #45, the first “Strange Sports Stories” installment ever: “CHALLENGE OF THE HEADLESS BASEBALL TEAM!”

Note that this isn't an actual picture of my cover- my cover is in sort of crummy shape- the book is over 50 years old, after all.

Note that this isn’t an actual picture of my cover- my cover is in sort of crummy shape- the book is over 50 years old, after all.

Let’s go below the jump for more.

Continue reading →

Coming Up: A New “Bizarre Baseball Culture”

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By the end of the week (perhaps as early as tonight), you’ll be seeing a new “Bizarre Baseball Culture”. Originally the plan was for it to be tonight, but it’s a bit longer of a story than I thought it was, so to ensure it is a good quality article, it’ll be a bit delayed.

Thank you!

Over at Hall of Very Good: Another Wisdom And Links!

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Another “Wisdom and Links” is up at the Hall of Very Good. This week, I become the first person in history to mention Alfonso Soriano and Chewbacca in the same sentence, give some links, and give an important offseason service announcement.

It’s Bo Jackson’s Birthday, here are some .GIFs

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Happy Birthday Bo Jackson. Here are some GIFs of how amazing you were:

 

And a Football one… sort of:

Josh Donaldson is the best player most people aren’t familiar with

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In case you missed it, Josh Donaldson was traded from the Athletics to the Blue Jays in exchange for Brett Lawrie and prospects Kendall Graveman, Sean Nolin and Franklin Barreto. The wise among us immediately saw this as a great deal for the Blue Jays, at least in the short-term, and a puzzling one for the Athletics, at least in the short-term.

Then there were others who disagreed with these assessments. “Orioles Uncensored” perhaps had a good response to them:

While no doubt the people @OsUncensored was speaking to may have been Orioles fans who remember the Donaldson/Manny Machado spat of last year, the fact is that many people probably don’t truly understand how good a player Donaldson is. It’s not their fault, after all, Donaldson is a relative newcomer (he’s only played 405 career games) and has played his career in Oakland. His traditional stats aren’t too flashy (his career BA is .268), and last year was his first time as an All-Star.

So here’s a bit of a primer. Donaldson is a 28-year-old 3B (although he has played C in the past) from Florida, although he grew up and went to both High School and College (Auburn) in Alabama. He didn’t grab hold permanently in the majors until 2012, his age 26 season. He didn’t become the type of player who gets into headlines for being traded, though, until his sophomore season in 2013. He hit .301/.384/.499, and his WAR was second-best in the AL, behind only Mike Trout. While his averages were down in 2014, he still was the 2nd best in WAR in the AL, and he had the third best WAR overall across the past two seasons, behind only Trout and Andrew McCutchen. Why? Because WAR doesn’t just hitting- Donaldson is a spectacular fielder, winning the 2014 Fielding Bible Award (a more sabermetric version of the Gold Glove) while being credited with saving more than 30 runs since 2012. That, along with his hitting, make him one of the best 3B in the game.

And those offensive numbers that seem a bit low, by the way, will likely grow. He is now going from O.Co Coliseum- an infamous pitcher’s park- to Rogers Centre, where extra-base hits are plentiful and where the park factors are more favorable for the hitter.

So, that’s who Josh Donaldson is.