Mar 15

(I know what you are thinking, “Hey, didn’t you say less sports, more randomness over here? I don’t want to keep reading about baseball, basketball, and pro wrestling. Jeez.”

Patience, young grasshopper. You will be rewarded.)

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baseball_digest_dec72

Last month, I faced a big dilemma. I received my last issue in my subscription to Baseball Digest. I have been getting Baseball Digest since late 1986, since I was 9 years old and the magazine featured Sid Fernandez and Mike Scott.

Recently, however, the powers that be at Baseball Digest have changed the magazine quite a bit. It not only looks different, but they also only publish six times a year, instead of monthly as they have for 60 years. And they started including articles on fantasy baseball. I seriously thought about not renewing. It wasn’t the same magazine.

But I renewed for one more year. We’ll see after that.

Anyway, my latest issue featured their annual necrology, or list of all the baseball-related people who died in the past 365 days. I’ve written before about my odd fascination with the Baseball Digest necrology. I don’t know why, but I read all the obituaries in the article, all 30 of them.

This year, inspired by the Nick Adenhart tragedy, Baseball Digest published a sidebar article with list of players who died while active in their baseball careers. They listed players such as Joe Kennedy, Darryl Kile, Steve Olin, and of course, Roberto Clemente.

(Here is a similar list in the ESPN.com archives. There are a few names not on the Baseball Digest list.)

Surprisingly, there were a lot of names I never heard of. And a few ballplayers who died from some really strange causes.

Did you know in 1932, Red Sox pitcher Ed Morris was killed during a fight at a Florida fish fry?

Did you know Reds catcher Willard Hersberger committed suicide in 1940 after “blaming himself for two consecutive Cincinnati defeats”?

And finally, in 1935, Brooklyn Dodgers outfielder Len Koenecke was killed when he was hit in the head by a fire extinguish swung by an airplane pilot while the flight was in the air. Apparently, soon after take off, Koenecke began interfering with the duties of the pilot and co-pilot. There was an in-flight scuffle and Koenecke was subdued in the most violent of manners.

(TheDeadballEra.com has all the newspaper clippings from the incident posted on their site. I highly recommend taking a look. Actually that whole site is phenomenal. It is entirely dedicated to the deaths of baseball players.)

Whereas we still lose the ballplayers to heart attacks, car accidents, or the occasional gun shot, I doubt we will see another tragedy like Len Koenecke’s for a long time.

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Thought #2:

Is there a correlation between bad teams and lack of home runs during the steroid era (approximately 1990-2004)?

Did the teams with the worst records during the steroid era have the lowest home runs per season average?

I’m sure I could do the research, but I’m guessing the best teams during that era hit the most home runs. Teams like the Pirates, Royals, (Devil) Rays, and probably even the Mets lacked the budget or front office smarts to benefit from the steroid era. During a time when marginal semi-stars such as Bret Boone and Todd Hundley were considered legitimate power hitters, smart teams had to know something was going on. Teams like the Yankees had the wallet and the wherewithal to take advantage and sign numerous chemically enhanced sluggers.

I’m guessing  there was a clear relationship between home runs and wins during the steroid era. Since home runs equaled wins, and steroids equaled home runs, those teams who did not win regularly between 1990 and 2004 probably didn’t have too many players who were on the cheating side of science.

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Mar 08

If you have read my sports stuff for any amount of time, you would know baseball and basketball are my favorite sports. I like the pitchers, the catchers, a day at the park – my favorite baller was John Starks (that’s my tribute to Kurtis Blow, by the way).

Although I’ve been a big fan of both sports, I only played organized baseball, and only then up to age 14.

(I did make my 6th grade basketball team. How, I don’t know, but I did. Sadly, I was cut before the first game. If I remember right, I missed one too many practices before the season even began. That was 1988. Practice? I was Iverson before Iverson was Iverson.)

Anyway, one of the things I’ve learned in the last few years by reading great blogs and talking to people is that if you never played a sport, you can never really understand what’s occurring on the field, court, or other playing surface.

With that in mind, or rather with the experience of playing basketball not in mind, or with the inexperience of playing basketball in mind, here are some thoughts on how baseball and basketball compare to each other.

(In all honesty, some of this post was written over two years ago, back in the “compare basketball to Jazz” phase of the sports blogosphere. That theory has been so overused and overanalyzed that even one of its originators, Bethlehem Shoals of FreeDarko.com thinks it is cliché.)

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400px_Basketball1Even the most casual fan of music knows the difference between the performance of music by mechanical rote and music played by improvisation.  It is the difference between the calculated routine of an orchestra and the raw emotion of an old bluesman.  Although both show musical ability and captivate the listener in their own way, their methodologies reveal a dichotomy in music between precision and feeling, accuracy and improv, calculation and creation, science and art.

These differences can also be seen in sports, particularly in the basic underlying premises of baseball and basketball.  Whereas baseball is admired for its strategy, planning, physics, and mathematical analysis, basketball is quite the opposite, admired more for its spontaneity, creation, and freedom.

(This is of course changing rapidly as front office folks and more and more fans jump feet-first into the statistical analysis world baseball fans have been in for the last 30 years.)

===============

For as long as there have been baseball fans, there have been baseball statistics. Ever since Harry Chadwick started keeping score, baseball fans have been enamored with numbers. Wins, losses, batting averages, hitting streaks, home runs, strike outs, speeds, and distances have been associated with the game since the first pitch.

Basketball is different. It doesn’t have the long lasting relationship with numbers that baseball has. Basketball fans are more thrilled by the performance than the result. It is the spectacle of action, the awe of movement. Granted, there are historical numbers, such as Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game, Michael Jordan’s 63-point playoff performance, or maybe even Scott Skiles’s 30-assist game, but they pale in historical depth to the numbers of baseball legend.

Because of its association with numbers, baseball as always seemed more scientific to me than basketball.  Baseball is the “Science of Pitching” and “Science of Hitting”.  Although I am sure there are numerous books on how to shoot a basketball, I’ve never heard of the the “Science of Shooting” or the “Science of Dribbling”.

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Throughout the history of baseball, those who achieve the highest levels of success have been those who have mastered the science of the game. One of the best examples of a baseball “scientist” is future Hall of Famer Greg Maddux.  Despite Maddux’s inability to strike out every hitter, he made a successful career of deceiving hitters through ballspeed variance and movement.  On the other side of the spectrum is pitchers like Detroit Tiger Joel Zumaya, whose brute strength (when healthy) enables him to make a living overwhelming hitters with his 100 mph fastball.  Falling between Zumaya and Maddux are hundreds of pitchers, some successful and some not, who utilize both the science of strength and the science of aerodynamics to varying degrees.

For batters as well, baseball is describable through the science of physics.  As making contact is at the heart of basic hitting, numerous batters throughout history have studied the science of procedure as to ensure hit placement.  These hitters such as Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs, Pete Rose, and currently Ichiro Suzuki, use the spin of the pitch to determine where to guide the ball during the hit. As with pitching, there are also those whose brute strength has elevated them to success.  Hitters such as the legendary Babe Ruth and not-so-legendary Rob Deer have used their ability to hit a baseball a long distance as a way to continue their careers.

Basketball is of course not without its physics. There are plenty of trajectories. There is the shot, the arc, the leaping, the angles of the rebound, and the reaction of a blocked shot. Many rebounders, such as the legendary Dennis Rodman, have used science-like precision to determine angles and timing, not unlike the mound calculations of Greg Maddux.

But basketball is based much more on freedom. The freedom to move left or right, front or back. The freedom to accelerate or slow down. The freedom to create your offense through arm and leg motions that make even the most liberal coach cringe. You can’t improv a home run. You can throw a little zazz into a dunk.

lil-giantsBasketball is not without its brute strength either. But braun in basketball is far different than braun in baseball. Like baseball’s speed, basketball’s strength is  a segment of the game falls opposite of the majority of the sport. For basketball, the strength, power, and science most often seen in baseball are evident in plays near the basket. Like Ruth and McGwire in baseball, many large basketball players such as Shaquille O’Neal and Dwight Howard and have used their size and strength as a weapon, overpowering their smaller contemporaries and dunking the ball directly in the basket.

Although a majority of baseball relies on physics and its resulting actions, there is one aspect of baseball that does not confine itself to the rules of science: fielding.  Fielding is more often than not a routine of basic movements, conditioned by practice to position individuals at the right place at the right time.  However, when the ball is batted or thrown off its usual trajectory, fielders must make non-routine movements to catch or throw the ball.  These movements – the leaping catch over the fence, the dive in the hole to field a groundball, the jump over or around a runner to make a throw – make fielding more of an art than a science.  Defensive experts such as the legendary Ozzie Smith or, more recently, Omar Vizquel, or any of the other great fielders in baseball history have often displayed a level of immeasurable improvisation and a knack for getting to the ball and ensuring it gets to where it needs to go.

If fielding can be considered artful, then it is no coincidence that it is the last frontier of baseball statistical analysis. And it is no coincidence either that baseball fielding and basketball are becoming statistical at the same time.

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Mar 04

IMG00042I’m not sure if I have mentioned yet, but I am going to be blogging over at minor league baseball blog BusLeaguesBaseball this season. Last night I posted my first article, a write-up of the spring training exhibition between the Florida State Seminoles vs the Philadelphia Phillies.

The Buses have Returned to Florida

Sure enough, I also posted that link over at ScalpEm.com. Trust me, it was a tough decision where I would post the original blog. I had to think about it. Post on the FSU site or on the baseball site? Both are run by longtime e-migos, and both have allowed me to write whatever I want whenever I want. But with a big basketball game for Florida State played last night as well, and the game against the Phillies only an exhibition, I went with the BusLeagues site.

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Mar 02

While I type away furiously on a 1,000 word epic two years in the making, I wanted to post a few links pertinent to the site.

Over on YouTube, the SnowMan of Wrestling911.com posted a video of the day I met WWE Diva Tiffany.

(By the way, did you know Tiffany was a vegan? She made PETA’s list of Sexiest Vegetarians of 2009. Personally, I don’t think I could date a woman who didn’t like BBQ, even it meant ruining my chances with Kaley Cuoco, Natalie Portman, and Carrie Underwood. Sorry, ladies.)

In other news, RaysIndex pointed out that Rays pitcher James Shields is sporting the ‘fro these days. In honor of James’s admission into the ‘Squad, we shall have a ceremony with chips, dip, punch, and pie.

(Hard to believe the South Park Movie is over 10 years old. Wow. It’s like the Canadians have really rehab’ed their image. From being the birthplace of Terrance and Phillip to hosting the Olympics. I’m proud of them. And it’s good to know they have forgiven America for invading their capital city of Toronto.)

Oh, and if you want to read something actually well-written, swing on by Deadspin.com and read Will Leitch’s post on film critic Roger Ebert. It’s about a young writer and his idol.

Leitch’s story reminds me of a similar, albeit much shorter, tale from my own early writing days. When I was in college, and just starting to understand how to write, I emailed columnist Leonard Pitts in response to an article he wrote about the mother of Emmitt Till, a young black man whose death was a key point in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. I thought Pitts’s article was so well done I had to ask him how I could write like that and how maybe one day I could have my own general interest column.

Although I think his assistant sent a canned response, Mr. Pitts’s advice was some of the best I ever received – actually, it may have been the only advice I ever received on the art of writing. Anyway, here is what he wrote:

As for advice…practice your craft.  Then practice it some more.  After
you’re done with that, take a little more time and practice. This is the
only sure route to learning your craft.

There is, in other words, no trick, secret, or magic formula that will make
you good.  Unfortunately for them, most writers are very good at finding
excuses not to write.  This is because writing is not enjoyable.  As some
sage once put it: “Writing is not fun.  Having written is.”

So what is required of the would-be writer is that he or she first develop
the discipline to apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair and
start putting words down on the screen.  You will be awful at first, then a
little better.  In time, perhaps, you will become good.  And sometime after
that, assuming you possess the basic gifts for it, you will become great.

Time not spent writing should be spent reading.  Read constantly and
promiscuously.  Read writers whose work you admire and try to figure out how
they do what they do and what it is in their work that makes it achieve
whatever effect it does.  Read writers whose work you dislike and try to
figure out what they’re doing wrong so that you can avoid making the same
mistakes.

Also: It’s important to invest in the tools of your craft.  In making an
investment, you prove – to others and, more importantly, to yourself – that
you are serious about this thing.  To that end, you need a workspace -
doesn’t have to be fancy, but it ought to be yours and accessible to you on
a regular basis.  You need a word processor or computer; a good dictionary,
an almanac, a copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, and a thesaurus.
You need a copy of Writer’s Market, which is a directory of magazine
publishers.  It lists the kind of material they’re looking for, the contact
persons and the prices they pay.  Also, get yourself a subscription to
Writer’s Digest; it’s a monthly magazine that deals with the craft of
writing, but also the business of it.  The magazine provides a great crash
course for young writers.

Finally, assuming you have any cash left over, you might want to pick up a
copy of Stephen King’s On Writing.  It’s a memoir of the craft that I found
inspirational and instructive.

I still haven’t picked up that Stephen King book yet. I might want to do that.

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Feb 08

Thoughts on sports and their different regional “flavors”:

I’ve always been interested in how different areas put their own twists on sports. A game played by the same rules can be played in totally different ways and interpreted in a completely different manner by different cultures.

But why? What is it about certain cultures that drives changes in the game?

rezball2A few years ago I noticed several articles that discussed a style of basketball being played in the American southwest by young Native Americans. Dubbed “Rezball“, it was basketball played at an extremely fast pace. According to ESPN.com,

Rezball is a smashmouth game of speed, aggression and stamina. Full-court presses and man D are applied relentlessly, but the transition game is the game. Guards often start a break after receiving the inbounds pass; set plays are rare. Rezball makes the 2007 Suns look like the 1995 Knicks. Squads with three guys taller than 6′3″ are rare, so even the short guys know how to play big, and all five positions boast guardlike handles and shooting skills. Watching the best teams will rivet you to your seat—from the way players improvise at warp speed to their sheer endurance and the dialed-in-but-carefree way they ball.

For some reason, Native Americans decided to add an extreme element of speed to their game. Granted, height is not a usual trait in Native Americans, so few teams would have the option to slow down the game by throwing the ball to a lumbering big man underneath the basket. But from what I know about Rezball, it is faster than the Philippines Basketball Association, a league known to impose height requirements to give domestic players a chance.

So why did the Native Americans tweak basketball in that way? Is running or sprinting a typical habit of the people?

On the complete opposite side of the spectrum is the southern style of professional wrestling, known in some circles as “rasslin’”. According to Wikipedia,

Rasslin’ – refers to a southern style of professional wrestling which emphasizes kayfabe and stiffness, with fewer squash matches and generally longer feuds. It was synonymous with the NWA-affiliated promotions. Rasslin’ included TV tapings at smaller venues, as compared to the larger and more well-known arenas utilized by northern U.S. promotions such as the AWA and WWF/E. The term is derived from a phonetic spelling of how the word “wrestling” sounds when spoken with a heavy Southern accent. It is also commonly used in a derogatory manner by non-Southern wrestling fans to describe that style of wrestling.”

Southernxident(To be honest, although the description is correct, I have never heard anyone in Florida refer to it as “rasslin’”. Actually, due to the mixed population in Florida, I’ve been told the state is a very difficult place to wrestle in, because transplanted fans from different parts of the country look for different things in their wrestling performances.)

I’ve been told that “southern” professional wrestling is generally slower than its northern counterparts. In the definition above, “emphasizing kayfabe” means characters and stories have more of a role in southern pro wrestling matches. In order to build those stories and develop those characters, the action must be slower. No rapid, high-flyin’, biff-bang-boom-wham-bam-slam matches. In southern wrestling, each match tells a story and it is the story that is emphasized more so than the athletic performance.

So why is wrestling different in the South? What is it about southern culture that favors deliberate storylines over fast-paced action?

Having lived in the South for over 20 years, I can attempt to answer this. For the same reason country music is generally slower, and southern accents are not as fast as northern dialects, Southerners prefer a more laid back lifestyle. People are more spread out in the south and aren’t ingrained with the urgency of northern city folks.

There is also the notion that morals are more prevalent in the South. Whereas in the North, people are all jumbled together and no one knows which way is which, in the South, there are traditional codes of conduct – such as how a gentleman or lady should act. Pro wrestling storylines feed off of these ideas. Bad guys deliberately brake the codes of conduct and good guys get in the fans’ favor by giving these villains a helpin’ of fist-flyin’ justice.

Before I end, I would like to leave you with a few questions.

Questions: Could there have been at some point different nuances in baseball? Were there slight differences in baseball strategy when the game started its growth in America? Did southerners play a slower-paced game than northerners? Was the northern game the origin of homeruns and fastballs and the south the birthplace of off-speed pitches, setting up batters, and base-to-base offense? Could there have been a difference in regional pitching psychology? Also, was there a different style of game strategy in the Negro Leagues?

The best answers may win something from me, if I can think of a cool gift.

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Jan 20

peanutsbaseball-1Last week, the folks over at the absolutely brilliant Wezen-Ball wrote one of the greatest sports blog posts of all-time. In what could only be called a genius notion, they decided to cull through 20 years of Charlie Brown baseball comic strips and see what stats they could find. According to Larry Granillo, the author of the post,

Granted, they aren’t going to be pretty, but someone should find the answer to the questions: how many games did Charlie Brown’s team lose? how many did they win? how many times did Charlie Brown get knocked over by a line-drive? and so on…

And that he did. In Part 1, Granillo looked at every game from 1951 to 1960. Let’s just say the numbers aren’t good.

In Part 2, Granillo examines the Peanuts gang’s diamond exploits from 1961 to 1970. Charlie Brown and company get slightly better in their second decade, but not by much.

Admittedly, Granillo’s examination of Charlie Brown’s baseball stats may be overkill for some. Some might say analysis like that sucks the fun out of a light-hearted comic strip about and made for kids.

But like I said, I think it’s genius.

The Wezen-Ball – Charlie Brown post reminded me of another absolutely brilliant post on a baseball playing cartoon character. Back in 2006, Derek Zumsteg of the blog U.S.S. Mariner dissected the classic Bugs Bunny cartoonBaseball Bugs“. Zumsteg, a noted baseball analyst, broke down Bugs’ performance on the field so thoroughly, he even calculated where and when Bugs uses super-rabbit skills. When describing Bugs’ ability to not only throw a pitch, but to race behind home plate and catch it, Zumsteg writes,

Therefore, he throws the pitch in the air at about 44mph and possibly quite slightly towards home. In the time the toss gives him behind the plate, he begins to chatter. In his three seconds of yelling, he’s able to cause the ball to accelerate extremely fast. We can estimate the speed of the ball given the force applied to Bugs while catching it. If, as seems reasonable, we figure he weighs 80lbs, the force to throw him directly into the backstop and do significant structural damage to that backstop can be estimated (”Estimation of pitch speed through re-creation of secondary observations using weighted mannequin and riot suppresion weapons,” Zumsteg, 2004). We are able to figure that the pitch was traveling at least 150mph and possibly much faster.

Needless to say, Zumsteg’s post is not for those who like to keep their humor and science separate.

Although Zumsteg’s and Granillo’s posts share similar subjects, they couldn’t be more different. Whereas Granillo wrote about 20 years of games in sweeping generalities littered with assumptions, Zumsteg had one game with a final score and recorded footage of performances, processes, and methodologies. Despite their differences, as a fan of baseball and of cartoons, I think they are two of the best sports blogs ever written.

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Jan 18

(This post is similar but opposite to my post a few weeks ago on The Effect of the New Economy on Foreign Baseball Players. Whereas that one discussed teams changing their budgets and how it is effecting the acquisition of baseball players, this post will talk about my fantasy of leaving America to compete in a professional athletic organization.)

InterKoreanGames1999I have always had a fascination with being an American-born athlete in a foreign country. Back in 2007, when I was writing for the YAYSports basketball site, I wondered if I had what it takes to play basketball in Iceland. Then, on TheSeriousTip.com in 2008, I wrote about Chris Jefferies, a former Washington University of St. Louis basketball player who was playing ball in Argentina.

Maybe if I made it on a foreign basketball team, I could ball with some of the FSU hoops players I used to watch live when I was in school, guys like Jason Rich and Isaiah Swann, both of whom are playing in Israel, or Nigel “Big Jelly” Dixon, who is hooping it up in South Korea. How cool would be to live the life of professional basketball vagabond Paul Shirley, whose book “Can I Keep My Jersey?” has been recommended to me on numerous occasions (one of these days I will read it, I promise).

(By the way, a post I wrote on Nigel Dixon’s career up to 2007 was one of my more popular early posts. What can I say? The people loved the Big Jelly.)

Not only am I not the world’s best hoopster (hoopist? hoopineer?), but according to a recent report on ESPN’s True Hoop blog, it may be tough to pay the bills while playing international basketball. Apparently, several former NBA players, to include Damon Jones, Robert “Tractor” Traylor, and Travis Best, have openly stated that they haven’t been financially compensated on a regular basis.

This experience has become a fairly common one for NBA players who have been lured to Europe with lucrative contracts. Nenad Krstic and Jannero Pargo were among the players who returned to the NBA last season after not receiving payments from their European clubs.

Since I have bills to pay, basketball might not be the best way to fulfill my international athletic dreams. Not getting paid is not my thing.

What about other sports?

Even though my tryout with the Atlanta Braves back in 2001 didn’t go as planned, I still think I have a shot at being a professional baseball player. According to baseball-links.com, there are leagues in 38 nations. Remember Brandon Fraser in The Scout or Tom Selleck in Mr. Baseball? That could be me. I could be the next Tuffy Rhodes.

(Ironic tidbit about Rhodes: although he hit 477 home runs and is an all-time superstar in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league, he is probably best known in the states for hitting only three. On his amazing opening day in 1994, off the Mets’ Dwight Gooden, Rhodes hit three homers, setting a record as the only Major League Baseball player to hit three HRs in his first three at-bats of the season. Unfortunately, he hit only 10 more in his six years in the bigs.)

Of course, if the international baseball thing doesn’t pay out – after all, if stateside teams aren’t exactly opening the coffers for a 32-year old lefty pitcher who couldn’t hit 70mph on the radar gun nine years ago, why should I expect an international team to? – I could try another venture.  As Jack Black showed in the classic cinematic masterpiece Nacho Libre, pro wrestling is quite the phenomenon outside of the US. According to the almighty Wiki, there are dozens of organizations in faraway lands such as Japan, Bolivia, Mexico, Australia, Ireland, Italy, and New Zealand.

Unfortunately, despite my pro wrestling fandom and “involvement” as a self-proclaimed superfan, I have no clue what to do in the ring. As a matter of fact, I have been in the ring a grand total of one time. A few years ago, when my curiosity into professional wrestling was slowly surfacing, I took up an invite to visit a couple of pro wrestlers during a training session. After they were done throwing each other around and exchanging grapples, they invited me into the ring.  Not only did I climb into the ring awkwardly, but everything I did was goofy. Needless to say, I got out before I got hurt.

You know, maybe I should reconsider this international athlete idea. Maybe I need to find something a little less physically demanding.

Do they play skeeball in other countries? I do like skeeball.

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Jan 09

Although I don’t write as much about sports as I used to, I still read my share of sports blogs. I still follow the Seminoles, Rays, Mets, and Knicks through both fan blogs and mainstream media sites. Two of my favorite of these sites ended 2009 with very similar posts that showed some interesting differences.

Over at Rays Index, the almighty Professor gave a hearty thank you to his readers for year well done. According to the Prof, Rays Index received 1.1 million page views in 2009.

Over at MetsBlog.com, founder Matt Cerrone also wrote a year-end post and mentioned he was on pace for six million page views in December 2009.

(Interestingly, both sites said they had huge increases in readership over 2008’s totals, 40% for Rays Index and 80% for MetsBlog. Meanwhile, newspapers are going the way of the dodo. Oh, in case you are curious, my old site, TheSeriousTip.com, received only 250,000 hits in its 3 years of existence.)

If the numbers given by Cerrone and the Professor are correct, in one month MetsBlog.com received almost six times the amount of page views that Rays Index got for all of 2009 – that’s 72x the page views for the entire year.

Of course, there are some legit reasons for this. MetsBlog.com the flagship fan blog for a New York City-based team. New York City has well over 10 million people. That’s a lot of potential viewers in possibly the world’s biggest media market. Not to mention, MetsBlog.com is associated with SNY, New York’s newest sports and entertainment television network.

Then there is Cerrone’s fanbase. New York is one of the more online cities in the world. I would also venture a guess that many of Cerrone’s core readers are Met fans who became fans during the Mets glory years of the late ’80s and are currently early-30s, late-20s professionals leading the business world into the Internet age.

Rays Index, on the other hand, isn’t quite the flagship blog of Rays fans. Although there is a growing Rays blogosphere, there are two primary Rays fan blogs, Rays Index and the more statistical-based, stat geek-run DRaysBay. Rays Index is the more snarky, less-pretentious, more down-to-earth alternative. Personally, I read and am a fan of both.

(Disclaimer: I’ve met the bloggers from both sites. Whereas The Professor and I shot the breeze over a beer, the guys that write for DRaysBay had no interest in chatting as they were too busy shadowing (or was it sucking up to) Will Carroll of BaseballProspectus.com.)

Rays Index also caters to a much smaller market without the depth and fanbase legacy. The Tampa Bay Rays’ market, if you really stretch it, could include from Orlando to Sarasota to Tampa to St. Pete-Clearwater, and tops out at probably 5-6 million people. That’s half of MetsBlog’s guaranteed, local, direct market. From a legacy perspective, the Rays as a team also don’t have the history, of success or otherwise, that the Mets have, although I bet if you compare Rays Index’s page views from 2007 to the present, you will see a large increase (More than MetsBlog’s 80% increase? Tough call.). And finally, to my knowledge, Rays Index doesn’t have a partnership with a major entertainment company.

I’m not sure why I just wrote nearly 500 words comparing the page views of a major market flagship fan blog with a fan blog in a minor market. I guess the fact that one receives 72x the annual hits of the other blew me away.

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Jan 03

Thoughts on foreign baseball players making their move to the states:

Taiwan World Cup BaseballEvery year there seems to be at least one big name foreign baseball player who makes his move to the US to play Major League Baseball. Some are prominent stars from their homeland, such as Japanese players Ichiro Suzuki, Daisuke Matsuzaka, and Hideki Matsui, and others are intriguing prospects such as Cuban Aroldis Chapman, a recent defector who has scouts drooling.

But how will the new economic landscape effect baseball teams and their interest in foreign players? In a climate where almost every team except the Yankees lost money last year (I think), will we ever see another offer like the one the Red Sox gave for Matsuzaka (51 million to Matsuzaka’s former team, the Seibu Lions, and another 50 million through contract)? Could anyone again offer over 100 million for one player?

So far, either by circumstance or by economic necessity, the answer is no. Since the end of the 2009 World Series, the biggest import as been relief pitcher Ryota Igarashi, who signed a two-year contract with the New York Mets for $3 million. Before signing with the Mets, it was reported the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Mariners and the Indians were also interested in Igarashi.

But the Mets’ acquisition is regarded as only having potential as an “effective late inning” pitcher, hardly a game-changer. And three million dollars is relatively chump change for major league teams. What about players who can significantly add wins to a major league team?

I wonder if it is possible that fewer baseball player will consider coming to America if they know they will be offered less money. If a ballplayer is paid well in Japan, how much is enough to compensate their move and cultural adjustment? Will the prestige of playing in America carry less weigh if the pay is less?

Whereas most players that come over from Japan are established, many that come from Cuba are not. Many are prospects who immediately latch on to an agent in the hope of being signed based on their raw skills. These players are far bigger gambles for Major League teams. In this new economy, I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of teams considering foreign projects is shrinking or will shrink considerably (with the exception of the Pittsburgh Pirates, of course, who, for whatever reason, signed two Indian game show winners last summer).

(Note: I know the financial landscape in Japan is far different from that of Latin America. Baseball players leave Japan for the challenge of playing in the states. They leave Latin American countries for far different reason, to include freedom and economic prosperity. But, regardless of the reason, for major league organizations, both types of players are investments.)

The new economic landscape could also see organizations committing to either the domestic amateur draft or foreign scouting and development. Currently, teams both sign college and high school players and have academies and scouts in places such as South America and the Caribbean. The acquisition of both types of players require sunk costs. Domestic amateurs require large sums up front, and could fetch the type of contracts reserved for established major leaguers. The recruiting, training, development, and eventual signing of foreign born players is more of a long-term cost but is a larger financial commitment. Could we see some teams committing exclusively to foreign development and skimping on the domestic draft or vice versa?

A few years ago on TheSeriousTip, I tore apart a suggestion by a close-minded baseball fan that teams shouldn’t sign or develop foreign players because they are taking jobs away from good ol’ American baseball players. I wonder if the letter-writer will eventually get his way as some teams end up more “American”, deciding signing foreign players too expensive. Although I do think teams will continue to be smarter financially, I hope we don’t see the end of multi-cultural rosters and the MLB being a showcase of the best baseball talent in the world. That is what makes baseball in America great.

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Dec 25

For those of us who believe, today is a sacred day. A day of worship and of reverence. A day where we gather and remember the birth of the greatest of all-time: Rickey Henderson. We do this by celebrating “Hendersonmas”, a holiday marked by walking, stealing, or scoring.

In case you missed my ode to Hendersonmas 2008, click here.

This year, instead of another lengthy diatribe, I want to leave you with this amazingly touching video. If this song doesn’t move you to spirit of Hendersonmas, then I am afraid you have no soul.

Happy Hendersonmas!

Oh yeah, today is also the day of birth of Calvin Stadiums and the Professor from the great Tampa Bay Rays site Rays Index. Happy Birthday to them too.

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