The Green Bag: Call for papers and nominations on “baseball and the law”

The Green Bag, “an entertaining journal of law”, has the following (11 Green Bag 2d 280):

We are seeking submissions of two sorts for our 2010 Almanac & Reader, which will have a baseball-and-the-law theme.

First, we want scholarly essays on topics related to baseball and the law. We hope to select 12 essays, each between 1500 and 5000 words long. Topics in which we are particularly (but not exclusively) interested are: (a) baseball and ... civil rights law; criminal law; defamation law; intellectual property law; international law; labor law; media law; property law; tax law; tort law; transportation law; (b) baseball players who were or became lawyers; and (c) roles played by lawyers in baseball.

Second, we want nominations for a ballot we are preparing to help us identify the best legal writing about baseball. This sort of writing might come from any number of sources, including but not limited to: fiction; journalism; litigation (briefs, judicial and arbitration decisions, etc.); poetry, music, and song; and scholarly works.

In due course—meaning sometime during the 2009 season—you will have an opportunity to vote for your favorites from the ballot we will prepare from your nominations. Balloting will take place online. We will publish the results—perhaps including a few samples from the top vote-getters—in the 2010 Almanac & Reader.

Please send your proposals for papers and your nominations for the ballot to editors@greenbag.org.

The Book Blog: Tango: Psst… wanna work for Bill James?

They STILL haven’t filled that Stokely Van Camp Counselor job?

Are you interested in writing for Bill James Online? Here’s the deal.  At this point, we can’t afford to pay you.  We have xxxx subscribers as of now and expenses averaging about $y,yyy a month, so. . .do the math; we’re losing money.

(Bill James posts the numbers, but it’s behind the wall.  I don’t know if I should post it or not.)

...Fangraphs has to buy data from BIS, and I presume BJ is getting a freebie there.  Fangraphs only has Google Ads, which, if they are as successful as mine, means he has not even earned 100$ from them yet, while BJ has subscribers.  Fangraphs invests alot more in technology than does BJ’s site.  Or at least, the output of their investment is greater.

It seems to me that Fangraphs, Hardball Times, and Bill James ought to merge.  They are all using the same data source.  They have two sources of revenue (ads for THT and subscribers for BJ).  They have two outlets for paying their writers (Fangraphs on their blog, and THT in their annual).

I might even be assimilated by this collective.  And all together, we’ll be half as successful as Sean Forman.

Padres consider allowing bloggers in the press box

Alderson: The other thing we’ve been toying around with is allowing people like yourself into the press box. I know there’s a lot of controversy about that among mainstream media and so forth, but our attitude is, the more access, the better. In Paul’s case, it’s a chance for him to express himself on an unflitered basis. He doesn’t get interpreted by [radio host] Philly Billy [Werndl] or [newspaper columnist] Tim Sullivan or somebody else. It’s an unvarnished line of communication.

AP expects you to pay to license 5-word quotations

In the name of “defin[ing] clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt” the Associated Press is now selling “quotation licenses” that allow bloggers, journallers, and people who forward quotations from articles to co-workers to quote their articles. The licenses start at $12.50 for quotations of 5-25 words. The licensing system exhorts you to snitch on people who publish without paying the blood-money, offering up to $1 million in reward money (they also think that “fair use”—the right to copy without permission—means “Contact the owner of the work to be sure you are covered under fair use.").

It gets better! If you pay to quote the AP, but you offend the AP in so doing, the AP “reserves the right to terminate this Agreement at any time if Publisher or its agents finds Your use of the licensed Content to be offensive and/or damaging to Publisher’s reputation.”

The Biz of Baseball: State of Major League Baseball - 2008

Who’s Who in the DC Universe got nuttin’ on this roll call!

Including…

Peter Abraham - Yankees beat writer, The Journal News and LoHud Yankees Blog
Chuck Armstrong – President, Seattle Mariners
Alex Belth - Founder of Bronx Banter and editor of “The Best Sports Writing of Pat Jordan”
Tyler Bleszinski (Blez) - Founder and author, Athletics Nation
John Brattain – Columnist, The Hardball Times, MSN Canada, Baseball Digest Daily
Jonah Keri - Writer for ESPN.com, a contributor to YESNetwork.com and the New York Sun
Rich Lederer – Founder and lead writer, Baseball Analysts
Tim Marchman - Baseball writer, New York Sun
Dayn Perry - Regular contributor to FOXSports.com; regular contributor, Baseball Prospectus
David Pinto - Owner and author, Baseball Musings; author, The Sporting News
Ken Rosenthal - Senior baseball writer, television analyst, FOX Sports; book author

And Mike Crudale.

SABR: Preliminary Schedule for SABR38

Now the online schedule is up, complete with an overview of all presentations.

Presentations will be given by David Smith, Steve Treder, Steve Steinberg, Jeff Angus, Vince Gennaro, Alan Nathan, Anthony Giacalone, Phil Birnbaum, a pair from Norman Macht, and a joint presentation from Dick Cramer & Pete Palmer, as well as others.

Deadspin: Leitch: A Note From Your Editor

Black tabled? Will Leitch moving on...sorta.

We started this site on September 8, 2005, with a simple headline: “Welcome to Deadspin. We Come With a Pure Heart and Mirthful Disposition.” We think that’s still pretty much true; we try to keep our disposition mirthful at all times. But sometimes that’s more difficult to do than others; this is one of those times.

It is with heavy heart — yet mirthful disposition! — that we announce that our time as Deadspin editor is about to draw to a close. After almost three years of plugging away around here, we are leaving as editor of Deadspin on Friday, June 27. We have accepted a job as a contributing editor for New York magazine. We’re excited about it, but, obviously, this has been our baby and our life every day for three years — which is about four decades in blog time — and we’re too emotional about the whole thing to get into much more detail about how we feel about the whole matter.

We’ll still be writing for the site, even after we’re not the editor anymore, so you’re not gonna get rid of us that easily. (We kind of love it here; we have nothing but manhugs and fistpounds for the Gawker crew, and vice versa.) We’ll go into the details more over the next few weeks, but we’ll just leave you today with a simple quote of “It’s probably time,” and then try not to dribble tears on our keyboard.

Thanks to The Best Neil.

ESPN: Sosa not pursuing MLB job, says he intends to retire in 2009

Sammy Sosa, still without an offer to play in the major leagues, will retire from baseball after the next World Baseball Classic, according to published reports.

“It’s part of the plan. It would be great if folks can see me for the last time wearing the uniform of the [Dominican Republic] National Team,” Sosa told Hoy, a Dominican newspaper.

“It’s always an honor to represent your country,” added Sosa, whose motivation to play in the WBC increased once Felipe Alou, a fellow Dominican, was named manager of the national club.

..."There’s something that I wish to state very clearly: I’m not looking for a job. In fact, I have told my agent that he should stop offering my services to MLB teams,” Sosa told Hoy. “I’m not retired. I remain highly focused and not begging for a contract.”

But would listen if…

Northern California Symposium on Statistics and Operations Research in Sports

The Northern California Symposium on Statistics and Operations Research in Sports is now accepting submissions. Details for the conference are available at: www.ncssors.wikidot.com

SABR: Low Fee for Convention Registration Approaching

As of now, it costs $87 for a SABR memeber to register for this year’s shindig in Cleveland, and $114 for non-member.  On May 29, that becomes $129 and $159, so for those planning on attending, but make the registration in the next 9 days. 

BASN: APRIL 15 IT’S BASEBALL’S MINSTREL SHOW

Curtis Colbert and The Bishops of the Holy Rollers Fallout Shelter...the BASN soundtrack of your life.

Bud Selig and the Bad Boys of Summer aka the 30 MLB owners decided it was such a success in making Baseball look good for and with African Americans they said why not do this every April 15th and they have. But it was only two years ago that someone whether it was someone in the MLB hierarchy or Ken Griffey. Jr. or some other knuckle head who decided why not wear Jackie Robinson’s sacred number 42 on April 15th.  And Bud Selig said YESYESYES and by last year players were falling all over themselves to wear #42 on their uniforms on April 15. Now entire teams want to wear #42 this April 15th like the African American manager ( one of 3 in the Majors ) of the Texas Rangers.

Here is what is coming

BET ON IT next year

Bud Selig will ORDER

every player to wear 42

yes all 750 of them plus

managers, coaches, etc.

And yes this is what we call April 15th a modern day MINSTREL show all these players running around on April 15th big SMILES on their faces especially the few African American players beaming because they are all wearing #42 on April 15th.

ESPN: Rob Neyer Opening Day Marathon!

They Shoot Horses in Gray Flannel Suits, Don’t They?

Welcome to The Show! On Monday, we have a special chat in honor of Major League Baseball’s Opening Day. ESPN.com MLB Insider, Rob Neyer, will be chatting during every pitch of every game.

That’s right. Neyer will start with the first pitches of the day in the Royals-Tigers game and Blue Jays-Yankees game, which both start at 1:05 p.m. ET, and continue through the last game of the day, Angels vs. Twins, which begins at 8:10 p.m. ET. But that’s not all. Neyer will keep chatting through the midnight ET edition of Baseball Tonight.

If Neyer is able to complete his mission, he will have chatted for close to 12 hours, which would break the current SportsNation individual chat record of 7 hours, 4 minutes, held by Bill Simmons.

More players rumored to have used steroids.

Ready!
Set!
Rehash!

===========Translation Matrix===========

Yawn.

Jobs @ Sports-Reference

Do You Know your JS, SQL, and DOM from your OPS, QB Rating, and PER?

Sports Reference LLC located in Philadelphia, PA is searching for summer interns to do computer programming for our popular sports statistics sites: Baseball-Reference.com, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Basketball-Reference.com, and Hockey-Reference.com (coming this spring).

Oh, glory be!  I don’t see where it says you get to live with the Master, and there’s probably some catch - like babysitting, but what a sweet deal this would be.  If I weren’t over-40, had none of the programming skills and already in the prison of marriage love, I would be all over this.

(The Final) Rob & Rany on the Royals

After 10 winning seasons...the last Rob & Rany on the Royals (sob...will life ever be Norm Angelini again?...sob).

Rob: Emotionally, it’s defensible. But the Twins are probably going to be pretty good in three years and they’re moving into a new ballpark that will almost certainly allow them to retain their best young players (or most of them).

Really—and I honestly hate to be a downer here—the Royals face the same problem they’ve faced since the early 1990s: they play in a tiny market in a ballpark that offers little chance for expanding revenues. Yes, Commissioner Bud’s revenue sharing has helped and will help. But for as far as the eye can see, the Royals will be the poorest team in the American League. I still love them, probably always will. But I can’t figure out a way to love their chances.

Which has almost nothing to do with the fact that this is the last edition of Rob & Rany on the Royals. There’s no one reason, at least not one I can think of. It just feels like the right time, and it felt even righter when you told me that you’re striking off on your own. I would have felt bad about deserting the few remaining Royals fans, the ones who stuck with them (and us) for these last 10 years. But now I feel good, because you’re more upbeat than I am and you’ll write a lot more often.

So I leave this small stage with nothing but happy wishes for you. And for our Boys in Blue.

B-ref Blog: Batting Order Position Outcomes

Now that pitchers & catchers have reported, so has Sean Forman - getting ready to roll out his site’s updates for 2008.  He also has a new feature under wraps called batting count summary. 

N.Y. Times: At Berra Museum, the Display of Clemens’s Jersey Is Over (RR)

But...but..with the removal of the Clemens jersey...this will cut a full tour of the place to under 3 minutes!

The Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center last week removed a Roger Clemens jersey from an exhibit about the Yankee renaissance that started in the mid-1990s.

“We’re trying to project the positive virtues of baseball,” said David Kaplan, the director of the museum, which has an educational mission. “And we have a lot of kids coming through here who are asking questions we’re not prepared to answer.”

He added that Clemens’s “jersey was raising too many issues” because of his “notoriety.”

That should read “lot of kid”...and they should welcome a little “notoriety.” Gutless.

Kansas Baseball HOF Class of 2008 - Congrats to Bill James and Shockers

Uh-oh...Bill James and Joe Carter going in together. Or as James wrote in the NHBA..."I think it is hard to say that the record shows that Joe Carter deserves any special credit as a clutch hitter”

Bill James attended KU for four years but left without a degree to join the army in 1971.  I’d love it if the university awarded him an honorary degree (if they haven’t already).  James is certainly one of the most influential baseball writers of all time.  In the 1970’s he almost single-handedly started a movement that allowed fans of the game to follow their hobby into even deeper layers of unhealthy obsession.

Triangle BTF Meetup: February 26

I’m trying to get local meetups back off the ground, now that my schedule has stabilized. I haven’t decided where to have this one yet - ideally it would be somewhere that is easily accessible to folks from RTP as well as Raleigh. Make a suggestion!

Weisman: Firejoemorgan.com and The Office: Worlds Are Colliding

Romance! Thrills! Adventure! Planets destroy earth! Fisk rampages office!

So, I’ve interviewed Michael Schur, the Emmy-winning writer of The Office (and also the man who plays Mose). And I’ve been critiqued by Ken Tremendous, the razor-sharp mind behind Firejoemorgan.com.

Little did I know they were the same person.

It’s blowing my mind, man.

As bummed as I was to become an FJM target ... I now have to ask, when does the intelligence behind that site find a TV audience?

The Book Blog: MGL: Clutch (and other) project(s) redux

MGL is in the zone...with a challenge.

I would also love (since this is the thing that commentators talk about - incessantly - most during game broadcasts, and this is the thing that people claim they can “see") to see something done with hot and cold players.  The only way I can think of to do that would be to have a website where any participant can log in, input their “user id” and classify someone as hot or cold until further notice.  That should be easy enough for all those pundits who think they can tell when someone is “pressing” or “seeing the ball well” or “locked in” or whatever you want to call it.  Again, is there anyone but an analyst or saber person who does NOT believe in players being hot or cold?

Here is the kicker.  I am willing to donate a substantial sum of money to a charity chosen by one side of the debate - the “non-sabermetric” side of course, if they win.  We would have to define “winning” - maybe best of 3, if we do 3 things, like clutch, batter/pitchers, and hot/cold.  Or we can do each one separately.

If the sabermetric side wins, I will also donate money, but that will be to a charity of our choice and it will be less money.

I’m not sure how much, but it would be on the order of $10,000 for them and $5,000 for us.  What the heck.  Anything to make a point.  If this flies, let none of my/our detractors/naysayers EVER say that I won’t put my money where my mouth is!  This should generate some good publicity and might encourage the media and perhaps some insiders to participate.

flickr: News in the 1910s

From Cool Papa Forman..."Lots of old baseball photos in here.  This is where I got the photos for the play index.  They’ve only now been added to flickr and they don’t have any known copyright restrictions.”

Welcome to the daily news scene from almost a hundred years ago, as photographed by the Bain News Service in about 1910-1912. We invite your tags and comments! Also, lots more identification information. (Most of these old photos came to the Library of Congress with very little description.)

This selected set of 1,500 photographs is from a large collection of almost 40,000 glass negatives. The entire collection spans 1900-1920 and richly documents sports events, theater, celebrities, crime, strikes, disasters, and political activities, with a special emphasis on life in New York City.

Bud Selig to remain MLB commissioner for three more years

This is just terrible news...because after just 3 days a dead body will leak squirky fluids from the mouth, nose, eyes, ears, rectum and urinary openings. Quite messy, as I recall.

Riding the crest of unprecedented financial success and an impressive performance before Congress Tuesday, Bud Selig agreed to stay on as Major League Baseball’s commissioner for three more years.

Selig, 73, agreed to continue his reign just two days after he appeared at a Congressional hearing on the Mitchell Report on steroids, a report authored by former Sen. George Mitchell at Selig’s behest.

Selig left Washington Tuesday night for the MLB owners’ meetings in Phoenix, where the owners asked him to stay on until 2012.

MLB.com to air live video from Tuesday’s congressional hearing

And I’m sure Sen. Mo Saic will freeze up, stammer and shut down before it’s all over.

MLB.com, the official website of Major League Baseball, will provide a live video broadcast from the congressional hearing related to the Mitchell Report in its entirety tomorrow beginning at 9:30 a.m. (EST).

Former Senator George Mitchell, Baseball Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig and MLB Players Association Executive Director Donald Fehr are scheduled to testify as witnesses before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in Washington, D.C.

B-ref: Win a Free Play Index Subscription

The Baseball-Reference.com Play Index is open for a free trial until Friday, January 11th.

FYI.

Seamheads: Thank You and Happy New Year!

Hmm...some interesting projects in the works at Seamheads.

- Ballpark Factors Database: Soon we’ll have the most extensive ballpark factors database on the Internet.  Our database will not only list factors for each type of hit, but it will include factor splits as well as stat splits.  For instance, if you want to know how right-handed home run hitters were affected by Turner Field in 2000, as opposed to left-handed sluggers we’ll have factor splits (HR factor for righties was 87; for lefties it was 105) and lefty/righty stat splits to complement the factors.  We have data on every stadium in major league history as well as those used in the National Association, the American Association, the Union Association, the Players League, and the Federal League (although not all will include splits).

- Quote Encyclopedia: We’re in the process of building an encyclopedia of quotes that will not only include the quote but will list the person who spoke or wrote it, the source of the quote (newspaper, book, magazine, periodical, etc.) and the date it appeared in print.  This will be a great tool for researchers who are looking for material for their books, articles, and/or essays.  Here’s a sample page to peruse.

BDD: Hamrahi: In a Giving Mood!

Good Guy Joe Hamrahi (I believe he followed Dandy Dan Daniel on MCA) is having a tremendilly of a giveaway!

With the holidays upon us and another great year of Baseball Digest Daily in the books, I’ve decided to hand out a few gifts. I’m just in that kind of mood, you know! So, here’s what we’re going to do...Everyone who posts their name and email address in the comments section after this entry between now and Monday evening at 11:59 PM ET will be entered into a drawing to receive one of the following free gifts:

- The Bill James Handbook 2008
- A copy of the 2007 Boston Red Sox media guide...that’s right, from this championship season
- JC Bradbury’s Baseball Economist
- John Burnson’s 2008 Graphical Player
- The Book by Tom Tango, MGL, and Andrew Dolphin
- 2 General Admission tickets to a major league baseball game of your choice...pending availability of course
- A Baseball Digest Daily T-Shirt!

and…

2 grand prizes...A one year subscription to Heater Magazine or a one year subscription to Baseball Prospectus!

Winners will be announced on Wednesday, December 26th. Good luck and thank you!

The Biz of Baseball: Brown: Bob Dutton Addresses the BBWAA Inclusion Process

The multi-threaded craniopagus parasiticustom continues! And the extensive...Baseball Writers’ Association of America - Badge list.

Brown: Regarding your comments on “40 games being the cutoff"… have you ever known a member of the BBWAA sponsoring a prospective member for inclusion that was below this threshold? This gets to addressing the chorus of voices that are saying that there’s a “good old boy” network at play.

Dutton: The way our membership works is qualifying outlets (newspapers, wire services, etc., and now internet sites) send us a list of candidates. There’s no such procedure of a member sponsoring a prospective member.

Also, the 40-game standard is mine. I didn’t mean to imply it as an association threshold. It isn’t. As I [mentioned] previously, there is no specific standard.

I do doubt, however, many members would recognize someone who attends fewer than 40 games as needing a BBWAA credential.

Bikini-Clad Beauties to Converge on U.S. Courthouse as Barry Bonds Faces Steroid-Related Charges

PETA, Bonds, steroids, nudity...I’m sure Pete Rose, Hitler and Ring Dings will be arriving shortly.

Wearing nothing but lettuce-leaf bikinis and holding signs that read, “Meat Contains Drugs--Go Vegetarian,” a pair of sexy PETA Lettuce Ladies will hand out free faux-turkey sandwiches outside the federal courthouse in San Francisco on Friday as Barry Bonds answers to charges of perjury and obstruction of justice stemming from an investigation of steroid use in Major League Baseball.

..."The growth-promoting drugs given to chickens make them grow faster than Barry Bonds’ hat size,” says PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich. “The best way to keep dangerous antibiotics, hormones, and other toxic chemicals out of your body--and help animals at the same time--is to go vegetarian.”

The Baseball Analysts: Lederer: BBWAA Opens Up Its Membership to Web-Based Writers

The Baseball Writers Association of America voted yesterday to open up its membership for the first time to web-based baseball writers. Qualified candidates were required to be “full-time baseball writers who work for websites that are credentialed by MLB for post-season coverage.”

Sixteen of the 18 nominations were recommended for approval: Scott Miller from CBS Sportsline; Jim Caple, Jerry Crasnick, Peter Gammons, Tim Kurkjian, Amy Nelson, Buster Olney, and Jayson Stark from ESPN; Ken Rosenthal from FoxSports; John Donovan, Jon Heyman, and Tom Verducci from SI; and Tim Brown, Steve Henson, Jeff Passan, and Dan Wetzel from Yahoo.

After combing through the list, my first reaction was “what about Rob Neyer?” Well, as it turns out, Rob’s nomination was one of two that were turned down. How can that be? Isn’t Rob full time? Is he not a baseball writer? Is ESPN not “credentialed” for the post-season? I don’t get it.

While I’m happy for the 16 web-based writers who were approved (many of whom had previously been members for years, if not decades), it doesn’t make sense to exclude one of the most thoughtful, knowledgeable, and level-headed writers in the business. Rob gets it. Unfortunately, the BBWAA didn’t get it quite right this time.

I commend the BBWAA for opening up its membership beyond the newspaper industry and am hopeful that the organization will see fit to approve Rob and many others inside and outside of ESPN, CBS, FoxSports, SI, and Yahoo in the future.

Thanks to Levski for the tip on this aboutime-halfhearted breakthrough.