Enrique Soto, one of baseball’s most prominent trainers in the Dominican Republic for the last two decades, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted of charges of sexually assaulting two boys that were part of his academy 10 years ago, according to a report that first aired Monday night in the Dominican Republic on Noticias Sin.

Better late than never.

The league’s struggles are merely the most vivid manifestation of a more profound, and surprising, phenomenon playing out here: the general decline of baseball in a place where it was long considered the national pastime, if not a religion. After decades of populating major league rosters with All-Star players at every position, Puerto Rico had only 20 players on Major League Baseball rosters on opening day last season. Only two of them made the All-Star team. (By contrast, the 1997 All-Star ...

Pittsburgh Press, December 29, 1911:

STRIPED UNIFORMS TO BE THE STYLE IN 1912

Stripes will be the rage in amateur baseball uniforms next season. Plain gray, white or blue uniforms will be work only by teams which find their 1911 suits good enough to wear again.

Along with the stripes, fashionable ballplayers will wear a hundred-dollar shine on a three dollar pair of shoes.

Last January, I became moderately obsessed with North Korea, thanks to this book, this graphic novel, and these photos. North Korea is both terrible and completely bizarre—in this day of hyper-connectedness, it’s hard to wrap my head around the idea that a country actually exists where millions of people have no light, not to mention no internet, phones, or non-programmed radios and TVs.

Illustrating North Korea’s strangeness is its official website, which is down today, the day that North ...

The investigation into Bonds and BALCO, the lab that produced and sold undetectable designer steroids, is the most important investigation ever undertaken into the use of performance-enhancing drugs…

...The federal judge who presided over the Bonds trial is Susan Illston. She is a San Francisco Democrat and a bit of an enigma.

Throughout the BALCO investigation, she made a series of decisions that were difficult to explain. Early in the prosecutions, when she was sentencing Greg Anderson on ...

Travis Madden had a bright future at Texas A&M-Kingsville.

The Inez native and Industrial graduate was a freshman majoring in chemical engineering and had just completed his first season of fall baseball.

But Madden died Sunday morning at the age of 18.

Kingsville police responded to a call just after 9 a.m. found Madden unconscious at the bottom of a stairwell at an apartment complex on the 1400 block of West Santa Gertrudis Street, about a block away from the campus, according to a police ...

You know, I’ve found that anger is the enemy of instruction.

Wow. Five more years of labor peace ensured, zero public rancor between the owners and the players, and yet all anyone’s talking about in the TwitterBlogoSphere is how terrible the new Collective Bargaining Agreement is…

One thing that everyone seems to forget about labor negotiations (and politics, and just about everything else): they’ve got nothing to do with right and wrong. They have everything to do with interests and leverage. ...Read More...

Continuing in MLB’s plan to make sure that two-sport athletes never choose baseball over football ever again:

• There will be slot recommendations for the first 10 rounds. No team is required to honor the individual recommendations, but there will be a cumulative number—a bonus ceiling—based on those recommendations assigned to each team for the first 10 rounds.

• If a team goes over its cumulative slot recommendation, there will be a tax for the first time, and the second time they will ...

Nobody give this guy’s number to McCourt.

On Sunday, the Lansings announced that an offer had been signed for the property. Mike and Denise Stillman, operating as Go the Distance Baseball LLC, plan to preserve the site. A purchase price was not disclosed.

On other acreage, however, the Stillmans say they plan to develop “All-Star Ballpark Heaven,” a baseball and softball tournament facility.

Some high quality sportswriting and editing going on here.

In a professional sport like baseball, where player talent and organizational characteristics are very comparable among the many teams, innovation can make the deciding difference. Tony LaRussa’s management of his bullpen, Charlie Phillips’ starting rotation decisions for Philadelphia, and Ray Washington’s lineup shifts for the Rangers demonstrate how agility can control the outcome.

Johnson’s version of this was to make savvy ...

Lester admitted Monday that he and other pitchers had an “occasional beer” in the clubhouse during days they were not scheduled to pitch, but on Tuesday WHDH-TV in Boston cited Red Sox employees as saying that Lester, Josh Beckett and John Lackey drank beer in the dugout during games.

The sources said that the trio would leave the dugout around the sixth inning, walk back to the clubhouse and fill cups with Bud Light. They would then return to the dugout and watch the game while drinking ...

I hear the OccupyChi people are now forming an OccupyJackass group.

“It’s tougher than people think, being a one percenter,” Adam Dunn told us this morning. “For starters, you gotta figure out what to do with all that dough, which is stressful.”

The White Sox designated hitter is a bona fide one percenter, and we’re not talking about his batting average. Dunn made $14 million this season, and his contract guarantees him three more years at that rate. “But that’s not net, it’s whachacallit,” ...

Here’s more from McKeon:

“In between innings they’d go to the clubhouse to get a drink or hang out. I said, ‘Hey, I got no rule against going up if you have to go to the bathroom or something, but get back.’ A couple of times I looked down the bench to talk to somebody and they weren’t there. They were in the clubhouse. So I went up and got them out and said, “OK, boys that’s it. We’ll lock the door.”

Florida won the World Series that season and a 23-year-old Beckett was named ...

Talking to a baseball executive recently, I expressed the thought that David Samson, the president of the Florida Marlins, was probably the most disliked executive in baseball. I was thinking about Samson because I had just written about the Marlins’ questionable treatment of their rookie left fielder, Logan Morrison, in demoting him to the minors.

However, my executive friend disagreed. If not Samson, I asked, who? Jeff Wilpon, he said.

Wilpon is the New York Mets’ chief operating ...

Budget cuts, tuition increases and insufficient revenues have left Cal State Fullerton athletics barely clinging on to Big West Division I status.

The NCAA requires a university to maintain seven priority sports and fund them at 80 percent in scholarships in order to be considered Div. I.

The seven sports that are considered priority by the Big West conference out of CSUF’s 15 are men and women’s basketball, men and women’s soccer, baseball, softball and women’s volleyball. CSUF is ...

The latest authoritative Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association annual report on U.S. sports participation, based on about 15,000 individual surveys and 24,000 households surveys, found that about 2.1 million Americans say they competed in wrestling last year—down 44% from 2000.

Other drops in total participants over the past decade even as the U.S. population steadily expanded: slow-pitch softball (-38%), football (-16%), ice hockey (-12%), fast-pitch softball (-11%) and baseball (-8%).

...Read More...

It seems like BBTF should mark this occasion even if the participants in the historic game were underwhelming representatives:

The 200,000th regular-season game in Major League Baseball history was recognized Saturday night at Minute Maid Park in Houston, where the milestone was announced after the Rockies-Astros game became official.

At about 8:45 p.m. ET, Colorado and Houston were tied at 2 after five innings. MLB officials then checked with Elias Sports Bureau for a final authentication, ...

“I’m not a guy that fights with people,” Soriano told ESPNChicago.com. “The way they treat me this year, I don’t like it. The way they have me hit in the No. 7, 5 and 6 spots, I have trouble concentrating on the job hitting in those different spots. But (Mike) Quade is the manager and does his best to try to make the team better.

...

Asked why he didn’t go to Quade earlier in the season to voice his displeasure about his spot in the lineup, Soriano said: “I don’t think I should go to his ...

The Toronto Blue Jays’ latest foray into developing Canadian baseball at the grassroots level comes in the form of a scout school for a handful of coaches from the country’s top amateur teams this weekend at the Rogers Centre.

The two-day session, which kicked off Friday morning, is being led by amateur scouting director Andrew Tinnish and is both selfless and a touch selfish in motivation.

By divulging some of the club’s philosophies on both player evaluation and development, the Blue ...

Reporting from South Williamsport, Pa.—Bases loaded, two outs, a 12-year-old boy digs his foot into the batter’s box and there it is, a moment youngsters from all over the world dream about.

The scene might have taken place in the mind of any kid standing in a backyard or on a sandlot field, but on Sunday it played out before a national television audience and a crowd of 11,950 at Lamade Stadium, youth baseball’s Mecca.

And Nick Pratto, the confident son of a coach, delivered in a very real ...

The Civil War helped facilitate the spread of the “New York game” as soldiers idled away time in camp, prisons, and even the front lines. Just as other social organizations, such as fireman units, enlisted together, so to did some baseball clubs.  On April 5, 1861 the Jefferson Base Ball Club demonstrated their dedication to the Union by erecting a flag pole at their regular Franklin Square playing grounds at 14th and I Streets NW.

Amongst the thousands of New York troops arriving in ...

All the hype in 2001 was about Almonte, but 10 years later, Almonte’s baseball days are over. Meanwhile, two Oceanside players—the two smallest—are in the minor leagues.

Matthew Cerda, Oceanside’s 4-foot-10 catcher, grew almost a foot and became one of the best hitters to come out of Oceanside High School. He was drafted in the fourth round by the Chicago Cubs in 2008, and he’s now an infielder for Class A Daytona in the Florida State League, hitting .282.

Bobby Shore, who was limited to ...

The days of simply playing ball with your friends is over. It’s a different world out there for the preteen athlete, with “Elite” and “Select” commonly turning up in the names of our youth sports teams and leagues. We’re having tryouts for 10-and-under traveling baseball teams, and we’ve got 10-and-under basketball teams traveling the country playing against other fourth-graders at God knows what cost to the parents’ bank accounts and the kids’ psyches. All in the name of … what? Trophies? ...

Not exactly baseball related but I’m guessing I’m not the only one who remembers him as a 12 year old baseball player.

While playing for Trumbull, Conn., Drury pitched a complete-game five-hitter and drove in two runs to lead his hometown team to the 1989 Little League World Series title. It seems only fitting that he announced the end of his athletic career while this year’s Little League World Series is being played in Williamsport, Pa.

LLWS:
The Little League World Series starts tomorrow. Schedule and TV listings are at the link above. If you are filling out a bracket (and if you ARE filling out a bracket, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU THESE KIDS ARE 12 YEARS OLD), it could be difficult this year, as the opening games of the double-elimination tournament seem pretty balanced, with the exception of Venezuela vs. the Netherlands (but then again, maybe young Honkballers are just as Cinderella as adult ones).

AMERICAS:
Cuba’s ...