.... but were too poor to ask. (Hint: try to be a Rockies fan who loves going to midweek games against the Mariners in May or September.)

The first pitches have been thrown, and Rick Ankiel is on pace to hit 162 home runs this season. Time to buy some baseball tickets. To help you out, we’ve analyzed ticket prices for every regular season Major League Baseball game in 2012, using data from SeatGeek, which tracks prices on secondary markets like StubHub. The SeatGeek data provides a more ...

In baseball, the name “Bob” has gone from extremely common to a marginal curiosity and nexus of confusion.

There was one active MLB Bob last year, Bobby Abreu, whose given name is “Bob” but goes by “Bobby”. In 2010 there were two - Abreu, and Bob Howry, whose given name is “Bobby” but goes by “Bob”. In 2009 we also had Bob McCrory.

In the future, will “Bob” be as unheard-of for baseball players as “Dick”? Can Bob Stumpo restore glory to this appellation? ...Read More...

Dirt gets dug!

It turns out that Fenway dirt isn’t dirt at all. In the infield, it’s a substance called “Turface,” a brick-red clay material that Henry had ordered to match the color of the crushed brick that makes up the warning track in the outfield. I brought this up at a meeting, and we landed on the idea of giving away little plastic bags of the stuff, labeling it authentic Fenway Park infield dirt. “Dirt,” Lucchino said, twisting up his face. “We’re going to give our fans ...

Apparently “Craig” only needs a first name, like Cher, Madonna or Snooki.

This morning, Craig [Calcaterra] wrote a couple of compelling Hall of Fame-related posts.

In the first, he noted that attendance at the Museum is way, way down: more than 20 percent just from 2007 through 2011… In the second, Craig gave some Calcaterrian whatfor and whatnot to three Chicagoland Hall of Fame voters who have (again) not voted for Jeff Bagwell because of suspicions that he used performance-enhancing drugs ...

You’ve twenty minutes; go!

My excerpting here is felonious to the Phelon part.

If you have numerous hours/days to kill, I heartily recommend going over to the Baseball Magazine Archives (The wonderful LA84 Foundation has many of the magazines from 1908 to 1920) and just typing in any keyword at all.

I first went over the to those archives because of a story that appeared on Fangraphs a few weeks ago with the nerd-friendly title, “Was wOBA actually invented nearly 100 years ago?” Fangraphs’ author Sam Menzin refers to a ...

Posted on behalf of Scott Fischthal and Neal Traven.

SABR invites all members to present their research findings to their colleagues attending SABR42 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Oral presentations are expected to last 20 minutes, followed by a five minute question-and-answer period.  Posters will be presented, with the author on-hand to discuss the work, during a poster session of 90 or so minutes, and will probably remain on display throughout the convention. Abstracts covering all aspects of ...

And here I thought Richard Meltzer and Zoo World had folded up their giant DuPont plastic circus tent.

David Roth: I wish William Friedkin would make a gritty, rainy-looking movie about the greenie-soaked MLB clubhouses of the 1970s. Gene Hackman wearing a hat and a cheap suit with Sanka stains on it. Interrogating Bake McBride about something.

David Raposa: To Live and Die in Three Rivers Stadium.

David Roth: Roy Schneider is miscast as John Candelaria, but does his best.

David Raposa: ...

Milwaukee Journal, December 20, 1911:

Mrs. Helen Hathaway Britton, owner of the St. Louis Cardinals, believes that every woman should be a baseball fan.
...
If women went to the ball game more, advises Mrs. Britton, instead of sitting home wondering what her next door neighbor is going to wear at Mrs. So and So’s theater party, she would find better contentment.  Again, she would find companionship with her husband more agreeable.  Also it would help to keep hubby home nights, for he would then ...

Toledo News-Bee, December 14, 1911:

During the world’s series between the Giants and Athletics, Billy Gould, a vaudeville artist, was working at a New York theater. Billy was anxious to keep tab on the game and asked an English actor to run out and get the score. The Britisher came back and said:  “It’s now 100,000 to 30 in favor of the Giants.”
...
“Put it down in black and white,” bawled Gould, and the Englishman produced the following figures:
New York 100 000
Philadelphia 000 030

A fun ...

I haven’t been this riveted to a TV show since Roy Thinnes got a severe pinky cramp and had to hide it during a whole The Invaders episode!

The resistance from—I guess you could call it the long-established media, since mainstream applies to the internet these days—seems to be fading. Writers such as Keith Law or Dave Cameron at Fangraphs have BBWAA membership, which is a wonderful, progressive development. But there’s still that challenge of making sabermetrics accessible to the those who are ...

Uh-oh…don’t let Danny Peary see this.

45-Tie. Harold Baines, 28 votes (Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? 5 yes, 26 no): Guys like Baines illustrated an interesting point for this year’s project, earning far more votes by and large than many of the 19th century greats on the ballot, but with a much lower percentage of their voters saying they belonged in the Hall of Fame. Certainly, I doubt too many people will cry foul about this over Baines, a very good designated hitter for much of his ...

Even long lost members of Spinks family look to the heavens for an answer!

The memory was brought to mind by a piece by Samir Husni, aka “Mr. Magazine” about TSN‘s decision to move from a bi-weekly to a monthly publication. He’s mostly concerned with the ethics of subscription fulfillment (or the lack thereof) as the magazine undergoes the transition. Seems TSN is trying to shortchange their readers by cutting back on the remainder of issues they’re allowing based on how much of ...

Bear McCreary for a moment here…Eureka!

To get an idea on the effects of tension, try this quick experiment.  Sit down at a table and place your dominant arm on the table in front of you so that the arm from the elbow to the finger tips is resting on the table.  The palm should be facing down but not completely flat on the table.  Just relaxed.  Now tense up all the muscles in your forearm, wrist, hand, and fingers at once and while doing so, try to quickly tap your finger tips on the table.  ...

The Baltimore Orioles are close to officially naming Dan Duquette as their next general manager, two sources confirmed Saturday.

Duquette, formerly a GM for the Montreal Expos and Boston Red Sox, interviewed in Baltimore Friday and was traveling to Baltimore Saturday to finalize a contract.

The twilight’s last gleaming?

Phew! I haven’t seen this much over-thinking since…okay, since whenever the Cardinals last played.

What interests us is whether players succeed or fail, whether they achieve or get lucky. The judgment that a ball is a strike is, really, the judgment that a pitcher delivered a a pitch that the batter ought to have hit. This is not so much a judgment about where the pitch was located, as it is a judgment about whether the pitcher or the batter deserves credit. It is, in the original sense of the ...

Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, October 27, 1961:

Joe Cambria, a baseball scout who has signed more than 500 youngsters to professional contracts, wishes he had latched on to just one more.
...

Fidel Castro, a right-handed pitcher who since has been accused of left-handed political leanings, was rejected by Cambria in the mid-1940s.

“Castro had a good curve ball, but not much of a fast ball” Cambria told Bill Tanton of the Baltimore Evening Sun.

In retrospect, as a fringy right-handed soft tosser, ...

I cannot text you with a drink in my hand, eh?

Here’s what we know happened. In the eighth inning, with the score tied, Tony La Russa picked up the phone and asked for Marc Rzepczynski to begin warming up. But here’s where it gets tricky. That’s all bullpen coach Derek Lilliquist heard. But La Russa would say afterward that what he actually SAID was that to get Rzepczynski AND Jason Motte working… he then noticed that only Rzepczynski was warming up. He then picked up the phone and called ...

Only a fantasy article, but I wish I could be the Assistant Pig-Keeper…

The National Fantasy Baseball Championship, a contest paying a top prize of $100,000, draws an elite collection of contestants — computer geniuses, deep-pocketed stockbrokers and money managers, maybe the odd young man or woman looking to be the next Billy Beane or Theo Epstein.

But the contest over the years has produced only one two-time champion: Lindy Hinkelman, a 59-year-old pig farmer from Greencreek, Idaho.

...

Since 1986, the DH World Series rule has been tied to home park. When the game is in an American League park, they use the DH. When it is in a National League park, pitchers hit for themselves.

Brilliant Tweeter CashMoneyMark asked an interesting question: From what we can see in the limited number of games which league has had the advantage?... There is no definitive answer to this, I think, because of the small sample size mentioned above. But it seems to me—and this is surprising to me—that ...

New York Times, October 19, 1911:

His mind unbalanced as a result of the feverish interest displayed in the outcome of the Giant-Athletic contract while watching the bulletin board returns here yesterday, Allen McGyre, 14 years old…disappeared from his home last night.
...

Shortly after the result of the eleventh inning was posted the boy left the bulletin board downcast, and later was found lying across a trolley track by E.H. Low, who took him home.

When Edgar Renteria ended the ‘97 World ...

BBTF is now a worthy topic for pop culture quizbowl. The entire tournament is here.

18. Answer the following related to various running jokes at the Baseball ThinkFactory website, for 10 points each:
[10] One recurring poster uses this name of the protagonist from Ring Lardner’s You Know Me Al. The poster imitates this character’s semi-literate style to comment on the baseball issues of the day.
[10] A hilarious running joke involved the phrase, “Sure, I’d listen if [blank] called,” ...

“F———goat,” comedian and Cubs fan Jeff Garlin is saying, and I must admit that the quotes that follow are not as precise as I might like because it’s hard to take notes when Diet Coke is spurting out of your nose. “A goat? OK, let’s get something straight. It is not a curse to not want a goat at a baseball game, all right? That is not a curse… You know, this was a time when people dressed up. I mean nobody would let a goat into a game now, and people dress like pigs. Back then people wore suits ...

Many of you know how much I hate TLR’s in-game managing.  I think he is atrocious and today he did not disappoint.  I said before the game started to my son and someone I know in the Cards front office that Tony would do something dumb just to show how “smart” he is.  It didn’t take long.  Even before the game, he inserted Nick Punto into the lineup in place of John Jay. Now Punto is probably the better defender than Schumaker at second, but Punto has no bat whatsoever.  My sim ...

I have a soft spot for commercials endlessly repeated during the playoffs.  Go fig.

Phil Jackson Audi commercial: This is actually THE BEST commercial in the playoffs, and might be the best sports-commercial performance since the heyday of Peyton Manning… Jackson is in a restaurant, walking by a chef who is yelling at one of his employees.

Chef [to Jackson]: “These people, huh?”
Jackson: “You know, I’ve found that anger is the enemy of instruction.”
Chef [who does not recognize ...