Screw Lilly…we need the Jeff Ledbetter Fair Play Act of 2013!

College baseball is on pace to set a record for fewest home runs and a 40-year low for scoring and batting average. Now some coaches are calling for a livelier ball to bring the numbers back up.

The switch to toned-down metal bats in 2011 has led to an offensive decline greater than many expected.

“The game isn’t the same,” Clemson coach Jack Leggett said this week. “It’s not as exciting.”

Leggett is leading an effort to adopt ...

While not as big a deal as Rob Parker moving to The Shadow League or Posnanski going to NBC…Ted Berg is now at USA Today! (I’m running out of space)

Former Major League manager Bobby Valentine will continue to diversify his resume when he becomes Sacred Heart University’s new athletic director. According to a report in the Connecticut Post, Valentine will be named successor to retiring A.D. Don Cook on Tuesday.

Baseball fans may best know Valentine from his stints managing the Rangers, Mets ...

For those who think it’s overdone when gay people tell you their coming-out stories, consider what’s been going on with Sean Karson.

Karson, who grew up outside Orlando, Fla., is a junior on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology baseball team. He’s the Engineers’ starting third baseman, and he’s pretty good, too: He compiled a .350 batting average as a sophomore, including a seven-game hitting streak during which he hit .540. He’s a co-captain on this year’s team.

...A ...

California Institute of Technology’s baseball team ended a 228-game losing streak Saturday with a 9-7 victory over Pacifica—the Beavers’ first win in nearly 10 years.
...
It was a non-conference game, though, and Caltech, mainly a Division III participant, has not won a Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference contest since 1988—a span of 463 games.

Sounds like the kind of guys the Astros should be scouting.

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 ...

So what will it mean for the Nationals, now that they’re picking later in the draft than they have before? Well, in the short-term, they won’t be at as much risk of losing their first-round pick for signing a Type A free agent as they would have been under the old system. But it seemed less likely they were going to pursue a big-name free agent this year than they were last year anyway. This has been a team built on scouting and development; Rizzo constructed his entire front office around the ...

Burrell was elected into the University of Miami Hall of Fame in 2008 and was followed two seasons later by Aubrey Huff(notes) and Jason Michaels(notes). Huff later credited Pat with helping him overcome his shyness by saying “I broke out of my shell at the University of Miami when I got around guys like Burrell.”

How did Burrell help? Well, here’s one story Huff has told:

  “After two weeks at Miami, I wanted to go home [...] So my mom flies out, trying to convince me to stay. I was living ...

Other penalties, some self-imposed by ASU in a case under investigation since January 2008, include scholarship reductions, vacating wins and the 2007 Pac-10 title, coaching limitations during practice and restricted recruiting.

...

ASU continues to dispute that some players being minimally overpaid for working in the Sandlot program, created by former coach Pat Murphy to promote youth baseball, and that certain work by student managers including throwing batting practice are major ...

Good stuff from Alan Schwarz…including a Father Gabe Costa sighting!

Watching a baseball telecast may not be the best way to learn basic probability.

Let’s say Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees and his .313 career batting average stride to the plate after 20 straight at-bats without a hit. Sports Announcer No. 1 will invariably discuss how Jeter is in a slump, suggesting that, because of some problem either physical or mental, his chance of getting a hit is somewhere less than his usual ...

Pittsburgh Press, November 1, 1911:

JAMES THORPE, OF CARLISLE, GREAT ALL-ROUND ATHLETE

Football this season has brought into the public eye a young Indian student at the Carlisle school, who promises to become the greatest athlete the world has ever seen.
...

James Thorpe has broken all traditions by approaching world records in so many lines of activity that physical trainers are at a loss to account for his skillful feats of strength and endurance.

Puh-leeze. Greatest athlete the world has ...

Didn’t the Cardinals have Jordan Etier high on their draft chart?

Jordan Etier, an infielder with the University of Texas Longhorns baseball team, was arrested Saturday afternoon and charged with two misdemeanors: Evading Arrest and Possession of Marijuana (less than 2 oz.).

According to a police affidavit, a person witnessed two men urinating beneath a pedestrian bridge on the 1800 block of Trinity Street and told a nearby police officer.

When the officer approached the two, Etier took off ...

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 ...

Probably by the ACC.

The New Mexico State University baseball team says its “hitter” mannequin has been stolen.

NMSU announced Tuesday that the team reported the mannequin stolen after a player noticed that it was missing.

The six-foot tall black mannequin wearing a gray New York Yankee uniform is modeled after a baseball player holding a bat and standing at home plate. The equipment, paired with a “catcher” mannequin that was not taken, is used for pitching practice.

The hitter mannequin ...

Former LSU baseball player Terry Belle, twin brother of former Tiger Albert “Joey” [Belle] died in a car accident last Saturday in Paradise Valley, Ariz.

Belle, 45, earned three letters from 1985-88 and played on LSU’s first two College World Series teams. He batted .276 in 135 career games with 11 homers and 65 RBI.

Belle’s two children were in the car with him at the time of the accident, but were apparently unharmed. RIP.

Catching up with the traceable Joel Horlen.

Horlen, now 74, is believed to be the only person to play on teams that won the Pony League World Series, the College World Series and the major league World Series.

We had a good pitching staff. Led the league in four or five different categories. I still didn’t get pitcher of the year award.

I faced a bunch of good hitters. Tony Oliva won the batting title every year. That’s about the only guy I can remember that I really didn’t like facing. I ...

It’s B.J. Wallace.

Billy Lyle “BJ” Wallace Jr., 40, and Amber Sheree McKenzie, 29, were being held in Baldwin County Corrections Center as of Wednesday, both charged with first-degree manufacturing of a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Wallace, a Monroeville native, pitched for the U.S. team in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, and the Montreal Expos picked him third in that year’s amateur draft, signing the left-hander ...

Willson, a power-hitting, left-handed hitter, will report to Toronto’s minor-league complex in Dunedin, Fla., at the end of the spring semester. Willson can play either first base or the corner outfield spots.

As part of his deal, Willson received a signing bonus that will be spread over three years, which allows him the flexibility to pursue a football career after college, if he chooses.

The baseball contract will not affect Willson’s remaining two years’ football eligibility.

...

The NCAA has given final approval for the use of instant replay to review certain calls at the 2012 College World Series.

Reviewable plays would be limited to deciding if an apparent home run is fair or foul, whether a batted ball left the playing field for a home run or a ground-rule double, or whether there is fan interference on apparent home runs.

The NCAA Baseball Rules Committee proposed the rule, and it was approved Thursday by the Playing Rules Oversight Panel.

Instant replay won’t ...

Boston youth resist The Charm of the Highway Strip and don’t Get Lost on The Wayward Bus en route to The House of Tomorrow.

Yogi Berra once said you can’t think and hit at the same time.

However, the New York Yankees legend never attended the MIT Science of Baseball program. It encourages eighth- and ninth-grade inner-city boys to learn baseball-related math and physics each morning and then apply those principles on the ballfield in the afternoon.

[...]

Half of the 30 students are poor ...