At Hardball Talk, Calcaterra said of this B-Pro guest piece by former journeyman pitcher Eric Knott:

We should spill way less ink about who we think “the real Home Run King” is — as if that matters — and think way harder about those frequent minor league suspensions and what they mean to the people who are faced with the choice to take dangerous drugs or wind up out of baseball.

Against that backdrop is this excellent column from Eric Knott. Knott pitched 11 years in the minors and ...

“Felons and Melons” was better.

it looks like TLC will not be airing a second season of Pete Rose’s reality show, “Pete Rose: Hits & Mrs.”

John Kiesewetter, who writes about television for the Cincinnati Enquirer, notes that TLC aired the final two episodes of the first season on a Sunday morning and shifted it to a channel called Destination America… a representative for TLC told Kiesewetter that there are no plans to air repeats of the first season.

Former Los Angeles Dodger Milton Bradley was charged today with 13 counts related to several alleged attacks on his estranged wife, and could get up to 13 years behind bars ... TMZ has learned.

The City Attorney’s Office has filed charges against Bradley stemming from 5 different incidents. The charges break down like this: 4 counts of spousal battery, 4 counts of criminal threats, 2 counts of assault with a deadly weapon, 2 counts of vandalism and 1 count of dissuading a witness from ...

Years before Alicia Keys made it popular to set people on FI-YUR!, there was Uggie:

Former Major League relief pitcher Ugueth Urbina, who last pitched in the majors in 2005 with the Phillies, was released from a Venezuelan prison after serving seven years of a 14-year sentence for attempted murder, according to multiple Spanish-language media outlets.

Months after his mother, Maura Josefina Villareal, was rescued by an elite Venezuelan anti-kidnapping unit in 2005, following a harrowing ...

“Mr. Walker is not a suspect…We don’t know if the person was killed at the site or if his body was dumped there.”

CBCSports.ca: Who’s more upset about your low vote total in the second year of your 15 years of eligibility: you or your family, friends and former teammates with Colorado and Montreal?

LW: I don’t think it bothers me a lot. Why am I going to get my feathers all ruffled over something that’s out of my control? Obviously, it would be an amazing honour.

Some people have pointed ...

OH NO, EXPO!

Last season, Orlando Cabrera batted .238 with the Indians and Giants, posting a 61 OPS+. The season before that, he posted a 76 OPS+. The season before that, he posted an 85 OPS+. Orlando Cabrera has been declining, and just turned 37 years old. As a free agent, Cabrera didn’t drum up much interest, which I’m guessing is why he’s intending to hang ‘em up. Enrique Rojas:

  “Orlando Cabrera to retire from baseball, he said in Colombia radio station. Thanks for memories!”

Cabrera ...

Bartolo Colon has agreed to a deal with an unknown club reports Bob Nightengale of USA Today (on Twitter). The right-hander wouldn’t divulge the team because he has not yet passed his physical.

Pretty sure it’s either the All-Stars or the Champs.

Keri, Burley, Sager and Tango. Nothing to see here, just move along. (gulp)

Now, for the many borderliners I rejected:

...Tim Raines. My first instinct was to vote for Raines, who ranks fifth all-time in steals with 808.

Unlike saves, steals have been been meaningful for 140 years. Raines had six straight 70-steal seasons.

He had a cocaine problem early in his career. I could get past that.

Raines played 23 years. I don’t think that would have happened had he not kicked the habit - and if ...

Jaffe’s latest HOF biz…

The future for Tim Raines

Despite his lackluster ballot debut, my hunch is that Raines will go into Cooperstown eventually. After debuting with 24 percent in 2008, he sprang up to 38 percent in 2011, and he’s a very good bet to rise up much more this year (as should all the backlog).

Furthermore, down the road Raines will be helped because he’ll have a case like no one else.

The ballot looks like it will be littered with powerful sluggers and some good ...

I get my Naval Base Percentage from San Diego!

A year after seeing his five-year stint as Mets general manager end with a thud, Omar Minaya is back in the baseball biz after being hired by the San Diego Padres to an undisclosed front office position.

The move, first reported by SI.com, will most likely see Minaya in an advisory role to Padres GM Josh Byrnes and deal with scouting – particularly in Latin America – and trades.

Minaya, 53, who was fired by the Mets in October 2010, was the ...

Well, we know where he learned obp from…ops, I’m not quite sure.

With the Red Sox considering changes in baseball operations, including in international scouting, is it possible Omar Minaya could be added to the staff? According to a source, the Sox may be interested in Minaya for a position in the organization.

...Minaya was appointed GM of the Mets on Sept. 30, 2004, a position he held until the end of the 2010 season, when he was let go with two years remaining on his contract.  He was not ...

Charlie Lea...RIP.

Former major league pitcher Charlie Lea, a star at Kingsbury High and then-Memphis State University before embarking on a successful pro career, was found dead in his Collierville home Friday. He was 54.

Collierville Police Chief Larry Goodwin said Lea died of a suspected heart attack.

Winner of 62 games in an eight-year major league career that ended with the Minnesota Twins in 1988, Lea pitched a no-hitter for the Montreal Expos against the San Francisco Giants in 1981, ...

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?

Remembering Mickey Scott...

Scott continued to live in Binghamton after his career. He opened a bar, called “Mickey’s Mound,” which I remember driving by when I was a teenager, having no idea that it was Mickey SCOTT’s Mound. I wonder how the conversation would have went if I asked my folks if we could just pop into a bar to see if a former major leaguer was there. (Mickey’s Mound is now The Brass Lantern Tavern).

Scott pitched for a Yankees farm team, the Binghamton Triplets, during the ...

In contrast, consider Ron Hunt. A second baseman during the expansion era, Hunt made a couple All Star games but otherwise made little dent in baseball history, except in being hit by pitches. Ron Hunt was hit 50 times in 1971, which destroyed the previous record by a whopping 19. That number is made more interesting to me by Hunt’s 58 walks and his 41 strikeouts. He was hit more often than he struck out! That’s an incredibly rare, if not, unprecedented achievement over a full season. ...

On deck in the Dodgers’ bankruptcy case: the Florida Marlins?

Could be, if Frank McCourt gets his way. As the bankruptcy proceedings increasingly resemble a grudge match cloaked in legal briefs, with Bud Selig threatening to banish the Dodgers from the league in order to rid it of McCourt, the Dodgers’ owner might respond by trying to take down the commissioner.

The Marlins could be in the collateral damage.

In July, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross wrote of what he called “the underlying ...

The Dunedin Sound to The Sound of Eden Done…

For most of his life, my brother believed that there was a direct correlation between the Montreal Expos’ fortunes and his own. (Given my brother’s occasional happiness and success, the theory was dubious from the start, and it would finally be disproved in 2004 when the Expos were given a name-change and moved to Washington and he was not.) In 1981, the Expos made the playoffs for the first and only time in franchise history, but were defeated by ...

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 ...

22 years ago today:

                1  2  3   4  5  6   7  8  9  10 11 12  13 14 15  16 17 18  19 20 21  22    R  H  E
                -  -  -   -  -  -   -  -  -   -  -  -   -  -  -   -  -  -   -  -  -   -    -  -  -
Dodgers         0  0  0   0  0  0   0  0  0   0  0  0   0  0  0   0  0  0   0  0  0   1    1 20  1
Expos           0  0  0   0  0  0   0  0  0   0  0  0   0  0  0   0  0  0   0  0  0   0    0 13  1

AP via Pittsburgh Post Gazette, August 25, 1989:

The score was 0-0 in the top of ...

Where even the Montreal Brochure gets cut short…

MLB would have difficulty justifying the location of a franchise in a city that would require revenue sharing subsidies from the beginning. A new franchise would need to be a contributor to revenue-sharing, not a recipient. Given our levels of disposable income and wealth in Montreal, and the knowledge that the Toronto Blue Jays receive significant revenue-sharing support, the bar would be set very high for potential Montreal investors looking ...

Keri est toujours sur le qui-vive.

Playing host to ALS Quebec’s sixth annual Celebrity Softball Game on Saturday, Municipal Stadium in Quebec City - home to the independent Can-Am League’s Quebec Capitales - couldn’t have been a more ideal setting. On hand to lend their support for the cause were former Expos Tim Raines, Pedro Martinez, Moises Alou and Denis Boucher. Former Canadiens captain Vincent Damphousse, a spokesperson for ALS Quebec, also suited up for the game.

This marked the first ...

Wadda ride with Bill Lee! More fun than a mesced-up Mint 400 off-road motorbike race!

As Bill Lee often says, it’s about the journey, not the destination. And the crowning achievement of the former Expos pitcher’s rather eventful journey may very well be a planned feature film about his life.

Have Glove, will Travel is scheduled to start shooting next year. Filmmaker Brett Rapkin has already written the script, adapted from two Lee biographies.

This week, Rapkin and Lee, along with Lee’s ...

1.  Harry Frazee, Red Sox

Baseball has always been a business, as evidenced by Frazee’s tenure as owner of the Sox. He bought the team for $400,000 in 1917 and sold it for $1.5 million in 1923, peddling his best players in the meantime to finance his theatrical investments. His favorite trade partner was the Yankees, who received Carl Mays, Herb Pennock, Everett Scott, and infamously, Babe Ruth. After Ruth’s departure in 1919, the team wouldn’t reach .500 again until 1934, while the ...