These pics of the greatest Mazzone in Oriole history should hook you.

Reader Bruce Menard recently clued me in regarding a chapter from fairly recent MLB history that I hadn’t been aware of. It involves a guy named Jay Mazzone, who worked as a batboy for the Orioles in the late 1960s. The unusual thing about Mazzone is that he’d lost his hands when he was two years old after his snow suit caught on fire, so he used metal hooks in lieu of fingers. This certainly made him an unusual sight on ...

Later today, from Baseball’s Winter meetings in Nashville, the Hall will release the name of the 13th Ford Frick Award winner who will join past honorees including legends Red Barber, Vin Scully, Mel Allen, Curt Gowdy, Ernie Harwell and Joe Garagiola.  Last years recipient was Tim McCarver.  Unfortunately, today is also the day that Haulsofshame.com releases its findings in an on-going investigation into the multi-million dollar thefts of baseball artifacts and documents from the National ...

Will Drinkwater
1911, 1913, minor leagues

A hospital, 1891.

MOTHER. Now that’s a New Year’s resolution I plan to keep!
NURSE. Ma’am, that’s a birth certificate.
MOTHER. Oh, whoops. Have erasers been invented yet?
NURSE. No.
MOTHER. Well, what do you do if you need to erase something?
NURSE. You contract smallpox.
MOTHER. What?
NURSE. [doffs stovepipe hat, rides away on penny-farthing bicycle]

Hey
1909, minor leagues

lol hey man what’s up

Ten Million
1911 through 1914, minor ...

In the front offices of major league clubs, the statistics-vs.-scouts debate ended long ago. No club today could imagine winning without tapping the resources of the increasingly sophisticated statistical tools available as well as the experience of scouts trained to look at a kid today and project his tomorrows.

Yet that debate was very much alive in 2003, sparked by the book “Moneyball,” and by author Michael Lewis’ portrayal of how Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane and assistant ...

When I published this classic in The Armchair Book of Baseball in 1985, I prefaced it by writing:

This classic assault on sense and syntax is generally associated with Abbott and Costello, who, having performed it in the 1945 film Naughty Nineties, are presumed to have written it. They didn’t. Who did? Naturally.

I went on to say that the skit was of anonymous authorship, as were some 2,000 other stock burlesque bits in Abbott and Costello’s repertoire. Afterwards, however, I learned that ...

The nerds are different than you and me…

I think I know now how Bilbo Baggins must have felt in Tolkien’s “The Hobbit.” My companions and I have set out on our own mountainous journey to try to attain a treasure.

The treasure in our case is not a pile of gold guarded by a dragon, but rather the gratification that comes with reaching the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Instead of facing trolls and fighting goblins, we are battling steep climbs and the fatigue that accompanies seven- to ...

Compare and contrast.

As long as he’s been on the ballot, I’ve been voting for JACK MORRIS, and in fact I’ve often tried to vote for him twice…

Perhaps now is the right point to mention my write-in vote for CARL YATREMSKY. Every year I look for his name on the ballot, and it’s never there, and it’s just not right!... Heck, he’s so famous, they even named my great-granddaughter’s birth control pills after him. If that doesn’t count for integrity, I don’t know what does…

LARRY ...

Jason Brannon’s about to go HAM!

SLG: Slüg. It’s Scandinavian. Slüg…

WAR: This has two different pronunciations, depending on which version of WAR you’re referring to. FanGraphs’ WAR is pronounced like the Franco-Prussian War, while the Baseball Reference version is like the War of 1812. See the difference? Neither does anyone else.

FIP: Remember that pointy weapon from the X-Files? You know, the one they used to stab aliens in the back of the neck, because that’s the only way to ...

Baseball star Alex Rodriguez may well be stacked.

But he has some hot competition in the form of his new girlfriend Torrie Wilson.

As a former WWE champ, 36-year-old Torrie may well be able to give Yankees slugger A-Rod a run for his money in the fitness stakes.

Last night Rodriguez - who recently split from Hollywood star Cameron Diaz - escorted his lady to watch the LA Lakers.

The sports star, also 36, shared courtside kisses with Torrie at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

Both A-Rod ...

Are we sure this wasn’t just Animal Services seeing this?

The Miami Marlins really wanted left-handed pitcher Mark Buehrle.

But a member of his family isn’t welcome in Miami-Dade County.

Eighteen-month-old Slater Buehrle is an American Staffordshire Terrier — a type of pit bull — and keeping one is illegal in Miami-Dade…

Buehrle, 32, said that “if it came down to not finding a house’’ where all his canines could live, he might not have signed with the Marlins, “but I knew ...

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 ...

Creative Commons by Gregg Regula

Happy New Year, BBTF!

All images are Creative Commons by Keith Allison (who I used yesterday, but the guy is probably the best photographer on flickr who puts his stuff up under Creative Commons)

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: ...

Caption this image:

Creative Commons by Keith Allison

Greg Spira, fellow Primate and long-time friend to many of us, passed away today. Will pass along details as I get them.

Creative Commons by Paul Hadsall

For the final days of 2011, a look at some of the best (creative commons licensed) photos on Flickr.

Today’s photo is of a rocket (not sure of what, probably a satellite) going through the sky during a early March night… and visible from the spring training stadium of the Washington Nationals. Talk about local color.

Creative Commons license, photo by tbridge.

There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will the ballot be stuffed up?

Edgar Martinez – Called ‘gar’ after the fish that has lurked in reed lined waters still and waiting since there were fish and waters and lesser animals condemned to a perdition life of preydom and chased by higher forms make thinbodied and needleteethed by time or Godhand and touched with the breath of life. Called that by the denizens of a rain-soaked city not because he was thin ...

Major league owners are famously reluctant to release franchise-specific financial information. However, Forbes estimates that the value of the Red Sox has climbed from about $500 million in 2002 to $900 million in 2011 — an impressive 7% annual growth.

Companies seeking to revitalize seemingly stagnant businesses can take three lessons from the Red Sox success:

1. Question orthodoxy. Of course you can’t put people on top of the Green Monster. Or host a hockey game in Fenway. Or can you?

...

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s top investigative reporter, Nancy Phillips, has written a story containing what we’re told are allegations of child molestation against sportswriter Bill Conlin, a longtime columnist at the rival Daily News. Conlin resigned just moments ago, according to a source at the Daily News.

Conlin, who turns 78 this May, won the Ford C. Frick Award last May. The story supposedly will drop soon (the newspapers publish under a joint-operating agreement, sharing some resources ...

Illin worse than Kim Jong the Second!

Of course, the picture is complicated. The heavy hitting of the late-nineties has since been attributed to performance enhancing drugs and the first decade of the new century has seen a marked decrease in offensive output. Then again, drug testing began in 2003, and the strike zone was effectively expanded in 2001—both also important factors affecting batters.

In a perverse sense, warmer and wetter climates are performance enhancers brought on by ...

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 ...

A hero, but he’s no Nomar.

‘I pulled out of the entrance (of his neighborhood) and I saw this car upside down and smoking. I kind of saw a hand pulling at the window,’’ he said.

“I looked at my wife and my wife’s like, ‘Go help! Just go!’’

Buck ran to the overturned car and went to work with two other Good Samaritans.

Buck and a bus driver who stopped to give assistance were able to help the car’s driver crawl out of a window of the upside-down car. Buck and another man ...

According to Spencer Fordin of MLB.com, Legendary Pictures announced yesterday that Harrison Ford will play Hall of Fame Dodgers’ executive Branch Rickey in a biopic about Jackie Robinson.

Many prominent actors have been mentioned for the role of Rickey over the years, including Robert Redford this past April, but Ford was apparently their top choice. His work in “Cowboys and Aliens” probably put him over the top.

As for Robinson, he’ll be played by the relatively unknown Chadwick ...