Forbes: Baseball and the Marriage Premium

According to OPS, the secret ingredient is… love??  Who’s been screwing with this thing???

In honor of the World Series, which starts tonight*, I dug out a research paper I’ve been sitting on for a while.

The paper, ‘Productivity, Wages, and Marriage: The Case of Major League Baseball‘ looks at the wages of baseball players and identifies a 16% gap between the wages of married players and unmarried players.

Economists have been documenting the marriage premium – the income boost ...

S&P LCD: Dodgers’ core legal issues remain intact, despite McCourt’s new pact

The showdown begins on Halloween! LCD is a pay site but I believe this article is free for nonsubscribers. Their coverage of bankruptcy issues is first-rate.

The divorce settlement announced earlier this week by Frank McCourt, owner of the L.A. Dodgers, and his estranged wife Jamie may lift the spirits of Dodgers’ fans more interested in baseball than judicial proceedings, but it is not likely to have much of a direct impact on the specific legal disputes facing the company in bankruptcy ...

ESPN: Dirk Nowitzki denied throwing out first pitch

Uwe Blab, Blab, Blab.

The Texas Rangers nominated Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki to throw out a first pitch before one of their home games in the World Series, but sources with knowledge of the team’s plans say that the recommendation has been nixed by Major League Baseball.

Unlike regular-season games, all first-pitch assignments in the World Series have to be approved from a list of candidates by the league office.

Sources told ESPNDallas.com that—with the NBA in the midst of a ...

Baseball America: 2011 Draft Report Card Chat With Jim Callis and John Manuel

Nick (Long Island): Bradley Marquez sounds like the 2nd coming of Jose Reyes. Provided he sticks with baseball, will he hit enough to play everyday and what position do you see him playing?

Jim Callis: Marquez does draw those Reyes comparisons, though he ultimately may be more of a center fielder than a shortstop. He has the tools to hit, but he’s going to lose some at-bats while playing football at Texas Tech.

Chuck (Wichita): How does Bubba Starling compare to Mike Trout in terms of ...

Selig to retire to Madison to write memoirs on UW campus

Oh, the Humanities!

Allan H. “Bud” Selig has charmed the UW-Madison history department, paid a million-plus for a professor to teach the history of sports and had scholarships created in his honor. His new office in the Humanities Building is cozy and modest. The effect of his presence will be the opposite.

No word on if the History Department is threatening to move out of state unless they get a new building.

WSJ: Futterman: ‘LaRussaball’ Conquers All

This post-season has marked the full flowering of a form of baseball that’s best described as LaRussaball—a philosophy that emphasizes the systematic and frequent (some would say overzealous) use of a team’s relief pitchers. It’s a style of baseball that makes the role of the pitcher who starts the game less important while it elevates the profile and stature of the pitching specialists who come out of the bullpen to quell rallies in the later innings.

[...]

Coming into this World Series, ...

The Atlantic: Inside Baseball: The Boston Red Sox and Sports Journalism

So now the world knows what beat reporters evidently have long known: that [Terry] Francona is going through a divorce. So what? I don’t think anything less of Francona for that. But I do think less of all the reporters who kept that fact hidden from me all season why I was wondering why Francona seemed so helpless at the beginning and end of the season. What did all these reporters know and when did they know it?

Meanwhile, if I were a Red Sox season ticket holder, you’re damn right I would ...

The Atlantic: Rustbelt Baseball Fans: A Little Less Miserable?

Looks like I could use some company….

Over the past four decades, during which their economies were ravaged by deindustrialization, these three Rustbelt metros combined for just three World Series Championships—two for St, Louis and one for Detroit.  For the most part, the World Series has been a bi-coastal affair during this time, with just three metros—New York, L.A. and the Bay Area (San Francisco-Oakland)—accounting for 16 out of the past 40 crowns. The Rustbelt has fared somewhat ...

Sherman: Sabathia talks with Yankees could push limits

You don’t pull no punches, but you don’t push River Avenue. And then there’s this…

On open market, C.J. Wilson can’t play the ace card

The Yankees are not the only team showing a lack of fervor for C.J. Wilson, though he has gone 31-15 with a 3.14 ERA the last two years and is left-handed. In supply and demand, this should make Wilson the top free-agent starter on the market — and once the bidding begins, all the talk of caution usually vanishes.

But I have yet to find a baseball ...

Sports News Baseball: Darvish ready for major league challenge

TOKYO (Kyodo)—The Yu Darvish sweepstakes are set to begin.

Nippon Ham Fighters ace Darvish, long said to be Japanese baseball’s next biggest export to the majors, is ready to make a move stateside through the posting system this offseason, Kyodo News learned through several sources on Tuesday.

The 25-year-old Darvish, the highest paid player in Japanese baseball at an estimated 500 million yen per season, is expected to officially ask the Fighters to put him up for bidding after the ...

Boswell: Texas Rangers show blueprint for hitting homers in a football town

Filip Filipovi?tory is ours!

Now, with the 40th anniversary of Bob Short’s escape in the rearview mirror, it’s time to go all the way and let the last of the bygones be gone.

How times change. The Rangers are not only the Series favorite over the miraculous Cardinals — “Rangers in six” is the chalk pick and mine, too — the Texas franchise has become a fine team-building model for other clubs from prosperous cities that are football crazy but not yet addicted to baseball.

Now, ...

WORLD SERIES Game 1 CHATTER

Rangers (C.J. Wilson) at St. Louis (Chris Carpenter). 8:05. FOX.

4 to 7 games to glory.

Morrissey: Baseball GMs becoming celebrities

Morrissey: Something is squeezing my skullduggery!

With baseball turning more and more into a numbers game, Epstein has become a superstar among those who have a difficult time separating their love of baseball from their love of math.

And that cultural phenomenon partly can be explained by another one: fantasy baseball leagues.

Everyone thinks he’s a GM now. Everyone thinks he can put together a winning team, provided he has the right statistics to help him make an accurate evaluation of ...

Doc Gooden: I missed ‘86 parade in drug haze

Hey Barra…here’s one of those written tributes to the 1986 Mets you were looking for.

Gooden, in an interview with ESPN, said he used drugs at a team party shortly after the Mets won Game 7 against the Red Sox and wound up leaving the party and eventually missing the parade. The team’s original excuse, that Gooden simply overslept, was tossed aside years ago.

“When the party started winding down, for myself, a lot of times I get to a certain point of using drugs, the paranoia sticks in,” ...

Whitey Herzog forecasts a ‘strange, strange Series’

Whitey remembers…and that’s a good thing. (well…except for the Joe Lovitto being a good young player jazz)

Herzog also has a current link with the Rangers in team president Nolan Ryan. In 1971, Ryan was a young fireballer with the New York Mets and Herzog was that club’s farm director. As such, he got a call from Mets general Bob Scheffing after that season.

“Scheffing called me and said, ‘Would you call (young outfielder) Leroy Stanton and tell him that we traded him for (Jim) Fregosi?’’ ...

Bill McClellan: A last hurrah for a great sport

And who used my 100-box top “Swerdlocs love Kix ‘cause they’re fun ta catch” t-shirt as a dust rag?!

I am reminded of that night as St. Louis hosts the World Series. The crowds will be large and festive, and Cardinals fans will be in a celebratory mood, but just beneath the surface of our collective consciousness is the realization that an era is passing.

Baseball was once the national pastime. Literally. Kids got up early on summer mornings and played baseball all day long. They no longer ...

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 10-19-2011

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 ...

Occupy St. Louis to show commercial-free World Series

And to think, only about a month ago…the Cards were a 99 to 1 shot to win the World Series.

Occupy St. Louis invited baseball fans on Tuesday to watch the World Series for free on a big screen at its campsite, and said it would stream its message against economic inequality between innings.

The group, part of the nationwide Occupy Wall Street movement, said it would show the opening game of the series, which starts on Wednesday at Busch Stadium, at its Kiener Plaza campsite.

“Come watch the ...

NYT:  Great From Day One, Pujols Draws Superlatives on and Off the Field

McGwire’s last season was Pujols’s first. McGwire said he had never heard of Pujols in spring training 2001, when Pujols had played only briefly above Class A. But McGwire said he could tell, instantly, that Pujols was destined for stardom. He understood the strike zone, hit for power to all fields, and did it with a demeanor that belied his 21 years.

The Cardinals did not plan to put Pujols on the roster, but McGwire was adamant. He told La Russa that if Pujols was sent to the minors, it ...

NYT:  Rangers Turn to Wilson, Their Ace and Student of the Game

When he was 13, Wilson read Seaver’s book “The Art of Pitching,” an analytical study of various approaches to pitching, from which Wilson can still recall specific passages and illustrations.

*  *  *

Despite being left-handed, Wilson holds Seaver in such great esteem as a pitcher that he still cannot forgive the five voters out of 430 who did not put Seaver on their Hall of Fame ballot.

“Who’s the jerk that didn’t vote for him?” Wilson said. “That’s what I want to ...

Peters: From Francona to La Russa, why there’s no such thing as the best manager in baseball

And check out the everyday, everyday, everyday Tony La Russa rewrote the book companion piece.

I’m a dyed-in-the-wool baseball guy. I went to my first major league game in 1949 at Griffith Stadium to watch the Washington Senators play, and still upon occasion nostalgically don my No. 3 Mickey Vernon itchy, all-wool replica jersey. In 1954 I attended the glorious welcoming parade for the former St. Louis Browns, turned Baltimore Orioles—and subsequently listened to every inning of the ...

washingtonpost.com: Washington Nationals step it up in the leadership department

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 ...

Fox to use infra-red technology in World Series coverage

Fox’s World Series coverage will include black-and-white on-air shots, looking sort of like X-rays, that are meant track heat.

Huh? The Fox Hot Spot, to be formally announced Wednesday, uses technology that’s been seen on TV cricket overseas. The idea is for heat-seeking sensors to pinpoint heat made by a ball making contact — with, say, bats, facemasks, player’s bodies — and mark the spot for viewers by making it glow.

Wednesday? I need more time to prepare!

Beer in Red Sox dugout?

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 ...

Newswire: Angels may interview Jerry Dipoto for GM

The Angels have received permission from the Arizona Diamondbacks to interview Jerry Dipoto for their general manager’s job opening, a major league source confirmed. Dipoto, who spent parts of eight seasons as a reliever in the big leagues, is Arizona’s senior vice president of scouting and player development.

ESPN: If Reyes bolts, Mets set to turn to Ruben Tejada

Rubin on Ruben.

Said one National League scout: “Tejada is ready to play every day. Save the money and go get some pitching. You’re not winning anything in 2012 anyway. Find out if the kid can do it. He really has improved with the bat and gotten physically stronger. He’s going to need a backup, though, in case he gets hurt or needs a day off.”

...Meanwhile, Reyes won the NL batting crown this past season and, when his gimpy hamstrings allow, will put up gaudy steal numbers Tejada will never ...

Cardinals fan, 98, roots for her ‘boys’ to win one more World Series

“I’m 98, and I don’t know if I’ll be here tomorrow,” Dittle said. “So I just need them to win this year.”

Katie Galligan, a great-granddaughter, said that earlier this summer, a doctor gave Dittle about six more months to enjoy, among other things, baseball.

Dittle asked when the next baseball season started. Told the first games would be played in April, Dittle counted on her fingers and quickly came to the point: “I’m not going to be around for that.”

But she has been around for the rest ...

Baseball body expels Khanal for forgery

The Nepal Baseball and Softball Association (NBSA) today expelled Vice-president Achut Khanal from his post.

Khanal was found to have used the letter of the National Sports Council (NSC) with forged signature of NSC Member Secretary Yubaraj Lama to apply for the South Korean visas to attend the November 4 congress of Baseball Federation of Asia in Seoul. Furthermore, Khanal had applied for the visa of President Asit SJB Rana and himself under the capacity of General Secretary.

Barry Halper ...

Bronx Banter: DeRosa: About the Errors…

While Mark DeRosa has 74 career errors…Joe DeRosa looks for some in Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding.

A ballplayer could react to a terrible slump in a number of ways. But all of them should be vastly different to a person reacting to the loss of a supernatural gift. A slump usually begins with the wrong mix of flawed mechanics and dumb luck and spirals into Adam Dunn-level tragedy when the player gets trapped inside his own head. Henry’s situation is closer to Prometheus and his gift of ...

Senators from World Series locales urge MLB to ban tobacco

WASHINGTON—Four U.S. senators and health officials from the cities hosting the World Series are urging the baseball players union to agree to a ban on chewing tobacco at games and on camera.

The senators, including No. 2 Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois, and health officials from St. Louis and Arlington, Texas, made the pleas in separate letters, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press. The World Series between the Texas Rangers and St. Louis Cardinals begins in St. Louis Wednesday night.

...