Frank Thomas: No Hall consideration for PED users

I wear this crown of thorns
I Big Hurt myself today. (scrambles for some legit Timi Yuro pain)

Thomas, in New York on Thursday for baseball’s first-year player draft, called the Biogenesis scandal “embarrassing’’ for the game and a “shameful’’ episode in baseball history. He said he has spoken with numerous Hall of Famers recently while taking part in a series of charity games, and they’re strongly opposed to players with links to performance-enhancing drugs gaining entry to Cooperstown.

...

Keri: Watch Out for Crush Davis

As Jonah points out…“Chris Davis feature with enough stats and .gifs to choke a horse.‏”  Peakness Stakes, if you will…

For the first 1,495 at-bats of his career, Chris Davis looked like a thousand big, lumbering, mediocre sluggers before him. He didn’t run well and didn’t field well. He had a terrible batting approach, one that could best be described as swing for the moon, then offer every fan on the third-base side a nice, cool breeze. Sure, he would close his eyes and launch balls fairly ...

Indians closer Chris Perez, wife charged with misdemeanor drug abuse

Cleveland Indians pitcher Chris Perez and his wife, Melanie, have been charged with misdemeanor drug abuse after a package containing marijuana was delivered to their rental home earlier this week.

The charge is a fourth-degree misdemeanor, indicating that the amount discovered by police was small. There are reports that the package contained 5.8 ounces of marijuana.

Begel: Time to trade Ryan Braun?

You want one quality starting major league pitcher. You want one quality infielder (so long Rickie). And, here’s where it gets complicated, you want three players from the minor leagues. Pitchers. If the team that wants Braun doesn’t have all three, they have to go out and trade for them so they can become part of the package.

But not before he tells me where to get some decent lox to go with this Begel…

Murti: Benefit Of The Doubt? A-Rod Doesn’t Deserve It

When you lose Sweeny Murti…well…

These are the first three paragraphs of a Sports Illustrated cover story by Gerry Callahan in the July 8, 1996 issue:

  In the off-season he lives with his mother, Lourdes Navarro, and shares a bedroom with his best friend, a three-year-old German shepherd named Ripper. He plays golf each morning and hoops each evening, and by 10 p.m. he is nestled in bed with his Nintendo control pad. He makes Roy Hobbs look like John Kruk, and he makes you wonder if ...

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 6-7-2013

New York Tribune, June 7, 1913:

Scranton, Penn., June 6—One ball only was used in all the plays in to-day’s Scranton-Syracuse New York State League game. This is believed to be a new baseball record.

Well, yeah, at the very least it tied the record.

Kang: Yasiel Puig Invades Los Angeles

And this is before he hit one deep into the fragrance sector last night.

Puig is a dead ringer for a young Floyd Patterson if he had decided to shave his Jheri curl down into a Mohawk. Like all great athletes, Puig’s body almost looks like it has been spliced together from Olympian parts. If you ever stand next to Dwight Howard, you’ll swear that he’s just a skinny tall guy with a pair of Hulk shoulders stapled on. Puig, who stands about 6-foot-3, is broad, trim, and chiseled. He wears the ...

Umpire Jordan Baker gaining notice for gum-throwing habit

Jerry Meals just threw up his…lunch.

As if Yasiel Puig, or any other major league outfielder, doesn’t have enough to worry about, add one thing to the list. Umpire Jordan Baker is quickly gaining fame for a pretty gross habit: After each half inning, he turns and throws his chewing gum into the outfield.

The gum-throwing, first reported by Lobshots.com, means that at the end of each game Baker leaves 18 wads of chewing gum in the outfield. Who has to clean this up? You have to bet if an ...

OMNICHATTER for 06/07/2013

For continued Draft Omnichattering, go here.

As super-regionals have begun, you can Omnichatter up the D1 NCAAs over here.

Anyway, full slate of games today. Yeah!

OT: NBA Finals and June thread

Not sure why no one has put up a new thread yet, then I remember that only 10-12 guys here care about the NBA.

we won’t detract from what this site is really about: the IRS and Biogenesis.

Megdal: Jeff Wilpon and the myth of a free-spending Mets winter to come

Megdal’s latest…

So now consider the real winter ahead for the New York Mets owners. They have less than a year to either find a way to pay J.P. Morgan Chase $320 million, or convince the bank to give them more time. And they’ll have to do so with more than just a Fred Wilpon press conference sunnily declaring his money problems a thing of the past. If the bank believes, unlike Standard and Poor’s, that the Mets are on the cusp of profitability, or that a forced sale now will produce less ...

Judge John Hodgman Podcast: Uniform Code of Podcast Justice

Sports! Paul brings the case against his friend Jeremy. Paul loves to wear his favorite baseball team’s gear to games, even when that team isn’t playing the game.

At issue: is it okay to wear a Phillies hat, jersey, t-shirt, and (possibly) pair of crocs to a Dodgers-Reds tilt in Dodger Stadium?

Zuckerman - Harper to see Dr. Andrews for knee

“Everybody says it’s bursitis,” Johnson said. “I thought if he took some anti-inflammatory it would calm it down, but it’s kind of been lingering. When he runs it swells up. He was jogging in the pool it swelled up from that. We’re concerned so we’ll get another opinion on it.”

One possibility Johnson acknowledged was Harper getting the bursa sac removed. His bursitis is due to swelling in the bursa sac in his left knee.

MLB draft was much different when Detroit Tigers’ Jim Leyland was a player

Shiit, when Jim Leyland was a player…Old Gold’s were new.

Leyland received quite a bit less as a catcher in the Tigers’ system in 1963.

“I signed for nothing,” he said. “No bonus, $400 a month. I thought I was the richest son of a ##### you ever saw in your life.

“Don’t get me wrong. It was a big day. But I wouldn’t have been a headline in USA Today.”

...Leyland’s meager bonus and his early paychecks didn’t allow him to splurge on luxuries. Well, except maybe one.

“I think my ...

Author shares tales of DiMaggio brothers

Including the tale of Dom DiMaggio being a HOF.

Dominic DiMaggio, four years younger than Joe, was a top-tier star in his own right, a seven-time American League All-Star centerfielder with the Red Sox (1940-42, 1946-53) and a lifetime .298 hitter. After World War II ended, he surpassed Joe DiMaggio as the league’s outstanding defensive centerfielder.

“I make the case in the book,” Clavin said. “If his name wasn’t DiMaggio, he’d be in the Hall of Fame.”

...But in some respects, ...

Alex Rodriguez issues statement

Just as Jason Keidel issued his! “Have Any Dignity Left, A-Rod? Retire Today And Don’t Come Back”

Alex Rodriguez said Thursday he is not ready to talk about the alleged connection between him and the founder of a Miami-area clinic at the heart of an ongoing performance-enhancing drug scandal in Major League Baseball.

“Myself and others are being mentioned in a media report before the process is even concluded,” Rodriguez said in a statement. “I would hope this thing would follow the ...

CBS: Catching Up With Bobby Valentine

“I think we’ve shot ourselves in the foot”...Hey, stop lifting my R. Budd Selig material!

TA: This scandal, involving Biogenesis in Miami.  How damaging is this to the game overall?

BV: I think our entire posture on this situation has damaged the game.  I think it’s been handled poorly from the start, whenever the start was.  I don’t know when guys starting using performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, but I would think that it was about the same time that they were being used in other ...

Schultz: Strasburg injury reaffirms Nats blew it last year

The Big Train to The Karma Train…Washington has it all!

We’re barely into June and the Braves already hold an eight-game lead over the Washington Nationals, the team that had been given the most likely chance to win the National League East and the pennant. This doesn’t guarantee that the Braves are going to win the East. But it does somewhat reaffirm how dumb the Nationals were to all but drop kick a potential World Series season last year.

...The Strasburg effect? Nothing is certain, but ...

Angels order fan to take paper bag off his head

Nice try, El Hombre.

Henry Bouldin could not bear to watch the Angels, not after the team was swept by the lowly Houston Astros.

So, as he sat behind home plate for Tuesday’s game against the Chicago Cubs, the Angels fan wore a paper bag over his head.

Until the seventh inning, that is, when the Angels ordered him to take it off.

“Security just showed up out of nowhere,” Bouldin said Wednesday. “They said you can’t wear anything over your head.”

That indeed is the Angels’ policy, team ...

MLB: Ichiro embraces magnitude of 4,000 hits

Ichiro Suzuki is about to join the pantheon of the baseball gods on a statistical plateau only two other players have passed: 4,000 hits.

Including his infield single in the Yankees’ 6-4 victory over the Indians on Wednesday at Yankee Stadium, Ichiro needs only 67 to match that lofty level.

Considering his legendary durability, it will happen sometime during the months ahead, certainly before the end of the season. True, Ichiro gets there by combining the hits he accumulated playing for ...

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 6-6-2013

Pittsburgh Gazette Times, June 6, 1913:

Pitcher Hopper, the New England right-hander, who has pitched two no-hit games and who is sought by the Cardinals…is probably the only pitcher in baseball who has the reputation of having been sold for a dog.

[Roger Bresnahan] decided that Hopper wasn’t worthy of a trial, and…[Dick Kinsella], who was then owner of the Springfield Three-I League team needed pitchers, [so] Bresnahan offered Hopper to him. They could not agree on a price until Kinsella ...

Anthony Bosch asked A-Rod for money before turning to MLB

Bosch needed funds to mount a defense against MLB’s once-pending lawsuit against him, but Rodriguez turned him down.

At that point, the Daily News reports, Bosch and MLB agreed to collaborate.

“They (MLB) were afraid someone else would pay him,” a source told the Daily News. “Bosch is the only guy that can provide them with what they need.”

In exchange for his cooperation, MLB will reportedly be “dropping the lawsuit MLB filed against him earlier this year and paying his legal bills, ...

Strauss: Cards’ offense taking a different route

How is St. Louis fending off the Reds and Pirates? Grinding, says hitting coach John F. Mabry.

Mabry uses terms like “process” and “grinding” almost interchangeably. Mind-set is as important to success as technique.

Mabry knows that style carries lots of weight in a market that loves to reminisce about Whitey-ball, which was played on a rug with lots of fast guys, two elements this club no longer boasts. (Nobody in the NL has attempted fewer steals than the Cardinals’ 17.) The new ...

Mets pound Nationals behind Byrd’s 2 HR, Gee impresses again

For the second straight night, a Mets pitcher fighting for his job made a strong case, but this time the struggling offense delivered for him.

Dillon Gee made a strong case to keep his spot in the rotation and the Mets jumped on some shaky pitching as they beat the Nationals 10-1 Wednesday night.

OMNICHATTER for 06/06/13

You can find the Draft OMNICHATTER here, although I don’t think anybody would complain if you threw in any major news or selections from it- just try to keep it primarily in that thread.

Anyway, 11 games today, with the first game (Rays at Tigers) at 1:08 PM.

Downey: Baseball, this time throw the book at users of performance-enhancing drugs

Downey Clean Breeze…Sheeet.

Throw the bums out, some will scream. I am totally OK with this.

Who’s legitimate and who ain’t? That’s all we want to know anymore.

We have spent much of this century wondering which individuals in the national pastime are squeaky clean and which are as stained as a dugout floor.

...All I do know is, we’re sick of it, man.

Baseball’s zero-tolerance policy is an absolute must. Oh, the players’ union reps will surely react and be appalled and appeal. But if ...

SF Giants Fans are not hypocrites for booing Melky

Absent any real news this morning, I want to touch on something that has always bugged me: the notion that Giants fans have no right to boo other steroid users because they cheered Barry Bonds.

I started to hear that creep into the conversation after the fans booed Melky Cabrera last night. Tim Brown, a national baseball writer for Yahoo whom I greatly respect, gave San Francisco fans a slight jab by noting the “incongruity” of booing Melky when they cheered Bonds.

In my opinion he’s ...

Nationals’ Strasburg placed on DL with lat strain

The Washington Nationals have placed Stephen Strasburg on the 15-day disabled list because of a strained muscle in his back.

The Nationals made the move Wednesday after Strasburg skipped a scheduled bullpen session. The session was supposed to determine whether he could make a start on Saturday

ESPN’s Franchise Player Draft - ESPN

Click the link to see the list.

If you were starting a franchise and you could pick any player in professional baseball, who would be your franchise player? That’s the question we asked 30 of our resident baseball “experts,” who participated in ESPN’s third annual Franchise Player Draft.

Baseball scout Epy Guerrero, the Blue Jays man in Latin America - The Globe and Mail

Known for his work ethic and dedication, the scout was not above calling upon subterfuge and legerdemain when needed.

He hiked up mountainsides and rode donkeys to check out athletes, and is said to have once dressed as a soldier to slip a prospect out of Nicaragua.

One of his more famous capers involved a beanpole boy who showed soft hands in the field and a lashing stroke at the plate. The youth was so poor he could not afford a glove, so had fashioned a cardboard milk carton around his ...