Rosemont Cubs? Suburban mayor makes his pitch

As the Chicago Cubs’ quest for a fair stadium refinancing deal continues to drag on with the Wrigleyville community throwing up roadblocks to slow down the settlement process, a new and potentially viable option to Wrigley Field has emerged.

Rosemont mayor Brad Stephens told me this morning in a CSNChicago exclusive that he is willing to give the Cubs and the Ricketts family a 25-acre parcel of land in the village that is a prime piece of real estate large enough to accommodate a new ballpark as well as parking and anything else the Ricketts family would desire to have as a part of the new complex.

“The Chicago Cubs are being held hostage by the neighborhood as they look to run their business. We are willing to offer them a tremendous opportunity if they are interested. Bring the bricks and the ivy and we can get a deal done, ” Stephens told me this morning.

While this is highly unlikely, I for one encourage this type of press for the Cubs in their fight with the roof top owners.  It’s a shame that there actually is a professional team that is trying to pay for their own stadium and is stuck fighting the city over it.

Red Sox’s Britton arrested for DUI after reportedly going 111 in 45 zone

Yeah, but with the stadium gun’s inflated numbers, he was probably only really around 107 or so.

Former Braves’ star Otis Nixon accused in scam

some people…claim the ex-Brave used his baseball reputation to trick them out of as much as $1,000 each by falsely promising he could win early release for their loved one in state prison.

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620 career steals… and counting!

Angel Villalona Gets Visa, Will Be In Giants Big League Camp

Villalona had been charged with the September 2009 murder of 25-year-old Mario Felix de Jesus Velete in the Dominican Republic at a bar in La Romana, where Villalona is from. Villalona eventually settled with de Jesus Velete’s family, reportedly for around $139,000. A prosecutor was planning to move forward with the case, but the charges were dropped.

AZ Republic: Mark Grace pleads guilty to Scottsdale DUI

Mark Grace, in court Thursday, pleaded guilty to endangerment and DUI, avoiding what could have been a lengthy prison sentence.

Instead, a judge imposed a sentence that includes work-release jail time as well as three years of supervised probation. Additionally, an Interlock device must be installed in his vehicle for six months and he will need permission to travel out of state.

His work-release sentence begins Feb. 10.

Grace, a former Diamondbacks player and broadcaster, was charged with four counts of aggravated DUI that could have resulted in a three-year prison sentence.

NY Times: Briefly a Rising Star, Forever a Mourning Son

So why’d Sammy wear #27?  Wait a minute… what’s halfway between 19 and 27…

It was called the Masjid of Tucson, a mosque where Muslims could worship and study the Koran in the Arizona desert under the idiosyncratic tutelage of Rashad Khalifa, its founder. On Jan. 31, 1990, the mosque, at the intersection of Sixth and North Euclid, near the University of Arizona campus, became the scene of a murder investigation.

Khalifa was found near the kitchen that morning, stabbed to death. It appeared to investigators that whoever had killed him had also tried to set fire to the body in an effort to destroy evidence.

A Ph.D.-educated Egyptian-American, Khalifa had founded his masjid as part of a midlife revelation that he was a messenger of God. In practice and study, Khalifa’s teachings about the Koran were infused with science, modernity and, more than anything, numerology. The number 19, he taught, was “the miracle’s common denominator,” a code that unlocked the Koran, like a secure password.

Much of Islam teaches that the Prophet Muhammad was the last messenger of God, but Khalifa added himself to the list, getting his message out through books, videos and a newsletter called Muslim Perspective.

His scholarship was curious to some and blasphemy to others. He began to receive threats against his life. Once he had been killed, conspiracy theories quickly circulated about who might have been responsible. Tucson investigators eventually came to focus on a local person of interest whose trail they soon lost.

It was not until 2006, when grant money from the Justice Department helped jump-start the city’s backlog of cold-case homicide investigations, that new DNA tests of bloodstains from the crime scene led to the arrest of a man named Glen Francis, who was then living in Canada.

As opening arguments in Francis’s murder trial began on Dec. 11 in Pima County Superior Court here, Sam Khalifa, the son of the victim, sat in the mostly empty gallery. He is 49 now and drives a cab here. But at one time, he was the starting shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates…

The Pirates drafted him in the first round in 1982 out of Tucson’s Sahuaro High School. By 1985, with Pittsburgh going through a series of shortstops, Khalifa replaced the injured Johnnie LeMaster in the starting lineup.

In the end, Khalifa played parts of three seasons in Pittsburgh, but by the 1989 season, he found himself being moved around the infield at the Pirates’ Class AAA affiliate in Buffalo, plagued by the sense that the organization had given up hope that he would ever be its everyday shortstop.

One night during a trip, Khalifa missed a team bus and simply flew home. Five months later, his father was killed, upending his life further and dashing whatever thoughts he had of spring training with another team…

Over the next two decades, as the murder investigation went cold, Khalifa got a college degree, drove a cab, tried some sales jobs, tried to get over his anger. Then he went back to driving a cab.

NYDN: Ugueth Urbina Released From Prison

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 five-and-a-half month captivity, Urbina was involved in a violent episode on his sprawling Venezuelan property. Urbina allegedly doused several men with gasoline and set them on fire and hacked another with a machete.

He’s only 38, and according to Venezuelan news sources, he was hitting 90 mph with his fastball while incarcerated.

Bill James Mailbag - 11/23/12 - 11/29/12

I think I did do this in Strat-O-Matic and .850 is about what happened.

To look at the question of how All-star teams would perform I used Teams-on-Paper estimates for the starting lineups in the 1980-84 all-star games. (using the first four starting pitchers who appeared and the last reliever for the staff). League average scores are around 200 with the best teams ever at slightly over 300. The all-star teams scores ranged from 271 to 357 and the predicted won-lost based on these scores were 96-66 to 122-40. The average number of projected wins was 110.5 (standard deviation 7.62) , a .682 W-L percentage.

Thanks.   I think you’re getting close to the reasons for my skepticism about teams playing .850 baseball.  

It may be that you could make Strat-o-Matic cards after the season, pick the best card at each position, and THAT team would play .850 baseball.   But this is because the season is not long enough to grind all of the randomness out of the statistics; therefore, some players in each season appear to be better than they are.   There are a handful of players in the league who are legitimate .310 hitters; one of those hits .340, one of them hits .330.   If you pick and choose after the fact, you can make an .850 team—but choosing real players before the fact, the best players would not play at that level.

Hey, Bill, I’m reading “Popular Crime” and I was comparing/contrasting the proposition of the economic class strife of the early 20th Century as it would have applied to baseball at the time. I suppose that same economic stress would have contributed to the Black Sox scandal during the 1919 World Series and would be a major reason gambling on baseball was such a concern during that time?

Absolutely, yes.  The Betting Scandals of that era are very directly connected to the tension between rich and poor that was dividing the country in that time.     The only reason I didn’t make that point in the book was that I chose to write that book with no reference to baseball—even to the point of repeatedly scouring the manuscript for phrases like “out in left field” or “made a big hit” that might be taken as baseball references.

Bill, Sad news today with the announcement of Marvin Miller`s death. In your opinion, where`s his place in MLB history ? It certainly is a shame that he doesn`t yet have a spot at Cooperstown…

And has told his friends in no uncertain terms that if the Hall of Fame tries to elect him postumously, they are to be told “No, thanks.”   Some people are bigger than their awards.   Babe Ruth doesn’t need to be in the Hall of Fame; the Hall of Fame needs to honor Babe Ruth to make the Hall of Fame look bigger.   To me, Marvin’s on that level.   He is too big for it to be relevant whether the Hall of Fame likes him or not…

I knew Marvin fairly well, knew his late wife as well.  We have close friends in common, and when I got to New York I would often have lunch or dinner with Marvin and Allen Barra.