Birthday team is uniformly blech among the position players. Good front-end pitching, though:
C: Phil Masi
1B: Scott Thorman
2B: Marlon Anderson
3B: Chuck Workman
SS: Ruben Amaro the Elder
LF: Lee Walls
CF: Lenny Green
RF: George Shoch

SP: Early Wynn
SP: Don Gullett
SP: Ralph Branca
SP: Joe Lake
SP: Casey Fossum
RP: Norm Charlton
RP: Tom Ferrick

LOOGY: Alvin Morman

Across town in the Milwaukee Sentinel 100 years ago:

[Cleveland catcher] Paddy Livingston notes the fact that Rubber Krapp issued more passes than any other American league pitcher during the 1911 campaign and remarks that he can steady the young spit ball pitcher and cause him to secure better control of the moist leather.
...

[Livingston says] "From what I saw of Krapp last season, his wildness is not so bad...I'll bet he has got a lot more of these good games stored away in that chunky body of his."

And not baseball-related, but made me laugh out loud as a lifelong soccer fan:

Soccer football is the new sun that is arising over the horizon of the sport world.

Forget the '70s...that absurd hype was going on 100 years ago.

Rockies trade P Greg Reynolds to Texas for the manager's son - 1B Chad Tracy

Rays sign RHP Fernando Rodney - 1 year $1.75 mill with an option

Mariners sign RHP Hisashi Iwakuma - 1 year $1.5 mill

Dodgers sign RHP Mike MacDougal - 1 year $1 mill

Mariners sign 3B Greg Dobbs - 2 years $3 mill

Mets re-sign OF Scott Hairston - 1 year $1.1 mill

Minor league deals
Mariners sign Softbank Hawks IF Munenori Kawasaki
Pirates sign LHP JoJo Reyes and IF Anderson Hernandez
D'Backs sign 1B Mike Jacobs
Cubs sign IF Edgar Gonzalez and OF Joe Mather
Rox sign 3B Brendan Harris
Angels sign RHP Eric Hurley and OF Ryan Langerhans
Marlins sign P Chad Gaudin
Brewers sign IF Cesar Izturis
Twins sign OF Steve Pearce and 3B Sean Burroughs
Mets sign LHP Chuck James and IF Omar Quintanilla
A's sign LHP Fabio Castro and P Merkin Valdez

I genuinely had no idea MacDougal was still in the league. I don't watch much West Coast baseball and the Nats annoy me*, so the last time I saw him, he had totally lost the strike zone and pitched his way off the White Sox roster.

(* - Not the Nats per se, just the way MLB hosed Montreal. I have a long memory about such things, especially because it just as easily could have been my team 15 years earlier.)

Rockies trade P Greg Reynolds to Texas for the manager's son - 1B Chad Tracy

There have been some bad 1st round draft picks recently, but I don't think anything was worse than taking Reynolds with Longoria sitting there as the top guy on the board.

There have been some bad 1st round draft picks recently, but I don't think anything was worse than taking Reynolds with Longoria sitting there as the top guy on the board.

Man, there was a lot of pitching talent, or more specifically, lots of guys who have been good MLB pitchers and look to continue to be good MLB pitchers, in that draft:

Lincecum
Kershaw
IPK
Trevor Cahill
Justin Masterson
Andrew Bailey
Doug Fister
Mike Leake
Mat Latos (11th round)
David Robertson (17th round)
Derek Holland (25th round)

Rubber Krapp issued more passes than any other American league pitcher during the 1911 campaign and remarks that he can steady the young spit ball pitcher and cause him to secure better control of the moist leather.

I think the fact that Rubber was a spitter just makes that story perfect. He kind of had to be, all things considered. Moist leather indeed.

Moist leather indeed

I get the feeling that the writers knew exactly what they were writing.

My favorite leather joke:

Dirty Little Johnnie: Teacher, teacher, what does it mean when it says "Robin Hood tore his leather?"
Teacher: Can you read me sentence, Johnnie?
DLJ: OK, if you insist. "Ready to do battle against the evil Sir Guy, Robin Hood tore his leather jerkin off".

Rubber Krapp? I BARELY KNOW HER BODEO DODEO DOOOOOOOOOO

I think this story becomes around 20 times more awesome once you check the Wiki link:

Originally, the cause was believed to be an inherent weakness of character or constitution. While Esmarch and Jessen[disambiguation needed ] had asserted as early as 1857 that syphilis caused general paresis, progress toward the general acceptance by the medical community of this idea was only accomplished later by the eminent nineteenth-century syphilographer Alfred Fournier (1832–1914). In 1913 all doubt about the syphilitic nature of paresis was finally eliminated when Noguchi and Moore[disambiguation needed ] demonstrated the syphilitic spirochaetes in the brains of paretics

This article had to have been just about the last article anyone could have written for this magazine about paresis. In another year, it would have been too obvious that it was a euphemism for "Old Bob is dying of an STD". At this point they still had plausible deniability, at least.

Rizzo to the Cubs with Zach Cates for Andrew Cashner and Kyung-Min Na.

Considering the Cubs were probably going to waste Cashner in the pen, I reallllly love that trade. I still think Cashner can hack it as a starter, but I understand thinking he won't hold up.

VERY INTERESTING.

Rumors are the O's may be interested in Alfonso Soriano, but the Cubs would have to eat eleventy billion dollars to make it happen. The return I imagine would be Mike Fontenot and Jerry Hairston?

And Dave Crouthers who will retire immediately.