MIAMI (AP) — A top Cuban umpire has defected to the United States.

ATLANTA (AP) — Chip Caray has called his final baseball game for TBS.

NEW YORK (AP) — The Los Angeles Angels voted to give a full postseason share to the estate of Nick Adenhart, the rookie pitcher killed in April in a car accident allegedly caused by a drunken driver.

Or Reed Johnson, Kevin Gregg, or Chad Fox, per Carrie Muskat:

A brief explanation (and I’ll try to keep it simple): Teams that offer their free agents salary arbitration get Draft picks in return if the player signs elsewhere, and the number of picks is based on the player’s rating. To get compensation, a team must offer arbitration to its Type A or B free agent and have that player either reject arbitration or sign before the deadline to reject the said arbitration.

The Elias Sports Bureau determines the designations based on statistical study. Gregg is a Type A free agent, Harden is Type B. Johnson and Fox are non-compensatory. So, if the Cubs did offer arbitration to Gregg and another team signed him, the Cubs could get two Draft picks. One would be a first-round pick from the signing team (if the team’s pick is below the first 15 picks in the Draft) and a supplemental pick. The supplemental pick is a player taken between the first and second rounds.

If the signing team has a pick in the first 15 slots, the team that loses the free agent will get the signing team’s second-round selection and the sandwich pick.A Type B free agent like Harden would be worth one Draft pick to the Cubs if he signs with another team. That pick is a supplemental pick.

I’m not quite sure how Gregg rates Type A and Harden Type B, but there it is. The Cubs clearly don’t want Gregg back, so they won’t offer arb even though two picks would come in return, because he’d likely accept and the Cubs would be stuck with him. Chad Fox, obviously, will likely retire. Since Reed Johnson is non-compensatory, it makes no sense to offer him arb — if the Cubs want him back, they can negotiate with him as a complete free agent.

The official deadline is tomorrow; we’ll know more by then.

Last week in the discussion of the signs on the Waveland building rooftop, I posted this photo from June 22, 1953 which I believed to be the earliest available color photo of the scoreboard.

That prompted Bill Wasik, who provided the answer to the Waveland mystery, to send me this photo, taken even earlier. After the jump find out when it was taken, and which players are in the photo.

Here’s what Bill sent me regarding this photo:

This is a rough composite of two 35mm slides taken with a stereo camera on Sunday, May 14, 1950. Pittsburgh was in town for a doubleheader, with Johnny Schmitz facing the Pirates‘ Junior Walsh. As we can infer from the scoreboard data and the position of the fielders, Wayne Terwilliger must be stepping in to the batter’s box to lead off for the Cubs in the bottom of the first.

Players visible include Tom Saffell in center, Pete Castiglione at short, and the legendary Nanny Fernandez at third. The man in black on the third base line is Hall of Fame ump Al Barlick. Not seen but present are, surprisingly, Honus Wagner, who was still a bench coach for the Pirates in 1950 and, over in left field, Ralph Kiner. Ironically, Kiner was the player most active in lobbying the league to have Wrigley’s centerfield bleachers closed in 1952.

Kiner came to the Cubs in 1953 — after several CF bleacher sections had finally been closed from lobbying by him, as well as several members of the Cardinals including their manager, Eddie Stanky. The first game for which those sections were closed was a game vs. the Cardinals on April 20, 1952; on April 27 the Cubs announced they would be closed for “the rest of the year”, but no one sat in those sections (which now is the batters’ eye lounge/skybox) after that, except during the 1962 All-Star Game.

This is one of the only photos I have seen — and the only one in color — that shows the bleachers full, and people sitting in those CF seats. Attendance that Sunday, which, as Bill noted, was a doubleheader, was 34,659 — and the Cubs, who were awful in 1950 (64-89), got swept by the even worse Pirates (who finished last at 57-96), 6-5 and 16-9.

A few other things of note in the photo:

• The photo is from the first game — showing us that doubleheaders in that year began at 1:30 pm.
• The ivy had been planted in 1938, 12 years earlier — but it isn’t even close to being fully grown. In mid-May, even today, the ivy isn’t fully grown in for the summer, but in this photo you see almost no growth. Even the leaves on the trees behind the bleachers haven’t grown in on that day.
• Check out the vendor, standing up in the blue jacket with yellow writing — wearing a fedora! Many other men are also wearing fedoras; you see a couple of people wearing Cubs caps, but no one else wearing any team garb.
• The LF grass looks pretty chewed up. Remember that the Bears played in Wrigley Field in that era, and the area that looks brown was just about the middle of the field.

Hey there! I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend, I know I did. Anyway, if you’re a woman (…or a gay man) and a baseball fan, there’s no doubt you’ve heard about the sexy myspace-style bathroom pictures of Grady Sizemore which were stolen from his inbox.

If you haven’t seen them yet, it’s our pleasure to bring the beauties to your attention. Here’s one to wet your whistle, and here’s the rest. Let this be a lesson to all you guys and gals out there who are considering emailing risque photos of yourself to your significant other. DUMB IDEA. Unless you’d like other folks to possibly see them someday.

P.S. To those of you who’ve already come to the brilliant conclusion that we are horrible people for stooping so low as to objectify the Cleveland Indians centerfielder, I say… it’s not the first time, and it most certainly won’t be the last.

[AP] | [Busted Coverage] | [Socialite Life]

I enjoyed the previous book I read by Jerome Holtzman, so I decided to try another. This one was written by Jerome Holtzman and George Vass. The full title is “Baseball, Chicago Style – A Tale of Two Teams, One City”. It was published in 2001.
First of all, that title reminded me [...]



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There was some discussion of of Bud Selig’s decision to leave as commissioner when his term ends in 2012, but I see the post was deleted by the original poster, likely because it was devolving into political discussion, which I had specifically asked several times in the post for people NOT to do.

I’m reposting the topic for discussion here. Keep the politics OUT of this post, or I’ll delete this one, too.