There’s a site I frequent quite often, it’s called “The Biz of Baseball” run by a fellow by the name of Maury Brown. If you are interested in the business dealings of the sport, it’s an invaluable site (even if you’re not interested, it’s just good reading). Anyway, in December of 2006, they ran an article called “32 Voices on the State of the Game“. It was an article with a sort of free flowing stream of consciousness from several completely different viewpoints. It was quite compelling. Well, they’ve done it again.
Out today is the next installment, entitled “The State of Major League Baseball 2008“. The odd thing (to me) about this entry is that I was asked to contribute to this new article. That was mind boggling to me, as I consider myself a small fry when it comes to things like this. But Maury persisted, said I was someone he definitely wanted a “a new voice that was a fan perspective”. So I sat down and wrote. If you’re familiar with this site, you know I can tend to “go off” on tangents, and just get mad at stuff. That’s kind of what I did in my piece. So check out the new article, not because I am in it, but because there’s a lot of good thoughts in there.
I still feel a bit “tingly” to be in the same piece with some heavyweights and big names like Chuck Armstrong (President, Seattle Mariners), Jerry Crasnick (ESPN Author), Jeff Erickson (Rotowire), Brent Gambill (Producer, XM Satellite Radio’s MLB Channel), Jeff Passan (Yahoo), and of course Ken Rosenthal (from everywhere). Thanks Maury!

Edit: After getting permission from Maury, here’s my piece from the full article.
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (1 Timothy 6:10)
I’ll start off with a theft from Will Carroll. It comes from the first Voices entry of this series.
“Saying what’s right and wrong with the game is an exercise in hubris and futility.”
Will’s right. It’s hard to have a good, honest list as to what is right and what is wrong that covers everything, which everyone can agree with. Even if you could make the list, would you want to? The flaws are what make the game. Baseball is a confusing game to “figure out”. You think you have a handle on how it should be done, and then find out that you don’t. But as humans, we tend to complain about things first. Most of the complaints you hear about about baseball are “too expensive” or “steroids”.
The bigger complaint is about money, though. There’s lawsuits about statistics (who owns the numbers), so much advertising that the head spins, a cost of parking and gas that is more than tickets in some places, and the price of concessions? Ha! Heck, the mlb minimum salary ($390,000) is so far out of whack with the “real” minimum wage ($12,168, assuming 40 hr work week) that it’s mind boggling how far removed from reality MLB seems to be when you talk about money. Everything is about the “Baby Ruth Home Run Challenge”, or the “DHL Pregame show”, or the “Monster.com All Star ballot”, to things like whatever the name of the Giants park is this week, and all that. You could take up the space that all 30 of us are using to talk about corporate naming issues. Heck, I saw a McDonald’s logo ON THE PITCHER’S MOUND in PNC Park when looking at it in Google Maps. My kid’s bobbleheads have half a dozen logos on them, nothing can get out there without being sponsored. I’m surprised there aren’t some sort of logo inside the men’s urinals in the bathrooms – or on the hot dogs themselves! We have so much money floating around the game that if baseball gave a religious tithe like Jesus commanded, we could probably do away with a lot of poverty in places. Don’t even get me started on the extortion of cities that is building new stadiums.
On top of the things with money, then there are the things that are just confusing. For example, MLB made a major stink recently about how games are “too long”, and they want to shave some time off. I think I read where the average time is longer by a matter of single digit seconds. Not minutes, but seconds. So what comes out at the same time? The note that we will have instant replay for home run balls, and for balls by the foul pole. They make a major deal about games being too long, then add a time suck like instant replay. Want the games to move faster? Call the bloody strike zone the way it is defined in the rule book. There’s several rules that are already on the books that if actually ENFORCED would make the games go faster. Man, that’s just perplexing.
A lot is made of the fact that it’s a game meant for kids, but so many ancillary things around the game are things we have to “explain” to kids is a major hassle. As the parent of a three year old, I’m enjoying teaching my kid that a home run is not just when they “run” around the bases – they have to hit the ball over the fence. If I had to get into why Barry Bonds looks like a horse, or why she keeps hearing the words “performance enhancing”, I don’t know if I’d try to get my kid into baseball. There’s so much business around the game, that it almost doesn’t feel like it’s for “kids” anymore. We’re teaching kids to get ahead, get the biggest signing bonus there is, you’ll “strike it rich with Scott Boras”, etc, etc, etc.. That’s why I’m enjoying Josh Hamilton now. A man who has discovered God, and is not afraid to show it. Good for him. Oh, he’s not the only one, but he is a local one to me, so I hear about him the most. When you hear so much bad about the sport all the time in the media, it’s nice to hear something nice like that.
What is The state of baseball? The state of “baseball” is fine, despite all the negativity above. The sport is too good to kill, but if you’re reading the website this article will appear on, you probably know this already. The most vitriolic complainer will still love sitting out at the park watching the game. Baseball will sometimes go and do something very nice – like the recent Negro League player draft at the recent MLB draft. I enjoyed that moment a lot. So yeah, there’s good there, but there’s SO MUCH negative it feels that it’s hard to find the good (outside the actual game itself).
P.S. I would like the return of scheduled doubleheaders – heck, give me a tripleheader!

OK, Michael Young is at 22. I wonder how much longer until the Dallas Morning News creates this series of graphics. You guys remember this?

Funny thing about that graphic is that when the DMN was doing that, they pre-made the graphics up to like 32 or something like that, and they were all just sitting on their server. If you found out the actual URL for the file, you could manually see the ones beyond 28. Was amusing to me at the time to see how far they thought the streak would go. :)

There was a nice article in the Dallas Morning News in Saturday’s paper about Tom Grieve, his career, and his forthcoming cancer surgery. Unfortunately, I cannot find a link to it online. If you know where it is, please post a link to it in the comments. As his surgery is in the next couple of days, I’d like to lift up a prayer for Tom. I don’t know how to contact him personally, so I will have to use this site as my vehicle for prayer.

Dear God, our father in Heaven, I’d like to lift up Tom Grieve to you. His surgery for cancer is this week, and you are a God of healing. You are a God that can do anything. I pray that you will be in the hearts, minds, and hands of the Doctors who will be performing the surgery on Tom. I pray that your will be done during the surgery, and that your mighty hand will be with Tom, and that any cancerous cells be removed from his body, never to return again. Tom has brought so much joy to so many through his body of work with the Texas Rangers baseball team that I pray that the love and joy that is your nature be with Tom’s family at this difficult time. I pray that his recovery be speedy and swift and that Tom is able to return to the life and the place that you have put him in for the enjoyment of all of the fans of the Texas Rangers baseball club. I pray all this in your son’s name, Jesus Christ our saviour. Amen.

Tom, I’m hoping you will see this before your surgery – I know you’re a busy man, and know that I will be in prayer for your recovery from the surgery this week.

As you’ve noticed, I haven’t updated for the Rays series. I just haven’t had time. I planned on doing that this morning, but got handed a huge project at work, and can’t now. I’ll try and catch up over the weekend on those – although it might be my first series skip of the year if I get too far behind. :)
Update: I ended up taking the cheap way out and I didn’t do updates for the Rays series. I did go back and add marker pages, because the new way I do the site means that if I don’t have a marker page with at least the win/loss & score, the schedule page won’t have any results for that date. :)

I had someone email me about what appears to be an old promotion of some sort. I told him I didn’t know anything about it, but I thought I’d harness my website, and post his email here. Does anyone know anything about this? Get back to me, and I’ll pass on what you said.

Hello, my name is Tom. I am in Minnesota, I was wondering if you knew anything about 2 records that I have, They are 45 records, the song is ( Nolan Ryan, hes a hero to us all) the artist is jerry jeff walker, date of records is 1990, the cover also says, limited edition no. 003846 of 5000.available exclusively at Arlington stadium or through tried and true music. Anyway just wondering if you have seen these before, or if they are worth anything to ranger fans, please e- mail back , Thanks!!

The official rules of Major League Baseball are available on their website here.
However, does anyone know if there’s pdf version available? They have several other documents available in pdf format, but I’ve yet to see the official rules that way.
If anyone has seen that, please let me know where to get ’em. Thanks.

I was going through my photo gallery today, and this picture came up at random. Whenever I see it, I think this should be a legitimate sign, and not a fan made one. What do you think?

Whenever my wife sees someone wearing #7 or #29, I usually hear “That’s not Pudge” or “That’s not RUSTY!”

I get a decent collection of emails in my almost 10 years running this site. Most are pretty nice, and occasionally, I get some that are somewhat rude. Like this exchange. Last night I get an email from a guy. I won’t name him, but let’s call him Oscar for the sake of this discussion. Unsolicited last night Oscar sends me this email:

I don’t know about you , but the Rangers are bad enough on their own , but that pissant announcer Josh Lewin makes me sick while I watch a horrible game

So I wrote back a couple of hours later with this:

I can’t help you there. I like Lewin. Also, “pissant” won’t foster many good conversations, really.

One other thing I should add is all the emails I send out have a bible scripture in the signature. I change it from time to time, but the current one is Philemon 1:6, which reads, I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. This will come up in the next sequence.
So this evening, I get another email back from Oscar, saying this:

Ok , Joe , I apologize for offending you . Looks like a clear case of me barking up the wrong tree . My mistake by writing a letter to a person who has a ranger baseball site but is not that much into baseball . Josh’s penchant for talking about anything other than baseball is ludicrous , but if that’s your cup of tea , more power to you . Maybe one day you’ll appreciate the great game of baseball for what it is , the national pastime , NOT a forum for lame comedy acts.
BTW , Jesus never played the game

Now, I know Josh Lewin isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I realize that. I like him, but I don’t go around calling him a pissant, or assuming people’s appreciation of the game is based on whether or not they like a particular television play by play announcer. That seems quite out there, and is the reason I’m posting this. The entire exchange seems quite bizarre. Anyway, I sent this back to him…

>>Ok , Joe , I apologize for offending you . Looks like a clear case of me barking up the wrong tree . My mistake by writing a letter to a person who has a ranger baseball site but is not that much into baseball . I'm very into baseball. Moreso than I think you possibly realize or assume. >> Josh’s penchant for talking about anything other than baseball is ludicrous , but if that’s your cup of tea , more power to you . Maybe one day you’ll appreciate the great game of baseball for what it is , the national pastime , NOT a forum for lame comedy acts . I'm 42. Been paying attention since I was 7. Thank you for assuming you are aware of all the facts of my life and that you know enough about me to assume you know what's going on in my mind and how I appreciate things. Insulting me merely because I like something you don't is a pretty narrow minded view of the world and people. Grating emails like that don't make me want to explain myself to you. Just makes me want to stick you on ignore, so I don't have to see you again, but I won't do that. >> BTW , Jesus never played the game No, but there's a lot to learn from Jesus about anger and poor attitudes towards people.

I really am perplexed by this. I will pray for understanding on this Oscar, as well as for your rather open hostility towards me.
Someone care to tell me (besides Oscar) if I’m off base here?
UPDATE: Friday evening, I got this back from our buddy Oscar. I don’t quite understand him at all.

why waste your time responding to a person who obviously is beneath you ? I’ve got all day , but your message of hope is wasted on cretins like me. Strike me from your reply list

So I gave him this in reply, but I think I’m done here unless he wants to discuss the Gospel some more.

It’s not my message of hope. It’s Jesus’ message of hope, and it’s never a waste of time. If you’d like to talk about it, I’d be glad to. Here’s one that I think applies to you.
“This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3: 22-24)

Dear Mr. Hicks.
We suck.
Lovingly,
Joseph M. Siegler
P.S. You should have retired Johnny Oates’ number when he was alive.

A friend of mine sent me this video, which he found on one of my regular Anglican news websites. Anyway, it’s a video where some folks turned a random minor league game with 10 year olds into something resembling a major league game.
If you have a kid who plays ball, you’ll probably find this amusing.