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lar at Wezen-Ball has created a nifty graph/ timeline which tracks every home ballpark used by the Major League clubs over the course of their entire existence. The explanation is here. The timeline itself is here. Pfun Pfact: The Reds’ home park was once called “Palace of the Fans,” and was built with team money. …

There had been a lot of noise about Curtis Granderson moving to left field now that he’s with the Yankees, but yesterday on XM’s Home Plate show, Brian Cashman said “Granderson is out centerfielder.”  Oh, he hedged it a bit and noted that Brett Gardner would be an outstanding centerfielder, but the Granderson is going…

Buster Olney has them. In addition to his $8 million: He gets $500,000 for winning the MVP Award, $200,000 for finishing second through fifth, and $100,000 for finishing sixth through tenth; He gets $100,000 for being voted in as an All-Star, $50,000 for being selected as a reserve; $100,000 for winning the Gold Glove and…

The world changed in a very important way last night at around 9PM. How? Ozzie Guillen’s Twitter account went live. The highlights so far: 3 day of Spring Training and im already boreddddddd going to eat in half hour why dye no have a job ? Thanks a lot for the support i like it…

One day after I pondered whether baseball would react in an ignorant, knee-jerk fashion to that positive HGH test by that British rugby player,  the New York Times reports that baseball plans react in an ignorant, knee-jerk fashion to that positive HGH test by that British rugby player: Major League Baseball, which had long been…

The Thomas M. Cooley Law School of Lansing, Michigan charges its many, many students something like $25-30K a year in tuition for what U.S. News routinely considers a fourth-tier legal education.*  And now their tuition dollars are going to the Lansing Lugnuts, Class-A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays: The baseball park will be renamed…

Only one time in my entire legal career did the date initially assigned to one of my cases as the trial date end up being the actual trial date, so I’m not exactly surprised by this: The question of who owns the Dodgers might not be resolved by the All-Star break, perhaps not by the…

From Olney.  And an added “best shape of his life” too! Best line of the spring so far: Andrew Jones showed up in great shape, about 25 pounds lighter than last year. And he proclaimed to others, “I am the best CFer you guys have in camp.” To which Joey Cora replied, “You should be.…

Michael Silverman of the Boston Herald tweeted this a couple of hours ago: For any doubters about the Mike Lowell situation being a distraction, I’ve got two words for you: Already is. Then he links the story he (apparently) wrote about Lowell in camp today.  If you can find anything that constitutes a “distraction” in…

A minor league deal, of course. Rosenthal reports that Wilkerson is not invited to the major league camp. He’ll train with the minor leaguers. Unlike a lot of guys his age, he’s willing to play at AAA this year. While Wilkerson trained last year, he hasn’t played in a real game since 2008, when he…

ESPN’s Jon Sciambi — one of the better and brighter baseball broadcasters you’re ever going to hear — wrote a guest column for Baseball Prospectus today.  It starts out with a great Chipper Jones anecdote and (accompanying pic), and segues into the challenges broadcasters face in bringing more advanced stats to baseball games on TV:…

Ron Rollins is probably my oldest commenter, having now followed me to three different blogs in the past three years.  He’s a baseball blogger himself. We often disagree with one another — he doesn’t much go for the steroids and other trivia in which I often delve, and his threshold for sabermetrics is not as…

“I talked about retirement a little bit, but told them I’d be the same ol’ grumpy, pissed off guy.” – Bobby Cox, describing the spring training kickoff speech he gave to the Braves this morning.

A U.K. rugby player tested positive for HGH recently and that fact has the New York Daily News and Buster Olney both arguing that it’s high time for baseball to implement a test of their own. If they do not, Olney says, “10 years from now they and the sport will be at risk for…

Jeff Fletcher at AOL takes a closer look at the conventional wisdom that Dusty Baker is the angel of death when it comes to young starting pitchers: There is no way to prove conclusively why any pitcher gets injured, so the claims of pitcher abuse by Baker will forever be just theories. It is indisputable,…

Not that this is a major surprise — Bob Nightengale reported that it was likely last October — but Aaron Boone has officially retired. He’s joining ESPN’s Baseball Tonight show. Boone posted a career line of .263/.326/.425 with 126 homers in twelve seasons. He made the All-Star team once.  And of course, there’s this. He’s…

Yahoo!’s Tim Brown has a feature on Tim Lincecum, the central part of which is Lincecum’s diminishing velocity, which has gone from mid-90s in his rookie year to a consistent 93 mph in 2008 and down to 91-92 last season, at least according to pitching coach Dave Righetti: “I’m aware my velocity wasn’t where it…

I’ve still got tens of thousands of baseball cards in my basement from back in the day, but I haven’t bought a new one in nearly 20 years. Just sort of lost interest, even if I still love my old ones. My mom showed up at my house today, however, with a box of those…

Jesus Montero turned some heads in batting practice yesterday, nailing a home run off the “M” in the “George M. Steinbrenner Field” sign in centerfield. The Star Ledger’s Marc Carig called up Google Earth and determined that it’s 446 feet from home plate to the scoreboard.  That’s probably on-the-ground length. When you look at how…

Tulips and crocuses.  Robins. Meaningful college basketball games.  All of these are classic harbingers of spring, but perhaps the surest sign that spring is here is the annual Eric Chavez comeback story. Hark! There it is! Mike Gallego has a fun challenge this spring: The A’s infield coach has to turn a Gold Glove third…

MLB.com’s Bill Ladson on Twitter a moment ago: Nats CF Nyjer Morgan said he is planning to grow an afro. I’ll have more on Morgan later on nationals.com. Unless it’s about Elijah Dukes investigating a hi-top fade, I don’t want to hear it. In other news, there’s really not a lot going on at Nats’…

Andy Martino writes that Jayson Werth’s Phuture is uncertain: The Phillies rightfielder arrived at spring training yesterday with long hair and a thick beard, entering the final season of a two-year, $10 million contract. With the Phillies saying they have limited payroll flexibility beyond the approximately $140 million currently committed, Werth might have priced himself…

What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many counties can’t…