Home Run Derby

So – we have news about the Case against Barry Bonds.  And this will be the end of Barry Bonds.

Apparently, the Feds will be subpoenaing former ballplayer Bobby Estalella to testify against Bonds in early March.  And he’s gonna spill. 

Now seriously … does Bobby Estalella look like a man who would know anything about performance enhancing drugs?

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St Louis has fired the first salvo of 2009 in the annual Cubs – Cardinals rivalry. 

Written in the snow outside Busch Stadium in St. Louis …

Photo Credit:  STL TODAY

I’m a Cub fan,  but I will admit – that’s simply beautiful. 
Well played St. Louis.  Your move, Wrigley.

Here’s a collection of ballparks in the snow.

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I’m buried with work this morning … so here’s what you should see around the Baseball Blogosphere …

• Big League Stew has some leg tattoos of Pete Rose and Mickey Mantle you need to see.
• Not Qualified for Comment has a great cartoon about the Legend of Mark Derosa
• David Pinto over at Baseball Musings attended a Q and A last night featuring Joba Chamberlain and Jon Lester.
• Biz of Baseball has renderings of the proposed Marlins stadium. 
• UmpBump has pictures of Hideki Okajima’s wife, Yuka.
• Dugout Central thinks that Washington Nationals’ GM Jim Bowden is the worst executive in MLB
• And Fanhouse has declared the 2009 Texas Rangers to be the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays

Pinch hitters is HRD’s link dump – if you have something you think should be here, drop us a line.

Plumbing the depths of the internet in search of material for this silly baseball website usually takes me through a Dante Alighieri-esque trip through the Nine Circles of Hell that is YouTube.

But sometimes, it’s worth it, like Baseball Stadia and minifigs made of Lego (H/T RSM).  And especially when you find old commercials from the 70’s or 80’s with jingles that will stick in your head all day. 

Here’s two old baseball toys which allowed kids to “play” baseball by themselves.

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About a year ago, Home Run Derby showed you a bunch of replica baseball stadia made of Lego.

There was PNC Park, Camden Yards, Cititzens Bank Park, Yankee Stadium, and even a motorized Miller Park made of Lego.

Well, now someone made some Lego minifigs to play in them. There’s a wee bit of an East Coast Bias here …

Let’s head to Boston, where we find Kevin Youkilis …

Where’s his new wife?

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Facebook.  Everybody’s doing it. 

Facebook is a great way to keep up with friends, reconnect with old ones you forgot about, constantly update people about the excruciating minutiae in your life, and avoid doing any work.

But it would appear that Facebook doesn’t love everyone.  Namely, one Allan H. Selig.  Also known as Bud Selig, the current commissioner of Major League Baseball.

Take a look …

Hilarious. 

Yes, I know that Facebook page almost assuredly doesn’t actually belong to Bud Selig.  Or this one.  Or this one (which lists former NBA commissioner David Stern as Bud’s only friend.  More likely, they’re all fake Facebook pages under the name ”Bud Selig.”

But there are a bunch of Facebook Groups who don’t like Bud Selig … and here’s some of them.  But be warned … some of them have some NSFW names.

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The Chicago Tribune has announced that the Ricketts family has won the bidding for the Chicago Cubs. 

And go figure, Jay Mariotti doesn’t like it.  In his most recent post at FanHouse, Mariotti describes how he apparently wanted (and still wants) Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban to be the owner of the Cubs. 

But since that didn’t happen, Mariotti had to first do a little name calling about Ricketts and Cub-Fandom in general …

I don’t care that the new owner of the Cubs, Tom Ricketts, met his wife somewhere in the Wrigley Field bleachers. Nor do I care that he lived every guy’s Wrigleyville dream, slumming in an apartment above a bar by the ballpark. This is just more of the same gooey romanticism that Cubdom eats from the first victory in April to the last inevitable loss of autumn — and never amounts to anything but the same “OHHHHH, NOOOOO!!!” from Ron Santo in the radio booth, echoing 101 years of agony.

We’re going to come back to this later.    Mariotti then goes on to assault Ricketts’ ownership qualifications …

What I want to know is simple and to the point: Can Ricketts and his family — best known for the TD Ameritrade discount brokerage founded by his father, J. Joe Ricketts — produce what the Tribune Co. couldn’t produce, the Wrigley family couldn’t produce and every Cubs owner since 1908 couldn’t produce? Can these people win the friggin’ World Series already? With no experience in pro sports ownership, what do they know about running a baseball franchise?  In particular, what do they know about running a franchise supported by a fanatical cult of loons, who ignore tidal waves of hopeless futility and, somehow, come back for more punishment after every October choke job?

So you need experience in “pro sports ownership” to run a successful baseball franchise?  Carl Pohlad (Minnesota Twins), Jim DeWitt (St. Louis Cardinals), Stuart Sternberg (Tampa Bay Rays), George Steinbrenner (New York Yankees), and Arte Moreno (Anaheim Angels) would like to differ.  Except Pohlad.  And only because he’s dead.

And besides, I would think “running a franchise supported by a fanatical cult of loons” would be easier than running one without said loons.  The key word is “support” – the loons pack the park nearly every game – without question.

Mariotti continues …

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Sometimes Baseball legends and Hall of Famers make really bad endorsements.  Harry Caray doing commercials for La Preferida Mexican Foods springs to mind.

Add Johnny Bench to the list.

We’ve already seen that Bench will still sell his soul (appearing with Joe Morgan so George Clooney would show up on Ellen Degeneres’ show) for just about anything.

Here’s Johnny Bench back in 1979, pitching Bazooka’s Bubble Fudge Bubble Gum with his nephew Timmy. 

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Back in the mid-1980’s, thanks to a big push by First Lady Nancy Reagan, everyone was on a big “Don’t Do Drugs” kick.

Cocaine was the big scourge back then, both on the street and in MLB clubhouses.  

In 1983, the Kansas City Royals had four players sent to prison for trying to purchase Cocaine.  The 1985 Pittsburgh Drug Trials led MLB Commissioner Peter Uberroth to hand out fines or suspensions to eleven players in 1986.  It’s believed that the Hall of Fame candidacies of Tim Raines, Dave Parker and Keith Hernandez have all suffered because of their association with the trials (and drug use).

In order to help improve their image, MLB unleashed a big ol’ Anti-Drug campaign … complete with players (presumably drug-free) making Public Service Announcements telling you about the dangers of Drugs (specifically cocaine). 

Here’s four 1986 PSA’s featuring a quartet of future Hall of Famers.

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