I missed this the other day, but in light of the problems in the Dominican, the chatter about a potential worldwide draft is increasing: Recent cases of fraud and potential corruption involving the signing of baseball players in Latin America have cast new attention to the possibility of a worldwide draft in major league baseball. […]

USA Today looks at why, apart from simply being a baseball-mad country, Cuba is able to produce so much talent: “Everyone plays all positions until about age 15,” says Adelio Garcia, manager for this team of top 13- and 14-year-olds from the western Havana district of Playa. “They like kids with many skills.” “They” are […]

Things to read while you fume over the fact that a last minute hearing scheduled by your opponent in litigation is preventing you from being able to wear jeans to work today: Guest contributor Jon Daly looks at the major sports commissioners who walked the Earth in the 60s and 70s. You know, back when […]

How they compared as the four major sports grew

On March 5, 2009 the second World Baseball Classic kicked off as Japan shut out China. The clear favorites in this year’s pool are Japan and Korea, two countries with well-known baseball histories, but today Richard looks at less baseball-oriented Asian countries.

Seven tips to help your chances.

The biggest danger of the opinion writing business is the risk of tying oneself up in logical and rhetorical knots in order to justify things you wrote days, weeks, or months ago when events in real time render those opinions, well, not entirely correct. Here’s some evidence of that: Writing about Jonah Lehrer’s book on […]

As a central Ohioan, I’m not sure if I can brag about this or not: Guys have a reason to high-five in Columbus and two other Ohio cities, named some of the manliest places in America. A new ranking says Cincinnati, Columbus and Toledo make the top 10 for manliness based on criteria such as […]

Royce the Hack — ShysterBall’s Foreign Correspondent from the Republic of Texas and daytime next-door neighbor of the Ballpark in Arlington — has a dispatch to warm you up on this late winter’s day: The grounds crew next door is in its usual pre-opening day fever. There is an armada of those little John Deere […]

Friend of ShysterBall Pete Toms has an article up over at the Biz of Baseball about sports marketing in the wake of Depression v2.0. It’s a comprehensive cataloging of thr furor over banks using TARP dollars — or not using TARP dollars if you deny the fungibility of money — for sports sponsorships. Read to […]