I can tell you now that one of them is a gimme and few more I know right off the bat.  Others have me befuddled, though.

Go ahead and give it a try.  The winner gets a free Seamheads t-shirt or mousepad. 

But first and foremost a little catchup.  Our own Teddy Ballgame is branching out and is blogging at Tedd’s Sports Shorts.  He’ll be covering sports in general and most likely from a Chicago perspective if I know Teddy.  He started only last week but already has a goodly amount of reading material for us plebes.  Get on over there and say hi. 

Speaking of University of Illinois baseball, there may be one or two of my readers who are fans that don’t know of my site, Illinois Baseball Report, dedicated to covering the team.  For those on Facebook, IBR now has a Facebook fan page, too.  Stop on by and become a fan.  We twitter as well @illbaseballrpt. 

The story goes like this (now pay attention because the details are important in this story.  Baseball fans won’t let you get away with anything).  Mayne went out on a limb and admitted that when JT Snow came up for his very first at-bat in the majors, Mayne told him what pitch was coming.  Mayne tells us that after he told Snow that a “fastball outside” was on its way, he smoked a double to left.

What controversial thing to say.  And good for him for coming clean, right?

Except it didn’t happen.

Mayne should know better (and probably does) than to get one by baseball fans.  It didn’t take long before someone posted the boxscore of JT Snow’s first game.  How strange that Snow was 0 for 5 in his appearance. 

So either:

A)  Mayne is clueless about the all-encompassing expansiveness of the Internet.  He’s a former ballplayer just talking about the old days and didn’t realize that he JUST MIGHT be fact-checked.

or

B) Just the opposite… Mayne is shrewd businessman who knows how to drive traffic to his website which in turn will increase sales of his books and other products.

I’ll just give him the benefit of the doubt and say it’s (A) though I’m jealous of all his web traffic for a stupid story that wasn’t true.

To be fair, Mayne has issued a correction/retraction.  The article rambles and is all over the place (you’ve read my stuff so you know what I’m talking about).  JT Snow was “playing for the Yanks” and he knows for sure it was “towards the end of the season”.  He’s even “sure it was JT”. 

He’s not so sure about the double thing, though.  Might have been an out or something. 

I’m ready to let this thing die.  I’ve given it more room on this blog than it probably deserves. 

I’m a little leery when it comes to MLB ballplayers and blogs or websites.  Somehow, I get the idea they are either ghost-written or under heavy monitoring.  Mayne’s however seems on the level.  First, he’s retired and probably can say what he wants.  Second, his writing style and content appears “unofficial” looking (i.e. he writes like he might speak).  Third, he’s selling a book and makes no bones about it.  But instead of putting a quick template website up and forgetting about it (I’ve seen this countless times even by writers), he’s actually updating it.  Kudos.

Speaking of ballplayers and websites, Willie Mays is having some issues with a website.  A domain name, in particular.  According to domainnamewire.com, Mays is filing to get williemays.com under his control.  Currently, the domain name is owned by a company called Global Access which resides in the Isle of Man.  The website is purely a money making venture for GA as it includes links to ticket outlets (this probably goes without saying but I encourage anyone who goes there to NOT buy tickets from those links).

Mays has asked the World Intellectual Property Organization to arbitrate the matter on his behalf.

I just took it myself.  It took me just 5 minutes to fill out but it does ask some great questions especially in terms of what areas you would like for them to focus their energies on in the future. 

So, if you can spare five minutes of your busy day, take Baseball Reference’s Survey.

The rules of the contest are stated simple enough in the post so saunter on over there and take a stab at winning a copy.

From what I can tell they’ll be including updates to the B-R blog and their always interesting Stat of the Day blog.

For those searching on a common player name (or part thereof), you can put the word “the” in front of the search term and the database will bring up the most popular searched player.

From B-R’s blog:

I just added a mod to the search box on the site. With the addition of all of the minor league pages, getting to someone like Alex Rodriguez’s page via a search “A Rod” returns like 50 people. Now, if you type in “the A Rod” it looks through our db and returns the most popular major league player who matches the search “A Rod”. Adding “the ” to the front of any player search will send you to the most popular player matching that search.

I did my own test.  I searched for “ramon martinez” and got back three results including two minor leaguers.  When I searched for “the ramon martinez”, it took me directly to the page of Ramon Martinez who pitched for the LA Dodgers.

This trick works with initials too though your mileage may vary.  “the jason v” did return Jason Varitek as I intended it too.  For that matter, so did “the j v”.

Anyway, this mod might save a few mouse clicks for those of us who search Baseball Reference’s database on a frequent basis. 

Sometimes info is easier digested in graphs, at least for me.  Check out the website Flip Flop Fly Ball and you’ll see what I mean. 

It’s full of neat baseball-related graphs, maps and images that are kinda neat.  For my buddy DonS, they even have a video montage of Ichiro Suzuki. 

A look at the oddly shaped Polo Grounds from Clem’s Baseball Blog

He has a profile on all stadiums including detailed diagrams with dimensions, and an extensive history. 

I’m not sure how he got all his information but it is impressive.  Diagrams and dimensions are available for every major change they made to each stadium.  There is even an option to easily compare two stadiums.

Check it out if you’re a baseball stadium buff.