Recently, the Tampa Bay Rays wore plaid blazers, or BRayzers, on a road trip.


Recently, Alan Cumming wore a plaid suit to the Creative Arts EMMYs.



Recently, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones went back on tour.

These can not all be a coincidence.

Basically, unless you're drafted in one of the fist several rounds, you don't make very much money. Depending on the state, most players make less than minimum wage, and that's only during the 4.5 months they're actually paid. Not very glamorous at all. Really interesting read.

But the biggest difference may very well be the money. The minimum annual salary in Major League Baseball currently sits at $400,000. Meanwhile, most players at the minor league level who haven’t reached minor league free agency are lucky to make $10,000 over the course of a season; a survey of players revealed that those in rookie ball make $1,250-1,300 a month while players in Triple-A, the highest level of the minors, can make roughly $1,000 more per month while under the contracted amount.

(Thanks, Jonah and Andy)

Can you imagine if this kid had died after being Tasered for running on the field at a Phillies game? I have a feeling MLB is going to ban the use of Tasers for this type of situation in the future.


UPDATE:
Oops, this one came from The Daily What. My bad.

Sometimes you wonder why people post mug shot photos, and sometimes you just know.



Matthew Clemmens was mad about his friend getting thrown out of the Phillies game for being unruly, so he made himself throw up on an off-duty cop. And his 11 year old daughter. You've got to not do that at the baseball game, folks.

So this happened last night at Fenway.

If you were curious about Charlie Brown's composite baseball statistics Wezen-Ball has calculated them for you. They've taken the time to go through 2 decades of Peanuts comics to provide a detailed analysis of the 60s and 70s. It's glorious and compulsive documentation. I approve.V

Via Baseball Musings

In this article about the Red Sox' recent moves, Alex Speier touches on their trade of Casey Kotchman for Mariners' utility man Bill Hall. It's been said this offseason that the Sox are especially concerned about the luxury tax and are doing everything in their power to remain under the $170 million salary threshold. This threshold is determined based on the average annual value of a contract, Bill hall's 4 years at $24 million for instance would be a cost of $6 million against the luxury tax threshold. However, since his contract was structured differently, and since the Brewers were paying the Mariners almost the full amount of the contract, Bill Hall's expiring contract is actually worth around -$1.5 million against the threshold.

Expiring contracts have a significant trade value in the NBA, but I've never heard of any baseball trades being made for this reason. Bill Simmons goes so far as to suffix Expiring Contract onto the end of any player in the last year of a contract, so at the very least, we should refer to Bill Hall as Bill Hall's Expiring Contract for this season, right?

Hall is in the last guaranteed year of a four-year, $24 million deal that will pay him $8.4 million next season. The Mariners, according to a major-league source, will pay $7.5-8 million of his salary — essentially sending the Sox the same money that was given to Seattle by the Brewers when the M’s acquired Hall last summer.

Hall’s contract is evaluated for luxury tax purposes as being worth $6 million in 2010, based on its AAV. But the full amount of the cash transfer — call it $7.5 million — will be deducted from the Sox’ payroll as determined for luxury tax purposes. That being the case, Hall will actually reduce the Sox’ payroll in calculating the competitive balance tax by roughly $1.5 million dollars. Overall, then, the Sox were able to sign Beltre and add Hall and a player to be named at a cost (for CBT purposes) of roughly $2 million in 2010.

Via Dave.

The on again, off again movie version of Michael Lewis' book, Moneyball, is back on. Bennett Miller, director of Capote, has been brought in to steer this ship home. He will, apparently, be taking the movie in a direction different, and more mainstream, than original director Steven Soderbergh.

Here's a video of Michael Lewis explaining the origin of The Blind Side. There's about 15 people in the theater when he does.

If it's pettiness you crave, here's a bazillion word, 2 part series on The Forgotten Man Of Moneyball, Eric Walker. In an interesting move assuring a constant bias, the author of the piece is that forgotten man, Eric Walker.

Lastly, I'd like to again ask why Liar's Poker has not yet been made into a movie.

The Tampa Bay Rays Executive VP Andrew Friedman doesn't have a contract for some reason. Thanks, Dave!

Sports Illustrated took a look back at Upper Deck and isn't too optimistic about the future of card collecting. Tucked into this ____ (what's the word for when a newspaper prints an obituary before someone is dead?) are a few interesting facts about Upper Deck like:

The image of Griffey that became part of collecting lore, with his blue turtleneck and 'fro-mullet tucked beneath his cap, was doctored. In his home office in Corona, Calif., 75 miles north of Upper Deck's headquarters, Tom Geideman hands me a Polaroid that had been sitting atop a binder of Griffey cards and says, "This—it's cut off a little bit—but this is the original photo." Griffey's wearing the navy-blue hat of Seattle's Class A affiliate, the San Bernardino Spirit, whose logo is a silver S over a red star. The picture was taken by the late V.J. Lovero, an Angels team photographer who shot Griffey and his father for a Sports Illustrated feature in 1988. Lovero sold one of his extras to Upper Deck, which airbrushed the hat royal blue, erased the star, made the S yellow and—ta-da!—completed the makeover.

And then there's this 'doth protest too much' rebuttal from the Upper Deck Blog. Though it seems some of the facts in the SI article were incorrect (and not checked for some reason), calling the article a 'hatchet job' is a little much. However, if you want to read 10 reasons the author of the Upper Deck Blog knows that card collecting is not dead, or see several comments from folks operating card shops, that's the link you'd click.