As you may know, Major League Baseball has been conducting DNA tests on prospects for several years now. What’s more, they often make the families pay for a test that costs $400. The reasons are understandable: teams want to avoid being defrauded out of millions of dollars by players who falsify their name and age.

The Nationals gave a $1.4 million signing bonus 16-year old Esmailyn Gonzalez before they found out he was 20-year old Carlos Alvarez Lugo. The Indians spent $15 million on a multi-year deal for Fausto Carmona before they found out he was three years older and his name was Roberto Hernandez. The amount of money at stake is so large that corruption is hard to avoid. Numerous officials were fired in the wake of a money-skimming scandal uncovered in 2008, including scouts from the White Sox, Yankees and Red Sox, and Nationals General Manager Jim Bowden. As Nationals president Stan Kasten said after the Gonzalez/Alvarez fraud was uncovered:

No teenager executed this fraud. There were a number of people involved in it… Falsified hospital documents. Falsified school documents. Other family members changing their identities. Bribes were paid. Really elaborate stuff.

That fraud is not just confined to a few high-profile cases. It’s widespread. According to a Cleveland Plain Dealer story from February:

Last year, MLB investigators did background checks on more than 800 players who signed professional contracts in the Dominican Republic. In about 15 percent, fraud was found. MLB statistics say fraud was discovered in over 60 percent of the players investigated in 2002.

So it’s understandable why teams would want to turn to science to find a way to fight back. But they may be breaking the law. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Alex Liddi hit a grand slam, which the AP noted was “the first major league grand slam by an Italian-born player in half-century.” That actually understates the true rarity of Liddi’s accomplishment: as a matter of fact, Liddi is only the second Italian-born player of all time to homer in the big leagues, since utility infielder Reno Bertoia retired in 1962 with 27 homers and one grand slam on May 7, 1958.

Liddi and Bertoia are among seven Italian-born major leaguers, and Liddi already has the third-most games played and the second-most Wins Above Replacement. (It won’t be long before he passes Bertoia, who amassed 1.1 WAR in 1,957 PA despite not really being able to hit or field.) Liddi is prominent as one of the only major leaguers born outside the Americas or East Asia.

Major leaguers have come from all six inhabited continents*, though in the past half-century, the vast majority have come from the Americas, East Asia, and a couple of dozen from Australia. Nearly 100 players were born in the UK and Ireland, though they got the majority of their emigration done in the late 19th and early 20th century. (As a sign of how much has changed since then, Irish ballplayers faced racist discrimination back in the late 19th century.) There has been one player from Africa, Al Cabrera, who hailed from the Spanish-controlled archipelago of the Canary Islands, which are off the coast of Morocco and Western Sahara.
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[On Hugo Chavez]
What I say about Chavez, I don’t say I like his ideas, I don’t say I like the way he is. I just said I like the man because he works hard and he says what he thinks. Some people don’t like it, but I don’t say I like the man, he’s a governor. I don’t say I like the man, he do great things in the world, in my country. I said I like the man because he loves his country.
— 2005, press conference before second game of ALCS

[Asked to name the toughest person he knows]
Fidel Castro. He’s a bullshit dictator and everybody’s against him, and he still survives, has power. Still has a country behind him. Everywhere he goes they roll out the red carpet.
I don’t admire his philosophy. I admire him.
— 2008, interview, Men’s Journal

[While talking to a reporter in his office]
I love Fidel Castro… I respect Fidel Castro.
You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that motherfucker is still here.
— 2012, interview, Time Magazine

One month ago today, Ozzie Guillen returned from a five-game suspension for saying “I love Fidel Castro.” And no one cares. The Marlins have gone 16-11 since he got back; they were just 2-3 under interim manager Joey Cora. The entire controversy, which seemed to suck all the oxygen out of sports television and radio for the week between the publication of his comments and the end of his suspension, appears to have dissipated.

(Well, just about. A little over a week ago, when the Marlins were in Houston for a series, Ozzie cursed out a radio host who asked him about the backlash , and the Astros kicked out a group of fans who chose to lampoon Ozzie by dressing up as Castro by wearing matching beards and cigars.)

The controversy even seems to have dissipated in Miami. “That’s a fact,” says Dr. Andy Gomez, the assistant provost at the University of Miami who is also a senior fellow in the university’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies. “The Cuban-American community, we’re going to judge him based on how many games he wins, not on how he feels about Fidel Castro.”
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So here’s what we know:
1) Bryce Harper, a phenomenally talented 19 year old who also occasionally does annoying things, got plunked by Cole Hamels on May 6.
2) Cole Hamels admitted doing it on purpose, “to continue the old baseball… that old-school prestigious way of baseball.”

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Last night, Jered Weaver threw the 274th no-hitter in baseball history — or so the stories say. There have been two no-hitters so far this year, and ten so far in this young decade. Half of them came in 2010, the year whose no-hit frequency led some to dub it “The Year of the Pitcher.”

And, indeed, the five regular-season no-hitters thrown in 2010 (along with a sixth, by Roy Halladay, in the playoffs) mark it as one of the no-hittiest years in history. The five regular season no-nos tie it for third place, with 1962, 1968, 1973, and 1991, and the six overall tie it for second place with 1969. (Of course, many will remember that there almost was — and should have been — a seventh.) But the most of all were thrown in 1990: eight overall. The frequency of no-hitters per year hasn’t increased, except with respect to the historically anomalous 2000’s.

Data here and throughout compiled from baseball-reference play index and MLB.com’s no-hitter registry.
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David Wright set the Mets’ all-time career RBI record last night, passing Darryl Strawberry, but he was already high on the list of the greatest Mets position players of all time. In fact, by Wins Above Replacement, Wright already is the G.M.O.A.T. — Greatest Met Of All Time. (Other than Tom Seaver, of course. No shame in that. Tom Terrific is probably one of the two or three best pitchers since World War II.)

He didn’t have a lot of competition, because the Mets have had more otherworldly pitchers than hitters. Mets have won four Cy Young awards — three by Tom Terrific and one by Doc Gooden — but no Met has ever won an MVP with the team. Only one Met position player has ever won rookie of the year, Strawberry. That’s not to say they haven’t had stars. Since the team was created in 1962, sixteen Met position players have been selected to multiple All-Star Games. By comparison, the Yankees have had 27, but the Braves have had just fourteen. The Mets have had great players, they just haven’t had a lot of superstars with staying power.

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Peter Gammons wrote for the Boston Globe for over 30 years, from 1969 to 2000. In that time, he became the most prominent beat writer on the Boston Red Sox and one of the lead baseball analysts on ESPN, and that body of work elevated him to the Baseball Hall of Fame, when he received the 2004 J.G. Taylor Spink Award for sportswriters. But the Globe may be more disappointed than proud of Gammons at the moment.

On a sports talk radio show, Gammons criticized Globe reporter Bob Hohler, who last October famously broke the “chicken and beer” story of vast dissension within the Red Sox clubhouse down their disastrous stretch run in 2011. The images from that story, gleaned from anonymous sources, dominated the coverage of the team as manager Terry Francona was fired and general manager Theo Epstein decamped to Chicago: Francona’s alleged painkiller addictions and troubled marriage; Josh Beckett, John Lackey, and Jon Lester’s lax approach to conditioning and training; and Jacoby Ellsbury’s isolation from the rest of the clubhouse.

A week ago, Gammons said that Hohler should reveal his anonymous sources. This week, he amended that to say that he wished Hohler would reveal his sources, even though he understands that Hohler is unable to do so. Gammons clarified that he was concerned about the damage the allegations had done to Francona’s further managerial chances:

The 2012 season has begun… It caused [Francona] so much harm – including essentially eliminating him from any chance at the Cardinals job – I wonder why those who spoke anonymously cannot step forward and say they were among the sources.

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A few weeks ago, the Dodgers became the most expensive sports franchise in the history of the world. Just today, they celebrate their 122nd anniversary in the National League. And it’s a storied history. On this date in 1890, the Brooklyn Bridegrooms made their debut in the National League by playing the Boston Beaneaters (the future Braves). Boston won the game 15-9, but the Brooklyns had the last laugh, winning the pennant by three games over Cap Anson’s Chicago Colts (later known as the Cubs) and 12 games ahead of the fifth-place Beaneaters. Their first National League season yielded their first National League pennant and the first of 19 20 overall for the franchise. That’s the second-highest total in National League history, behind tied with the Giants’ 20. (The Cardinals are in third place with 18.)

The Bridegrooms were playing in their second league and under their third name: the franchise had begun in 1884 as the Brooklyn Atlantics of the American Association. Then they played three years as the Grays, eleven as the Bridegrooms or just Grooms, and then thirteen as the “Superbas,” a nickname coined to describe the superteam that resulted from a mixture of the best Bridegrooms and the best players from Ned Hanlon’s legendary 1890’s Baltimore Orioles — they finished in first place their first two years under that name, 1899 and 1900. The name “Dodgers,” a contraction of “Trolley Dodgers,” was first used in 1911-1912, but the team then spent 18 years as the Robins before the present name stuck for good.
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We’ve heard a lot about Valley Fever this year. Last week, Bob Uecker’s son passed away due to complications associated with the disease. And back in March, when doctors suspected that Ike Davis was suffering from symptoms of Valley Fever and some worried that Mike Trout might have fallen ill as well, Wendy Thurm asked a timely question: “Should MLB Be Worried About Valley Fever?” She concluded that the answer was, basically, no:

Although Valley Fever doesn’t appear to present a significant health risk to players who live or play in Arizona, with two reported cases among major leaguers in the last three years, MLB should take steps to educate teams and players about the disease and how to lower the risk of infection.

Of course, the number of reported cases of a disease is generally lower than the number of actual cases, particularly in the case of a disease like Valley Fever, whose symptoms often resemble those of the flu. Valley Fever is caused by a fungus called coccidioidomycosis, or cocci for short. Cocci grows in the soil, and so its endemic region is almost entirely confined to a very specific, arid area: the San Joaquin Valley of California that gave it its name, and the desert region of southern Arizona. (Most of the state’s population lies within the endemic area, though much of the state is cocci-free, including the Grand Canyon.) The Phoenix-Tucson corridor of Arizona contains the majority of the population exposed to Valley Fever, so much so that local public health advocates have started to refer to it as “Arizona’s Disease.”

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‘What’s to-day?’ cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.
‘Eh?’ returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.
‘What’s to-day, my fine fellow?’ said Scrooge.
‘To-day?’ replied the boy. ‘Why, Christmas Day.’
— Charles Dickens, 1843

“Happy opening day,” Bobby Valentine says, and then he pauses to reconsider. “Third opening day. Yesterday, Japan and today. Happy third opening day.”
— The New York Times, 2012

For many a year one had no difficulty in answering a version of Ebenezer Scrooge’s simple question: what is today? When does the baseball season start? It starts on Opening Day, of course. But how do we define what is and what is not Opening Day?

Traditionally, we think of Opening Day as a think that happens in April and in America (or Canada). But it has not always been thus. In fact, the first game of the 1871 season was played on May 4, as the Ft. Wayne Kekiongas defeated the Cleveland Forest Citys 2-0, behind a shutout by Bobby Mathews.
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