On this date in 1920, the Chicago Cubs give his unconditional release to Lee Magee after having learned from him a week ago that he has been betting against his team. Magee will sue the Cubs for his salary of $4,500, charging that his livelihood as a ballplayer was destroyed through the sudden canceling of his contract. The Cubs will ask for a dismissal of the suit, saying that “previous to the making of the contract the plaintiff was guilty of betting against the team of which he was a member, and sought to win bets by intentional bad playing to defeat said team.”

More on Magee. It’s some story.

This is a select group of players:

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Which of these players will ever get into Cooperstown?  Which ones should?

Kirk Gibson and Tony Phillips were teammates on the 1993 Tigers.   Tony Phillips and Tim Salmon were teammates on the 1995 Angels.  And, this trio is the top three of “Retired Batters Who Played From 1933 to 2012 Who Were Never an All-Star“:

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Here is the batters list -

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And, he is the pitchers list -

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The team had 3 Hall of Famers:  Red Faber, Ray Schalk and Eddie Collins.  And, maybe it could have been as many as five – if not for the fix.

I wonder what the record is for most eventual Hall of Famers on a team that lost a World Series?  It couldn’t be more than five or six, could it?

They were all on the road to close out the season.  (They went 14-10 in those games.)

I cannot find any mention of why the played they month of September, sans one game, on the road.

Worse, they played three double-headers in a row during this stretch.  Yikes.

The dude could hit.

And, he was colorful.

Dead at forty.  Shame.

Via the Star-Ledger:

George Herman “Babe” Ruth was born on Feb. 6, 1895. While baseball fans are well-versed in the both Babe’s statistical and hot dog-eating accomplishments, here are some lesser-known facts about one of the original five inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Ruth was one of eight children . Only he and his sister, Mamie Ruth Moberly, survived infancy.

By the age of 15, Ruth’s talents as both a pitcher and hitter had become known to Baltimore Orioles manager Jack Dunn. The minor league team’s manager scouted talent for the Boston Red Sox. By 19, Ruth wanted to play professionally, but needed a legal guardian to sign a contract for him. Dunn became Ruth’s guardian, and teammates began to refer to Ruth as “Dunn’s new babe;” the nickname stuck.

Ruth and his illustrious teammate, Lou Gehrig, did not speak to each other for years, with clubhouse talk tracing the dispute to Ruth’s wife having once criticized Gehrig’s mother. When the two stars did speak, it was often in fluent German. Both were sons of German immigrants.

Ruth ended his career bitter with the New York Yankees because he felt they should have named him manager. No other team gave him the opportunity either. The only on-field position he ever held following his playing days was as a first-base coach for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1938.

I never knew that Ruth and Gehrig talked to each other in German. And, how about The Babe and Donnie Baseball? Both wanted to manage the Yankees and both ended up as a coach with the Dodgers instead. (Of course, Mattingly later became the Dodgers skipper.)

Last, Hank Aaron was born on February 5th and the Babe was the 6th.  How cool would it have been if they both had been born on the same day?  Man, they just missed….

That’s the number of Plate Appearances that Ken Griffey Jr. had in his career at Safeco Field.

I’m just saying…

By the way, the dude had a career .998 OPS when playing in the Kingdome. Also, 198 of his career homeruns came there too.  From 1993 through 1998, “The Kid” was good for 20 to 30 homeruns a year at the Kingdome.

Here is the list -

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Greg Maddux, from 1992 through 2000, may just be the greatest run by a starting pitcher in the history of baseball.  Only Lefty Grove and The Big Train come close to it.

Via Ken Davidoff today with a h/t to BBTF -

In 2006, Jerome Holtzman, a legendary Chicago baseball writer who became MLB’s official historian in 1999, told Selig that he thought the reaction to the “Steroid Era” had been overblown. That the game had been filled with this sort of stuff from its inception. Selig responded with an assignment: Put something on paper for me. Give me some context to what we’re seeing now.

Holtzman responded with a document that went back to the start of the 20th century. It mentioned gamblers and segregation, corked bats and scuffed balls, amphetamines and steroids. Selig still has it in his office today.

Holtzman died in 2008. His successor as MLB historian, the great John Thorn, said this to me on Friday: “No number is pure, and no number can be given a rich understanding absent context. Every number has a virtual asterisk alongside it.”

He added this: “I believe that the average fan looks at numbers like 511 (Cy Young’s wins) or 714 (Ruth’s homers) or 755 (Aaron’s homers) or 762 (Bonds’ homers) as a royal road to understanding. There is no royal road. There is no short cut. They are imperishable remains of events that are vanished. This is all we have. That’s why we venerate them.

“We look at the numbers differently than other sports in part because baseball is a stop-action game. The memories adhere. That’s one of the reasons that baseball is the great game of memory and conversation.

“Statistics help, but sometimes they get in the way of understanding.”

I dunno. I still think that stats, in context, are useful – when you look at them in terms of relativity to the era of play and the body of work a player has crafted. And, if someone who was always “just” a 30-homer guy all of a sudden starts hitting 50-long balls a year, and it’s not the result of his park, then you have to look at the rest of the league. And, if he’s only one of a few doing it, then something is wrong. And, that’s worth noting.

Larry Bigbie with the game-winner!

A lot of people think the Super Bowl today will be a close one – with three or four points being the difference between winning and losing. And, it seems to be pretty close to a split on who people are picking to win. So, it seems like it’s anyone’s game.

Me? I am predicting that Harbaugh will be the winning coach. Other than that, I got nothing…

Enjoy the game!

And, the minute it’s over…good-bye to football until training camps…and, hello baseball!

It’s a short list which should get shorter very soon:

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Is there ever any chance that Kaat, John, Moyer or Tanana ever make the Hall of Fame?

Here is the list -

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Wow.  Look at Ron Santo.

I really thought that Roger Maris would have been higher in this list. And, hey, check out where Sal Bando ranked.  Lastly, for these three “age” season, Kenny Lofton was as good as Joe DiMaggio?  Fun stuff…

Happy Birthday today to former one-time members of the Yankees organization Paul Blair and Austin Jackson.

Reggie Jackson, on facing Nolan Ryan: “Every hitter likes a fastball, just like everybody likes ice cream. But you don’t like it stuffed into you by the gallon.”

Happy Birthday Nolan.

Elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, Nolan Ryan was inducted on July 25, 1999 wearing a Rangers cap on his Hall of Fame plaque. Nolan was elected to the Hall of Fame on 98.79% of the eligible ballots, a figure which remains the second highest in history. He is the only player to ever have his uniform number retired by three different teams with the Angels (#30) and Astros (#34) joining the Rangers.

Here is the list -

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Yup. From ages 30 through 35, Jackie Robinson was that good.

Here is the list -

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If Mike Trout’s 2012 rookie season was a woman, I would want to make love to it.

On January 27, 1927, Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker were both exonerated of charges of wrongdoing by Commissioner Landis. Both had been accused, by Dutch Leonard, of conspiracy to throw a game in 1919.

It was headline news in 1927. But, today, do many baseball fans even know the story? And, has it tarnished the legacy of either of these players? For sure, it didn’t keep them out of the Hall of Fame.

He’s an interesting story, from what I can tell.

Brian Greer was drafted by the San Diego Padres in the 1st round of the 1977 amateur draft. In fact, he was the 8th overall selection of the draft.

He struggled in Low-A ball that season, after signing. Nonetheless, the Padres called him up in 1977 and he got into one game where he batted once and struck out (at the age of 18).

The next two seasons weren’t that much better for him. He played Double-A in 1978 and 1979 and was not tearing up the league with the bat, by any stretch of the imagination. Although, he did manage to get into a few big league games in 1979.

He continued to stink in 1980 and 1981 down in the minors. However, in 1982, at the age of 23, playing at both Double-A and Triple-A, he was a three-outcome role model. All told, he batted 566 times and had 31 homers, 103 walks and 202 strikeouts. Combined, his BA/OBA/SLG line was .252/.393/.535 (to go along with 99 RBI that season).

Of course, this was 1982 and sabermetrics wasn’t what it is today. And, for some reason, in 1983, he was sent to A-Ball where he only played in 73 games and was striking out at an alarming pace.

The story ends there. He was out of organized baseball after 1983 at the age of twenty-five.

And, today, he and Phil Coke are the only two players drafted from Sonora High School in La Habra (California) to go play in the major leagues.

Only two players have done this in their major league career-

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How many of you knew this before I told you?

An interesting panel and debate…

The answer is here.

Stan Musial passed away.

When he retired from the game, he was the second greatest player in National League history (at that time).  And, he was a tick away from being the best.

Spanning Multiple Seasons or entire Careers, Playing in the NL, From 1901 to 1963, sorted by greatest WAR Position Players

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Teams with three batters in a season where they qualified for the batting title and had an OPS of .990 or better: