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And what antics transpire within?

This morning, whilst savoring my morning ritual of Fortnum & Mason and The Sydney Morning Herald, I ran across this item about the charter jets used by most American sports teams. It seems like Delta has a good grip on the business, holding contracts with half of the MLB franchises.

The article is worth checking out for some insight into the business side of the charter service and a cool slideshow of what the planes are like inside, if you’re not a baseball player/journalist/groupie and have never had the pleasure of seeing one.

Apparently the NBA configurations have 60″ of legroom between seats. That’s five feet! You could lay David Eckstein out in front of you as a floormat and you’d both be perfectly comfortable (especially if you were considerate enough to remove your shoes first).

Three years into a remarkable burn, it looks like Walkoff Walk will shut its doors for good at the end of January. The blogosphere will sorely miss the stylings of the writers at the irreverent WoW. Rob Iracane and Kris Liakos were the primary writers and editors of the site that was seemingly dedicated to immortalizing the importance of the game-winning walk, and, perhaps, shrimp running on treadmills. 310toJoba, Dan McQuade and Drew Fairservice also wrote for WoW, with Fairservice recently starting GhostrunnerOnFirst, a Blue Jays blog on ESPN’s Sweet Spot Network. Something tells me we haven’t seen the last of this crew.

But, before we lose them in this particular iteration, let’s celebrate the genius that was Walkoff Walk. Here are some of the best posts in WoW history, in no particular order:

Kris Liakos’ “Annual Teams That Were Dead By Memorial Day” post (5/7/08)

Kris discovers Rinku and Dinesh (5/2/08)

Kris interviews Rinku and Dinesh (12/11/08)

Drew Fairservice makes a link between gut size and strikeout ability (6/30/2010)

Drew comments on DRaysBay taking out a goodbye ad for Carl Crawford (12/2/10)

Rob Iracane rips off Nate Silver, argues for expansion (5/13/08)

Rob writes about economics in a semi-intelligent manner for once (12/2/08)

Rob wonders why it’s so often minorities that ‘lack hustle’ (5/6/10)

Rob skewers Jon Heyman for circular logic on Bert Byleven – a year ago (1/5/10)

Dan McQuade’s excellent movie recurring review feature, Cinema Varitek (4/30/09)

Dan laments the lack of ‘cat-ty’ analysis (6/15/10)

310toJoba takes a look at WAR and MVP votes, parts 1 and 2 (1/16/10)

In the New Year’s edition of the New York Times, Michael Schmidt wrote an interesting article on Rafael Palmeiro and the hall of fame. Naturally, PEDs are a major theme. The topic of how the writers will treat those players from the steroid era – not just those like Palmeiro who were caught, but players like Jeff Bagwell with whom speculation is all the evidence we have – also came up. On that subject, Ross Newhan a former columnist from the LA Times, said the following:

“Somebody said we are not the morality police, but yet I think we are. If we aren’t, who is? Part of our job is that we are custodians of the game’s history. I do look at the larger picture, and Palmeiro had a lot of good years, but that brings back to my feeling that otherwise he would be worthy of the Hall of Fame.”

The merits of Newhan’s viewpoint can be debated – I, for one, stand in the “innocent until proven guilty” court – but that’s not why we’re here. We’re here because the image of Ross Newhan as a Custodian of Baseball is funny. See?

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Road uniform concept sketch.

It sounds like the Korea Professional Baseball League may be getting a ninth team, this one in the city of Changwon.

As in Japan, baseball teams in South Korea are typically owned by corporations. Intriguingly, one corporation bidding for the rights to the proposed Changwon franchise is NCSoft, a leading publisher of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games, including the popular Lineage and Guild Wars series of games.

NCSoft’s corporate motto is “make people’s life more fun.” But when does more fun become too much fun? That question was raised in a US District Court last summer, when a former customer sued NCSoft for negligence, arguing that their game Lineage II was “too addictive.” The plaintiff claimed that he was “unable to function independently in usual daily activities such as getting up, getting dressed, bathing or communicating with family and friends.”

Video gaming is a plausible competitive sport in Korea, and perhaps NCSoft sees some nefarious synergies between publishing video games and running a baseball team. More likely, they’re just looking to do some good old-fashioned advertising.

Fear not, innocent denizens of Changwon: there is no way baseball will ever be as life-wreckingly fun as massively multiplayer online roleplaying games. Baseball has a far more wholesome and more moderate fun-ness.

Baseball Team For Sale?

You’ve always wanted to get into baseball. You’ve bothered all your friends for years about your ideas for making a team hum. You read all the cutting-edge websites and have theories of your own. You have some money saved up, and your day job is pretty successful, but you’re not willing to start at the bottom of the baseball hierarchy. You won’t bring your resume and hound the execs.

There’s opportunity for you around the next corner. Try jumping into baseball by owning your own minor league baseball team. The Sports Advisory Group, a sub-sector of the W.B. Grimes and Co., a boutique media, sports and entertainment mergers and acquisitions firm, has a classified section you may never have seen before. They list, for your pleasure, the minor- and independent-league teams that are available for purchase.

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I won’t lie to you, reading The Baseball Stadium Turned Clunker Graveyard almost made me weep. I couldn’t help but think of Field of Dreams; Kevin Costner, and Shoeless Joe Jackson. And James Earl Jones, too, because, man, that baritone voice of his is the one I wish was inside my head.

Anyway, once home to Negro and minor-league baseball teams, Bush Stadium in downtown Indianapolis, an Indiana Landmark for crying out loud, is now a parking lot. A parking lot for rusting and beat-up cars. For shame. As a proud Canadian, I need to know who I’m supposed to blame for this travesty. The Democrats? Republicans? John McCain? President Obama? I’m rather fond of Obama, so I’d much rather blame McCain.

On an aside, did you know you can actually visit the Field of Dreams from Field of Dreams? It’s in Dubuque County, Iowa, about 100 miles from Madison, Wisconsin, where I’m headed next summer for a wedding. You better believe I’m going to make the drive, stand at home plate, and yell at the top of my lungs: “If you build it, they will come.” And they must sell If You Build It, They Will Come t-shirts, right? They have to. Because I’d totally buy one.

While Indianapolis has found one way — an awful way — to put their downtown stadium to use, so has Cleveland, and the Indians, albeit only for the winter.

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Fantasy Baseball 2.0?

Sega has a new baseball game coming out this March – MLB Manager™ Online – which will allow players to select and then trade players in order to accrue points and win championships (there’s even a WBC it looks like). Fantasy baseball veterans may have heard of such a game – but they might also admit that the game could use a facelift. Could a console-style user interface add a little spice to fantasy baseball? It’s possible.

The ‘news’ here, though, is that you, esteemed reader of NotGraphs, might be able to help them shape this game in time for its March 2011 launch. Through this link here, you are invited to apply for a beta test for MLB Manager Online. Applications are open to anybody with a computer that supports Flash 10 (not just PCs), and will remain open until December 27th. The test will begin January 7th. Good luck!

*It’s come to my attention that what’s below is a semi-irregular feature over at the inimitable Walkoff Walk. That’s a great website — who doesn’t like Shrimp? And this is a good idea. So I’ve taken the reigns this week.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. Yes, that is a Twitter Fail Whale cake pictured above. Just when you thought you’d seen it all, you’re reminded why you read NotGraphs.

Twitter. A window, 140 characters small, into the life — no, the soul — of a Major League Baseball player. What wisdom, over the past seven days, have the 124 current and former baseball players, according to Tweeting-Athletes.com, imparted on the masses, now that they’ve taken to the tweets?

Well, that’s what we’re about to find out. Without further adieu, I present: The MLB Tweets of the Week …

First up, Carl Crawford, @CarlCrawford_. After signing his mammoth contract with the Boston Red Sox, Crawford took to Twitter to answer the question of all of us had on our minds:

Yes for those asking, I am going to open a bookstore. Details to come

Is it weird that I want to manage Crawford’s book store? I think it’s kind of weird.

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MLB released the 2011 Chase Field All-Star Game logo yesterday.

I find the color scheme interesting, but aside from that, this logo is flat out boring. It’s a desert… with a mountain… and a sky. The lettering is done in, naturally, the font of the Arizona Diamondbacks. It’s not a terrible logo or anything, and it doesn’t affront the eyes by any measure. There’s not really an easily identifiable problem with the logo. It’s just… there.

The drabness and overall corporate feel of the logo are represented perfectly in Diamondbacks CEO Derrick Hall’s take on it.

“It incorporates a little bit of the mountains, it’s got our font, a Diamondback feel about it,” Hall said. “I’m very pleased with the way the logo turned out. It looks good on merchandise, it looks good on baseballs, it looks good on caps.”

I guess it’s hard to say what else we really should be looking for in a logo, particularly one like this which is essentially only used to market this three day event. As I look at the list of past All-Star Game logos, however, I can’t help but feel like this is one of the least inspired of them all. Almost all of them have some sort of baseball related or city related icon that makes it feel like the logo is part of something besides a marketing campaign. This one, though, just feels like it’s there to move some hats and get this whole thing over with.

To which I say: Whatever.

We hate it when our friends become successful/And if they’re northern…

With Joey Votto winning the NL MVP this year, Canadians have scooped 3 of the last 28 MVPs (Larry Walker in 1997, Justin Morneau in 2006). That’s pretty amazing considering how there are only something like 20 Canadian Major Leaguers. Hooray Canada, right?

Wrong! At least, so says Alison Korn of the Toronto Sun.

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