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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Recently, in these pages, I made a case for a way of discussing books in a manner conducive to NotGraphs. You can read those exact words, if you want. Alternatively, you can just believe me when I say that the basic idea is to share lightly annotated passages and ideas from interesting baseball-related books.

The Text in Question
Dollar Sign on the Muscle: The World of Baseball Scouting by Kevin Kerrane

A General Statement About the Quality of This Book
It’s super high, the quality of the book. Reading it, I’m thinking to myself, “This is the best book I’ve ever read.” That I’ve only ever read three or so books, though, will definitely influence my opinion on this matter.

The Four Eras of Scouting
Kerrane provides what must be the first real historical analysis of scouting. He divides it into four main eras, as follows.

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The Associated Press reported yesternight that, as a token of his appreciation to the team for which he played his first nine seasons, Boston-bound outfielder Carl Crawford treated 150 Tampa Bay Rays employees to a barbecue lunch on Wednesday.

Of course, Crawford’s gesture is not without precedent. In the years since free agency began in 1976, it’s become customary for departing players to recognize the relationships they’ve established during their team-controlled years. Here are five other, super-un-fictional examples of similar situations.

1981: Upon receiving his contract for 1980 a day after the deadline, and thus becoming a free agent, Boston catcher Carlton Fisk mails back to miserly GM Haywood Sullivan a disembodied middle finger with very specific instructions on what Sullivan “can go ahead and do” with said finger.

1983: On eve of departure for San Diego, Steve Garvey spends one eventful night making every woman in Los Angeles his “special lady.”

2000: Lefty Denny Neagle gives former clubs the New York Yankees and Cincinnati Reds the gift of laughter after informing them the Colorado GM Dan O’Dowd had just signed him to a five-year, $51 million contract.

2006: A single night after making one of the legitimately great catches in Major League history, Gary Matthews Jr. lavishes all manner of gifts and praise upon the relevant employees of David M. Schwarz Architectural Services, designers of the Ballpark in Arlington. In the attendant thank you note, Matthews explains that “owing to the firm’s choices in park dimensions,” that they had unwittingly compelled a number of teams to incorrectly assess Matthews’ sub-par defensive skills. “I owe almost all of the millions of dollars I’ll be overpaid to you,” continued Matthews.

2009: Mark Teixeira, about to play for his fourth team (the Yankees) in two years, almost remembers name of Angels’ clubhouse attendant.

The best part about writing for a blog that’s only been alive for, like, two months is how there’s an entire past’s worth of things to which one can link and upon which one can idly comment.

In this case, it’s a video of Boston-born comedian Mike Birbiglia talking about his less-than-ideal experience at baseball’s MVP Award ceremony thing.

It includes, among other things, Dennis Eckersley cursing a blind man — which, that’s probably not very shocking coming from the same man who once said of Brad Penny when the latter was having trouble with his fastball, “He’s a little gay with his cheese.”

Leading Greco-American and PITCH f/x expert Harry Pavlidis — in response to Frank DeFord’s suggestion that “sports sucked in 2010” — is fielding nominations for the things that sucked hardest about baseball specifically in the last calendar year.

Because we here at NotGraphs want nothing more than to be the warm yellow light that pours all over everyone, allow me to take the very opposite tact and pose this: Which moments or events or other baseball-related things were most excellent in 2010?

At the risk of biasing the readership, here are a couple-few suggestions from inside my soul:

• That one time when Andres Torres metamorphosed into a giant insect… in order to more ably catch a tailing fliner.

• That one time when Colby Lewis was granted sainthood and knighthood.

• That other time when Colby Lewis was awarded all the Nobel Prizes for all the categories.

People, though: I can’t do this alone. Help a Cistulli out.

Because I don’t understand Spanish so good, I can’t tell you exactly what’s happening in this video, but my guess is that it’s something along the lines of “Everyone is punching everyone else.”

What I can say is that the principal figures here are baserunner (and former Diamondback) Jeff Salazar, second baseman Oswaldo Morejon, and pitcher Alejandro Martinez, who (i.e. Martinez) not only throws the errant pickoff attempt but also launches himself at Salazar.

NotGraphs can confirm that, in terms of discinplinary action, both Salazar and Morjeon were ejected from the game and Martinez has been fined $25,000 by the NFL for unnecessary roughness.

H/T: Vin Scully Is My Homeboy

Recently, in these pages, I made a case for a way of discussing books in a manner conducive to NotGraphs. You can read those exact words, if you want. Alternatively, you can just believe me when I say that the basic idea is to share lightly annotated passages and ideas from interesting baseball-related books.

The Text in Question
Dollar Sign on the Muscle: The World of Baseball Scouting by Kevin Kerrane

On This Book and Why I’m Reading It
Despite the fact that it might disappoint my mother, it’s a fact: if Rob Neyer told me to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, I would effing go jump off that bridge, stat.

Why? Probably for like a thousand reasons. Like, because Neyer is the freshest of princes. Like, because while some people* cling desperately to their spot in the public consciousness, Neyer has repeatedly used his notoriety to celebrate and recognize the work of those less well-known. Like, because Neyer remembered my frigging birthday — something even my jerky college friends can’t be bothered to do.

So when, this past summer, Neyer mentioned that Dollar Sign on the Muscle is more or less the definitive book on scouting, it immediately became a priority for me.

*I can’t put up with those people because they’re bastard people.

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Hardball Talk’s Craig Calcaterra is well-known for his Shysterball blog of yore, but perhaps he hasn’t been prodded about his old profession enough. He was gracious enough to answer my pestering emails in between wondering about Bartolo Colon’s gut and Andy Pettitte’s will to go on.

Eno Sarris: Set the scene, tell us a little about your youth. Where did you live growing up, where did you go to college, what did you study, and where did you go to school after that?

Craig Calcaterra: I was born in Flint, Michigan and lived there until I was 11, when I moved to Parkersburg, West Virginia. We lived there three years, and then we moved 120 miles south to Beckley, West Virginia where I went to high school and eventually graduated. For reasons I’ve explained elsewhere, I consider Beckley my hometown. I went to Ohio State University — far enough away to where I felt like I was going away to college but close enough to home to not feel like I was going too far — where I majored in political science and minored in English and anthropology. That kind of transcript is pretty much tailor made for either unemployment or law school, so I chose law school. After three years at George Washington in DC, my wife and I moved back to Columbus, Ohio were I jumped into the working world.

Childhood was pretty normal. My dad was a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. My mom was a secretary and sometimes waitress. The moves were for when the old man transferred. I have an older brother. We were baseball card fanatics from 1978 until he joined the Navy in 1989. I still have about 100,000 baseball cards in my basement much to my wife’s chagrin. I played baseball and football as a kid, but by the time the tenth grade rolled around my desire to play finally sunk to the same level as my ability so I called it a career. Mostly I was a normal kid just trying to balance his geek-like tendencies against the need to attract females. It mostly worked out.

Eno Sarris: Shysterball readers would remember that you were a lawyer first, but you wrote mainly about baseball on the blog. What was your ‘day’ job like? What did you like and dislike about being a lawyer? Would you ever think about going back?

Craig Calcaterra: I was a litigator. Mostly defending lawsuits for big corporations, but a little white collar criminal defense too.

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If I’d been around these parts two years ago when Dock Ellis passed, then I would’ve posted this back then. Since I wasn’t, I’m posting it now. And what follows, friends, is baseball greatness captured by cinematic greatness …

Most resonant line: “What happened to yesterday?”

Damn, Dock, what did happen to yesterday? Actually, guys and things like Dock Ellis happened to yesterday, which is partly why everyone loves and is haunted by the yesterday of his or her choosing.

Oh, and the hair-curlers thing you no doubt observed and momentarily cherished is not some sort of directorial flourish …

Bowie Kuhn, who didn’t seem to like anything, predictably didn’t like Ellis’s curlers look, which, it would seem, was just a rolling pin, bathrobe and terry-cloth slippers away from something greater … Anyhow, Kuhn decreed from on well-groomed high that Ellis cut it out and affect a more baseball-y appearance. And then Dock: “They didn’t put out any orders about Joe Pepitone when he wore a hairpiece down to his shoulders.”

What do you think: How would the School Sisters of Notre Dame, a Baltimore-based order of Roman Catholic nuns, celebrate the sale of their ultra-rare Honus Wagner baseball card for a cool $220,000?

Actually, don’t answer that question. It’s best left to the imagination.

According to The Associated Press, beacon of journalism, the T206 Honus Wagner card is “the most sought-after baseball card in history.” Produced between 1909 and 1911, only 60 of its like exist. Back in 2008, one in mint-condition sold for a whopping $2.8 million, the most loot ever dished out for a Cardboard God.

I know what you’re thinking: How the hell — please pardon the pun — did the School Sisters of Notre Dame end up with one of the cards? It was left to the order after the brother of a deceased nun passed on earlier this year. He’d held on to it since 1936.

For the bizarre story of what happened to the Wagner T206 after it was put up for auction, and how in the end it found its way into the hands of CARDiologist Dr. Nicholas DePace, I turn it over to the AP.

More importantly, have you ever had a look at Honus Wagner’s résumé? A career .414 wOBA, and 159 wRC+. What “The Flying Dutchman” did in 1908 was nothing short of absurd. Over his storied career, Wagner was worth 149.8 WAR. Jesus! (Sorry.)

Wagner also once famously said:

I don’t make speeches. I just let my bat speak for me in the summertime.

It spoke, alright. Loud enough for Wagner to rightfully become one of the first five men to be enshrined in Cooperstown.

Back to the Wagner T206. About Dr. DePace, who stepped up to the plate — that’s one pun I won’t apologize for — and bought the card after the original auction winner went AWOL, Sister Virginia Muller said it best:

God bless him.

Amen.

Image courtesy The History Bluff.