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Brushbackpitch.com has railed against the Florida Marlins and owner Jeffrey Loria several times for his use of baseball’s luxury tax money for personal gain.

Today Jeff Passan from Yahoo! Sports uses documents obtained by Deadspin to put the franchise’s distortion of its financial situation to get Dade County to approve a new ballpark, which will open in a couple years.

Deadspin has spent the last several days exposing financial documents Major League Baseball owners likely never wanted made public (Marlins’ president David Samson called it “a crime” in Passan’s piece, which might technically be true).

Passan’s column is good. I haven’t read the entire Deadspin series yet, but from what I’ve seen and heard, it’s worth a look. It takes a look at “the other side” of the game, which compared to the gracefullness with which Joe Mauer can hit opposite-field doubles all season long and makes it instead look as ugly as watching Delmon Young patrol the outfield.

But it’s the reality of professional sports these days.

The Philadelphia Phillies will soon put Jamie Moyer on the disabled list with a sprained ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow. For many pitchers these days that injury means a year on the shelf recovering from Tommy John Surgery. For the 47-year-old Moyer, however, there is a strong likelihood that it could mean the end of his career.

When I first saw news of the injury I cringed. And the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Matt Gelb confirmed Thursday that there is at least some chance that if the injury is, in fact, serious enough to require the reconstructive surgery that Moyer may instead decide to hang it up.

So why the fanfare? Moyer has pitched for nearly two-and-a-half decades for … seven teams, if I counted right. And the last half-dozen or so he has hardly been great. But he is a gamer. He got out of the gates slowly this year, creating speculation that his spot in the rotation and perhaps on the Phillies’ roster this season might have been in jeopardy. He turned things around, though, and in May became the oldest pitcher ever to throw a shutout.

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Seems like no matter how hard Commissioner Bud Selig tries to build interest in the Major League Baseball All Star game he still comes up short.

There was a lot of hype leading up to the game this year, with debate over whether Omar Infante belonged in the game and whether rookie phenom Stephen Strasburg got screwed when he was left out.

But at the end of the day, despite all the hoopla, the game’s broadcast produced the lowest television ratings in history. Back in the mid-1960s and 1970s, the game used to produce ratings scores in the mid 20s and share ratings in the mid-50s.

(A ratings point represents one percent of the total households in the United States watching a given show. Share measures the percentage of television sets in use tuned into a program. So 20-plus percent of households with televisions used to watch the All Star Game and more than half of the televisions in use during the game were watching it.)

In 2002, the All Star game slipped to single-digit ratings for the first time and those figures have not returned to double digits in the years since. Tuesday’s game, according to the Los Angeles Times, drew just a 7.5 rating for a paltry 12 million average viewers. Read the rest of this entry »

I love that the New York Yankees did not get Cliff Lee from the Seattle Mariners.

I love even more that the Yankees were livid with the Mariners because they thought they had a deal and then Seattle pulled it away from them at the last minute.

But I am confused about how the Texas Rangers, bankrupt and under the operation of Major League Baseball at the moment, can take on more than a million in salary for a pitcher they likely will not retain after the season while giving up rookie hitting phenom Justin Smoak as part of the deal.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand that Lee is an ace. And I understand that Texas is in first place. Read the rest of this entry »

Today was a helluva day in sports. Wimbledon participants Nicolas Mahut and John Isner are tied 59-59 in the fifth set of their match, setting all sorts of all-time records, including longest match played. The United States scored a goal in extra time against Angola to go from fourth place to first place in their group in World Cup early-round play. The win set up a Sweet Sixteen matchup against Ghana.

I spent most of my day at two airports.

Yes, today largely sucked. But I want to hand out some accolades to people who made it suck less than it could have. And then yes, I will tie this post back into baseball.

First thumbs up goes to the couple dozen people watching the U.S. play Angola at a bar at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport this morning. I’m not a huge soccer fan by any stretch. I don’t pretend to understand the game like I do football or baseball. And many of the passengers watching the match obviously were the same – they were excited with every scoring opportunity the U.S. had, even if they didn’t understand how they earned those chances. It was a lot of fun watching the waning moments of the matchup with a bunch of fired up people I’ll probably never see again.

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A friend and former colleague, best known these days by his blogroll name of Randball, must be on a baseball trip to Milwaukee. He has tweeted tonight that Milwaukee Brewers fans view games at Miller Park as nothing more than an opportunity to buy $7 beers. Mr. Randball also calls Brewers fans the “worst fans ever.”

I would argue that Philadelphia Phillies fans, who in just recent weeks have had a fan intentionally vomit on an 11-year-old, had a fan tasered for running onto the field and then the next night had another moron run onto the field in copycat fashion, have to at least be in the mix for worst fans (though Philadelphia fans certainly are more knowledgeable than most).

I don’t know who the best fans or the worst fans are in baseball. Do you have any thoughts? If so, I’d like to hear them.

I had the opportunity to go to the Twins game against the Kansas City Royals last night, and even had the chance to sit in some of the “Pretty People” seats with access to some special areas within the park.

More on my thoughts on Target Field later.

One thing that really caught my attention was when the Twins distributed All-Star ballots for voting mid-game.

I always enjoy looking at the ballots to see what ridiculous mistakes they’ve made as far as including players who have been benched, are at different positions, and other things that MLB should be able to fix on the fly with their printing vendors, given their clout.

But I got last night’s ballot, and was shocked to find out that the Twins had taken the liberty of punching out the holes for all of the Twins players on the ballot for me.

My wife initially thought that maybe we had gotten a recycled ballot–one someone had punched, not submitted, and an usher might have grabbed and put back in the box–but looking around, everyone’s ballots were punched.

Now I’m a home town fan, and I would definitely vote for Joe Mauer, and probably Justin Morneau (even though Miguel Cabrera probably deserves the start), and maybe even Delmon Young just to irritate the locals that don’t like him.

But no way on earth would I ever vote for Nick Punto to play 3rd base in an All-Star game.  I’m not sure I would even vote for him to be the 3rd string hot dog vendor for the outfield upper deck sections at an All-Star game.

In fact, I’d rather vote for someone like Evan Longoria, just to make sure that Alex Rodriguez doesn’t get the starting nod.

I know the Twins have been pushing hard on All-Star voting–emails, radio commercials, in stadium stuff–but is pre-filling out ballots ethical?  Do other teams do this?

[NOTE: I did find some non-pre-punched ballots at a booth later in the game--so not all ballots are given out this way. And I don't think the ballot I got at a game a couple weeks back were either.]

If this is common around all stadiums, it’s just further confirmation that MLB needs to kill off fan voting having anything to do with All-Star game rosters–especially if they’re going to continue with the asinine idea that the winner of the All-Star game gets home field advantage in the World Series.

Curious to hear your thoughts on this in the comments…

Oh, and by the way, Punto is currently 5th in voting for 3rd base. Orlando Hudson is 4th at 2B, JJ Hardy is 3rd at SS, Jason Kubel 5th at DH, and Denard Span and Michael Cuddyer are both in the top 15–meaning the only Twin on the ballot not showing up in the results is Delmon Young…

Florida Marlins outfielder Mike Stanton had three hits (though one came on a questionable call in the ninth inning where it looked like he forced the runner in front of him) and scored two runs in his Major League debut. He definitely looked like he belonged, watching footage on MLB Network.

But the rookie who stole the show on Tuesday was the highly acclaimed franchise savior for the Washington Nationals, Stephen Strasburg.

The phenom, who entered professional baseball under controversial circumstances when his agent, Scott Boras, threatened to hold him out unless he got $50 million to sign, was every bit the stud he was advertised to be. He tossed seven innings, striking out 14 and walking none in getting his first MLB win. Read the rest of this entry »

Coming into the 2010 season, there had been a total of 18 perfect games thrown in Major League Baseball history. That’s not just the modern history, either–we’re talking back to the days of Lee Richmond pitching for the Worcester Rubylegs back in 1880–a total of 18 games, out of probably some 350,000+ games played (no idea if that number is right, but my quick guesstimation put it at about 300,000).

The Major Leagues once went a stretch of 34 years (from 1922 to 1956) without seeing a perfect game, and as recently as the 1970’s, went an entire decade without seeing one.

During the 1990’s, there was an all-time high of four perfect games, including just the second time that there were perfect games pitched in back to back years (David Wells in 1998, David Cone in 1999; prior to that, Jim Bunning in 1964 and Sandy Koufax in 1965 were the only two to throw perfect games in back to back seasons).

So far in 2010, there have been two official, and one (as of yet) unofficial perfect game thrown.  In fact, these three games happened in less than a month (Dallas Braden on May 9, 2010; Roy Halladay on May 29, 2010; Armando Galarraga on June 2, 2010).

For those of you keeping track at home, the 1990’s had a record four perfect games, while the…2010’s(?) has essentially three perfect games less than three full months into the first season of the decade (and let’s not start with the whole “the decade doesn’t start until next year crap–I’m going by the first three digits of the year).

Add Mark Buehrle’s perfect game from July of 2009, and that’s four in less than a full year.

So what’s causing the rash of perfect games?  Is it a fluke? Is it the watering down of talent due to expansion finally catching up to hitters, as it seemed to with pitchers?  Are pitchers just getting better?  Are performance enhancing drugs–and/or the testing/banning of them–somehow coming into play? Is MLB finally making up for juicing balls after the strike shortened season in an attempt to lure fans back to the ballpark?

I really don’t have any idea what’s behind it–so I thought I’d put it out there to see if anyone has any other thoughts on what might be leading to this, whether or not the trend will continue, and if so if that means that the exclusivity of such a game will start to wane as more pitchers are able to throw them?

You’ve likely all seen it by now. Jim Joyce missed an out at first base that cost Armando Galarraga and the Detroit Tigers a perfect game Wednesday night.

It was a terrible call. Horrible. The fans were cheated. Galarraga should have had the third perfect game in Major League Baseball in less than a month. But come on now. Joyce, by most accounts is a pretty good umpire. He did not miss the call on purpose. He is not Satan. And he immediately owned up to the mistake after the game. Let’s give him credit for that.

The Twittersphere is abuzz with reports that Joyce is distraught about the blown call. [Update: Joyce admitted to the botched call after the game and clearly felt like crap about it.]

This is being blown a bit out of proportion. Even Galarraga sounded resigned and accepting of his fate more than upset. He acknowledged that he spoke with the Joyce after the game. “He feels bad,” Galarraga says in a conversation with ESPN broadcasters Rick Sutcliffe and

He adds that Joyce “kind of” apologized to him. Sutcliffe gave props to Galarraga for how he handled the call, keeping his composure, not getting into an argument with the umpire and immediately retiring the next and final batter of the game.

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