Okay, that’s a made up line. But less than a year after Brushbackpitch.com finished up an eight day road trip by stopping at the Field of Dreams, Don and Becky Lansing have put the property up for sale.

The Lansings love the land, according to the Wall Street Journal. It has been in the Lansing family for more than a century.

But they’ve maintained it themselves since Universal Studio built it. And, having seen it up close, it’s easy to see that it could become a maintenance issue.

In addition to the baseball diamond, a two-bedroom house, six outbuildings, and a 193-acre parcel of land are on sale. The Wall Street Journal says a price hasn’t been listed, but the Associated Press says $5.4 million is the price tag.

Not a bad payback for letting a movie company take over your house for a few months for filming.

I can’t remember if either of us ever posted our thoughts on the Dyersville, Iowa tourist stop. But it was definitely worth driving way the hell into the middle of nowhere.

Families played catch on the field and wandered in and out of the same cornfield the players walked through in the movie. They sat on the same bleachers and looked for the “Ray Loves Annie” carving.

And then they wandered into the gift shop that, I’m sure, has provided the Lansings with a pretty decent living the last two decades.

I don’t know who will end up buying Field of Dreams. It’s certainly out of the price range of the owners of Brushbackpitch.com. But I hope it’s someone interested in maintaining it as it is right now.

It’d be a shame to see it fall into the hands of someone less interested in maintaining as it is. If you get a chance, especially before the Lansings sell, I’d recommend checking it out.

It’s worth the trip.

It’s bad enough that during Sports Center–the show that made its claim to fame by showing highlight after highlight of virtually all of the previous day’s sporting events–from the big game to the largely irrelevant ones–was repeatedly pimping their story on the history of the Pie to the Face in Major League Baseball.

Truly ground breaking sports journalism there.

But on top of that, they once again managed to put their ESPyaNkees slant on things–in the story preview sidebar, they managed to squeeze in a headline as a lead in to the story, entitled “Yankees Walkoffs.”

That’s right, they took a stupid story, and put the Yankees spin on it, because apparently Yankees starting pitcher AJ Burnett has pied several players in the face this season after walkoff wins, including Melky Cabrera, Alex Rodriguez, Johnny Damon, and some rookie catcher that was a September call-up (Francisco Cervelli maybe?  I was so enthralled by the thought, time and effort put into the piece that I missed the name).

Glad I can once again go six months without checking out Sports Center…

In reality, while Jeter has had a fantastic season, he’s nowhere near the best MVP candidate for 2009. Look at the work Joe Mauer, Miguel Cabrera and others have done compared with Jeter and that’s obvious. Then take a look at Jeter’s teammate, Mark Teixeira, and hopefully it’s clear to most impartial observers that Jeter, while a valuable player and by almost all accounts a decent guy, isn’t even the most credible candidate on his own team.

Really what it most proved was that the Wall Street Journal should stick to business reporting. In past years it would have been a perfect target for a Fire Joe Morgan deconstruction, but unfortunately that Web site has shut down. A friend and former colleague at the Star Tribune took a credible FJM shot at the WSJ’s performance on his Randball blog.

While his work was solid the masters were at the helm as guest editors of Deadspin for a day. And they came through, brilliantly exposing the holes in the Journal’s argument. Read and enjoy …

Then let’s have some debate. Who is the AL MVP for 2009? In the NL it would appear to me as though Albert Pujols is the clear-cut winner. But there are a handful of legit candidates in the AL. Who would y’all vote for?

My vote? As a local, it’d be nice to see Joe Mauer win. He’s had a fantastic season. But facts are facts and I believe winning plays a role in how “valuable” you are to your team. And the Twins were roughly .500 without him the first month of the season and they’ve been roughly a .500 team with him. Taking homerism out, I’d probably choose Cabrera. The Tigers will likely win the AL Central. And while they aren’t without flaws, without Cabrera that team probably finishes in third place.

Major League Baseball’s Web site released a press release today indicating that it would be providing coverage, kicking off with streams of six former presidents, starting at 10 a.m. central time.

“It has been 133 years and 26 United States Presidents since Major League Baseball’s National League was officially formed in 1876. To commemorate the storied history of baseball and its place as a social institution, MLB.com, the official website of Major League Baseball, will offer fans live coverage of the Inauguration of President Barack Obama, beginning at 9:00 a.m. (EST) on Tuesday, January 20, 2009,” according to a press release from MLB.com.

There’s no question that, whether you like George W. Bush or dislike him, it’s time for a change in the leadership of this country. I’m not sure I understand the tie between 133 years of Major League Baseball and providing coverage of the inauguration, which will be available on approximately 412 networks in the United States and another 13,216 around the world …

But I thought all of our regular readers might want to know.

Vinny Micucci and Hal Bodley will host the “MLB.com Live Inauguration Special.”

I often find what he writes interesting, but he struck a nerve with me the other day with a post about how the Tampa Bay Rays making the World Series would negatively affect television ratings.

“Isn’t the great story of the FILL IN THE BLANK HERE team worth some eyeballs,” Rovell writes of what fans and radio hosts ask him each time a Cinderella team makes a run. “And the answer is no. The bottom line if the Rays make it to the World Series they’d arguably be the most anonymous team to ever make it there.”

To which I say “Who freaking cares.” Just because spoiled New Yorkers used to having their team(s) in the mix every season don’t make it for one lousy season, just because the favored Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim both choked away their opportunities to make a run this season, just because TBS and/or Fox Sports didn’t get the major market teams they wanted to maximize the fattenization of their wallets, doesn’t mean that I have to feel badly about it. If none of those teams’ fans tune in should I feel bad for Fox?

I have nothing against the Boston Red Sox. I like a lot of their players and I admire how they’ve fought this far after trading away Manny Ramirez, who yes, quit on the team mid-season, and overcome his absence in the lineup.

But whether it results in a ratings boon or not, the Rays would be a great, fantastic baseball story. This is a team that started out signing as many over-the-hill former stars as possible in an attempt to win early only to fail miserably and pretty much fall into anonymity and oblivion. Remember the Wade Boggs years? Fred McGriff’s final bow in 2004? Greg Vaughn? Jose “Needle Butt” Canseco?

This is a team that selected Bobby Abreau in the 1997 expansion draft and then traded him to Philly for shortstop Kevin Stocker. This team was a laughingstock.

But then somewhere around 2004 the team started to get it. The Rays traded Victor Zambrano for Scott Kazmir, who now along with James Shields and Matt Garza (yes, Mr. Rovell, some of us would be able to name the Rays pitchers – without even looking their names up), anchors a young pitching rotation with the potential to dominate for years to come.

Guys like Carl Crawford and BJ Upton, though he’s still going through some prima donna phases, have developed into legitimate players while free agent signees Carlos Pena and Akinori Iwamura have contributed to the team’s offensive development as well.

This year, the third under the leadership of Manager Joe Maddon, the Rays brought up third base prospect Evan Longoria and he became arguably the last piece needed to make this team a playoff contender. And for the first time, the Rays held off the Yankees and the Red Sox and the Toronto Blue Jays and won the American League East.

This is a young team, an exciting team. And it’s a team that fans, other teams and yes, television executives, should get used to watching in the playoffs. This team isn’t going anywhere, at least as long as the Rays do the right thing and sign as much of this talent to long-term deals, as the Cleveland Indians did in the mid- and late-1990s.

Yes, I have nothing against the Red Sox. But I would love to see the Rays make the World Series so they can showcase the players that took this team from the doldrums and brought them to the pinnacle of Major League Baseball.

And if it happens to cost a few overpaid, overegoed executives at some major television networks a few advertising bucks in the process you’ll see nary a tear dropping from my eye.

Yet the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, better known as ESPN, wouldn’t switch games.

The network, along with MLB’s Saturday broadcast partner Fox, is oft-criticized for an East Coast Bias and a love affair with the Yankees/Red Sox series. And while watching 236 Boston/New York games a season sometimes gets more than a little nauseating, ESPN could justify the decision for most of the past decade by pointing at the standings. It’s been more than a decade since the Yankees missed the playoffs and Boston, in the last half-decade, has overtaken them as the powerhouse of Major League Baseball.

But this year the Yankees are seven games behind Boston – not just for the division, but for a playoff spot as well. And the Red Sox, while ahead in the Wild Card race, trail Tampa Bay in the AL East and are being chased more by Minnesota than New York.

Meanwhile, the Phillies and the Mets have been passing the NL East lead back and forth like Linda Essex has traded husbands. Tonight’s comeback victory put the Miracle Mets back in front by a half-game, just one night after the Mets bullpen passed the lead back to the Fightin’ Phillies.

But yes, the match-up between New York’s portly Sidney Ponson and the always slightly better-than-mediocre recent acquisition Paul Byrd was deemed must-see television.

I understand that Boston and New York are major population centers, that there is a huge rivalry between the two squads and that ESPN gets top notch ratings when they show the two teams’ contests. And maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t see why any true baseball fan would have preferred watching the Yankees/Sox to the Phills/Mets contest tonight.

Call me a whiner. Call me jealous. But I also know I’m not the only one that feels this way – ESPN is mocked for its programming schedule as often as, well, as often as the network decides to show the Red Sox/Yankees games.

And even if ESPN muckety-mucks were dead-set on showing yet another Yankees/Red Sox tilt I certainly don’t understand why they couldn’t have made the switch when it got out of hand – the Phillies/Mets conclusion was awfully compelling to watch, at least via the scrolling news-feed at the bottom of the screen. The only excuse I can come up with is the lack of ESPN broadcasters on site. But I don’t care about that – the Baseball Tonight crew could provide commentary as needed. Most of those clowns talk too much anyway. But that’s for another post.

CBSSports.com last month announced that it has launched an all-new version of its College Fantasy Football game, “continuing to be the only major fantasy sports service provider with a collegiate fantasy football game.”

CBSSports.com originally released the game in 2005. But the controversy this year is that for the first time, it will use real, individual player names rather than listing school and position, such as “FLORIDA QB” or “MICHIGAN RB”.

CBSSports.com is proceeding following the resolution of a lawsuit filed by the Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which had attempted to claim ownership of statistics generated by baseball players during games. MLB lost the case and the U.S. Supreme Court in June refused to hear its appeal.

CBSSports.com is the biggest organization charging forward, several other entities have either added college football-related fantasy information to their magazines and Web sites or plan to starting this season, according to a statement released by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association (FSWA).

Check out the full version of this story at our sister site: www.zoneblitz.com.