The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball Blog

One of the incidents I couldn’t find a way to cram in — In the 1880s, St. Louis Browns outfielder Curt Welch hid cases (cases!) of beer behind the billboards of Sportsman’s Park, so he could enjoy beers while playing at the home park.

Hey, you may experience some bumps as I move the Cheater’s Guide to Baseball blog off of my personal site to cheatersguidetobaseball.com

Sorry if there’s any inconvenience.

There’s a lengthy interview I did with King Kaufman about cheating over at Salon for your possible enjoyment.

I spent the first half of my day in an ER, and I’m under instructions not to go anywhere or do anything but lie around and drink fluids. Reschedule to be announced.

Nice interview on MLB.com with umpire Rick Reed regarding Hargrove’s argument, which resulted in Reed calling the game one pitch away from potentially being official, with the Indians up 4-0.

Withers: What happened in the fifth inning, and what was [Mariners manager Mike] Hargrove’s complaint?

Reed: We were trying to get the game official if we could. Hargrove’s argument was that his hitter could not see and complained to him. He went to home plate to give us his viewpoint, and [Indians manager] Eric [Wedge] came out to support his team.

Both had legitimate gripes. Was the snow heavier at that point than at any other in the game? It was close. As we were having our discussion, which I think was fairly lengthy, we were all covered with snow.

People have emailed me to ask why comments are off on the K-Rod posts, and here’s the short version: when comments are on, they’re run heavy and contain almost 100% abuse, and I just don’t’ have the time or energy to keep the blog clean.

With comments off, I’ve received a lot of email, most of which is interesting discussions of other pitchers, mixed with maybe 10% of the “you live in your mom’s basement where you head a homosexual prostitution ring” trolls. The barrier from leaving an anonymous comment to actually sending an email seems to eliminate the vast majority of abuse.

By default, I allow comments on subjects until they become unmanageable. Thanks.

From the loose clippings at the Hall of Fame library, I believe this is a 1921 clipping probably from The Sporting News, but I don’t have a date. Packs in the now-jarring — well, I’ll let it speak for itself

The Pirates training at Hot Springs are enjoying the sensation of being entertained and looked after by the only woman ground keeper in baseball. She is Mrs. O. H. Wilhelmi, whose husband is the ground keeper at the other ball park in Hot Springs, used by the Boston Red Sox. She is said to be an expert and has her park in fine shape, according to Pittsburg players, bossing a gang of negro grass manicurists like a real man on the job.

It’s always strange to go back to old documents and see advertisements for cigarettes that advertised health benefits, or whatnot, but I never quite managed to adjust to seeing casual discrimination. It makes me wonder what future generations are going to see in our media that will strike them the same way.

Anyway. Yeah. Check that out.

I’ve converted the Cheater’s Gudie blog to the new host and WordPress. Sorry for any inconvenience.