Blog Kiosk: 11/8/2018 - Dodgers Links - Some Odds and Ends

Awesome! Japan clearly has better mascots than we do. Pic above via NotSWCT on twitter.

Below are more links to check out:

• This Day in Dodgers History: In 1990 Darryl Strawberry signed a five-year $22.25 million free agent contract to play for his hometown Dodgers. This was huge news back in the day. Unfortunately, he would not fare well in Dodger Blue. 
• Happy Birthday, John Farrow, Tony Cuccinello, Eric Anthony, Henry Rodríguez, Víctor Álvarez, Darwin Barney, José Offerman, Nick Punto and Yasmani Grandal!
• Dodgers Memorabilia: Love of the Game Auctions has the 1946 Jackie Robinson Heilbroner's Baseball Bureau information card up for auction. It was originally filled out by Jackie in the mid-40's and includes detailed biographical information about him. As you may know, Heilbroner's Baseball Bureau was the very first statistical bureau devoted to baseball (Auction Link).
• Audio: Ned Colletti talks to Roggin and Rodney at AM570 about what candidates would be great to fill in for Farhan Zaidi for the Dodgers (audio link).
• Since the Dave Roberts contract is far from being done, so the Dodgers have decided to pick up his option (that was due yesterday), per a tweet from Bill Plunkett:

#Dodgers have picked up Dave Roberts club option for 2019 season but will continue to negotiate and expect to reach agreement on multi-year deal at some point.

— Bill Plunkett (@billplunkettocr) November 8, 2018

• This is interesting, but not all too surprising. With any business comes a need to generate profits. Via Bill Shaikin at the LA Times; "Document prepared for potential investors says Dodgers plan on staying under luxury tax threshold."

The Dodgers plan to keep their player payroll below the level that would require a luxury tax payment for at least the next four years, according to a document prepared for potential investors and reviewed by The Los Angeles Times.

...
The Dodgers’ payroll projections are not binding. One high-ranking team official called the figures a “forecast,” and another said he would be “shocked” if the player payroll did not top $200 million next season.

• Per David Seideman at Forbes.com; "Brooklyn Dodgers Documents Thrown Out Of Window By Old Man Could Fetch $10K In Auction." Wow!

One morning, about a dozen years ago, a rabbinical scholar woke up in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, a long fly ball away from the site of Ebbets Field, the home of the fabled Brooklyn Dodgers from 1913 to 1957.

“There was terrible ruckus in [the scholar’s] building,” Adam Rothschild, senior auction coordinator for Steiner Sports, told me. “He went into the hallway where he could clearly hear commotion from an old man upstairs. Then he went down to the street. He stopped and looked in the alley as a downpour of documents filled the sky. He saw folders and files, papers, letters and books flying out of his neighbor’s window. As the papers fell, he walked into the alley and collected them.” 

The elderly man probably had been the Brooklyn Dodger’s accountant.

• Via Michael Avallone at MiLB.com; "Dogs' (Cody) Thomas left the pocket for the outfield: Former two-sport Sooner determined to make it big in Hollywood."

"I wanted to play and excel at both [football and baseball], but God had other plans for me," he said. "I realized that football wasn't going to work out. I gave it my all and loved playing, but it just felt right when I went back to baseball. I played both until I felt it was the right time to change.

"I think it was a good thing I took some time off [from baseball]. I appreciate playing so much more now. Stepping away made me fall in love with the game again. Looking back, I wouldn't have done anything different." 

• Per Talya Minsberg at the NY Times; "Overlooked No More: Jackie Mitchell, Who Fanned Two of Baseball’s Greats: Mitchell was a 17-year-old pitcher in 1931 when she struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game, but questions about that exploit linger."

It was April 2, 1931, and Mitchell, all of 17, was on the roster of the otherwise all-male Tennessee minor league team the Chattanooga Lookouts, which had signed her to a contract just a week before. The Yankees were in town for an exhibition game as they made their way from spring training in Florida back to New York, and 4,000 people had filled the Lookouts’ stands.

Mitchell took the mound in the first inning, in relief. “The Babe performed his role very ably,”  William E. Brandt, a reporter for The New York Times, wrote. “He swung hard at two pitches then demanded that Umpire Owens inspect the ball, just as batters do when utterly baffled by a pitcher’s delivery.” 

The third pitch was a strike that left Ruth looking. When the umpire called him out, the Bambino flung his bat away, “registering disgust with his shoulder and chin,” The Times reported. Gehrig took “three hefty swings” and struck out, too.

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