When David Wright donned the "new batting helmet" late last season - and was mocked mercilessly by just about everyone - I thought it would be a good idea to go back through some old magazines and newspapers and find how people reacted to the introduction to the original helmet. I was certain that I could find ballplayers and writers saying the same thing then that ballplayers were saying now about the Wright helmet. I never wrote that piece, though, because I ran into a problem: there was never really a big, league-wide rollout of batting helmets to mark the new era. In fact, the answer to the question "who was the first baseball player to wear a batting helmet?" is pretty nebulous.

I put the notes to the side and told myself that I would come back to it, but I never did. But then I found myself drawn back to Paul Lukas' wonderful blog, Uni Watch, which I, for some reason, had strayed away from recently. Well, for those who don't know, Paul has had a keen interest in the development of the batting helmet (and the batting helmet w/earflaps) for a while. Every now and then he posts an interesting photo or whatnot that he or a reader has stumbled across, and it gets us all just a tad bit closer to solving the whole puzzle. Last week, he unveiled another piece to the puzzle: a reader had recently stumbled across the Popular Science archives and found this image from the November 1940 issue. Paul loved it, and was able to determine that the helmet shown there was probably the same one that Jackie Hayes had worn in the summer of 1940.

Well, the image looked incredibly familiar to me, so I pulled up my notes from last fall. I had found the same image in Popular Science too, but in the October 1940 issue. I emailed that photo, and many more that I found in that initial research phase to Paul, and, with his encouragement, I decided to investigate the issue some more. I spent some more time in the Google News and Proquest archives this weekend, and I even went to the library to pull up some books. I can't say that I've solved the puzzle, but I do feel like I connected and filled in a lot of areas that were incomplete or hanging loose. Keep reading for a timeline on the invention and evolution of the batting helmet in baseball.

(Click "Read More" to continue reading. Be warned, it's quite long.)

Happy Friday everyone! As a sort of follow-up to yesterday's salary cap debate, I thought this Calvin and Hobbes strip was appropriate.

I'd like to include more Calvin and Hobbes strips (similar to what I've done with Peanuts strips in the past), but Bill Watterson and Universal don't like people doing that. I hope then, by embedding this image in the way they ask you to with strips like Peanuts,  I'm respecting their wishes.

If you are dying to see the (relatively few) Calvin and Hobbes baseball strips, I highly recommend the "Calvin and Hobbes Extensive Strip Search (C.H.E.S.S.)". The owner of the site has gone through every single Calvin and Hobbes strip and cataloged not only all the dialog but described what was happening in every panel. It's incredibly simple to just type in the word "baseball" (or whatever else you're looking for) and get a list of ever strip to feature "baseball" in any way. From there, you just have to go to the official website, at CalvinAndHobbes.com, and search for the date you found. It may not be the most straightforward way to see your favorite Calvin and Hobbes strips, but it is pretty simple.

And now that I've given you a quick, simple way to dig through the Calvin and Hobbes archives, I suspect your Friday is shot. Enjoy (and you're welcome).

I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, but the good folks at Around the Horn Baseball have set up a pretty cool series called The Great Bloguin Baseball Debate. Writers from all over the Bloguin network are paired up with specific topics and are asked to give pro and con arguments. It's been a really cool and successful series, with some great arguments being put forth and some even greater discussion in the comments.

This week, the debate finally got to my doorstep. Along with Around the Horn's Danny Hobrock, we were asked to argue the question "Should MLB have a salary cap?" I took the opposition. If you click over to the debate, you can read my (much too long) argument against the salary cap. I think it came out well, as did Danny's piece.

Go take a look. I tried not to use the standard arguments against the salary cap, and I'm pretty happy with the results. Let me know what you think in the comments over there (I have a pretty good feeling that there won't be a lot of people on my side...).

Just a quick note to apologize for the lack of updates these past few days. On Thursday, I flew down to Texas to visit my brother and his family for the weekend. I didn't get back to town until this evening. It was a great time, but it kept me from working on the blog. Not that I'm complaining. I hope you all understand.

I have a few things in the pipeline for the week, though, so it won't stay quiet for long. I hope that works for everyone.

In the meantime, though, I wanted to take the time to mention something pretty cool. Jeff Polman, the genius behind the 1924 and You Are There! blog (which I mentioned before), finished up that great project on Sunday and, on Monday, started a new one. This new project, which he's calling "Play That Funky Baseball", is a Strat-O-Matic replay of the 1977 season. Using the top sixteen clubs from that season, he's playing through a 154-game season with the help of some internet "managers" for each club. Here's how Jeff describes it:

The 1977 season, rewound, replayed, reimagined and put through the wah-wah pedal.  Using the classic Strat-O-Matic baseball game, the almost-best 16 teams from that funkified year do battle for 154 games, under the absentee-managed guidance of notorious baseball writers and bloggers from around the nation.

(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)

With the wave of new stadiums that have been built in the last 20 years or so, from the second Comiskey Park in 1991 to Oriole Park at Camden Yards in '92 all the way through Yankee Stadium and Citi Field last year, Target Field this year, and the new Marlins stadium in 2012, there's been a lot of turnover in Major League Baseball stadiums. A fan from 1970 would only recognize five current ballparks, and a fan from 1990 would only recognize seven. Throw in all of the name changes to ballparks in that time, and it's been a busy time for MLB stadiums.

With that in mind, I thought it'd be fun to see what a timeline of all Major League ballparks would look like. Using club and ballpark histories from sites like MLB.com and Wikipedia, I created a timeline that includes every home ballpark used by a club in each year of it's existence. If a team played a few games outside of their main ballpark (like the Expos did in Puerto Rico a few years back), I didn't include that. The timeline begins in 1901, when the American League formed, but older stadiums that were in use at the time are shown back to when the team started using it. I also included markers to show when each team won pennants and World Series trophies (so we can see how long a particular stadium had to wait before it hosted a World Champion). Domes and retractable roofs are also included.

I think this does a pretty great job of showing how big league baseball has changed over the last century or so. I feel pretty good about it's accuracy, but if you see something wrong [EDIT: like the errors on the Reds timeline - I'll get to that this evening fixed], please let me know. If you have any questions or comments, I'd be happy to hear them. Enjoy!

Last night, I joined the rest of the Twitter universe - or at least those with MSNBC - in watching the immensely entertaining and surprising opening-round victory by Team USA over Canada in Olympic hockey. From the early first-period goal that put the Americans out in front, to the even quicker response-goal that put them back on top 2-1, to the final empty net goal that sealed the victory in a hectic last four minutes, it was one of most exciting hockey games that I've ever seen. The fact that it was in Canada in front of a very partisan crowd made it that much more fun to watch.

The only thing that would have made it better were if it were a baseball game. Seeing a high-flying game like that played on a baseball diamond rather than in a hockey rink, between two national teams that were killing themselves to get the victory, could go down as one of my favorite baseball memories ever. The World Baseball Classic tries to make this happen, but it just hasn't worked yet. I'm one of the few fans out there who would really like to see it succeed, but even I have to admit that it's going to be a long time before we see a WBC version of the USA/Canada game from last night.

It wasn't always like that, though.

(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)

It's a great week to be alive because pitchers and catchers have finally reported. It's the week we wait for every winter, the first sign that baseball is on the horizon. It's a week worthy of celebration.

And it's been that way for a long time. We're often reminded of baseball's rich and glorious past, and of all the great men who played then. And while we may feel like we have a pretty good sense of what those men and those times were like from reading through old statistics, looking at baseball cards, and seeing the more famous photos over and over again - for those of us who weren't alive to actually remember the times, of course - we're still missing a pretty substantial piece of the picture.

Like spring training. Which is what makes the Google archive of the photographs from Life magazine so welcome. With just a few clicks, we can be taken back decades to see some more candid moments and get a sense of what things were really like.

(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)

• Travis is a 22-year old Marquette student sitting in the rightfield bleachers - the Miller Lite Beerpen - wearing an unbuttoned, pinstriped Prince jersey, drinking his fifth Lite of the game and eating his third Italian sausage.
• Frank is a 47-year old second-shift factory worker whose been going to Brewers games off and on since Paul Molitor's rookie year. He celebrated on Wisconsin Avenue with the team after the 1982 World Series. He's sitting in the leftfield loge outfield seats (right in the sun!) and drinking a High Life.
• Jason is a 29-year old administrator who has only lived in Milwaukee for the last 5 or 6 years. He loves watching an exciting young team and is happy to get his 20-pack every year. He tends to read sabermetrically-inclined blogs, but still appreciates someone like Ichiro!. He's sitting in the upper deck, right behind home plate, drinking a Lakefront Riverwest Stein.
  

The Answer
There's no doubt about it - Travis is hoping for Prince to swing out of his socks on the next three pitches. A home run into the bleachers will not only mean a Brewers win (more reason to celebrate at Fridays!) but a chance to catch the ball (nevermind that his hands are full with beer and sausage). Anything else from Prince will be a disappointment to Travis.

(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)

I don't do this very often, but work and other projects have been kicking my butt recently, so I haven't been able to do much blogging myself. With the news last week about Bud Selig's statue at Miller Park (coming immediately on the heels of my ballpark statues post), and with the retirement announcements of two future Hall-of-Famers, Frank Thomas and Tom Glavine, it's not the best time to be silent.

Thankfully, though, there are plenty of other great baseball blogs out there still churning out the quality writing. Here are a few links to some posts you might have missed:

• 3:10 to Joba is giving out a copy of the new Baseball Prospectus 2010 Handbook. Just hop on over and send in an email (or tweet about it). A pretty sweet deal, if you ask me.
• The Brewers Bar is the newest Brewers blog here at Bloguin, and I'm really enjoying Jaymes' work. For Valentine's Day yesterday, he took the time to write some love poems to a few of our favorite (and not-so-favorite) Brewers. Good stuff.
• Staying within the Bloguin family for a minute, there's a great series going on over at Around the Horn: the Great Bloguin Baseball Debate. Writers from all over the network weigh in (including myself, in the near future) and debate over a given topic. There's already been a few excellent debates, including this piece about the Nationals and Stephen Strasburg.
• This is another piece from last week, but, unless I want to wait until Thursday for the next installment - and I don't - it'll have to do. One of the best additions to the baseball blogosphere recently is Walkoff Walk's "This Tweet in Baseball", where Rob goes over some of the best Twitter updates of the last week from baseball personalities. It's always fun.
• Finally, this isn't baseball-related, but it's still pretty cool. With Olympic hockey getting underway Tuesday - the absolute best reason for the Winter Olympics - you may want to know about the Olympic Hockey Blog, which plans to be all aflutter with activity over the next two weeks. Sounds like the place to be.

Welcome to the middle of February, folks. Pitchers and catchers are still a week or more away from reporting, the hot stove is all but dried up, the Eastern seaboard is waist-deep in snow and writers are taking some time off in this post-Super Bowl, pre-spring training part of the calendar... it's not exactly the ideal time for us baseball fans who are eager to see the season started. There just isn't that much news going around.

We should be grateful, then, for some of the stories we've seen this week. Yes, the Bud Selig statue at Miller Park got some good laughs, but we also got this wonderful story from Brent Mayne yesterday. It was quickly and easily debunked - as far as the specifics go, at least; I fully believe the general events of the story are true - but it was a lot of fun to talk about.

I also found a neat little story yesterday over at the social news site, Reddit. A user named mushpuppy tells the story of how he got the chance to meet Rangers' shortstop Toby Harrah as a kid at a local event in the '70s. When he finally met him face to face, the shy kid asked Toby what he'd do if he ever found himself in an 0-for-22 slump (or some other such number - it's what mushpuppy himself hit in Little League). Toby kind of rudely laughs at him and says, "I don't know, kid. I've never gone 0-22." Go and read the rest of the story yourself. It's not exactly heartwarming - maybe schadenfreude is the right word - but it's honest. I liked reading it.

In the interest of keeping these honest and fun stories alive during this otherwise cold and boring week, I figured I'd join in. Of course, I can't match the experiences of a journeyman catcher, or even of a Texas kid from the 1970s, so I'll have to do it another way. Lucky for me, my Google search skills haven't atrophied. Here's what I found:

(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)