Baseball: Negro League, Gerrit Cole, Baseball in the Netherlands, Steve Delabar, Staten Island Yankees

MLB reports: We are proud today to feature on MLB reports: the President of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Bob Kendrick. It was an honor and privilege to get to know one of the finest and most important executives in the world of baseball. The Negro Leagues represents a key time period in baseball history. The NLBM is essentially the Cooperstown of the Negro Leagues, in Kansas City. Mr. Kendrick is responsible for overseeing the entire NLBM and has one of the most demanding and rewarding jobs that we have ever seen. His story is a fascinating one and we were glad to have Mr. Kendrick with us today to share it. For all fans of baseball and American history, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is a vital institution to visit. We present today our interview with the President of the NLBM, Mr. Bob Kendrick: - http://mlbreports.com/2011/09/13/kendrick

In 2008, young high school pitcher Gerrit Cole was drafted by the team of his dreams, the New York Yankees. Cole turned down the opportunity, and the guaranteed millions of dollars, opting instead to attend UCLA.In fact, Cole never even gave the Yankees a chance to make a financial offer. Together with his father, Mark, Gerrit charted various pathways to his future. They painstakingly pored over the positives and the negatives, charting career comparisons and compiling financial analyses before ultimately deciding that attending college was the best possible decision to ensure Gerrit posterity. Once the decision was made, there was no looking back - http://bleacherreport.com/articles/844503-mlb-pittsburgh-pirates-prospect-profile-gerrit-cole-everything-you-need-to-kn  

The Netherlands will be celebrating 100 years of baseball in the country in 2012 but a lot of work needs to be done before anyone will consider the Netherlands a baseball hotbed. At sporting goods stores in places like Delft and Rotterdam there are football (soccer) kits, footballs, sneakers, basetballs and lots and lots of bicycles. Baseball gloves are not widely available. Baseball doesn’t have a bottom to the top support system starting with youth baseball and working through high schools in the country. - http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/professional/could-major-league-baseball-or-honkball-be-coming-to-the-netherlands  

When this season began way back in late March, Steve Delabar was earning $75 a day as a substitute teacher in Elizabethtown, Ky. He was a couple of months shy of turning 28, had a steel plate and screws in his right arm, an ugly scar from Tommy John surgery and had been out of baseball for two years. He had never pitched higher than Class A ball and his last pro baseball game was in the independent Canadian-American League for the Brockton Rox. His most recent competitive action on a field, however, had been playing softball -- slow-pitch softball. Now we're in the middle of September, and barely five months removed from coaching a high school team, Delabar is pitching in the major leagues for the Seattle Mariners. And Wednesday night he earned his first major league victory by pitching a scoreless inning against the New York Yankees on national TV. Dennis Quaid, call your agent. - http://espn.go.com/espn/page2/story/_/id/6968917/steve-delabar-alex-liddi-austin-romine-exemplify-great-mlb-stories-september  

A New York hedge fund manager with no previous experience in the field is buying one of the city's baseball teams. No, Greenlight Capital's David Einhorn and the New York Mets have not made amends. But an unidentified hedge fund honcho has agreed to buy the minor-league Staten Island Yankees from their current owners, the big-league New York Yankees. The new owner is to pay $8.3 million for the team—a far cry from the $200 million Einhorn was to pay for a piece of the Mets—which has struggled financially in recent years. - http://www.finalternatives.com/node/18062