Baseball: Ross Ohlendof, Ozzie Guillen, Baseball Attendance, Pitching From Stretch, Christy Mathewson

Smartest person in baseball: At #1, I went with a guy whose college major involved a hell of a lot of pure mathematics. I’m talking of course about Pirates’ pitcher Ross Ohlendorf, who majored in Operations Research and Financial Engineering at Princeton. His senior thesis—which he completed while actually playing in the Arizona Diamondbacks’ farm system in 2006—used sabermetric statistical analysis to come up with a theory for the rate of return on investments made in the MLB draft. Today teams actually use his theories to determine how they should allocate their money. That’s pretty freaking awesome if you ask me. - http://www.totalprosports.com/2011/09/16/9-smartest-players-in-major-league-baseball  

Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen brought his oldest son Ozzie Jr. to the Negro Baseball Leagues Museum and came away more appreciative of the career baseball has given him. "At some point, they (the players) were making more money in the winter leagues than they were making here," Guillen said. Guillen was moved by one comment by a former player who said his team traveled from Kansas City to Chicago without stopping to eat because there was no place that would serve them food. - http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/whitesox/chi-guillen-humbled-by-trip-to-negro-leagues-baseball-museum-20110917,0,3058980.story  

Baseball attendance has already hit a plateau. Through Thursday's games, average attendance across in the majors was up only 32 fans per game over the same point last year, a gain of a whopping one-tenth of a per cent. From the professional ranks down to Little League, baseball is witnessing a troubling trend. In the decade from 2001 to 2010, the five professional sports teams with the greatest drops in attendance were all baseball clubs. Over roughly the same period, the number of Americans aged 7 to 17 playing baseball fell 24 per cent, according to a Wall Street Journal story that cited a series of multi-generational baseball families, including team executives and scouts, lamenting the rejection of baseball by their own children, who were taking up football and hockey instead. Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/sports/Dull+races+creating+major+problem/5420259/story.html#ixzz1YHu2Z58t 

In this video tutorial, viewers learn how to pitch from the stretch in baseball. Keep the glove up, and keep the ball hidden behind the rear leg. Set your position bringing the front leg in, bringing the hands to the center of the body and bend the knees. Then lift the leg across the body before pitching. Raise the leg at least waist high before throwing. Do not hold the leg up, just lift the leg up quickly and throw the ball. Practice checking the bases before throwing. This video will benefit those viewers who enjoy playing baseball, and would like to learn how to properly pitch a baseball. - http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-pitch-from-strech-baseball-350914  

In cynical times like ours, it is hard to imagine a celebrity who was a genuine hero. I mean hero in the classic sense, one whose virtues reflected the best society can offer. Consider Christy Mathewson, arguably one of the first great baseball players of all time. Philip M. Seib, professor of both journalism and public diplomacy at the University of Southern California, is the author of a host of books on the media and its role as both medium and message in our modern age. http://www.decaturdaily.com/stories/Story-of-baseball-great-captures-spirit-of-era,85122