Mack’s Apples - Jeremy Eierman, Mark Vientos, Brick and Mortar, Segregated Baseball, Mark Appel

Good morning.

          

Players To Watch in  College Baseball   -

         

  SS Jeremy Eierman, Missouri State - Eierman is coming off one of the greatest offensive seasons in Missouri Valley Conference history. The free-swinging junior was fifth in the nation with 23 homers, led the Valley with 68 RBIs, scored 37 runs and had 39 extra-base hits. He also batted a team-high .341 with runners on base, drove in 26 runs with two outs and reached base in 33 straight games.

John Sickels on –

         

  Mark Vientos, 3B, Grade B-: Age 18, second round pick in 2017 from high school in Plantation, Florida; hit .262/.318/.398 in rookie ball with 14 doubles, four homers, 15 walks, 46 strikeouts in 191 at-bats; while the numbers don’t stand out on the surface, he was just 17 during the regular season; scouting reports are enthusiastic about his bat speed and general feel for hitting; he could hit for both power and average down the line; originally a shortstop, but his range fits best at third base; will need some time but a high-upside bat; ETA 2022.

           Minor League Ball

Baseball Lifestyle Company Baseballism Is Seeing Success Around  Brick-And-Mortar Stores –

        

   Portland, Oregon-based Baseballism, the company that features baseball-lifestyle products which includes not only caps and tees, but glove leather purses, watches, and phone cases, is bucking a trend by strategically moving to brick-and-mortal locations where MLB ballparks are located. The company is also expanding their Cooperstown location with the reopening scheduled for April.

The company, who saw revenues of $10 million in 2017, has slowly been moving into locations with stores in Scottsdale, AZ near Spring Training locations, and more recently near SunTrust Park, home of the Atlanta Braves. Now, the company is accelerating store growth with a locations outside Fenway Park in Boston and across from AT&T Park in San Francisco by April, with stores in Chicago in Wrigleyville and Arlington, Texas by September.

The Geography of  

Segregated Baseball  in New York –

           

The earliest confirmed game between two black teams was played in the Town of Jamaica, now part of Queens, on Nov. 15, 1859. The Henson Base Ball Club defeated the “Unknowns” of Weeksville, a free black community in today’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, 54 to 43. (Scores like this were common, as pitchers threw underhand.)

            In those days, baseball fields often doubled as ice skating rinks in the winter. A condescending 1862 article in The Brooklyn Eagle places another all-black match, between the Unknowns and the Monitor of Brooklyn, at the “Yukaton Skating Pond.”

Defining a Baseball  Bust -

          

  The response to Appel’s sudden withdrawal from baseball was almost entirely positive, with thousands of people on social media wishing the pitcher luck and praising him for his candor. Still, there was a minority response that reflected a festering ignorance of Appel’s singular conflict, and the conflict of all athletes — heck, humans — who face difficult decisions about what they want out of their lives. But Appel’s decision was about one telling quote early in the story: “I’m pursuing other things, but also trying to become a healthy human.”