Hawaii Winter Baseball league owner Duane Kurisu, announced the termination of the league’s three-year contract with Major League Baseball.

During last week’s Winter Meetings in Las Vegas last week, general managers elected to consolidate MLB’s minor league fall and winter off-season developmental leagues to the six-team Arizona Fall League and its Instructional League.

The four former Hawaii Winter Baseball league teams, which field A-level and AA-level players, will be incorporated into a second fall league.

The HWB league opened in 1993 and ran through the 1997 campaign. After an eight-year hiatus, HWB re-launched under a new three-year contract in 2006. The 2008 season saw participation from 23 of the 30 MLB clubs, six of 12 teams from Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, and the Lotte Giants of the Korea Baseball Organization.

“We have some opportunities to remain involved with pro baseball at various levels,” added league president Hervy Kurisu. “But for now we’re sacking up the equipment, and continuing work on developing future opportunities.”

Minnesota Twins first baseman Justin Morneau reclaimed the Tip O’Neill award on Friday as Canada’s best baseball player.

The 27-year-old British Columbian batted .300 with 23 HR and 129 RBI and helped carry the Twins to within one game of the American League Central division crown.

Morneau first won the award given by the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.

The 2008 AL All-Star and MLB Homerun Derby Champ also earned his second Silver Slugger award this season.

Morneau will play for Team Canada in the 2009 World Baseball Classic which opens in Tokyo in March.

All about the center of gravity

Base running and base stealing would seem to be arts driven solely by a runner’s speed, but there’s more than mere gristle, bone and lung power to this facet of baseball – there are lots of mathematics and physics at play.

With baseball playoffs heating up and the World Series right around the corner, it’s guaranteed that fans will see daring slides, both feet-first and head-first, and even slides on bang-bang plays at first.

Who gets there faster, the head-first slider or the feet-first? (more…)

Lefties have the edge

That’s because the game was designed to make a lefty the “Natural,” according to David A. Peters, Ph.D., the McDonnell Douglas Professor of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, and uber baseball fan. Peters is a mechanical engineer who specializes in aircraft and helicopter engineering and has a different approach to viewing America’s Favorite Pastime.

First of all, some numbers.

“Ninety percent of the human population is right-handed, but in baseball 25 percent of the players, both pitchers, and hitters, are left-handed,” said Peters, a devoted St. Louis Cardinal fan who was at Stan the Man’s last ball game at Sportsman’s Park in 1963. (more…)

Four-time Cy Young winner Greg Maddux became the first member of the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Class of 2014.

Maddux, who has won 355 games, announced his retirement today.

Maddux went 19-2 with a 1.63 ERA in 1995.  Eighteen Gold Gloves.

I loved watching Maddux pitch.  He would berate himself with a large “Fuck!” as he stormed off the mound at the end of an inning if he did something as damaging as giving up ball three.  He’d then spend the remainder of the half-inning stewing in the corner of the dugout, like an accountant who had just been audited again.

One of my all-time Greg Maddux anecdotes was told by George Will in Newsweek:  “Leading 8-0 in a regular season game against the Astros, Maddux threw what he had said he would never throw to Jeff Bagwell-a fastball in. Bagwell did what Maddux wanted him to do: he homered. So two weeks later, when Maddux was facing Bagwell in a close game, Bagwell was looking for a fastball in, and Maddux fanned him on a change-up away.” True or not, it fits the Maddux persona perfectly.

In 5000+ innings, Maddux walked 999 batters (hmm…maybe he retired specifically not to reach the 1000 mark!).

Let us hope that Tom Glavine and John Smoltz will come to their senses and retire now as well.  I would book my ticket to Cooperstown today to see those three enshrined in Atlanta Braves caps together in July 2014.  If nothing else, Maddux (5 career HR) and Glavine’s appearance Nike’s “Chicks Dig The Long Ball” commercial makes them deserving.

(Inevitably, some BBWAA asshat will not vote for Maddux in 2014 – robbing baseball of a well-deserved feel-good story.  I will save my anti-BBWAA tirade for another column.)