You Down with OBC?

Old Baseball Cards, that is.

These guys have a whole site dedicated to locating, trading and collecting cards from the 1900s through the 1970s. They started the site on Prodigy (!) in 1991. They operate on an honor code of sorts - what goes around, comes around. Send cards to someone who needs them, and eventually you'll get the cards you need too. It's not about investing, it's about the love of collecting.

Pretty cool, if you ask me.

But Just HOW High and HOW far?

Ever wonder just how far a HR was hit? The folks over at Hit Tracker ("how far it really went") keep tabs on all of it.

Like ALL of it - I'm not kidding. The Hit Tracker tool (it works with spreadsheets) churns out all sorts of data. It's all displayed on the Hit Tracker website, and you even get to see things like the path the ball took overlayed on a map of the ballpark in which it was hit, links to video of the HR itself, and stats like who was pitching, the angle, the apex and the wind speed of the hit ball.

Here's how it works >>

They've got a blog, and it's worth checking out as well.

In with the Old

A 99 year old Yankee fan is set to see opening day at the new stadium this week. Ok, so it's cool that he's 99, but thousands of other (rich, or just plain lucky) people are going to be there too.

But here's the thing: Harry Heller was there for opening day of the old Stadium too, in 1923.

Check out the full story on MLB.com, and see a photo of Heller over at the NY Daily News.

Minor League Promotions Rule

The announcement that the Grand Prairie AirHogs will host “Octomom Night” on June 13 reminded me just how creative minor league promotions are.

Like the Lake Elsinore Storm's Nothing Night last July: nothing but the game. No tickets, no concessions, no announcer (sounds pretty good to me, actually).

Or the Lowell Spinners Political Correctness Night in '08: players who committed an error were not identified to spare their feelings and terms like "first baseperson" and "vertically-challenged stop" were used in place of the actual position names.

All season long in '07 and '08, Benjamin Hill kept tabs on the minor league promotions over at MiLB.com. I hope that will continue in '09. He also writes his own blog.

If Benjamin shares some great promotions, I'll be sure to pass them along. Follow me on Twitter to stay up to date (@atthecorners).

The Curse of the Colonel

I always suspected that Colonel Sanders was evil. "Oh, you're gonna buy my chicken...."

Well it turns out that Colonel also helped put a curse on the Hanshin Tigers of Japan:

In 1985, a group of excited Hanshin Tigers baseball fans stole a Colonel Sanders statue from a Kentucky Fried Chicken and threw it in Osaka's Dotonbori River. Sanders was wearing star hitter Randy Bass' uniform at the time, and the fans did it to celebrate the Tigers' championship. Bad move. The Tigers haven't won a title since, causing frustrated fans to call this the Curse of the Colonel Sanders.

But guess what: Sanders appeared on the riverbank earlier this week. Does this mean the curse is over? Read more over at Tokyo Mango.

Revisionist History

Care for a bit of time travel?

Shawn over at Baseball Awards has taken on a herculean task: determining who should have won the affiliated awards and championships from each baseball season that has passed. He started with 1965 and is working his way up. MVP, Cy Young...he's got it covered.

He's done some major analysis. And agree with him or not, you have to admit he's serious about getting down to the numbers. And I've gotta commend the commitment to the cause.

More Names, But not of the Nick Variety

Last week I posted about great baseball nicknames. But I completely overlooked great baseball names. The god-given-my-mom-and-dad-named-me-this type of name. If you're a parent, and you name your kid something like Chipper Jones...that kid's gonna be a ball player.

The folks over at Bats took the "great baseball names" beyond just a list. Check out that post here.