* The 45-man rosters for the World Baseball Classic were announced yesterday, which is interesting but not altogether meaningful -- the 28-man rosters that teams will actually play with won't be announced until Feb. 24. In the meantime, Baseball America scours the WBC for prospects.
* Curt Schilling does the math to "prove" the Red Sox should bring back Jason Varitek.
* Rickey being literal. (via BBTF)
* The Tigers' offseason, told via comic strip.
* Chicago Tribune: "Rev. James L. Greanias, the Greek Orthodox priest brought in to Wrigley Field to remove a curse before Game 1 of last year's playoffs, has accused Cubs Chairman Crane Kenney of throwing him "under the bus" at last weekend's Cubs Convention."
* Joe Posnanski dreams of 20/20 foresight: "Of course, no team gets all the draft picks right. No team gets half the draft picks right, or one-third, or one-quarter or even one out of every twenty right. But it's possible. If the Royals had just been right three times in 1999 - if they had only drafted, say, Lackey, Peavy and Pujols - what would their history have been like? And this is why, at the end of the day, teams like the Royals and Pirates and Reds and Twins and Marlins and Rays and all the rest have every chance to succeed in this crazy game. If you are right on the draft, really right, you can beat every team out there no matter how many billion they might spend."
* Pres. George W. Bush, baseball fan: "I don't know how I fell in love with baseball, I just loved to play it. Everyone who loves baseball can remember the first time he saw the inside of a real major league park with real big-league players. It stays with you forever - the greenness of the grass, the sight of major leaguers in uniform, the sound of a big-league swing meeting a big-league pitch."
* Bruce Jenkins of the San Francisco Chronicle argues against a salary cap: "Teams fail because of their own stupidity and ill-advised transactions, not because they're short on cash. What the Rays pulled off was no miracle, nor was it an aberration. That was just a flat-out superior team, built on dimes, nickels and guile."
* Bucs Dugout: Nate McLouth, smarter than Dave Littlefield.
* Whither Pudge Rodriguez?
* Are the Mets and Ben Sheets getting together?
Sports
* Jonny Gomes takes his Rayhawk to Cincinnati.
* Last but not least, tons of players avoided arbitration -- as always, MLB Trade Rumors is a clearinghouse for tracking all the moves.
Left on Base: WBC Rosters, Schilling Shills for 'Tek, Rickey Takes Off originally appeared on MLB FanHouse on Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:15:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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