Just wanted to take a quick moment here to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. I was hoping to have a nice little post before the holiday got here, but my travel plans (that find me out here in Massachusetts for a full week) got in the way. I'll try to get something done over the weekend.

But to everyone out there, have a great holiday. Enjoy your turkey, your football, your family and everything else that makes the day/weekend special to you. No matter what, we all have a lot to be thankful for and it's wonderful to be reminded of it every now and then.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

It's been a few weeks since the last MLB Predictions contest update - the last update was right after the Giants beat the Phillies in the LCS - and quite a few things have happened since then. Let's take a look at what's happened - and how someone managed to win it all already! As always, here are the details about the contest.

To see the leaderboard and everybody's full predictions, side-by-side, click here.

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One of the best of the annual baseball books (and the only one to come out in time for Christmas) - The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2011 - is available and now shipping. If you've never read the Annual before, it's a terrific mix of statistics (both fun and in-depth) and commentary from some of the best writers on the web.

This year, for example, the Annual features articles by Rob Neyer, John Dewan, Craig Calcaterra, Sean Smith, Dave Cameron, Tom Tango, and more to go alongside the articles from regular THT contributors like Chris Jaffe, Steve Treder, and Dave Studenmund. You should really order it as soon as you can.

Order The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2011 from Acta Sports today

To top it off, I've contributed two different articles to the Annual. The first is "The Year in Taters", a look at home runs (and home run trots) across the league:

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I've said it in the comments and on Twitter, but I just want to say it again: thanks, everyone, for all the positive comments on the Periodic Table of Hall of Famers. I'm glad everyone seems to be enjoying it so much (and, yes, there have been some great suggestions that I might want to incorporate in the future).

Good friends Bill and The Common Man from the Platoon Advantage - you know, from our (generally) bi-weekly podcast - asked me to write a guest post this week, and my post is now online. You may not remember, but thirteen years ago today was one quite active day for the Hot Stove. Not only was the Expansion Draft for the Diamondbacks and Devil Rays that day, but it also saw some significant wheeling-and-dealing involving Pedro Martinez going to Boston and a few other near-Hall of Famers switching teams.

It was definitely an interesting day. Go check out my guest post at the Platoon Advantage and let us know what you think.

Click the image to see the full chart.

There are few charts in the world as well-known and recognizable as the Periodic Table of the Elements. On charts and folders and schoolbooks everywhere, the periodic table has been around for almost 150 years. It has been in use for so long thanks in large part to its ability to tell a complex and sophisticated story about the known elements in the world in a simple layout.

With 118 elements known on the current chart, and 109 players elected to the Hall of Fame by either the BBWAA or via special election (no Veteran's Committee here!), it seemed like a fun exercise to try and arrange the Hall of Famers into a periodic table structure. Well, maybe "fun" is a bit relative.

I took up the challenge anyway. You can view the full results by clicking on the image above or checking out the Periodic Table of Hall of Famers right here. Click "Read More" below to read more about the table's structure.

Last year, to celebrate Veteran's Day, I took some space here on the blog to tell some baseball-related stories about the veteran closest to my life, my older brother. He was, at the time, beginning his second tour of duty in Iraq. Well, it's now a year later and Casey is safely returned home and retired from the Army. He started his first non-military job just last month, and we are all quite pleased with that.

Just because he's safe at home, though, doesn't mean Veteran's Day is any less important or worth honoring. With that in mind, I have reproduced that Veteran's Day post below. It's personal to me, of course, but I think it's a story worth sharing. We are thankful everyday that Casey is home safe and no longer in harm's way. But that isn't the case for everyone. So, please, take the time today to honor or thank the veterans that you know in some way. They make a difference, and so does your appreciation.

My formative years, in terms of my love for baseball at least, spanned ages 8 through 11. At that time, my family (with five kids) was quite poor, and we lived in apartments. I don't know the exact reasons - I would guess the annual rent increases - but we would move from one apartment complex to another about every two years. In fact, until I was 15 or 16, I don't think I ever celebrated more than two Christmases in a row in the same home. Not that I'm complaining. I knew we were poor, of course, but I rarely felt it. Which, for a kid, is great.

My two older brothers and I had plenty to keep us busy, but what we came back to most often was baseball and baseball cards. This was the late '80s, so packs of cards were still only 50 cents, affordable(ish) even to a bunch of poor kids. We'd make the trek to the Payless Drug Store around the corner every chance we could to pick up a pack or two of the beautifully blue-bordered 1988 Donruss, with it's Warren Spahn puzzle pieces and wonderfully illustrated Diamond Kings (Kal Daniels! Scott Fletcher! Tommy John!), or the still-classic 1988 and 1989 Topps (how many Gregg Jefferies' "Future Stars" cards could a kid get?!). Of course, "every chance we could" to us was maybe twice a month. Fifty cents wasn't a lot of money, but it's not like quarters were falling out of the sky either.

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Man, didn't I just write a post about the passing of a baseball legend? How depressing.

I say that, of course, because word came out this evening that Seattle Mariner broadcasting legend Dave Niehaus passed away at age 75. Outside of the Pacific Northwest, Niehaus was never quite the household name that, say, Vin Scully or Bob Uecker are, or Harry Caray or Ernie Harwell were. But people who care about the game and appreciate a great broadcaster have known about Niehaus for years. In 2008, he was given the Ford C. Frick Award by the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Last April, I created a graphic that highlighted some of the game's longest-tenured, most popular broadcasters called "Your Childhood Has Been Brought to You By..." I received a few complaints from fans of different franchises that felt that I wrongfully left off their guy. I'm very pleased to say that I did not make that mistake with Dave Niehaus.

Niehaus was the voice of the Mariners from the beginning, having been selected as the team's lead play-by-play guy in December 1976. Over the next 34 years, he called nearly every game the Mariners ever played. At the start of the 2009 season, for example, he had called 4,971 of the team's 5,061 career games.

Who would've known back then, in the year of the bicentennial, that Niehaus would be calling games in Seattle for the next 34 years until his death? From the December 24, 1976, edition of the Seattle Daily Times:

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Looking through my email this evening, I found the following press release from the Baseball Writer's Association of America stuck in the spam folder. I can't seem to find the news anywhere else online, so I thought I'd share it with everyone. It's some pretty big news, after all.

For Immediate Release
November  9, 2010

BBWAA Names Pablo Sandoval as Inaugural Winner of "Commitment to Fitness Award"

The Baseball Writers' Association of America is happy to announce today that San Francisco Giants third baseman Pablo Sandoval has been voted by the member writers as the inaugural winner of the Commitment to Fitness Award. With childhood obesity becoming a bigger and bigger health problem every year, the Baseball Writers' felt it was important to honor the players on the field who best exemplify the commitment to fitness that professional baseball - and a healthy adulthood - requires. The award was voted on by sixty members across the league.

Pablo Sandoval had an amazing rookie season in 2009, batting .330 and slugging 25 home runs with 90 RBIs for the San Francisco Giants. In the offseason, Sandoval attended the much publicized "Camp Panda", so named after his popular nickname "Kung-Fu Panda". Camp Panda was a strict, regimented workout regime Sandoval committed to during the winter months of 2010. It was spoken about far-and-wide in the baseball world, giving kids who look up to baseball heroes a positive example. When Sandoval showed up to Spring Training looking better than ever, it secured Camp Panda as one of the best influences on America's youth that Major League Baseball has to offer. With this award, Sandoval can take great pride in what he managed to accomplish in the winter of 2010.

As with all BBWAA awards, the "Commitment to Fitness Award" was voted on by two writers representing each Major League club. Writers are instructed to vote on which players have done the most to encourage fitness as role models. Each ballot allows for three names, with first place selectees receiving five-points, second place selectees receiving three points, and third place selectees receiving one point. Whoever ends up the voting with the highest point totals wins the award. For this inaugural season, Sandoval finished with 232 points, Milwaukee's Prince Fielder, a renowned vegetarian, finished in second place with 224 points and Albert Pujols, the slugging first baseman of the St. Louis Cardinals, finished a distant third with 54 points.

See what I mean? That's some important news. I can't believe it skipped so many people's radars. Just shocking. Congratulations to Panda, though. He certainly deserved it. (And it's nice to see Prince get the honorable mention!!)

UPDATE: When reached for comment, Derek Jeter said "Good for Pablo. The guy worked hard all winter. You pretty much couldn't read a paper in March that didn't mention Camp Panda. He definitely deserves this award."

Big news in the baseball world this evening: according the New York Times' Bats Blog, ESPN will not be bringing back the Jon Miller/Joe Morgan pair for Sunday Night Baseball next year. Morgan's contract was not renewed, while Miller's exact contract situation isn't clear (possibly coming back to radio).

This seems to have made a lot of people happy. After all, FireJoeMorgan.com was popular for a lot of reasons. Still, I'm not sure it's going to make as much of a difference as some people seem to think. I wrote up my thoughts on why that's the case over at Awful Announcing.

Having to listen to Joe Morgan rail against the modern game, give nonsensical analogies, worship at the altar of Willie Mays, and, above all, show his disdain for anyone who dared to take an intellectual approach to the sport on a weekly basis was painful. There were more than a few times that I chose not to watch a Sunday Night Baseball game because I didn’t want to put up with Morgan’s active ignorance.

But Morgan wasn’t the only problem with ESPN Sunday Night Baseball. I don’t even think he was the main problem with Sunday Night Baseball...

Head on over to Awful Announcing to read the full post.

Last week, the good folks at Baseball Think Factory linked to this beautiful image from Shorpy. It's an image of Forbes Field sometime around 1912. It may not look like much in this small resolution, but check out the full size. At ten times the resolution (literally), you get to see all kinds of wonderful detail. I recommend checking it out and spending some time looking at everything it has to offer. It's a lot of fun.

The image inspired me to wonder what life may have been like that day in Pittsburgh. Here's one attempt at that. I hope you enjoy it.

Walter rushed to cross the street. Abraham, his friend from school, said he would be waiting for him outside the stadium before the morning tilt, and he wanted to get there as soon as possible. It was a pleasant Independence Day morning, and the city was beginning to ramp up for the day’s festivities.

As Walter stepped off the curb, he heard the noisy rattle of an automobile. He stopped suddenly, letting the finely dressed woman continue down Bouquet Street. The breeze from the automobile, combined with Walter’s sudden stop, caused his cap to fall off his head and roll into the gutter. Walter didn’t mind, though. He had learned early to avoid the automobiles as they hurried to their destinations. Children did not fare well when they failed to get out of the way in time.

Walter chased his cap down and pulled it back onto his head. With a quick look to his right, Walter continued across the street. Only six blocks to go, and he’d be that much closer to seeing Hans Wagner for the eighth time already this year.

Like any good Pittsburgh boy, Walter knew that the Flying Dutchmen was the best player in all the sport. And not only was he the best player in all the sport - Ty Cobb, good as he was, just couldn’t match up to Hans - he was probably the best player ever to play baseball. Walter, from his seat far off in the bleachers, cheered him on as often as he could, frequently helping at the neighbor’s barbershop in order to earn enough money to go. It didn’t matter that Wagner had been playing baseball for longer than Walter had been alive - Hans could do no wrong.

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