Rain Delay

Braves, Hanshin Tigers sign agreement

According to ESPN, the Braves and Hanshin Tigers have entered into a working agreement.

The Atlanta Braves and Hanshin Tigers of the Japanese League have reached a working agreement which will help Atlanta with international scouting, especially in the Far East.

The Braves, led by Eastern Rim scouting coordinator Phil Dale and international scout Hiroyuki Oya, have worked together informally with Hanshin for several years.

"We have worked hard to develop our international scouting and Phil and Hiroyuki have had a good relationship with the Tigers for some time," Braves assistant general manager Dayton Moore said. "This agreement will help us in building a strong and trusting partnership as we seek and exchange information that allows us to acquire talent."

Season tickets on the decline for M's

Does this really surprise anyone?

According to figures compiled by the club, halfway through spring training there is a decline of about 2,000 season tickets from 2005. After coming in at just more than 17,000 season tickets sold a year ago, with just less than three weeks before Opening Day season ticket sales are sitting at just over 15,000.

The Mariner's home attendance peaked in 2002, when 3.54 million fans took in games at Safeco Field one year after the Mariners set an all-time single-season record with 116 wins.

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But attendance has slipped in each year since, down to 3.27 million in 2003, 2.94 million in 2004 and 2.73 million last year.

"Traditionally all around baseball, an April midweek crowd can be expected to be a little small," Adamack said. "But if the team gets off to a good start, that could change, too."

Well with a couple 90+ loss seasons, I can see where season ticket sales is on the down trend. The same article reports that single game and group tickets are holding steady with last year.

Local buyers interested in Braves..

This has been a quiet story for most of the winter and headed in to the spring. Who was interested in buy the Braves. Fox was a potential buyer at one point, instead they bought Turner South. Now it seems there are two prospective buyers. A Radio Magnet, and a Atlanta based Apartment Builder. Both are local, which is something that Major League Baseball favors, and have approved both candidates.

"It's an intriguing opportunity and one we're looking at seriously," David Dickey said Wednesday. He said talks with Time Warner continue and added: "I think there's a long way to go in the process, not only for us but for them, too."

Terwilliger did not return calls seeking comment on his interest in the Braves Wednesday.

David Dickey said his family has been approved by Major League Baseball as a prospective Braves buyer — a necessary step before a bidder can examine a team's financial records and enter substantive negotiations.

Terwilliger's group also has been approved as a bidder by MLB, people familiar with the process said.

Another entity involved in discussions with Time Warner about a possible Braves acquisition is Colorado-based Liberty Media Corp., which last week said it "would love" to exchange some of its large block of Time Warner stock for a company-owned asset such as the team.

Liberty Media is a holding company that owns interests in many businesses, including a 4 percent stake in Time Warner and a 6 1/2 percent stake in Denver's professional basketball and hockey franchises.

Blank is not necessarily out of the running, either, having left the door open to the possibility of renewed talks with Time Warner.

Some people involved in the process believe he may get back into the bidding if the market yields a lower price than the $400-million-plus Time Warner has been seeking.

All indications are that there is no clear front-runner — or that the front-runner changes frequently.

"It's going to be an interesting spring," David Dickey said. "Whether we're standing or not when the dust settles, it's going to be interesting."

Not until a read the article, did I realize that the Dickey's own Cumulus Media. Only reason this means anything to me, is when I used to work in Eugene Oregon. The station cluster that we were competing against, was dun dun dunnnnn...Cumulus Media. I'm really glad this whole Braves for Sale thing has been a major distraction this spring. I guess, I wouldn't mind a radio guy buying the Braves, as long as it's not Clear Channel it's all good.

Braves Skipper signs extention thru '07

The Braves announced before their game against the Cards today, that Skipper Bobby Cox has signed a contract extention through the 2007 season.

Based on his overwhelming success, it seems Bobby Cox has earned himself the right to serve as the Braves' manager for as long as he desires.

Contractually, it's now known that he'll be in that role for at least the next two seasons.

Just before the start of Sunday afternoon's game against the Cardinals, the Braves issued a release stating that Cox had been given a one-year contract extension, which ensures he'll serve as their manager through at least the end of the 2007 season.

Cox, who has won the National League Manager of the Year Award each of the past two seasons, assumed his current position midway through the 1990 season. One year later, the Braves began their current record-setting streak of 14 consecutive division titles.

Cox and Braves general manager John Schuerholz, who also assumed his current role before the start of the memorable 1991 campaign, are now both under contract through the end of the 2007 season.

Widely respected by his players and peers, Cox enters this season as the winningest manager in Braves franchise history. His 2,092 career wins places his seventh on the all-time managerial wins list.

Emphasis is all mine kiddo's. This isn't like earth shattering news, but still good none the less. Right now, I couldn't fathom a Braves team without Bobby at the helm. It just seems to wierd, well at least we wont have to worry about it for a while. That picture of Bobby screams to be captioned "I love it when a plan comes together."

Bonds, almost a Brave?

Braves GM John Shuerholz has a book coming out, one of the notables was that Barry Bonds (like him or not) was a Brave for a day. Boy, that starts to bring out the "What Ifs" doesn't it?

Barry Bonds was a Brave for one night in 1992, Tom Glavine was ready to back out of a free-agent deal with the Mets and stay with the Braves in 2002 and Deion Sanders only used the Braves to demonstrate his athletic prowess.

Those are among the revelations in a surprisingly candid book by Braves general manager John Schuerholz. "Built to Win" is due to arrive in stores next week.

Like I've said before you learn something new every day. This was definitely something I didn't know, and I'll be curious to see how the book does, and more than likely I need to get my hands on a copy.

Here's what JS had to say about Bonds being a Brave:

"I was euphoric," Schuerholz writes. "Barry Bonds was a Brave! . . . There seemed no limits to what we could achieve over our approaching several seasons."

Then things hit a major snag.

About an hour before the announcement, I decided to call Ted Simmons just to coordinate the timing of the release.

"We have a problem," Ted said.

"What do you mean, a problem? Don't want to release it just yet? What?"

"I can't do the deal," he said.

"You can't do the deal? You did the deal! Ted, you agreed over the phone, general manager to general manager. We made the deal!"

In baseball, that's about as sacrosanct as anything gets. That had never happened to me, nor has it since, where there was a total reneging of a trade. . . .

Honestly, I think we were/are better off without him at this point. I mean look at all the negative press with the book coming out about his alleged steroid use. Shuerholz goes on to talk about all things Braves including this great quote about former Brave John Rocker.

"Big John Rocker, from Macon, Georgia. Had an arm like a cannon and a head like a cannonball."

Looks like this book could be an interesting read, some of the other things he talks about including trying to land A-Rod, Furcal's DUI and how Deion Sanders and Kenny Lofton really didn't fit in with the Braves.

Cha Ching!

Mariners '05 profit to the tune of $8 Million Junior Bacon Cheesebuger's.

PEORIA, Ariz. — The Mariners informed the Public Facilities District on Thursday that they had a profit of more than $8 million for last season, according to information obtained by The Seattle Times.

The club is required to report annually the amount referred to as a special calculation, which was created specifically to determine when the club begins sharing profits with the PFD.

However, they are not required by terms of their lease for Safeco Field to declare their net profit/loss totals from business operations, but have done so in recent years.

Their letter to the PFD stated that they had net income of $8.3 million for the fiscal year that ended Oct. 31, 2005, which resulted in a special calculation figure of $7.3 million.

This is the second time this year the Mariners have opened their books in a sense and revealed financial figures

Clan:Bavasi

Over at the Baseball Toaster , Mike rants about Former Red's GM Dan O'Brien and that fact that loosing is in his gene's, so really it's not his fault his teams did terrible.  So he goes on to break down Winning percentages of GM's with family ties. The Bavasi clan is fourth on the over all list with a .498 winning percentage, combined.

Which when you compare to the O'Brien's who come in dead-last, that's not so bad really. Still this is a list you really don't want your family name on.And if your wondering, or to lazy to click the link, Bill came in on the individual list at #4, though the Bavasi clan owns the top three spots on the individual list. Isn't that just spiffy.

If anything, it's a fun read. Not to mention a bit on the scary side.

Does size really matter?

Well to the Marlins and Dolphins it does. Last year the Braves installed the biggest High-Definition video board at the Ted. Now there's one bigger that's been installed at Dolphins stadium, which houses both the NFL's Dolphins and the Marlins.

"It's a significantly bigger board — we figure 20 percent bigger," said Mark Steinkamp, marketing and sales support manager of Daktronics Inc., which is building the Dolphins Stadium board.

A press release announcing the 50-feet-high, 137-feet-wide board, scheduled to be installed by the start of the Marlin's season, boasted: "This will become the world's largest high definition video display, surpassing one installed [last year] that was recognized as the largest by Guinness World Records."

But the Braves front office isn't buying it:

"The only thing the Dolphins are going to be able to claim — not something we're going to lose a lot of sleep over — is that their screen square footage [6,850] is larger than ours [5,609]," said Mike Plant, the Braves executive vice president of business operations.

Good to see the front office are keeping themselves amused over the winter. I've got an idea! How about finding us a closer? I think that would be more productive than getting into a battle of the video boards.