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MLB teams spend $236 million on draft; White Sox responsible for 1 percent of it

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At the other end of the spectrum, the White Sox ranked last at $2,756,300. The Tigers were the only other team below $3 million at $2,878,700–less than the $3.45 million they paid supplemental first-round pick Nick Castellanos in 2010.

Batting Stance Guy breaks out the wigs again to cover a major breaking story about bat weight.

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Batting Stance Guy breaks out the wigs again to cover a major breaking story about bat weight.

Did the Cubs really win in 1908?

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Yes, there exist contemporary accounts of the final out, which came when Tigers catcher Boss Schmidt succumbed to Cubs pitcher Orval Overall, a name so good that you might think it was invented: He certainly sounds like a fiction, and a bad one at that, but let's take it on faith that the Cubs did win the 1908 World Series behind a citrus farmer named Orval Overall, of Farmerville, Calif. We'll have to. The game is not in the living memory of a single human being. The average life expectancy for men in 1908 was 49.5 years, so that the few eyewitnesses to that victory -- among players and spectators alike -- were becoming scarce even by World War II. It is now customary for athletes to say after winning a championship, "No one can take this away from us," but perhaps we should make an exception for the 1908 Cubs, not because they didn't prevail over the Tigers in five games, but because it's possible that the 1908 Cubs were not of this world. We owe it to history to at least consider that those Cubs were -- and I beg your patience here -- aliens from outer space.

Division title sealed; Donny Lucy is back

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Pierzynski placed on 15-day DL, Sox purchase contract of C Donny Lucy. AJ has a fractured left wrist. Bruce Chen adds another victim to his White Sox tally.

Tigers Acquire Delmon Young

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n a surprising intra-division deal, the Twins announced today that they've traded left fielder Delmon Young to the Tigers for minor league lefty Cole Nelson and a player to be named later. The press release notes that the PTBNL must be chosen on or before October 15th. The Tigers already had an open spot on the 40-man roster for Young. It's not yet clear whether Young cleared waivers, or just made it past the seven American League clubs that would have allowed the Tigers to win the claim. Young won't have to alter his plans, as the Twins were headed to Detroit tonight to begin a three-game set.

SHOCKING: Camelback Ranch revenue down

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The revenue at Camelback Ranch has dropped 20% since the Dodgers and Chicago White Sox opened their spring training complex in Phoenix two years ago, according to documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court on Wednesday. [...] The Dodgers lost revenue in spring training too, although the specific amount is unknown because the Dodgers and White Sox do not split all revenue on a 50-50 basis, according to the court filing. Still, the Dodgers accounted for the vast majority of the Camelback Ranch revenue decline from last spring to this one. Attendance for Dodgers games at Camelback Ranch dropped 17% this season; attendance for White Sox games dropped 2.6%, according to Cactus League statistics.

douchebag idea of the day

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This isn't exactly breaking news by now, but holy shit, Carlos Zambrano has elevated himself to the pinnacle, the zenith, the apex, the pantheon, nay the hall of fame of douchebaggery. His notion of pissing away $24 million dollars- conceived, mind you, as a solution to his very own inability to avoid being one of the world's premier douchebags- is likely the douchebag idea of the season. Only in Wrigleyville could a player turn himself into this veritable tautology of douchedom; only there could a man, by virtue solely of his own unassailable wretchedness, turn what should normally be an occasion of sympathy for another loss in another lost season, into a spectacle of such cataclysmic egotism that even the Cubs organization and the sorry hordes of lemmings known as Cub fans are throwing up in their mouths. It is beautiful in its purity, desolation, and futility, this confluence of a douchebag, his douchebag behavior, his douchebag response to his own douchebaggery- and, ultimately, their demoralizing effect on the legions of douchebags who pay to watch him suck.

In case you needed yet another reason to admire Mark Buehrle

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As a Veteran that was at Walter Reed in 2005 (sadly before the Sox started doing this) I really enjoyed this article. Most of the visits you get there are politicians who are there more for the cameras they bring along than the troops. Having a down-to-Earth star pitcher like Mark swing by for a vist must have been awesome. I even have to give some props to Linebrink for starting the tradition. I wish Gonzalez would have mentioned the other players that went. I'm choosing to believe that Q and Che were in the crowd. I'm also choosing to believe Che was so broken up about the experience, he had to sit and let Omar play. Now I even feel better about last night's game. Great piece.

SSS favorites involved in indy-league brawl

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1. Tony Phillips is 52 years old and still playing baseball for the Yuma Scorpions. 2. Tony Phillips tackled and punched Chico Outlaws manager Mike Marshall. 3. Yuma manager Jose Canseco attempted to play peacemaker.

Baseball's Toronto Blue Jays under suspicion again of stealing signs at Rogers Centre - ESPN

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A few of the players in the bullpen turned their backs to the field to fixate on the man in white, while others watched the stadium's radar gun. As soon as each pitch was thrown, those watching the man would call out what they thought he was signaling, and those focused on the radar gun would confirm his signal. Sure enough, the man in white was raising his arms above his head before every off-speed pitch and doing nothing when the pitch being called was a fastball.