Dodger Thoughts

Happy birthday to our very own @NancyBea! pic.twitter.com/DpOnjhvgNo

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) February 25, 2014

By Jon Weisman

The offseason is getting closer and closer to an onseason …

• The new rule limiting collisions at home plate is official. Details from Paul Hagen at MLB.com.
• A.J. Ellis had an interesting reaction to the rule, as told to Ken Gurnick of MLB.com.
  

  … Ellis said if the rule change is motivated by the serious ankle injury Giants catcher Buster Posey suffered in a collision three years ago, self-regulation might be a better route to take.

  “Now it’s like rules protecting quarterbacks in the NFL — you want to keep your best players on the field,” he said. “But the Giants took steps by not having Buster involved in plays where his body is in harm’s way. In our organization, maybe I’m a little more expendable. That’s where my value to the team lies.” …

• 

  Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Library of Congress

  President Woodrow Wilson was a baseball fanatic as a child, according to official MLB historian John Thorn (via Baseball Think Factory):

  … Like the protagonist in Robert Coover’s 1968 novel The Universal Baseball Association, J. Henry Waugh, Prop., the 14-year-old Thomas Woodrow Wilson—known as Tommy—created a whole universe of players, statistics, and a pennant race, with or without the aid of dice. But unlike Waugh—who invented a table game using three dice, a “Stress Chart,” and an “Extraordinary Occurrences Chart”—the young Wilson did not create players or teams. He used only the cast of characters in the real-life National Association of 1871, which he surely read about in the sporting weeklies.

  And now, from deep in the archives of the Library of Congress, we have come upon Tommy Wilson’s complete handwritten record of that fantasy season. George Wright, Al Spalding, and Cap Anson cavort on an imaginary field, along with all the other worthies of that first year of professional league play. …

• Here’s the annual reminder that Spring Training stats can be deceiving. This time, we’ll let Daniel Brim of Dodgers Digest do the honors.
• Brim’s colleague Dustin Nosler offers his all-name team from the Dodger organization, starting with Pratt Maynard at catcher.
• Non-roster catcher J.C. Boscan talked to J.P. Hoornstra of the Daily News about his concerns about his native Venezuela.
  

  … He said that his parents run a restaurant in Maracaibo, a city in northwest Venezuela near the Colombian border. Since last year they have been deeply affected by the nationwide food shortage, which has been one of the main causes for protest.

  “They understand the protests,” Boscan said. “It gets tough for them when they try to get something for the restaurant and they can’t find it. …

• The best kept secret at Camelback Ranch is the area with the back fields, writes Evan Bladh of Opinion of Kingman’s Performance.

Four remain in the #Dodgers Ping Pong Tournament: Withrow/ Moskos Stripling/ Butera Rosin/ Rojas (one loss) Kershaw/ Billingsley (one loss)

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) February 24, 2014