Astrodome

Earlier this month, demolition of Houston, Texas's Astrodome began. While too outdated to be renovated now, when it opened on April 9, 1965, it was a state-of-the-art facility, the world's first multi-purpose, domed sports stadium. It's home team baseball team, the Houston Astros, has changed their name from Colt .45s upon moving into the Astrodome. Their old name played a large part in why the honorees decided rather than to use a traditional shovel for the ground breaking ceremonies, a different...tool, would be more appropriate.

Disaster Draft

It's something you may (or may not) have thought about before. What would happen in the catastrophic event that a Major League Baseball team were to lose a large portion of their team? A charter bus goes off the road, a plane loses an engine, or some other terrible event? Well that, my friends, would call for a "disaster draft."

In the event that a team disaster ever occurred in which at least five players were dismembered, disabled, or killed, MLB has a contingency plan, built around some sort of "disaster draft" designed to restock the team in the event of such a tragedy. This plan is covered in Rule 29 of its official rules. The way it would work would be that each team has to make five players available for a draft taken from its active list (or if it's during the off-season, during its reserve list.) This list would include a pitcher, a catcher, an outfielder, and infielder, and one more player of any position. A player with a no-trade clause in its contract would not be made available, unless the player waives that clause.

It makes sense to have a plan in place, but it would be a heavy undertaking to do. How would players moving to the new team feel, knowing their are replacing deceased players? Let's hope we never have to find out.

We'll Never Be Royals

This year has seen the rise of 16-year-old New Zealand singer Lorde in the music world. Helping her popularity has been her hit song, "Royals." What does any of this have to do with baseball? Well, it's recently been discovered that one of the sources of her inspiration for this song is a photograph of Hall of Famer George Brett in his Kansas City Royals uniform!

George Brett

In an interview with VH1, Lorde explained how she “had this image from the National Geographic of this dude signing baseballs. He was a baseball player and his shirt said, ‘Royals.’... It was just that word. It’s really cool.”

National Geographic has confirmed that this is the only photo in the archives of a Royals baseball player signing autographs. There you have it!