Cleaning out the inbox-Baseball

The inbox is just overflowing, so to get a few things out of there, I'll be taking care of the baseball notes.

Bruce Markusen and his "Card Corner" on the Baseball Hall of Fame website takes a look at the career of the "Toy Cannon" Jimmy Wynn.
The smallish Wynn at 5'9 was the first true power hitter for the Houston Astros in the notoriously power sapping Astrodome.
Markusen selected Wynn as his player to write about since the parameters for the article was a player that played for both World Series teams (Astros and Dodgers).
Wynn's first year with the Dodgers was the last big year of his career and I've always thought that his .271/32/108 line should have been enough to beat out his teammate and eventual winner Steve Garvey for the 1974 National League MVP.

The SABR website has thousands of player profiles and a recent one that caught my eye was that of early 1960's thumping first baseman Jim Gentile.
It was a very intensive profile of Gentile's career and I found his years of being blocked by Gil Hodges in the Brooklyn/Los Angeles system a story that was interesting.
Two Gentile points that were new to me- the first was that it was Gentile, not Hodges that played first base for the final game of the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field.
The other was a classy move by the Orioles back in 2010.
In 1961, Gentile had a clause in his contract that would have given him a $5,000 bonus for leading the American League in RBI, but his 141 RBI fell one short of Roger Maris for first place in the league.
Almost 50 years later, a SABR researcher found that Maris had been given an extra RBI in a July game and that it was Gentile and Maris that led the league.
The Orioles brought Gentile to Camden Yards and surprised him with a check for five thousand dollars fulfilling their commitment.
Very classy by Baltimore.

SABR's baseball card blog has two articles of note from the inbox.
The first discusses Luis Tiant in "An ode to El Tiante".
The author connects Tiant to his comeback from arm injuries to explode on the Boston sports scene
in 1972, his lack of an appearance in the 1972 Topps set and the resulting first card with the Red Sox in the 1973 release, which stood out to me as a kid when you didn't exactly see a lot of red gloves around.
I always like when an author explains his interest in the topic and the author (Mark Armour) attaches his Tiant fandom as part of the piece.

SABR also adds an article on Pat Neshek, ace reliever, card collector and autograph hound.
Neshek's the biggest collector that actually plays in the league and his interview discusses all of his memorabilia collections.
Neshek was also in the news for collecting earlier this season when Neshek ripped Zach Greinke for not signing cards for Neshek after allegedly promising that he would do so.

There aren't specifics, but it appears that Wichita Kansas might be bringing affiliated baseball back to their town after a reference to a December Chamber of Commerce meeting there.
Supposedly, it could be AAA ball from the Pacific Coast League, but no teams have been mentioned as possible prospects to make the jump.