At least the writers still are in the ballpark.

Late last week, it was disclosed that the Los Angeles Angels will be moving the press box from its prime location behind to a less than ideal perspective down the rightfield line.

From Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times:

The Angels are in the process of converting their press box to a luxury seating area that will feature upgraded dining opportunities and amenities for about 80 fans, a move that will push writers covering the team to a new press box down the right-field line in Angel Stadium.

There will be no changes to the radio and television broadcast booths, which will remain on the club level behind home plate, or in the Diamond Club restaurant and seating areas on the lower level behind home plate.

“It really boils down to building revenue streams and finding as many ways as possible to grow,” said Tim Mead, Angels vice president of communications. “In talking to other teams, the seating behind home plate is a prime area to do things.”

Mead noted the White Sox made the move with their press box a few years ago. The writers aren’t happy about it.

Upon hearing the news about the Angels, Paul Hoynes, the longtime baseball writer for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, wrote in a Tweet:

Selig promised BBWAA no team would be allowed to move pressbox from behind home plate after Chi did it. Angel writers should go to Bud.

I don’t know that it will do any good. Given that the Angels have committed a zillion dollars on about four players, the Commissioner is not going to rule against the team trying to find some new revenue sources.

Sorry, Hoynsie. I don’t think the protest is going to go very far.

Jacob Ruppert might not have been a YES man.

The Baseball Hall of Fame got it right this week. Ruppert, the Yankee owner who set the foundation for many dynasties, finally will get his due in Cooperstown with his selection by the pre-Integration committee.

“We were surprised to learn he wasn’t in,” said former Yankees player and executive Bob Watson, who was a member of the 16-person election committee.

Ruppert was Steinbrenner long before Steinbrenner. When he bought the Yankees in 1915, they were a terrible team languishing deep in the shadow of John McGraw’s New York Giants. All he did was purchase a player named Babe Ruth from the Red Sox; build sports’ greatest stadium; and set the Yankees on a course to become the most successful franchise in sports.

Dave Anderson writes about him in today’s New York Times.

However, Ruppert wasn’t a complete visionary. In light of the YES Network being valued at $3.8 billion, it is laughable to note that Ruppert was among the owners who were resistant to the new medium of radio in the 20s and 30s. He thought it was an outrage that teams would broadcast their games for free.

While researching a book I’m doing on Babe Ruth, I found this passage from Marty Appel’s new epic-length book, Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees from before the Babe to after the Boss. Here is a Q/A I did with Appel earlier in the year.

Appel noted Ruppert wouldn’t even let visiting teams in Yankee Stadium broadcast games back to their markets. He has this quote from Ruppert:

“All of the clubs in both league have invested heavily in real estate and in construction of modern ball parks. They are, like myself, battling with the times. Some of them must economize, which means reductions in salaries and other overhead expense. Now can you understand why club owners who want to save money are willing to let broadcasters give away their business for nothing?”

William Veeck Sr., the father of the legendary baseball maverick Bill Veeck Jr., had a different perspective. As president of the Cubs, he placed the team on four different stations in Chicago.

Veeck thought by broadcasting the games, fans would form a deeper connection to the team, making them more excited about taking a trip to the park. “Increased attendance, even in Depression times, reflect its value,” he said.

Guess we know who was right. I’m sure if he still were around, Ruppert would have had 3.8 billion reasons to change his mind about putting games on radio.

Congratulations to Paul Hagen, one of the good guys. He is this year’s winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, an honor handed out “for meritorious contributions to baseball writing.”

I knew Paul back when he was working in Dallas covering the Texas Rangers. The bulk of his career has been in Philadelphia, where he joined the Daily News in 1987.

From Philly.com:

“I don’t think you ever really know how you’re being perceived,” Hagen said. “So when something like this happens, that your peers thought enough of you to vote you an award like this, it’s overwhelming, it really is.”

Hagen, who has been writing about baseball for 40 years, including more than a quarter century in Philadelphia, received 269 votes from eligible BBWAA voters. The next closest candidate received 87 votes.

Hagen got a standing ovation when he was announced as this year’s recipient before the BBWAA’s Tuesday morning meeting in Nashville, where Major League Baseball’s winter meetings are being held this week.

“A consummate pro,” said St. Louis Post-Dispatch baseball writer Rick Hummel, who received the Spink Award in 2006. “He always seems to have a smile on his face . . . And he has the neatest notes – you can actually read them. I don’t think many of us can say that.”

Hummel laughed.

“I’ve never gone to a Hall of Fame induction when I wasn’t covering one,” Hummel said. “But I’ll be going this year [to see Hagen].”

Tom Cheek is this year’s winner of the Ford Frick Award. The annual award is recognition for excellence in broadcasting by the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Unfortunately, the long-time Toronto Blue Jays announcer passed away in 2005. However, he had a long and distinguished career and still is remembered fondly in Toronto and throughout baseball.

His biggest call: Joe Carter’s World Series winning homer in 1993: “Touch ’em all Joe! You’ll never hit a bigger home run in your life.”

Here’s the release from the Hall:

Cheek becomes the second Frick Award winner whose career came primarily with a Canadian team, following Dave Van Horne’s selection as the Frick Award winner in 2011. Van Horne spent parts of four decades broadcasting Montreal Expos games.

“Tom Cheek was the voice of summer for generations of baseball fans in Canada and beyond,” said Hall of Fame President Jeff Idelson. “He helped a nation understand the elements of the game and swoon for the summer excitement that the expansion franchise brought a hockey-crazed nation starting in the late 1970s. He then authored the vocal narrative of a team that evolved into one of the most consistent clubs of the 1980s and 1990s. We are thrilled to celebrate Tom’s legacy with baseball broadcasting’s highest honor.”

Born June 13, 1939 – one day after the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum opened its doors in Cooperstown – in Pensacola, Fla., Cheek was raised in a Navy family and joined the armed forces himself in 1957, serving in the Air Force until discharged in 1960. Cheek’s father, also named Tom, was a World War II hero who served as a fighter pilot in the Battle of Midway in 1942.

After continuing his education at SUNY Plattsburgh and the Cambridge School of Broadcasting in Boston, Cheek worked as a disc jockey in Plattsburgh, N.Y., and as sports director for a group of three stations in Burlington, Vt., calling University of Vermont sports for several years.

In 1974, Cheek began work as a backup announcer to Van Horne on Expos broadcasts. Then in 1976 at the age of 37, he landed the job as the radio voice of the expansion Blue Jays. Paired first with Hall of Fame pitcher Early Wynn and later with Jerry Howarth starting in 1981, Cheek’s rich baritone voice and his passionate-yet-lighthearted approach to his job dazzled fans eager to embrace Toronto’s new role as an American League outpost.

His call of Joe Carter’s World Series-winning home run in Game 6 of the 1993 Fall Classic – “Touch ’em all Joe! You’ll never hit a bigger home run in your life.” – quickly became embedded in the sports conscious of Blue Jays fans around the globe.

Cheek called every regular season and postseason Blue Jays game from the franchise’s birth on April 7, 1977 through June 2, 2004. The next day, Cheek took the first of two days off to attend the funeral of his father. But upon his return, Cheek sensed he was not right physically when he was unable to retain information he had read only minutes earlier. On June 13, 2004 – his 65^th birthday – Cheek underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor, but some of the tumor was unreachable.

A little more than a year later, Cheek passed away on Oct. 9, 2005.

Cheek was inducted into the Blue Jays Level of Excellence in 2005. That same year, the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame established the Tom Cheek Media Leadership Award, with Cheek being honored with the first award.

Cheek will be honored at the Hall of Fame’s Awards Presentation on Saturday, July 27 in Cooperstown, along with 2013 J.G. Taylor Spink Award winner Paul Hagen.

Cheek was chosen from a list of 10 finalists selected in October, featuring three fan selections from an online vote and seven broadcasters chosen by a research committee from the Cooperstown-based museum. The final ballot contained a mix of pioneers and current-day broadcasters: Ken Coleman, Jacques Doucet, John Gordon, Bill King, Graham McNamee, Eric Nadel, Eduardo Ortega, Mike Shannon, Dewayne Staats and Cheek. Doucet, Gordon, Nadel, Ortega, Shannon and Staats were the living candidates. In September and October, a total of 34,283 votes were cast in the Museum’s online fan poll for inclusion on the final 10-name ballot, with Cheek, King and Doucet as the top three fan poll selections.

The 21-member electorate, comprised of the 16 living Frick Award recipients and five broadcast historians/columnists, includes Frick honorees Marty Brennaman, Jerry Coleman, Gene Elston, Joe Garagiola, Jaime Jarrin, Milo Hamilton, Tony Kubek, Denny Matthews, 2012 Frick Award winner Tim McCarver, Jon Miller, Felo Ramirez, Vin Scully, Lon Simmons, Bob Uecker, Dave Van Horne and Bob Wolff, and historians/columnists Bob Costas (NBC), Barry Horn (Dallas Morning News), Stan Isaacs (formerly of NY Newsday), Ted Patterson (historian) and Curt Smith (historian).

FORD C. FRICK AWARD RECIPIENTS

Nobody saw this one coming.

The Cubs have selected Jim Deshaies to replace Bob Brenly. Deshaies had been the analyst for the Houston Astros, where he was a long-time pitcher.

From Paul Sullivan in the Chicago Tribune:

“It was a very tough choice,” Deshaies said of leaving the Astros’ booth. “The Astros have been very good to me and I’ve spent the lion’s share of my life here. As an Astros guy, I was very hesitant to leave. As a baseball guy, going to the Cubs and watching games at Wrigley Field, I look at that job as the best in the game.”

Later, Sullivan wrote:

While Cubs business president Crane Kenney made the final call, Kasper was instrumental in pushing for Deshaies, a source said. Deshaies spent an inning in the Cubs booth with Kasper and Brenly near the end of the season.

It’s an interesting choice considering Deshaies name never came up in any of the speculation. People were focused on the ex-Cub factor in writing about Eric Karros, Dan Plesac, Rick Sutcliffe and others.

But as the Cubs showed in bringing in Brenly, who never played for the team, the ex-Cub thing wasn’t a priority.

The 2013 Hall of Fame ballot came out Wednesday. It will put the focus on the electors, the baseball writers, more than ever before.

For the first time, the eligible class includes juicers Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa.

Sosa got an indication today that he shouldn’t make any summer plans to be in Cooperstown. The former Cub will get as many votes from the seven voters at the hometown Chicago Tribune as Royce Clayton, who incredibly is on the ballot.

In a story by Paul Sullivan, the Tribune voters weigh in with their opinions.

Phil Hersh (in a Tweet): “Oh, the joy I will have snubbing Sosa, Bonds and Clemens (plus McGwire and Palmeiro, natch) on my HoF ballot.”

Phil Rogers:  “I covered Sammy Sosa’s first big-league game, when the skinny, athletic kid played center field and batted leadoff for the Rangers. The thought then was he might win a batting title one day, and 609 home runs later he is going onto the Hall of Fame ballot as one of the flashiest sluggers in history. He was beloved in Chicago for a long time but he won’t get my vote as he never knocked down the New York Times report. Sammy had quite a journey, even if it stops at the gate to Cooperstown.”

Mark Gonzales: “If Sammy wants to come out and refute the Times story, then I’m all for listening. Until then, it’s a firm ‘no.'”

Teddy Greenstein: “You were a product of the times — an awesome product at that — but not an all-time great without the artificial help.”

The eulogies flowed for Marvin Miller Tuesday, and rightfully so. Nobody impacted baseball more than he did during the last 50 years.

Miller clobbered the owners back then, and his successors have done a pretty good job ever since. They have been able to avoid the one thing that the unions in the other sports couldn’t: Baseball doesn’t have a salary cap.

The impact now becomes more acute in the wake of the recent local TV rights deals being signed by teams. The Dodgers are set to cash in on a ridiculous $280 million per year deal from Fox in Los Angeles. That’s $1.73 million per game, or almost as much as the Miami Marlins’ current payroll for 2013.

The Dodgers’ haul makes recent TV deals by the Angels and Texas Rangers (both in the $3 billion range) seem like petty cash. And both of those teams were more than pleased with what they got.

With the regional TV market exploding, the key now is to have a local deal that is set to expire in the next couple of years. The Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs and Seattle Mariners are among the teams on deck for the big TV money upgrade.

The Atlanta Braves, meanwhile, are stuck with a 25-year deal with their local outlet that pays in the $12 million range. Let’s see: $280 million compared to $12 million. How are the Braves supposed to compete with that?

Answer: They won’t.

The TV disparity wouldn’t be as dramatic if there was a salary cap in place, much like the NFL, NBA, and NHL (whenever they resolve their dispute). But baseball is cap-less, meaning almost anything goes.

I know, I know. MLB Commissioner Bud Selig will point to the low budget Oakland A’s winning the AL West this year, and the Tampa Bay Rays have been competitive with a minimal payroll. Money isn’t everything. Just ask the Cubs and Mets, big spenders and big losers.

Still, it helps to have some cash on hand to not only get players, but also to be able to keep your stars in the fold. Clearly, without a salary cap, teams aren’t competing on a level playing field.

The Dodgers now will have a huge advantage thanks to their TV deal. And the other teams with new local packages in upcoming years also will have more to spend.

Yet another reason for players to give thanks to Marvin Miller.

Should be fun.

Keith Olbermann will be a guest-host on MLB Network’s “Hot Stove” next Tuesday and Wednesday, from 9-11 AM ET.  He was in-studio yesterday as part of a panel discussion on the American League MVP.

Olbermann knows baseball and has some time on his hands these days. While I doubt he would do this as a regular gig, it would terrific to see him pop in as a contributor. He has plenty to offer.

He writes Baseball Nerd for the MLB Blog network.