Other Canadian Baseball Hall of Famers include actual Canadians like Larry Walker, Ferguson Jenkins and Kirk McCaskill, but also some with more tenuous connections to the nation, like Tommy Lasorda — who pitched for the Dodgers’ Triple-A team in Montreal for nine seasons — and the entire All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which had 64 Canadians including the catcher Geena Davis’ character in A League of Their Own was “rumoured to be based on.”

There’s obviously a waiting period after a player retires before he can be inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. I can tell because Matt Stairs isn’t in yet even though they (presumably) already have a Matt Stairs Wing full of awesome Matt Stairs memorabilia, including jerseys from all 13 of his Major League stops, an empty beer can that is believed to be from his first-ever postgame Molson, the original scouting report on Stairs by Expos scout Bill MacKenzie*, and, of course, a whole bunch of hockey stuff.

The Matt Stairs Wing is right near the early Winnipeg Slugger prototypes, across from where the wax statue of Kelly Gruber stands and kitty corner from where the actual Kelly Gruber stands, just sort of hanging around admiring the Canadian baseball history, considering his small role in it and secretly hoping someone recognizes him even while he insists to his friends that he hopes no one recognizes him.

Come to think of it, I should probably get to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame this summer. Worth it for the trip down memory lane to those times when Jason Bay was pretty good.

*- Actual name of Expos scout that signed Matt Stairs. Canada!

Anyway, now it appears he’s bound for Italy to play baseball there and write about it. I’ve long fantasized about writing a book about baseball around the world — going to games every place baseball is played and detailing each place’s baseball culture. But it looks like Dirk Hayhurst is going to trump the hell out of that idea, and good for him.

The next day, he walked out to his position before the game, carrying a signed baseball in his hand. He spotted the familiar faces, smiled and threw the baseball over the fence.

There was a hundred dollar bill rubber-tied to the baseball. And an inscription: “Beer or Bacon Dog on me. Jeff Francoeur.”

- Bojan Koprivica, Hardball Times.

Oh, Frenchy.

Via Craig Calcaterra.

Via Toby Hyde.

- Bill James, Grantland.com.

So that’s pretty awesome. It’s cool when matchups between the best pitchers in the game play out like matchups between the best pitchers in the game. Poor Tim Lincecum pitches for a team with no offense to speak of.

Added, of course.

It has been added.

He was all those things and more, Navin. It was something to behold. He didn’t just wear the jheri curls, he lived them.

If I remember it right, Carlos actually proved the craziest of the pitching Perezes. The Wikipedia is blacked out and so is a good portion of my memory, so I can’t prove that now. But I remember him wildly signaling strikeouts from the mound and taking ridiculous home-run swings every time he came up to hit, and I remember aping both those things while playing stickball.

Melido, on the other hand, never did anything I can remember to distinguish himself as weird besides being Pascual’s brother, throwing a rain-shortened no-hitter against the Yankees then later joining the Yankees, and also having sweet jheri curls.

Via Steve Schreiber.