Baseball notes

One way to get drafted
The Major League Baseball draft was earlier this week, and here's a story from the Providence Journal on an easy way to get drafted:

The draft finished up yesterday, and the Red Sox displayed a little nepotism in the later rounds. Boston chose left-handed pitcher Nick Francona, son of its manager, with its 39th pick, in the 40th round. In the 44th round, the Red Sox selected Beau Mills with their 43rd pick. Beau is the son of Boston bench coach Brad Mills. Each draftee recently graduated from high school.

This is a good idea
This wouldn't work in every city, but in an area like New England where people are crazy about sports, it makes a lot of sense. Apparently several local theaters are showing select Red Sox games on the big screen in high-definition. For five bucks you can get a seat in the cool environs of the theater that also include vendors selling hot dogs and beer.

Not surprisingly, it's been really popular. In fact, the idea really took off based on interest fans showed last season:

Last fall, as part of a contest, Showcase Cinemas received more than 25,000 ticket requests at the Randolph theater for a sold-out Sept. 5 Red Sox-Yankees game

I don't see this happening in Montreal anytime soon.

Time to make the jerseys
Slate has an interesting article about the guy who sews the names on the Mets jerseys and how he came into this job. I'm not sure if this is a perk or not, but he also gets great seats to all the games.