For decades, baseball spurned pompoms. The first American cheerleaders were men who worked the crowds at college football games in the late 19th century; women didn’t get involved until the ’20s and ’30s. In the years that followed, football and basketball players had their feats heralded by organized squads of cheering women, but baseball players had to make do with hollers from the crowd.

Baseball historians aren’t sure why the sport went without for so long. But it was a handful of entertainment executives from the Walt Disney Company who helped initiate the change. When Disney purchased the California Angels in 1996, it added some bells and whistles: a six-piece Dixieland jazz band, zany sound effects for foul balls, and the Angel Wings Cheerleaders. The Angel Wings danced on the top of the visitors’ dugout between innings, attempting to rile the crowd.

The crowd got riled. Apparently the Angel Wings dancers frequently blocked the views of season ticket holders behind the dugout; from the very start they were heckled and booed. Disney management quickly moved the dance team to a platform in the stands out in right field. From there they continued to lead “dance-offs” that tested the crowd’s skills at the macarena and the chicken dance. The Angel Wings Cheerleaders were abandoned the following season.

Despite the shaky start, the Toronto Blue Jays have since brought in the J-Cru Fan Activation Team (now known as the J Force), and the Florida Marlins have introduced the Marlins Mermaids. San Diego has a dance team known as the Pad Squad—pronounced “Pod Squad”—which runs around the field at Padres home games, clapping and tossing T-shirts into the crowd. (Reaction from San Diego fans has been mixed.) The Expos had cheerleaders, too: Indeed, there were those who felt that the Molson EX Girls (who danced to Bananarama on top of the dugout) were an excellent reason to keep baseball in Montreal.

With such a motley record, it’s unclear what the future holds for American baseball cheerleaders. But cheerleading already has a firm foothold in the rest of the baseball-playing world. It’s de rigueur at games in the Dominican Republic, where women in body stockings dance to recorded merengue music on top of the dugouts. In Korean baseball, football-style cheerleaders with whistles, megaphones, and pompoms get the crowd excited, while college games in Japan feature women dancing quietly with pompoms while men dressed in black lead the cheers.  Link post to Cheerleaders4ever.com

Haven’t you been checking the mock drafts, hoping to figure out who’s picking the players you’ve watched in college. Trying to get some inside dope on what your favorite team is thinking. Who they’re hoping to get?

Let’s take a short look at the mock drafts. And let’s check back after the picking is done and see who got it right and who fumbled.

First off, let’s make it a bit easier this year. Everybody gets two picks right. The Dolphins go with Jake Long, the tackle from Michigan. And crafty mock-drafters know that the Patriot get zip with pick #31, forfeiting the pick for that sneaky thing they did with video.

Jake LongNow here’s where when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Link to Full Blog Post

For #2, Don Banks over at SI.com has Chris Long, DE from Virginia going to the Rams, figuring him to make their pass rush better on the outside, and passing on Glenn Dorsey. Bob Glauber, Newsday.com, acknowledging that Chris Long is possibility, goes with the DT from LSU arguing that Dorsey‘s “superb inside force can help a Rams’ defense that has been brutal against the run for years.”

2008 NFL Draft Overview Gus Ornstein reviews Tom Marino Scouting Reports