Have Major League Baseball clubs found yet another way of manipulating players’ pay? They have if the union is correct in its suspicions about the Houston Astros’ contract negotiations with three of their selections in last month’s draft.

The union filed a grievance against the Astros this week, contending the Astros tried to manipulate the signings of pitcher Brady Aiken, the No. 1 player picked in the June draft, and two players selected in lower rounds, pitchers Jacob Nix and Mac Marshall.

Tony Clark, the head of the union, declined to talk about the issue because a grievance had been filed. Dan Halem, MLB’s chief labor executive, and Jeff Luhnow, the Houston general manager, did not return telephone calls seeking comment. In the messages I left, I mentioned the reason why I was calling.

However, a person familiar with the dispute said of the Astros’ treatment of the players …

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Michael Beschloss is described as a presidential historian, the author of nine books and a contributor to NBC News and PBS NewsHour. He has also become a contributor to The New York Times and as such has become a revisionist of baseball history. Twice in the last two months, in essays about Sandy Koufax and Pete Rose, he has incorrectly characterized the significance of their acts.

Both Beschloss essays appeared in the Times, which three years ago this week initiated the practice of revising baseball history that paved the way for Beschloss to engage in his own exercise in revisionist baseball history.

The Times, which labels these pieces “History Source,” has aided and abetted its spread of faulty history by failing to correct – or properly correct – and sometimes even acknowledge its mistakes when they are pointed out.

No correction has been sighted at this writing for the mistakes Beschloss made in his piece about …

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Troy Tulowitzki, Paul Goldschmidt and Giancarlo Stanton are three of the best players in Major League Baseball. The teams they play for are not three of the best teams in Major League Baseball. None of them will represent the National League in the World Series in October.

Despite their teams’ shortcomings, they are among the most highly motivated players in the game. They are accustomed to playing as hard as possible because their teams need their production offensively and defensively to have a chance to win. Those players need no additional motivation to induce them to play at the top of their game.

Yet Commissioner Bud Selig thought they needed additional inducement to bring their most intense efforts to the All-Star game. He believed they would expend those efforts if the league their teams play in could have homefield advantage in the World Series.

Does the commissioner really believe …

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