As part of the Business of Sports Network’s annual Autism Awareness Campaign, we will be providing occasional content that highlights the developmental disorder. The hope is that by understanding it more, parents will look for the signs to allow early diagnosis, and for those not touched directly by Autism Spectrum Disorder, get a better understanding how prevalent it is and how it is a growing health concern, not only in the U.S. but globally.

As part of this content, we are pleased to announce the publication of an interview with Shonda and Curt Schilling, and their challenges once they discovered their son Grant had Asperger’s Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism.

Here is a preview of one of the questions and answers by Curt Schilling:

Maury Brown: Curt, Grant’s diagnosis came in the summer of 2007, your last season in baseball. The timing of the two allows you to now focus on Grant and the rest of the family without the distractions of playing. Let’s say that the diagnosis had come earlier... say, 2005. Do you think it would it have affected your career path in MLB?

Curt Schilling: No idea. I mean, we walked away when we wanted to walk away. I honestly don’t know; it depends on how we both would have addressed it at that point. I might have retired a year or two earlier, so I don’t know.

The interview will give sports fans a completely different view of Curt Schilling than they’ve ever seen before, while seeing an incredibly candid and touching side to his wife Shonda. The interview covers the publication of Shonda’s book, The Best Kind of Different: Our Family’s Journey with Asperger’s Syndrome.

Look for the complete interview on Thursday to coincide with beginning of International Autism Awareness Month.

For more on why the Business of Sports Network is engaged in Autism awareness see When Sports Becomes a Small Matter: A Child and Autism. For more details on the Business of Sports Network’s Autism Awareness Campaign, see From Matt Kemp to Alyssa Milano to Peter Gammons, Sports and Entertainers Offer Assistance for Autism Awareness

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Maury Brown is the Founder and President of the Business of Sports Network, which includes The Biz of Baseball, The Biz of Football, The Biz of Basketball and The Biz of Hockey. He is available for hire or freelance. Brown's full bio is here. He looks forward to your comments via email and can be contacted through the Business of Sports Network.

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The Biz of Baseball will take on special graphics as part of the Business of Sports Network Autism Awareness campaign throughout April

UPDATE (3/28): We are pleased to announce that we have added Larry Cancro, the Senior Vice President of Fenway Affairs for the Boston Red Sox. Who is also Chairman of Autism Speaks, New England and a Board member of Melmark, New England a school that specializes in autism and similar cognitive disabilities.

Starting on April 1, things will look a bit different here at The Biz of Baseball. But then, getting you to see things differently is part of the plan.

April marks the beginning of International Autism Awareness month. On Thursday, we will embark on our third annual Autism Awareness Campaign, with each site across the Business of Sports Network sporting special graphics and information about the developmental disorder.

This year we’re proud to announce that we have engaged a host of high-profile individuals and organizations in the campaign (see the list below). What we have asked them is simple: lend your name. In doing so, they recognize the need to spread autism awareness.

While the same content you have come to expect will be published across the sites, there will be occasional content focused on autism awareness. For one, there will be an interview with Shonda and Curt Schilling about how Asperger’s Syndrome has touched them personally through their son Grant. The interview will focus on the challenges they have faced, and touch on Shonda’s book The Best Kind of Different: Our Family's Journey with Asperger's Syndrome in which Curt writes the Forward (for more on the book, see here). We also are in touch with Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp for an interview. Kemp’s brother has autism and is an advocate in fundraising and awareness of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

As part of our efforts we have partnered with Autism Speaks. There will be links for those that wish to donate to their efforts, plus special content that Autism Speaks has provided to the Ad Council. I will also be writing a guest article for their blog, and they plan to promote our content.

Finally, we will be looking to you and the media for assistance. If you have a way to help spread the word – be it through a blog, mainstream outlet, radio, or television – a plug of any size would do wonders.

While the bulk of the information will be coming throughout April, we want to pass this along now:

1% or 1 in every 110 children has been diagnosed with autism, including 1 in 70 boys. This represents a staggering 57 percent increase from 2002 to 2006, and a 600 percent increase in just the past 20 years (source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC))

Below is a list of those that are lending their name to promoting autism awareness. If you are in the business of sports or entertainment and wish to assist, please contact us.

Corporate Endorsers

Autism Speaks

Populous (Stadium and Global Design)

Sports Management Worldwide

Triple-A Portland Beavers of the PCL

Portland Timbers FC of the USL, soon to be MLS

Oregon Sports Authority

Yardbarker Network

Sports Business Radio

Sports and Entertainment Endorsers

We hope you will join us in these efforts starting next week.

Maury Brown
President
Business of Sports Network
Bizball LLC

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• Peter Gammons, Matt Kemp, Alyssa Milano, Ken Rosenthal, Others Lending Support for Autism Awareness

Maury Brown is the Founder and President of the Business of Sports Network, which includes The Biz of Baseball, The Biz of Football, The Biz of Basketball and The Biz of Hockey. He is available for hire or freelance. Brown's full bio is here. He looks forward to your comments via email and can be contacted through the Business of Sports Network.

Follow Maury Brown on Twitter

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The Biz of Baseball has been updated with new data....

Last year, The Biz of Baseball launched its Minor League Attendance database. The resource, the only one of its kind online, provided details on minor league attendance dating back to 2005 to 2008. Recently, we added in 2009's data, but you wanted more.

Now you've got it.

The minor league database has now been updated with MLB club affiliation. This way, users can see which Single, Double, and Triple-A clubs are associated to their MLB counterpart

To see this new data, select the following link (or the image above):

• Minor League Salary DB

Special thanks for Tim Collins for his database work with The Biz of Baseball

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• Peter Gammons, Matt Kemp, Alyssa Milano, Ken Rosenthal, Others Lending Support for Autism Awareness

Maury Brown is the Founder and President of the Business of Sports Network, which includes The Biz of Baseball, The Biz of Football, The Biz of Basketball and The Biz of Hockey. He is available for hire or freelance. Brown's full bio is here. He looks forward to your comments via email and can be contacted through the Business of Sports Network.

Follow Maury Brown on Twitter

Follow The Biz of Baseball on Twitter

Follow the Business of Sports Network on Facebook

Maury Brown, the president of the Business of Sports Network will be on WELW (AM 1330), Willoughby/Cleveland area at 10:10pm ET on Sunday evening talking competitive balance in Major League Baseball.

Brown ran an extensive article on Baseball America on parity in Major League Baseball (see Revenue Sharing Is Making An Impact) and will be doing an article for Yahoo! Sports seeing if there are ways to get payroll compression in MLB without a hard cap before Opening Day.

Data for the Baseball America article was largely based on this table showing each of the 80 postseason slots in MLB over the last decade, with several metrics, including payroll.

The Biz of Baseball is part of the Business of Sports Network. For details on our interviews, latest new on MLB, the NFL, the NBA,and the NHL from outside the lines, check www.businessofsportsnetwork.com for information and links to the Network's sites.

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