Derek Jeter with fewer hits than Harold Baines?!

When I saw the headline on the Onion Sports Network site, "Derek Jeter Honored for Having 122 Fewer Hits than Harold Baines," I took it for a joke. How could it not be? Derek Jeter is captain of the Yankees, the team's all-time hits leader, got a shout-out from President Obama, stands-for-Truth-Justice-and-the-American (or-at-least-Yankee)-Way, all of that. Harold Baines, on the other hand, is a retired former journeyman outfielder/DH who played for about half a dozen different teams.

But a quick search on Google led to the Baseball Reference site, where, lo and behold, it turned out to be true! Baines retired with 2,866 hits. Where was his fanfare? Did he get a shoutout from President Bush? (Well, OK, that one probably isn't fair, since the US was still reeling from 9/11 at the time.) But the Onion has a point. Jeter has to be put into perspective, and in light of Harold Baines, Jeter is still good, but not really all that...

Bernazard Must Go!

I said in another post, back when Willie Randolph was fired, that Tony Bernazard should be next. That his successful efforts to undermine Randolph's authority as manager demonstrated that he had no idea how to conduct team business in a professional manner. But now reports that he ripped off his shirt and challenged members of the Mets' Double-A affiliate in Binghamton to a fight should be the last straw. (See story)

The Mets are doing a good enough job of being the butt of jokes that they don't need team execs adding fuel to the fire. The man has gotten way too much benefit from all the doubt. Fire him, Omar, or whoever his boss is. (Which is another confusing point with the Mets' organization: Bernazard is a VP and the general manager is his boss?)

With the farm teams doing as badly as the Mets, or even worse, it's understandable that Bernazard would be frustrated or even angry. But still there are lines that should not be crossed, and Bernazard stomped all over the line before jumping over it. Get rid of him!

Alex Rodriguez and Steroids

I'm already tired of all the hand-wringing over A-Rod and his admission that he took steroids, supposedly for only three years while he was playing for the Texas Rangers. OK, it is now and was then a banned substance, but at that time there was no penalty. So why try to whip up grounds to punish him now?

But I have to admit I'm disappointed.

After the furor whipped up by the New York sports media over Mets' then-GM Steve Phillips passing on the chance to trade A-Rod back when the Rangers were shopping him around -- saying that Rodriguez wanted perks that would have created a team of 24+1 -- I started to sour on A-Rod. Before that I had kind of liked him, but as he basked in the glow of both the $25-million-plus he was getting paid plus the "glory" of being with the Yankees, he became really irritating with his obsession with being seen in the best light by the media and the fans. Now I guess we all know why...

But I'm disappointed because, although I had come to dislike Rodriguez, I got the impression that he really was clean. I've even gone on record on this blog, in earlier messages on the Bonds situation, praising Rodriguez for being clean. Now that he's admitted to juicing, it raises a lot more questions:

• Was he really using for only those three years?
• Why did this supposedly confidential information get out? Who put his name out there? Why now, so much later?
• What other supposedly confidential info from that survey is about to come out?
• How does baseball think it will get cooperation from players in any other matter that's supposed to be confidential?
• When will these overpaid-idiot players realize that they're under so much scrutiny because the leaders of their union have always pushed them to refuse to cooperate with investigations? The word is that they're scared of Don Fehr and Gene Orza, but let's face it, if enough of the players want them out, what power do Fehr and Orza really have?

I, for one, will be glad when this whole mess is over, and we're no longer hearing about steroids in baseball -- or in any sport, for that matter.

Naming Rights vs. Bailout

I see that I'm not the only one who thinks it's wrong that Citibank and others can give out tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to sports arenas for naming rights, then turn around and beg the federal government for bailout money. As far as I can tell, the furor seems to be contained to the New York area, since Citibank has agreed to pay the NY Mets $400 million over twenty years for the naming rights for the Mets' new stadium, set to begin use this year. But I wouldn't be surprised if it goes farther than that. This bears some research...

Mets' chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon says Citibank is right in continuing to pay the money. Of course he says that, he and his team are getting those millions. But I can't help thinking that his perspective is corrupted by the estimated half-billion dollars that the Mets' parent company, Sterling Equities, is rumored to have lost in the Bernie Madoff scandal.

It looks to me like the Feds are paying Citibank to replace what the Mets lost to Madoff. Pretty good deal, if you can arrange it...

Cowards in the Night

So the New York Mets have finally done what every one of the team's fans knew they would have to do, eventually: they fired manager Willie Randolph. But did they have to do it in such a cowardly way? To let the man fly 3,000 miles away to the West Coast, only to fire him after the game ended, was, as the NY Daily News put it, "a classless, cold-hearted and cowardly act."

It's apparent from the way it was handled that general manager Omar Minaya had decided -- that someone had decided -- to fire Willie days before the midnight hatchet job actually took place. Randolph actually asked Minaya on Sunday if he should bother taking the trip with the team to the West Coast, and was given a noncommittal answer that amounted to a firing right then.

But what I don't understand through all of this is, why isn't Tony Bernazard's job on the line? Supposedly a major issue in Randolph's relationship, or non-relationship, with the players was Bernazard's personal campaign against Randolph, making sure that each and every one of the organization's Hispanic players -- not only on the NY Mets, but even in the minor leagues -- had Bernazard's personal phone number so that they could contact him if they had any issues with the manager. So, naturally they felt that there was little need for them to pay any attention to Willie. Minaya, as the general manager, should have nipped that in the bud as soon as it became an issue. Personally, I think this is exactly the reason for Randolph's perceived lack of fire. If Bernazard and team COO Jeff Wilpon wanted Willie's head on a plate, what good would a display of fire really do in the long run? Bernazard is personally responsible for the sinkhole this team has fallen into, and because of that he should be bodily thrown into it. I feel a little bad about saying that, because I liked Bernazard as a player, but he's more trouble than he's worth in the front office. "Instigator" isn't a requirement of any major-league front-office job, at least not to my knowledge.

There was an article also in yesterday's NY Daily News that suggested that the Randolph saga provided the Mets' TV network, SportsNet NY, with riveting content even when the team was underperforming. It's natural to assume that Randolph's treatment had nothng to do with TV ratings, but then I remember reading that Ted Turner originally bought the Atlanta Braves in order to provide content for his then-newly-purchased WTBS television station. So who really knows...

NOW Pay-Rod Says He Shoulda Been A Met

The back page of today's New York Daily News has habitual attention-hog Alex Rodriguez moaning that he should have signed with the Mets back in 2000, instead of taking the record-setting $252 million ten-year contract that Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks threw his way.

I think I speak for many Mets fans when I say, So freakin' what?

If Pay-Rod had signed with the Mets back when they were hot-and-heavy over him, we might not be enjoying the contributions of homegrown Jose Reyes and David Wright. After all, the kind of money the Mets would have wound up paying him -- probably not $252 million over any number of years -- would definitely have prevented Reyes from coming aboard, at least as a shortstop (Rodriguez' original position). The Mets have had a history of shifting promising players to different positions in the past -- Edgardo Alfonzo's late-90s third-to-second-to-third shuffle comes to mind -- but chances are that Rodriguez' presence would have jammed up the shortstop position for years to come and, if there had been a third-base or second-base prospect considered more promising than Reyes, the jam might have prevented him from becoming a Met at all.

Last year Rodriguez was foolish enough to follow the advice of his mercenary agent, Scott Boras, and turn down a sure-thing offer from the Yankees in favor of testing the free-agent market. Apparently $25 million a year was no longer enough to live on, or maybe Boras' share, $2.5 million or so, wasn't enough for him. There was plenty of speculation that the Mets might sign him, and David Wright had gone on record during the season to assert that he'd gladly shift to second base if that was what it took to land Pay-Rod. Thankfully that didn't happen, because this lifelong Mets fan was ready to shift allegiance to the Yankees for good if they had signed Mister Me for all the money the Wilpon family had in the bank. When Steve Phillips, the Mets' general manager back in 2000, claimed that he had stopped negotiations for fear that signing Rodriguez would create a team of 24+1 instead of a 25-man unit, he was widely ridiculed. I think the time that has passed, and Rodriguez' true contributions to the terrible Texas Rangers team and the not-good-enough Yankees, have proved Phillips right. Yeah, OK, A-Rod won an MVP award with the Rangers, but on a last-place team that's meaningless. What could it mean: that the team wouldn't have been as deeply in last place? The basement is still the basement, whether the team in front of you is only one game ahead or 20.

Having said all that, though, I could easily be wrong. I cried foul when the Mets let Alfonzo go in favor of an unknown thrid baseman named Ty Willingham. I figured he'd be just another in the series of forgotten names on the list Mets' third-basemen. But Willingham turned out to be a good hitter and fielder. During Ty's second year, though, there was all this talk about this wunderkind in the minors named David Wright.

"Oh no, not again," I thought. I figured the Mets had just "lucked out" this time with Willingham and that there was no reason to tinker with a good thing. Again, I was wrong -- Wright has turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to the Mets team.

Pay-Rod staying put?

I just don't get it. I thought that Hank Steinbrenner wanted it to be known that the days of handing over millions upon millions of dollars to spoiled media hogs just for star power was over. Besides that, I thought the Yankees wanted to finally win another World Series. But apparently, I was wrong, because the Yankees are about to re-sign Alex Rodriguez for a reported $275 million over ten years.

I suppose that the Steinbrenners and their front-office people probably thought that Rodriguez's agent, Scott Boras, had just overstepped his bounds, and that maybe if they deal directly with Rodriguez they might be able to work something out. But still, in light of A-Rod's record of leaving teams just as they finally hit the big time (Seattle's record for wins in a season, Texas's first playoff spot in ages) I thought maybe the Yanks had a shot at winning the Series next year (should they make it) by letting Pay-Rod go. But, alas, it appears they'd rather have controversy than World Series rings...

But I am glad of one thing -- if Rodriguez had to stay in New York, I'm glad it's with the Yankees, and not with my Mets. I would have seriously considered switching my allegiance to the Yankees if Omar Minaya had signed Rodgriguez. Ever since David Wright opened his big mouth earlier this year and said he'd eagerly switch to second base to make room for A-Rod, I've wanted to grab him by the collar and shake some sense into him, to keep him from saying such things in the future. The Mets have enough trouble without that Primo Uomo (male Prima Donna) on the team.

One thing I have to say in A-Rod's favor, though: I'll be glad when either he or Ken Griffey Jr. breaks whatever Barry Bonds' final home run total is (probably what it is now) just to erase that asterisk from the record books.

Chickens coming home to roost?

So the Feds have finally made some kind of case against Barry Bonds. I know, as it has been pointed out numerous times before, that there has not yet been a positive steroids test result -- but based on my own experiences from taking a corticosteroid that's medically necessary due to transplant surgery, he shows all the signs of steroids use, at least in the past. He missed an entire season and all but fourteen games of another due to knee problems, right in the same period of time that he had bulked up and almost doubled his yearly home-run output, and joint problems (usually knees, hips, or shoulders) are a hallmark of steroid use. (My experience is having to have hip surgery -- not a replacement -- after only nine months of everyday use of prednisone, an anti-inflammatory medication. Not the same as what Bonds is alleged to have taken; his "meds" are much worse on that score.) No telling when the IRS will turn its attention to his tax-evasion case...

Derek Cheater?

Not only are the Feds after Bonds, but now the New York State income tax officials have turned their attention to Derek Jeter, New York Yankees shortstop, who is accused of not paying three years worth of taxes and claiming he lived in Florida while actually living in New York.

At a salary of $20 million per year, Jeter can definitely afford to pay his fair share of taxes, so I don't know why this should even have to be an isssue. If it's true, that is; there's always a chance that the state is overzealous and that Jeter's claims of being a Florida resident are accurate. But if it is true, then it looks like just another example of an athlete thinking that, because of what they do and all the money they make, they're invincible. (Look at OJ, who's about to go away for a long, long time.)

Day Old Post

Of course, all the stuff in that post about Joe Torre being fired turns out to be idle speculation, since General von Steingrabber has apparently consented to let Joe Torre at least finish out his contract.

Baaaasebaaaall, movies, and the Mets

It's been a long time, I shouldn't'a left you,
Without a dope post to read (or two)
Think about all the weak posts you slept through --
Time's up! Sorry I kept you...

(apologies to Rakim, and for this post title, more apologies to the guy who wrote that baseball song that he then customized for every major league team)

But it has been too long since a new post has shown up here. I created a post offline last night, then forgot to save it to my flash drive so I could take it to work and post it from there. They always say the memory is the first thing to go. (grin)

So the Yankees, embarrassed and angry that the $200-million-plus paid to their band of suspects didn't get them past the first round of the playoffs for a second straight season, want to fire Joe Torre and replace him with Lou Piniella. Well, they're right about someone having to lose their job for incompetence and lack of foresight. Too bad that somebody can't be George Steinbrenner.

In yesterday's NY Daily News Mike Lupica makes all the all the right noises to avoid sounding like a Steinbrenner hatchet-man when he says, in so many words, that Torre isn't responsible for the free-agent acquisitions that turned the Yankees from a team to a bunch of individuals who take the field at the same time and play wearing the same uniform. He admits that firing Torre won't make the pitching staff any younger or any better. It won't solve Alex Rodriguez' protracted I-problem. But then he says that some kind of change has to be made, and that nobody gets to be Yankees manager forever, not even Torre.

Well, he's right that nobody gets to be Yankee manager forever, and I never thought Torre would even try to bend that rule. But firing him for the failures of his team is the wrong move. What they need to do is get rid of the guys who are too wrapped up in themselves (Alex RodrIguez, Gary SheffIeld) to be team players. A caller to a radio call-in show on WFAN here in New York pointed out this past Sunday that during post-elimination interviews, Jeter's sentences were dominated by "we," while Pay-Rod's were dominated by "I" (hence my mention of his "I-problem"). Kinda vindicates Steve Phillips, former Mets general manager, for breaking off negotiations with Rodriguez back when he was a free agent, claiming that Pay-Rod wanted his own publicity staff and an office with a secretary. Phillips probably exaggerated when relating what he says Rodriguez wanted, but A-Rod definitely turns any team from a unit of 25 players to a "24+1" unit, and that never works. Even Reggie Jackson, king of I-problems, knew that he couldn't be that separate from the team for very long and expect success. At least I think he did...

Bill Madden of the Daily News suggests that some apparently believe that if Piniella is hired in Torre's place, he might be able to get more out of Rodriguez. They got along well when Piniella was managing the Seattle Mariners and Rodriguez was their start shortstop. But that same story also points out that it was after Rodriguez left, winding up in Texas with a $252 million contract and a nickname ("Pay-Rod") I'm sure he hates, that the Mariners set a regular season record with a 116-46 record. I'm sure that's not a coincidence.

Even Derek Jeter gets some of the blame in the Daily News stories, which point out that Jeter was quick to come to Jason Giambi's defense when the sterioids stories began hitting the news, while doing and saying absolutely nothing to bring A-Rod into the fold when he began floundering. Maybe Jeter, the team captain, could have been more supportive of A-Rod, but that wouldn't change the fact that Jeter is a team player, and Rodriguez is not. Case closed.

Meanwhile, there's a report that, if Joe Torre is indeed fired, the Texas Rangers would be interested in hiring him, since the recent firing of Buck Showalter leaves the managerial position open. If Torre goes down there and tears up the American League the way the Mets did the National League this year, Buck Showalter will be vindicated in the claims he made back in 2002, that he planted the seeds that grew into Yankee world championships in the late 90s and the Arizona Diamondbacks championship in 2001. After all, Showalter, who was given an unusual amount of say in personnel decisions, helped create the teams that went on to win it all in New York and Arizona. If Torre gets fired in NY, takes the Texas job, and wins it all in 2007 or 2008, it would probably be right to conclude that Showalter should be in the front office, not on the field. Not that he's a bad manager, per se, but if Texas winds up being the third consecutive team he helped put together that goes on to win a World Series within two seasons of firing him as manager, he should seriously consider seeking a front office job and leave the field managing to others.

There's also an article in the sports section of yesterday's Daily News suggesting that maybe Torre isn't as close to being fired as all the screaming headlines suggest, that this might be Steinbrenner's way, though an underling, of making sure the Yankees remain the top baseball story in New York, even though the Mets are the only New York baseball team whose season is not over. Wouldn't surprise me at all; they say Steinbrenner hates it when the Mets make the front or back pages of the NY newspapers for any reason, baseball-related or not. Even in the aftermath of 9-11 it became an issue when Mets players were in the Ground Zero area volunteering their services -- visiting the injured in area hospitals, helping to feed the rescue and cleanup workers, etc. -- while Yankees players were conspicuously absent. The Yankees players, no doubt egged on by the front office, accused the Mets players of grandstanding to make the papers, while the Mets players accused the Yankees of not taking the opportunity to do something to help.

Meanwhile, outside the stadium...

This, from yesterday's New York Daily News, near the very end of the Lupica article calling for Torre's dismissal and replacing him with Lou Piniella:

Across Rupert Place, a couple of kids from the neighborhood, Nelson and Alvin G, from 162nd and Woodycrest, were playing basketball at Macombs Dam Park, which will be razed soon for the new Yankee Stadium.

"What did you think about the Yankees?" Nelson G was asked.

The kid smiled. "Let's go, Mets!" he said. Then, he was chanting it. "Let's go, Mets! Let's go, Mets!"

Then there were two more kids coming from the next court... laughing and yelling for the Mets across the street from Yankee Stadium.

Take that, General von Steingrabber!

"The Last King of Scotland"

Stanley Crouch, professional grouch for the NY Daily News, has good things to say about this movie, namely how it personalizes Uganda dictator Idi Amin Dada, generally portrayed by history as a monster in a uniform. Crouch says it does a good job of showing how Amin was able to sway people into seeing him as "not the animal he's made out to be," and that in doing so Forest Whitaker does the "unimaginable."

What I want to know is, why is this movie called "The Last King of Scotland"? I know a pivotal part of the story is how Amin manages to get a young doctor from Scotland to agree to be his personal physician, and how this man tries to reconcile the man he knows as his patient with the animal Amin was made out to be by the rest of the world. But it's a bit... disconcerting, to see a pic of a maniacally-grinning Whitaker, in uniform as Amin, with "The Last King of Scotland" as the caption to the photo.

"One team plays games, the other plays baseball"

That is the headline at the top of Lisa Olson's story comparing the Mets NLCS team and the Yankees' failure to launch.

She make some good points in comparison, but the point, not mentioned in the story, that resonates with me is this:

Pedro Martinez, the staff ace, was unavailable for much of the season, and totally unavailable for the postseason; Orlando Hernandez, not the staff ace but maybe the best postseason pitcher in the game, was also unavailable for the postseason -- and still, the Mets swept the Dodgers. They needed a lot of help from the bullpen -- in fact, no team that has swept the first round of playoffs has had the starting pitchers consistently leave the games so early -- but the bullpen came through, as bullpens are supposed to, and the Mets are in the league playoffs while the Yankees can only "participate" in the postseason as spectators.

OK, so these things happen (re: Abreu on the Yankees, Nady gone, Sanchez on the DL, etc.)

All right, I guess nobody on the Mets front office staff is a fortune teller. They had no way of knowing that the Yankees would make a move to get Bobby Abreu before the Mets could get him. They had no way of knowing that some wild driver in Miami would sideswipe the taxicab carrying pitcher Duaner Sanchez, separating his shoulder and ending his season, making it necessary to trade right fielder Xavier Nady, the man whose presence in the Met outfield made a trade for Abreu unnecessary. They also had no way of knowing that the day Abreu first suited up in a Yankee uniform for a game, the Yankees would move back into first place, stealing some of the Mets' thunder. They couldn't have known any of that in advance.

But now I find myself thinking about how the Mets season might wind up with their most dependable reliever (Sanchez) out of the game and a popular and steady outfielder (Nady) now playing for another team. And about the popular and steady outfielder (Abreu) that could have been a Met but is now a Yankee...

Roberto Hernandez should be able to pick up the slack, I guess. I mean, even at 40 years old, he was the highlight of the Mets bullpen last year, and by all accounts was headed to a similar record this season. He's even on the top-ten list for career saves, which came as a surprise to me, since I had never heard of him before the Mets got him last year.

I just don't want to watch somebody else's team in the playoffs again this year. I want to see the Mets there, and I want to see them there because they won their way there, not because they slid in through the backdoor via the wild card.

Who woulda think it? (Barry Bonds' indictment)

According to SI.com, Bonds [is] relieved not to be indicted. Who woulda thunk it? I'd have thought he'd be eager to spend time in court listening to government prosecutors repeat over and over again how he's guilty of something he contends he's not.

NOT.

Actually, I wouldn't believe Barry Bonds if he tells me there's solid ground under my feet even as I feel it there for myself. I say this because due to a medical situation I have to take steroids myself, though not anabolic, and I've already had to have surgery on my hips after less than a year on the meds. His intermittent hobbling around on bad knees, bad enough at one time to have cost him almost a whole season, are a dead giveaway of steroid use.

Steroids block delivery of oxygen to blood vessels in joints. It can happen in any joint but is most common in the shoulders, hips, and knees. Bonds has never been overweight, per se, and probably had little or no knee trouble before 1998, when Mark McGuire (and Sammy Sosa) threatened to make him an afterthought. But when Bonds saw what "andro" did for McGwire's production (and the attention he got), he decided to go in that direction himself, even as it became obvious that McGwire's body was breaking down prematurely because of the stuff.

Now, I know Bonds has steadily denied knowingly using steroids, and that he has never failed a drug test. But from my own experience I have to believe he's using, no matter what he says. It's just too bad that his own stubbornness won't allow him to fess up to what he's done and take his punishment like a man.

Equally shameful is the fact that fake-commissioner Selig hems and haws and hopes the federal government takes Bonds off his hands, so he won't have to make a decision himself. He knows that the Bonds situation is bad for baseball, but I wonder if he has given any thought to the possibility that the delay by the Feds could simply be part of making a case against continuing baseball's anti-trust exemption? He should give that some thought, because if the exemption is revoked, Selig is sure to be out of a job. If that were to happen, it would quickly point out the sham of the so-called blind trust that owns the Brewers, openly owned by Selig until his occupation of the commissioner's office (not the Commissioner's Office -- he's not doing the job, he's just using the room). Because Selig would be back in Milwaukee running the Brewers as if nothing had happened.

Because nothing has.

Who knows? Things could turn around. Now that the Washington Nationals have more-or-less been bought by someone, finally, there will be less excuse for Selig's refusal to do something about the Bonds situation. Selig has to have a roomful of advisors for even the most trivial decision. Let's see if he or his advisors will realize everything that could be at stake here, and finally do something about Bonds, before the rug gets pulled from under them.

New perspective on Barry Bonds issue

Here's an interesting perspective from a sportwriter boycotting Barry Bonds games, a sportswriter who happens to be a black woman.

SI.com - Writers - Elizabeth Newman: Decision to boycott Barry Bonds is not about race - Thursday May 18, 2006 5:15PM

USATODAY.com - Old Man at Shea

This one isn't "strange," per se, just unusual. The New York Mets' Julio Franco, 47 years old, has just set a record for the oldest player to hit a home run in a regular-season game. Says he wants to hit a homer at 50. More power to him. (OK, that wasn't intended to be a pun.)

USATODAY.com - This player is really, really old school

Update: on Thursday 4/27 Franco stole a base. It wasn't the best situation to steal a base in -- he left first base empty with one out and Carlos Delgado, a power hitter, at bat -- but I like that hustle, especially in an older... make that the oldest player. The only player in major league history older than him to have stolen a base, did it almost 100 years ago. For the Mets' sake, I hope Julio continues to NOT act his age.

Too bad Rickey Henderson didn't have that kind of hustle in him when the Mets had him. His conviction that he is and will always be a SUPERstar is what did him in. He's a year older than Franco, but Franco's been playing continuously since he joined the majors, even going to Japan and Korea when he had to, taking nothing for granted. Superstar Rickey "bided his time" in the minors, convinced that a major-league callup was just minutes away. Well, it's been two years now, and no one's calling. Better hang up that pride, Rickey: retire, and take a coaching or TV job somewhere, instead of hanging around ballparks looking desperate.

Mannyfest doesn't materialize

So Omar Minaya and the Mets didn't get their Manny... at least not yet. If Omar is smart, he'll forget about Manny completely and go after the Phillies' Bobby Abreu, before the Phils come to their senses. Manny is the type of player that can be a team's top cheerleader one minute and their biggest pain in the butt the very next. Abreu, on the other hand, just quietly goes about his business without drawing attention to himself other than with his performance. Omar, get this man STAT!

As for Kris Benson and the ever-mouthy Anna Benson, well, Kris is still a Met for the time being. Anna caused a stink earlier in the week by blasting the Mets' organization for even offering Kris as trade bait (hey, Omar, Benson for Abreu -- how's that sound??). She claims that published reports that she's planning to pose naked in Playboy drove the team to offer Kris, which the team denies. But Anna, by wagging that tongue just a bit too much and too publicly, may force the issue. The team may not be driven to trade players because of their spouses' extracurricular activities, but a spouse with a runny mouth can poison a clubhouse, and no team wants that. Shut up, Anna, and let the Mets' people do their jobs.

Here's the ESPN story on the winners and losers at the winter meetings: ESPN.com - Mannyfest doesn't materialize

So it seems that some do not like "Commissioner" Bud Selig...

IllinoisLeader.com

The funny and sad part is where the writer says Selig needs a committee "to help him decide if he wants fries with that."

"Baseball to Canseco: Thank You" ??

Here's a different perspective: This Bloomberg.com columnist says that baseball and Bud Selig owe Jose Canseco a thank you for restoring some integrity to baseball. "Jose Canseco" and "integrity" in the same sentence -- who'd a thunk it?

Baseball Owes Canseco for Steroids Crackdown

More baseball

So the Mets are now going full-tilt after Manny Ramirez, Carlos Delgado, and Billy Wagner, and may actually have a deal for Delgado if the details can be worked out. Good for them. I just hope, as does the New York Daily News, that Wagner's not just using the Mets as a bargaining chip, like Dave Winfield and Joe Carter did oh so many years ago.

And I see that the Marlins want to leave Miami, since the city won't commit to a baseball-only stadium (they now share a stadium with the football Miami Dolphins, a stadium owned by the Marlins' original team owner). I don't think I'll ever understand why multimillionaires team owners insist that public money should be spent to build a place where multimillionaire athletes play games. I know they want some kind of commitment from the city where they play, but let's face it, the owners are rich -- they have to be, these days, with baseball salaries the way they are. So why not spend their own money? Ted Turner did it, and I didn't hear him crying. Of course, by that point it wasn't really his team anymore, and it was probably Time Warner's money he was spending. Anyway, I just hope the deals the Marlins are working on now aren't going to be anything like the total dismantling of the 1997 World Series Championship team that Wayne Huizenga pulled with the Marlins when he owned the team... Oh, wait, the current owner is the guy who abandoned Montreal in order to buy the Marlins. I s'pose all bets are off, then...

The Middle East and baseball

All this fuss over Senator John Murtha's comments on pulling out of Iraq is nothing more than both sides mugging for the cameras, political style. After Bush's political attack dogs all but called Murtha a terrorist himself, Bush softened a bit and said that Murtha has a fine record of service, but he's just wrong about Iraq. A fine Washington version of good-cop, bad-cop, I think. As for pulling out of Iraq, of course Bush would think Murtha's wrong; Murtha probably doesn't have friends in position to profit from what's going on over there. One of the press conferences said that a quick troop withdrawal would put American lives in danger. Yeah, those Americans working for Bechtel, Halliburton, and all the rest. They're the real reason the troops were sent there in the first place. If Bush would just admit that, he might find that he'd gain just a modicum of respect from the American people, just before the White House came crashing down around him out of sheer inanimate contempt for its main occupant...

Bud Selig, an actual baseball commissioner?

It looks like I may have to take back some of my comments about Bud Selig being only a caretaker commissioner. The new steroids rule isn't something a caretaker would come up with. I'm glad to see that, if the rule is enforced, there won't be any more situations like Steve Howe, who seemed to be in trouble over cocaine or some other drug every other week, only to wind up back in uniform for somebody or other the very next week. (Of course cocaine is NOT a performance-enhancing drug, it's only illegal.) Let's see what they do with the players whose names keep popping up now, like Barry Bonds, who was the subject of a back-page feature articel in the sports section of this past Sunday's New York Daily News.

I still think Selig would look more like a real commissioner, though, if he (or his so-called "blind trust") would just sell the Brewers once and for all. I don't care how "commissionerly" Selig turns out to be, having his old team run by his daughter creates a very real appearance of conflict of interest. Maybe after they finish clearing up the Washington Nationals mess, Selig will finally decide to be a commissioner and not an owner. But will he be free to act without restraints, or will he make real fans fondly remember the days of Giamatti and Vincent? Because if he's restrained by the (other) owners, then Congress should think seriously about investigating baseball's antitrust exemption. One of the conditions for granting the exemption in the first place was that baseball had a strong and independent commissioner. He worked for the owners, but they had to grant him a measure of authority over them and their investments (their teams) in order to keep the exemption. So, though they grumbled when Bowie Kuhn started fining teams for excessive amounts of money changing hands in trades, they went along with it. But when Fay Vincent came along, they did their best to make him uncomfortable. He took the hint and left, and baseball has been rudderless ever since. Losing that exemption and having to answer to some degree of federal oversight would wake up the owners for real. Time will tell...

Pakistan vs. the Gulf Coast

There were reports in the news lately that, while Pakistan receives billions in aid from the US Government, Louisiana is having serious financial problems because of the cost of rebuilding in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. A few weeks ago, there was a political cartoon in the NY Daily News, showing a road sign somewhere near the southern Mississippi coast, giving directions to "Biloxiraq," "PersianGulfport," and "Bay St. Baghdad." Also pictured were two locals, one saying to the other, "That's one way to get the government's attention."

Isn't it odd that the man who had been famously portrayed as turning his back on the rest of the world to "take care of his own" is quicker to send aid to Indonesia (which didn't really want it) and the Persian Gulf area (which definitely didn't want it) than to his own countrymen? Hotels around the country are telling Louisiana refugees that they have to get out, largely because FEMA has informed the hotels that they won't pay for the refugees' stay past December 1, and yet more and more money and resources are being dropped into the bottomless pit of Iraq and Afghanistan.