Monthly Archives: February 2009

In an interview today with Peter Gammons of ESPN, Alex Rodriguez fessed up:

“When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day,” Rodriguez told ESPN’s Peter Gammons in an interview in Miami Beach, Fla. “Back then, [baseball] was a different culture. It was very loose. I was young, I was stupid, I was naïve. I wanted to prove to everyone I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time.

“I did take a banned substance. For that, I’m very sorry and deeply regretful.”

…”Overall, I felt a tremendous pressure to play, and play really well” in Texas, the New York Yankees third baseman said. “I had just signed this enormous contract I felt like I needed something, a push, without over-investigating what I was taking, to get me to the next level.

“I am sorry for my Texas years. I apologize to the fans of Texas.”

…Rodriguez also said of his 2007 interview with Katie Couric on “60 Minutes,” when he denied ever using steroids, that “at the time, I wasn’t being truthful with myself. How could I be truthful with Katie Couric or CBS?”

Rodriguez is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t but this is a good first step.

I’ve posted some version of this chart twice before, but now that the Yankees have wrapped up their arbitration cases, I thought I’d update it one last time, adding Andy Pettitte’s new deal and the 2008 dollars spent on LaTroy Hawkins, which I erroneously left out of my previous two bits of accounting.

Note that I’m assuming that Pettitte will achieve all of his bonuses (which he will if he stays off the DL and throws 210 innings). As for Hawkins, the Yankees traded him to the Astros at the trading deadline last year and picked up a “significant portion” of his remaining salary of the deal. In the absence of the specific numbers, I’m assuming they paid all of his $3.75 million salary last year. Most likely the bonuses Pettitte fails to reach (2009 dollars) will be balanced out by the portion of Hawkins’ 2008 salary paid by the Astros (2008  dollars). The chart doesn’t include service-time increases to pre-arbitration players such as Joba Chamberlain and the middle relievers, but those will likely total less than a million dollars.

all costs in millions of dollars; *estimated prorated portion of 2008 salary

So the end result of all of the Yankees’ offseason spending is a roughly $19 million increase in payroll. Of course, the Yankees have hidden that increase by shifting 14 million of the dollars owed to CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira this year into their signing bonuses, which the club doesn’t count as payroll, but I do (all figures above include any relevant portions of signing bonuses).

Here’s the result of that $19 million increase (ages as of April 15 in parentheses):

• Mark Teixeira (29) replaces Jason Giambi (38)
• CC Sabathia (28) replaces Mike Mussina (40)
• A.J. Burnett (32) replaces Carl Pavano (33)
• Xavier Nady (30) replaces Bobby Abreu (35)
• Nick Swisher (28) replaces Wilson Betemit (27)
• Damaso Marte (34)  replaces Kyle Farnsworth (33)

Not bad at all.

Since this off-season has been such a piece of science fiction, today’s news is brought to you by this:

So it seems this fellow named Alex Rodriguez put something in his body he wasn’t supposed to, and now folks think his performance at his job is tainted … let’s just list every relevant article:

• Jayson Stark thinks this is a huge blow to the legacy of the game:

Who knows what other names are lurking on that list of seized urine samples? Who knows whose career and reputation will be fed through the shredder in the next big scoop? And the next? And the next? …

How could baseball have allowed this to happen to itself? How? Can anyone recall any other sport that has ever committed such an insane act of self-destruction?

What compares to it? The Black Sox? This is worse. Game-fixing in college basketball? This is worse. Nominate any scandal in the history of sports. My vote is that this is worse. It’s not worse because it will cause massive numbers of people to stop watching or caring about baseball. Check the attendance. Check the revenue charts. People will come back. They’ve already come back. The sport, as a business, is doing great. But the sport, as a unique paragon of American culture, is devastated. And that’s forever.

• Howard Bryant writes about the legacy of the would-have-been HOFers, and also about the “leak” of A-Rod’s name:

The debate over the next few days undoubtedly will shift to the leak, to who spoke to Sports Illustrated and why. And why, if the anonymous source had access to the entire list, was Rodriguez the only person named? The legality of the leak should not be underestimated. Someone has compromised the confidentiality of an agreement. But these questions are important, although they aren’t as important as this fact: The full scope of the steroids era is coming into even clearer focus.

Don’t forget that the most important informant in American history — W. Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat — took down a president in part because he didn’t receive the promotion he wanted. Nobody complained then, because the information he leaked was legitimate.

For the same reasons, nobody should complain now.

• Buster Olney laments the opportunity lost through A-Rod’s actions:

Alex Rodriguez was supposed to be the guy who saved baseball, the way that Mark McGwire did in 1998. He was supposed to ride in and save the home run record from the clutches of suspected steroid user Barry Bonds. He was supposed to be the guy who would show that clean players could be just as prolific as the cheaters.

• Olney also wonders how A-Rod will respond publicly to inquiries about this matter:

But there’s one other destination for A-Rod, one more route: Honest and Open. He could talk about everything: what he did, when he did it, why he did, his regrets, his concerns, side effects, the benefits, the costs. This would be something very rarely seen in the steroid era — a time filled with thousands of mistakes by users, by union leaders, by the baseball commissioner and by baseball owners. And yet it’s a time of embarrassingly few specific, sincere admissions. Doing so would be the right thing. That could be part of A-Rod’s legacy as well.

(more…)

Life goes on.

It is uncommonly warm in New York this weekend. Today, it is in the mid-Fifties and people are out on the streets. The snow is melting. And though the cold is sure to return, you can feel the buzz of the springtime in the air.

The Alex Rodriguez news is depressing, though not altogether shocking. It’s another chapter in a continuing saga.  More stars are sure to be exposed, sooner or later.

As I’ve mentioned already, I think the whole thing stinks, and there is plenty of blame to go around.

But it’s not the end of the world. Most of us will continue to watch baseball and follow the game with enthusiasm.  Some of us will turn away and find something else for distraction and entertainment. 

But for what it is worth, it is a beautiful day in New York.  And I intend to enjoy it.

I was on the subway early yesterday afternoon, headed downtown for a late lunch with one of my dad’s old friends. I took out the Daily News from my napsack and gazed at the back cover. Celts beat Knicks; a smaller column on Joba (I’m starting dammit). It was 1:00 pm and the newspaper was already irrelevant, scooped by the 11:00 am SI.com story on Alex Rodriguez and steroids.

Before today’s papers came out, most of the major pundits had filed their two-cents on-line. The news cycle is just too fast for print.

Anyhow, powered by a great, big Oy Veh…

“His legacy, now, is gone,” one Yankees official said of Rodriguez, speaking on condition of anonymity because the organization had no public comment. “He’ll just play it out. Now he’s a worker. Do your job, collect your paycheck and when you’re finished playing, go away. That’s what it is.”

…“If he did it, he’s got to flat-out admit it, like Giambi,” the Yankees official said. “Just come out and say, ‘I did it. I’m sorry. I lied.’”
(Tyler Kepner, New York Times)

I always go back to the numbers.  They are comforting, a self-contained pleasure.  I used to flip through the encyclopedia and now I skip through baseball-reference.com.  I liked to look at Alex Rodriguez’s career numbers.  Talk about stacked!  They left little room for question–this is greatness.  Now, like the numbers for an entire generation, they’ve lost their magic.

I’ve enjoyed rooting for Rodriguez and will most likely continue rooting for the guy. But if these reports are true, I also think he’s a schmuck. What’s the old saying? Don’t do the crime…well, if he did cheat, it’s on him to handle himself like a grown up.

Here are some the reactions from the Bronx Banter comments section yesterday:

Ken Arneson: “And what victories arise are always magical, mysterious, haunting and untrustworthy.”

rbj: “What’s shocking to me is that I’m not shocked, just disappointed. The thing is, it was part of baseball culture at the time, which doesn’t excuse anyone for breaking the law but does spread the blame around, from Selig on down. And while baseball seems to be in the spotlight, I’d like to see some investigative journalism on steroids in football. You can’t tell me all those huge linebackers are 100% natural.

I am bothered that something that was supposed to be anonymous, in order to help clean up the game, has been seized by the federal government and is now getting leaked out. Anyone think the players are ever going to agree to anything like that again?

And Henry Aaron is back to being the all time home run king, natural division.”

Mr OK Jazz TOYKO: “Frankly, people who feel “morally shaken” about the whole issue make me question their priorities..baseball is truly the “beautiful game”, let them all roid up if they want. Mariano is still going to strike you out, A-Rod will still be a great hitter, Ichiro will still be a wizard with the bat…”

Zack: “The notion of the purity of the game is all kind of hogwash int he first place. Greenies,which have a real, documented affect on performance, have been around since pre-Aaron. I would put money on him having used them in fact. Mantle of course did too. That moral ambiguity has long been a major tenet of the game, whether its the spit ball, throwing games, betting on games, greenies, roids, segregation, or whatever.”

Matt Pat11: “I think it almost goes without saying that he’ll handle the situation in the worst possible way imaginable, because he always does.”

Monkeypants: “I love baseball deeply. it is indeed a beautiful game, as noted above. But I really despise this era of the sport more and more, and with each passing year, for a variety of reasons, I find MLB less enjoyable.”

Yankee23: “This doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it should. I was happy with A-Rod’s new contract, excited to see him finish his career in pinstripes. I don’t truly care about 2003 drug tests. Color me cynical, whatever, but there are 104 known positive tests during that season. Sure we only know one name, but these were positive tests from a sample size during that season. The “steroid years” are forever tainted, I’ll agree to that. But now it’s 2009, it’s time to move on. We have stricter tests in place and we’ll still have people testing positive. When will we be satisfied? Will this require daily testing and the outing of the other 103 names?”

joejoejoe: “Baseball aside, it’s very much wrong that grand jury testimony leaks and that test samples that are collectively bargained to be private leak. The health of our judicial process and privacy of records are both far greater issues than who takes steroids but it never seems to come out that way in the sporting press.

You don’t have a right to know what goes on in grand juries or what is in somebody elses confidential medical tests. It’s just voyeurism masked as a crusade for truth.”

williamnyy23: “The irony in this story is that the seizure and leaking of these confidential tests as well as the constant flow of what is supposed to be grand jury testimony is much more harmful to our society than professional athletes experimenting with chemicals.

Instead of leading the lynch mob to string up Alex and find out the other 102 names, I would rather see Selena Roberts and Mr. Epstein arrested and placed in prison until they reveal who illegally leaked to them this information. It’s shameful that our lust to oust baseball players who took steroids is blinding so many to the greater transgressions being perpetrated against our justice system. The bottom line is Roberts and Epstein cheated when they used illegal means to procure a scoop. Condemning Arod and applauding these “journalists” would be hypocrisy to the nth degree.

Aside from their criminal actions, Roberts’ and Epstein’s motives can only be seen as motivated by an agenda because the only name revealed was Arod’s. If the two authors were really interested in performing an investigative piece, why would they only seek information about Arod? I guess when you have a book to sell, all else become irrelevant.”

Rich: “Selena Roberts has a history of writing agenda-ridden stories, but I have little doubt that she and David Epstein have bona fide sources. The person with the primary agenda is the leaker, not the recipient of the leak, although they clearly are a primary beneficiary of it.”

Simone: “Why is the messenger is always attacked? Selena Roberts.has every right to make buck and write her books and articles. This is on Alex. He is the liar and cheat.”

Shaun P: “I, for one, am done with the idea of athletes being “natural”. There is no such thing. They ALL use drugs to manage pain, heal faster, get bigger, do more – whether its steroids or Advil or uppers or insulin or HGH or espresso (caffeine, after all, is a drug) or something we’ve never heard of, there is no such thing as an athlete that doesn’t use SOMETHING “unnatural”. I don’t think there ever was, or if there was, it was an awfully long time ago.

And disappointed is the right word, rbj. That’s exactly how I feel.”

Hungover too. And I didn’t have anything to drink last night.

Bonds. Clemens. Now Rodriguez. These are the names of some of the greatest players of our era. In some ways, it’s just been a matter of time with Rodriguez, hasn’t it? He’s another top dog, a historically great player with an enormous competitive drive to go with his ego. My question is: How long will we have to wait for the others? The other great stars. Historian Glenn Stout hit the nail on the head a few years ago when he wrote:

One has to be not only blind but considerably and willingly dumb to look at the last two decades of major league baseball and not raise an eyebrow at each and every number and achievement, not only of every single player, but of every single team, a point the Mitchell Report underscored. Apart from pushing the use of PEDs on the young, that is the worst aspect of this entire scandal, for just as the one player trying to throw one game calls into question everything that happens in that game, so too does the use of steroids and other PEDs by even a small number of major league players ripple through the game and undercut everything that happens after the umpire calls “Play ball!” The effects of steroids and PEDs on the game are not isolated events, but a like a disease, a long-term condition that affects every second of the patient’s life.

…When historians look back at this era there will be one irrefutable conclusion; it all stinks. Every number, every stat and every place in the game is suspect and tainted, artificial and enhanced. Since we cannot now and never will be able to state with any certainty who used what and who didn’t, how much and for how long, no player and no team comes out of this era pure. The implications of that are no more pleasant locally than they are in Oakland, New York or anywhere else, for just as the Canseco’s MVP award and McGwire’s and then Bond’s home run records are suspect, so too are the performances of those teams with those players in their lineups. And as the Mitchell Report told us, no team during this era was unaffected. There was a Jose Canseco on the field for every team in every inning of every game for most of two decades. Therefore the A’s 1988 pennant with Canseco in the lineup is as spurious as the Yankees four world championships in five seasons from 1996-2000, and – it pains me for m y Boston friends – as Boston’s two long-awaited championships in 2004 and 2007.

It is also personal. As an occasional writer of baseball history I do not look forward to a time in the future when I have to write about this era. And I am somewhat embarrassed by the way I have written about it in the past. Although I wrote about steroids in the pages of this magazine in 1998, my books barely mention PEDs and hardly consider their impact. Were I to re-write them today, armed with what we now know of the era, my recounting of the last twenty years would be radically different.

There’s so much to be disppointed in here, and it starts at the top with Bud Selig and the union and the owners and the players for allowing thier collective avarice and self-absorbtion to get out of control. I’m turned-off by how this story was reported–we’re talking about leaks from confidential documents. Why not release all of the names on the list? Why just Rodriguez? Color me cynical, I respect Selena Roberts as a veteran journalist, but I also know she’s got a book on Rodriguez coming out this summer. You can’t tell me that didn’t play at least a small part in all of this. Has she been sitting on the information waiting for the right moment to drop this bomb? I wish I knew. I don’t mean to discredit the story, but it’s hard to come away from it not feeling dirty.

It will be fascinating to see how Rodriguez handles himself in the coming days and weeks. The Torre flap is now meaningless, trivial. So will Rodriguez take the fight to these accusations or will be come clean, if in fact he’s guilty? I suspect he’ll deny everything. For a guy who seems to have two left feet when it comes to public relations, Rodriguez could potentially come out of this looking good if he copped to using PEDS in a way that satisfies our lust. The public craves blood but we are suckers for forgiveness. We love illusion but demand authenticity.

I’m left feeling that this is all one big, fat, ugly mess. On one hand it has ruined the game for many fans. It spoils the precious numbers that we use to evaluate our heroes. It reveals the players to be human, frail and weak, far from the kind of guys you’d want to have lunch with nevermind worshipping as role models.

At the same time, the game is thriving; attendance is up, and the game is viewed as a success–big time entertainment, ethics be damned. Baseball’s drug years forces us to either quit the game, to reject the culture of enhancement and cheating and find something else to enjoy, or accept the moral ambiguity that is part and parcel of the show and still root-root-root for the home team.

Never a dull moment, eh?

According to a report in SI.com, Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003.

Well, this takes care of Rodriguez having to worry about answering questions about the Torre book.

Since its Saturday morning … this post is powered by a cartoon.  Not just any cartoon mind you … but perhaps the cleverest, “works on multiple levels” cartoon of the past 15 years (excepting “The Simpsons”, of course).

(And yes, its part 2 of 2 … I can’t find part 1 … but its still worth it).

Ladies and gentlemen …. I give you “The Powerpuff Girls” in “Meet The Beat Alls”

• Leading off …. here is a Boston-based book review of our favorite new tome:

Torre and Verducci spend much of the book chronicling the rise of the Red Sox and fall of the Yankees, and note that “Athens would prevail over Sparta at last.” The authors rightly contend that the shift in the balance of power between the teams was the result of bad decisions by Cashman and extraordinarily sound ones by Red Sox GM Theo Epstein. …

Those not deterred by its length will find “The Yankee Years” an insightful and non-hagiographic look at a legendary manager and team during one of baseball’s most transformational eras.

• The Post’s Joel Sherman gazes into the future of Derek Jeter’s next contract … and shudders:

But know this – Yankee officials already talk privately about dreading D(erek)-Day.

After all, what team official wants to tell Jeter he has to take a pay cut or has to move positions or – gulp – just has to move on? How would you like that on your baseball epitaph: You were the Yankee executive who told Derek Jeter thanks for the memories? Derek Jeter

Of course, the alternative is not too appetizing either. Because kowtowing to Jeter’s legacy by paying him lavishly and keeping him at short means tying yourself to a late-30s icon well beyond his expiration date.

As if the matter needs complications, Jeter will conclude his current 10-year, $189 million contract on the doorstep of 3,000 hits, a total never reached by a Yankee.

And, really, do we need complications? He is Derek Freaking Jeter. He is the very definition of Yankee. How do you explain being tied to Alex Rodriguez for 10 years, but cutting relationships with Jeter?

[My take: Has any reporter even approached Jeter with the question of whether he’d be willing to switch positions, try CF, if the team asked him to/needed him to?  Maybe Jeter’s performance in ’09 and ’10 will be poor enough that the public outcry over letting him go will be softened a bit?  (Admittedly, that would probably mean the Yanks miss the playoffs those years.) Perhaps he’d like to rejoin Torre with the Dodgers in 2011?]

(more…)

I’ve been reading Charles Pierce’s collection of sports stories, Sports Guy. I think Pierce is a terrific writer, with a fierce, half-crazed intelligence, that sets him apart from his peers. He’s especially good on basketball, but here’s a story that might be of some interest around these parts…direct from the SI Vault, a piece about two sports moms, including Brien Taylor’s ma:

Brien grew up long and lean, and the neighbors were amazed by how he could throw a stone and knock a bat out of midair. Soon, he was pitching for East Carteret, the school his mother had helped integrate, and his fastball was being clocked at 97 miles per hour. Scouts began to come to North River. By his senior year, Brien Taylor was 9-2 with an ERA of 0.92, and the feeling was that he would be picked first in the major league draft by the Yankees. The Taylors were all Yankee fans, as were many others in Beaufort, a fluke of fan demography caused first by an atmospheric glitch that allowed the old-timers to hear radio broadcasts of ball games from New York and second by the fact that Babe Ruth used to come down to Beaufort to hunt birds. His picture hangs in a number of the old hunting shacks that are still occupied deep in the scrub woods up behind the town. It was a very big thing to have Brien Taylor drafted by the Yankees last June.

The Taylors knew that Brien was going to need advice in dealing with his new employers, so they enlisted the aid of a Los Angeles-based attorney named Scott Boras. It was Boras who had wrung the Van Poppel contract out of Oakland, largely by threatening to have the pitcher go to college, which would have cost the A’s their rights to him. Boras instructed Bettie about the intricacies of the sports business, and he found a bright and apt student. “By the time the Yankees came down here,” Boras says, “she was ready with all the questions.”

New York first offered Brien $300,000, then $650,000. The family thought it over, consulted with Boras and turned the deals down flat. Baseball, which was once again trying to rein in salaries, was agog. Bettie was adamant. She knew what Van Poppel had gotten, and she knew what was fair. If the Yankees didn’t want to give Brien what was fair, then he would go pitch at Louisburg College, near Raleigh. The Yankees fumed. Newsday’s Tom Verducci, expressing an attitude widely held in baseball, ridiculed the notion of Brien as a student. This got Bettie even angrier. People seemed to assume that the threat of college was less credible coming from a poor black kid like Brien than from a suburban white kid like Van Poppel. She called on those same reserves that had gotten her through the doors at East Carteret on that first day of school.

“When somebody tells me I can’t do something,” she says, “it makes me want to do it all the more. Push me against the wall, and you’ve got a battle on your hands. O.K., so I looked like the bad guy, but I wasn’t going to do what they wanted just so I wouldn’t look like the bad guy.”

“Flowers” was the first cassette I owned as a kid. The first two tapes my mom ever bought for me were “Let it Bleed” and “Are You Experienced?” A good start, eh?

Powered by quite possibly the greatest three minutes in WKRP (and perhaps all of sitcom) history …

WKRP in Cincinnati: Thanksgiving Turkey Bomb! @ Yahoo! Video

• OK … I’m guilty of having been …. ummm …. overly optimistic … regarding the able-bodied viability of Ben Sheets as an answer to the Yanks need for a fifth starter. He’s probably gonna have elbow surgery.

[My take: And he was pushing for a two-year deal during the off-season?]

• The Bombers offered Andruw Jones an NRI to Spring Training, and he turned them down, reports SI.
• Derek Jeter will be facing his Yankee teammates, as a member of the US WBC team, in a March 3rd exhibition.

(more…)

Our good friend Ken Arneson has the last word–okay, many words–at Baseball Toaster.  And that’s as it should be.  He was the head, and we formed like Voltron around him. 

It is a sprawling, ambitious post that is followed by an engaging comments section.  If you’ve got the time, I suggest checking it out. 

And don’t forget to turn that radio dial.

Milton Parker, the back-of-the-house partner at the Carnegie Deli, passed away yesterday. He was 90. From the New York Times:

According to savethedeli.com, a Web site that celebrates delicatessens nationwide, Mr. Parker’s business card read “Milton Parker, CPM (corned beef and pastrami maven).” Mr. Levine’s card reads “MBD (Married Boss’s Daughter).”

Besides the quality and belly-bulging portions of the Carnegie Deli’s menu items, several other factors brought fame to the restaurant. Dozens of delis dot the streets of the theater district. For years, the Stage Delicatessen — near the Carnegie, on Seventh Avenue — had a superior reputation. But in 1979, Carnegie pastrami was judged better by The New York Times. That touched off what newspaper articles called the Pastrami War. Both establishments fared well, with customers lining up down the block.

“Them?” Mr. Parker said at the time of his rival. “They’re living off our overflow.”

It certainly did not hurt business, five years later, when Mr. Allen’s movie “Broadway Danny Rose” was released, with some scenes shot at the Carnegie.

Kind of makes you hungry, no?

Powered by quite possibly the best 5 minutes ever in “Taxi” …

Here’s the news:

• Brian Cashman states he’ll never write a book like Torre’s latest, and has some other interesting tidbits from a charity event in Pleasantville:

Someone skeptically asked if Cashman was really satisfied with the situation in center field, and he responded that he expected Melky Cabrera to bounce back after a dismal season last year.

“At the same time,” he said, “I’ve got a kid named Brett Gardner that’s hungry and wants that job.”

• Over at Newsday, Tom Verducci states his case on the merits of the book, including this:

“He told me he didn’t want to tell any tales or have it be a tell-all book,” Verducci said. “That’s exactly what we told publishers.”

Things got more complicated when Torre left the Yankees, and Torre did tell some tales many believe violated the sanctity of the clubhouse.

Verducci said he warned Torre “people will pull things out of context,” but he dismissed the notion the book crosses any lines.

“I don’t think the book goes into any rooms that were unlit,” Verducci said. “He may illuminate things further, but you think about Alex Rodriguez fitting into the clubhouse; was that a surprise he had trouble?

[My take: Detailing that Kevin Brown was found hiding and curled up in the corner of a room after an awful pitching performance isn’t (almost literally) “going into any rooms that were unlit”?]

• The News’ Vic Ziegel doesn’t understand what the fuss is about with the book:

There was hardly a shock in the well-written pages, no reason to stop a single press, nothing hotter than PG-13. OK, here’s one thing that might have a shelf life: Expect a bunch of headlines this season playing off the nickname A-Fraud.

A-Rod needs careful handling? David Wells isn’t David Niven? The night Kevin Brown cried? (Who knew the indifferent Brown had tear ducts.) Torre and Brian Cashman were drifting apart? None of that should have surprised even the casual baseball fan.

For some reason, though – maybe because the book was touted as an inside-out look at the Yankees – a few pre-publication leaks suggested the perfect storm. No, sorry, “The Yankee Years” is no tsunami.

If there’s a mystery here, or a complaint from the e-mailers who love to complain, it’s why this book was written in the first place. Why did Torre, who insisted everything that happens in the Bronx stay in the Bronx, decide to break the 11th commandment and violate the sanctity of the clubhouse? Funny, but Torre doesn’t think he was The Great Violator.

(more…)

Lebron’s line against the Knicks tonight: 52 pernts (on 17-33 from the field), 11 assists, 10 boards, 2 blocked shots.

The Cavs win as James is the first player to record a triple double while scoring more than 50 points since Kareem back in 1975.

Eh.  He’s pretty good.

Here’s taking the This or That concept to a scary new level.

(Warning: Foul Language Ahead.)

Brute Force:

Or Squirm City?

Fender Session.

Tele:

Or Strat?

I flipped through the paper on the subway this morning, my fingers smudged with newsprint. More layoffs, this time the cosmetics industry. Hard times here, more ahead.

I looked up and a short, smartly dressed couple stood in front of me. They were both attractive, well-groomed and pinched-looking, and they spoke softly to each other. It was almost as if they were just mouthing the words. So many couples are loud in New York and they were just the opposite.

I went back to my paper and then looked back up at them. They both had small mouths, and now they were both thinking, looking away from each other, lost in thought, concerned. I thought about how many times I see dogs who look like their owners. It was almost too perfect that these two people would find each other.

They stood about a foot apart and the man reached out and tugged gently on the woman’s handbag. She looked up at him. He held out his hand. She took it and they held onto each other, silently. I thought about Raging Bull, about all the slow-motion, close-up shots of hands, and how expressive hand gestures are (I talk with my hands all the time).

It’s cold outside today and the news is hard. This couple seemed worried, but I couldn’t tell if that was just their natural disposition or something else. At least they have each other.

Powered by this really creative use of Legos, here’s the news:

• The Joe Torre book publicity tour (such as it is) made a stop in midtown Manhattan Tuesday.  MLB.com covered it:

While the “A-Fraud” talk was among the more prominent issues that made waves, Torre rejected the idea that he had broken the time-honored code of the clubhouse — in short, what you see here stays here, a message that Torre himself sent to players during his 12 years.

“I don’t think I really volunteered anything in this book that at some time or other — sitting in the dugout, sitting in the clubhouse, talking to media — that they haven’t heard before,” Torre said.

In part to assure that, Torre said that he had “read and re-read” the final text, making changes along the way with his co-author, Verducci.

[My take: Well … the “they” in that 2nd paragraph excerpt refers to the media and players, not to the buying public.  If Torre HAD said some of those things in front of the media, why hadn’t the media passed it onto the public?  Some media person would have “leaked” something during the past 12 years, don’t you think?  How many of us (the general public) knew of “A-Fraud”, or Damon’s “burnout” or some of those juicy quotes BEFORE this book?  Count me on the side of “he broke the code of the clubhouse”.]

• Sam Borden (pinch-hitting for a vacationing PeteAbe) reports from the scene of the Manhattan book-signing.
• Here is the Times recap of it.
• Harvey Araton also reports on the event, and offers his opinion on Torre’s attitude toward the reaction to the book:

I don’t blame Torre for writing a book, for being proud of what he achieved in New York. The Yankees treated him shamefully at the end and were classless in excluding him from the Yankee Stadium finale. I just wish Torre would say he told it as he saw it and stop pretending that there is nothing in “The Yankee Years” more incendiary than a rundown of his starters for a four-game series in August.

He continued on Tuesday to characterize the “A-Fraud” reference to Alex Rodriguez as an inside joke, “tongue-in-cheek, in front of him.” Even if that were the case, now that Torre has revealed it publicly in a book receiving spectacular national attention, how humorous will it be for A-Rod when he is serenaded with the chant on the road next season and possibly at home for leaving the bases loaded with two out in the eighth?

(more…)

There is a cute little girl in our building who kitty sits for us when we are out of town. She’s thirteen now, so she’s not such a little girl anymore. But she’s a sweet kid, thoughtful and bright. Her parents are cool too–the old man is a professor. They are in their mid-fifties I’d guess, hip, and know a ton about music. Last year, the mother had a stroke, or at least they initially thought it was a stroke. Turns out she has A.L.S.

At first, her speech was slurred. Now, she can’t talk anymore. Instead, she types into a small laptop computer that speaks for her. But she is deteriorating and there is no telling how long she has to live–two years maybe?

My wife Emily has crohn’s and has become something of an expert at dealing with insurance companies. She has gone downstairs to our neighbhors apartment and spent hours sorting through their insurance complications. It makes her feel good to help, to be of some use, to put her own long, often exasperating experiences to work.

I’ve gone down a few times too but it’s almost too painful to bear. I saw the parents on the subway a few weeks ago and buried my head in my book. They didn’t notice me and they got off a few stops later, far from our usual stop. I felt ashamed, like a coward.

The thought of the husband losing his wife, of the girl losing her mother, is overwhelming. When I see them, I am bright and cheery, but look for a way to make the encounters as brief as possible.

A.L.S. is cruel fate for anyone. Which is why I felt a measure of comfort reading George Vecsey’s column in the Times today.

Baseball is doing a good thing.

During his three seasons with the Cleveland Indians, Oscar Gamble’s big hair made for quite a sight at Municipal Stadium and other American League ballparks. According to former Hall of Fame senior researcher Russell Wolinsky, fans frequently serenaded Gamble with chants of “BO-ZO!” in tribute to the popular TV clown of the 1960s and 1970s who featured a similarly large tuff of hair. Clearly, political correctness was far less in fashion than it is today.) By the end of each game, Gamble was usually left with a particularly bad case of “hat hair,” with his Afro suffering severe indentations from both cap and helmet.

Gamble’s oversized hair posed another problem. He could rarely complete a turn around the bases without his helmet falling to the ground, while long chases after fly balls in the outfield would similarly result in the unintended departure of his cap from his head. Caps and helmets simply didn’t fit over his Afro, the largest of any player in the major leagues and one that rivaled the hairstyles in the American Basketball Association. (For those who remember Darnell “Dr. Dunk” Hillman, Gamble’s Afro was nearly as massive and majestic as the one grown by the former ABA standout.) The “problem” reached such extremes in 1975 that Gamble held a contest in which he asked Indians fans for recommendations on how to wear his hats. “We’re open to all suggestions, except a haircut,” Gamble informed Cleveland sportswriter Bob Sudyk.

As much notoriety as Gamble (seen in his 1976 and 1979 Topps) accrued for his “head piece,” he acquired a colorful reputation for additional reasons during his journeyman career in the major leagues. Recognized as the flashiest dresser on the Indians, Gamble once wore a pair of red, white, and blue plaid slacks, accentuated by red elevator shoes. Gamble was also one of the few major leaguers who could claim ownership of a disco. He opened up the establishment in 1976, turning over the day-to-day operations of the disco to his brothers.
(more…)