Whether Newsday’s Wallace Matthews has become an acolyte of Fantasy Pros911’s Patrick DiCaprio or he merely prefers the idea of Omar Minaya doing a Donnie Walsh impersonation, I can’t say for sure. But Matthews might’ve actually penned a column rational Mets fans might agree with, the Amazins-baiter citing “the illusion of being competitive without being competitive at all”. It’s time, argues Wally, for Fred Wilpon (above) to compose a statement like this rather than instruct Minaya to rearrange the Titanic’s deck chairs ;
“We apologize for our atrocious 2009 and ask our loyal fans to bear with us for a year, because even though we promise to play like hell, we’re probably not going to be very good in 2010. And rather than waste money – your money – on a subpar free-agent crop and be held hostage once again by bad, immovable contracts, we’re going to sit this winter out and come back stronger in 2011.”
A proclamation like that, of course, would require a quality that the Mets don’t seem to possess – humility – and a concession the Mets are never going to make, namely a deep ticket-price cut.
Instead, they are saying things like what Minaya said at last week’s GM meetings: “In the past we’ve always been at the forefront of going after the players we need, and I think things will stay as they have been.”
The last part of that quote is perhaps the most chilling thing a Mets fan can hear: ” . . . things will stay as they have been.”
That means more cosmetic surgery for a patient bleeding from more wounds than any doctor could hope to fix. And once again, they ask you to pick up the tab.
Tackling the impending apocalypse with a worldview that makes Jim Hellwig seem postively well grounded by comparison, former Phillies catcher Darren Daulton has finally found a publisher for his eagerly awaited end-of-the-planet tome ; himself.
Welcome to my new website www.dutch2012.com. The initial purpose of this site is to provide guests with information regarding the metaphysical academia and fundamentals of 2012 and it’s correlation to metaphysics.
My book “If They Only Knew” provides basic information regarding metaphysics, kind of a starter kit to introduce what is happening and what to expect as December 21, 2012 approaches. This site is in the process of providing guests and opportunity to interact with other people, including myself, regarding these two synonymous topics.
I have evaluated several options as to best provide interaction amongst my guests and have decided on utilizing Facebook (Darren Dutch Daulton). Just to think several years ago I could not turn on a cyber machine (computer), now I am utilizing this technology to reach out to people who have experienced different phenomenon, and to let you know that it is perfectly normal and you are not alone.
In closing I would like to thank the many people who have attended my book signings and the thousands of emails I have received applauding my sharing of this information. As some of you are aware, the initial responses of my book were not always positive. However, I can gratefully state that in the past six months a dramatic turn has taken affect and the responses are phenomenal.
I ask you to please email me with any suggestions as to what will make this site further enjoyable to you my valued guests.
If I know the Mets (and, sadly, I know the Mets), they’ll make a major play for Holliday, envisioning him protecting David Wright (or vice versa) in a revamped middle of the lineup. But this would be foolish. If Omar Minaya is wise, he takes his (offensive) money and goes straight to the house of Chone Figgins, the Angels’ splendid third baseman. Yes, there’s the defensive alignment problem—the Mets are locked at third with Wright, at short with Jose Reyes and at second with (good God) Luis Castillo. But Figgins has shown an ability to play anywhere, including the outfield.
So why sign him? Because the Mets, being the Mets, constructed a ballpark that sucks the power from most boppers; that will only reward speed, speed and more speed. I’m not saying it’ll certainly work, but if I’m in charge of the 2010 Mets, I’m thinking of the mid-80s Cardinals of Vince Coleman, Willie McGee and Tommy Herr. Run, run, run, run, run—and hope the old-school generation of offensive somehow works.
Indeed, the Wilpons built a field with a very specific team in mind. Sadly, that team was the 1985 Cards.
Monday’s announcement that Florida’s Chris Coghlan had been named the National League’s Rookie Of The Year just happened to come on Dwight Gooden’s 45th birthday — a quarter century after the former Mets starter was named 1984’s NL ROY. Congrats to Doc on narrowly beating me to 45 and here’s hoping he continues to do so for a long, long time.
The ‘Clones deserve credit on a number of counts. For starters, giving Backman another chance to succeed in an MLB-affiliated league given the scrutiny he’ll be under is a pretty gutsy move, one that suggests the Wilpons are more interested in how the player Darryl Strawberry once called “that little redneck” might help player development (even Tom Cable doesn’t think this was great for public relations). For another, their press release on the subject openly cites Backman’s 4 day tenure as manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks, one that ended when the Snakes glumly admitted they’d not done their due diligence on Wally.
As a life-long Cincinnati Reds fan, Steve Driehaus couldn’t stomach supporting a resolution last week congratulating the New York Yankees on winning their 27th World Series title.
“They bought a World Series,” said Driehaus, D-West Price Hill.
When Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., and 66 co-sponsors offered the resolution last Friday, it easily passed, but 28 members – mostly from districts near Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston and Minneapolis-St. Paul – voted either “no” or “present.”…
Since 1973, no resolution honoring a past World Series champion has drawn a negative vote.
The vote Friday stands in stark contrast to 1975, when the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., sponsored a resolution congratulating the Reds for winning the World Series against his beloved Red Sox. The Senate approved that resolution unanimously….
Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., who voted for the resolution, asked for ”the record to reflect the fact that I am a Mets fan, and I do not associate myself with the previous comments” favoring the Yankees.
Only one of the 28 naysayers was actually a representative from Pennsylvania.
“Of the 263 no-hitters ever thrown in the Big Leagues,” mused the folks at No Mas in an e-mail message earlier today, “we can only guess how many were aided by steroids, but we can say without question that only one was ever thrown on acid.” And while the late Dock Ellis’ 1970 no-hitter has been mentioned in this space, chronicled by someone far more skilled, and recalled by artists including but not limited to musician Barbara Manning and painter Jay Kaplan, no one has ever tackled this historic event quite like illustrator James Blagden.
Earlier today, the New York Post’s Bart Hubbach called out Mets executive V.P. of lying David Howard (above, third from left) after the club reneged on an earlier pledge to lower season ticket prices. Lower them, they have, just not nearly as much as previously touted.
After wrapping up their dismal season, the team promised ticket prices would drop by an average of 10 percent. But when season-ticket holders received their bills this week for 2010, many were incensed to discover the price cut was as little as a 1 percent.
Thomas Cooney said his seats in the Promenade Reserve Infield, which in 2009 were $4,050 for two seats, are now $3,955 for 2010 — a drop of 2 percent. “Wow, what a discount,” he grumbled.
Mets spokesman David Howard said, “It’s very consistent with what we said in the beginning. Obviously, the ‘average’ means there is some higher and some lower, but the average is 10 percent. We haven’t heard outrage about this.”
How precisely would Howard measure “outrage”? Calls to the club last spring to address Howard’s shameful practice of peddling obstructed view seats for premium prices were either unreturned or met with smug replies along the lines of “tough fucking luck”. If some ticket holders are seeing a reduction of only 1 or 2 percent, it would stand to reason others are seeing a pretty substantial discount in order to achieve this alleged 10% average. Tellingly, Howard didn’t elaborate to Hubbach. One of Faith & Fear In Flushing’s more (ahem) outraged readers commented, “this ‘price cut’ is only the latest in an endless series of symbolic gestures by Mets ownership to the Mets fanbase”, though this aggrieved party obviously cares little for the fiscal challenges facing Howard in the months ahead. For starters, how the fuck are they gonna get rid of these jerseys now that J.J. Putz’ winning personality isn’t around to flog ‘em?
“There is going to be a wide range of what people are hoping to hear. For me personally, we’re not there yet as far as what it’s going to look like,” Mozeliak said about an eventual press conference. ”Hopefully in the next week or so we can work through that.”
McGwire did not attend a Busch Stadium press conference to announce La Russa’s one-year contract extension and his own hiring. McGwire’s phone number is also omitted from a winter phone list distributed to club personnel.
Mozeliak has not approached McGwire about himself available to media but hopes to with La Russa’s cooperation. There is a desire among some in the organization to make McGwire available before the holidays in order to defuse an otherwise persistent issue.
“I think it does matter” that McGwire make himself available, Mozeliak said. ”I just don’t want to paint myself in the corner today on this topic. There are still some things I’m trying to learn and to understand.”
Mozeliak’s comments come a couple of days after the Columbia Daily Tribune’s John Clark eviscerated McGwire, not only calling the Bunyanesque Fraud 1B an inadequate Hall Of Fame candidate, but also suggesting Big Mac is equally unfit to be a hitting coach (”in 16 years, a batting average of .263, including three years at .235 or below, (.201 in 1991 in 154 games, and only once breaking .300″).
I’ve been meaning for some time to link to this dazzling David Samuels essay here at CSTB, but there was one thing I wanted to do first, and I’m only now (and only barely) doing it. Which is try to figure out how a sprawling, multi-thousand word essay — on being a baseball fan in New York during the global economic collapse, by former Atlantic writer David Samuels — wound up in The National Newspaper, an English-language newspaper based in Abu Dhabi. I still haven’t figured that out.
The National Newspaper is a little over 18 months old, it turns out, and is — as one might expect from the garish but very willing-to-pay-for-quality Emirates — pretty deluxe. Its editor-in-chief comes from the London Daily Telegraph, other staffers have experience at The New York Times, among other places. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it also pays ridiculously well — the salaries of its staffers were briefly linked (and then removed from Google Docs), but EIC Martin Newland’s salary is, per the Guardian, “a cool tax-free annual take home of about £320,000 a year,” or roughly $532,928. I can only hope the writers get paid just as well.
As befits the UAE’s weird status as a nation in which bottomless money has replaced politics seemingly entirely, The National appears to be a reasonable, mainstream-y paper that balances faintly cheerleaderish UAE national news coverage — a headline today: “Students prefer jobs in public sector” — with consensus-y international stuff (Kofi Annan has an opinion piece about strengthening the Geneva Conventions, for example). It’s something you wouldn’t mind reading if you were, for some reason, in Abu Dhabi.
Where Samuels’ long, searching piece on the strange tension and feeling of dislocation he experienced at the new Yankee Stadium this year fits into all this, I don’t know. I sense that it says something about the state of the media — or of long-form writing, or of the simple weight of money and its ability to simply make things happen — that Samuels’ piece ran as it did, in the place that it did, but again I’m not entirely sure what that is. I’ve always had the sense of the whole UAE/Abu Dhabi/Dubai Thing as just being something that didn’t really exist — George Saunders wrote a terrific essay about Dubai’s unreal reality in this book — or shouldn’t; a fake country, built on phony money, that reflected fraudulence and folly and not much else. Maybe this is what writers should be hoping for, now — to be snapped up by some mysterious sheikh-run newspaper far away, to write the best we can about whatever we want. I think that’s what I thought the world was like when I graduated from college. It’s a fantasy, but realities like ours call for that.
At any rate, here’s a smallish taste of Samuels’ piece, which is too long to excerpt effectively. If you have time, I really do recommend reading the whole thing. But you’ll need time. Okay:
By the middle of the summer, half the people I know, myself included, have been laid off or are simply working less. “I definitely have a lot less money than I had before it happened. I absolutely get fewer Starbucks Coffee things,” says my friend Jon, a former head writer for David Letterman, as we sit in the stands eating sandwiches that we brought from home and watching the Yankees defeat the Blue Jays by the score of 4 to 3. He recently bought his own espresso machine, which by itself isn’t much of a sacrifice. Nobody we know has lost their home. Still, everyone is worried that things could get worse, and that we could wake up one morning and find that the world that appeared to welcome us with open arms and bright smiles had been replaced by a sour old hag who is not persuaded by our attempts at reform.
I tell Jon about a game I attended in June at Citifield, the home of the hapless Mets, which also opened this year, at the bargain price of only $850 million. In the sixth inning I went to the bathroom, where I tried to balance myself to avoid a pool of stagnant water by the toilet while a speaker overhead broadcast offers for two-bedroom condominiums in Rockaway Beach, which could be mine for a $10,000 down payment. It was a reminder, I thought, of the link between the loose public economy that pumped money into two baseball stadiums the city didn’t need and the loose private lending that inflated real estate prices to the point where ordinary New Yorkers could no longer afford to live here.
Between innings, the groundskeepers jog out onto the field and swap in new bases. The old ones will go to feed the booming baseball memorabilia market which has monetised every square inch of the nostalgia-laden playing field and made the actual third base at Yankee Stadium magically transferable with a swipe of the family credit card to the lawns where fathers and sons play catch.
Taking an entirely different approach than Mike Silva, Maury Brown has been monitoring Roger Clemens’ folksy words of wisdom via Twitter, and unlike the gentleman from NY Baseball Digest, actually engaged the Rocket (above, right) in something approaching a philosophical debate.
Clemens was asked, “What is the best advice that you ever got?” Here’s the answer:
Well…a down right to the point one came from my mother- “Never get in a pissin’ contest with a skunk” Mine would be “love and work hard at what you do” and Give time to others. Understand sometimes you will fail, pick yourself up and go at it again! One that always hit home and says it all came from our grandmother…”if your a ditch digger, be the best ditch digger you can be!”
OK, ignore the misspellings (I now have a better understanding of his use of “misremembered” now)… thinking of how Clemens might view McNamee, I saw what mother said, and latched onto it.
“I think you should have listened to mom. Certainly, not listened to Rusty. Get in front of it, like the others.”
“Getting in front of it” is a reference to the likes of Pettitte and Jason Giambi who realized that if they admitted – even vaguely – to using PEDs, the public (and more importantly, Congress) will get off your back and eventually move on. Look at Pettitte. His hGH use was barely mentioned during the World Series.
To which Clemens helpfully responds, “said from the begining, ‘how do you prove a negitive’ (sic). not much to do about wallet-chasers”
I’ve lived in Texas for more than 5 years (admittedly, in the cosmopolitan state capital) and have yet to hear anyone referred to as a wallet-chaser. I’m not quite sure what a wallet-chaser is, but I’ve been a wallet misplacer on more than one occasion.
Because there will be some level of competition. The Giants badly want to add Bay or Holliday, and the Mariners, Angels and Orioles have some money to add corner bats, as well.
And if the Mets do not get a big bat in free agency, their early read is that players such as Prince Fielder, Adrian Gonzalez and Derek Lee either will be beyond their ability to acquire or not available.
So that could push the Mets to that other side in the internal conflict in which they try to use their dollars to dominate the second-tier free-agent pool. That would put players such as Barajas, Adam LaRoche, Jermaine Dye and Randy Wolf into play.
That would cost about $30 million in total for next season, and enable the Mets to have Murphy and Angel Pagan for backup depth, all while not touching a fragile farm system.
While the Cubs’ hopes of sending Milton Bradley to Toronto have been noted previously, Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal today claims such a move, however unlikely, would involve Luis Castillo going to Wrigley and underachieving 1B Lyle Overbay becoming a member of the New York Mets.
The three-team possibility, according to one source, has “some legs, but not much.” The Jays are opposed to the deal, one source says — perhaps because new GM Alex Anthopolous does not want a trade for Bradley to be his first major move.
Still, the mere discussion of Bradley, Castillo and Overbay between the clubs offers insight into each team’s thinking.
Castillo, who has two years left on his contract at $6 million per season, would add speed and on-base skills to the top of the Cubs’ lineup, but is not an ideal fit. The Cubs eventually want to move Ryan Theriot to second to make room for top shortstop prospect Starlin Castro.
The Mets are in the same position they were a year ago — eager to trade Castillo and sign free-agent second baseman Orlando Hudson. The additions of both Hudson and Overbay would revamp the right side of their infield, and Overbay’s line-drive stroke would play well at spacious Citi Field.
MLB Trade Rumors’ Howard Megdal notes, “Overbay has also mashed righties for his entire career – .847 OPS career, .905 in 2009 – and could be paired with Daniel Murphy or Nick Evans for a high-reward platoon.” Presumably, Rosenthal looks at Overbay’s 35 doubles in 2009 and sees a good fit at the ballpark where the entire team seems to have warning track power (and just that much). I see a 32 year old slowpoke who will earn $8 million as a part time player.
Which is a not very nice way of saying, that amount of money might we worth it to deny Daniel Murphy an additional 80 games playing first base.
Ever wonder where the city of New York obtains mountains of confetti for what used to be called ticker tape parades to honor sporting champions, astronauts or Chain Gang’s election to the Rock’n'Roll Hall Of Fame? Me neither, but the New York Post’s Chuck Bennett and Salim Algar report Friday’s celebrations for the newly crowned Yankees included sensitive personal information landing on lower Manhattan sidewalks.
“We’re finding pay stubs. We’re finding personal financial information. We found a balance sheet of someone’s trust fund showing $300,000 in stock,” said Damian Salo, 29, an internal auditor attending the parade with friends.
“It’s terrible. Here’s the VP of a financial-services company; he makes over $200,000,” he added, holding a pay stub.
Some of the documents came from the Liberty Street financial firm A.L. Sarroff, including their client accounts, with Social Security numbers and detailed banking data.
“They’re records that should have been shredded,” said firm founder Alan Sarroff. “An overzealous employee threw them out the window. He was reprimanded.”
No, not attending two junior proms in one night. Rather, former Mets backstop / scourge of the Long Island H.S. dating circuit Paul Lo Duca is back in the public eye, prepping for a handicapping analyst gig. From the LA Daily News’ Tom Hoffarth who kids, “Who better to know about horses than a guy who dug horsehide out of the dirt for the past 10-plus major-league seasons?” I dunno, Pete Rose?
“I’m really trying to give people a handicapper’s view, because, let’s be frank, most people are watching the shows to make money and I’m trying to give them value and find the angles,” said Lo Duca, a prominent voice on TVG’s Breeders’ Cup preview shows Thursday and today.
One of the most prominent baseball players involved in the horse game, Lo Duca has been in ownership groups since 2002 when he was with the Dodgers. The first horse he bought, The Weej, was named after his father – a nickname given to him by family members because he resembled the Mario Bros. video game character Luigi.
“I’ve had a lot of people come up to me say, `You’re good, we like watching you,’ so that’s really cool,” said Lo Duca, who split limited playing time with Washington and Florida in 2008 and is living these days on Long Island with his new bride. “It’s really a different dynamic. Then, you’re playing baseball. The fans may not like you but they’ll say hi. Here at TVG, it’s really a status thing.
“I’m a comfort-level guy, and if I’m out of my element, I get into panic mode. But face it – I’m a gambler and I know the horses. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t have knowledge. The sport is fascinating, and there’s so many similarities with the competition. It’s neat to do this. Every time I go to the track, it doesn’t feel like I’m working.”
Granted, this couldn’t have been the part of Friday’s assignment Michael Kay relished most. But either way, he’s absolutely flunked his audition for Hot 97.
Giants right-hander Tim Lincecum has a few more days remaining in his NL Cy Young reign, time he’s likely to spend lying low after today’s revelation he was charged with speeding and marijuana possession last week in Clark County, WA. Finally, a Bay Area icon is busted for PED’s (and if you don’t think enjoyment of Lincecum’s performances is positively enhanced by weed, would you at least believe AT&T Park’s garlic fries are just a bit tastier?) and the SF Chronicle’s Ray Ratto — no stranger to daring behavior (you’ve seen his haircut, right?) cannot hide his disgust. “High and speeding at 8 in the morning? Is life that grippingly dull in the offseason? Or are you just nuts?”
That’s the hard part to reconcile. Eight a.m. is just too early in the day to spark up, and speeding on the freeway at 8 a.m. even if you’re straight as a javelin is just asking to get caught. I mean, who else is on the road that early other than truckers? Doing both, therefore, is pretty well inexcusable.
The lessons Lincecum will earn from this, his first official brush with the law as someone whose every move is monitored, are clear. He’ll have to do all the P.R. mea culpas, but the first ought to be about vehicular safety. You can draw your personal line of outrage anywhere you want here, but it’s the driving part that is clearly the most disturbing judgmental lapse of all. That’s where the apology-fest should start, and he can take it wherever he wants (or is told to by the Giants) after that.
Whether or not 8am is too early to be high is entirely a matter of opinion. I mean, perhaps Lincecum had been up since 5. But on the topic of his driving whilst baked, the SF hurler has undoubtedly been defamed by the veteran columnist. The Chronicle’s own source for the story quotes a Washington State trooper describing Linceum as “not appearing impaired.”
I’ve listened to radio announcers across this great land for years on the satellite and, with the exception of Scully and maybe Joe Castiglione, none of them can hold a candle to Sterling and Waldman. Despite Waldman’s one emotionally-challenged Roger Clemens moment and Sterling’s affinity for quoting lyrics from 1940’s Broadway musicals, there is no greater pair on the radio today.
Proving to be almost as thoughtful a columnist as David Wells — who today urged the Yankees to dust off Chase Utley, lest he hit any more home runs to break Reggie’s W.S. mark — the Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy insists Philly’s Game 6 starter Pedro Martinez “is still pitching for the honor of Red Sox Nation.”
In his role as Philadelphia Phillies starting pitcher, Pedro knows he is carrying the colors for Sox fans around the world – just as he did in 2003 when Grady Little left him on the mound too long in the ancient ballpark across the street.
Yesterday Pedro was reminded that every thinking Sox fan is rooting against the Yankees.
“It wouldn’t surprise me at all,’’ said a smiling Martinez. “I know they don’t like the Yankees to win, not even in Nintendo games. And knowing that I am part of Boston, I consider myself a Bostonian . . . I’m pretty sure that every Boston fan out there can feel proud that I’m going to try to beat the Yankees, and I’m going to give just the same effort I always did for them. They’re special fans, and they will always have my respect.’’
Pedro won the third game of the 2004 World Series (seven innings, no runs, three hits) in St. Louis and is looking to close the book on his October résumé with another Series win tonight. Don’t bet against him. The Yankee lineup scares most righty pitchers, especially in the Bronx, but Pedro can neutralize the Bombers with his smarts and location.
The Yankees were Pedro’s daddy when Grady left him on the mound too long in 2003. Tonight Pedro has a chance to make everything right. All these years later, he’s still pitching for the Red Sox.
Tighter than tight deadlines were in place for Thomas Boswell’s account of World Series Game 4, leaving little time to correct, uh, the sort of typos that appear in almost every one of my CSTB entries, regardless of the time of day. The Washington Post’s resident ombudsman, Alexander Andrews, while acknowledging the tough circumstances, lowers the boom on Boswell (above) just the same.
Those who read Boswell in Monday morning’s newspaper encountered a mess. By my count, the column contained at least 20 typos, grammatical errors or misspellings.
“I’d like my 75 cents back, please,” wrote reader Mitch Zeller of Olney, who had purchased a copy of Monday’s Post at the Bethesda Metro station. “There is no excuse for such a shoddy product. It’s completely unprofessional; more errors than one would see in a high school or college newspaper.”
Sunday’s thrilling Game 4 in Philadelphia ended shortly before midnight, and Boswell filed his story at 12:07 a.m. Crafted literally as the game was unfolding in the exciting late innings, the story came in rough. And it was longer than the allotted space, leaving editors to try to edit and significantly trim it within about 20 minutes while they also edited and packaged other World Series stories and stats. Editors hit the button on Boswell’s column at 12:25 a.m., just shy of the 12:30 a.m. final copy deadline. They knew it had received only cursory editing, but the alternative was to hold it out of the paper. That would have angered readers who have come to rely on Boswell’s keen insights.
The result were passages like these:
- Extra rest for a pitcher “may be on crucial value” instead of “may be of crucial value.”
- “…the Yankees had reverse the tide” instead of “reversed the tide.”
- “…tactics that may bare on the rest of the sears” instead of “bear on the rest of the series.”
The Yankees have already sent CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett to the mound on 3 days rest in the 2009 World Series to varying degrees of succes. Tiring of such considerations of wear and tear, however, is Hall of Famer Bob Gibson, who asks the St. Louis Dispatch’s Rich Hummel, “A pitcher can’t pitch with three days’ rest? Some of those guys make $8 million a week.”
“What’s the big deal?” Gibson said Monday night. “I don’t get it. I don’t think it’s going to kill somebody.”
I don’t imagine you’d want to do that all year,” Gibson said. “But for playoffs and World Series … if you can’t do it then, when the hell can you do it? I don’t quite get it.
“I just think they make a little too much about it. I don’t know who it is — if it’s the media or what.”
While Charlie Manuel discussed the rest matter with Cliff Lee, Gibson said he never had any such conversations with managers Johnny Keane and Red Schoendienst.
“Nobody ever sat down with me and said, ‘Would it be OK if I pitch with three days’ rest?’ I told them, ‘I’m going to pitch every fourth day.’
Willie Mays robbing Vic Wertz? Ho hum. Mazeroski’s walk-off before they called such things a walk-off? Whatevah. Carton Fisk’s game-winning shot down the leftfield line in 1975? Fuck off. All of the above pale in comparison to the not-so-idiotic Johnny Damon’s most astonishing of accomplishments ; running another 90 feet to claim an uncovered 3rd base. The dust had barely cleared from the Yankees’ 7-4 defeat of the Phillies in last night’s Game 4 of the World Series before pundits reputed (and otherwise) fell over themselves hailing the former caveman’s presence of mind ;
“While you could argue that he would have scored just as easily from second on an A-Rod double (predetermined-destiny alert!), it doesn’t change the fact that Damon made one of the all-time great heads-up base-running decisions, on the biggest stage imaginable, on the heels of a terrific nine-pitch at-bat.” – Joe DeLessio, New York Magazine
“We’ve seen a lot of baseball games. We’ve seen a lot of postseason games. We’ve seen a lot of World Series games. But we’ve never seen anything quite like Johnny Damon, racing the baseball to second base in the ninth inning of a tied World Series game — and then picking himself up and stampeding all the way to third, as 46,000 occupants of a stunned ballpark turned and asked each other: What just happened?” – Jayson Stark, ESPN.com
“Last night, there was no Ken Huckaby, no Carlos Ruiz, no Brad Lidge awaiting Johnny Damon at third base. The Yanks’ left fielder caught everyone off guard, and as the Yankee bench, millions of fans, and Carlos Ruiz watched the play unfold, Damon beat Feliz in a dash to third. It was a race for ages.” – Benjamin Krabak, River Ave. Blues
“Damon joins Enos Slaughter in the annals of great World Series baserunning plays tonight, stealing second and then third base on one play. One of the first baseball proverbs I recall was ‘in every game you see one thing you’ve never seen before,’ and after thirty years of idling away hours watching baseball games, tonight was the first time I’ve seen anything like it…A similar play I’ve always imagined happening one day is a runner on third stealing home during an intentional walk to a righthanded batter — with a usually-immobile catcher stepping the customary several yards to his right, seems like it would be very hard to get a tag on the runner.]” -Shayana Kadidal, Huffington Post
WFAN’s Mike Francesa (above) claims he was wildly misquoted last week by the New York Post’s Phil Mushnick concerning the physical fitness of Philly’s Chase Utley. With a $25K bet riding on the dispute, the Mike’d Up host has challenged Mushnick to produce audio evidence of such comments, a wager the columnist finds curious given the radio station’s past inability to prove or disprove Francesa made specific remarks. To wit, Mushnick will accept Francesa’s challenge, but he’d like to go double or nothing.
Days after the 9/11 attacks, Francesa, global affairs expert (it’s a gift), launched two bigoted, backwoods and facts-depraving commentaries blaming both Israel and American Jews for America’s peril at the hands of terrorists.
Francesa also said the Jews he knows are disloyal Americans in that they would go to war to defend Israel but not the United States.
In the wake of an attack on the U.S. by Islamic lunatics, Francesa even called upon American Jews to prove their virtue as Americans, to choose between Israel, which he called “a failed experiment,” and the U.S.
As a third-generation American Jew, whose great-uncle was a WWI doughboy, and whose father was a WWII Naval Lt., then commander of the Staten Island chapter of the Jewish War Veterans, I was, shall we say, displeased by Francesa’s determination that the time had come for me to swear allegiance to the United States.
On Sept. 23, 2001, the above appeared in this column. In WFAN’s response, on behalf of Francesa, station boss Mark Chernoff denied that Francesa said any of that — despite thousands, including WFAN staff, having heard what I’d heard. My challenge to produce those tapes was ignored.
If I wrote such malicious lies, why wasn’t I sued?
[After a century of white male hetero fail, even homophobic Cub fans will welcome lesbian ownership.]
If the Cubs aren’t anywhere near the post-season this year, they can at least claim the title of the most progressive ballclub in MLB. The Windy City Times reports that new Cub owner Laura Ricketts is the first out lesbian to own a major league baseball team. Forget how far to the cultural left this puts the Cubs compared to their former Tribune owners, it now pushes the Cubs to the left of expedient Sox fan President Barack Obama. Obama’s been dragging his feet on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy in the military for two years and has been against same sex marriage for (almost) forever. Laura Ricketts works with Lamba Legal, a group that fights for gay rights nationwide. The weird thing is, while Obama would have issues with the Trib and the new pro-gay rights Cub agenda — rightwing neo-con and pro-gay marriage father of a lesbian, Dick Cheney, was as comfortable throwing out a first pitch for the conservative Trib Co. as he would for the big money pro-gay Ricketts. AsThe Windy City Times reports:
Among the purchasers is Laura Ricketts, a lesbian who now becomes the first out individual to own a professional sports team, according to MarketToMarketLLC.com. According to ABC7Chicago.com, Laura, who lives in Chicago, is a member of the board of Lambda Legal, a national organization fighting for gay rights—including same sex marriage.In an interview with MarketToMarketLLC.com, Laura Ricketts, who has a partner, said, “I came out to my family I would say early to mid 30’s. I think for a long time I wasn’t really out to myself growing up in Omaha, Neb., to a Catholic conservative family. It took me a while to come out to myself and not long after that I came out to them. I think that it really couldn’t of been a better experience. They were all immediately supportive. … I have been really really fortunate in that regard.”
Pete, Todd, Tom and Laura make up the board of directors, with Tom as chairman, NBC.com added.
The Ricketts have been outspoken about their quest to have the Cubs win the World Series, a feat the team has not achieved since 1908.
A bunch of readers have asked how singer Ronan Tynan can be booted from Yankee Stadium for making an anti-Semitic remark in private, one for which he apologized, yet days later singer Jay-Z, who in public calls black men “n – - – - – s” and degrades women as “bitches,” performs before a World Series game in Yankee Stadium. Good question. Ask Bud Selig – Phil Mushnick, NY Post , November 1, 2009
No need to trouble the Used Car Salesman, Phil. I’d love to tackle this one, and it’s a great double standard to raise given your almost pathological insistence that all modern claims of racism against African-Americans are wild exaggerations. Tynan was booted because anti-semitism is usually considered less socially acceptable than Jay-Z operating within the time honored artistic practice of writing in character. Despite an overwhelmingly negative portrait of Italian-Americans as thugs, cast members from “The Sopranos” are welcome guests in sporting venues across America. Not once have we read a word of protest from Mushnick, whose cultural wading pool is so dangerously shallow, he’s likely to still be bitching about hip-hop in 2025, if he lives that long.
Big League ‘Stew consider this viral campaign for Call Of Duty to be in questionable taste, and I can’t really argue with that. But on the bright side, after showing all the personality and range of a cardboard box in commercials for ESPN The Magazine and New Era, Hamels has clearly been working with some sort of acting guru. With a little practice, he might manage something as impressive as this someday.
When I was in Philadelphia earlier this postseason with Cal Ripken Jr., Dennis Eckersley and Ernie Johnson for TBS, we got booed. We were just doing our show out in center field and people were walking by saying “You fat piece of [bleep]. . . . Tell Cal he’s gay. . . . Ernie Johnson sucks.”
I’m like, “Who the hell are these people?” We’ve got no part of baseball.
We’re doing the game and TBS stuff and these Phillies fans are just f-bombing us to death.
They are angry people. It’s going to be tough, because they are very vocal, foul and can maybe cause havoc on some of the younger guys, but I don’t think they will give the Yankees any problem. The only problem will be for these Phillies fans, when they lose. The Yankees will shut them up.
I put Philadelphia, Cleveland and Oakland atop my list for the worst fans in baseball, with Philadelphia No. 1.
Curiously, rather than cite any examples of CBP being a hostile environment for visiting teams, Wells makes it very clear it’s a very tough place to broadcast. Would it be out of place to suggest Philadelphians are not necessarily terrible baseball fans, but rather, have a very low tolerance level for poor analysis?
(Cubs GM Jim Hendry and Milton Bradley, back before they got to know each other)
When Buster Olney floats the possibility of an (admittedly unlikely) Oliver Perez-for-Milton Bradley swap. the circumstances are rather obvious ; the only way the Cubs will be able to jettison an obvious scapegoat escape their contractual obligations to their tempermental outfielder is if they take on an equally brutal salary in exchange. The Toronto Sun’s Bob Elliot quotes one unnamed Cubs insider as saying there’s some truth to rumors of a Bradley-for-Vernon Wells discussion (”"It’s early on, but we think this one has some legs”)
Wells has six years left on his contract extension, $107 million remaining, including the $8.5-million final instalment of his signing bonus, which is due in March. Team president Paul Godfrey and former general manager J.P. Ricciardi signed Wells to the contract extension.
The Cubs’ idea is to split the difference on monies owed — Wells’ $107 million and Bradley’s $21 million for a difference of $86 million. Each team absorbs $43 million.
The Cubs have to deal Bradley. Other possible landing spots: The San Francisco Giants for lefty Barry Zito, who has four years remaining at $83 million; the Indians for Travis Hafner, three years for $40.25 million, Giants’ Aaron Rowand, three years at $36 million, the Dodgers for Juan Pierre, two years at $18.5 million, and Tampa Bay’s Pat Burrell, one year at $7 million.
“What kind of aesthetically challenged dolt doesn’t have a portrait of themselves as a mythical creature from Greek mythology?’ asked WNBC’s Josh Alper, formerly of the late, lamented The Feed, responding to claims by Us Weekly that Yankee 3B Alex Rodriguez had not one, but two such framed illustrations in his boudoir, featuring his own visage re-imagined as a centaur.
Thanks to Faith & Fear In Flushing’s Jason Fry, here’s an example of exactly what Kate Hudson saw the first time she visited A-Rod’s bachelor pad.
For New Yorkers of a certain vintage, shots of a manical Penny Crone cackling away in front of celebrating Yankee fans were a big a part of the local TV news tapestry, right up there with regular Freddy “Sez” sightings. The exploits of the former WNYW reporter — now selling real estate for a tony NYC agency — are remembered fondly by the New York Times’ James Barron.
Early in Derek Jeter’s career, she took a look at him in street clothes, and wondered about the fit of his slacks.
“I walked right up to Derek Jeter and I said, ‘Derek, why don’t you wear tighter pants?’ ” she recalled. “And what did Derek say? Not too much. He looked at me like I was nuts.”
“Gatorade man”? She yelled that at someone who walked into the stadium with a large barrel of — well, you know. He was blocking her shot, which ruins everything in television news. The man turned out to be Willie Randolph, a Yankees coach at the time and later the manager of the Mets.
There was the day she went to a bagel factory and the anchor introduced her as “an industrial accident waiting to happen.”
And there was the time she interviewed Yogi Berra and called him “Yogi Bear.”
“My husband told me that Yogi Berra was named after Yogi Bear,” she said, “so I thought his name was Yogi Bear. So we’re sitting in his living room, me on one side, Yogi Berra on the other, the fireplace, and I said, ‘Good evening, Mr. Bear.’
As late as Monday night, the crappiest upper tier seats at Yankee Stadium for Game One of the World Series were going for nearly $400. Despite being allowed inside the Steinbrenner family’s glittering palace for free as a member of the working media last night, the Inquirer’s Frank Fitzpatrick is far from grateful, complaining, “Several Yankees employees walk around the concourse holding signs that say “How may I help you?” It’s all for show. They were unable to get me a seat in the main press box.”
Four hours before Game 1, the main press box resembled the Tokyo subway. Bodies and computers made things impassable. The adjoining work rooms were overflowing too, the precious spots apparently having been claimed at dawn by savvy veteran journalists.
The poor Yankees. How were they know people would be interested in covering a World Series? Having hosted 39 others, there was no way they could possibly have anticipated a crowd.
Beat a hasty retreat for the auxiliary press box, a lofty, outfield perch where Philadelphia sportswriters were assigned seats and sherpas to get them there.
After rappelling up there, it was quickly apparent that more clothing, binoculars and oxygen would be required. The freezing wind howled like a New York cabbie. The puddles of water that two days of rain had left on our chairs and tables were icing over.
We all would have huddled near the TV monitors for warmth had there been any TV monitors. Apparently it was OK for the cream of the nation’s sportswriters to get wet but not for TVs.
Far below, set up atop the right-centerfield wall, we could see a pair of NYPD snipers. Had New Yorkers finally tired of the Yankees uber-obnoxious broadcast team of John Sterling and Susan Waldman?
NY Baseball Digest’s Mike Silva has it on good (albeit anonymous) authority Mets GM Omar Minaya is a lousy listener. This winter, Minaya might want to feign fascination with what others in the organization have to say, if not learn to work by committee, as SI.com’s Jon Heyman reports former Amazins executive Sandy Johnson is returning to the club as a VP of scouting. Quoting a “mid-level” mole, Heyman warns the addition of Johnson, “sets the stage” for MInaya’s firing, 3 years and 3.5 million remaining on his contract or not.
Mets COO Jeff Wilpon is said to have thought it imperative that Johnson, who had a big hand in building winning teams in Texas and Arizona, return to boost the front office. Johnson had previously expressed to the Mets that he was likely to retire. Johnson was said by one club official to have been given basically “a blank check” to return, signaling the Mets’ desperation to keep him. The vast majority of Mets scouts had their contracts renewed within the past few days with no raise, said to be the result of a bad economy and the team’s poor performance.
The Mets also are looking for another senior baseball executive to join Johnson and assistant GM John Ricco and form a strong triumvirate under Minaya, who is said to by people in the organization to be on thin ice after the Mets’ disappointing season. Some Mets people believe that Minaya and manager Jerry Manuel won’t survive a poor start in 2010, and that the presence of Johnson and Ricco gives the Mets an alternative should Minaya be fired
My guess: someone here in Columbus told Jay-Z’s people that they’d sue him for breach of contract if he didn’t show up for tonight’s show and he begged Major League Baseball to let him move his Alicia Keys thing to Game 2. Whether it was Jay-Z or baseball who, in the first instance, thought that the good people of Columbus would stand idly by while he dissed us for New York is unclear, but as always, the wholesome Midwest triumphs over the forces of east coast decadance and evil.
Shortly after we’ve learned Fred and Jeff WIlpon actually profited from the Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme, details from Jamie McCourt’s divorce proceedings againsts Dodgers co-owner Frank reveal an alleged net worth of some $1.2 billion. No more jokes, presumably from T.J. Simers, wondering if his standard of living would drop were he to switch jobs with Frank for a week. Amidst claims from Jamie’s lawyers that Frank, “will continue to enjoy the marital life of luxury, reside in the fabulous homes, enjoy the lush gardens, the pools, the spas, and all the other amenities of the family properties. He will continue to travel in luxury on private jets and stay in the grandest hotels,” Dodger Thoughts’ Jon Wiseman insists “the McCourt’s have torched themselves in the Los Angeles community.”
From player payroll to Dodger Stadium ticket and amenities pricing, the explicit acknowledgment of where so much of their money goes, their unrepentant selfishness and greed, is going to bring exponentially more skepticism to any future Dodgers-related decision they make.
I’m not trying to say it’s shocking that the Dodgers owners are greedy – or that they are unique in their greed. I’m just saying that they’re no longer going to be able to cover their greed with a pretty picture, and that does make a difference.
Some fear the divorce proceeding will hamper the Dodgers’ offseason plans, and for good reason. On the other hand, isn’t this the time when you buy the kids a nice pony to take their mind off the ugliness?
(three unidentified gentlemen who who don’t need or want your patronage, Mets fans)
As mentioned previously, at least one prominent Mets blogger is on record as advocating his comrades in arms take up the cause of the Philadelphia Phillies in the ‘09 World Series rather than root for the Yankees. Chamomiles Davis of The Fightins has taken such sentiments into consideration and replies, “take that support and cram it far, far up into your ass. We don’t want you rooting for our team. Fuck off. Really.”
In 2000, the Mets and Yankess met in the latest incarnation of what pundits call “The Subway Series.” The Yankees won that series, and I was happy. Do you know why, Mets fans? Because I rooted for them. And do you know why I did that?
BECAUSE I HATE THE FUCKING METS. ALWAYS AND FOREVER. I WILL NEVER, EVER, EVER ROOT FOR THE METS TO WIN ANYTHING AS LONG AS I LIVE. I don’t care if they’re playing Satan for control of the Earth. Goooooo SATAN! In short, screw the New York Mets with a rusting rocket ship. So why the hell would you root for our team?
Y’know, when he puts it that way, I can’t remember why. A pox on both houses, then, the Nu Stadium and CBP. May both venues and all who inhabit them (CSTB contributors aside) be reduced to vapor when an MLB-sanctioned stunt to promote the upcoming “2012″ goes horribly wrong.
Would it have been so difficult for someone at the Post to properly research what a traditional Hawaiian skirt really looks like? And surely the persons responsible for this front cover of today’s paper are aware once you go down this particular road, there’s no turning back?
(what true Mets fan doesn’t want to see this man rewarded for his years of hard work?
“ICH BIN EIN PHILLIE” declared a sanguine Jason Fry of Faith & Fear In Flushing last week, declaring of the (uncrowned at the time) AL Champion Yankees, “this greater enemy is attended by a howling mob that knows neither reason nor decency nor humility…Twenty-six times has this foe bred a vile plague, one that reduced our nation to lifelessness and blighted all that we hold dear. Though we are not allowed to fight, neither are we required to adjourn in silence. We must lift our voices against tyranny, though we would have chosen most any other champion. We must shout down injustice, though our voices cannot conjure fairness. We must oppose a great evil even if it means supporting a paltry good.” In other words, though it’s distasteful, Fry would advocate Mets fans cheering for Brett Myers to receive a 2nd ring rather than see Hank Steinbrenner and A-Rod doused in champagne. Tedquarters’ Ted Berg, however, couldn’t disagree more, citing the following Phactors for rooting against The Phillies. Or more to the point, toning down the hateful rhetoric towards the Highlanders.
1) The Yankees buy their championships
First of all, Mets fans: Just because your glass house is falling apart doesn’t give you the right to throw stones. The Mets had the second-biggest payroll in baseball this year, and even if they didn’t spend like the Yanks did, they still tried pretty hard to buy a championship. They just did a poor job of it.
Second, there’s still nothing illegal about trying to buy a championship. The Yanks bring in a lot of cash, so they spend it on players. Would you prefer the Steinbrenners pocketed the loot? Would that be, in some way, more honorable?
2) My friends are Yankee fans, and they’ll rub it in my face
Will they? Then I have a solid suggestion for you: Get some new friends.
I recognize that there’s an obnoxious sense of entitlement among some Yankee fans, but I’ve actually found it remarkably easy to filter those people out of my life. It turns out, people who are obnoxious and entitled about anything are just not too pleasant to be around. Nowadays, the Yankee fans I do interact with are mostly kind and reasonable people who recognize how lucky they are to root for a team with a $200 million payroll.
So that’s that. Phillips’ credibility wasn’t considered an issue when he suggested Josh Hamilton was undeserving of a Cincinnati roster spot, nor did anyone at the network raise an eyebrow when Phillips suggested Barry Bonds’ record breaking HR had to occur at home “for the good of baseball”. In the wake of a consensual extramarital affair, however, one that caused additional scrutiny to be placed on the Bristol U. campus, the former Mets GM apparently cannot do his job properly. For instance, the next time he and Joe Morgan had a disagreement on “Sunday Night Baseball”, Morgan could reply, “yeah, but you had sex with someone who wasn’t your wife. And bloggers didn’t think she was very attractive.” ARGUMENT OVER.
Surely Phillips isn’t being sacked simply because ESPN and Disney are trying to protect the sanctity of marriage? If that’s the case, Phillips supporters (all zero of them) might well wonder at what point the network established an official policy banning infidelity. If the cringe factor came from what sounds like the exploitation of a subordinate half his age, ESPN ought to specify as much. As a Connecticut native, I’d hate to think one of the Nutmeg State’s most widely recognized entities has gone all puritanical on us.
And he’ll have much to offer his students other than advice on how to avoid questions. With Tony La Genius opting to stay in St. Louis, it’s rumored today that former Cards 1B / andro enthusiast Mark McGwire is debating whether or not to join his old manager as the club’s new hitting coach. For DanUpBaby of Viva El Birdos, (”ss much as the congressional hearings made me cringe, I would be really excited to see him back on the bench, taking up his role as Slugger Emeritus”) the official announcement cannot come soon enough.
Enigmatically Sized Mac—prepare for a ridiculous muscles-watch campaign for the next several months, unless he’s extremely forthcoming about The Past in the interim (Khalil Greene is already putting together a long-sleeved undershirts care package)—seems to have a serious interest in the mechanics and technique of hitting, and while a player’s skill-set is no guarantee of future baseball enlightenment (Joe Morgan and John Kruk both had 110+ walk years), the McGwire method, which in Matt Holliday’s unsuccessful case required quieting that big leg kick, seems like a disciplined change of pace from Hal McRae, whose philosophy seemed to involve the words “grip” and “rip” and a small thesaurus.
As for the circus—well, let’s let it play out before we work up our best indignant faces. Some sportswriters might see this as a chance to focus a little more on their pet baseball black eye, but some won’t, too; if that’s not your prerogative the best thing to do is just to look at it in your own way, and not focus on dive-bombing the people who would see a Travesty of Baseball Ethics in Albert Pujols taking an aspirin.
The concrete pedestrian ramps at the brand-new $1.5 billion city-subsidized Yankee Stadium have been troubled by cracks, and the team is seeking to determine whether the problems were caused by the installation, the design, the concrete or other factors, according to several people briefed on the problems.
The ramps were built by a company accused of having links to the mob, and the concrete mix was designed and tested by a company under indictment on charges that it failed to perform some tests and falsified the results of others. But it is unclear whether work performed by either firm contributed to the deteriorating conditions of the ramps.
The company that evaluated the strength of the concrete poured for the walkways, Testwell Laboratories, its owners and several officers were indicted last year on state racketeering charges, and they have all denied the accusations. The case stems from a sweeping 18-month investigation of the concrete-testing industry that also led to charges against a second company. The investigation also forced the city to order the retesting of the concrete in 80 structures in four boroughs, including the stadium. More than half a dozen other companies remain under scrutiny in the case.
The above news comes on the heels of a New York Post report regarding the shoddy workmanship that went into the construction of Citi Field, another venue that couldn’t have been built without public funds. Though Michael Bloomberg is about as likely to lose the upcoming mayoral election as Chris X. Brodeur is to be invited to brunch tomorrow am with Rudy Giuliani at least two of the three men mentioned above have much to answer for.
(back when Phillips actually worked in New York. With apologies to the Rotters)
Given the New York Post’s exhaustive coverage of Steve Phillips’ sex life this week, you might be mistaken for thinking the disgraced ESPN baseball analyst’s face actually sold newspapers. As such, it’s curious with all the coverage of Phillips’ zipper issues, few have wondered why a major New York tabloid would devote nearly as much time and attention to a person not nearly as famous to the general public as Michael Jackson or Balloon Boy. That Phillips’ embarrassment would be grist for Deadspin and countless other sports blogs is no surprise. Via his shoddy broadcast work and/or tenure as Mets general manager, Phillips became a widely mocked figure long before he was accused of getting busy in a Target parking lot. But even assuming half of the Post’s readers are Mets fans, how many of them were aching to see Phillips take a spectacular, personal fall?
A case like the Phillips/Hundley affair doesn’t make the front page — even in a slow news week — without authorization from the top. And the higher you go up the ladder, the more this seems like an arm of NewsCorp has gone to deliberate lengths to publicly humiliate a major competitor. Is Fox going to win future bidding rights to the NBA because Steve Phillips was horny? Probably not — and they might not want said rights, anyway. But every little revelation that proves hurtful to ESPN is making someone in Rupert Murdoch’s organization smile.
So with all that said, congratulations to Phil Mushnick for towing the company line this week. “The only time ESPN indulges — even encourages — sexual insensitivity from employees is as a matter of commerce,” lectured Phil in today’s paper, “while in public, on ESPN, ESPN Radio, in ESPN the Magazine or ESPN.com.” As opposed to Fox TV, Fox Sports, NewsCorp’s movie studios and newspapers, none of which ever stoop to pander? By all means, kick Phillips when he’s down. If baseball fans are lucky, when he gets back up he’ll be doing something far quieter. But don’t pretend for a minute that ESPN is any more or less a corrupting, degrading societal force compared to their competition.
He abandonded me since october 7th. He was suppose to come and spend Christmas with me and never did, he was suppose to spend New Years with me and never did either. He only called to emotionally insult me and tell me that I was fat and ugly and that he had found someone better, all this while I was pregnent with our daughter. He later told me that the only reason why he married me was to get his green card. He would constantly call and send text messages insulting me and telling me that the baby wasn’t his which he knows is a complete lie and a DNA test will be there to prove it, he would call me and put his mistress on the phone to insult me. She is a prostitute in Venezuela who has slept with almost the entire country to say the least and all she has always wanted was money. She has a son who she abandoned and last I know now she is pregnant with Alcides child. It’s been so hard for me to find out while pregnant all this things and that I married a monster. Alcides got kicked off his team in Venezuela Cardenales due to bad conduct. Everyone believes that the little time he spent in the majors made his head swell to the max.Nobody respects him in Venezuela or in the Brewers organization because everyone knows what’s going on.His own mother and father and brothers and sisters want nothing to do with him to the point that they kicked him out of his house. He had a car accident in Venezuela in December where he totalled the car he was driving so to this day nobody knows what he will or will not achieve this upcoming year due to the fact that he has many loose screws as you can see.
We’ll see how long MLB Advanced Media allows these accusations to remain published. In the meantime, Steve Phillips can take slim consolation in knowing he’s no longer the front-runner for the Lamest Husband/Dad Of The Year. (thanks to Scott Comeau for the link)
“Jamie is disappointed and saddened by her termination,” attorney Dennis Wasser said Thursday. “As co-owner of the Dodgers, she will address this and all other issues in the courtroom.”
Wasser would not say whether she would continue to occupy her office at Dodger Stadium. He said that would depend on the outcome of legal proceedings he expected to initiate “in the next couple weeks.”
While Frank McCourt is pressing ahead with the business of the team, including Tuesday’s announcement of a long-term contract extension for General Manager Ned Colletti, Jamie McCourt is believed to be lining up investors for a possible effort to buy her husband out and gain sole control of the team.
Shaikin also writes that Mrs. McCourt “was believed to have started calling prominent baseball figures, with the intention of arranging meetings to discuss the direction of the team.” Who thought Steve Phillips wouldn’t land on his feet?
“Tubby temptress”, “Cuckoo for coco puffs”, “geek”, “portly production-assistant”. A smattering of rude remarks about Steve Phillips’ ESPN colleague/mistress Brooke Hundley from Deadspin commentators? Nope, instead, it’s a cross section of insults delivered by the dedicated news team at the New York Post, who’ve apparently decided the only person more deserving of scorn than Richard Heene is a young woman who didn’t take kindly to being dumped faster than Marco Scutaro. The remarks about Ms. Hundley’s weight are slightly curious in that the Post doesn’t supply full body shots of any of their columnists (and you’ve been dying to see a full-frontal of Phil Mushnick for years). Mo Vaughn was in far worse physical condition than Hundley, and Phillips didn’t catch nearly as much grief over that relationship.
Finally, the Post supplies a written statement to police prepared by Phillips’ 16 year old son, in which Hundley is accused of using the handle, “riotgrrl4life” in her stalktastic correspondence. At the risk of piling on even further, I’m gonna out on a limb and presume Fifth Column weren’t on the tape deck when Phillips allegedly hooked up with Hundley in the parking lot of a Target on I-84. Really, Target parking lots. Boston Market. Never let it be said that portion of Connecticut is without glamor.
Congratulations to the Philadelphia Phillies on their back-to-back National League championships. Ordinarily, my having to choose between the Phillies and (probably) the Yankees would be akin selecting which I prefer, Weiland solo or STP. But if repeating as World Champs means more televised rebukes for Brett Myers like the one shown above, I might have to root for Philadelphia (video clip taken from The Fightins)
OK, I actually have no idea what the above headline really means. One of the joys of writing a sports blog as opposed to being Neil Best, however, is that I can publish such a thing. Just because I can do something, however, is flimsy justification for doing so…at first glance, anyway.
The only thing more precarious this morning than the state of Steve Phillips’ broadcasting career might be his marriage. Hours after the New York Post revealed the alleged affair between ESPN’s Phillips and a twenty-something production assistant, Deadspin’s A.J. Daulerio claimed to have sought commentary from the WWL several weeks ago. Upon being stonewalled by a P.R. flack, Daulerio declared Wednesday open season on ESPN’s long list of persons with overactive libidos (”since the tenuous connection between rumor and fact for accuracy’s sake has been a little eroded here, well, it’s probably about time to just unload the inbox of all the sordid rumors we’ve received over the years about various ESPN employees”).
After the lowly Erik Kuselias and network V.P. Katie Lacey (who apparently, slept her way to the middle) were named and shamed, the uncredited Stupid Sports Blog had seen enough, opining, “it’s just a sad state of affairs over there for a blog that used to be one funny dick joke after another, and now it’s run by a guy who has a vendetta against ESPN because the New York Post did its job better than him.”
Basically, someone sent Deadspin an e-mail accusing someone at ESPN of having some sexual indiscretions, and Deadspin printed it. And they only printed them because Daulerio was upset with his treatment by ESPN. The timeline:
1) 2006-2009: Inbox flooded with rumors about ESPN employees’ sexcapades.
2) 2006-2009: Company policy is never delete them, never do any investigating into them, but don’t publish them, because we’re not going to do that to those people.
3) August 2009: “Hello, ESPN? Hey, it’s A.J. Is Steve Phillips getting fired for doing Harold Reynolds-esque stuff? No? Anything else? No? Kthanksbye!”
4) October 2009: Daulerio spits out his pumpkin latte when he reads the Phillips story in the New York Post. He arrives at work and decides it is now OK to print those old rumors since the one about Steve Phillips, which actually wasn’t true if you recall, since ESPN didn’t tell him about the real Steve Phillips story.
If you’re looking to ruin someone’s life, I suggest you set up a fake e-mail account and e-mail Deadspin with a tasty sex rumor about whoever you like at ESPN. Get your friends to do it too so it seems more credible. Tell them Stuart Scott tried to work a three-way with Cindy Brunson and the corpse of Tom Mees. They’ll print it and be right to do so since they didn’t get the Steve Phillips story.
SSB might have a point about whether mere e-mail tips oughta be enough to publicly embarrass the (semi) high and mighty. But if you’re wondering why the public’s right to know includes digging into the sex lives of persons who barely register as public figures, perhaps this case is about more than smearing celebs. SSB inadvertently made the point mentioning “Harold Reynolds-esque stuff”, much as Daulerio raised the same issue at the end of the Lacie post in questioning an apparent double standard (”so for your notes: ESPN Corporate Ladder-Fucking: Good. ESPN On-Air Talent Production Assistant-Fucking: Not Good.”). Were Harold Reynolds’ hugging hands any more or less busy than those of Phillips, Kuselias and Lacie? Toss in Sean Salisbury’s Phone Cam Penis Gallery, and we start to see a work environment that seems exploitative at the very least, if not downright hostile towards those unwilling to help the on-air talent get off. Do such things occur at many other businesses? Fucking right they do, however not every business has a stranglehold on the sports media scene, nor are many businesses as effective in shaping dialogue and pop culture as ESPN.
So yeah, if true (and that’s a big “if”) this stuff isvery newsworthy . Reynolds and Salisbury probably found it highly interesting reading. None of that, however, excuses the sickening treatment afforded to Phillips’ production assistant by readers of the WEEI.com website. Seriously, what sort of twisted individual followed this story, looked at the frosted-tip, Hilfiger-wearing Phillips and said to themselves, “he could do so much better”?
Either Lakers G Kobe Bryant (above, left) has a Type-T(ommy Lasorda) strain of Dodger Blue ruining thru his veins or he’s still harboring a grudge over the 2002 NBA All-Star Game. Of Kobe’s decision to attend a Phillies/Dodgers game at Chavez Ravine in the company of Frank McCourt, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s John Gonzalez compares it to “like watching Zell Miller at the Republican National Convention.” “The defection was complete and the insult was obvious,” writes Gonzo, presumably secure in the knowledge there are no West Coast newspapers that might ever desire his services.
Ah, but that wasn’t enough. Mamba wanted to make sure we got the message and sent word through Craig Sager. TBS’s Technicolor Dreamcoat reporter asked the NBA’s version of Kanye West – Bryant’s ego has grown so impossibly large that he didn’t hesitate to go out in public wearing a shirt with his own likeness on it – if it felt a little strange to root against his hometown. Even Sager knows how poorly that sort of thing plays, especially here in Philly.
“It’s not weird.” Bryant reportedly said. “I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 14 years now.”
I lived in Boston and Dallas for eight years total, but I never had the urge to buy a Red Sox hat or spoon with former Big D mayor Ron Kirk. (He’s not much of a cuddler, anyway.) Plenty of athletes leave home to play elsewhere, but few have so openly and unapologetically dug up their roots and scorched the earth they left behind. Can you imagine Dwyane Wade so blatantly snubbing Chi-town?
In an attempt to finally cut whatever frayed ties he still had with Philly, Sager said Kobe told him that he grew up rooting for the Mets and that he still has Ron Darling’s baseball card. It’s bad enough that he was a closet Mutts fan, but he held on to Ron Darling’s card after all these years? Really? Until I heard that, I didn’t think it was possible for Bryant to be any lamer than some of us already suspected.
Man, when was the last time Ron Darling inspired this much disrespect on a national level?
An entity tied to the New York Mets baseball team and its owner Sterling Equities Inc. might be sued for withdrawing $47.8 million more from Bernard Madoff’s firm than it deposited with the con man, a lawyer said.
Mets LP placed a total of $522.7 million in two Madoff accounts and withdrew $570.5 million over an unspecified period, Irving Picard, the court-appointed liquidator, said in a filing Oct. 19 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.
Picard has sued Madoff’s biggest investors and longtime beneficiaries, including hedge-fund firms, philanthropists and family members, seeking the return of about $15 billion in what he calls fake profit from the fraud. Sterling Equities, led by Mets principal owner Fred Wilpon, hasn’t been sued.
“It cannot be argued on Wilpon’s behalf that these were legitimate investment returns,” Bradley Simon, a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, New York, who isn’t involved in the case, said yesterday in an interview. “It would be a violation of his fiduciary duty for Picard to not seek the return of that money.”
In yet another violation of baseball etiquette, Dodgers LF Manny Ramirez, writes the Philly News’ Marcus Hays “did not witness Rollins’ two-run double that won Game 4 of the National League Championship Series and gave the Phillies a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven competition. He was devoted to hygiene and dependent on technology.” To wit, while Jonathan Broxton was melting down, Manny was cooling off in the CBP visitors’ showers and watching the highlights after the affair had concluded.
“It’s really nothing different than he’s done before,” Joe Torre said. “I don’t think it’s disrespect of anything. He wasn’t going anywhere until the game was over, and we can’t put him back in the game.”
As he exited the shower room, Ramirez saw reliever George Sherrill, who had preceded Broxton on the mound. He snatched a quick view of the replay before teammates entered and turned off the televisions showing the elated Phillies and the rocking ballpark.
He remained in the clubhouse to share their gloom, even if he hadn’t shared their deflating in person.
“I think, the way it turned out, it doesn’t look good,” Torre said.
Indeed, though persons eager to clobber Ramirez should remember a few things. For starters, Keith Hernandez sipping a Bud in the Mets locker room in the midst of a wild Game 6 comeback has only become part of Mex’s legend. Rickey Henderson playing cards with Bobby Bonilla while the Mets were losing to the Braves in the 1999 NLCS wasn’t considered an egregious enough offense to keep the former out of the Hall Of Fame. And considering Manny’s past towel-related issues, this could’ve turned out far worse. (thanks to Chuck Meehan for the link)
At the risk of making light of a very sad situation for Steve Phillips’ family, I think i speak for baseball fans across the country when upon learning of the former Mets GM’s suspension from ESPN, the first thing I thought of was, “why are the network’s interns and production assistants so resistant to the charms of Joe Morgan?” While you’re wondering if ESPN isn’t an acronym for “Extremely Serious Penis Needs”, the New York Post’s Jeane Macintosh and Dan Magan provide many sordid details.
ESPN analyst Steve Phillips had a fling with a 22-year-old production assistant, who, after being dumped, taunted his wife with “Fatal Attraction”-like phone calls and a letter that bragged about her sexcapades with Phillips while taking pot shots at their “loveless marriage,” The Post has learned.
The former Met general manager, whose tenure with the team was rocked by admissions of infidelity, confessed to his wife and local cops that he had slept with ESPN assistant Brooke Hundley several times this past summer before dumping her.
Hundley’s desperate actions included accidentally smashing her car into a stone column while speeding away from the Phillips’ home.
You can (and undoubtedly will) read the full piece if you want more dirt, and there’s plenty to sift thru, including Hundley allegedly harassing Phillips’ 16 year old son via Facebook and a very precise physical description of the Baseball Tonight analysist’s crotch that most assuredly falls under the category of more than anyone wanted to know. With any luck, we’ll be spared similar revelations someday concerning John Kruk. Until then, however, perhaps the only really funny portion of this story is The Post crediting “additional reporting” to one Phil Mushnick. Never let it be said Phil isn’t a team player.
