ST. PETERSBURG, Florida. As the New York Yankees slipped into last place following a 5-2 loss to the first-place Tampa Bay Rays last night, Yankees' senior vice president Hank Steinbrenner said he would petition baseball commissioner Bud Selig to break up the Rays, a team he says is ruining the game through its dominance.
Steinbrenner: "It's getting out of hand."
"Do we want to end up like one of those lopsided college football rivalries where Podunk State thinks it's a big deal to beat Nebraska twice a century?" Steinbrenner asked as he kicked a stray dog and refused to sign an autograph for Timmy Salmon, a ten year-old Tampa Bay fan who dreams of working in sports management some day. "I don't think so, and I don't think the American people think I think so either."
Kazmir: "The Yankees? I get up for them by watching tapes of high school girls softball games."
The Rays took three of four games from New York, causing Steinbrenner to call a team meeting at which he bit the head off a live squirrel to demonstrate the sort of toughness he expects from his squad, which has the highest payroll among major league baseball teams and Fortune 100 manufacturers. "This place looks like the waiting room of an orthopedic clinic," Steinbrenner said, referring to the injuries that have crippled the Bronx Bombers in the early goings. "If you can't get over your testicular anemia, maybe I'll send you back down to Wilkes-Barre," where New York's Triple-A affiliate is located.
Selig: "Dear Lord, please let the Brewers sweep the Red Sox in inter-league play."
As commissioner of baseball, Selig has broad powers to take action he deems in the best interests of the game, subject to limits imposed by the collective bargaining agreement with players. "He can require players to shoot up steroids out of view of fans, for example," says sportswriter Neil Kinnel of the Bergen County Register, who covers the Yankees. "Or he could make Bartolo Colon lay off the Twinkies."
NEW YORK. Concerned by the failure of their young pitchers to deliver this spring, New York Yankees' manager Joe Girardi and pitching coach Dave Eiland have agreed on a novel therapy--romantic liaisons with teenage country singers of the sort that fueled the Hall of Fame career of hard-throwing right-hander Roger Clemens.
Mindy McCready: Guaranteed to lower your ERA
"We checked with the Elias Sports Bureau," said Eiland, whose young ace Phil Hughes is 0-4 on the season with a 9.00 earned run average. "They have confirmed that an affair with a teenage country singer increases a pitcher's ground-ball outs and first-pitch strikes, so we're gonna go with that."
Clemens: "I know where you live, and I'm comin' after your Shania Twain CD's!"
Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young Award winner, allegedly began an illicit sexual relationship with country singer Mindy McCready when he was 28 and she was 15. McCready is a country singer whose biggest hit was "Guys Do It All the Time", which Clemens interpreted as an overture upon hearing it on the clubhouse stereo system after a game against the Texas Rangers in 1996.
McCready: "Okay, let's get your running in, then some long toss, then a glass of white zinfandel with Mindy."
Clemens had been declared to be in the "twilight of his career" by then-Red Sox general manager Dan Duquette at the end of the season, but he went on to win 162 games with the Toronto Blue Jays, the Yankees and the Houston Astros. "I may have confused 'twilight' with 'dawn' or maybe 'high noon'," Duquette later explained.
TAMPA, Florida. The mood in the New York Yankees' clubhouse was solemn after a 5-3 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates Thursday. "They're making cuts today," pitcher Kei Igawa told a reporter from Japan. "Many people are very nervous."
"Let's practice the glove-throwing play."
When a player was summoned to the manager's office, he knew the news wasn't likely to be good. And so when veteran Billy Crystal heard coach Tony Pena call out "Hey, Mr. Funny Man! Skip wants to see you", his teammates said nothing and avoided eye contact as Crystal made the long walk to manager Joe Girardi's office.
Billy Crystal
Crystal, a 60-year old comedian, movie star and Oscar host, had been hoping to extend his illustrious career by switching to designated hitter, a position where veterans whose fielding skills and timing have diminished can hope to hang on for a few more years until they lose their batting eye. "Henny Youngman did it," Crystal had said to reporters in front of his locker just the day before. "At the end his delivery had slowed down, but he could still knock out a joke in a clutch situation."
Girardi
"Billy, have a seat," Girardi said to the aging comic. "How's the family?" he asked, making small talk. "Fine," Crystal said, although his face bore an expression of concern that belied his word. "Well, Bill, let me cut to the chase," Girardi said after some more palaver. "We appreciate all you did for us in your single celebrity at bat, but the club has decided to move in a different direction."
Scouting report: "Like someone trying to swat a fly with a meat cleaver."
Crystal's face registered a look of dismay, then resignation. "So it's over?" he said.
"We could re-assign you to the Columbus Clippers, but if we give you an outright release, you might catch on with--I don't know--Tampa Bay or Kansas City."
Murphy: "He's got the bling, he's got the swing."
"Thanks," Crystal said, hurt but appreciative. "Just out of curiosity," the star of hit movies such as "When Harry Met Sally" asked, "who're you going with at veteran designated comedian?"
"We just picked up Eddie Murphy from Los Angeles."
"Eddie Murphy? A ex-Saturday Night Live hack who's making kiddie movies now?" Crystal had famously turned down an offer to join the regular cast of the late-night comedy program early in his career, and it paid off when he made the move to Hollywood sooner than expected.
"He's got the bling, he's got the swing," Girardi said as he picked up a pile of scouting reports. "We're looking for a more explosive sense of humor--one that will put runners in scoring position."
"What's wrong with my schtick?" Crystal said, lapsing into Borscht Belt yiddish for a comic's material.
"Bill, it's fine--but times have changed," Girardi said. "Yours is a more situational, observational humor. Did you know the Yankees were last in the AL East last year in stolen bases to Jewish mother jokes?"
"I haven't told one of those since . . . "
" . . . and that we failed to bring home fifteen runners in scoring position during Labor Day telethons by washed-up comedians? Those numbers aren't good."
Jerry Lewis: "$81 million folks. That'll buy a utility infielder, or a left-handed pinch hitter with some pop in his bat!"
Crystal was silent, and hung his head.
"How 'bout the Red Sox," Crystal asked. "They have a history of hiring comedians, like Bill Lee . . ."
Bill "Spaceman" Lee
"I think they're all set," Girardi said. "They just signed Jay Leno."
"Leno!" Crystal screamed. "You've gotta be kidding me!"
"Nope. He's local--from Andover, Mass."
"But he's got that big chin!"
"That's a plus. When the chin music"--baseball slang for high, inside pitches--"start's flying, he'll be a valuable asset."
"I don't get it," Crystal said.
"The way that thing sticks out, he has the highest hit-by-pitch to at-bat ratio of any major league comic."
WASHINGTON. As she watched her husband's defiant testimony before Congress yesterday, Debbie Clemens could only shake her head in sadness over how far she has fallen. "I stand by Roger 110%," she said with tears forming in her eyes. "I only wish that--like him--I could have just said no."
Debbie Clemens
While her husband continues to deny that he used performance-enhancing drugs during a career in which he won seven Cy Young Awards, more than Cy Young himself, Debbie Clemens has admitted that she used human growth hormone before a Sports Illustrated photo shoot, enabling her to appear more buxom than Yankees' second baseman Chuck Knoblauch. "It was wrong, and I apologize," she said, "especially to all those little girls out there who are just strapping on their first training bras."
In happier times.
In her prime, Debbie Clemens was considered one of the greatest housewives in baseball history, chauffering her four children to school and youth sports events while maintaining a rigorous workout schedule, spending up to 35 minutes on exercise machines unless other people were waiting. She holds the modern-day record for consecutive children named after strikeouts--Koby, Kory, Kacy and Kody. In the pre-modern era, Lucy Yemm, wife of Bill "Five Finger" Yemm of the Cleveland Spiders, gave birth to Kevin, Karen, Kelly, Kyle and Kenneth.
"C'mon--you're hogging the Stairmaster!"
Clemens' confession was met less with surprise than relief by her circle of friends on Boston's North Shore, where the Clemens lived when Roger played for the Red Sox. "We'd go out for Mexican food," said Alice Sheehan, a neighbor. "The next day everybody'd be puffy but Debbie--you don't recover from a pitcher of margaritas like that unless you're on something."
"We lost your kid, so we're going to give you a FREE PIZZA!"
Clemens was sentenced to a year's probation and 200 hours of community service, which she will satisfy by working at the gift counter at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in a Houston suburb.
WASHINGTON. Former major league second baseman Chuck Knoblauch emerged from a meeting with congressional lawyers investigating drugs in baseball this afternoon denying he had named names of any player other than himself. "Today, under the pains and penalties of perjury, I admitted to Congress that I took human growth hormone," Knoblauch said with emotion in his voice, "but only to avoid having a disease named after me."
Knoblauch: "Oops--sorry about that!"
Knoblauch played ten years for two major league teams, the Minnesota Twins and the New York Yankees, and one season with the Kansas City Royals, a minor league team with a fake ID. In 1999 he developed throwing problems, and was diagnosed with Steve Blass Syndrome, a disease named after the Pittisburgh Pirates' hurler who pitched two complete-game wins against the Baltimore Orioles in the 1971 World Series but subsequently left baseball after contracting "pitcher's yips".
Steve Blass
Because Knoblauch was not a pitcher, he feared that a new disease for second basemen who couldn't throw to first would be named after him, and started taking human growth hormone. Knoblauch's condition improved, but he left the game after injuring several fans sitting in seats along the first base line with his newly-revived arm.
Lou Gehrig: "Get your own disease!"
The New York Yankees have a policy of creating diseases named after players who succumb to them, such as Lou Gehrig, in the hope of collecting royalties from others who subsequently contract the ailment. The Yankees have the highest payroll in baseball, and try to hedge their "luxury tax" exposure by buying life insurance policies on fans who ask their players for autographs.
Sent down to the minors, or the Royals, which is worse.
Knoblauch urged Congress to legalize steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs for use by second basemen, saying he had noticed a veritable epidemic of "Knoblauch's Syndrome" as he traveled around the country. "It's so sad," he said as he wiped a tear from his eye. "I go to Little League games and I see second basemen who can't throw to first, just like me!"
LONDON. Amy Winehouse, the neo-soul singer whose drug habit plays a prominent role in both her life and her work, today urged seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens to enter rehab, saying it was his only hope to turn his life around.
Winehouse: "Exercise is like really important."
"People think I don't care about sports, and I don't," Winehouse said by telephone from her home in London, where she was caught on film yesterday snorting cocaine, smoking crack, and sticking Mike 'n' Ike candies up her nose. "I know what it's like to have your innocent recreational drug use exposed to the white hot glare of tabloid journalism."
Mike 'n' Ike: If you can't resist, snort 'em, don't shoot 'em.
Clemens was named 82 times in the Mitchell Report, the document that memorializes the investigation conducted by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell into steroid use in major league baseball. Former New York Yankees trainer Brian McNamee claims he injected Clemens with Winstrol, an allegation that Rusty Hardin, the pitcher's attorney, denies. "Roger never used Winstrol," Hardin said. "He smoked Parliament Lights at the end of his career, and Camel Filters in the box when he was just starting out."
"Who's the skank?"
Winehouse's biggest hit is "Rehab", in which she recounts her resistance to drug rehabilitation. Clemens's biggest hit remains a 1986 game against the Seattle Mariners in which he struck out 20 batters in a nine-inning game while pitching for the Boston Red Sox. Mitchell's greatest hit is the saying "I like blankies too much," which he has used to defuse tension at the Iran-Contra Committee hearings, the Northern Ireland peace talks, and Bud Selig's Friday night polka soirees.
COLUMBUS, Ohio. Twelve year-old Robbie Bennett has been a star for every baseball team he's ever been on, from T-ball to "Dad Pitch" to Little League. A pitcher, Robbie's walls are plastered with posters of Roger Clemens in the uniforms of the four major league clubs the seven-time Cy Young Award winner has played for. "He was my hero," Robbie sniffles. "Now I think he's a stupid Froot Loop," he says as he throws himself on his bed and sobs into his pillow.
Roger Clemens
The reason for Robbie's tears is the revelation by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell that Clemens received shots of anabolic steroids in the buttocks to maintain his overpowering physique and become perhaps the greatest starting pitcher in baseball history.
"I thought I could stay fat like Clemens just by eating Twinkies and French fries," Robbie says when he is asked why he's crying. "Now I find out I have to get shots in the butt."
Eric Gagne
For young Timmy Merlino, the announcement that his idol Eric Gagne had signed with the Milwaukee Brewers was the best news he'd heard in a long time. "He was the first autograph I ever got," Timmy says as he looks down at a plastic-wrapped baseball card of Gagne while with the Dodgers that bears the fireballing right-hander's signature.
But that trophy is tarnished now that it has been revealed Gagne took human growth hormone. "It appears," said Mitchell at yesterday's press conference, "that Eric Gagne's record-breaking string of blown saves in the summer of 2007 was fueled by illegal drugs."
George Mitchell
Young fans are baseball's future, and major league executives expressed fear that yesterday's revelations could depress attendance for years to come. "Once kids hear about the drugs, they'll want to stay home and smoke dope instead of coming out to the games," predicted Bob Hohler, Director of Baseball Operations for the Houston Astros. "Unless they're Cubs fans, in which case they'll come out to the park and get high."
Greater than any economic effect is the loss of innocence, as children begin to see players such as Josias Manzanillo, Kent Mercker and Steve Woodward, all former members of the Boston Red Sox, as something less than the immortals they were considered in their playing days. "You mean to tell me," says Bobby Hammond of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, "that I could take performance-enhancing drugs for years and still suck?"
NEW YORK. Nanotechnology, the science of incredibly teensy-tiny things, promises to transform our lives over the coming years with sub-atomic robots that can download songs directly to the human brain. For now, however, nano-scientists say they are satisfied to have achieved the first tangible evidence of the field's potential, recording post-season batting statistics for New York Yankees' third baseman Alex Rodriguez.
Alex Rodriguez
"Come October, A-Rod hits like an American League pitcher batting in the World Series for the first time all year," says Columbia University scientist Morris Schonfeld. "It's a real challenge to detect anything at all."
"If you look closely, you can see his RBI's in there somewhere."
Rodriguez is affectionately known as "Mr. Regular Season" by Yankees fans for his post-season productivity, often driving in a run a decade. "At that pace," noted Lou Berloni of Yonkers, "he'll be in double figures before you know it."
"You need to highlight your cheekbones--they're terrific!"
Rodriguez is also popular among players, who says his role as self-appointed spokesman for the game is as refreshing as a kid who volunteers to take names when a teacher leaves the classroom. "What's not to like?" asks Boston's Jason Varitek, who struck up a pen-pal relationship with Rodriguez after a 2004 misunderstanding in which the Red Sox catcher's attempt to give the man they call "A-Rod" some metrosexual advice on moisturizing was misinterpreted as aggression.
"If I take care of myself, I think I have a chance to be the best-looking Yankee of all time."
Nanotechnologists were able to confirm Rodriguez's post-season impact after his seventh-inning home run in the Yankees' series-ending loss to the Cleveland Indians, ending his incredible streak of 57 post-season at-bats without an RBI. "You can't measure nothing, so that helped," noted Brian Staub, a lab technician at New York University's Center for Nanotechnology Studies. "On the other hand, the only guy he ever seems to drive in is himself."
ALAMEDA, California. HomeQuest Financial, a subprime lender that has been cited for loan and foreclosure abuses in a number of states, today announced that it would set up a charitable fund tied to individual performances in baseball's postseason play as a way to give back to homeowners who have suffered during the current housing market collapse.
"There's the hammer, it's going--going--gone!"
"We realize in retrospect that maybe we could have done things just a teensy bit differently," says HomeQuest CEO Martin Upchurch. "If we had known people weren't going to repay our loans, we would have charged them bigger fees upfront."
Don Larsen's World Series no-hitter.
Under the program, HomeQuest will donate $100 for every balk, $200 for every batter who hits for the cycle, and $300 for each no-hitter thrown during the post-season, beginning with today's NL Wildcard playoff game between Colorado and San Diego and ending with the final out of the World Series.
"Peavey's got a no-no going into the 8th. Don't jinx it by saying anything."
"It's a way for us to say 'Thank you' to all of those familes who vacated their over-leveraged houses peaceably so we didn't have to resort to extreme measures," Upchurch says. "We really appreciate it when we don't have to rent German Shepherds to secure our properties."
"That wasn't a balk. Clemens started to pitch, then got bored and went home to Houston."
But, a reporter asks, balks, no-hitters and hitting for the cycle are extremely rare events, meaning that HomeQuest's exposure is minimal at best. Does Upchurch really expect the dispossessed to benefit much from a program that is so narrowly tailored?
"Talk to the people in marketing," he says. "I'm more of a big picture guy."
ANN ARBOR, Michigan. Gary Sheffield, the outspoken outfielder for the Detroit Tigers who transformed an upper-body tic into a powerful home-run swing, was today named Director of Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan Law School, whose program of racial preferences was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003.
"No, I don't want to be your friend, you freaking half-breed."
"When it comes to making finely-calibrated distinctions on the basis of race, Gary's the man," said Evan Caminker, Dean of the University of Michigan Law School. Caminker said Sheffield would report directly to him on issues of diversity and racial purity, but Sheffield moved quickly to correct his boss, whom he characterized as a "pasty-faced nerd who sits in a liberry" all day. "Nobody tells me how to do things," Sheffield explained to reporters. "I do things the way I gotta do them, and that's it."
The Shef's Idol: Sammy "I've Gotta Be Me" Davis, Jr.
Sheffield has been in hot water recently after saying Derek Jeter, his former teammate on the Yankees, "ain't all-the-way black." Jeter's mother is white, his father is African-American, his maternal grandfather is an Aleutian Islander and his dog is a colliedoodlekeet, a mixture of a border collie, a French poodle and a parakeet.
"When you're Gary Sheffield, you're way the hell far out in left field--all the way!"
“Jeter used to come to me and basically used to tell you what (Torre) is all about, he’s a good man, he’s this, he’s that,” Sheffield said. “But like I tell Derek Jeter, ‘That’s you. It’s one thing that they treat you a certain way — you don’t feel what other people feel, 'cause you've got a brain.’ “
Those close to him say that Sheffield's prickly temper may be due to his use of anabolic steroids, whose side effects include irritability, back acne and shriveled testicles. "You can hardly blame the guy," said Joel Upham, who covered Sheffield during his years with the Yankees. "It's not easy attracting Baseball Annies when word gets around that your shoulder blades look like a fourteen year-old's face and your testicles are the size of pistachio nuts."
BURBANK, California. The Walt Disney Company today rescinded the player-for-rabbit trade that sent Monday Night Football's Al Michaels to NBC for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit after the aging cartoon character failed his physical.
"He was in much worse shape than we thought," said Disney President and CEO Robert A. Iger. "His knees were shot from all that hopping around."
Other sports executives questioned Disney's judgment in making the deal in the first place. "They're a bunch of artists, not businessmen," said Scott Pioli, VP of Player Personnel for the New England Patriots. "It was a case of 'Liberal Arts Major Disease'--the delusion that all big numbers are the same."
In Oswald's case the numbers weren't that hard to figure out. The cartoon rabbit was born in 1927 and was Disney's franchise player before he was lost to NBC's Universal Studios in a front-office snafu that recalled the Red Sox' loss of Carlton Fisk. In that incident, Fisk was allowed to become a free agent when team management forgot to mail him a contract.
Oswald will test the free agent waters now that he knows he's expendable in the eyes of NBC management. "I guess they've decided to go in a different direction," the rabbit said with a disappointed tone in his voice. "I'm not feeling so lucky anymore."
Oswald said he will talk to New York Yankees management next week about a position with that club. "They appreciate over-the-hill stars in the twilight of their careers," he said, "and 1927 was a pretty good year for them."
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
