The Mets season of great expectations included every twist and turn you could hope for, from a cement overcoat for Willie Randolph to Billy Wagner exploding like a knockoff Rolex during the playoff stretch for the second straight season.
Perhaps the greatest aspect of the Baseball Hindenburg, (see "Oh the humanity"), had to be the pundits and commentariat annointing the Mets the once and future king of the NL East all season long.
While the bullpen was a bitter pill for Mets fans to #### it doesn't compare to the crow prognosticators are choking down all over the baseball landscape...
The media clung to the shimmering Camelot of Metstopia so fiercely that even after the 'Politans crashed and burned like Evel Knievel at Snake River Canyonwire service leads dripped with absolute oh-my-gosh shock of the second collapse!
Isn't the real story the blue collar, against all odds, let's play 162, grit and gristle Phillies slugging their way to NL East glory two seasons running?
Ryan Howard spotted the Mets half a freaking season swatting an anemic .234 BA, 28 HR's, and 84 RBI's. He followed with a sparkling 2nd half, a .272 BA, 20 HR's, & 62 RBI's. His strikeouts dropped from 129 in the first half to 70 in the second.
Meanwhile Chase Utley sported a .292 BA, launched 33 HR's, & drove in 104 RBI's. Meanwhile the staff ace, Cole Hamels had no worries posting 14 wins against 10 losses, a razor sharp 3.09 ERA, and notched 196 K's, in 227.3 frames pitched.
David Wright's epitaph says it best; "We failed. We failed as a team...There's no pointing fingers. There's no excuses. We as a unit didn't get the job done."
Dave you're not alone in thinking you ever had a shot at it, let's see if misery loves company...
Let's start by wiping the egg off of ESPN's bucket of useful idiots...let's see, Eric Karabell & Sean McAdam got it right but they must feel awful lonely at the top of this puddle of mugwumps...89.5% of ESPN can't tell the NL East from a pork chop it seems...only 21% of them squeezed a team that has 2 consecutive MVP's into the playoffs as a wild card and a mind boggling 0% gave the Phightins' a chance to make the World Series.
But like the X-Files, ESPN is not alone, let's lift all the other skirts in a lil' game I like to call Criswell Poker...For those of you who don't know or remember who Criswell is, Criswell Predicts, is a great read...(Fowl Line tip o' the cap to John Schlegel, executive editor for the West Divisions for MLB.com for the Criswell hook and compiling these Fearless Fosdick predictions at the start of the 2008 MLB season.
Look I know when we get psychic we end up being more wrong than right it just goes to show, you can add up all the math, pull every SABR rabbit out of the hat and it still doesn't mean a thing until a minimum of 1458 innings unravel beneath the cleats...but it's funny the non-ESPN'ers got it right more often than the haircuts behind the desk and scribble, (28% to 11.5%)...
Sports controversy sells and when you bottom line it there's no downside to stirring the upside. Here's all the sports controversy you need and then some. Buckle your sports seatbelt and let's get ready to rumble...
Steroids make sports better, faster, stronger and more enjoyable.
Women can play golf as well as men and Michelle Wie has a bigger set than Sergio Garcia.
White athletes are way better than black athletes and that's a fact.
SABR is to baseball what analyzing brush strokes and colors used is to declaring great art.
The Redeem Team blew it big time when they all didn't take to the podium and give the black power salute commemorating the 40th anniversary of the greatest Olympics protest ever.
The NFL pre-season rocks because we get to figure out what happened to all those guys who didn't get drafted in the first two rounds.
The USA Olympic gymnasts really screwed the pooch by being too old to win.
College football is like watching softcore porn on Cinemax or Showtime they're taking their top off but not much else is going to happen.
Cheating made the Patriots great and they should be allowed to keep cheating because they invented it or at least perfected it.
Black athletes are way better than white athletes and that's a fact.
The Tour De France has a creepy urine fixation and if you have to spend more than half an event whipping it out or examining your zipper it isn't sports it's a porno movie.
Tiger Woods wouldn't be famous if his name was Herb. Nobody cares about guys named Herb in any sport.
Boxing isn't fixed.
Women can't drive on the freeway without checking their makeup or talking on a cellphone. Danica ditch the helmet, go Max Factor on them and prove multi-tasking women are way better drivers than men.
Barry Bonds is baseball and as long as he keeps swatting dingers I don't care if he injects liquefied babies in his butt to do it.
Hispanics are way better athletes than black or white athletes and that's a fact.
Bowling is the outlaw sport they wear crazy shirts.
Brett Favre should be his own team. Nobody can beat the Favre they can only hope to beat the spread.
Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris can't fight to the death because they're both immortal.
Jose Canseco never took steroids.
MMA & UFC is for sissies.
The only two teams worth watching in baseball are the Yankees and the
Red Sox and they should get automatic byes to the World Series.
Pro-wrestling is real the rest of the world is fake. Deal with it.
Real athletes have beer guts.
The Cowboys, Patriots, Lakers, Yankees, and Red Sox suck.
Hooters won't hire a gal with a fake rack.
Orientals are way better athletes than white, black, or hispanic athletes and that's a fact.
The Olympics are cool because every two-years poker has a chance to become an Olympic sport.
NASCAR drivers should be allowed to put anything they want on their gas pedals because faster is better, and rules just slow things down.
Eskimos are way better athletes than white, black, hispanic, or oriental athletes and that's a fact.
The NFL should field an all midget team. They wouldn't win a lot but it would be the best game of the year for most teams. Except of course those teams that got beaten by the midgets. That would really suck. For the regular-sized guys, not the midgets, they'd be cool with it.
Soccer is God's way of gently reminding us we might be retarded.
That's all I got right now so I hope you have some controversy, smack, gibber-jabber, left in you because I'm not afraid to say it and probably have or will...Bring it on!
Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins called an air strike in on his own foxhole complaining about Phillies fans booing players. While the mighty-mouth All Star takes aim at fans Rollins apparently forgets it's Phillies owners and management who failed to build one single pitching staff in the past eight-years capable of achieving his off-stated goal of winning a championship. When fans boo-Jimmy listens. Rollins isn't the first player to get his panties wadded by fans booing let's take a walk through that field of dreams I like to call, If Loving You is Wrong I Don't Want to be Right... On May 15, 1912--Peaches Ain't Always Sweet The Detroit Tigers face the hometown New York Highlanders. Behind home plate, Highlanders fan Claude Lueker gives Detroit's Ty Cobb the business and then some. Lueker rides Cobb like a hobby horse every time the Peach bats.
Cobb warns the Highlanders and umpires if Luecker isn't ejected there's going to be hell to pay. When Luecker calls Cobb a "half-(racial epithet used primarily in rap songs)," Cobb takes to the stands and starts viciously beating Luecker. Fans beg Cobb to stop because Lueker has no hands. Cobb without missing a beat, punch or kick replies, "I don't care if he's got no feet!"
May 12, 1991--The Splinter Relents Ted Williams Appreciation Day at Fenway Park, Ted Williams pulls a Red Sox cap from his jacket and tips it to the crowd--the only time he does so in his illustrious career. Williams considers Red Sox fans no better than wolves.
May 17, 1950, after being booed for fielding mistakes Teddy flips Fenway fans the bird three-times. August 7, 1956, after being booed for dropping an easy fly ball Williams spits at Fenway fans and is fined five-thousand dollars. He tells the Boston Herald he has no regrets, "I'd spit again at those booing ####s." Teddy was just warming up. July 23, 1958, after Kansas City fans booed him for not legging out a ground out Williams spits at the fans and earns a $250 dollar fine. Sept. 21, 1958, Upset after popping out, Williams hurls his bat in anger and hits a woman in the head sitting behind Boston's dugout. The hit doesn't count because it isn't an official at-bat. Williams pays a $50 fine.
In a pre-game speech before the final game of his career, Williams says, "I must say my stay in Boston has been the most wonderful thing in my life. If I were ever asked what I would do if I had to start my baseball career over again, I'd say I would want to play in Boston for the greatest owner in the game and the greatest fans in America." A fitting bookend to the quote Williams began his Red Sox career with, Aug. 14, 1940, Williams opines in a Boston newspaper, "I don't like this town. I don't like the people. I want to get out of town, and I'm praying that they trade me." The truth falls somewhere in between. May 11, 2007--Junior goes XXL The Reds face the Dodgers in LA and Dodger fan Matt Schafer starts heckling Ken Griffey Jr. "You suck ... shouldn't you be on the D.L.?... too old for center,...etc." But Junior takes it in stride.
"He was just on me every time I came in...Him being a little larger than normal, I just asked, 'Shouldn't you be wearing a support bra?'" In the sixth inning Griffey sends someone to find the largest brand new jockstrap in the clubhouse. They write the number "3" and "JR" on it, brown paper bag it and Griffey throws the bag to Schafer when he runs back onto the field.
Schafer dumbstruck by the response twirls the jockstrap in the air and the entire section breaks out in laughter--winning Griffey a new fan, Matt Schafer. When Griffey returns to the dugout Schafer apologizes for the things he said.
Bottom of the Ninth So Jimmy ain't the first and won't be the last athlete booed. Fans are what they are down through the ages. How you handle it is a whole 'nother issue...I'm sure all of you have special memories of your favorite ballplayer showing fan love so feel free to drop a dime on them below...special thanks to Ty Cobb for his quick wit.
Kerry Wood is cursed. Maybe he spit on a gypsy or stepped on too many cracks in the sidewalk as a kid. Whatever the reason he is the most talented game of Russian Roulette the Cubs can play down the stretch. Sure Wood pitched a scoreless inning against the Stro's last night. But the Cubs who just designated southpaw reliever Scott Eyre might want to hold their horses for a minute. Here's why...
Wood's pitched more innings this season than he has over the last two seasons combined. Which isn't that tough since he barely eked out 24 last season and 19 in 2006. But Lou Piniella has a better chance of trading for and then starting Mike Hampton in the 1st game of the World Series than seeing Wood make September let alone October. Let's take a look at Wood's track record.
1998 Wood misses the last month of the season with a sore elbow. 1999 Wood says see you later to his ulnar collateral ligament, undergoes Tommy John surgery and misses the entire season. 2004 Wood misses two months with strained triceps. 2005 August 31, 2005, Wood undergoes season-ending arthroscopic surgery for a torn labrum. 2006 Wood misses the first month and a half of the season after setbacks in his rehab, surgery on his knee and falling out of a hot tub. Wood returns to the Cubs' rotation on May 18, 2006. Unable to lift his arm Wood goes back on the DL in June. One month later Wood is shut down for the season with a partially torn rotator cuff. 2007 Wood misses April 1st to August 3rd with soreness in his elbow. 2008 Wood goes on DL from July 24th to August 5th with a blister on his finger.
Wood's been on the DL 12-times in an 11-year career. Because he throws across his body which is a recipe for disaster. It isn't a question of will he injure his throwing arm it's simply a matter of when.
You could blame his managers as far back as high school when he pitched two games of a double-header and threw 175 pitches or Cubs skippers like Jim Riggleman and Dusty Baker who ran up steep pitch counts on Wood because the Cubs had no bullpen or they were trying to save their job. Baker in particular has a reputation for grinding starters down to the nub and has a pitch-count be damned attitude refreshing for 1920 but sadly out of touch with the pitching staffs of today. Ultimately that thinking turned Chicago Heat into Chicago Hope.
I'm not wishing bad things on Kerry it's like seeing the same car crash at the same intersection every year and you can't stop it. Rise and shine happy campers It's Groundhog Day in the Windy City. In any event Wood doesn't seem to pitch all that often in September and while a blister isn't the end of the world you have to wonder if it isn't the canary in the Cubs coal mine.
Manny's playing in the NL for LA and here's the DL... Manny needs to step up his game and I ain't talking baseball. LA will chew him up like a pretty girl from Des Moines stepping of####reyhound bus with stars in her eyes...lucky for him I have just the thing--Hollywood for Dummies... When You Wish Upon a Starlet... Manny it's no secret Hollywood is ground zero for the hottest women found outside of Miami Beach but there are rules. The right starlet will set you on the path to glory quicker than you can say Joltin' Joe & Marylin Monroe, (...forget her though, she's deader than Steven Seagal's career).
You need somebody so young she makes Miley Cyrus look like Wilford Brimley and make sure she's an absolute train wreck. The more addictions the better her press value--bulimia, anorexia, pills, booze or multiple DUI's. Think Lindsay and Brittney rolled into one.
She should shock even the most jaded by not only being too
young but so emaciated she makes a swizzle stick look like Oprah after
a two-month IHOP bender. Think Olson Twins, (...but they're a million years old now so stay away from them even if it's the one that didn't get Lanced).
Manny's Baby Mama Drama Choose wisely Manny because the next step is crucial. You need to knock her up faster than Wesley Snipe's films go straight to DVD. Nothing says super-duper-star like selling your baby's pics to People magazine. Have a Cause... Forget PETA Manny, vegans, and the environment too. Scientology's already jumped the couch. You need a brand new Manny-worthy cause like Manny's Foundation where you work with privileged kids who have everything and want so much more.
Charity means a million photo-ops while you press the flesh with the LA glitteratti. Poor underprivileged kids get all the attention anyway. Guess what? There's still like a million of them. Forget those stinking losers. You want to work with winners. Because you're a winner. Winners don't stay winners helping losers. The Environment... Nothing says star power like going green but face it Manny you can't be Manny in a tiny car. Drive a bold statement that says I'm willing to wreck the environment and fix it at the same time. How about a hybrid Hummer? Sure it guzzles gas by the square inch but as long as you insist the clock works off a solar panel you'll dodge an inconvenient truth. Scandals... Nothing says you've arrived like your first scandal but face it Manny drug overdoses, and DUI's, are so yesterday. You need a Manny-tacious disaster. The kind that requires press conferences, Nancy Grace denouncing you nightly on CNN, and speaking about yourself in the 3rd-person.
Wearing a shirt that says "Manny Played for Boston and All He Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt" is a good 3rd-person start but the smart play might be entering rehab without any addictions whatsoever. Now that's just plain Manny-sized crazy.
Tell the world you want to take twelve-extra steps even if it means battling normality one day at a time for the rest of your life. Repeat after me, "Dr. Phil, my name is Manny and I've been clean and sober my whole life..."
Fans... Don't bother spitting on them or giving them the finger Manny. They really don't care. They're at the game to be seen and not by you. They don't even know what the rules of baseball are. The average LA celebrity fan thinks you just scored a touchdown. So deal with it Manny. You're $7-million dollar window dressing to the stars.
Alyssa Milano... Forget about her Manny. Milano's hag city, the ultimate baseball groupie. She'll mount your head on a plaque above her fireplace faster than Tony Danza's talk show got canceled. Besides she's in her thirties which is like a kagillion in Hollywood years. It would be like French-kissing your Granny. Baseball... Fight the urge to use Paris Hilton as a bat, I know, I know, it would be funny hearing her squeak every time you foul one off but the press loves her and her pocket rat.
Skip over the smoldering wreckage of Boston selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees and you'll find a field of dreams littered with the stupidity of baseball's best and brightest as well as dumbest general managers. Sure things seldom are but for long suffering fans the baseball trading deadline is long on dead and short on the bottom line...some of these came in the off season but one thing's assured bad trades get better with age because fans, like elephants, never forget...
Fergie We hardly Knew Ye The Phillies trade history is spotty at best but who can forgive or forget the Phightin's swapping Hall of Famer Ferguson Jenkins, John Herrnstein and Adolfo Phillips for the Cubs Larry Jackson and Bob Buhl? I know it's hard to #### losing a player like Adolfo but Fly Jenkins 276 post-Phillies wins really put the lop in lopsided.
Trading Lefty wasn't a Wise Thing to Do The Cards sent HOF'er Steve "Lefty" Carlton packing after he asked for a $10,000 raise and got pitcher Rick Wise in return. Wise won 32 games over two seasons for those Redbirds while Lefty spent 15 seasons in Philly winning 241 games, four Cy Young's and a World Championship. The Cards didn't recover for a decade. Feel the burn.
Tom Terrific Sees Red How or why the Mets decided HOF'er Tom Seaver was only worth Pat Zachry, Doug Flynn, Steve Henderson, and Dan Norman eludes me. Seaver had plenty of pop left in his cannon winning another 122 games while Mets fans watched their new pigs-in-a-poke rack up a combined cup of coffee in the bigs. On a breezy summer night you can still smell this trade in Jersey City.
Forget the Babe What About Bags I'll give you Houston's 37-year old journeyman reliever Larry Andersen for 22-innings and three blown saves and you give me Double A 3rd-sacker Jeff Bagwell. Sounds crazy but once upon a time Bagpipes was a Red Sox and stuff happens. Bagwell, a four-time All Star, Rookie of the Year and NL MVP averaged .297, 174 hits, 34 HR's, and 115 RBI's over his15-year career with the Stro's. The next time the BoSox trade with Houston fans should riot.
I'll See Your Smoltz and Raise You an Alexander The Tigers made a deal with the devil for 36-year old pitcher Doyle Alexander who notched 29 wins for Detroit over 2&1/2 seasons. The Braves got 20-seasons out of Smoltz, a Cy Young winning, 5-time All Star who pitched in 24-post season series for the Tomahawk's through the 90's. Smoltz added insult to injury in this deal saving 154 games for the Braves making him the Swiss Army knife of pitchers. The Curse of Curt It's bad luck to trade Curt Schilling. The worst kind. First the Red Sox traded Schilling and Brady Anderson to the Orioles for pitcher Mike Boddicker who won 39 games over 2&1/2 seasons for the Sox. Three years later the O's shipped Schilling, Steve Finley and Pete Harnisch to the Stro's for Glenn Davis. Ouch. Davis fly-swatted 24 home runs over 2&1/2 seasons in Baltimore. Davis' hardest hit came in a bar where he broke his jaw on a guy's fist. The Stro's kept Schilling for 1-year getting 3 wins out of him before sending Schilling to Philly for Jason Grimsley, (who never pitched an inning for Houston). Curt won 101-games in Philly before they traded him to Arizona for a fistful of dreck, Omar Daal, Nelson Figueroa, Travis Lee, and Vicente Padilla. The Diamondbacks kept Schilling for 3&1/2 seasons and a World Series ring before trading Curt for Casey Fossum, Brandon Lyon, Jorge de la Rosa, and Michael Goss from the BoSox. Whatever Boston has in mind for Schilling, one thing is certain, don't trade him under any circumstances. The Great One, Clemente Last but not least isn't a trade but I can't kick the Dodgers long or hard enough for allowing the Pirates to take HOF'er Roberto Clemente in the Rule 5 Draft because they already filled their quota of Black players on the MLB roster. This shameful unwritten agreement among teams makes a mockery of MLB bragging about Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in 1947. No disrespect to HOF'er Robinson intended. Baseball didn't really integrate until the 1960's when teams dropped the quota and finally insisted all players deserved the same accommodations at Spring Training.
Shawn Chacon did what a lot of fans in Philly never got the chance to do. Grab Ed Wade by the throat, throw him to the ground and jump on him. The Houston Astros are doomed. The Ed Wade story proves in America you can grow up to be anything you want except maybe GM of a baseball team.
"So at that point I lost my cool and I grabbed him by the neck and threw him to the ground. I jumped on top of him…Words were exchanged."
Shawn made a mistake here plain and simple. Everybody knows its choke all the way and then drop the lifeless body in a septic tank or well. For that he should be suspended. You either do it right or don't do it at all at this level of professional sports.
In Philly Ed Wade was the genius that traded All Star Curt Schilling for Omar Daal and Travis Lee, All Star Scott Rolen for Turk Wendell, Bud Smith and future All Star Placido Polanco. Only Placido never became an All Star in Philly because Ed Wade, you guessed it, traded him for machete wielding, arsonist, murderer and sometime head case reliever Ugueth Urbina. He traded future All Star Johnny Estrada for Kevin Millwood who proceeded to stink up 1 out of 2 seasons.
"Spoljaric, could you use that in a sentence please?"
He signed Andy Ashby who distinguished himself giving Phillies fans the finger and followed three straight seasons of 14 wins in San Diego with 4 wins in Philly. Wade is baseball's equivalent of Motel Hell when it comes to pitching, his Philly roster of acquisitions reads like a who isn't of pitching; Paul Spoljaric, Bruce Chen, Chad Ogea, Robert Person, and Vicente Padilla. Gutless, heartless and soft were used so often in the sports section of the Daily News, Dairy Queen advertised its ice cream was tougher.
Because of Wade, 3rd sackist David Bell played 4 seasons past his expiration date hitting an anemic .243 while hopeless Phillies fans jumped off the 700 level in despair.
Why Houston hired him remains an utter mystery. Personally I wouldn't pencil him in any baseball job higher than peanut vendor because even though he might have to make change for a five dollar bill he doesn't have to open the shells. When 3rd Place is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow
During Ed Wade's 8-season death grip on 3rd-5th place in the NL East, the Astros made the playoffs a total of 6 out of 8 seasons. Last season without Wade the Phillies won the division.
Now Wade gets to Houston. He trades a shutdown closer, Brad Lidge (1-0, 18 saves, 0.87 era), for a banjo-hitting outfielder. Plus he's already doing to Houston's pitching staff what he perfected in Philly. We call it Eddie's patented panic move, when things go bad, blame a pitcher, a couple of bad starts and you're yo-yo'd into oblivion.
"He is suspended pending final resolution of whatever move we end up making with him…"
Which is where Shawn Chacon comes in or more accurately goes out. Wade pulled one of his legendary temper tantrums and finally met a brick wall most adult people do when they throw hissy fits with guys bigger than them. Houston loses a so-so pitcher by making Chacon walk the plank, but if they don't get rid of Wade they're going to get baseball's bubonic plague.
No Question About It
Fowl Line Bonus Feature
My good friend and Phillies fan, Don Z. Block is the poet laureate of the Brooklyn Dodgers, his take on Ed Wade's demise as the Phillies GM is rightfully one of the greatest pieces of baseball satire ever scribbled...here it is in its entirety.
I was there with Eddie when the bombs began to fall. We could hear the enemy outside using flamethrowers, and the air was filled with screams. Throughout the battle, little Eddie never stopped smiling. When it became clear that they would be breaking through the bunker door in a matter of minutes, Eddie called for his pet puffin, Charlie, patted it on top of its rather large gray head, and gave it a big, wet farewell kiss. By now we were all crying. Then Eddie slipped the bird some aspirin, and seconds later the creature exploded rather messily.
Eddie then asked us all to line up in a row so that he could shake our hands. When he came to me, I was so overcome that I could not look at him, but Eddie said, "Be brave, Paul. You were my finest acquisition. I will never forget how nobly you filled in for Randy. I want you to do me one last favor!" And he whispered in my ear what he wanted. I couldn't believe it.
Seconds later, I was toeing a mock piece of rubber in the bunker with the door behind me. At a mock plate stood Endy Chavez, a hitter with a reputation for always making contact. In my left hand, by the scruff of his neck, I held little Eddie Wade. I wound up and threw Eddie toward Endy. Endy took a mighty swing and finally made tremendous contact. Little Eddie went zooming towards the door on a straight line, and he lasered through it with a loud boom and a bright light--and then he disappeared.
We never saw him again. That night, the sky was filled with shooting stars--lots of them. And one of them, I am certain, was the Little Eddie.
The biggest, fastest, and possibly dumbest creature to roam the earth since dinosaurs is professional baseball and like dinosaurs baseball's inevitable extinction is just as predictable. What pushes a sport to the brink of doom? Let's examine how baseball illustrates a disturbing fact; the age of the sports dinosaur is drawing to a bitter and sudden close.
Baseball. Why did it resonate for so long? Why was it cherished for almost 150 years? Why does it seem so hollow and phony now? You have to go back to the beginning to see why the end of professional baseball is near.
Baseball isn't just the national pastime it is the national pastime and for good reason. Baseball was incubated in the civil war and afterwards became the panacea that healed a divided nation. Baseball was bigger in all aspects than we can imagine today, it held the promise of spring, the struggle of summer and the decay and finality of fall so perfectly in balance it's hard to imagine life without it.
The rhythms and pace are as perfect as the diamond it's played upon. It's the great equalizer. There is a profound truth to its demands. The ball, the bat, the glove, the dimensions immutably played across nine innings, three outs, and a box score that sings the game across time. Brandeis said, sports is truth because once it was reduced to a box score there were no interpretations, no gray areas just the game as it was played forever fixed in the amber of Linotype.
The earliest professional teams rose and fell like summer corn. The players an amalgam of college graduates, drunks, and shifty characters were every bit as dodgy as the grifters and con men that owned the clubs. There was no privilege between the lines that mattered save your baseball pedigree. It didn't matter that Rube Waddell was mad as a hatter and twice as childlike, on the mound he was un-hittable and just as likely to chase a fire engine, as he was to strike out the side. His manager, Connie Mack, for fear he would disappear on a bender, doled his salary out a few bucks at a time.
Race played no part in the beginning it wasn't until Hall of Famer Cap Anson, a de####able racist, led a cabal that drove Black players from the game in the late 1800's and then like a Shakespearian tragedy it took the man who saved baseball Judge Landis to maintain that prejudice until his death when Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson shattered that vile barrier six decades later. But don't get all misty-eyed.
The Negro League in its day was the 3rd largest black owned and operated business, and cornerstone of the Black community, their players were every bit the equal of any major league player. Robinson may have broken the barrier but the barrier fell directly on top of the Negro League. Nor were the Dodgers all that racially smart or advanced. To maintain a quota system that suppressed black players in the majors after Robinson and Larry Doby broke the color barrier they lost Roberto Clemente to the Pirates in the Rule 5 draft because they already had their quota filled on the Dodgers roster. But none of this is news to any real baseball fan.
Baseball stars in every era were considered family heirlooms passed on from father to son, each adding his own layer. It was a legacy and a trust. But all that began to change in the 1970's. It isn't fair to blame baseball for the changing environment of sports or even society. Nevertheless baseball withstood much change without the bedrock shifting. But like a Brontosaurus or a T-Rex seeing the meteor cross the sky that would kill them it didn't understand its time was over.
Baseball has spilled more ink than any other sport. It has a lyricism that attracts great writers to scribble great things. But suddenly newspapers faced their own extinction. Great dailies fell all across the country, as cable supplanted print media and now sports, once the favorite section of the daily paper, was a click away for an increasingly lazy and entertainment jaded public. Baseball a sport that thrived because it was the only affordable entertainment for the poor and middle class saw it's impact and place dwindle as the price of tickets pushed aside all but the deepest corporate pockets.
Family owned teams sold out to corporations who care only about the bottom line. Media companies bought teams for programming and chucked them into the hungry maw of 24-hour sports channels without understanding or caring about tradition. Baseball became another commodity measured in ratings. Like earth inverting underneath a flood ravaged dike, tradition washed and whirled away and by the time of the last real commissioner, Fay Vincent, the only thing owners cared about was whacking up billions in profits and everything else be damned.
Over expansion, fueled by a lust for the billions it brought current owners in entry fees, diluted the quality of the players, to compensate the mound was lowered until pitchers could barely pitch six injury free innings a game over an entire season even on 5 days rest. Under the greedy and clearly dumbest commissioner, Bud Selig, owner by proxy of the Milwaukee Brewers, major league baseball extorted new stadiums from taxpayers and then priced them out of attending. Attendance still rose as corporate box seats and the wealthy supplanted the dopes that paid for the stadium and ratings rose like a bubble until an unlikely pin, steroids, popped it.
Steroids are the genie let out of the bottle of real fan discontent. Players like Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds put a real face on a problem created, fostered and supported by MLB, owners, and teams. Baseball was all a lie. The thing we cherished and grew up with was gone. Replaced by a shimmering Vegas resort mirage. When fan outrage finally brick walled the mealy-mouthed Selig he tried to whitewash it with the Mitchell Report. But nobody was biting. With each new revelation, an ugly truth was left flopping and gasping for air like a fish made out of raw sewage.
Look at the baseball landscape today. There are only two teams, the Yankees and the Red Sox and $100 million dollars in salary behind them is every other team. Sure they don't win the World Series every season, but most. It isn't even a league it's like Batman and Superman fighting to the death with the rest of the Justice League happily sucking mocha lattes at a Starbucks.
The other teams are content to grab the TV cash and act as a feeder system. But the sport no longer resonates. It no longer captures the heart, mind and soul of our nation. There isn't a single player that isn't playing under the su####ion of performance enhancing drugs. Their personal lives are displayed like a colonoscopy so any hope of them ever being a hero to a small child is unlikely and finally when you do go to a ballpark, they fiscally rape you so hard it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Baseball should look at hockey and figure it out. Once a sport stops resonating, canceling a season or signing the wrong TV contract, makes it very easy for Americans to simply walk away. Right now baseball is kicking dirt over that cliff. Baseball will reap what it sows. Fans unfortunately inherit the wind.
Innocent until proven guilty might be the foundation of law in this country but Roger Clemens says screw the innocent, literally. Reports are circulating Clemens carried on a 10 year affair with troubled country music singer Mindy McCready from the time she was 15!
I tend to believe Roger, after all it's not like 28-year old married men with two kids would line up to have sex with a fifteen-year old girl if NBC's To Catch a Predator is any indication. Have a cookie Roger, Chris Hansen has a few questions he'd like to ask before you're wrassled to the lawn by a swarm of disgusted police.
Rusty Hardin, Clemens lawyer & utility apologista, confirmed the long-term relationship but denied Clemens got beyond 3rd base. He did not confirm whether Clemens would demand to testify in front of Congress about his bagging a fifteen-year old girl.
"He...had...kind of an inappropriate relationship with her," Hardin said. "He's considered her...close... He has...had a sexual relationship with her." (remarks edited for context, clarity and damning purpose)
This shocking 15th hour revelation strips the last Boy Scout vestiges from the reptile formerly known as Roger Clemens. Meanwhile the mouthpiece for former trainer Brian McNamee was going Daffy Duck on the corpse of Clemens reputation calling it another example of Clemens, "...pervasive prevarications." Where I come from we call it something far cruder.
McCready had a No. 1 single in 1996 with "Guys Do It All the Time." Apparently a thinly veiled reference to Clemens insatiable demands for tawdry sex. That's my opinion and it isn't based on any facts. Just the usual rush to judgment in a Jerry Springer Universe.
Hardin did not respond to my imaginary email which doesn't surprise me in the least. Meanwhile the HOF announced a new exhibit, "Would You Like Some Candy--the wit & wisdom of Roger Clemens" was canceled until further notice. Said exhibit curator Hastings Muggeridge-Swinburn, "It was an attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of Mr. Clemens but all of us wondered why he kept quoting Nabokov's Lolita..."
Whoever said life imitates sport was right on the money but what if real life held some of the answers for sports? A nonsensical notion at best but what if sports started paying attention to the unimportant world around it? Maybe it would look something like this... $20 million 'virtual' border fence scrapped The US Government is pitchforking $860 million taxpayer dollars into this boondoggle that makes the newly clothed emperor look naked yet smart. It's not a fence but a bunch of iPhones stapled to poles that pinpoint illegal aliens crossing our border and then take a pretty picture. While an "actual" fence is centuries-old proven technology costing 10% of the "virtual" fence, virtuality leapfrogs the whole fuddy-duddy fence as a physical barrier concept and replaces it with cutting edge stupidity. "Oops" the first $20 million dollars just got flushed down the drain... Sort of reminds you of the Detroit Tigers doesn't it? They built the best "virtual" baseball team in the off season for $130 million dollars and right now the 8-year, $152.3 million dollars they dumped down the Miguel Cabrera drain is looking all systems go. Swatting a very ordinary, .263 with 5 dingaroos, Fatty, as his teammates like to call him, waddled over to play 1st base after a grueling three-week stint at 3rd. Meanwhile Dontrelle Willis and his $7,000,000 salary are nestled safely on the DL with zero wins, just two-starts, a hyper-extended knee and a 7.20 ERA. Willis has all the fixin's o####iant floparoo of a season. After notching 9 wins out of twenty played the Tigers are tied with the dismal KC Royals who managed to spend a paltry $57 million dollars for the same result. It looked real good on paper. Israeli Airstrike Targeted Syrian Nuclear Reactor Despite being years away from completion and based on a photograph of a Syrian wearing a I Helped Build a Reactor at Al Kibar & All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt those wacky guys at the Israeli Defense Ministry bombed the snot bubbles out the Syrian site. Their policy of Love Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry is simple, bomb first and refuse to answer questions later. That same solution might be perfect for those New York Knicks, after a 2008 season where Isiah Thomas redefined imploding, coughing up millions for his #### lechery to childish squabbling with Stephon Marbury, he topped it all off with, Whoops there go all my real jobs. Winning 56 games over two years and losing 108 as coach Thomas is a certified triple threat, he stinks at being President, GM and Coach. He singlehandedly destroyed basketball as we know it in New York City. Kept on out of spite to wring a nickel's worth of value out of the money paid him, Isiah the Useless was peremptorily bombed by his successor Donnie Walsh the other day with the announcement Thomas is banned from having any contact with members of the team! While he doesn't have an office, desk, phone or chair Thomas can still speak to Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan, but only after saying "Donnie may I?" Walsh strafed the smoking rubble of Isiah Thomas' career in a recent interview saying, "He's answering to me and nobody's reporting to him." I wonder what the question is? Life and sports intertwine in ways so wacky you can't even make it up...
KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's ####es after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft... Purported victims claimed sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear...
We finally know why the Patriots lost the Super Bowl to the Giants...
The Phillies attempted to curse the New York Mets yesterday burying ace hurler Johan Santana behind a concession stand at Citizens Bank Ballpark. The Phillies took their cue from a construction worker who buried a David Ortiz Red Sox jersey, (dubbed Hex Shirt), in the new Yankee ballpark to curse the Yankees. The Phillies went one step further burying an actual player.
"I was eeting breakfasts burrito when banditos keecked ze door in and I was keednaps," commented a perplexed Santana before being buried under two-feet of Portland reinforced cement. Excited fans crowded around the site jostling for a better view as Phillies owner William "Cheap" Giles and General Manager Pat Gillick pressed their hand prints into the quick drying cement. Giles in a prepared statement said, "We hope this brings the Mets as much bad luck as possible while preserving the good natured rivalry we enjoy." Santana's reply was a cryptic, "Blurb, blurb, blurb."
Mets executives were understandably outraged. "We intend to file an immediate grievance with the Commissioner's Office we strongly condemn this practice and seek the return of our ace," said Farleigh "Skip" Mellon, Mets VP of Marketing. "Anytime you innovate there are bound to be fuddy duddy's who disagree," replied Ruben Amaro Jr. Phillies Asst. GM. Meanwhile MLB Commissioner Bud Selig fresh from his triumphant announcement reversing tepid punishments doled out during his steroid whitewash was reluctant to comment. "Can they do that?" Selig asked before being hustled away to attend the American Pharmaceutical Association Banquet where he is accepting an award for Lifetime Excellence in Promoting Pharmacopoeia in the Workplace.
In related news, United Local Building and Trades Council 903 threw up picket lines around the Santana burial site protesting the use of undocumented day laborers to dig the hole and pour the cement. Local President Faffy "####" Ionini had this to say, "The use of non-union scabs to construct this site is shocking as well as distressing on many levels." When asked if the Local would interfere with Santana being dug up at Selig's order Ionini replied between bulging mouthfuls of greasy cheese steak, "Who the @%#! is that @#&hole?"
Baseball is back and so is Slobbermetrics! For most of us baseball means the crack of a bat, the thud of a ball in a glove and shelling peanuts from our nosebleed seats. For another segment it's the thrill of brand new batteries for their calculators, polishing the ol' slide rule and new numbers to crunch. In an effort to bridge the widening gap between those who like slobbermetrics and those who hate it we offer an olive branch. It's Slobbermetrics Explained...here are some common acronyms and terms used by baseball statisticians with the math safely removed and buried in a landfill...
AVGPAP You start out with beer & salty snacks and the starter your team signed in the off season for $17 million dollars starts throwing batting practice to the other team. At first you mumble and mutter but by the second inning you're hurling epithets that are 20mph faster than the only strike he throws.
Collapse Rate When you combine your teams pitching and hitting in the stretch run the number of games left is 25% fewer than they need to even sniff the wild card.
EqA An exercise in denying no matter how you slice the cheese you still end up with a pile of cheese and three fewer crackers than needed.
ISO Not to be confused with the most common form of isometric exercise baseball fans contemplate; completing the full beer curl. This is the crux of a single isn't worth a tinker's damn to a slobbermetrician. MAXPAP The point at which your vocal cords shred when you realize that fat slob of a manager is too busy spitting sunflower seeds to notice his pitcher burst into flames two innings ago and the opposing team is going around the bases like a side show carousel horse.
MORP Are players on your team worth the hundreds of millions of dollars they make while you play an adult game called life that pays far less. It's named after Robin Williams breakthrough role on TV based on an outer space alien, see; MINDY.
NRA This explains our second amendment right to possess firearms and why it's important players are not allowed to carry on the field or they might cap Pythagoras in his baseball know-it-all ####.
OUT Not to be confused with unknown outs which are accounted for by scorers having to go to the bathroom or take an important cellphone call during the game. PAP Proves slobbermetricians do not easily forgive or forget. Once they sink their teeth into something they hang on until they're distracted by more interesting statistical anomalies.
Park Adjustment aka The Wrigley Effect where a power hitter who can't clear the warning track on your team would have hit 70 home runs if he played for the Cubs. Cubs fans get to believe if their warning track wonder played at Coors Field he would swat 80 a year easy.
Pythagenport If you do the math carefully you can understand the science necessary to build a working Stargate in your backyard using components easily found in your garage.
RARP This simply explains why the guy on every other team is so much better at everything than your favorite player on the Tampa Rays. It's also the most common noise made in a ballpark bathroom after you eat more than six green hot dogs. It turns out Dr. Seuss was very very wrong about green food. Stuff Stuff is borrowed from what we clutter our garage with. It is the amount of talent crammed into an opposing pitcher every damn time you drop $100 bucks to go to Taxpayer Field to see a game. See; Shutout.
Ugueto Effect This explains why the Yankees are so good every year and your team sucks. Not to be confused with the Urbina Effect which postulates your crazy Central American pitcher is 386 times more likely than his North American counterpart to set a man on fire and hack him to bits with a machete because he looked at his sister while she did the Macarena.
100 years isn't enough time to save the Cubs fans from a slow lingering death. The sad fact is the baseball gods exist and the Cubs are their favorite toy. Superstitious Cubs fans hope selling a box seat to a goat will improve their chance of reaching and winning a World Series but everybody knows it takes more than a lucky goat to make your dreams come true. While it might be fashionable to point out the Red Sox and even the White Sox managed to put their past behind them over the last couple of seasons, the truth is for Cubs fans the past will always be in their future. The Golden Age of Futility for the Cubs had to be 1929 to 1938, when they won the NL Pennant four times and came out of the World Series a sparkling 0-4...In 1929 leading the Philadelphia Athletics 3-0 in the Series and up by 3, Hack Wilson lost the ball in the sun, (apparently it was lost for quite some time because it resulted in a 3 run inside-the-park-homer), the Cubs gave up 10 runs in the seventh and eventually lost the series. In 1932, Babe called his shot and while controversy reigns to this day whether he did or not, the fact is the Cubs were swept in that series. By 1945 their last appearance in a World Series, the goat infamously cursed the North Siders and once again, Chicago, despite winning two out of three in Detroit and the last four games being held at Wrigley Field, lost. From 1947 to 1966 the Cubs had only two teams finish above .500, finally the Wrigley's opened the wallet and hired Leo Durocher who turned the Cubs into one the highest paid franchises in baseball. With Ron Santo, and Hall of Famer's like Ernie Banks, Ferguson Jenkins and Billy Williams, they managed back to back winning seasons in '67 & '68. But 1969 left no doubt where the Cubs were headed. Leading the division by 9&1/2 games in August a black cat ran around Ron Santo and stopped to stare at Leo in the dugout at a game in Shea Stadium--the message was clear, the Cubs would sleep with the fishies. The Cubs collapsed and the Mets went onto baseball history. The modern era of Cubs futility begins in 1984 when the Cubs true to form won the first two games of the NLCS beating the Padres by a combined score of 17-2. When the series shifted to Sand Diego the Cubs wilted, in game five they carried a 3-0 lead into the 6th frame when an error by first baseman Leon Durham cost the Cubs the game. Ironically the 1st baseman prior to Durham? Bill Buckner who was traded mid-season to the BoSox. In 1989 They made the NLCS again and despite splitting their 1st two home games and leading in the next three games they fell to the SF Giants. 1998 saw the Cubs beat the Giants in a one game tiebreaker for the privilege of getting swept by the Atlanta Braves. Then we move to the only proof you need, the 2003 NLCS series against the Florida Marlins. If the Cubs had even the slightest chance of getting to the World Series in this century it was dashed like a clam on the rocks. Prior and Wood dubbed Chicago Heat anchored a staff that had four pitchers win 13 games or more. The Cubs lost game one and swept the next three, only to get shut out in Game 5. With Prior and Wood set to start, Cubs fans breathed a sigh of relief. Over 100,000 Cubs fans piled into the stadium, neighborhood and bars surrounding Wrigley Field. Prior had a 3 run lead, when in the 8th inning, the gods of baseball started hurling lightning bolts. The infamous foul ball interference between Cubs fielder and fan Steve Bartman (Cubs fans are even cheated out of this outrage...this year Alou admitted in an interview he had no play on the ball), resulted in a walk, followed by a booted ball by the Cubs NL Fielding % leading SS, Alex Gonzalez, resulting in 8 runs in the 8th and victory. The Marlins took the NLCS and the Series the Cubs got Bartman. The Cubs made it to the NLDS last season but guess what? They lost. Their relievers turned into a pile of gasoline soaked rags and got torched. But that's the Cubs way. Where winning isn't everything, losing means so much more...
What does Hollywood know about sports movies? Instead of inspirational stories of white guys winning against all odds; we're stuck with Academy Award winning films whose titles sound even duller than the movie…Poppy twaddle, fiddle sticks, and balderdash. Here are some sports movies we'd like to see…. #### The League of Their Field of Dreams Slowly Starring: Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, Kevin Costner, Madonna, Spike Lee & Jack Black.
Buck Barkbutt (Tom Hanks) a down and out drunken baseball manager with a fatal disease finds Carla (Madonna) turning tricks under the center field bleachers and Lastings Spilledge (Jack Black) the minor league phenom fights aging veteran Mutt Mudder (Kevin Costner) for the starting catcher's job.
A freak fire caused by Barkbutt's Iron Lung short-circuits when Carla and Barkbutt are bumping uglies and burns the ballpark to cinders. Mean spirited owner Bennett Clay (Spike Lee), threatens to move the team to Oklahoma, Mudder sells his kidney to buy a cranberry bog to build a new baseball field. Spilledge swats .390 despite playing waist deep in cranberries so the team cuts Mudder who drowns himself playing one last game of pepper in the bog.
After Barkbutt accuses Carla, now the team cheerleader, of dosing him with #### she says, "Who cares? (gum crack) You're dying anyways ain't ya?" Carla gets hit by a foul ball and goes into an irreversible coma. The ghost of Satchel Paige (Bobby De Niro) pitches the pennant clinching game and gets shelled because his arm is as dead as he is. Spilledge has a complete nervous breakdown after the ghost of Mudder haunts him saying, "Swing batter, batter, batter, swing!" Clay sells the team and Barkbutt dies.
She had a heart of gold; he had an Iron Lung.
There are no happy endings in baseball The Longest Natural Hoosiers
Starring: Robert Redford, Adam Sandler, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper, Burt Reynolds, Eddie Albert, & Gene Hackman.
A rural high school basketball team in the 1950's wins the state title only to get sent to jail for point shaving. They meet Paul "Wrecking" Crewe (Burt Reynolds) who recruits them to play against the brutal prison guard team after the warden Rudolph "the Red-Nosed" Hazen (Eddie Albert), threatens to sell the high school team for a pack of unfiltered cigarettes.
The guards win the game outright 110-3 because they are ex-NFL stars and the entire basketball team weighs less than the guard's right defensive tackle. When Crewe tells the Warden to stick the ball in his trophy case the sadistic deputy warden (Adam Sandler), sics the hounds on Crewe who tear him limb from limb. Johnny Cash (Gene Hackman), puts on a prison concert and sings a song about a boy named Lou to a lukewarm reception.
Hazen then forces Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) to recruit the basketball team to play the prison guards in baseball. #### Yanker (Robert Duvall) is killed when the cheap Chinese black light bulb in Hobbs cell explodes after he goes in to get Hobbs lucky rabbit's foot (Wonderfoot).
The guards are all ex-MLB players and handily beat the basketball players. The game ends when Hobbs jacks one up and over the prison walls and that's the only baseball the prison has. Hobbs is shanked to death in the cafeteria because it took the prisoners almost fifty-years to save enough rubber, string and leather to make the last baseball. The Warden sells the basketball team for a pack of ciggies to a transvestite murderer serving life without parole, (Dennis Hopper). A storybook ending so preposterous you won't know whether to cheer or jeer!
Ex-ball player Barry Bonds hoping a typo will save him from the avalanche of evidence hanging over his head in a Federal perjury case offered this excuse why he can no longer be tried for being a big fat liar after prosecutors made a typo;
"As is always the case, many more prospective jurors will have read the original story than the retraction," wrote Dennis Riordan and Donald Horgan, two of Bonds' six attorneys in their 3rd Grade level appeal.
Where I come from it never takes six attorneys to cover up a lie unless of course it's a really big "stinks like a dead whale in a church" lie. Let's look at some other excuses Barry might use equally as absurd:
The sun was in my eyes...Solid baseball excuse but recent laser measurements taken by the Jet Propulsion Lab indicate the likelihood of light reaching Barry's pupils after he added 45 pounds of flab and muscle to his eyelids with steroids is 0.0000000000022% leaving that excuse in the dark.
It depends on what your definition of steroids is...Worked for Clinton, acknowledge the three hundred-pound #### of truth and then get a lot of body blows in on the weak third person singular present indicative of be. Disregarding everybody in the room obviously knowing the only definition of "is." This is a tricky defense because Go
The Mets season of great expectations included every twist and turn you could hope for, from a cement overcoat for Willie Randolph to Billy Wagner exploding like a knockoff Rolex during the playoff stretch for the second straight season. 
Jayson Stark, ESPN.com, East: Braves ...Peter Gammons, ESPN/ESPN Insider, East: Braves ...Jerry Crasnick, ESPN.com, East: Mets ...Buster Olney, ESPN The Magazine, East: Braves ...Tim Kurkjian, ESPN The Magazine, East: Mets ...Rob Neyer, ESPN Insider, East: Mets ...Steve Phillips, ESPN/ESPN Insider, East: Mets ...Keith Law, ESPN.com/Scouts Inc, East: Mets ...Eric Karabell, ESPN Fantasy, East: Phillies, ...Jorge Arangure Jr., ESPN The Magazine, East: Braves ...Amy Nelson, ESPN.com, East: Braves ...Pedro Gomez, ESPN, East: Braves ...Enrique Rojas, ESPNdeportes.com, East: Mets ...Peter Pascarelli, ESPN, East: Braves ...Bob Klapisch, ESPN.com contributor, East: Mets ...Jonah Keri, ESPN.com contributor, East: Mets ...John Shea, ESPN.com contributor, East: Mets ...Sean McAdam, ESPN.com contributor, East: Phillies, Nate Ravitz, ESPN Fantasy, East: Mets... 
Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins called an air strike in on his own foxhole complaining about Phillies fans booing players. While the mighty-mouth All Star takes aim at fans Rollins apparently forgets it's Phillies owners and management who failed to build one single pitching staff in the past eight-years capable of achieving his off-stated goal of winning a championship. When fans boo-Jimmy listens. Rollins isn't the first player to get his panties wadded by fans booing let's take a walk through that field of dreams I like to call, If Loving You is Wrong I Don't Want to be Right...
Manny's playing in the NL for LA and here's the DL...
Baseball is back and so is Slobbermetrics! For most of us baseball means the crack of a bat, the thud of a ball in a glove and shelling peanuts from our nosebleed seats. For another segment it's the thrill of brand new batteries for their calculators, polishing the ol' slide rule and new numbers to crunch. In an effort to bridge the widening gap between those who like slobbermetrics and those who hate it we offer an olive branch. It's Slobbermetrics Explained...here are some common acronyms and terms used by baseball statisticians with the math safely removed and buried in a landfill...
