Glavine And Thomas Call It A Career

Good morning Fackers. While we wait for Johnny Damon and Chien-Ming Wang to officially become former Yankees, two of my favorite non-Yankees of the past twenty years officially became former Major Leaguers over the past two days.

Despite not having played at the Major League level since 2008, neither Frank Thomas nor Tom Glavine had officially announced their retirement. That changed Thursday, as Glavine took an advisory job with the Braves, patching up whatever differences he had with the organization after they callously cut him during his rehab last year.

Later on Thursday, word broke that Frank Thomas, who last played with the A's in 2008, was calling it a career. The Big Hurt confirmed that at a Chicago press conference Friday morning, where the White Sox announced they would retire his number 35, a nice step following his acrimonious departure from the organization after the 2005 season and subsequent pissing match with GM Ken Williams.

Both Glavine and Thomas were excellent all-around athletes. Glavine's fondness for golf has been well documented and for a pitcher, he had some pretty good years with the bat, earning four Silver Slugger awards. He was also a very good hockey player, selected by the Los Angeles Kings in the fourth round of the 1984 NHL Draft, ahead of eventual Hall of Famers Luc Robtaille and Brett Hull.

Thomas, like Bo Jackson before him, was a two sport athlete at Auburn, doubling as a tight end on the Tigers football team before an injury derailed his football career. I, like Aaron Gleeman at Hardball Talk, and Joe Pawlikowski at RAB, was a fan of the Big Hurt despite him not playing for our favorite team. Joe went so far as to imagine what it would have been like had Thomas come up with the Yankees instead. Unfortunately, the closest we ever got to that was his turn as the unnamed rookie in Mr. Baseball, whose emergence prompted the Yankees to ship aging Jack Elliot off to the Land of the Rising Sun.

Both Glavine and Thomas were active off the field as well. Glavine has long been an important and involved member of the Players Association and was one of their central figures in the '94 strike. Thomas was perhaps the most outspoken player when it came to the issues of performance enhancing drugs in baseball, was one of the few witnesses not to embarrass himself at the 2005 Congressional Hearings, and was the only active player to willing cooperate with the Mitchell Report investigation.

But above all, what both will be remembered for is being one of the premier pitchers and premier hitters of the 1990s. Both should be part of what promises to be an outstanding 2014 Hall of Fame class.

The Latest On David Cone

Good morning, Fackers. One of the off the field storylines we've followed pretty closely this offseason has been David Cone's departure from YES. First it was rumored he was leaving the network after a dispute with management, then he actually did leave but said it was in order to spend more time with his family.

Yesterday, Joel Sherman offered up his understanding of the situation on his 3UP blog, and it runs contrary to what Richard Sandomir wrote in the Times when Cone's departure was official:

I continue to hear that Cone’s departure after one season in the booth for YES was hardly pleasant. He had a personality conflict with one executive in particular, feeling this executive was intrusive and disrespectful all year. However, there were two incidents, in particular, that made Cone flip out.

Early in the season, with the Yankees struggling, Cone remarked on the air that if the Yankees did not start performing better than they could fall out of the race. The YES executive told the broadcasters that this remark aggravated Hank Steinbrenner and needed to be avoided in the future (so much for a firewall between the team and what is said on the air). Cone felt this was a true statement – and rather innocuous – and should not have been discussed.

It it wasn't already blindingly apparent why Hal is running the team and not Hank, it should be now. Really, Hank? Trying to censor the broadcasters over something that trivial? Unacceptable. Go outside, smoke a couple Marlboro Reds in a row and try to regain your composure before we send you back to the fucking horse farm.

Late in the season, Cone remarked that one of the important, behind-the-scenes workers involved in daily coverage of the Yankees was a free agent at the end of the year. This made the top YES executive flip out because the plan was not to retain this particular employee. Cone was confronted by the YES executive and there was a heated exchange during which Cone explained that he had made a lot of money playing (nearly $67 million) and took the YES job as a way to get back into baseball, but that he would not take such verbal abuse from anyone because he did not need the job. At that point it became apparent that Cone would not be back in 2010.

Obviously, Cone has a point here. He's not in it for the money and this mystery executive should take that into account when interacting with him. You might be able to lean on John Flaherty or Bob Lorenz because they are thrilled to have their jobs and probably could use the money, but you can't strong arm a guy who is there purely by choice. Admittedly, Cone didn't have to react so obstinately, but I can't help but side with him in both scenarios.

Guess who loses in all of this? The fans, of course. Sherman believes that the end result of this will likely be Tino Martinez being in the booth for 40 games in 2010. If he's anything like he was in his on short stint on Baseball Tonight - awkward and rigid - then color me less than excited.

As for Cone, the Post also indicates that he could play a role in the upcoming CBA negotiations. He has a history of being very influential in his time in the Players Association and a deep knowledge of the issues that will be on the table.

So maybe this is a blessing in disguise. We won't get many FanGraphs references this coming year (unless someone teaches Michael Kay how to use a computer) but it might free up Cone to help out with the labor situation and affect some real positive change in the game.

Welcome To Club 103, Fellas

Back when the news of Manny's positive test in 2003 came to the forefront, I asked "why couldn't it have been Ortiz?", but I must admit that this isn't nearly as satisfying as I thought it would be.

Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, the sluggers who propelled the Boston Red Sox to end an 86-year World Series championship drought and to capture another title three years later, were among the roughly 100 Major League Baseball players to test positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003, according to lawyers with knowledge of the results.

First of all, thanks to the lawyers (Yankee fans, presumably) who chose two leak these two (and only these two) names out of the 98 or so that were still under wraps. If only the guy who conducted the Mitchell Report had any connections within the Red Sox organization, you might not have had to risk being held in contempt of court!

I think we can cast aside the notion that Manny's most recent test was an isolated incident. In light of this new information, given how steady his career numbers have been, it's hard to imagine when he was clean. With Ortiz on the other hand, his transition from Minnesota to Boston (in 2003) draws a pretty clear line. Whatever. Here's the fun part....

Hey David, are you ready to taste your own medicine and take a voluntary one year suspension?

"I would suggest everybody get tested, not random, everybody," he said. "You go team by team. You test everybody three, four times a year and that's about it."

And if a player tests positive for steroids?

"Ban 'em for the whole year," the slugger said.

Oops.

Objectively speaking, there is something pretty despicable about the fact that these guys were told the tests would remain anonymous, and now, one or two at a time they are leaking out like death by 1,000 papercuts. It's not fair, but like Omar Minaya would say, you can't put the cat back in the bottle.

The moral of today's news isn't that the Red Sox Championship is tainted, it's that we now understand the entire sport to be slightly more dirty than we previously assumed. It's not a good thing for the sport to have the accomplishments of the best players of an era systematically knocked down one by one. It's not going to be fun to look back in 10 or 15 years, when what timeframe actually defined the "steroids era" begins to crystalize, and realize that very few of the remarkable accomplishments we saw were as they seemed at the time.

Let's move on.