Thoughts On Washington

Legend says that when George Washington was a boy, he chopped down a cherry tree. Papa Washington wasn't too happy to find a felled cherry tree on his land and when he asked little Georgie about it, our founding father sang like a canary. The moral of the legend is that George Washington couldn't tell a lie.

Ron Washington, on the other hand, can tell a lie. At least I think so. Because I can't conceive of a remotely plausible scenario in which a fifty seven year old man decides to try cocaine for the first time in his life. And, according to Washington's explanation, that's exactly what happened last year, leading to his much ballyhooed positive test.

Yet, as Craig Calcaterra pointed out earlier this week, Major League Baseball had a very extensive cocaine problem in the late seventies and early eighties, with the Kansas City Royals being one of the most deeply involved teams. Washington came up through the Royals system in the early seventies. This doesn't make Washington guilty by association, but it does make it very likely that he faced far greater access and temptations during his impressionable youth than he did as grizzled baseball lifer some time last year.

Virtually every Washington story that's filtered through my Google Reader over the past several days has centered on the question of how big of a deal is this? Unscientifically, the majority of what I've read (or my memory of it at least) posits that it's not a very big deal.

I don't want to play the morality police here, but I think this kind of is a big deal. Yes, Washington is a grown man. Yes, he is more than free to make his own decisions. But decisions have consequences, and right or wrong, Washington's decision was in violation of the law and was in violation of his contract with his employer. If I'm Nolan Ryan or Jon Daniels, I'd want to think long and hard about whether Ron Washington is the guy I want running my team.

That isn't to say that Washington doesn't deserve a second chance or that what he did was terribly wrong in the first place. But as I said above, I'm having a hard time believing that this was one time incident. If Washington endeavors to take a risk like that from time to time, I don't know that I want him calling the shots for my club. Managers have very little impact on what happens between the lines anyway, so unless Washington is some sort of managerial genius, why take the risk of continuing to have him steer the ship? Washington is a guy who was within a hair's breadth of getting fired in 2008 anyway.

That said, this all should really be a dead issue at this point. According to his statement to the press Wednesday, Washington offered his resignation when the positive test came in last year. Ryan and Daniels allegedly weighed the situation, decided to keep Washington, and were fully supportive of him as he went through and completed MLB's treatment program. All parties should be commended for their actions as far as all of that is concerned.

So why then is this a story some eight months or so after it happened? If you want to believe one of the more salacious rumors out there, it's because a disgruntled former Rangers employee was trying to blackmail the team and subsequently leaked the story when his demands were not met. If true, it would mark the first time ever that Jon Heyman got a scoop leaked from someone other than Scott Boras.

And I think that is what bothers me most about this whole situation. Far beyond the morality play unfolding, here is yet another instance of where a drug test - essentially a medical record - which is both collectively bargained and federally mandated to be kept confidential, has been leaked to the press for character assassination purposes. Just as it was in the BALCO trial with Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, and Gary Sheffield. And just as it was with the 2003 survey testing that has seen Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz, and others called before the court of public opinion.

No matter which side you're on as it relates to steroids, or cocaine for that matter, I think everyone should be a little uneasy that these stories are made public because someone leaked information that was supposed to be confidential. And I think everyone should be particularly uneasy when that someone, as in the BALCO and Club 103 situations, is about ninety nine percent certain to be a Federal Agent.

And with that, I'm going to double check my income tax filing and make sure everything is in order. Enjoy the weekend Fackers. Who knew managers were subjected to drug testing?

13 Days Until Spring Training: Alex Rodriguez

A year ago today, the biggest PR problem Alex Rodriguez had was his portrayal in Joe Torre's book. At the time, The Yankee Years painted A-Rod as a preening, narcissistic phony who was universally disliked by his teammates. There wasn't much in the book that hadn't been written in the tabloids already, but it was different to hear the rumors of A-Fraud confirmed by his former manager.

It might have been unpleasant for A-Rod to deal with the negative press, but there a revelation far more detrimental to his reputation bubbling just beneath the surface. Over the next few days of 2009, Selena Roberts would confront A-Rod with the knowledge that he failed a steroid test back in 2003 and eventually report it to the world. It made what Joe Torre wrote in his book seem like a mild inconvenience.

Thankfully, A-Rod admitted his steroid use right away, but the backlash began to snowball after his interview with Peter Gammons and got even more ugly following his press conference in Tampa. He added still more fuel to the fire when he left the park during Spring Training with his disgraced cousin, was pictured kissing a mirror in a Details magazine photo shoot and was outed in the Daily News for being involved in a relationship with the madame of a whorehouse.

Those events were really just bad P.R. and weren't going to have much of an impact on his on-field production. But then came the news of his hip injury and the impending surgery which ultimately cost him the first month of the season. What was already a disastrous offseason got tangibly, inarguably, a whole lot worse. At least it seemed pretty terrible at the time.

But at a certain point when he was hiding out and rehabbing in Colorado, things started to change. The details of Selena Roberts's book began to leak and some had the potential to be very damning, but the tide began to turn. Craig from Shysterball was among the first to question the motives and level of objectivity Roberts used in writing her exposé and fairly swiftly, we all grew tired of the never ending stream of A-Rod's exploits.

Then of course he rejoined the team in a moment a movie studio would have rejected because it was too unrealistic; a three run shot on the very first pitch he saw. Although he struggled early on in his return, the back to back days off he got off in Florida seemed to turn his season around.

After his return the Yankees went 88-44 and climbed from 4.5 games behind the Red Sox to achieve the best record in baseball by 6 games. After his two day hiatus in Miami, they were 62-28. He was probably given too much credit for turning Mark Teixeira's season around, but it's hard to understate the importance of swapping replacement-level guys like Angel Berroa and Cody Ransom for one of the 5 best hitters in the game.

We heard a lot about the fact that A-Rod flew under the radar last year. In October, Joel Sherman talked about his newfound ability to blend in with the team. At the conclusion of the season, Marc Carig dubbed him the "Quietest Yankee". Even the notorious PeteAbe, who has never been too fond of the slugger, gave him credit for his ability to "blend in and stay out of the news".

Most importantly, though, A-Rod finally broke out with a monstrous playoff run. He hit a series-changing home run off of Joe Nathan in Game 2 of the ALDS along with a game-tying dinger off of Carl Pavano in Game 3.

He raked .429/.567/.952 against the Angels in the ALCS, including a crucial game-tying shot against Brain Fuentes in the 11th inning of Game 2 on an 0-2 pitch with Freddy Guzman, Brett Gardner and the struggling Robinson Cano waiting behind him.

A-Rod's line of .250/.423/.560 in the Fall Classic wasn't as gaudy as either of the previous series but he came up with huge hit after huge hit. A two run shot off of Cole Hamels in Game 3. The go-ahead double off of Brad Lidge in Game 4. He also scored two runs in the clinching Game 6.

Do you think that if you traveled back one year in time and told A-Rod that he would be outed as a steroid user, have his name splashed throughout the tabloids, have seriuos hip surgery and inadvertently grope a female police officer but would somehow come out better for it on the other side a year later, that he would have believed you? I personally still find it hard to believe now.

Re: Yesterday

There was a lot of interesting discussion here and at Joe Posnanski's blog about Mark McGwire and A-Rod yesterday and since I was away from my computer for the better part of it, I wanted to address a couple of things before we move on.

First, thanks to Joe for responding my post. He's truly one of the good guys - humble and self-effacing in an business whose most successful participants are usually sorely lacking in both traits. There aren't very many writers who would take the time to answer criticism like that and do so with without taking it personally. People say "agree to disagree" often, but it's not easy to concede a point. Especially to someone you don't know over the internet.

While both Craig and Joe used the term "double standard" as a way to describe the difference between Joe's reaction to the two interviews, that was a length I purposely didn't go to in the post. I made sure to mention that I was taking him out of context before I compared the two quotes. Like commenter NaOH, I don't think it makes him hypocritical or duplicitous to have somewhat contradictory reactions to two things I thought were fairly similar. Joe thought they were quite different, which is totally understandable.

Life isn't neat and tidy. There is a whole lot of gray area, particularly when it comes to steroids in sports. People are distributed throughout the continuum in their opinions about how much PEDs help players and how much using them is a violation of the game. And each individual player carries their own set of circumstances. These issues all operate on sliding scales, not on/off switches.

As writers, we try hard to make points and gravitate towards unequivocal terms in doing so. Readers don't want to waste their time reading wishy-washy opinions and writers don't generally waste their time typing up their thoughts on issues that they don't feel strongly about. As a result, there are bound to be any number of contradictions in a person's body of work over the course of time. If anyone cared enough to rummage through my archives, I'm sure there would be plenty of them there as well.

Consistency is largely overrated. The world is in a constant state of flux and while it's popular for politicians to rip each other for waffling, I think we are all better off trying looking at each situation as inherently different instead of assuming everything fits into the same rubric.

The Man Responds

Joe Posnanski took the time to address my previous post about A-Rod & McGwire. Like everything else he writes, it's worth reading.

I Know That Face: McGwire, A-Rod and Posnanski

I didn't really want to talk about this subject, but for some odd reason, I've been thinking a lot about Mark McGwire over the past two days. The reason of course is obvious, but it's odd because I've never really cared much about McGwire before Monday. When you say "baseball" and "1998" the first thing that comes to mind is the unstoppable version of the Yankees that won 114 games and the World Series. I never really cared that Big Mac took steroids, but I still consider the single season home run record to be 61 (although Maris' 1961 campaign obviously comes with its own set of caveats). Basically, I was fairly indifferent about the guy and still am about steroid use in general.

But then I read the part of his statement where he said "wished he never played during the steroid era" and quickly realized this wasn't going to be an actual apology. Then I watched the interview with Bob Costas on Monday night and listened to McGwire refuse to acknowledge that there might be some connection between him taking steroids and hitting lots of home runs and I grew more disenchanted. My first mistake was expecting a real apology in the first place. My second mistake was watching the interview.

At that point I was ensnared in the story. I read reaction after reaction yesterday, some echoing the disapproval Tom Verducci and Ken Rosenthal showed on the MLB Network after the interview and some questioning why McGwire's apology wasn't good enough for us. Even those who claimed not to care were adamant in their apathy.

While no one was particularly surprised by McGwire's admission, the story still got huge and reached a point of ridiculous oversaturation. Basically everyone with a voice in the baseball media offered their opinion and there were responses to the interview and also retorts to those responses.

Well, here I am with a rebuttal to a retort to the responses. When you are a media bottom feeder like myself and you wait 36 hours to give your opinion on a story like this, all that's left is the backwash of the backlash. So here goes nothing...

If you don't read Joe Posnanski's blog, you are truly missing out. If there was a sports writers draft tomorrow, he would be snatched up with the first pick. He weaves together disparate topics with ease and makes seemingly uninteresting things worth reading about. His posts are long and nuanced and are meant to be read in full, but I'm going to blockquote him here (and take him out of context) to make a point.

From his reaction to the McGwire interview (or more accurately, his reaction to other's reactions):

I didn't agree with or even follow everything McGwire said, but I never thought that was the point. I never thought apologizing was an Olympic sport with stoned-faced people judging how straight his toes were pointed and if he made too big a splash. McGwire is not a public speaker. He's not a philosopher. He's not a politician. He is not even an especially open person. He is a guy who dedicated his life to hitting baseballs hard. Expecting him to become Hamlet doesn't seem fair.

This is a valid viewpoint. I happen to disagree, but two people can watch the same lengthy interview and come away with completely different perceptions of what just took place. There's a lot of wiggle room in 54 minutes of two-way conversation.

But look at Posnanski's reaction to A-Rod's interview with Peter Gammons last year:

I thought Alex Rodriguez’s ”apology“ was one of the most absurd shams of recent memory. I thought it was so pathetic that, for the first time, that ”A-Fraud“ moniker finally made some sense to me. As a baseball fan, I wasn’t mad at A-Rod when the steroid story broke. As a baseball fan, I was furious at A-Rod when he and his handlers put together this infomercial apology.

To me that sounds like Joe judging A-Rod's apology, something that "wasn't the point" when it was McGwire's turn in the hot seat. Again, there is a lot of room for interpretation and there are significant differences between the two situations and subsequent interviews (namely the interviewer), but it's hard to reconcile those two statements.

Both of these guys had handlers and given the attention that they were bound to garner by admitting to using steroids, they should have. The biggest difference was that McGwire's team had a month to orchestrate his PR offensive while A-Rod found out that he was going to have to face the music three days prior while he was running on a treadmill and confronted by Selena Roberts.

Poz goes on to suggest (about A-Rod):

That this is a PR campaign ordered up by a very rich man who got caught and the only goal was to admit as little as humanly possible and make excuses for the little he does admit.

McGwire didn't get caught, but the only reason that he's admitting this now is that he wants to be the hitting coach for the Cardinals and he knows he has to pay his pound of flesh to the media and get this out of the way now. But his PR campaign was far more calculated than A-Rod's was and similarly unbelievable.

If you're Mark McGwire, you don't pay the big bucks to a "crisis-communications company" to tell the whole truth. You hire them to conveniently confine your steroid usage to the smallest believable window, and claim you used them only to recover from injuries. You flatly deny Jose Canseco's account because he still doesn't have any real credibility despite the fact that most of the stuff he said was true. You say that you only used steroids in "very, very low dosage". You don't acknowledge that they might have made you a superhuman home run machine, because that would be cheating, you see? You just took them to get back to where you were. Heck, talk about the "backspin" you put on the ball and act like you unlocked some key to hitting. You're going to be a hitting coach after all!

When you hire a crisis-communications company, they feed you lines like "walking M*A*S*H unit" that you repeat over and over again. They find a way to spin your bungled appearance in front of congress in 2005 so it looks like it wasn't your fault. They make sure you don't incriminate your former coach and future boss by saying he had knowledge of your steroid use. They remind you to say that you "wish you never played in the steroid era". Because like A-Rod being naive and trying to live up to the expectations of a giant contract in Texas, you were a victim of circumstance - an injury-plagued slugger who just happened to play in the steroid era.

I don't like being lied to. I don't appreciate the fact that, not only does Mark McGwire think that he was a better home run hitter than Babe Ruth because of his "God-given ability", but that he is also smarter than everyone else and thinks he can pass off a partial admission because he hired a company to calculate exactly how much he had to admit.

The problem is that a story gets this big, and the mainstream media reaction becomes the villian. Everyone needs a take and no one wants to hear you repeat what Tom Verducci said 10 seconds after the interview concluded.

The one common thread between Posnanski's take on McGwire and A-Rod is that he says that he's shocked that he disagrees with everyone's else's reaction in both. I don't find that surprising at all. I think the best writers make a living on the opposite end of the spectrum (our pal Craig Calcaterra comes to mind). Not to say that they don't believe their own opinions, but the guys I most enjoy reading typically come down diametrically opposed to the majority reaction when a story like this breaks. They are good at finding something about conventional wisdom to disagree with and that makes their opinion interesting to read.

Well this time, I think the original consensus was right. I think McGwire's "admission" was, in many ways, just as bad as A-Rod's. I'm not willing to believe that he really took steroids just to get healthy and I think deep down he knows that they made him better.

If you grant that the truth lies between what Jose Canseco said and what McGwire did, well McGwire's lying because he said there was "absolutely no truth to that whatsoever". And what good is an apology if you're not going to tell the truth? Besides, I wasn't asking for an apology anyway. McGwire did this for himself. Which shouldn't be a surprise, because if he was doing it for everyone else, it would have happened years ago.

Sherman Takes His Act To The Big Stage

That's right folks, ol' Joel actually turned his incoherent blog post about A-Rod deserving the Sportsman of the Year award into a column for the Post. It's worded differently, and amazingly, it might make even less sense. He continues his character assassination of Tiger Woods despite any real evidence of wrongdoing and even asks "What's next for Jeter? An Oscar? An Emmy? The Nobel Peace Prize?"

This is a bullshit topic (which is why I'm burying this post at 7:00AM) but Sherman has re-invented his article so I'm re-tooling my takedown. Here are two points Sherman makes (among countless other ones I take issue with) that do a fair job of summing up his argument:

• This feels like lifetime achievement.
  
  
• And Rodriguez should win this award. He embodies where sports are now. He is the intersection of illegal performance enhancers, advancements in sports medicine, celebrity and on-field genius.

He takes issue with the notion that Jeter is winning it because of lifetime achievement but thinks that A-Rod should win it because he "embodies where sports are now". I fear he may be taking the word "Sportsman" a bit too literally.

The Sportsman of the Year award is a pretty arbitrary award given out for a certain mix of on and off-the-field achievements. There is no concrete mold into which the winner always fits, but I think it makes a whole lot more sense to give it to someone who has always represented a high level of class and character (not to mention success in competition) over someone who has been a notorious preening egomaniac in the year he was forced to admit that he did steroids.

Is that fact that he ceased to be a complete trainwreck remarkable in some ways? Yes. Does that make him deserving of any sort of award? Absolutely not.

Fack Youk Exclusive: A Conspiracy

Good morning Fackers. As Jay mentioned late yesterday afternoon, both he and I were too occupied to tend shop and shuttered a little earlier than usual. What he didn't tell you was that we were busy as part of a major emergency investigation undertaken by the Fack Youk Investigative Report Team.

As you may be aware, Fack Youk has been involved in a bit of a blogowar with a certain Angels' blog whom I refuse to name or link to any longer given the sheer amount of garbage they've spewed over the past week. It began when they tried to go all FJM-style on the Bobby Abreu post I authored last week. I don't usually make a habit of reading blogs dedicated to other teams, but when Jay received a Google alert that my post had been linked to there, I went over to defend my viewpoints as rationally and politely as I could. And that in and of itself wasn't too bad. There was a decent discourse in the comments, nothing got too inane, and things remained relatively friendly.

With them now on my radar and the ALCS underway, I checked back occasionally. And that's when the general IQ level started swirling down the tubes. Yesterday, they unearthed the gem that they had "pretty conclusive evidence" that the secret to Mariano Rivera's success over the past decade and a half was that he was throwing spitballs. Nevermind that spitballs either move erratically or down and that Mariano's cutter moves from his right-to-left. Nevermind that Rivera has spent the past 14 full Big League seasons playing in the planet's biggest media market with dozens upon dozens of his games being aired on national television. In one fell swoop, with a little help from a DVR, these witty gumshoes had uncovered the equivalent of the Zapruder Film spliced with video evidence of Big Foot banging the Loch Ness Monster.

If that weren't enough, as proof that a few idiots crying out in the wilderness really can change the world, the grass roots conspiracy theory grew to the point that MLB actually launched an investigation. The MLB investigation, and a modicum of diligence from a far more rational Angels fan, exonerated Rivera.

Apparently not satisfied that they had their fifteen minutes of fame without becoming the laughingstock of the baseball blogosphere, the site began questioning the expedience with which Rivera was cleared, suggesting that it was a bit fishy and reminding everyone that it took MLB "over a decade" to get to the bottom of steroids, which by the way, everyone who has ever played for the Yankees takes.

Quite a day there for our left coast friends. Not content to sit back and enjoy the likely 50,000 plus page views their responsible and well-thought-out accusations earned them, they came back for an encore yesterday, focusing on three atrocious calls in Game Four, one of which actually benefited the Angels and none of which had any impact on scoring. But see, that's all part of the conspiracy.

What conspiracy you ask? Oh, you poor gullible reader. The joint conspiracy amongst MLB, FOX, and the World Umpires Association to ensure that the Yankees receive favorable calls in order to place the ginormous New York media market in the World Series thereby securing a ratings bonanza. Plus it would keep small-town greater Los Angeles and its tiny metropolitan area of dozens of residents out of the Fall Classic where Bingo Night or a seasonal bobbing for apples contest could single-handedly kill the World Series ratings.

Got all that? Oh, I know what you're going to say: "The umpiring has been horrible all post-season. It's been the single biggest story line all through the playoffs". Well of course it has you nitwit. They couldn't make it obvious; then any moron could have figured it out. They had to disguise it so that only the internet's brightest minds/Angels bloggers could just barely uncover the plot. Look, everyone knew the Yankees were going to get by the Twins, it was when they got to their arch-nemesis, the Angels, who have absolutely pwned the Yanks over the past ten years, that they would need help. So by decree of MLB/FOX/WUA, umpires began intentionally blowing calls throughout the Division Series in order to make it more believable when they started throwing things the Yankees' way in the ALCS. That's why the Angels got the benefit of three blown calls in Game One of the ALDS against the Red Sox; it makes it all the more believable that they're not getting screwed now.

As Yankee fans, of course Jay and I have mixed emotions about corroborating all this shocking news. But the truth will set you free and we want to hold ourselves to a high moral standard rather than be handicapped by blind loyalty to the juiced up cheating Yankees. That's why we took the afternoon off yesterday, to partake in a daring mission to capture the security tapes of the headquarters at said Angels blog. That way we could prove to the world that they did in fact have airtight evidence that all their claims were true. Unfortunately, MLB/FOX/WUA/CIA operatives arrived just as we were about to make our getaway, recapturing the security footage from us in an effort to leave the entirety of the baseball loving public in blissful ignorance.

But we are undeterred. We turned to the Fack Youk Artistic Reconstruction Team, a crack assemblage of disgraced former police sketch artists and art school dropouts and had them reconstruct what we had seen at the Angel blog fortress of solitude. The reconstruction is below. Prepare to have your minds blown:



See how reeediculous all this sounds? So in honor of the folks over at the Blog That Shall Not Be Named, here's a video starring A-Rod's girlfriend's ex-husband:

A-Rod's Turbulent But Taciturn 2009

Good morning, Fackers. The Yankees and A-Rod in particular closed out the regular season with a bang yesterday.

This year will be remembered for a lot of things done by individual players. The debuts of CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira and A.J. Burnett, the emergence of Nick Swisher, the defensive re-invention of Derek Jeter, Robinson Cano's rebound, Jorge Posada's ability to contribute despite his shoulder and hamstring injuries, Johnny Damon's power surge, Chien Ming Wang's fall from grace, Phil Hughes' transition to the bullpen, Brett Gardner's first season in The Bigs, Mariano Rivera's continued excellence, Joba Chamberlain's innings limit, and the swan song of Hideki Matsui.

Am I missing anything? Oh yeah, A-Rod.

A-Rod endured what was certainly the most tumultuous offseason a player has had since Game of Shadows essentially convicted Barry Bonds of doing steroids in the court of public opinion before the 2006 season to have a pretty damn good year in 2009.

It started with Joe Torre's book, exploded with his admissions of steroid use, got worse with his interview with Peter Gammons and even more ugly with his press conference in Tampa. Adding still more fuel to the fire was the time he left the park with his disgraced cousin, the Details magazine photo shoot and the revelations that he was involved in a relationship with the madame of a whorehouse.

Those events were really just bad P.R. and weren't going to have much of an impact on his on-field production. Then came the news of his hip injury and the impending surgery which ultimately cost him the first month of the season. What was already a disastrous offseason got tangibly, inarguably a whole lot worse. At least it seemed pretty terrible at the time. (Click through that one for one of my finer photoshops)

But at a certain point when he was hiding out and rehabbing in Colorado, things started to change. The details of Selena Roberts's book began to leak and some had the potential to be very damning, but the tide began to turn. Craig from Shysterball was among the first to question the motives and level of objectivity Roberts used in writing her exposé and fairly swiftly, we all grew tired of the never ending stream of A-Rod's exploits.

Then of course he rejoined the team in a moment a movie studio would have rejected because it was too unrealistic; a three run shot on the very first pitch he saw. Although he struggled early on in his return, the back to back days off he got off in Florida seemed to turn his season around.

Since his return the Yankees went 88-44 and climbed from 4.5 games behind the Red Sox to achieve the best record in baseball by 6 games. Since his two day hiatus they are 62-28. He was probably given too much credit for turning Mark Teixeira's season around, but it's hard to understate the importance of swapping replacement-level guys like Angel Berroa and Cody Ransom for one of the 5 best hitters in the game.

We've heard a lot about the fact that A-Rod has flown under the radar this year. Joel Sherman recently talked about his newfound ability to blend in with the team. Yesterday, Marc Carig dubbed him the "Quietest Yankee". Even our pal PeteAbe, who has never been too fond of the slugger, gave him credit for his ability to "blend in [and] stay out of the news".

Did anyone see this coming? I'll be the first to admit that I did not. One the posts I wrote before the season started and liked above was entitled "This Is Never Going To End" and another was "Hurricane A-Rod". I put up another one comparing him to an actual Albatross. At the time it looked like he was spiraling out of control and I think we should be very thankful that he did not.

It's not just that he eclipsed the 30 home run and 100 RBI marks for the 13th straight season, miraculously breaking a record he previously shared with Jimmie Foxx and Manny Ramirez. A-Rod actually had a higher on-base percentage than in 2008 despite batting 16 points lower. He changed his approach at the plate and as a result struck out in 18.2% of his plate appearances, down from 19.6% in 2008.

Fifty-one of his 100 RBIs tied the game or gave the Yankees the lead (although that didn't stop a certain insufferably bitter Yankee blogger who didn't even watch yesterday's game from dismissing the homers because they came in "garbage time"). He stole 14 bases and got caught only twice. He gave the Yankees more production than they could have reasonably expected given the injury he was coming off of.

I'm not going to fall into the trap of saying any of this makes him more likely to have a great postseason. I thought his ridiculous MVP campaign in 2007 set him up to break out of his October slump but it most definitely did not. The reality is that a 5 game series is a tiny, tiny sample and there is no guarantee that he will get the big hit or hits that he is seemingly due for.

I'm sure as hell hoping it happens, though. A-Rod is a power hitter with holes in his swing, who seems to alter his approach when the pressure elevates, neither of which portend profound postseason production. But as he's demonstrated time and time again, he can carry a team when he finds his groove. Maybe this is the year he finally gets hot in the postseason, and maybe it's not. If it is though, the other teams standing in the Yankees' way had better watch out.

Fly With The RockTwit

According to an article published in the Daily News, you can do just that.

The "Sports I-Team", the same investigative group who put together "American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America's Pastime" are reporting that Roger Clemens is now on Twitter, dropping gems like this one:

Like a courtroom? Sounds like The Rocket, I guess...

As someone who has been fooled by a fake Twitter account in the past, color me skeptical. In the article, the News quoted a "spokesperson who requested anonymity". Think about that for a second. A spokesperson who requested anonymity. I would be embarrassed to say I had anything to do with Clemens' PR as of late, but it sounds pretty dubious.

The account isn't verified and despite being around since June 17th, it only has 478 followers as of 1:00PM on 9/19/09.

Looking through his 134 tweets, none are to other well known people. Wouldn't the real Rocket be talking to some of his ex-teammates or celebrity friends who also have Twitter accounts? Does he just not have any friends anymore? Or is it a fake person who would have their cover blown by trying to talk to someone Clemens actually knows?

Could the "Sports I-Team" really fuck up this badly? Is this a shrewd move by the Clemens camp to feed the Daily News false information as a way of discrediting them? Could they be that calculating? Could the News be that lazy not to verify this with multiple sources? Maybe they just don't understand Twitter.

Who is the real "ASS CLOWN" here?

The Wonderful Waivering Wallace Matthews

Now here's a refreshing voice of reason who would like to set Wallace Matthews straight after he stated without qualifiers that unlike A-Rod, Andy Pettitte and others, Derek Jeter has "resisted the temptation" to use performance enchancing drugs and "did things the right way":

Still, I realize that while it would be disrespectful, and perhaps irresponsible, not to take Jeter at his word about his own steroid history, I have come to know that to accept the word of any ballplayer on this particular subject these days is to invite humiliation.

>8

I mean, minus a paper cup, a test strip and a private room, how can any of us know for sure when a ballplayer, even one as honorable as Jeter appears to be, is telling the truth.

>8

It's a shame that a player like Jeter has to be asked whether his career has been helped by steroids.

It's a bigger shame that even after his denial, we still can't be sure he is telling the truth.

That voice? Wallace Matthews himself, on February 19th, 2009.

Either Matthews arranged for the private room/paper cup scenario or for some unknown reason only six and a half months later, we CAN be sure Jeter's telling the truth...

The Deification Of Derek Jeter

Good morning, Fackers. It was a pretty decent weekend for the Yankees, after they left Toronto at least. Being one-hit by Roy Halladay was rather frustrating and getting blown out on Sunday was brutal in a very different, protracted sort of a way. Even the game that they won at the Rogers Centre was painful to watch, a nine inning, 6-4 game that somehow took 3:52 to complete.

Yesterday redeemed the weekend as we were treated to a great pitcher's duel in the first game and an offensive explosion in the second with the Yanks winning both. I had wondered about the decision to throw both Burnett and Sabathia in a double header as it figures to get one of them out of their typical rest pattern for their next start, but I think we'll all take the two wins now and worry about that later.

Increasingly, the topic of conversation turned towards Derek Jeter as the weekend pressed on. He picked up 5 hits on Saturday and Sunday and looked to chip away at Gehrig's record during the twin bill on Monday. The YES Network even put together an intro that played before each of the games of the doubleheader about his pursuit of the All-Time Yankee hits record saying he is "Forever identified as a champion; a hallmark of Yankee greatness" and has "the consistency of a metronome". They also set a new record for most presumptuous text poll ever during the night game which asked fans if they would rather witness Jeter's 3,000th hit, final game, number retiring or Hall of Fame induction. But Jeter went 0-8 so the quest will have to wait.

Look, every Yankee fan loves Derek Jeter, my generation especially. He came up when I was 11 years old, won the Rookie of the Year when I was 12 making him the perfect sports idol for kids around my age. When we're old and gray, we're going to still remember Jeter fondly because he'll be inexorably tied to our youth.

Maybe it's the contrarian in me, but I have trouble liking things that seemingly everyone else does. If you are a hardcore Yankees fan and someone asks you who your favorite player is, chances are, you'll at least try not to say Derek Jeter. Because he's everyone's favorite player. It's too obvious.

Even dummies like Wallace Matthews can appreciate what Jeter has done. What Matthews can't do, however, is write an even-handed column using "facts" or "relevant statistics" to explain how great Jeter is:

And yet, Jeter - unlike teammates Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi and Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, not to mention probably hundreds of others throughout both leagues - resisted the temptation to take advantage of what was encouraged by the Players Association and tacitly approved by Major League Baseball.

That took more strength than any of the juice monsters could ever imagine, or ever hope to muster up.

He never tried to be more than what he was, a contact hitter with an inside-out swing who was as happy to dunk one just over the head of the second baseman. He kept score not by the number of tainted home runs he could hit . . . but by the number of rings he could collect.

He's got the rings, four of them, and he's got the money. But most of all, he has his self-respect and the knowledge that his accomplishments are not beholden to an unscrupulous chemist, a rogue doctor, a failed police officer turned "personal trainer'' or some sleazy gym rat disguised as a clubhouse toadie.

Aside from being wrought with weak clichés and and the same bullshit every boring writer has always said re: Jeter's intangible winnerificness, it's incredibly unequivocal. You'd think that after so many players seemingly above speculation like Andy Pettitte, Rafael Palmero, Manny Ramirez and if you'll recall, A-Rod at one point, have been exposed for using steroids, Matthews might want to steer clear of unilaterally proclaiming his cleanliness. But Matthews thinks he can do that, because Jeter is just different.

Again maybe it's because I'm wired to go against the grain, but I don't like the milestone chases. The flashbulbs going off when he's still 3 hits away from Gehrig's mark don't make sense to me. I'm not a fan of the love Derek Jeter gets for being Derek Jeter®. I enjoy watching him more when the attention subsides and we don't have to incessantly talk about how great he is. Because talking about how much you're enjoying something makes it less enjoyable.

Pondering What Might Have Been

Last week, the media and the blogosphere dedicated a lot of time to marking the twenty year anniversary of Pete Rose agreeing to a lifetime ban from baseball in the face of overwhelming evidence that he gambled on the game and gambled on his own team. ESPN showed an Outside the Lines piece that actually managed to humanize the insufferable Joe Morgan, who was literally moved to tears over his frustration with the arrogance and stubbornness his friend and former teammate has carried himself with in these last two decades.

This post isn't intended to wade into the quagmire that is the Rose debate. Rather, it's to point out that yesterday marked the twentieth anniversary of the death of former Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti, the other principal character in the Greek tragedy that is the Rose banishment. The anniversary of the death of Rose's baseball career passed with much fanfare. The anniversary of the death of Giamatti passed with nary a whisper.

Baseball lends itself to stories and fables and legends and hyperbole. That's the way it's always worked, particularly with the media. As such, the legend goes that the toll of the Dowd Report and the Rose ban killed Giamatti just eight days after the suspension was announced. The truth of the matter is Giamatti was overweight, smoked heavily, and suffered from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. I'm sure the stress of the summer of 1989 weighed heavily upon Giamatti, but it certainly wasn't the only cause of his tragic and untimely death.

Last night, as I drove past the sign for the Giamatti Little League Center on my way to my hockey game, I thought about what might have been had Giamatti not died less than a year into his tenure as Commissioner. Several others have had similar thoughts of late. Rose and his camp insist that Giamatti would have granted Rose reinstatement over time. Fay Vincent, who served as Giamatti's Deputy Commissioner and played a major role in the Rose investigation, insists that never would have happened.

In February, following the Alex Rodriguez steroid admission, Yale Magazine ran a piece from Giamatti friend and former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh. It implied that Giamatti was planning to tackle drug testing head on after the Rose situation was settled, and suggested that perhaps the PED scandal of the last twenty years could have been avoided had Giamatti been successful. And maybe Giamatti would have made an impact. He had the backing of the owners. He had taken a hard line against a union before in his days as Yale President. He had gained a reputation as a disciplinarian in his time as National League President, handing down heavy suspensions to Rose for an ump bump and Dodgers reliever (and former Yankee) Jay Howell for applying pine tar to a ball during the NLCS. But we'll never know if Giamatti would have taken on drug testing nor how successful he would have been.

As for me, I wonder how other things would have played out had Giamatti lived to serve a full term. Would Fay Vincent still have been named his successor? If so, would he have been as overmatched in that role had he been able to spend more than just a few months working in Major League Baseball first? Would the owners still have forced him out? Could the Bud Selig era have been avoided? How about the 1994 strike? The Wild Card and divisional realignment? Would the ridiculous All-Star Game/homefield advantage policy still be in place? Would baseball have expanded twice more? Would contraction have even been discussed? Would the Nationals still be in Montreal? Would the Giants or White Sox have moved to St. Petersburg after all? Would revenue sharing have been put in place sooner? Would it not have been put in place at all?

Recent Yankee history might have been much different as well. In February 1990, Fay Vincent handed George Steinbrenner a lifetime ban for his hiring of gambler Howard Spira to dig up dirt on Dave Winfield and his foundation. The ban was lifted three years later, after Vincent had been forced out of office and Steinbrenner friend Bud Selig was the acting Commissioner. Would Giamatti have handed down the same sentence? If so would he have reinstated Steinbrenner at any point?

It's all useless conjecture, but it's also intriguing to wonder what might have been. While Rose, Vincent, and Thornburgh all knew Giamatti to some extent, none of them can truly know what he would have done had he served longer as Commissioner, and neither do I. What we do know is that Bart Giamatti died too soon, and it was baseball's loss. It's unfortunate that the baseball media didn't see fit to remember that yesterday.

Bias? What Bias?

It is with trepidation that I even wade into the cesspool that is the steroids debate, but Jack Cust opened his mouth, and the Yankees are currently playing Oakland, and I don't really have anything else I want to write about right now, so here goes....

For some unknown reason, Cust gave an interview with the AP yesterday, in which he touched upon his name being in the Mitchell Report and railed against the entire investigation, claiming it was biased due to George Mitchell's presence on the Red Sox Board of Directors:

With all the other stuff going on, with a lot of the guys coming out recently — big-name guys — to me it's kind of funny they spent all that money on the Mitchell Report and a bunch of hearsay and the guy who made all the money off it happened to work for the Red Sox. Were there any Red Sox on the report? To me, that's kind of a joke. How does that happen? It's coming out now with guys on that team. The guy worked for the Red Sox — they spent all kinds of millions of dollars — and then no one there had their name brought up.

That's not entirely accurate. Off the top of my head, two players were named in the report for events that took place during their tenure with the Sox: Paxton Crawford and Manny Alexander. Not exactly world beaters there, but it's a start.

I'm not sure where to begin this. First, the report was an absolute mess from the word "go", and will likely stand as the biggest in a series of blunders that has marked Bud Selig's now seventeen year tenure as Commissioner. While an investigation into steroid use in the sport was likely warranted, Bud jumped on that train about fifteen years too late, closing the barn door long after the entire stable of horses had run out. Choosing a principal investigator with a potential conflict of interest was a poor decision*. Sending him out to lead a multi-year, multi-million dollar investigation without any sort of subpoena power or any ability to grant immunity was a poorer one.
*As was naming an owner to serve as "acting" commissioner for six years, then letting him keep the job for an additional eleven and counting...

Without any ability to force people to talk to him, Mitchell was grasping at straws from the start. Exactly two active Major Leaguers spoke with him: Frank Thomas, of his own volition, and Jason Giambi who had the option of either cooperating or being suspended after he committed the cardinal sin of stating that baseball as a whole was wrong in the way they handled performance enhancing drugs.

Without player cooperation, nearly the entire Mitchell Report was based on the testimony of stool pigeons Kurt Radomski and Brian McNamee, who were forced to cooperate as part of federal plea deals. Radomski was a longtime clubbie with the Mets, McNamee a former strength and conditioning coach with the Yankees. Around which city and which teams do you think the majority of the report would focus?

While I do find it curious that there is a general lack of players from Mitchell's organization appearing in the report, I'd imagine that's more a result of the investigation being toothless than it is a function of any bias. If anything, the recent revelations of positive tests from both Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz (illegally leaked by employees of our federal government by the way, who in turn possess that information via a direct violation of labor law) should illustrate that no team, no clubhouse, not the Red Sox, not the Yankees, not anyone, was immune from this garbage.

As for Cust, I can understand his frustration with carrying the scarlett letter of being named in the Mitchell Report. His inclusion was tenuous at best, hearsay at worst. On a daily basis, Cust is likely surrounded by both teammates and opponents who did things as bad, if not worse, and haven't been outed.

That said, Cust was given every opportunity to respond to Mitchell, and like all card carrying MLBPA memebers, he refused to do so. From a legal perspective, I can understand that position. But if Cust, or any other of the accused, punts on his opportunity to clear his name, he loses much of his right to complain about it. And that see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil mentality is exactly how the MLB and MLBPA found themselves in this mess in the first place.

What Just Happened Here?!?!

Good morning Fackers, and those of you who are still sticking around to tell us how "facking qweaah" we are.

Well it was quite a day around here wasn't it? Thanks to some Tuesday night shenanigans in Boston, some tedious work with MLB.tv and Windows Movie Maker by Jay, and gracious links from Big League Stew, Deadspin, The 700 Level, The Legend of Cecilio Guante, and the Cleveland Frowns, this place absolutely blew up. Good thing Jay and I didn't both go the Yankee game or anything like that..... oh wait, we did.

In our absence, what was conceived as a well earned jab at some jackass-ish behavior somehow devolved into a cesspool of anonymous tough-guy commenting centering around steroids, tainted championships, relative payroll levels, fanbase paranoia, recent playoff history, and a bunch of other horseshit. Oh, and I think I might have been invited to visit Texas as well. I'm still trying to discern what the hell any of that has to do with what happened in Boston Tuesday.

So at the risk of stirring up yet another shitstorm, let me see if I can offer as objective an outlook on Youkgate as humanly possible from a dirty facking Yankee fan. The way the first game and two innings of the Tigers-Sox series unfolded, I suppose something like this was bound to happen. The Sox were coming off a four game sweep at the hands of their division rival - a series that had its share of hit batsmen tomfoolery - and were playing their worst baseball of the season.

Monday night's game saw three hit batsmen: Miguel Cabrera in the top of the fourth, Youkilis in the bottom, and Brandon Inge in the the eighth. On Tuesday the teams picked up right where they left off. Cabrera was hit again in the top of the first, causing him to leave the game. For what it's worth, I didn't think that pitch was intentional. In the bottom of the inning, Porcello came inside on Victor Martinez. Martinez didn't like it. I don't think Porcello was trying to hit him, but I'm sure his intent was to come inside. Whether that was retribution or whether it was because that's just a good way to pitch I'm not entirely sure.

Either way, the climate was perfect for a fight when Youkilis led off the bottom of the second. I'm convinced that sometimes, particularly when tensions are high like that, a batter will go to the plate having already made the decision to make a big deal out of anything close to hitting him. That's how we wound up with Manny Ramirez inciting a bench clearing incident in the 2003 ALCS on a pitch that was high, but over the plate. That's how we wound up with Richie Sexson charging the mound on a pitch that was outside. And that's how we wound up with Youkilis, who had already been plunked once in the series, charging the mound on a two seam fastball that appears to have hit him without any intent.

According to pitch f/x, Tuesday night Porcello threw eight four seam fastballs, averaging nearly 93 MPH and topping out at 94 MPH. He threw half as many two seamers, averaging just under 92 MPH, and topping out at 92.2 MPH. MLB Gameday had the two seamer that hit Youkilis at a blistering 89 MPH. According to fangraphs, Porcello's pitch selection and velocity Tuesday, despite the small sample size, was in line with his results this season. So if he wanted to hit Youkilis, why would he choose to do it with a two seamer, a pitch that he throws half as often and anywhere from 1 to 5 MPH slower than his four seamer?

Some might point out that entering last night's game, Porcello had hit just one batter in 111 IP in 2009. That's a fair point, but in his lone minor league season, Porcello plunked 11 batters in just 125 innings of work. But I mean, that's all in the past right? 20 year old Major League pitchers should have impeccable control.

Either way, Youk charged the mound and threw his helmet like a coward. Porcello, giving up about twenty pounds, executed a nice hip toss that would have made Tito Santana proud, leaving Youk at the bottom of the pig pile.

Despite what the pro-Sox contingent commenting here had to say, Youk isn't winning this one on the national stage. The Deadspin comments - not the best gauge but definitely not a biased cross section - were decidedly anti-Youk. Keith Law tore him a new one before the game was even over. MLBN was none too kind to him Tuesday night, and what little coverage I saw on ESPN wasn't too complimentary either. In a way, even the MLB suspensions speak to that: Youk got five games which he began serving last night. Porcello, his ejection dubious to begin with, was also given five. However, most starting pitchers suspended for similar "offenses" have been given six games. The Tigers can easily work Porcello's suspension around an off day, making sure he doesn't miss a start. Alternatively, if Porcello's appeal reduces the suspension by a single game, it will cover his normal rest. But whatever, ignore what's being said on the national stage - several dozen anonymous commenters here can't be wrong.

Now, I don't want to pick through all ninety-some-odd comments we had on the initial post and critique them one by one, but there are two that I'd like to highlight.

First, we have the Greco-Roman wrestling expert who proclaims (sic'd) "The man on defense has the advantage when he knows its coming". Well, sure they do, that's why it's called going on the defensive. Wait - never mind - it's called going on the offensive, because, you know, it's better to attack than be attacked, particularly when you have a running start, your opponent is retreating, and you elect to use protective gear as a missile. I may not be the fighting expert that this anonymous commenter apparently is, but I have taken several physics courses, and I do know that Youkilis' 220 lbs coming at a full sprint is preferable to Porcello's 200 lbs at a standstill. Momentum equals mass times velocity. And for future reference Youk, next time you attack a guy who has you by four inches but is giving you twenty pounds, it might be a better idea to go low. Perhaps if you had spent more time with the Huggins Thugs during your time at Cincy you would know this.

Secondly, we have "I love how you end the clip before youk rolls over on him like he is about to ground and pound him to a bloody pulp". Yes, I'm sure that's exactly what was about to happen next. We've all seen this guy before. He's usually the one who talks a bunch of shit, tears his shirt off, then begs his friends to "hold him back", you know, for the other guy's good, not because he's really a pussy and doesn't actually want to fight. Alternatively, he's the guy who gets his ass kicked, and upon the merciful ending of the fight asks his friends, "Why'd you break it up?!?! I had him right where I wanted him".

Anyway, thanks for the record-shattering day everyone. With just one post we received about a month's worth of traffic. Too bad most of it was a barren wasteland of anonymous idiocy. Despite what I've described above, I see now that we probably should have blindly praised Youkilis for his gritty guttiness and his gutty grittiness. The rest of the post should have been about how the Yankees suck and all take steroids and buy championships and how insecure they are with a 5.5 game lead more than two thirds of the way through the season.

Never mind the fact that I completely unfairly slammed the guy on Monday for his outfield play over the weekend, and no one said peep. The guy took one for the team when it was needed, put himself on the line, and we (predictably) made fun of him for it no one called us out on it. The lowest common denominator wins again.

I realize that calling the blog "Fack Youk", though done somewhat tongue-in-cheek, is antagonistic. As such, a certain amount of what happened yesterday is to be expected when people don't get the joke. But I'm utterly amazed that what I thought was a fairly cut and dry post spurred the pissing match that followed. But what do I know? Keep the comments coming; let's just try to up the collective IQ a bit this time around. As for me I've said my next-to-last about the Sox until the next head-to-head series starts next Friday.

Game 108: Maybe This Time

It's been just under two months since the Yankees and the Red Sox squared off which, over the course of a baseball season, seems like forever. The last time they played was a month before the All-Star Break and 47 games ago. Now the Yanks get to face Boston in 7 out of their next 17 games and will have a chance to start paying off some of the debt they accrued during the first 8 machinations of the season series.

Regardless of what some financial institutions and Mark Teixeria would like you to believe, Yankees vs. Red Sox is different from any other rivalry in baseball. It's the reason that I could call this site "Fack Youk" and knew people would not only understand what it meant but agree with the sentiment. Aside from liking the Yankees, the next thing that we all have in common is hating the Red Sox. There's more mutual disdain and attention and anticipation, especially this time around. You don't see Cubs bloggers writing open letters to Carlos Zambrano that sound like this when the Cardinals come into town (even though Joba has never actually hit him).

For those waiting to hear the New Stadium sound like the Old House, tonight is the night. For the first time since he was outed for failing the steroid test in 2003, David Ortiz will be welcomed back to the Bronx with a raucous chorus of boos and "STER-OID" chants. For the first time since September 16th, 2006, the Yankees play host to the Sox with a lead in the division. But the desperation from that 0-8 start will be palpable.

It's not a do or die series for the Yanks; they could get swept again and still be just 1.5 games back with 7 head to head games still remaining. But it's most certainly going to feel like it. When a season series is as one-sided as this one has been, it feels like it is due for a correction. We went through it in early June, feeling that with each passing game that the Yanks we just due to take one. It feels that way now more than ever. The Sox are playing .500 ball away from Fenway and the Yankees are 35-17 at home. The Yanks are 20-10 over their last 30 while the Sox are 15-15. Everything but the season series favors the fellows donning the Pinstripes.

The biggest game of the series is tonight's. The Bombers need to get off the mat in the worst way, before the pressure keeps building, the fans start booing and things get ugly. The pitching match up tonight gives us more reason to be optimistic.

The Sox send John Smoltz, who has been disappointing since joining the team in late June. He's made seven starts and given up 29 runs in 36 2/3 IP, which translates to a 7.12 ERA. He's only walked 5 while striking out 30, but has allowed 50 hits and 6 home runs.

The Yanks counter with their hottest pitcher at the moment, Mr. Joba Chamberlain. He's been solid over his past 7 starts (4-0, 3.05 ERA) and downright dominant during his past 3 (3-0, 0.83). He's given up 8 hits in his last 21 1/3 innings while striking out 19. This is the Joba everyone was waiting for when he was struggling earlier in the season. He's made four career starts against the Sox, averaging 6 innings a pop with a 1-1 record. He struck out 12 in just 5 2/3 his last time out against them, but allowed 4 runs in the process. He's a better pitcher away from Yankee Stadium than he is at home, but as a notorious nose for the big moment.

Today is also a special day in Yankee history. As we mentioned last Friday, it's been 30 years since Thurman Munson passed away. Tonight marks the 30th anniversary of his funeral where Bobby Murcer delivered the eulogy and drove in all five runs in a 5-4 victory over the Orioles later that night.

We're bringing out the big guns for the song tonight; this is serious business. Hopefully we'll be hearing more from this gentleman later on tonight.

She's gonna hold me fast,
And I'll be home at last,
Not a loser anymore,
Not like the last time, and the time before.

All of the odds are, in my favor,
Something's bound to begin,
It's gotta happen, happen sometime,
Maybe this time I'll win.

Off Night Links: Monday, Monday

Here we are on another off night, the first in 17 days. There will be another 16 games before another break for the Yanks and at least as far as the starting rotation is concerned, this one is a welcome relief.

While Joba Chamberlain was originally supposed to start tomorrow night against Roy Halladay, he will now be pushed back to Thursday for the first game against the Red Sox and oppose John Smoltz. This means Andy Pettitte and Sergio Mitre will pitch against the Blue Jays and Mitre will be the only starter the Sox don't get to see, which is obviously the best case scenario. The extra two days will also help to keep Chamberlain's innings total down, a factor that will make for some tough decisions as the season wears on.

Meanwhile, here are a batch of links to keep you busy on this relatively quiet night in the MLB. See you tomorrow morning. Enjoy.

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Oh, you thought the price for Roy Halladay was high? Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times says that the Red Sox offered the Mariners 5 of the following seven players for Felix Hernandez and they turned the offer down: RHPs Clay Buchholz, Daniel Bard, Justin Masterson & Michael Bowden, LHPs Nick Hagadone & Felix Doubront, OF Josh Reddick or SS Yamaico Navarro. As Matt said earlier over GChat, "That means the Yankees would have had to exhume Ruth and Mantle for King Felix". Click through to see the alternate 3 team deal that almost happened including the Padres and Adrian Gonzalez.

This guy? Steroids? GTFO! The man to the left, son of Sox broadcaster Jerry Remy, was one of two former security guards fired by the Red Sox for connections with steroids. Remy and Alex Cyr (a part time assistant of Manny Ramirez) had connections with a paid employee of David Ortiz and openly discussed steroid use with him. Once again, how about a round of applause for George Mitchell, ladies and gentlemen? Boston had it's own Kirk Radomski and Brain McNamee right under their noses and mysteriously had no idea. But then again, who would have ever thought the man pictured in a fucking Gold's Gym man-tank, looking like a body builder might have been taking steroids?

Well, bully for Youk. It appears that the our anti-namesake had himself quite the weekend down in Baltimore and has emerged from a two month long slump that saw his OPS drop as low as .952, but is now back over 1.000.

Here is a raffle for a good cause. The prize is 10 seats atop the Green Monstah for the August 20th game between the Yanks and Sawx. It benefits the Mark Bavis Leadership Foundation, started in honor of a former BC Hockey player and NHL Assistant who was killed aboard Flight 175 on 9/11. Tickets are $2 and there is a minimum purchase of 5. If you win, don't forget who told you about it.

This is a pretty sad sight. (h/t NSI, who alternatively called today "Moldy Monday")

Will Leitch makes the case for Billy Beane as the next GM of the Mets over at New York Magazine. My favorite quote:

If every general manager in baseball thought like Minaya, Beane would still be in top form; as it is, he had to forage for newer, more elusive inefficiencies.

John Heyman also weighs in with his thoughts on GM candidates from around the league.

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In New York Football Giants news, it appears that Antionio Pierce will not be indicted by the Grand Jury for his involvement in the Plaxico Burress fiasco. Perhaps this fucking mess will finally start to go away?

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If you've got anything else, leave it in the comments.

"Let's Move On"

Yesterday, I dropped the sentence above at the very end of the Manny and Ortiz post. It was met with some friendly disagreement in the comments so I just wanted to take a moment to clarify the point.

The overriding sentiment from the commenters was that the Sox fans had their fun with all the steroid controversy surrounding the Yankees and now it's time to give it back to them.

Sox fans were merciless with Jason Giambi until the day he left, no doubt. They got various steroids chants going for Andy Pettitte on the heels of the Mitchell Report, but those have largely subsided. They were anxious to point out that they had the "clean" years of Roger Clemens' career. But let's see how aggressive with the "You-Took-Ster-Oids" chants they are next time A-Rod comes to Fenway. Like any other fanbase Red Sox Nation has it's fair share of dickheads, but most people with a reasonable amount of frontal lobe activity are going to realize they are now the pot calling the kettle black. If any of the fackin' Sullies and Murphs do start to get mouthy, Yanks fans can counter with "So-Did-Pa-Pi". What are we going to do beyond that?

I'd be lying if I said there wasn't an element of personal satisfaction and Soxenfreude involved in all of this. There more certainly is. Aside from the Yankees, it's the most central theme of this blog, for fuck's sake. But any of the idiots who were foolish enough to point the finger at the rest of the league, and really thought they were going to skate away with no stars on the Red Sox being implicated in PED use, and thought that 2004 was a gift from God, pure as the driven snow, just took a shot to the solar plexus. And that's good enough for me.

This news doesn't change what happened in 2004 from our eyes, though. The '04 roster of the Yankees included A-Rod, Gary Sheffield, Kevin Brown, Jason Giambi and almost certainly some other guys who haven't been outed yet. Their cheaters were a microscopic amount better (or just luckier) than our cheaters.

What we are heading towards is a realization that almost nothing is free from the stain of PEDs, one player and subsequently one fanbase at a time. Very few individual accomplishments and absolutely no Championships in say, the last 15-20 years or so are going to above reproach.

Like always, the Yankees are at the forefront of this, like they are in almost every aspect of baseball. We as Yankee fans are again ahead of the curve. Whether you like dragging people into the mud with you is a matter of personal preference, but it don't get a whole lot out of it.

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.

I Don't Want To Speculate, But...

Tim Marchman, who's writing I truly enjoy, put up an... interesting post last night. Apparently there's another list of the supposed positive tests from 2003 floating around, and Tim, a respected mainstream journalist linked to it.

He goes out of his way to say that he's not "passing any judgment on whether the list is accurate or not" and adds parenthetically:

Maybe some time when I'm about to stick my head in an oven I'll cobble up a 2,000 word post on journalistic ethics and the 'it's out there' principle, but I think for now it's enough to say it's out there.

And by "out there", he means that it was proudly displayed on RotoInfo.com. Not exactly on Deadspin, you know?

I didn't go to journalism school, and I know it's just his blog, but when you link to something, you are giving it a new audience. And when you say things like...

A thorough but not comprehensive spot check reveals that these players all seem to have been in the majors in 2003, for instance, and if it's fake someone did some real work on it. I note, as an example, that in one of the multiple similar but not identical versions floating around one player is listed twice, in among two different teams he played for that year. That's detail. (Or really shoddy work, of course!) This also is not the fake list that got out the morning the Mitchell report was released, by the way—that's here and is entirely different.

...it sounds like you are trying to give it some credibility.

Marchman also wonders aloud:

Should this list or something reasonably close prove real—and there are some names on it that would genuinely shock and even disappoint me, which is saying something—it would be a good thing for baseball.

He spends the rest of the post, dare I say, speculating what it would mean for baseball if this list turned out to be accurate.

Here's what Marchman said about the whole Jerrod Morris/Raul Ibanez/John Gonzalez/Ken Rosenthal fiasco when it came up:

I should really add that as far as I can tell, 99.9999% of the time when you see professional journos talking about 'controversy' that's arisen because some random guy no one reads has said something, it's a backdoor way of bringing up something they don't think they're allowed to bring up but think is worth talking about.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this doesn't fall into the other .0001%.