Passed out? How could they possibly tell the difference?
YES Network television host Bob Lorenz has been charged with drunken driving in Connecticut where police say he was found passed out in his car in his hometown of Westport.
The 48-year-old Lorenz was arrested early Wednesday morning. Police say they found him slumped over the wheel of his car and when they woke him up he drove away slowly and nearly hit a utility pole. Officers say his speech was slurred and he smelled of alcohol.
Lorenz hosts pregame and postgame shows for the New York Yankees and New Jersey Nets. He was arraigned Wednesday at Norwalk Superior Court and his case was continued to Feb. 29.
I attended a Q&A session involving A’s co-owner Lew Wolff this afternoon hosted by the Rotary Club of San Jose. It’s interesting to see Wolff operate in that kind of environment. He represents the bad guy to so many A’s fans. But he was on friendly terrain Wednesday, speaking in the same downtown area where he hopes to build his new ballpark someday – and he drew laughter with a few sharp one-liners. You can’t help but wonder how he would have been greeted in Oakland for a similar function.
–If the team does indeed move to San Jose, they will be called the “San Jose A’s,” which has been assumed. Wolff pointed out how the franchise has moved from Philadelphia to Kansas City to Oakland, always keeping the “Athletics” label. There was a stuffed Stomper on hand at Wednesday’s event, with the A’s mascot wearing a “San Jose Athletics” uniform.
–Getting an answer from MLB on the stadium issue “in the next couple months would be great,” Wolff said. Someone asked how long he might wait for an answer before throwing in the towel on building a ballpark. “I’m not going to continue this much longer,” he said. “What we want is an answer. We want a ‘Yes, you can relocate and share the territory,’ or ‘You can’t.’ But not having any answer is difficult not just for me, but for the 130 people that work for us, for planning, for our baseball team every year.” So what happens if his timeframe expires and there’s still no answer? Would Wolff and his fellow owners sell? He said he’s not entertaining that option yet.
–Despite the trades of three All-Star pitchers over the winter, Wolff thinks the A’s will field a quality team this season. “We’re going to fool a lot of people with our team, I think,” he said.
Since he came aboard in October 2010, Alderson has been obligated to take a payroll that was over $140 million and cut it to about $90 million. You can make that kind of huge and swift reduction only if you repeatedly acquire players who will cost very little.
“I don’t think people really understand how constrained he really is,” Steve Phillips, a former Mets general manager, said of Alderson. “There’s no team in the last year and a half that’s been as affected by financial challenges as the Mets.”
...“They’ve been in a bottom-feeding mode when it comes to the free-agent market,” said Phillips, who is now a host on SiriusXM’s Mad Dog Radio channel. “They are trying to catch that lightning in a bottle, that diamond in the rough.”
...Jim Duquette, who served as the Mets’ general manger in 2004 and now works as an analyst for SiriusXM’s MLB Network Radio, said Alderson was in a tough spot.
“I can’t see how he or even the team’s ownership could have predicted beforehand the extent of the financial issues they currently face,” he said.
Alderson and his deputies have shown some willingness to be assertive with the resources they have available to them. Breaking with the team’s previous stance, they bypassed the essentially unenforceable guidelines set forth by the commissioner’s office for signing bonuses to sign several draft picks last summer.
So stenchingly good…Francesspool odored a velvet case of Borsari di Parmesan!
These aren’t your father’s Yankees. They aren’t your 1996 Yankees, either.
Only the Yankees could be self-important enough to launch a non-baseball related product with a cocktail party.
According to Wallace Matthew of ESPN NY, the Yankees will launch two official fragrances called ”New York Yankees” and “New York Yankees for Her” at a cocktail reception in Manhattan on Tuesday, February 21.
Yes, every team has non-baseball related products. You have checkers, chess, teddy bears, etc. with the team logo. None of the 29 other teams believe they are bigger than the game where they create a fragrance and have a bourgeois party to announce it. This is the same organization that puts out press releases to let everyone know what Hal Steinbrenner thinks regarding world events. What’s next? Randy Levine on the catwalk modeling underwear? Don’t discount it, since the modern Yankees brand caters to the Wall Street crowd with the new Stadium, luxury advertisements, and the moat near the luxury seats to keep the lower class of fans away.
Or as Dustin Parkes sez about Lawrie…“just in case Toronto Blue Jays fans didn’t already know that if Brett Lawrie played for the Boston Red Sox, they’d hate his guts with an unforeseen fury.”
Blue Jays like Brett Lawrie, who through his @blawrie13 account tweets uninteligible things like:
“Runnin through these H*** like I got that devilish flow rock’n'roll no halo we party rockkkkk #Sorry4PRockin
I don’t know either.
Fortunately for those of us who can’t quite grasp young Brett’s dialect, some genius has come up with the Brett Lawrie Babel Fish—@translawrieate—which deciphers such garbled nonsense into common English. Fed through this handy system this we see the above tweet come out like this:
“I’m not a man of pure actions. My unyielding sexual conquests with women of speculative morals resemble the efficiency of Drano” (1/2)
Apologies for expressing the lyrics of Party Rock Anthem. (2/2)
Fresh off her Super Bowl halftime performance, and its attendant digit-borne controversy, Madonna has announced a world tour in support of her forthcoming album MDNA. Its New York stop is set for September 6 at Yankee Stadium, which has a big wide-open schedule surrounding that date, just FYI. (Madonna’s tour goes from Boston on Sept. 4 to New York on the 6th to Ottawa on the 10th.) Tickets for the show go on sale on Monday, February 13, at 10 a.m., with prices ranging from $52.90 to $375.05.
Straight from the riveting pages of The Beane Eaters comes…
The jig is up for Major League Baseball, just ask the cities of New York, New York, Los Angeles, and Oakland, California.
The con game is over and the cover is being lifted. MLB wants fans to attend games with minor league players on the field. MLB wants fans to buy their team’s products, and to watch inferior baseball.
The question should be asked, why do fans of the New York Metropolitans, the Oakland Athletics or the Los Angeles Dodgers support their teams?
It seems odd or a coincidence that these teams have a competitor across town to compete for the same fans. Teams that have owned or will own the city. The New York Yankees dominate the Big Apple, the San Francisco Giants own the Bay Area. With the new star first baseman and National League all star Albert Pujols joining the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. You can bet Southern California fans will be flocking to Orange County and leaving Chavez Ravine.
...What is troubling, other teams are now following the Money Ball method of running a baseball team. With Commissioner Bud Selig’s wishes. Baseball continues to slide down the American popularity poll.
...Baseball fans have to take it into their own hands and not attend games of the New York Mets, Oakland A’s, and Los Angeles Dodgers to make their message clear. Put a product on the field that can compete for a division title.
or as Howard just tweeted…“Write a book critical of the Mets, lose media credentials.”
I thought I ought to pass along this bit of news, so all of you have a sense of what the blog will and won’t be this coming year, and why that is.
Since taking over the LoHud Mets Blog in March 2011, I have been credentialed numerous times by the New York Mets-100 percent of the time my editor here, Sean Mayer, has requested credentials. This is nothing new. In my years covering sports, I have been credentialed by every major sports team in the New York area, writing for ESPN.com, The New York Times, New York Magazine, The New York Observer, and many other outlets.
So it was odd that last week, Sean received a call from Jay Horwitz, the Director of Media Relations for the New York Mets, telling him that while the Journal News can continue to receive credentials, the Mets would not be credentialing me.
Sean asked why that was, and Jay responded that the Mets “don’t like my reporting”. The team declined to respond to my multiple attempts to reach them for a fuller explanation.
...What the Mets manage to do by keeping me out of the clubhouse is deny my the chance to give you a better sense of the Mets players as people, thus giving the fans a greater stake in the success and failure of the team. Why they think that is somehow to their advantage, I couldn’t possibly say.
Tim Groseclose, a professor of political science and economics at UCLA, has spent a professional lifetime studying politics, media and biases, and when it comes to big East Coast cities and their sporting teams, there’s little to debate.
“We Arkansans and Oklahomans sometimes call people from Boston or New York ‘Yankees,’ which we mean as a synonym for ‘rude, Northern person,’ ” Groseclose said. “Hank Williams Jr. might have said it best: ‘If heaven ain’t a lot like Dixie, I don’t want to go. . . . You can send me to hell or New York City. It’d be about the same to me.’”
In the oft-times insular world of pro sports, the nation’s attitudes for New York and Boston are no secret. The successes of their teams serve as inspiration for taunts and barbs. Road trips in the NFL are merely sleepovers in a lion’s den. . . .
The successes of the sports teams serve as kindling, while the more potent fuel for many is a perceived overexposure of East Coast teams. And critics point to a singular culprit.
“Ask anyone in Chicago, Detroit, Iowa, Minnesota — it just feels like a large portion of the country gets ignored,” said Steve “Sparky” Fifer, a sports talk radio host for WSSP-AM in Milwaukee. “So it’s not necessarily a hatred or dislike for the team specific teams, it’s the dislike for ESPN and the coverage they provide. From a fan perspective, if you turn on ESPN during the baseball season, good luck seeing Brewers highlights. Right now, regardless of how good the Knicks are, you’ll see Knicks and Celtics every night.”
John Ourand, who covers media and television for the SportsBusiness Journal, said “East Coast bias” is a real phenomenon but not necessarily a true bias. Television’s decision-makers don’t favor particular teams; they favor money, he said.
“There are markets that have teams and people follow that passion whether they like them or hate them,” Ourand said. “Even when you hate them, you’re watching.”
Cripes, I remember when a $100 bag of Thurston Moore’s muggy hair sat grewsomely for years on our record store wall…with little feedback.
Jose Reyes took one for the team Friday night.
To conform with Miami Marlins policy, the 28-year-old shortstop cut off his famed dreadlocks, which he had sported the past three years as a member of the New York Mets.
The Marlins have a strict grooming policy, and Reyes met it in grand style. On Friday night, the four-time All-Star had his hair cut on MLB Network’s “Hot Stove” show, which aired at 6 p.m. ET.
“It’s going to be a little bit emotional, because I’ve spent three years with this hair,” Reyes said shortly before sitting in a barber chair set up in the studio. “At the same time, I understand it’s a rule of my new team, the Miami Marlins. I’m a team player, so I have to cut it off.”
...Reyes used his platform on MLB Network to benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation of South Florida.
Reyes’ hair has been packaged and authenticated by Major League Baseball. It is now being auctioned on eBay.
Evidence that Popeye’s spinach-abuse was rampant and gave him an unfair advantage:
• The drug is on an open shelf in his locker for all to see.
• Popeye brings the substance onto the playing field without reservations.
• Upon seeing it fall to the ground, Bluto immediately realizes his good fortune and takes a hit of it.
• Bluto’s performance while on the green stuff is remarkable, throwing lightning pitches and burning holes in bats, not to mention launching grand slams.
• Popeye is terrible on the mound without his dose and immediately tries to remedy that by shooting up. The placebo spinach does not work.
• When Popeye finally manages to grow another batch (showing remarkable skill at cultivating the herb, I might add), his performance becomes ungodly, racing between the mound and the plate, pushing the grandstands back, hitting 21 home runs with 21 swings… He also lashes out at Bluto, assaulting him and knocking him out of the stadium.
Good news, sports fans. The glory days of baseball broadcasting—when a commentator could be forgiven for a bit of misbehavin’—are alive and well.
Why’s that? Because this week Fox Sports Midwest announced it will retain Cardinals play-by-play broadcaster Dan McLaughlin for the 2012 season. Last fall, Daily RFT opined that McLaughlin’s career in St. Louis was finito after he was charged for his second DWI in just over a year’s time.
We felt even more confident about that prediction when the embarrassing details of McLaughlin’s arrests came out a few weeks later. When pulled over in August 2010 for the first DUI, McLaughlin was allegedly so shitfaced he’d wet his pants. When he crashed his car in the second DWI in September 2011, McLaughlin was apparently too drunk to unlock the car door and lied to the officer that he lived just a few blocks away and could safely drive home if she let him go.
...FSM general manager told the Post-Dispatch today that he is standing by the 37-year-old whose worked for the cable channel for 14 years. Since the second DUI charge, McLaughlin has confessed to being an alcoholic and is said to attend as many as two or three AA meetings a day now.
“It’s perceived as an illness,” Donovan said of McLaughlin’s alcoholism. “We’re trying to support him.”
Ian Rotten vs The Great White! (batting cage match)
Actor/ comedian/ cultural icon Cheech Marin and I were talking baseball and I just had to get the camera out, as he really knows and loves the sport. Here is part one of our conversation at his pad in Malibu.
...In the video here he talks about playing shortstop in little league, growing up near L.A.‘s Wrigley Field (home of the PCL Angels) and why the Dodgers had a national presence on early television broadcasts even before they moved to the West Coast. A unique and informed perspective by a funny, intelligent and hospitable guy.
juicepress.com? I thought The NY Daily News Sports Investigative Team owned the rights to that.
Teixeira, a two-time All-Star, and investing partner Kenny Dichter are teaming up on a Juice Press store in Greenwich, Conn., where Teixeira lives. They are also putting an undisclosed amount of money in the entire company. The Juice Press has three stores and a soon-to-open fourth in Manhattan, according to its website. They feature cold-pressed fruit and vegetable juices for refreshment and for the juice-only fasts called cleanses. The stores have also gained a following among raw-food devotees. The Connecticut outlet is expected to open in the spring.
In addition to Teixeira’s heavy-hitting profile, The Juice Press apparently got a determined entrepreneur. The first baseman said he was looking for a worthwhile investment to help manage, not a celebrity endorsement gig. “It’s not like I’m getting free juice for life to like it,” he said. “I am much more interested in long-term partnerships.”
Teixeira paid $25,000 for a new company domain name, juicepress.com, because it was easier to remember, store officials said. The address will become active soon.
I guess even Bill Rasmussen is turned off by the constant flow of live Super Bowl tailgating food injury updates.
Bill Rasmussen is a baseball fan.
So naturally, when he met USC President Harris Pastides, there was one main topic he wanted to discuss.
“Baseball,” Rasmussen said. “He, as all of you are, is incredibly proud of the back-to-back national championships. What I mentioned to him was, because of my interest in baseball, prior to ESPN, the College World Series had no coverage. I wanted to include it, and that was part of our contract with the NCAA — that we get to do the College World Series.”
Rasmussen, the founder of ESPN, is not only a baseball fan, but a sports fan in general, which pointed him towards a 24-hour network devoted only to sports.
Thirty-two years later, Rasmussen doesn’t even watch his brainchild every day.
“I’m not a big television fan,” Rasmussen said. “I’d rather be doing things.”
...His favorite part of ESPN is the “Baseball Tonight” program, mostly because of his love of the sport. Though he doesn’t watch the channel every day, he still takes immense pride in how it has grown.
Sooo looking forward to his “Pantsload: Call of Doodie!” roll-plying action game!
Whether Roger Clemens, an early mentor to him, should be in the Hall of Fame: “No, he shouldn’t. I don’t believe any of those who cheated should get votes. You never know when they did and when they didn’t. I don’t know how much was real. That’s just me. I don’t think anybody who did it should get in.
“Wait, you said [for years] that you never did it? Now [you say] you did? It’s the Pete Rose defense. And you got caught the first time you did it? And how about when you [actually] started? That’s a whole other conversation. It’s just very black and white: They got caught doing it, they’re out. Unfortunately, some of my friends and teammates are on that list and it makes me disappointed they made that decision. It doesn’t make me like them less. Now, Barry Bonds? How can you even remotely consider that guy a nice guy?”
Giving steroid users a pass because not all users have been identified: “No. You can’t unlearn what you’ve learned.”
The advantages of steroids: “My biggest problem, and I’m so sick of hearing it from hitters or anybody else, is that steroids didn’t help you hit. That’s the most bald-faced lie ever. When I’m facing Barry Bonds Sept. 1 and Barry Bonds feels super fresh and I’m dragging ass, don’t tell me that. It was as much about being fresh and keeping your body fresh.
“Talk to [former NFL and MLB players] Deion Sanders and Brian Jordan. They’ll tell you the grind of a baseball is way harder [than football] because of the grind of the season. So yes, [a steroid regimen] did help you produce.”
The 2011 Red Sox: “It was clearly a group of kids that took a swift kick in the ass. What they did last year was embarrassing and shameful. I’m shocked that a good kid like Jon Lester got caught up in that. [Former manager] Terry [Francona] got fired for being the same guy he was years before that. I ran off at the mouth, but Terry will always tell you that I was as coachable as anybody. It was shocking that some people in this clubhouse allowed those stories to come out, but it was embarrassing, as if that wasn’t enough, that nobody had enough guts to stand up and say, ‘Enough!’”
For years, as part of my moonlighting as an unpaid consultant for Topps Baseball Cards, I have engaged in a ritual involving a few company executives and a few (brand new) boxes of that year’s Topps set. The first box to come off the production line is ceremonially opened, either on television or at Topps HQ, and then we quietly pillage through whatever’s available pack-wise.
Today we turned it into a happening.
This started when I ran into my colleague and fellow collector Greg Amsinger at MLB Network two weeks ago. Greg is giddy enough about cards that I once almost distracted him from a Yankee Stadium live shot by advising him that my collection included three Honus Wagners. When the Topps gang and I set the “ripping of the first packs” for today, I asked if I could invite Greg along.
Ka-boom.
Greg brought a camera crew, Topps put up a display including blowups of the cards of Pujols and Reyes in their new unis and the one-of-a-kind gold card inserts, they assembled the entire 2012 Baseball Production team, I dressed up in my Matt Moore First Win Game-Used uniform, they fitted up a conference room full of unopened boxes, and pizza…
Baseball isn’t heliostats…baseball is Sunny Jim Bottomley rounding second!
The Kansas City Royals baseball team is getting greener with the largest in-stadium solar array generating electricity in Major League Baseball.
The 160 solar panels, which have been installed and tested, are expected to produce 36,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year, which is enough to power for four homes. That won’t be enough to meet all the stadium’s electricity needs but should provide most if not all of a crucial element of the game.
“Your beer is going to be cooled by the sun,” said Chuck Caisley, a spokesman for Kansas City Power & Light.
...The installation of the panels was completed Monday. They’re at the back of the ballpark and stretch around most of the outfield. They can be clearly seen from most seats although they blend in — blue solar panels in brushed aluminum frames. The panels are non-reflective and tilted to keep any reflections from interfering with play. That wsa a concern of Major League Baseball, which had to approve the stadium change.
The design also had to deal with obstacles unique to a ballpark. The array is in two sections, so none will be behind the scoreboard, which would have cast a shadow reducing their effectiveness.
Looks like Costas “has his faintly disapproving schoolmarm face on” (syte Lipsite)...again.
“No one has ever won an appeal,” Costas said. “The thing is set up and it’s made clear that even if you by your own testimony unknowingly ingest something that trips the test, you are responsible for ingesting it. So I don’t see what his successful defense will be. So he sits out 50 games and it costs him more than $3 million.
“I also do not understand the baseball writers’ position,” Costas said. “I understand the position that you will not be able to go back and yank guys out of the Hall of Fame if it’s subsequently discovered that they used steroids. Or even that you can’t take away A-Rod’s MVP from years ago during a period of time that he has now acknowledged that he was among those who tested positive.
“But baseball ought to have a rule in place like the one football put in a few years ago,” Costas said. “You may remember (Chargers’ linebacker) Shawne Merriman (in 2006) was suspended for using performance enhancing drugs during the year, but he still made the Pro Bowl. Then they put in a rule that said, ‘Look, you can’t make the Pro Bowl or receive an honor in the year you have been sanctioned. Not suspected. Not Jose Canseco wrote a book. Not something that came up in the Mitchell Report. But under our official procedures you tested positive.’ Well, (Braun) tested positive in October of the year he won the MVP. So I think - and I’m not taking a shot at Ryan Braun here, terrific player, seems like a good guy too - but I think you submit it to a re-vote. In which case Matt Kemp would easily win. In fact, if the Dodgers had been contenders, Kemp would have won anyway because he actually had a better year than Braun.”
At least eight groups advanced to the second round of the big Frank McCourt Dodgers sweepstakes. Several of them look like powerhouses. But one of them looks like a winner of the Dodgers from here.
That would be the Magic Johnson-Stan Kasten group.
For one, that group has Magic Johnson. For another, that group very likely will have Patrick Soon-Shiong.
Soon-Shiong isn’t Magic in terms of jump shots, fame or even local cache. But in terms of moolah, Soon-Shiong blows everyone in L.A. away.
Soon-Shiong is reported to have $7.2 billion, and sources suggest to me he will very likely join the Magic-Kasten group. I mentioned this on twitter recently, and the Los Angeles Times, which has been all over this story, wrote soon after that Soon-Shoing is mulling over which group to join. That’s very likely the way Soon-Shiong or someone close to him wants it played. But he is a close friend of Magic’s, bought Magic’s 4.5 percent stake in the Lakers (and is believed pleased with that purchase) and is a basketball junkie. It’s possible he’s holding out like Bill Clinton’s buddy Ron Burkle, who appears to be waiting to see who’s leading before committing. But if the Magic-Kasten group is in it to the end, and they should be, expect Soon-Shiong to join them.
“It just didn’t work out. I wanted to buy a baseball team; they were selling a media rights deal,” Cuban said, alluding to the fact that the Dodgers’ TV rights are up for sale and obviously a big part of the purchase price.
He then elaborated: “The economics got so out of control because the Dodgers’ TV deal’s up for bid and so there’s a lot of groups coming in going, ‘This TV deal’s worth so much money that we’re gonna pay whatever it takes to get the Dodgers.’ And so they’re buying the TV rights deal first and the team second,” Mark said.
It’s a bit of a head-scratcher to come at it from this angle, because buying a baseball team is a huge package deal. Every team has TV rights. If they didn’t, revenues would be a lot lower. Basically, Cuban’s bid was far too low and he thinks the other bids are too high.
Well, that’s not completely true. The bottom of Skip Schumaker’s pants leg is actually quite visible in the 2012 Topps Series 1 baseball card set that’s launching on Wednesday.
...Now that l’il critter has somehow become big enough to push Schumaker almost completely off his own baseball card. According to Topps, it’s the first time in company history that a player’s card has not featured the player’s face.
The company also says that it hasn’t given Schumaker a sneak peek at this latest piece of memorabilia, so one can only guess what he thinks of playing second fiddle to the squirrel on his own baseball card. But he can take solace in the fact that some of the cards will feature Schumaker’s face. According to Beckett, the squirrel will only appear on the “short-print” variation of the card, making the squirrel version a valuable find for collectors out there.
This has everything except a “Joe Batters” Accardo appearance! Oh, wait…
As I said Ted’s name he looked at me and motioned for me to call him in his room after the dinner. I did so and came up to visit with him. While we were talking he told me that he has always been a huge fan of Frank Sinatra since I knew him well.
“Why don’t you tell him yourself,” I said.
I looked at my watch and it was 3:00 a.m. in Toronto, but I knew Frank was at home in Palm Springs and certainly wasn’t sleeping at midnight. I picked up the phone and called Frank.
“Francis,” I said. “I have someone who wants to say hello to you.”
I gave the phone to Ted and he went on and on to Frank about what a huge fan he was, how much he admired him and how I always spoke so highly of him. As it turns out, frank was telling Ted the same thing. Talk about the mutual admiration society; I had the greatest singer of all time talking to the greatest hitter of all time, and everybody was happy.
Both Frank and Ted were truly amazing men. I am so fortunate to have been friends with both of them. As an Italian, or just a music lover, Frank was more than just an entertainer; he was special. He had more than a great voice; he had stage presence that made you feel like he was singing just to you.
As a baseball lover, Ted was best hitter who ever lived. He hit for power, and he hit for average. And believe it or not, he hit .406 in 1941 and didn’t win the MVP. Of course 1941 was also the year DiMaggio hit in 56 straight games. Joe of course was a hero too for baseball fans and Italians….
[T]here was this CBSSports.com report quoting one of its reporters, Jon Heyman: “Heyman also notes that the finalists to land Fielder were the Nationals, Tigers and” – look out, here it comes – “one other ‘mystery team.’”
It is no surprise that Heyman would cite a mystery team that no one else knew about, even if he didn’t identify the team. Heyman, according to an Associated Press report on the Fielder signing, “first reported the agreement with Fielder.”
That Heyman is first with a major Boras signing has come to be expected in the baseball and reporting industries. There’s nothing wrong with a reporter having a good relationship with an agent, but the Heyman-Boras link has been so beneficial to Boras that years ago baseball executives told me they understood that Heyman was on Boras’ payroll.
Heyman denied that charge, but his reporting on Boras and Boras clients has continued to arouse suspicion. Heyman has recently moved from Sports Illustrated’s Web site to CBSSports.com, but his reputation has followed him. Researching Boras, I came across this item on a Web site called Tauntr.com:
Jon Heyman: Scott Boras’ Puppet…
Rich Lederer of the Baseball Analysts broke down the interesting relationship in a great post a while back, but the trend has continued. And, though Heyman is more involved with Boras during the Hot Stove season, look for him to “break” some Boras-related stories as the trade deadline approaches.
In the interest of full disclosure, I can say that Boras has never leaked a signing or a trade or a story of any kind to me. I don’t even think he talks to me. He hasn’t returned a telephone call in a long time, and I didn’t bother calling him for this column.
In the plane on the way to Perth for the Big Bash final, I watched Moneyball, a movie about an American baseball manager who puts together a team capable of mixing it with the big boys on a shoestring budget. The core principle of the movie is computer analysis and statistics. Baseball games are broken down into component parts and players are selected based on their statistical suitability to each of those parts
...Unfortunately, he then pulled out the printouts. One of them was a map of where my deliveries had pitched and the other was a corresponding document showing how many runs had been scored from each of those deliveries.
John (Buchanan) excitedly told me that whenever I pitched the ball on off stump, the batsman wasn’t scoring. He generally took half an hour to make a point and, considering the tea break at a Test match is only 20 minutes, we were already walking back onto the field at the time. I turned to him and replied that the reason they weren’t scoring when I bowled that particular delivery was because the ball had been turning half a metre and they couldn’t actually reach it.
I thanked him kindly for his input and asked him whether or not he thought I should concentrate instead on getting them out. His blank face indicated that he would have to go back to the laptop before he could respond.
Incidentally, I did start putting them in the right place occasionally, picked up my only five-wicket haul at the MCG and we went on to win the Test. Computers have a huge role to play in cricket, all sport for that matter, but remember the basic principles of the game will always be of paramount importance.
Moneyball is a great film but the stats that matter in cricket are simple. Make more runs than the opposition and bowl them out twice.
Earlier Friday evening, it seemed as if the Roy Oswalt sweepstakes were intensifying, as a report emerged that Oswalt was nearing an agreement with the St. Louis Cardinals. Well, now we’re taking things one step further. According to Gordon Edes, Oswalt has reached an agreement with the St. Louis Cardinals.
Oswalt headed to the Cardinals, source says.
It’s unconfirmed at this point, but Edes is reliable, and Joe Strauss tweeted earlier that the Cardinals were definitely interested and that a decision was expected soon. One figures that, as badly as Oswalt wants to stay around his home, this is probably true.
The Boston Red Sox are going to a new digital ticketing system for the cheapest seats at Fenway Park to keep them out of the hands of scalpers.
Fans with seats in the $12 upper bleacher section for high-demand games will receive only digital tickets. They will be required to swipe the credit card used to purchase them at the gate.
Fenway Park is the oldest ballpark in baseball, and it is also among the most expensive. The Red Sox say they’ve left the upper bleacher seats below market price to help families get into the ballpark. But that also makes it a lucrative option for the resale market.
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and local baseball executive Dennis Gilbert did not advance to the second round of the Dodgers’ ownership bidding, according to two people familiar with the process but not authorized to discuss it publicly.
Cuban told The Times in November that he did not believe the Dodgers were worth $1.2 billion. Outgoing owner Frank McCourt believes he can sell the team for at least $1.5 billion.
Gilbert, the former agent and current Chicago White Sox executive, had partnered with former talk show host Larry King as well as Jason Reese and Randy Wooster of Imperial Capital.
