The Cubs’ new regime continued its housecleaning Monday when it released infielder Blake DeWitt and claimed infielder Adrian Cardenas off waivers from the Athletics.
DeWitt, a former first-round pick of the Dodgers, was the highlighted return in former general manager Jim Hendry’s 2010 trade that sent Ted Lilly and Ryan Theriot to LA. But he never could crack the Cubs’ lineup, hitting .265 in 121 games last season…....
Cardenas, 24, split time at three infield positions and left field while hitting .314 with 28 doubles and a .374 on-base percentage for Triple-A Sacramento last season. He played mostly second base in four previous minor league seasons.
Hong-Chih Kuo has parlayed reported interest from multiple teams into a major-league contract with the Mariners, according to Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times.
After three years as one of the most dominant relievers in baseball Kuo was awful last year, allowing 29 runs in 27 innings. As usual he missed a ton of bats, racking up 36 strikeouts, but Kuo struggled to throw strikes with 23 walks and also battled anxiety issues.
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.
Nice summary of the new CBA, presented by e.e. cummings.
rule 4 draft
every team will now get a slot-based “pool” for how much they can spend in the top 10 rounds, calculated relative to how many picks they have and how high those picks are. the cardinals, with 6 picks in the top 100 will have a relatively generous cap. the cardinals can spend up to the cap on all their picks through the 10th round. it doesn’t matter how it is distributed within that group; they can spend $100,000 on a first round pick and $1m on a 10th round pick. as long as they don’t spend more in total in the top 10 rounds than is in their pool, there will be no penalty. the ideal is that teams will pay slot for everybody. whether teams obey that kind of logic is yet to be seen.
there are huge penalties for paying more than is in your “pool.” a 5% overage is not a huge deal. let’s say the cardinals got $5m to spend in the top 10 rounds. if they go over by $200,000 (4%), they’d be taxed a further 75% of that $200,000, which would be $150,000. However, if they go over by more than 5%, they get the 75% tax AND they lose next year’s first round draft pick. go over by 10% and the penalty is a 100% tax and loss of next year’s first and second round picks. go over by 15% and you lose your first round pick next year and the year to follow. i read the graduated penalties as giving teams room for small errors or oversights, but imposing very stiff penalties for anything beyond minor discrepancies.
beyond the top ten rounds, you can give anybody a bonus of up to $100,000. anything beyond that counts against your pool fund.
what will be interesting to see is if teams game the system or, if they do, how they do so. as i said, the concept is that teams will pay slot in an orderly way. since there’s a finite pool, any extra money you pay to one prospect must come out of the slot money dedicated to another. but that leaves room to shift salary from one slot to another or even not to sign a player in a given slot, in favor of giving money which should’ve gone to him to another draftee. (ed: this is incorrect. although it does not appear in the summary cited above, baseball america states that when a player fails to sign, the money for that slot comes out of the pool. this woud seem to make a ground-up negotiating process, starting with the 10th round player and moving up to ninth, etc. almost mandatory.)
will teams take a chance in later rounds on signability players and just fail to sign some other players? (ed: as noted above, they’d lose the slot money if a player failed to sign; however the team could draft 30th round talent in early rounds and offer them far below slot talent - or as one commenter at bucsdugout suggested, offer pittances to college seniors, to keep money for above-slot signings elsewhere). if next year’s austin wilson falls to round 8 or even round 12, will some team get creative with their pool funds? i suspect most teams will follow the designed plan, since the risk of not doing so seems pretty high. however, some team may find an irresistable prospect falling in the draft and shift money around to sign him.
the signing deadline has moved up substantially (mid-july) to ensure that players sign fairly quickly—which should be easy to accomplish, there being less room to negotiate as most teams will hew closely to slot offerings….
The Colorado Rockies made a significant addition to their rotation on Monday, acquiring right-hander Jeremy Guthrie from the Baltimore Orioles for right-handers Jason Hammel and Matt Lindstrom, according to a major-league source.
Guthrie, 32, likely will be the Rockies’ No. 1 starter. He was scheduled to go to a salary arbitration hearing Monday; he asked for $10.25 million; the Orioles offered $7.25 million. He is eligible for free agency at the end of the season.
Hammel, 29, will replace Guthrie in the Orioles’ rotation, while Lindstrom, 31, will move into a late-inning role in their bullpen. Both are under club control for two more seasons, and their combined salaries in 2012 will be in the range of Guthrie’s.
1. Mark Appel RHP R-R 6-5 190 Stanford
2. Lucas Giolito RHP R-R 6-6 230 Harvard-Westlake HS, Studio City, Calif.
3. Byron Buxton OF R-R 6-2 175 Appling County HS, Baxley, Ga.
4. Deven Marrero SS R-R 6-1 194 Arizona State
5. Mike Zunino C R-R 6-2 215 Florida
or…The Year They Couldn’t Get a Speedball Past Tito Francona
Terry Francona, the man who managed the Red Sox to two World Series championships, is often called Tito. That’s because it was his dad’s nickname.
And his dad was quite a hitter. So good that in 1959, he had the highest batting average in the major leagues. But he did not win the American League batting title.
...Francona was batting .402 as late as Aug. 10, clouted a pair of home runs in a game five days later and a week after that, hit another ninth-inning game-winning homer. On Sept. 7, he was at .391 before going 11 for 56 to close the season while hampered by a sore hamstring.
Francona got at least one hit in 75 of the 96 games he started and had 43 multi-hit games. He hit 20 home runs and had 79 RBI, a .414 on-base percentage and a .566 slugging percentage. He struck out just 42 times in 443 plate appearances.
A player required 477 plate appearances to qualify for a batting title. That left Francona 34 short, which is why his final 1959 batting average of .363 did not crown him the AL champ. Detroit’s Harvey Kuenn won the title with a .353 mark.
Somebody told Hans Wagner that it required lots of nerve to play football, but that almost any chap could play baseball. This roused Honus to oratory. He is a football fan himself…[and] likes to watch a football game more than he does a baseball game. But he refused to admit that football requires more nerve than baseball.
...
“Doesn’t it take a little nerve to stand up to the plate and have the terrible speed of a hard ball whizzing past your forehead? Doesn’t it take nerve to step in when you don’t know what’s coming? Doesn’t it require nerve to slide into a bag when the ball is coming at you like a bullet and you don’t know but that it’s going to bound off your head?”
The Braves will unveil a new crème-colored home uniform on Monday that will probably seem familiar to fans of a certain age.
The design closely resembles the home uniform worn by the Hank Aaron-led Braves during their first two seasons in Atlanta in 1966-1967, right down to the player number instead of a tomahawk beneath the “Braves” script on front of the jersey.
...(Derek) Schiller said the new uniform was “ultimately a John Schuerholz decision” stemming from the team president and longtime former general manager’s desire to “re-connect with the team’s history.”
There is no tomahawk on the chest, but two crossed tomahawks are incorporated in a sleeve-patch logo along with “Atlanta Braves” and “1876,” the year when the National League franchise debuted as the Boston Red Caps. The Braves often cite their status as “the longest continuously operating franchise in Major League Baseball.”
The new logo is on the left sleeve, replacing a screaming Indian chief patch featured on Braves uniforms in 1966-1967. Besides that political-correctness change, the other big difference in the new uniform is player names on back. The old ones didn’t have those.
The book ‘Scars and Strikes’ is Rocker’s attempt to set the record straight a dozen years later. He says he wrote 98 percent of the self published book himself and in it he puts forth his views on many things, including Sports Illustrated reporter Jeff Pearlman, who Rocker says has a history of ‘vilifying every subject he encounters.’
Jaye Watson asked, “Do you blame him completely for the article for you looking like a racist and a homophobe?”
“Absolutely,” said Rocker.
Watson replied, “So none of it was your fault? Nothing that you said?”
Rocker answered, “If the article was 20 pages long and my long winded commentary had been included in its entirety, the opinion of me today would be drastically different.”
...Rocker says steroids helped him recover more quickly between games and that he wasn’t the only Brave using them.
“Probably just off the top of my head, probably eight to ten guys in that Braves house I know factually and one or two more that I’m not sure of. It’s the kind of thing if you weren’t doing it, it’s like bringing a knife to a gun fight. I’m not going to climb on top of the mound, look 60 feet away at Mark Maguire knowing good and well what he’s doing. I’m not going to climb up there short handed. I’m going to have all six bullets in my gun because I know he does. When the game is over and the three run homer is in the seats you can’t make excuses.”
I knew Steve Sisco’s only career HR smelled fishy.
I apologize in advance for self linking here. This is a baseball game I came up with which is super easy to play and designed to introduce very young children to the game. My daughter is just shy of 4 years old, and playing this game with her stuffed animals is a big hit so far.
If you have kids between the ages of 3-6, give it a try.
...When Wilson Ramos emerged from the jungle barely 48 hours after he was taken, the government’s account of his rescue failed to convince everyone. In one private conversation after another, well-known members of Venezuela’s baseball community cast doubt on the official version of events. The story described federal agents going bravely into the wilderness to rescue Ramos in a hail of bullets that apparently hit no one. The skeptics considered this a play by the Chávez regime to remix the truth for its own benefit—to show the world that Venezuela wouldn’t let the malandros snatch a baseball player and get away with it.
Well, something happened to bring Ramos home. The skeptics had their theories. And in a country where real life can imitate an overwrought spy novel, nothing was too strange to consider.
A follow-up story on the Ramos kidnapping and aftermath.
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.”
Despite their difference in Wins Above Replacement—Jeter’s was 2.3, Gardner’s 5.1 according to FanGraphs, mostly because of his high defensive rating—Jeter was the winner of this WAR, and the discussion has hardly been raised this winter.
The Yankees’ best lineup last year seemed to be the one with Jeter leading off and Gardner hitting ninth.
And yet, there is a circumstance in which the Yankees might do better with Gardner batting first and Jeter second in 2012—when a right-hander is starting. In fact, that would probably cover close to two-thirds of the season.
The reason is that Gardner’s OBP versus righties the last two seasons is significantly higher than Jeter’s. In 2010 and 2011, Gardner’s OBP vs. righties was .383 and .345, respectively; Jeter’s was .316 and .329. And throughout his career, Jeter has been a slightly better hitter in the 2-hole, where for years he batted regularly. As a leadoff hitter, Jeter’s career BA and OBP are .309/.379; they are .314/.385 as a No. 2 hitter. Plus, Gardner’s speed should make it easier for him to steal against a right-handed pitcher.
Now, when a lefty is pitching, the numbers are reversed: Jeter’s OBP’s over the last two seasons (.391/.423) are better than Gardner’s (.373/.344).
So the answer seems pretty simple: Gardner leads off, Jeter bats second when a righty is starting; Jeter leads off, Gardner bats ninth when a lefty is starting.
Having said that, I don’t want him hitting for the Orioles.
Even if he shocks everyone and has a monster year in 2012 for someone, I don’t want to see that at Camden Yards. Ramirez has done way too much wrong in his career and, if Cal Ripken Jr. is a role model for kids, this guy is the opposite of that.
It starts with his current 50-game suspension for violating baseball’s drug policy, which was reduced from 100 games. I can’t get out of my mind the incident a few years ago where he allegedly pushed a much, much older Red Sox front office employee over a ticket dispute. He was arrested last September and charged with domestic battery.
That is way too many “issues” for me. I am not making this decision but it’s pretty clear where my vote would stand if I had one.
Plus, I watched the guy dog it many nights on the bases and in left field at Camden Yards only to see him hit a key homer later in the game to the adoring Red Sox Nation and for a club management which chose to overlook the former because he could deliver the latter. He was just Manny being Manny.
Let him be that somewhere that is not Baltimore in 2012.
“As a father, of course you’re proud of what your son’s been able to accomplish on the field,” Cecil Fielder, 48, said. “But as a father also you worry about how he is growing as a man, how — I want to say this correctly — how he is communicating with everybody that had something to do with how he got to where he is. And that part of my son, I think we’re all a little disappointed.”
Cecil Fielder said Prince has no relationship with any members of their extended family, including his ill grandparents; he “hides behind” agent Scott Boras’ representatives to dodge discussing his family; and he shows no appreciation for those who helped him along the way.
For example, Cecil Fielder said: “We all knew the kid was obese. He had a hard time running to first base without getting tired. You don’t transform your body by yourself, you’ve got to have trainers, you’ve got to have people cooking for you, there’s a lot of things that go into that. …
“There’s a lot of people that wish he would get over whatever he’s got going on with his self. … And once he gets rid of that, I think those people he needs to reach out to other than me, I think hopefully he will.”
Cecil Fielder said he took family to see Prince play in Atlanta a few years ago and when they went into the family waiting area postgame, security made them leave. As a result, he has no plans to see Prince continue the family legacy in Detroit, though he also said Tigers owner Mike Ilitch “is concerned” about their relationship.
“I know what I did for my son, and he knows what I did for him,” Cecil Fielder said. “I’m going to take the high road, stay away from it and not cause any friction. … You play for the Tigers, I played for the Tigers, do your thing. … If you want to stay stuck whatever cocoon you’re in, stay there, but I’m not going to join you.”
The team will host a party for 500 people on an infield that features a bar, a full-service grill, an oyster bar and a dessert stand. A 12-foot screen will protect the party attendees from errant line drives and any advances from your newest member of the Reading Phillies, first baseman Prince Fielder. (Don’t believe that Detroit news.)
• Derby participants will earn points by hitting any of several outfield targets, including an R-Phils intern bouncing on a trampoline, a R-Phils intern dangling from the end of a crane and a R-Phils intern sitting in a dunk tank. In related news, the Reading Phillies are considering implementing the first-ever intern disabled list this season.
• Derby participants will be penalized for any baseballs caught by roving mascots in the outfield. Who, by the way, will be busy dodging the “golf ball picker upper” that players can also hit for bonus points.
I’m not sure the article needs all the rhetorical flourishes, since the reality sounds crazy enough.
The Cubs have signed left-handed pitcher Gerardo Concepcion to a reported $7 million multi-year, major league contract.
Concepcion, 19, defected from Cuba in the Netherlands after being named rookie of the year for the Cuban national team. He will be invited to spring training, but is not expected to make the rotation. The Tribune first reported the team’s interest in him during December’s winter meetings….
Concepcion’s fastball, according to scouts, is about 92 mph, but he has an exceptional curveball and very good changeup.
The consensus seems to be that Marlins Ballpark’s home run celebration machine is tacky, over-the-top, nonsensical and just plain awful. All of those adjectives are accurate, except for “awful”, which should be replaced with “awesome.”
...Enter Marlins Ballpark and the Moulin Rouge-esque home run contraption. It is more adventurous than any current MLB stadium amenity, rivaled only by the backstop aquarium about 400 feet away. Imagine Mike Stanton crushing a home run to center field, then rounding the bases accompanied by the sights—and sounds—of the Marlins’ own Bazooko Circus. It’s just awesome, in the way that Death Wish III, Mark McGwire taking batting practice or a performance of 1812 Overture with live cannon fire is awesome. There is no pretense of tastefulness, and that’s okay. Not everything in baseball has to be Vin Scully. There is room for Bill Veeck. And it’ll probably annoy Bob Costas, so there’s that.
I want to hate all things Marlins—especially considering the crony capitalism and theft of citizens’ dollars which were integral for building Marlins Ballpark—but I have to admire the home run celebration machine for the absurd spectacle that is is. Do I want every team erecting their own? Not necessarily, but some fresh architectural and attraction ideas in MLB would be welcome.
I always figured my dancing with Madonna was the low point of her career, but after this Sunday…that might change.
Predicting 60 percent of games correctly is astoundingly high – gamblers need to win less than 53% of their games to make a profit. That is why analytics are so popular among bettors, said Elihu Feustel, professional gambler, one-time casino consultant and co-author of “Managing Risk: Attacking Vegas and Wall Street.”
Feustel, of South Bend, Ind., devotes multiple chapters of his book to betting on football. He does not, however, like football.
“I think it’s boring,” he said. He is still willing to make money off of it.
...Baseball may be better known than football for the use of analytics. The Oscar-nominated movie based on a best-selling book, “Moneyball,” traced the Oakland A’s road to success using advanced statistics , but no plans have been made for “Football Outsiders: The Movie.” But football analytics have their own vibrant research community in universities across the country.
Vince Gerrano, executive director of the Sports Analytics institute at Manhattanville University in New York, said football analytics time has come.
“Baseball came first because it’s so much more difficult to analyze individual contribution from a player in football,” he said. “In football, there is so much interdependency.
Jeff Allison got up Friday morning to get ready to go to work at a local baseball facility and coach kids. Then he read the headline about Josh Hamilton.
“It tore me apart,” said Allison. “I know. I’ve been there.”
...“I’m happy,” he says, “and I’m proud of where I am. Do I wish I were in the big leagues? Of course, but once I hurt my elbow and didn’t say anything, my stuff was never the same.”
Allison is the best high school pitcher I’ve ever seen in New England. The night I saw him, he sat 95-97 mph with a hammer curveball. In seven innings, he faced 22 batters and threw 21 first-pitch strikes.
...And now, at 27, he is 62 months clean, trying to find his balance and help kids stay away from his demons. Today, he cares about Hamilton, “Because if you haven’t gone through this, you have no idea how it tears at you. Josh will make it through. He will succeed. He will be great. I say it from a different vantage point than many other people. I’ve been there. I know. And I know that in the end, Josh will win and continue to be a superstar. If I could help him as he helped me, I would, but he may not need anyone else, because he will make it.”
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.
Not a baseball item, but I think some people here might have a couple of choice thoughts. It is amazing how much the ardor for prosecution waned after Barry Bonds was sentenced to only four months of home confinement.
The sound you just heard was Lance Armstrong and Nike both thanking Judge Illston.
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.
One of the big knocks against Brock was that he didn’t walk very much. This really hurt his on-base percentage and makes his career .293 batting average fairly soft. Over his career, he averaged 14.76 plate appearances for every walk. Of the 34 Hall of Famers who had at least 2000 plate appearances from 1960-1979, only a handful walked less frequently than Brock. For the record, those were Ernie Banks (14.77), Luis Aparicio (15.51), Nellie Fox (16.11), Bill Mazeroski (18.36), Robin Yount (19.10), and Andre Dawson (20.85), and these numbers are all limited to the portions of careers in just the period 1960-1979. Most of those guys, however, also struck out a lot less often than Brock, who had a 2.27 K/BB ratio in his career. Banks (1.84), Aparicio (0.97), Fox (0.35), Mazeroski (1.46), and Yount (1.96) had more balanced attacks, while Dawson (3.64) was just getting going with his own (HOF-questionable) career.
Brock also took over the lead in career caught stealings in 1974 and kept that lead until 1999, when Rickey Henderson passed Brock, 8 years after he passed him in stolen bases. In fact, looking at the top 10 guys in all-time stolen bases, Brock has the worst success rate of all (ignoring Hamilton and Arlie Latham, for whom caught stealing data doesn’t exist.) Brock’s rate was 75.3%. By comparison, Henderson was at 80.8%, Ty Cobb at 80.9%, and Tim Raines at 84.7%.
For his career, Brock ranks 35th in games played and 19th in at bats, but only 45th in runs scored, 63rd in total bases, 67th in doubles, 63rd in triples, and 58th in times on base, while 21st in strikeouts and 17th in outs made.
So what’s all the fuss? Brock was a really good player, but should he really be in the Hall of Fame?
In his continuing battle against brain cancer, Gary Carter made a rare public appearance Thursday, visiting the Palm Beach Atlantic college baseball team he coaches near his home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
Carter, 57, has spent nearly his entire time confined to his house in recent days as his condition has worsened.
However, according to family sources, he was determined to make it to Palm Beach Atlantic’s opening game of the season and was driven to the game by family members — whereupon he arrived at the field riding in the back of a golf cart shortly before the playing of the national anthem.
“He wanted to be here for his guys, here for opening day,” Carter’s daughter, Kimmy Bloemers, was quoted as saying by the Palm Beach Post.
Carter spent only a few minutes with the team, shaking hands with the players and grinning broadly, while repeating: “Let’s get a win tonight.”
He then spent about three innings watching the game from a private booth in the press box, accompanied by former Montreal Expo teammates Tommy Hutton and Jeff Reardon, both of whom live in the Palm Beach Gardens area.
On Jan. 21, Carter was honored with the Milton and Arthur Richman “Ya Gotta Have Heart” award at the New York Baseball Writers dinner but was too ill to attend. Instead, the award was accepted by his son, D.J., and his two daughters, Kimmy and Christy, who asked the audience to pray for their dad.
Since then, family sources said doctors elected to cease a lot of the medication — chemotherapy and radiation — Carter was receiving as it was no longer containing the tumors and making him feel worse.
He was said to be spending most of his time at home in a weakened state, and the family website has not had an entry since Jan. 19, when Bloemers reported, “This past week has been one of the hardest weeks for my dad. Every day is exhausting and every move takes great effort.”
Thursday, at least, was a better day, as Carter fulfilled his vow to his players to be there for them on their opening day of the season.
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.”
The source disclosed to us that in the early 1980s Barry Halper was questioned by a family member of the source as to what the origins were of some rare items Halper had shown him. Said the source, “Barry bragged to (my relative) that a lot of his collection came from that (the New York Public Library).” The source continued, “Barry said it was there for the taking and Barry was quite proud of it. (My relative) absolutely could not tolerate it.” We asked the source to confirm that the thefts were from the NYPL and the source stated, “Yes, the New York Public Library, he used to talk about how he did it.” When asked to delve further into details the source stated, “These were conversations he and (my relative) had, and obviously, (my relative) and I talked about it, but I can’t remember that Barry himself, but he also hired other people to do it and told them and how to go do this, so it was just something that once we knew, that was the end of the relationship (with Halper). It always amazes me because he was trading on he was always bigger than life, and people just let him get away with it and I just couldn’t believe it.”
Pam Guzzi, the great-great granddaughter of the original owner of the Sutton contract, Hall of Famer Harry Wright, was shocked when she got the news that the contract had not yet been returned to the library and was again being sold. Said Guzzi, “It appears painfully obvious that the contract between Ezra Sutton and my great-great grandfather, Harry Wright, was among the articles belonging to, and subsequently stolen from, the New York Public Library. It is incredulous to me, that this document now appears on the auction block and I hope and pray and plead with the “powers that be” that the document be removed and returned to the NYPL.
According to the report, Time-Warner and Comcast—the Mets’ business partners with SNY—authorized the purchase of 16 percent of the ballclub to prop up the Mets, which in turn should help ratings. The $80 million infusion should allow the Mets to meet this year’s debt obligations.
Makes some sense, to the extent their fortunes are already intertwined.
