Ronald Belisario says positive cocaine test was reason for absence

Back with the Dodgers after a year-long absence, reliever Ronald Belisario said he couldn’t leave his native Venezuela last year because he tested positive for cocaine.

Belisario said he didn’t know when he tested positive for the drug or what entity administered the test.

But the hard-throwing right-hander insisted he doesn’t have a cocaine problem, saying he used the drug only once. He said he hasn’t been treated for cocaine addiction.

“I don’t have a problem with any drugs,” he said.

Belisario will have to serve a 25-game suspension at the start of the upcoming season for violating baseball’s drug policy.

Belisario missed part of the 2010 season to receive treatment in a substance-abuse program. He said the treatment he received wasn’t for cocaine use, but declined to specify any further.

“That’s in the past,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Thanks to J.J. Calefornia for a line on this.

Yu Darvish arrives in Surprise, throws 30 pitches in bullpen session

“It was a bit overwhelming from what he did in Japan and all the background he had,” [Luis] Martinez said. “I was actually excited and happy to catch him. He threw sliders, curveballs, changeups, splits. He threw 30, and within those 30, there were about 10 different pitches. He’s unique in his own way. He’s a great talent.”

Marlins Season Preview: Ozzie Incites War, Zambrano Finds Zen, and Reyes Battles Dreads

If possible…picture an even unfunnier Carlos Mencia.

Odds that Ozzie Incites a War in South America:
After several months of restrained press conferences, new Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen will finally explode in a foul-mouthed Spanglish assault on Hugo Chávez. Calling the Venezuelan president una arepa de mierda, Guillen will unwittingly set off a 90-day skirmish between his home country and neighboring Colombia. The war will finally end when Chávez, Guillen, and Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos agree that all arepas simply taste kinda shitty.

Odds 6:1

The Pitcher Formerly Known as Leo Nuñez Gets Another Name Change:
Juan Carlos Oviedo aka Leo Nuñez will change his name to Meta World Pitcher in a last-ditch attempt at to leave the Dominican Republic and return to the Marlins. It won’t work.

Odds 3:2

Reyes Battles His Demonic Dreads:
Spiteful over having to move to third base, Hanley Ramirez will buy José Reyes’s dreadlocks off of eBay. The powerful charm will propel Ramirez to an All-Star first half of the season, until the hair abruptly abandons him to return to Reyes. The Dominican shortstop will wake up one morning with the dreads engulfing his head, and will have to tear them off to the music of T-Pain on Mansion’s dance floor.

Odds 4:1

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 2-22-2012

A few interesting blurbs from the newspapers of 100 years ago today:

El Paso Herald, February 22, 1912:

Ty Cobb sews a sheepskin into his trousers to save his hide when he slides. Manager Jimmy Callahan, it is said, has ordered a carload of fleeces from the Chicago stock yards for his base stealers…The death of Jimmy Doyle probably will upset plans for a Chicago-Boston trade that involved several players, Doyle among them.

Cross him off, then.

Washington Times, February 22, 1912:

We hear a lot about “swell” third basemen, but the only “swell” third baseman we ever saw was big Ed Gremminger, once with Boston, whose waist line approximated sixty inches.

Katz, Wilpon, and the Madoff “vig”

The only good thing about revelations like this is that it hopefully hastens the day that the Wilpons and Katz are forced out of ownership. It’s harder for Selig to stand by when the owners do stuff like this:

Katz and Wilpon, according to the trustee, structured player contracts to draw out the timing of their payments. They would then invest the money they owed the players with Madoff and make a profit across the many years of the contract payments. That, too, was the vig. . . Finally, instead of paying disability insurance premiums for key players on the team, the trustee says, Katz and Wilpon put the money into an account — called “Saul’s cookie jar” — to pay injured players. That, as well, was the vig.

El Cerrito: History-Making Pumpsie Green Thanks City

“Pumpsie” Green, the first African-American to play for the Boston Red Sox…by all accounts.

The El Cerrito City Council Tuesday night presented Elijah Jerry “Pumpsie” Green, 78, with a proclamation honoring his “distinguished stature in baseball history.”

“We are honoring more than a baseball player tonight,” said Mayor Bill Jones. “We’re honoring a very good person by all accounts.”

...“So it’s pleasure from one Gaucho to another to be part of this presentation,” Jones said.

“I’d like to talk a little bit about history,” he continued. “A lot of us, the vast majority of us, we really live through history. ... But few of us are history.”

Jones then recounted Green’s entry onto the Red Sox roster during a game in 1959. “When he entered the game,” Jones said. “Pumpsie Green became history. He was not only the first African-American to play for the Boston Red Sox. He ended segregation in major league baseball. For the Boston Red Sox, as we all know, was the last team to integrate in major league baseball.”

...Jones noted that it was more difficult to break into the major leagues then, when there were only 16 teams (compared with 30 now) and only 400 roster positions.

“You had to be really, really good – a really good ballplayer – to be playing at that time,” Jones said. “And in 1959, if you were African-American, you had to be exceptionally good. And Pumpsie Green was.”

Kahrl: Which way is Freddie Freeman headed?

Hopefully not to Paris…as Kahrl takes a look.

As the chart reflects, it was a nice season. But as the chart also reflects, from leading projection systems like Insider’s Dan Szymborski (ZiPS), Bill James’ projections from Baseball Info Solutions and Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA, it hasn’t generated any great expectations for what’s to come in 2012. Two of them expect to see Freeman lose ground, while BIS projects modest growth.

That might seem like glum stuff, but there are a couple of big, nagging problems with Freeman’s rookie season. His batting average on balls in play (good ol’ BABIP) and his problem making consistent contact. Put those together, and you’ve got a lot of at-bats that end at home plate, and—worst-case—reason to believe that his numbers will drop if a few more balls in play land in leather instead of grass.

Is that pessimism reasonable? In broad strokes, sure. There’s an almost automatic twitch in the sabermetric community to despair over anyone with a BABIP well beyond the norm, as Freeman’s .339 was last year. It becomes even more troubling when you’ve got a guy who swings and misses as often as Freeman did last year against breaking stuff. It isn’t like pitchers don’t know they can get an empty swing after snapping off a good slider or curve.

...The ultimate upside is that the Braves could wind up with a quality bopper at hitter’s slot under club control for at least the next five seasons—a spot where so much of the NL’s talent has scrammed for paydays as a designated hitter. As homegrown competitive advantages go, that’s the sort of thing that should encourage a contender to let it ride.

Cubs’ Byrd sports a new look

BULLY!

the Cubs’ Marlon Byrd was sporting a significant amount of fresh tattoo ink Saturday.

Running the length of Byrd’s right arm is a portion of a Teddy Roosevelt speech called “The Man in the Arena,” which dates back to April 23, 1910 and was given in Paris, France.

The most famous portion of the speech, which is believed to be the text Byrd committed to his arm, is as follows:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

2012 MLB Draft Top 100 Prospects 1.0

The strength of the 2012 MLB Draft is clearly going to be its high school bats. In the early going it doesn’t seem that we’ll see the type of college pitching that we saw drafted in 2011. The top of the class is much more in flux than it was in 2011, but despite its weaknesses, this is not a draft to be underestimated….

1. Mark Appel, RHP, Stanford
2. Lucas Giolito, RHP, Harvard-Westlake H.S. (Calif.)
3. Byron Buxton, OF, Appling County H.S. (Ga.)
4. Mike Zunino, C, Florida
5. Max Fried, LHP, Harvard-Westlake H.S. (Calif.)
6. David Dahl, OF, Oak Mountain H.S. (Ala.)

I’m pretty sure Fried Zunino was an appetizer at the Italian place I ate at last weekend. 

Shaikin/LA Times: Peter O’Malley reportedly out as bidder for Dodgers

There will be no restoration of the O’Malley dynasty…

Backed in part by the South Korean conglomerate E-Land, O’Malley was one of 11 bidders to survive the first cut. Blackstone Advisory Partners, the investment bank handling the Dodgers sale for owner Frank McCourt, has asked the remaining bidders to submit a new offer this week.

However, according to one of the people, O’Malley was concerned he might not win the bidding even if he made the highest offer.

Wedge: Ichiro will bat third this season

And next we move on to solving Moufang loops!

Mariners manager Eric Wedge said Ichiro Suzuki will bat third this season, with Chone Figgins and Dustin Ackley the likely Nos. 1 and 2 hitters, respectively, in Seattle’s lineup.

Wedge made the announcement on Tuesday after talking to all of the players involved.

“I’ve done a lot of thinking about it this winter and talked with the coaches and [general manager] Jack [Zduriencik] and everyone. Bottom line is for us to have the best lineup, one through nine out there. I want our lineup to be extended. I feel our best opportunity to score runs is with Ichiro batting third. It helps the guy in front of him, the guy behind him and it helps him.

“When you look at what we have coming back this year and trying to be deeper, one through nine, and giving ourselves the greatest opportunity to score runs, that’s why I’m going to bat him third. Everybody in there wants to win—Ichiro as much as anybody. They all want us to put together the best lineup we can to score the most runs possible.”

...Ichiro has been working on a new, more open stance throughout the offseason, but he said hitting third won’t change his general approach at the plate.

“The situation of hitting third won’t change my approach in my hitting style,” he said. “It’ll only change the situation with runners on base.”

Moneyball’s mantra helped ABs win World Cup

Who plays Tony Woodcock in the movie?

Lewis’ book sent shockwaves around the world. One of them shook the floor under Wayne Smith’s desk. The All Blacks’ assistant coach had always been interested in statistical analysis. He had helped set up the Verusco system in the 90s. What if the All Blacks could find their own Paul DePodesta?

Washington Post: Ask Boswell

Boz is back, live from Viera:

It’s not easy or quick to be a baseball town, especially when only a very few on TV or radio could even tell you off the top of their head who Matt Purke is, where he went to college or (hint) what arm he throws with. Okay, a couple could. (Kelli Johnson is here every year and knows her stuff.) And Thom Loverro. The rest can’t even find the stadium. Shame, sham… Yet Purke’s on the Nats 40-man roster and in the main clubhouse. That’d never happen with a Redskin. We’d be on 24/7 Purke Alert. Thing’ll balance out. But it takes time.

Tony La Russa in talks for MLB job

Former St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, in Detroit Tigers camp shadowing general manager Dave Dombrowski, said he is in talks with Major League Baseball about a job with the league.

La Russa emphatically said the job is not Joe Torre’s former position—executive vice president for baseball operations for Major League Baseball. Torre resigned his post in January to join a group that is bidding for ownership of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The job, La Russa said, will be to undertake special assignments under the the baseball operations umbrella, essentially working at the behest of commissioner Bud Selig.

La Russa, looking very relaxed, said “I’m not missing the baseball side yet,” when ask

Look for a lot of double-switches in the MLB Office with Rob Manfred litigating from the #8 spot.

Theo Epstein Compensation: Cubs Send Chris Carpenter To Red Sox

And you were a…compensation.

The Chicago Cubs have confirmed they will send 26-year-old right handed pitcher Chris Carpenter to the Boston Red Sox as compensation for Theo Epstein. The deal also includes an exchange of players to be named later, which is expected to be decided by April 15. The Cubs selected the 6’4” Carpenter in the third round of the 2008 amateur draft, and since then he has posted a 21-19 record with a 3.62 ERA and 7.62 SO/9 in 96 games across the minor league system.

Baseball America ranked Carpenter as the No. 13 prospect in the Cubs’ system, while John Sickels of SB Nation’s Minor League Ball blog ranked the 26 year old pitching prospect as the No. 14 overall player in the Cubs’ system, and had this to say:

  14) Chris Carpenter, RHP, Grade C+: Power arm pitched poorly in Triple-A bullpen due to command issues but looked much better in Arizona Fall League. Dominant when his command is working.

Jon Neise has a new nose, courtesy of Carlos Beltran

It looks like Mets reporters have already sniffed out the spring’s oddest story.

It’s true. New York Mets pitcher Jonathon Niese arrived at the team’s camp on Monday and said that he had received a nose job over the offseason. Better yet, the bill for the surgery is supposed to be picked up by former teammate Carlos Beltran, who promised to handle the tab before he was traded to the San Francisco Giants last July. 

  “[Beltran] wanted me to have a new nose,” Niese [told reporters on Monday]. “So he offered to pay for it. I was just like, ‘All right.’ Then it turned into seeing doctors and to getting it fixed.”

Dirk Hayhurst is carrying a Grudge

Dirk Hayhurst wants to name names, but will he?

Baseball America: 2012 Top 100 Prospects

Who will be the next Ben Grieve?

1 Bryce Harper of, Nationals Age: 19. ETA: 2012.
He should get to the majors as a teenager; settle in and enjoy it.
2 Matt Moore lhp, Rays Age: 22. ETA: 2012.
He makes it look so easy, and he’s so good he’ll make David Price a No. 2 starter.
3 Mike Trout of, Angels Age: 20. ETA: 2012.
His signing scout, Greg Mohrhardt, has since been promoted to Angels crosschecker.
4 Yu Darvish rhp, Rangers Age: 25. ETA: 2012.
It’s hard to moderate expectations for proven Japanese ace, but he should definitely surpass the Dice-K bar.
5 Julio Teheran rhp, Braves Age: 21. ETA: 2012.
There’s absolutely no link between his last name and Darvish’s Iranian heritage.
6 Jesus Montero c, Mariners Age: 22. ETA: 2012.
He should face less pressure replacing Miguel Olivo rather than Jorge Posada.
7 Jurickson Profar ss, Rangers Age: 19. ETA: 2013
He should beat out golf, cheesy theme parks as Myrtle Beach’s top 2012 attraction.
8 Shelby Miller rhp, Cardinals Age: 21. ETA: 2013
He’s looking to become the first big leaguer named Shelby, and it should happen soon.
9 Trevor Bauer rhp, Diamondbacks Age: 21. ETA: 2012
The unique ones are the hardest to project, and no one’s as unique as Bauer.
10 Dylan Bundy rhp, Orioles Age: 19. ETA: 2013.
First goal: Beat big brother Bobby to Baltimore. Next: Make the Orioles relevant.

The Night Homer Simpson Beat The Olympics and Bill Cosby: The Making Of “Homer At The Bat”

20 years ago, this past Sunday…

Steve Sax, who retired three years after “Homer at the Bat” and did time as a financial adviser before becoming a life coach and motivational speaker, acknowledges a sizable debt to the show. (The writing staff’s early preference for second base was Chicago’s Ryne Sandberg.) “Sometimes, fans would yell, ‘Hey, how’s Homer?’” Sax told me. “I know they weren’t talking about me hitting home runs, but it was a lot better than the stuff I used to hear.”

Brian Cashman admits that the Bombers didn’t try to win AL East in final weeks of 2010 season

As Busted Hyman Ruth just told me…“I’ve loved baseball ever since Brian Cashman fixed the AL East in 2010!”

Cashman admitted Sunday that the Yankees sandbagged toward the end of that season, conceding the AL East division title to the Rays in an effort to get several players healthy and prepared for the playoffs. The Yanks, who were assured of a playoff spot at the time, settled for the wild card and swept Minnesota in the first round before losing the ALCS to Texas in six games.

“I’m not taking away from Tampa Bay, but we didn’t try to win the division,” Cashman said. “We tried to line ourselves up for the playoffs and that worked. “The division title was rendered meaningless the way the set-up was. It really meant nothing more than a T-shirt and a hat.”

...“I wouldn’t want to say maybe it’s just us, but when you’re in a position to know you’re going to go (to the playoffs) and it really doesn’t matter which way you’re going to go, at that point, and you start resting guys, lining them up, and the games in September aren’t as meaningful as they needed to be,” Cashman said.

“Baseball took notice and made I think a very smart change. Bud Selig did a remarkable thing adding the wild card and I think he’s now doing another remarkable thing by enhancing the playoff push.

Bryce Harper: “I want to play and I want to play in D.C.”

I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it. You can’t have it. Too much magic, bush.

The Nationals’ top prospect arrived at Space Coast Stadium on Monday, still tiptoeing between cockiness and confidence, yet still sure that he can break camp with the Nats and contribute at the major league level as a 19-year-old.

“They’re going to make their decisions and I’m going to come here and play. ... I think that’s the biggest thing,” Harper said. “If I come here and work hard in the outfield, work hard hitting, try to make their decision hard - that’s the most I can do. If they want to send me back down, that’s them. I want to be up here, like I said. I want to play and I want to play in D.C.”

General manager Mike Rizzo is already aware of his future star’s stated preference, and that’s who Harper must convince that he’s ready. Harper already has an ally in manager Davey Johnson, who has been stumping for his young outfielder since last season.

“It’s huge to have the manager on your side,” Harper said. “I’m really excited, like I said, to come in here and play and just to be here is an honor. I’m going to come here, work as hard as I can, keep my mouth shut and play. ... I got to learn from everybody around me, come in here, work as hard as I can and try to make this team.”

...So Harper will allow the Nationals’ public relations staff to work with him “and learn from my mistakes. ... They’re going to let me be me and not shelter me.” That strategy also ensures that Harper’s fans and followers see him as he really is.

“I want everyone to know the real me,” he said.

and Who…is that.

Phillies have long history in television

True. Lowell Palmer was superb as Longstreet.

Interestingly, when it comes to TV commercials, the Phillies doing the acting have delivered nothing short of Olivier quality work. If I recall correctly, Mike Schmidt did a commercial for 7-Up in the early 1980s. It was around that time when Steve Carlton hawked milk in a TV spot, which, for many of us who never heard him speak because of his refusal to grant any interviews, was a landmark event. We finally heard Lefty talk, and then for a while he wouldn’t stop and it was all we could do to seal up his bunker in Colorado to keep him quiet.

Of course, Carlton still turns up for the reunion weekends at the ballpark where he usually sits with the broadcast crew for an inning or two where, listening in, it sounds as if the ol’ left hander is attending a baseball game for the very first time.

The biggest draw for advertisers was Pete Rose, who shilled for everything from Kool-Aid, Wheaties, Nestle Crunch, and Aqua Velva. Having had the chance to hang with Pete in Las Vegas, it seems as if he was given a lifetime supply of Aqua Velva as payment for doing the ads because one whiff made it seem as if he was trying to use it all at once.

Lubbers: Another Way to Measure Career Value

In his career, Damon has a career WAR of 51.6 (via Baseball Reference) in 2,426 games played.  Though these two statistics are rarely used in the same conversation I think they can be useful together in determining a player’s value and Hall of Fame chances.

Damon has produced 51.6 wins through his career over what a replacement-level player would be expected to produce in his place.  By dividing career WAR by career games played for Damon, we wind up with .021.  What does this mean?  My interpretation is that over the course of his entire career, his team would expect to have a 2.1% greater chance of winning a game with Damon in the lineup versus a replacement-level player.

...Damon has produced well over the course of his career but is not quite in the same league as most Hall of Famers and his HOF case is arguable at best.  Some of the players surrounding him, such as Andre Dawson and Jim Rice, were elected because of how they produced in their “peak” years.  Damon has produced only one season with 5.0+ WAR or above, compared to 4 apiece for Rice and Dawson.

In this day and age it could be difficult for a player viewed as clean to be rejected to the Hall of Fame with 3,000 career hits.  If Damon is elected he certainly would not be the worst player in the Hall, though his candidacy needs a boost to be widely considered when he is eventually on the ballot.

Thanks to Butcher.

Cook: In Leyland’s opinion, A.J. Burnett is a superior talent

As his 6.63 ERA against the Tigers proves…

There is no one whose opinions I respect more on all matters baseball than Jim Leyland’s. He still lives in Pittsburgh after managing the Pirates from 1986-96 and is starting his seventh season with the Detroit Tigers. Naturally, he was the first baseball man I thought to ask about the Pirates’ wisdom in trading for New York Yankees pitcher A.J. Burnett. He said he liked the deal. That means I like it, too.

“He’s a superior talent, there’s no question about that,” Leyland said of Burnett.

Leyland went on to say Burnett didn’t win as many games as he should have won with the Yankees, considering his great stuff. Burnett pitched “total lights out” in some games against the Tigers. “When he’s got it going, he can shut you out in a heartbeat,” Leyland said. But in other games, Burnett blew leads and lost. He often was hurt by wild pitches and home runs. “You kind of walk away shaking your head because this guy is a special, special talent,” Leyland said.

...If Burnett has any remorse about leaving the win-at-all-costs Yankees to join the hope-to-win-as-cheaply-as-possible Pirates, he didn’t show it Monday. He said he wasn’t necessarily looking forward to a fresh start after two lousy seasons with the Yankees. “I was more prepared this winter to prove a lot of people wrong.” Then, he said a fresh start isn’t such a bad thing. “I’m here for a reason.”

To win a lot of games, presumably.

I liked hearing that.

“I’m no Cy Young. I’m no All-Star—yet,” Burnett told 93.7 The Fan. “Let’s put a ‘yet’ behind that.”

Torres: Nationals’ potential excites Davey Johnson

Davey Johnson’s first Major League managerial assignment was the 1984 New York Mets, who went on to win the World Series two years later and make the playoffs in 1988.

But Johnson says his Washington Nationals are more athletic, more gifted and have the potential to be a better ballclub.

That’s high-praise considering the Mets team that eventually won the Series was stocked with stars like Keith Hernandez, Gary Carter, Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry and others. Somewhere the memories of Gooden, Carter and Strawberry are scowling.

I’m sure that outspoken bunch would have something to say about it.

“Potentially,” he stopped to emphasize the word Monday afternoon at Space Coast Stadium. “This club has more potential. It actually has more athletes, it has a lot of gifted athletes. I mean, compare (Wally) Backman to (Danny Espinosa) Espy. Shoot, Backman wouldn’t last five seconds.”

Take their opinions and shove it up their ass!!  Let’s go get a beer Doc…

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 2-21-2012

El Paso Herald, February 21, 1912:

Charley Ebbets is collecting files of New York and Brooklyn papers of January 3, on which date the plans for Brooklyn’s new ball park were detailed. Charley will place this documentary evidence in the corner stone, and thinks it will make great reading for the fans 50 years from now, when the Ebbets Stadium will still be known as a modern and well-equipped baseball edifice.

That reading material will come in handy on the off chance the team moves 3,000 miles away, the stadium gets demolished, and apartment buildings spring up at the corner of Bedford and Sullivan.

Tim Brown: Albert Pujols and Yu Darvish bump into each other twice in L.A. before spring training

New to the job, new to the division, new to the left coast, Albert Pujols has a lot to catch up on.

The sun sets pink and orange over the sea.

Designated freeway lanes are little more than suggestions.

If you turn your cap backward while ignoring the designated freeway lanes in your Beamer, that’s known as “keeping it real.”

And the Dodgers are that little can-do franchise up the road.

It’s a lot to take in at once.

In the midst of working through all that in Los Angeles last week, along with finding a place to settle his family, Pujols quite accidentally came upon the very reason he is a Los Angeles Angel.

On Thursday, as he got in a workout at Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach, in walked Yu Darvish, who introduced himself.

“A really nice guy, Pujols said. “And really humble. He said he’s looking forward to the battle. It’s going to be fun.”

Danny Espinoza’s strong handshake make big bat

In which Thomas Boswell engages the reader with eloquent images of the hijinx signalling the beginning of Spring Training, the proper use of a 2 iron, and improved switch-hitting from the second sacker.

This spring, Espinosa’s grip will bring tears. Off-handedly, Johnson mentions that last year Espinosa hit well right-handed but poorly left-handed. “That’s going to change dramatically this year,” said Johnson. Why? Because of that handshake.

In other news, is very bad to drink Jobu’s rum.

Is VERY bad.

NY Times: Trustee Says Mets Saw Madoff as House Money

Maybe Wilpon and Katz meant to say they invested in the Vanguard Dividend Appreciation Index Fund…

Saul Katz called it the Madoff “vig.”

Vig, or vigorish, is a gambling term, meaning the money a bookmaker collects on every bet taken, regardless of the outcome — a kind of dependable handling fee.

To the court-appointed trustee suing Katz and Fred Wilpon, the owners of the Mets, the Madoff “vig” was, quite simply, evidence of the men’s implausibly unyielding faith in Bernard L. Madoff’s steady investment returns, and the men’s dependence on those returns to help finance their businesses and deepen their personal wealth.

The trustee, Irving H. Picard, asserts that Katz and Wilpon took out bank loans just to invest the borrowed money with Madoff, confident that their returns would be better than the interest on the loan. That was the vig at work.

Katz and Wilpon, according to the trustee, structured player contracts to draw out the timing of their payments. They would then invest the money they owed the players with Madoff and make a profit across the many years of the contract payments. That, too, was the vig. ...

Finally, instead of paying disability insurance premiums for key players on the team, the trustee says, Katz and Wilpon put the money into an account — called “Saul’s cookie jar” — to pay injured players. That, as well, was the vig. ...

The vig was described by David Katz, one of Saul’s sons, during a sworn deposition in late 2010 when he was questioned about one way that the family company, Sterling Equities, made money with Madoff.

“You borrow money at 5 percent and you’d make 10 percent,” David Katz said. “You’d make a ‘vig,’ as my father would say, on the Bernie investment.”

The lawyer deposing Katz, according to a transcript of the proceeding, briefly appeared confused by the term.

“You’d make a vague?” the lawyer asked.

Katz said, “Vig, vig, vigorish.”

“Oh, vig, as in v-i. ...,” the lawyer responded.

Katz said: “Oh, don’t even ask. Sorry.”

Free agent Ivan Rodriguez hoping for another shot

Shiit, now the players union will be screaming…“COLLONOSCOPYUSION!”

Ivan Rodriguez is working out daily to keep his 40-year-old body in shape, hoping he’ll get a chance to play this season.

The 14-time All-Star and 13-time Gold Glove catcher insists he’s not ready to retire - yet.

“I can still play,’’ Rodriguez said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Monday from his home in Miami. “But it has been a tough market for veterans.

“There are a lot of guys who have won championships and have playoff experience to offer teams with no jobs. It’s hard to believe.’‘

Rodriguez, Roy Oswalt, Johnny Damon, Hideki Matsui, Vladimir Guerrero, Magglio Ordonez and Jason Varitek are among the big names available.

...He has 2,844 career hits - another record for a catcher - and said being in the 3,000-hit club is “absolutely’’ important to him, saying the milestone motivates him to work out harder.

“Of course, I would love to get 3,000 hits and win another World Series before I hang up my spikes and glove,’’ said Rodriguez, who helped the Marlins win it all in 2003. “But I am not a person to just follow numbers. I just want to go to the ballpark every day to help a team win and to work with a pitching staff.’‘