Batter up: World Baseball Classic, Pool D

The 2009 World Baseball Classic officially began in the wee hours of Thursday morning. Most teams, including these ones, get started on the weekend.

Next up: a preview of Pool D (San Juan): Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama, and the Netherlands. This pool was much the same in 2006, except with Cuba instead of the D.R. This time around, none of these teams will face Cuba until the semifinal.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

• Opener: Saturday, March 7 vs. the Netherlands (11 a.m., all times Eastern)
• WBC 2006: 4th overall: 5-1 in group play, lost to Cuba 3-1 in semifinal.
• Players to watch: SS Jose Reyes (Mets), DH David Ortiz (Red Sox), RHP Edinson Volquez (Reds), 2B Robinson Cano (Yankees), SS Miguel Tejada (Astros), SP Pedro Martinez
  
• Who's missing: Adrian Beltre and some guy named Rodriguez.
  
• Pitching: Jose Arredondo, Juan Cruz, Damaso Marte, and Rafael Perez are varying degrees of dangerous out of the bullpen: Perez has had more strikeouts than innings in every major-league season. And with Volquez and Johnny Cueto, the Dominicans are probably No. 1 in "2008 pitcher performance minus 2007 pitcher performance." But they also have Pedro in camp, who considers himself "the old goat in this group."
  
• Hitting: Without Beltre or A-Rod, it's not as scary as it was a week ago. But it's still better than most in this tournament. Willy Aybar can fill in at third in their absence.
  
• Fielding: First base and outfield is a little less packed than second, third, and short (Cano, Reyes, Tejada, Hanley Ramirez can play too). Willy Tavares is probably in CF by default. Nelson Cruz can handle RF, but Jose Guillen and Moises Alou have never been great so Jose Bautista might show up in one of the corners by default.
  
• Predicted Round 1 finish: First place.
  
• Tournament potential: They're good enough to make the final four. They'll have to beat two of these teams (easy enough) then probably two more of Puerto Rico/USA/Venezuela. Their pitching may not carry them all the way to the final, though.
  

PUERTO RICO

• Opener: Saturday, March 7 vs. Panama (5 p.m.)
• WBC 2006: 5th overall: 4-2 in group play and did not make semifinals. They beat Cuba 12-2, but lost to them 4-3 in the second round.
  
• Players to watch: RHP Javier Vazquez (Braves), C Geovany Soto (Cubs), OF Alex Rios (Blue Jays), 1B Carlos Delgado (Mets), OF Carlos Beltran (Mets), other Mets named Carlos
• Who's missing: Not too many pitchers available. Only 17 Puerto Rican pitchers have made their major-league debut in the last 10 years. A big loss is Mike Lowell, third baseman, .279/.343/.467 lifetime hitter, and one of the best guys in baseball, who is recovering from hip surgery. He really wanted to play.
  
• Pitching: Behind Vazquez, it's kind of thin: Javier Lopez and Pedro Feliciano can contribute out of the bullpen, but with Ian Snell and Jonathan Sanchez 2-3 in the rotation, they'll need relievers more often than is convenient.
  
• Hitting: Soto was the 2008 NL Rookie of the Year and the starting catcher in the All-Star Game. Delgado is Delgado. Beltran and Rios add power. Mike Aviles came out of nowhere to hit .325/.354/.480 for the Royals last year and Felipe Lopez is also a decent hitter. They have legit major-leaguers at basically every spot, 1 through 9, and four of them need to be handled with care.
  
• Fielding: If Soto falters, then Yadier Molina, the best fielder among the Flying Molina Brothers, is solid behind the plate. Ivan Rodriguez is on the roster as well, although Soto is probably a better option to start. Lopez used to play shortstop but wasn't good, and Alex Cora should play there over Aviles. (Bernie Williams is apparently on the roster and should be kept away from an outfielder's glove.)
  
• Predicted Round 1 finish: Second-place behind the Dominicans, or first if they send Vazquez against them.
• Tournament potential: Maybe the semifinals if their pitching holds up. They can certainly ride their bats to Round 2.
  

PANAMA

• Opener: Saturday, March 7 vs. Puerto Rico (5 p.m.)
  
• WBC 2006: One of four teams to lose all three games, although they kept Puerto Rico within one and took Cuba to eleven innings. They were also memorably no-hit by 18-year-old Shairon Martis of the Netherlands in their final game.
• Player to watch: OF Carlos Lee (Astros)
  
• Who's missing: Mariano Rivera, possibly the best pitcher ever (you can make the argument)
  
• Pitching: Manuel Corpas is probably the best pitcher, but he rarely goes more than two innings. After him it's Manny Acosta, another reliever, and Bruce Chen, who could start but shouldn't. There are a remarkable number of A-ball players on this roster.
  
• Hitting: Carlos Lee and, um, Carlos Lee. Carlos Ruiz also has major-league experience. The president of Panama convinced him that they needed a catcher, but with a career OPS+ of 77, Ruiz won't cause opposing pitchers to pace nervously and talk to themselves (any more than they already do).
  
• Fielding: No clue. Lee's not great, that's all I can tell you.
  
• Predicted Round 1 finish: Third
  
• Tournament potential: They'd have to upset and/or kidnap somebody to get into Round 2.
  

NETHERLANDS

• Opener: Saturday, March 7 vs. Dominican Republic (11 a.m.)
  
• WBC 2006: Their only win was the aforementioned no-hitter over Panama.
  
• Players to watch: Sidney Ponson, I guess. Shairon Martis isn't listed on the roster this year. Randall Simon hasn't played in North America for a while but will forever be known for this:
  
  You know Letterman would be all over this, too.
  
• Who's missing: Martis, Jair Jurrjens, and Andruw Jones.
  
• Pitching: Sidney Ponson, I guess. Rick VandenHurk is #2 on a weak staff. Rick VandenHurk's career ERA is 7.
  
• Hitting: Former Ottawa Lynx outfielder Gene Kingsale is there, but don't get too excited.
• Fielding: I hope Sharlon Schoop gets a lot of playing time behind the plate, because his name is Sharlon Schoop.
  
• Predicted Round 1 finish: Fourth
• Tournament potential: Guess.
  

Snark break ...

Pour the milk in before the cereal? You wild man, you ... meantime, chew over one man's opinion of The Tragically Hip's five best songs, especially if you do know where Kingston is ...

It is NHL trade deadline day, or for people with an inner life, Wednesday.

The nerve of that Alex Rodriguez. How dare he say the Yankees could use Mets shortstop Jose Reyes, who's only nine years younger and is making $14-million less this season than Derek Jeter. It was a tough Tuesday all around for diva ballplayers. Manny Ramirez is almost signed, took attention away from rumblings Barry Bonds wants to play again and Darryl Strawberry saying, "hell, yeah," he would have taken steroids in the 1980s.

Fox Sports has an anti-ice agenda; five of the flicks on their 10 Worst Sports Movies involved hockey or figure skating.

Shame on anyone who doesn't realize Youngblood was brilliant in its way. It's worth it alone for spotting Steve Thomas and Peter Zezel as extras and the fact that it shows the Hamilton Mustangs taking the bus home after a game in Thunder Bay which shows the screenwriters didn't have a clue about Canadian geography.

The Wrestler and Hot Rod were basically the same movie.

This post is worth nothing, but this worth noting:

• The three St. Francis Xavier basketball players facing assault charges won't play in the Atlantic conference tournament, but could be reinstated for the CIS Final 8. That includes one of their star guards, Tyler Richards, along with Nepean native William Donkoh.
  

Zen Dayley: Carlos and the Bagman

It's been around the blogosphere and back, but a pre-eminent baseball writer batting out a column calling ex-Jay Carlos Delgado "the lost slugger of the Steroid Era" demands a response, especially when you totally called this spin:

"It's been hard, as a Jays fan, to shake the idea that Carlos Delgado's reputation might improve even though there's no way to presume anyone was clean as a bean."
-- Feb. 10, 2009

Discretion seemed like the better part of beating the Delgado drum two weeks ago.

It is zero-sum to play the guessing game of who was clean and who was juicing in baseball in the 1990s and 2000s. Tom Verducci, though, makes six figures writing about baseball (oh, the envy is just dripping off the computer screen), so maybe he can feel a little safer stepping out on to that ledge. The rest of us, who don't have editors and advertisers to answer to so much, can, as Jason at It Is About The Money, Stupid did, call this a "fool's errand." There is no way of knowing, so you can't turn Delgado into this smiling, ebullient bald-headed beacon.

It is also curious, mildly, whom Verducci doesn't seize upon as the Lost Slugger as he did his tour of spring training camps, carrying a lantern in the daytime. Delgado hit the ninth-most home runs in baseball from 1996 to 2003, which is taken to be the full run of the Steroid Era, to which Jules in Superbad would say, "Wow, that's a bit of an oversimplication there." Another first baseman of that period, Jeff Bagwell, is tied for sixth on the list (with Mark McGwire, who actually didn't play in two of those seasons).

Bagwell was not forgotten. He was simply underrated. He is also retired as a player, plus there was a New York Daily News report last spring that a trainer supplied drugs to him, Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte when all three played in Houston. It didn't have much of stickiness factor, perhaps since "the rules of American sports journalism prohibit steroid allegations from being directed at average-sized Caucasian ballplayers on teams based in Red States." (OOLF, Dec. 15, 2006.)


Point being, Jeff Bagwell is not as good a literary device as Delgado. He's also not as a big skin to hang on the wall compared to Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa or Clemens and Mark McGwire. Being underrated and playing your whole career in a football state has its perks. (As an aside, someone claimed the spike in Bagwell's home-run rates was fishy, failing to point out he hit only four homers in his Double-A season in 1990 because he played in an extremely pitcher-friendly league; no one on his team hit more than five homers, and Bagwell led the league in doubles, which is an indicator of a burgeoning home-run stroke.)

Getting back to Delgado, it's easy to see why he would put on such a pedestal. He plays for the other New York ballclub and he could soon be in rare company when it comes to his counting stats.

"This season, be it anything close to ordinary for him, Delgado will become only the 11th player in baseball history with 500 home runs, 500 doubles and 1,500 RBIs. It is a club with no back door. The others: Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, Eddie Murray, (Ken) Griffey, (Manny) Ramirez, (Rafael) Palmeiro and (Barry) Bonds. And yet Delgado never is talked about as a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and is rarely discussed as a Hall of Famer at all."

It's a fun thought, although piling up the big career hit, home run and RBI totals is somewhat a combination of longevity and the era where someone played. The first five names on that list are all-time greats beyond that doubt. The next five involve a guy who played forever and four who had the benefit of playing in the ArenaBall era, including two whom most people would call drug cheats.

Delgado should not be turned into a hero after the fact. He was a terrific hitter in Toronto. The vibe with him was the same as it has been with Roy Halladay since the start of the 2005 through on or around July 31, 2009,. He made it feel like the Blue Jays would always have some hope as long as he was as around. Perhaps Hall of Fame voters, who tend to give a lot of credence to someone having won a MVP award or Cy Young Award, will consider looking at it as if he won in 2003, when he was edged by Alex Rodriguez.

The bottom line, as ShysterBall noted, it's really hard to except people to believe who was clean and who was dirty.

"Look, I appreciate what Verducci is trying to do here. He, like so many of us, wants to bring some kind of certainty to bear on steroids' impact on baseball. He wants to draw a line around certain players and statistics so we can at least have some kind of a foothold for assessing the era in which we find ourselves. The fact of the matter, however, is that no analysis, such as it is, like this one going to achieve that certainty or allow us to separate the wheat from the chaff. Rather, it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of reporting and scholarship. In the meantime, we're just going to have to live with our vague senses about this stuff and have some faith that the enduring nature of the game -- and the work of history -- will sort all of this stuff out for us."

In the meantime, Carlos Delgado is 31 homers from 500. He'll probably achieve the milestone in September. Sure, it would have been great if he could have done it in a Blue Jays uniform.

Bloggers can't be choosers, though. Only Sports Illustrated gets make such choices.

Related:
Appreciating Carlos Delgado, the lost slugger of the Steroid Era (Tom Verducci, SI.com)

Rodriguez: Thirteen thoughts on the baseball Judas

It is better for your health to "ignore these blowhards" with regard to the media coverage of the Alex Rodriguez scandal, to quote FanGraphs, which has created the Hyperbole Index (HI, for short).

Good friend Pete Toms notes this is a chattering class issue. The majority of people who will attend ballgames, just for something to do or on a company outing, will have forgotten about this by April. For sanity's sake, condensing the whole Rodriguez matter to 13 thoughts seems appropriate for putting the matter to bed for a few days.

1. Rodriguez breaking the home run record... good thing: Contary to what you might have heard, Rodriguez has not destroyed the game's history. His shame will serve to liberate it from the conceit, kept up by self-appointed gatekeepers such as Bob Costas, that baseball is the best game of all because of its record book.
   
   Those of you who have also watched all 18½ hours of Ken Burns' Baseball, six times over in the past 15 years might remember this part. At one point, Costas says the grand old game stands alone since you can rhyme off numbers such as 56, 755, 4,256, .406 and everyone will get the reference. In other sports it is, "How many yards did Jim Brown have when Walter Payton passed him? How points did Wilt Chamberlain have when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar passed him to become the all-time leading scorer in the NBA?"
   
   Statistics are a good backup for confirming what you saw or filling in what you missed. It's mostly a reflection of the competition player faced, the conditions (i.e., segregation, scouting, home ballpark), the way the game was played at the time and whether he was fortunate enough to enjoy a long career. Everything needs to be put into context, not just the Steroid Era.
   
   The failure to understand is this is why Dick Allen, who played in the low-scoring 1960s and early '70s, is not in the Hall of Fame. It is also a big part of why Jim Rice got in last month by the skin of his teeth. Oh, and remember, anyone who played before the game was fully integrated, their numbers are a bit suspect too.
   
   It's a fair leap, but if the top two home run hitters of all time are a pair of universally hated cheaters, perhaps it gets slower-thinking sportswriters to stop furrowing their brows in a vain attempt to understand the situation. This is a small, nerdy point to list first.
   
   
2. Marvin Miller must be laughing. The now 91-year-old former players' union boss warned five years ago (The Biz of Baseball, July 13, 2004) that the U.S. government might step all over players' constitutional rights in order to be the white knight on Steroids in Sports. No one was listening (guilty as charged):

   "... it's one thing if an employer makes it a labor-management issue. It's quite another when the government says, 'I now will subpoena records of confidential tests and I will use the material,' which, after all is tantamount to saying, 'I will require self-incrimination and I may send some of you to jail.' I think the sports media, like so much of the other media, is just asleep on this issue."

3. This shall pass. This is only the second-worst scandal in sports history, according to the estimable Seattle baseball writer Geoff Baker. (Canadians might be interested to know what claimed the No. 1 and No. 5 berths.) People are so jaded that they can shrug this off, noting it was timed so it keeps Steroids in Baseball on the front burner in the lead-up to the start of Barry Bonds' trial (which is going so, so well for the prosecutors).
   
   
4. Statistics can prove anything; 14 per cent of all people know that. Baseball was due to see an attendance decrease in 2009 due to the recession. Expect someone to blame that on the Bonds and Rodriguez fallout.
   
   
5. Putting the media on trial: The Sports Law Professor turned the cannon on Sports Illustrated's Selena Roberts, who broke the story Saturday.

   "Where is the reporters' complicity? I see Selena Roberts, Sports Illustrated's new back-page moralizer ... being interviewed on evening news programs without having to answer for her conduct. If it not permissible for an insider to reveal the contents of sealed evidence, then why is it morally permissible (if not illegal) for an outsider, especially a veteran reporter experienced in prying admissions out of reluctant innocents, to cajole and entice such insiders to break their known legal obligations? Isn't luring another to commit a wrong just as culpable as the wrong itself?"

6. In other words, Rodriguez didn't have to make stuff up: Rodriguez steered some of his ESPN interview with Peter Gammons around to spewing invective about Roberts. He even went so far to accuse of her of committing a B&E:

   "What makes me upset is Sports Illustrated pays this lady Selena Roberts to stalk me. This lady has been thrown out of my apartment in New York City. This lady has, five days ago she was thrown out of the University of Miami police for tresspassing. And four days ago she tried to break into my house while my girls are up there sleeping, and got cited by the Miami Beach Police. I have the paper here. And this lady's coming out with all these allegations, all these lies, because she’s writing an article for Sports Illustrated. And she's coming out with a book in May. And really respectable journalists are following this lady off the cliff, and following her lead. And that to me is unfortunate.

   Jeff Pearlman has some choice words for Gammons for not challenging Rodriguez's assertions. Roberts was also slagged by The Futility Infielder last night.
   
   
7. Yes, him again: Rodriguez's infamy means that Pete Rose, who's been sent down the river so many times only to keep bobbing up like some raspy-voiced Rasputin, can continue his two-decade-old image rehabilitation.
   
   Rose was on MLB Home Plate on Tuesday afternoon, where he drew a distinction between his crimes as an athlete-gambler and a juicer: "What I did had nothing to do with the direct outcome of a game. What I did (betting on baseball), I did as a manager." That might be a flimsy premise, but taking a banned substance definitely impacts
   
   For what it's worth, Rose did not buy any claim Rodriguez was young and naive in 2001-03, pointing out "he wasn't a kid." Granted, at the time Rodriguez was playing for a team whose former managing partner who referred to things he did in his 30s as "youthful indiscretions." Maybe that gave him the idea (kidding).
   
   
8. Cooperstown needs new shorts: Rose, who of course wants to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame worst than anything, said, "I just got a call from a guy in Cooperstown. He's all pissed off. He's like, this is going to ruin us because no one from the last 10 years is going to get into the Hall of Fame because of steroids."
   
   There would not be a problem if the Baseball Writers' Association of America would get off its collective high horse, but that's another 100 posts. To borrow a phrase from one of Kinger's contemporaries, Tim Cunningham, the Hall of Fame voting system is "totally broken." A-Rod sticking a needle in his bum doesn't let anyone off the hook.
   
   
9. Comfortably numb: Please keep in mind that some other big name will get out at some point.
   
   
10. Who is innocent by association? Poz noted Frank Thomas, who was just naturally huge and cooperated with the Mitchell Report, comes out very well. Thomas was huge naturally and his career has wound down at a normal pace. Some of the pitchers who played through the Steroid Era, such as Mike Mussina, might have stronger arguments for the Hall of Fame, assuming they were on the level.
    
    It's been hard, as a Jays fan, to shake the idea that Carlos Delgado's reputation might improve even though there's no way to presume anyone was clean as a bean. The former Toronto slugger, as you probably remember, finished second to Rodriguez in the American League MVP voting in 2003. Delgado was fourth in 2000, behind the tainted Jason Giambi, Thomas and Rodriguez.
    
    Being a former MVP draws a lot of water with the BBWAA. The view might take hold that Delgado actually should be looked at as the winner in 2003, which would help his borderline Cooperstown bonafides. As a first baseman who has OPS+'d 138 over his career, Delgado is an iffy Hall of Fame candidate, but he is getting close to the 500-home run plateau which once meant automatic induction, along with 500 doubles and 1,500 RBI.
    
    
11. Talk about timing: The Rodriguez scandal has done for the new MLB Network what the first Gulf War did for CNN back in 1991, as Sports Media Journal noted. It's been a real coup for the digital channel, although Canadians have to take everyone's word for it since the channel is not available in Canada, thanks Rogers.
    
    
12. Why the shrug? It is tough to feel scandalized when one made his peace with the Steroid Era three flippin' years ago:

    "Baseball’s hamfisted attempt to put a gloss over the steroids scandal last year makes every fan a little bit guilty. We are taking pleasure in a sport that you know has been altered by drug cheats, knowing that there are strings attached."

13. Barry Bonds is still in the 10th circle. It makes no sense to draw a distinction between Rodriguez and Bonds because the latter is a more arrogant jerk. No one thought to call Rodriguez a cheater before Saturday, and Bonds was pilloried far, far worse.

Zen Dayley: All the news about Rodriguez is a lot of Huey

Don't call him A-Rod, A-Roid, A-Fraud, A-Hole (nice one, New York Post), or even A-Bastard.

It should be just plain Alex Rodriguez. The first thing you do, since it would take too long to kill all the lawyers, is to strip away all the iconography and just realize Rodriguez is a very flawed man; he's. Marvin Miller was right all along when he said the ballplayers' union never, ever should have agreed to any drug testing.

How reasonable is it to wonder if Rodriguez, who is choosing the beg forgiveness route, knew this might be coming out and if that influenced his choice to play for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic? One might have little to do with the other, but the Dominicans play their round-robin games in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Team USA's first games are in Toronto. One is a little cheaper for a media outlet to send someone to these days.

Here's a fairly representative collection of the thoughts today;

Deadspin: "Well, that's everyone. Any baseball player who has done anything notable in the last ten years did so while hopped up on goofballs. So I guess baseball is canceled now?"

Craig Calcaterra, ShysterBall: "In any event, it is my view that long after the Alex Rodriguez-specific portion of this drama has played itself out with an apology, a press conference, and a .300/.400/.600 season, this episode will be remembered mostly as the first known instance of the MLBPA truly betraying the interests of its own players. That, my friends, will have longer legs than anything else that broke on Saturday.

"And of course, let us spare no ill feelings when it comes to whoever in the government leaked this stuff. Look, I don't sit in my study wearing a tinfoil hat all day, but you don't have to be someone like that to wonder why, if the feds have had this information for years, it's only coming out now. To me this leak smells like a calculated and maybe even a vindictive move, designed to thrust the steroid story back into the public eye on the eve of Barry Bonds' trial ... it is certainly the case that the federal government's investigation of steroids in professional sports has gotten out of hand, both in terms of the reources spent and in the amount of zeal with which it is apparently being pursued."

Curt Schilling: "I'd be all for the 104 positives being named, and the game moving on if that is at all possible. In my opinion, if you don’t do that, then the other 600-700 players are going to be guilty by association, forever."

Bill Madden, New York Daily News: "(The Yankees) should do what's best for the organization:

"Cut him loose - no matter the cost.

"As difficult as it is to imagine eating $270 million, the Bombers will be making a statement, not just for the Yankee brand but for baseball as a whole.

"They will be applauded for it."

Anthony Rieber, Newsday: "... when A-Rod's name comes on the (Hall of Fame) ballot, whatever year that will end up being, I plan on voting for him, too, even if he breaks down at a news conference next week and admits sticking needles in his tush every year of his career.

" ... We just will never know who did and who didn't take steroids and HGH during the home-run happy 1990s and 2000s. Heck, we will never know who is and who isn't taking steroids and HGH today, since there is no test for HGH.

Jeff Blair: "The allegations surrounding Rodriguez won't kill baseball. In the end, it will be part of the price fans pay, like overpriced watered-down beer and lousy hot dogs. But make no mistake: This is the single most devastating development for the game since this whole process of self-analysis and self-flagellation started."

Scott Carson, sportsnet.ca: "Especially tough questions should be directed at (Gene) Orza (of the players' association - ed.), who we are led to believe, was giving certain players warnings about when random drug tests would be heading their way. Anyone that doesn’t find this inherently wrong probably also thinks that professional wrestling is real and that Charles Manson was just a misunderstood hippie. And the fact that Selig and Fehr knew of a positive test by A-Rod and chose to stifle that information, probably won’t sit too well with the politicians in Washington who have been trying to get to the bottom of this whole steroid mess.

"In the end, this will be all about spin and super agent Scott Boras will do everything within his power to protect his client and the millions of dollars that A-Rod represents to him. In due time, A-Rod will come forward and – hopefully – will truthfully give his side of the story. But with the verdict having already been handed down in the court of public opinion, it says here that no matter what Rodriguez tries to sell us, it won't amount to a hill of beans."

A Large Regular suggested whoever does the in-game music at various parks should play forgotten corporate rockers Huey Lewis and the News' I Want A New Drug when Rodriguez comes to bat. This is the first recorded instance of anyone wanting to hear Huey Lewis, and for that, Alex Rodriguez should burn, especially when he went to such great lengths in the past to say in not so few words, "I have never done steroids."

The Trippers...

... once again, the familiar refrain: "It just doesn't matter! It just doesn't matter ...

... how the steroid saga plays out with Alex Rodriguez since, "He is in the same boat with Barry Bonds – people want to think the very worst about them since it makes them feel better about themselves." (John Brattain, Baseball Digest Daily.)

... that someone can work as a sports columnist in Boston, birthplace of the American Revolution, and completely misunderstand the United States Constitution. The First Amendment doesn't cancel out the ones which come after it, Bob Ryan.

... that people are brazenly dropping Al Michaels/Miracle On Ice references all over the place, even in in the coverage of a small-town swim meet. Far be it to say using it just confirms you're small potatoes. (In that particular example, it was used by a coach, but that makes no difference. Sometimes you don't use a silly quote, just save people public embarrassment.)

... that people in Southern Ontario who say John Tavares would look good in blue and white don't specify that they mean the New York Islanders or St. Louis Blues.

... that Kingston hockey player Kip Brennan got to date one-time supermodel Amber Smith (she was once on Red Shoe Diaries, don't play dumb) and then wasn't very nice to her. No one in Kingston would be surprised to hear Kip Brennan can be a bit of a cad.

... that Conan O'Brien had the best line about Michael Phelps: "I think there’s an important lesson to be learned here: Kids, never share your pot with someone who has the lung capacity of a dolphin.”

... that Lloyd Eisler's cell phone went off during his and Kristy Swanson's wedding ceremony. He has better luck with cellphones than with e-mail.

This post is worth nothing, but this is worth noting:

• NFL mock drafts have to be taken with a grain of salt, but Next Season Sports did one with a blogster from each team. The Daily Norseman has the Vikings taking Mark Sanchez from USC.
  
• The original Ottawa Can-Am League manager, Ed Nottle, is back in the league as a bench coach for the Brockton Rox.
• Frozen River is getting Oscar buzz (and it's set in northern New York state, so that's an excuse to mention it). Its lead, Melissa Leo, did a Q&A with the Huffington Post.
  

Zen Dayley: Get out the A-Roid headlines and try not to learn anything

One can still look at Alex Rodriguez the same way one did 24 hours ago and believe everything in Sports Illustrated.

He is a pawn in a political game. The real subtext is deeper than a three-time MVP, the shining beacon, the one who said, "we're in a non-trusting era with the fans," being outed as a 'roidoid.

Major League Baseball has had its towline cut today in terms of management-union relations and terms of trust between MLB and union, players and fans, any two entities you want to name. The testing where Rodriguez was nailed was supposed to be anonymous, except for the part where he was tipped off by his union. ("I knew it wasn't anonymous," ex-Jay David Segui said on MLB Home Plate this morning.) It does no good to get hung up on why Rodriguez's name was the first of the 104 who tested positive to get out. Go ask Ben Johnson about being that big skin on the wall.

This will have ramifications in what yours truly jokingly calls the Labour War of 2012. Marvin Miller, back in early 2005, said MLB was risking losing the players' trust permanently. The union might have lost some players. Miller was right all along, just like Jose Canseco. As well, John Brattain points out that the players' agents are villains in this for looking out for the almighty buck and throwing due process to the wind.

On another level, you might want to focus on Rodriguez as villain. He's going to get booed with great gusto, as well he should. Please bear in mind Major League Baseball has handled the steroids problem by selling out its athletes in ones and twos, while the enablers, the agents and owners, get off scott-free. It's such a cynical hand-washing exercise by the moneymen that it has to be rationalized away, unless you're of a mind that stupid reality should never intrude on your sports-following (not entirely unreasonable, given the state of the world).

It beats playing the I-knew-it-I-knew-it-I-knew-it game, or wondering who will be the next big name to suffer a takedown. To be completely honest, the reflexive stance for a baseball nut which has evolved over the past 10 years is just to assume everyone is kinda suspect, the same way you're cool with your favourite authors, actors and musicians are wasted, wired, stoned, bombed, hammered, smashed and shitfaced.

The question I have for everyone, have always had, is why people look at sports differently than other forms of entertainment.

It's too funny to sit here listening to XM Radio, hearing host Casey Stern on MLB Home Plate citing Rodriguez' 60 Minutes interview with Katie Couric, where he said he did not feel he needed steroids to be a better ballplayer. It was a soft focus piece on a commercial network, barely a step up from the stage-managed pieces on Entertainment Tonight. It was, in Earl McRae's phrase, "disco journalism," indicative of sweet FA.

However, it all comes back to the word "trust." People, to put a twist on one of the late Jack Buck's iconic calls, want to believe what they just saw.

You can lose yourself in fiction, but sports still has to be seen as legitimate. There is probably no getting past that in our lifetimes. The view has hardened that Henry Aaron is the clean home run champion. Aaron hit 755 home runs legitimately, while Barry Bonds hit 762 semi-illegitimately, even though in Hammerin' Hank's case, to quote Mike Wilner from a few days ago, "From about the 1950s, maybe earlier, until last year PRETTY MUCH EVERY PLAYER IN THE MAJOR LEAGUES WAS ON SPEED. Sorry, that's just the way it was."

Rodriguez was supposed to be the one who would reclaim the record for the good guys. Well, sorry, that's a kindergarten view of the world. It ignores a lot of what has been going on for 15 years, as John notes.

"Everybody profited big time from this: Bud Selig makes almost $18 million a year, Don Fehr is among the wealthiest union leaders in the country, player agents like Scott Boras looked the other way and reaped obscene commissions off the players that injected themselves with these substances and there is no escaping it – the 'steroid boom' caused revenues to spike and this in turn showered money on all parties.

"The dollar will never fall as low as the means people will stoop to acquire it. Greed won the day and it wasn’t just the players that were responsible – they had a lot of accomplices."

At least Rodriguez and his handlers can keep this at an arm's length than others have. They have learned from Roger Clemens' legendarily bad example how to conduct a defence in the court of public opinion. He'll be booed in every ballpark he visits, except the new Yankee Stadium. You want it make this about Alex Rodriguez alone, fair enough, but it is not. Look at the guys who get to play forever, because it's their ball.

Related:
Sources tell SI Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003 (Selena Roberts and David Epstein, SI.com)

The U.S. of A-Rod; or, not this again, Alex

The time is past for slinging mud at Alex Rodriguez for not being unsure what country he wants to play for in the World Baseball Classic.

Granted, as pointed out by It Is About The Money, Stupid, A-Rod did the "WBC Hokey-Pokey" before the 2006 event. He's predictable as John Gibbons was for leaving a starting pitcher in too long. One larger point, as noted about two-thirds of the way down the the Gordon Edes column linked to in the lead, is that the WBC is very much a promotional tool worldwide for Major League Baseball. Bud Selig and the boys might be crossing their fingers and toes hoping that A-Rod will play for the Dominican Republic, since it's an obvious storyline.

The U.S. team between, Evan Longoria and David Wright, also has two young, telegenic, handsome in a non-threatening way third basemen whom it can use in its would make and it might be hoping A-Rod plays for the Dominican Republic, since that would open up the third base spot for a bright, marketable young star in Evan Longoria.

The other reason not to hate on A-Rod for this is that everyone is a dual citizen nowadays. This is hardly profound. The beauty of living in this day and age (emphasized because at this writing, some jagov on The History Channel is going on about how he'd love to visit 19th-century France and hang out with with Voltaire -- that's great, hope the irony of wanting to live in the past when you're appearing on a cable TV program ain't lost on ya) is that it's particularly easy, especially if the sports is the vessel for that connection with the old country.

It's also a part a defence against that worst disease in life, nationalism. For instance, when Canada is playing in the World Junior Hockey Championship and the shinny jingoism has been put up to 11, it's an easy to cop-out to joke about being "one-quarter happy" if Sweden ends up winning.

As well, for a lot of us, that desire to connect with your roots crops up very strongly in your early 30s. There's that desire to feel a sense of the past -- especially in a world that's been redrawn more in in the past 10 years than it did in the previous 20, often seems strongest for people in their early 30s. You're no longer identifying yourself as someone's daughter and son, and are

It should be no surprise that the one pro athlete who always seems trying to please someone other than himself -- Madonna, New York sportswriters, Yankees fans, Derek Jeter, Scott Boras, not necessarily in that order -- would have the same duality of man thing happening.

That's not see A-Rod is altruistic; just think of the storyline if he ended up facing the U.S. team. It is just two-faced to judge his WBC waffling.

Who knows, maybe he just wants to avoid playing for Team USA, whose three first-round games are in Toronto. Bad things tend to happen to him -- getting caught with a mystery blonde, getting plunked in the leg by Josh Towers in '07 -- when he visits the city.

Plus he doesn't want to lose to Canada again.

(Now, it's off to Sport Chek to a buy a Swedish hockey sweater with No. 13 on the back -- for Mats Sundin, not A-Rod.)

Related:
A-Rod to play for the Dominican in WBC (Gorden Edes, Yahoo! Sports; via It Is About The Money, Stupid)

Zen Dayley: Some real howlers about the underappreciated

The larger point with Cliff Lee vs. Roy Halladay --is that we have no idea where fans' understanding of baseball is heading.

Lee, the Cy Young Award winner over the Jays' talismanic tall right-hander, put up numbers -- 2.54 earned-run average, 22-3 record -- that, if he had not won, you might imagine people looking at in 20 years and saying, "How did he not win the Cy Young?" It's a good ketchup answer that sort of shuts out any fresh insight. In 20 years, it could just as easily be, "How did Halladay not win when he faced the second-toughest hitters and Lee faced the second-weakest?"

Rob Neyer has written a pretty good analysis of Lee vs. Halladay, mostly in reaction to a column out of Toronto on the subject. It appears the latter writer has pulled the same stunt in five years ago when then-Jay Carlos Delgado was edged by Alex Rodríguez for the MVP award, going against his principles to stump for the hometown player.

Neyer's piece might be firewalled. ESPN is doing pretty well financially, so here's what he had to say, in its entirety:

"(Name redacted) somehow has missed the single best argument for Halladay: He faced better hitters. He faced significantly better hitters.

"This year in the American League, 39 pitchers pitched enough innings to qualify for the ERA title.

The hitters Halladay faced finished the season with a .766 OPS, No. 2 out of 39.

"Lee's opposition finished with a .735 collective OPS, No. 38 out of 39.

"There are 14 teams in the American League. Quick and dirty, we can split them down the middle; the top seven teams in the league are the Good Hitting Teams, the bottom seven the Poor Hitting Teams. Of Lee's 27 starts against American League teams, 14 came against Poor Hitting Teams. Of Halladay's 30 starts against American League teams, only 12 were against Poor Hitting Teams.

"The best-hitting teams in the AL were the Rangers and the Red Sox. Halladay started against them seven times; Lee, just three times. The worst-hitting teams in the AL were the Royals, the Mariners, and the Athletics. Lee started against those teams nine times; Halladay, only four times."

(Editor's note: What would Doc have done if he got to face the Jays' hitters?)

"Halladay pitched 23 more innings than Lee, against tougher competition. He walked five more batters than Lee, and struck out 36 more. Halladay completed nine games; Lee completed four.

"Now let me make the argument for Lee, without even mentioning wins and losses.

"There's not much difference between their ERAs: 2.54 for Lee, 2.78 for Halladay. If Lee had given up six more earned runs all season — just one earnie every month — their ERAs would have been identical.

"But unearned runs count on the scoreboard, too. Lee gave up only five of them, and Halladay gave up 12. Add everything up, and Halladay gave up 20 more runs than Lee. Halladay's 'run average' — all runs included — was 3.22; Lee's was 2.74. That's a significant difference, in a conversation like this. We've grown a lot, we baseball fans, over these past 25 years. But we continue to completely ignore unearned runs, and there's really no reason for it.

"There's no wrong answer here, though. Superficially, Lee's numbers are more impressive. Dig a little deeper, and Halladay's are almost exactly as impressive. If you could have one of them for one game tomorrow, you'd have to pick Halladay. But the award's not given for talent. It's given for performance, and Lee's performance was almost exactly as impressive as Halladay's.

"Lee won the award, because baseball writers have traditionally favored Cy Young candidates who win a great number of games and lose very few. Lee won more games than Halladay, and lost many fewer. (Name redacted) is a traditionalist, usually. I can't avoid the sneaking suspicion that if he covered any team but the Blue Jays, he would be throwing his full support behind the guy who went 22-3."(Emphasis mine.)

Not to be too repetitive, but as noted in the summer, Lee winning is like when Brigham Young was voted NCAA football champions in 1984.

"They had to, though, since BYU was the only unbeaten. The baseball writers might not want to vote for Lee ... At the rate he's going, though, they might have to vote for him.

If memory serves, that "how did he not win?" line of argument had some currency in 1997, when the National League MVP debate was between Larry Walker, Mike Piazza and Jeff Bagwell. Walker, who hit .366 with 49 homers and 130 RBI while playing in the thin air of Denver, won in a landslide, taking 22 of 28 first-place votes. The two future Hall of Famers who each played in pitchers' parks split the other six.

It was less understood at the time that Piazza had a better park-adjusted OPS+ (185 to 178) as a catcher than Walker, a corner outfielder (true, Piazza was not much of a catcher, but he still contributed more to his team's overall defence than Walker would have in right field, and more important, he was all man). Walker might have still got the MVP, but with 2008 standards, it might have been a closer vote.

(Update: Joe Christensen and Geoff Baker were two of the writers who gave Halladay a first-place vote.)

O Overbay, where art thou?

Jon Hale at The Mockingbird has done a takedown on the whole notion of jettisoning Lyle Overbay. So what if he doesn't "do everything?"

"It’ll be a great PR move because it 'goes right after' the main problem of last year, but just like spending 55 million bucks (for B.J. Ryan in 2006) on the most highly overrated position in the game in a knee-jerk reaction to the Miguel Batista closer experience, if J.P. (Ricciardi) forgets that the whole reason he pushed hard for Overbay in the first place was that he is more valuable than he looks to the HR-duhhhh-RBI crowd and wastes money just to get him off the team, it will ... thus be punished accordingly."

A Toronto team make a move with more of an eye to PR than wins and losses? It's never happened.

Related:
Lee, Halladay really performed equally well (Rob Neyer, ESPN.com)

Snark break...

Getting the grouch out before coffee break ...

It stinks that the Yankees went back on their practice of confiscating fans' sunblock and making them pay a huge markup for a replacement tube. How often do you get a chance to write the headline, Yankees Greed Beyond The Pale or The Yankees Don't Care About White People?

$5 for a one-ounce tube of SPF 15 sunblock? That gives new meaning to greasing people.

Here's what what some would write if some overpaid gutless puke like, say, the Jays' A.J. Burnett, had started that game for the Mets last night.

This is why Johan Santana makes people scream: He is pitching brilliantly. He has a three-run lead against a Philadelphia team with first place in the NL East on the line. And the Mets bullpen gives up six runs in the ninth inning to lose the game.

That's the difference between being a grouch for a few minutes and being one full-time.

It's great to be young and a Canadian Patriot... the best summation of New England Patriots Nick Kaczur's legal situation: "Kaczur will have to pay $355 in fines and fees. You or I would be living an episode of Oz in similar circumstances."

Garrett Reid, troubled son of Eagles coach Andy Reid, has been sentenced to two years in drug rehab. While there, he'll get clean, learn to love himself and figure out why his dad never drafts any decent receivers.

(Obviously, you never joke about drug addiction, unless it's an actor or a pro athlete..)

Canada is introducing its flag-bearer for the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony today. They should pick the 61-year-old equestrian Ian Millar, since he might have actually been in the first Olympics -- in Athens. (What kind of saddle sores did he get riding the horse nude?)

The Canadian Olympic Association could also go with Alexandre Despatie, as the flagbearer. That way, Sidney Crosby can make it two divers in a row in 2010.

With respect to the WNBA brawl: Well, people were promised it would be electric between the L.A. Sparks and the Detroit Shock. David Stern is so mad that he already suspended Ron Artest indefinitely.



That's all it was? It's actually good to see the WNBA show some bite. Please don't go thinking that a rumble will spark American interest in the league -- it doesn't. Just ask the NHL.

Still wouldn't be something if these teams -- which teams were they again? -- meet in the WNBA final?

The OHL's Peterborough Petes introduced their new coach yesterday. There's a novel concept, eh, Doug Springer?

Zen Dayley: Plus, Jeter's intangibles once saved Christmas (don't bother looking it up)

(Alternate title: Shut Up, Take Some Cialis.)

Derek Jeter is going to start the All-Star Game and that's OK.

There's one question anyone who embarks on writing seething screed about The Captain being voted into the Midsummer Classic should first have to answer. If they can't, they have to turn their energy toward another topic, something less contentious than who starts in the all-star game (suggestion: "Religion: What Is The One True Faith?").

Here it is: Has anyone from Major League Baseball ever made it clear whom the All-Star Game is actually for, the players or the fans?

An answer has never been apparent during the past 20-odd years as a baseball-obsessive. That's why anyone -- present company very included -- who writes a blog post or any full-length article giving her/his opinion on whom the fans should have voted into the game is, at best, fulfilling their obligation to provide content. At worst, they're a little bit full of shit for being blind to a grey area that Roger Clemens' family could drive six Hummers through, side-by-side.

Just using should is strikes one, two and three. There is no should about an event that's ensnared by the MLB hype machine's meathooks. Derek Sanderson Jeter is producing a garden-variety .732 OPS and his usual just-OK defence for his $21.6-million salary, which makes him one of the game's most overpaid players. It's not even the second-best production among a thin field of American League shortstops. All three Yahoo! Sports national baseball writers anointed the Texas Rangers' Michael Young as their starting shortstop.

So what, though? All of you can take your OPS and your WARP and your VORP and stuff it in a sack. Don't share your Win Shares. Shame on Yahoo! Sports for telling baseball geeks what they want to hear, that the game is for the players who are doing the best this season.

Anyone who watches a Fox station on a regular basis (in the case, only because FOX 44 from Burlington, Vt., shows Family Guy and Seinfeld reruns between 11 p.m. and midnight) knows that this is being played up as, cue the ominous music, "the last Midsummer Classic ever at Yankee Stadium."

Let's ignore that Yankee Stadium isn't what it is because of anything that ever happened in a glorified exhibition game in July -- can you even name the last time the game was played there? -- but because of what's happened there in October. Never mind that, as Will Leitch pointed out last week in a New York Times piece, "the bleacher bums, the upper tier folk, the families who have had the Yankees in their blood for decades," likely won't be at the July 15 game since tickets for an event typically have such a mark-up that only the most well-connected and well-heeled can attend.

Fox and MLB want that image of No. 2 in pinstripes trotting out to take his place at shortstop in the top of the first inning of the last all-star game ever at Yankee Stadium. They want Joe Buck -- did you know the guy doesn't even like baseball that much? -- to make some extemperaneous remarks about how it's fitting that it's Jeter who's starting in this, the last all-star game ever at Yankee Stadium.

(Digression: At some point, there will be a post about how watching The MLB on Fox stirs up more mortal terror than anything Alfred Hitchcock ever put in a movie. It's this funhouse-mirror distortion of America -- the banal commentary from Joe and Tim McCarver, along with a steady stream of commercials for all sorts of wonder drugs for your wang. Far be it to suggest that there's a time-tested holistic remedy if your penis isn't doing what you need it to do -- stop drinking beer and watching sports, put down the channel-flipper and the fatty foods and get some exercise!)

October, according to the major media, is Jeter's time, but of course, there might not be playoff baseball for the Yankees, who are four games behind the Red Sox for the wild-card spot. One major culprit for the failure of a $196-million ballclub is a lack of a production from the all-important 2-hole in the lineup, Jeter's normal spot in the lineup. Note the irony? (Fire Joe Morgan pointed out a couple days ago that this only adds to the reason to blame the Yankees' shortcomings on Jason Giambi and Alex Rodriguez.)

From here on out, let's at least be halfway intellectually honest and stop humouring ourselves that the All-Star Game exists for any such noble purpose. The annual byproduct of ballot-box stuffing does decide home-field advantage for the World Series, which is like choosing the next president of the United States by the same method used on American Idol (which will happen, by 2024 at the latest).

ESPN carries on like the only two baseball teams that exist, much less matter, are the Red Sox and Yankees. It's no surprise, then, that the Evil Empires account for six of the nine elected starters in the American League, with Ichiro Suzuki, who's 26th among AL outfielders in OPS (one spot up from the Jays' Alex Rios, for pity's sake) also voted since there's a huge voting bloc in Japan. The Cubs' Kosuku Fukudome, .420 slugging percentage and all, was also elected as a National League starting outfielder, although he's simply having a nice first season in North America.)

It's just pointless to spew venom about Jeter, or to point out that among the 17 elected starters, only five are the most productive hitters at their position going into today (this is based on OPS). If you want to get mad at anyone, point out that if the Red Sox hadn't traded Hanley Ramírez out of the league, he could be starting for the AL. Hey, since everything gets blamed on Blue Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi, point out if his ballclub had ever been able to come up with a solid shortstop (too bad Troy Tulowitzki, whom the Jays infamously passed over in the 2003 draft, is having a lousy, injury-riddled year?), maybe there would be a viable, popular alternative to Jeter in the AL.

(Digression No. 2: Obligatory passive-aggressive swipe at Ricciardi -- if Kim Ng is ever going to become baseball's first female general manager, could it please be in Toronto?)

Fox and MLB use the all-star game to sell stars, not call attention to the guys who might happen to be better at baseball. They need Derek Jeter out there patrolling his range of infield dirt — a range which is shrinking like the polar ice cap — instead of a deserving player, so-called. Judging by how the voting turned out, ESPN, Fox, et al., are doing a very good job of persuasion. The two Boston/New York players who actually have great numbers but who are also media-inculcated whipping boys, Jason Giambi and J.D. Drew, didn't get voted in.

At least Red Sox slugger David Ortiz' injury means that Texas' Milton Bradley should get to take his spot as the designated hitter.

See? There's that word should again. We've lost already.

Related:
Why I Hate The MLB on Fox (Greg Wallace, Anderson Independent-Mail)
Leave Joe Buck Alone!, Or Why Joe Buck is Not the Baseball Anti-Christ (Eamonn Brennan, AOL Sports Blog)

Stuff other blogs are going to beat to death

I'm sure I could think of a great one liner if I had the energy or inclination. But, instead I'll just say this:

Get. This. Crap. Out. Of. The. Sports. Section.

Somehow heard over cringeworthy Mulliniks and stumbling Barfield...

(He's back for post #2, and despite his new colleague's earlier prediction, the world has not imploded at this point. In tribute to that earlier postulation, it would've been appropriate to attach a similar British comedy quote. Instead, on account of laziness, I attach an unrelated picture of a giant hedgehog named Spiny Norman. Dinsdale!)

Did anyone else notice how surprisingly effective the CBC's Elliotte Friedman was on the Blue Jays broadcasts this past weekend? Filling in for an otherwise-occupied Jim Hughson, the HNIC stalwart did a fine job of narrating play and drawing bits of useful analysis from an otherwise undesirable broadcast team of the motor-mouthed Rance Mulliniks and the inexperienced Jesse Barfield.

Sure, this was nothing close to a flawless Shulmanesque performance. He occassionally misidentified upcoming players in the batting order or on the field, tended to exaggerate the home run potential of various fly balls (gotta look at the outfielder, not the ball), and fell into repetitive use of the word "correct?" to elicit analysis from his colour men ("Rance, I understand you played baseball, correct?"), but for a first shot at a major league broadcast this was a terrific fill-in for an experienced and talented Hughson.

This too coming from me, someone who has never been a fan of Friedman's work either on The Score or on HNIC, and who finds that he's become by far the most overrated broadcaster by the sports media critics in the various papers. The fact that he doesn't ask stupid questions has been exaggerated to imply his questions are brilliantly crafted, and overshadow his maddening sideways holding of his microphone, and bizarre gesticulation when talking to the camera. In the interests of full disclosure, I should note that as a Queen's broadcaster I am contractually obligated to nitpickingly despise and find fault with anyone associated with UWO's CHRW 94.9 FM.

But the broader implication of last weekend is that the stigma attached to inexperienced Canadian baseball broadcasters may be a false one. Often, we're brought to the conclusion that only an American like Tom Cheek or Jerry Howarth can properly narrate this inherently stateside game. The experience of fans with the likes of Rob Faulds, Rod Black, or Brian Williams, among others, hasn't helped to dispel that idea. But Friedman's more than passable work at the Skydome this past Saturday and Sunday bodes well for the future of baseball broadcasting in Canada in a way that only Mike Wilner had done to this point. Unfortunately, we'll need more games on the CBC, an unlikely concession from megalomaniacal death-corporation rights holders Rogers Communications, before it'll even matter.

Zen Dayley: Here's a cellular phone, call someone who cares

Brian Tallet in the 10th instead of Jesse Carlson or well-rested B.J. Ryan? These games count in the standings, you know.

• Anyone who wonders why Orlando Cabrera, a superior shortstop, is on his fourth team in five seasons should read this Sunday column in the Chicago Tribune.
  
  Even Cabrera's teammates on the White Sox apparently have little time for his habit of calling the official scorer after being charged with an error. Bob Verdi, the writer, also has a solution:
  
  

  "Most players are also notoriously frugal, so one way to fix this would be to charge them for ringing the press box. As it is, dugout phones are free phones. But ask these millionaires to fork over a quarter, and then watch them try to make collect calls."

  Anyone who's really obsessive about sportswriters will notice that Bob Verdi got a dig in on Jay Mariotti at the end of his column. Mariotti wouldn't be serving as an official scorer, since that might require (a) knowing how to score a baseball game and (b) actually attending the game.
• Everyone saw that Arizona's Brandon Webb pitched a complete game in one hour, 52 minutes? Bud Selig is right. Baseball games are too long.
  
  (There's some nice use of anecdotal evidence.)


• Shaun Marcum still leads the AL in WHIP after giving up 11 hits across seven innings in a no-decision vs. the Angels last night. That's how good Marcum has been.


• Joba Chamberlain starting aginst the Jays on Tuesday, when Sportsnet is airing the game, not Wednesday when it's TSN's turn, proves the existence of some higher power. You can already hear Rod Black pumping out the sap if he was calling a Joba start at Yankee Stadium. "Joba Chamberlain ... a young man of such vast potential ... wearing pinstripes ... in the final season at this historic ballpark ... in the Bronx." Goodness gracious, Jays fans suffer enough indignities already.


• There was major coverage of B.C. high school slugger Brett Lawrie by the Globe and Sun Media on Saturday. One almost hopes Lawrie goes before the Jays pick at 17th overall, just to remove the possibility of the know-nothings slagging the team five years down the road, even though the MLB Draft is a total crapshoot. (Minor League Ball's latest mock first round has the Jays taking Lawrie.)
  
  Lawrie, at 18, does seem like something special. Arizona State's Brett Wallace, at least according to his press clippings, also seems like the total package down around where the Jays are selecting.

That's all for now. Rest assured, something new is in the works for the Zen Dayley, to keep it fresh and well, actually appearing daily. Meantime, for anyone who might be interested, Chuck Klosterman's first novel is due out in three months and the GQ profile on Marston Hefner, Hugh Hefner's remarkably well-adjusted 18-year-old son, is worth a read.

Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

BRAVES NARC ON SAL'S 'STACHE

From here on, the effort will be made to have a daily post — Jays, Canadians in the majors, assorted detritus:

• A world with a Fu Manchu-free Sal Fasano is not one anyone should desire, but it's arrived. The Braves organization only lets minor leaguers grow those neat little mustaches, so our pal Sal, now playing Triple-A in Richmond, is clean-shaven. Teammate Scott Spiezio also had to lose his Cardinal-red soul patch.
• The Seattle diehards at the USS Mariner seem to be down on Erik Bedard already. At best, there are serious concerns since the left-hander from Navan, Ont., was barely hitting 90 mph on the radar gun during his start vs. Tampa Bay on Tuesday.
• David Eckstein seems to be seeing a lot of pitches as the Jays leadoff man. That seems to be helping Alex Rios and Vernon Wells. The 3-hole was an empty spot for the Jays last season no matter who batted there.
• Reed Johnson had hits his first two times up for the Cubs tonight, hiking his early-season OBP to .476 ... yeah, but in the National League.
• The Tao and the Drunks have the snide takedowns on anyone who made too much of Tuesday's 9-8 loss to the A's. Who knew that one shouldn't infer too much from one game in in a sport where the season is 162 games long and a hitter who fails six times out of 10 is considered a star. It's in the all-time top five of Annoying Tendencies of Canadians Who Don't Get Baseball, right up there with asking why the Jays don't lay down sacrifice bunts more and complaining about a so-called lack of heart.
• That would include TSN's Rod Black. He's a trooper; he's professional. That goes without saying. He called the Jays-A's game on Tuesday and then booted it back to the studio to be the between-periods host for the Canada-Finland women's hockey game. During the game, though, he kept saying stuff such as, "Who ever would have thought A.J. Burnett would struggle tonight after the way he pitched at Yankee Stadium last week?" How about anyone who's ever caught Burnett's hot-and-cold act? Seriously, it's just wrong to pose lazy rhetorical questions as insight. It serves as a snowjob for people who are trying to understand baseball. It's a day-in, day-out game.

YANKEES DRAMA WINS A TONY

The prospect of Alex Rodríguez replacing an ailing Derek Jeter at shortstop, stacks up pretty well as media-nurtured Yankees dramas go.

There's actually a parallel between Jeter and ex-Jay Tony Fernández, whom he replaced as the starting Yankees shortstop in 1996. Jeter, as Fernández did, has that smooth batting stroke and polished ability to inside-out a ball to the opposite field. It's his fallback. Jeter will always hit for a decent average for as long as his body permits him.

On June 30, 1999, his 37th birthday, Fernández woke up leading the American League with a .395 batting average, having just dipped below .400 the day before. That was more or less it for him. He wasn't up to fielding well on a daily basis and that was his last year as an everyday player.

Jeter is starting to show the same kind of range at shortstop as Aerosmith's Steven Tyler did while assassinating God Bless America during the seventh-inning stretch today at Fenway Park.

(Seriously, Steven Tyler should be all over the web and the highlight shows. By the way, there's no truth that his daughter, actress Liv Tyler, thought Todd Rundgren was going to perform.)

That could be where Jeter's headed. He's a remarkable hitter, but Baseball Prospectus 2008 noted he went through a spell last summer where he was nicked-up and got by slapping singles. That's probably going to start happening more and more with Jeter.

Related:

Girardi shouldn't even think about using A-Rod as stopgap shortstop (New York Daily News)
Jeter’s injury acute pain for Yanks (Yahoo! Sports)

DUSTIN OFF SOME STORYLINES; TSN IS MOST LOW DEF

ESPN.com will be OK with or without a link from here. Regardless, Jonah Keri and his high-minded contemporaries were nice enough to take a contribution for raines30.com back in the fall and attention should be paid to his 100 Storylines for the 2008 baseball season.

In particular, Keri is touting Dustin McGowan to supplant Roy Halladay as the Jays ace by the end of the season. That's a relatively new one.

It's too bad about the Jays getting rained out this afternoon. Mike Wilner's best line about the "ludicrisosity" of scheduling a baseball game in New York City on March 31:

"I get to come to Yankee Stadium for the first time in my life and I get to see a big white tarp rolled out on to the field."

Meantime, the Drunks call attention to the real kick in the pants, which is that fans miss out on getting to watch the opener in HD. TSN will be airing the season opener of the Rogers-owned baseball team on Tuesday rather than the Rogers-owned network, which is showing Mathematically Eliminated vs. Effectively Eliminated, the Leafs and the Sabres.

Granted, the ballgame could be a nothing game too, but no one will know that for at least a month. What's better? TSN tomorrow or more rain and Sportsnet picking it up on Wednesday? Let's hear it.

Please don't make this into a Jamie Campbell vs. Rod Black kvetchfest. It's tiresome, for one. It's not about them. It's on the highers-up in Canadian broadcasting who don't invest in bringing along bona fide baseball play-by-play people and just expect to get lucky, which can happen. The rest of us are just supposed to believe that there isn't a man or woman in a country of 33 million people who can commentate baseball. That's hard to believe.

BATTER UP: NEW YORK YANKEES

It's baseball season, that mystical, wonderful time of year where you commit to a team for six months, knowing full well they won't win. Here's a starting nine for the New York Yankees.

1. Is this the year? It's 50-50 at least the Yankees will finally end up watching the post-season like the rest of us. They're depending on some hitters who are in inexorable decline.
   
   Jason Giambi might be "like a cat" at first base; unfortunately, the cat is Garfield.
2. Girardi, destroyer of arms: It's been noted by plenty of people already, but three of manager Joe Girardi's starting pitchers from the 2006 Marlins team developed sore arms. That's who you want deciding when Joba Chamberlain (pictured) and Phil Hughes have had enough.
3. How good is Joba? It's almost like he flew to New York from spring training in Florida without taking a plane. He'll average better than a strikeout an inning as a 22-year-old in his first full season. Anyone who can do that touches greatness if their team doesn't burn them out inside of five years.
4. The Babe only tried to eat the outfield wall once: Take it from the blogfather, Will Leitch, who calls visiting Yankee Stadium "the biggest rip-off in all of sports" and describes as it having "the nostalgic architecture of an International House of Pancakes."
   
   (Our man Pete Toms has a different take on Yankee Stadium.)
   
5. Derelict Jeter: All the cucumber slices and mud packs can't hide the wrinkles developing in the 34-year-old shortstop's game. He's still got another couple years before people really notice, but the signs are there -- less power, fewer steals.
6. Taunt selectively: It works like this with which Yankees get booed. Jeter, Robinson Cano, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera are untouchables. Three of them have that whole supple arrogance of grace quality going for the, while Posada's just nails; you couldn't catch 120 games a year for 13 years and not be nails.
   
   The gloves are off when it comes to Giambi ("SHRUNK-en GO-nads! Dunh dunh duh duh dunh!"), Johnny Damon (declining badly and bailed on the Red Sox), Mike Mussina (crybaby suck) and A-Rod.
7. Still OK to kick Clemens around: By Bill James' count, the Astros and Yankees were 32-36 in Roger Clemens' starts across the past three seasons.
8. Pinstriped grief porn: There's something icky and discomforting about the Yankees' recent side trip to play a benefit game at Virginia Tech one year after those 33 students were massacred by a sick nut. What kind of group jumps at the chance to attach itself to such a gut-wrenching tragedy? The horror of that day goes way beyond a photo-op for a baseball team.
   
   It's like what Leitch says in his book about the Yankees' practice of playing God Bless America during the seventh-inning stretch, "If you wait, the ushers will actually chain your section closed so you cannot leave. Why? Because the Yankees Are More Patriotic Than You Are."
   
   It's irritating when a shallow patriotism -- any shallow ism -- is forced on people. Of course, it goes without saying that Paul Godfrey is big on playing God Bless America, which is a wretched song next to America The Beautiful, whenever the Yanks are playing at Rogers Centre).
9. Need-to-know: Rightfielder Bobby Abreu is due for a bounce-back season as long as he's spotted against lefties, let's see how long the Yankees stick with the plan to throw the kid pitchers and the jury is still out on Mussina. The Yankees probably only make the playoffs as the wild card.
   
   They'll be back in full force over the next five years, though, having sunk a lot of money into some prized prospects, to say nothing of what they'll reap from doing business with China.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.