One way LeBron could have got people on his side

Allowed Jim Gray to ask, "LeBron, lemme ask you: It seems now there is an opening. The American public is very forgiving. Are you willing to show contrition, admit you're just in it for the money, and make some sort of apology to that effect?"

The NHL moves the goalposts, and maybe a whole team it was sworn to defend

Honestly, this was just a joke!

"If you want a short and snappy answer about where the Phoenix Coyotes will play, just say Kansas City." — Aug. 6

Then it gets out that the NHL's Hail Mary play to buy the Phoenix Coyotes would only keep the team there for one season before they would try to move it. They have to protect those expansion fees, don't you know (and Eric Duhatschek's put-the-Coyotes-in-Toronto theory actually makes a lick of sense, keeping in mind this is coming from a newspaper which is part of the same corporate family as TSN):

"In an about-face, the league's bid to purchase the Coyotes out of bankruptcy court specifically mentions it is open to relocating the team.

" ... Since the NHL states in its bid that it 'does not anticipate there would be a net profit upon a resale of the team to a Glendale buyer,' its own interests, and those of the creditors, would likely be best served by relocating the team to a market where its value could be maximized beyond $140-million.

The league’s apparent openness to relocating the Coyotes flies in the face of its commitment to Glendale, dating back to when the team’s troubles surfaced last season and throughout the league’s four-month fight with Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie ..." — globesports.com

"... the NHL’s plan (to buy the Phoenix Coyotes) is nothing but a stay of execution. In the short term, it will give Glendale one last chance to lure a local investor or bring (Jerry) Reinsdorf back into play. If it doesn’t work, the Coyotes will be off for greener pastures." Arizona Republic

In the words of a Kurt Vonnegut character, "I had to laugh like hell." Make It Eight, Eh dug out a great quote from NHL deputy commish Bill Daly from just last month.

"Daly stressed the new terms would not allow the Coyotes to break the lease in a year or two and move elsewhere.

"The NHL must fight for the bankrupt Coyotes to stay in Glendale long-term, he said, to send a message to other cities that have spent money attracting or retaining hockey teams.

" 'If we want communities to continue investing in our franchises, we need to work arm in arm to protect their investments,' Daly said."

Whoopsy-doodle. It turned out those "communities" are not actual communities where people live and pay taxes, but groups of really, really rich guys. There is, for instance, L.A. Kings owner Philip Anschutz, whose company owns an arena in Kansas City which needs a tenant from a big ball-and-stick league. (This just a personal opinion.)

Meantime, it's behind the times to portray this as Hamilton vs. Phoenix (Puck Daddy). Never was. Gary Bettman and Bill Daly know who they work for, and it's whoever needs a hockey team as a front for Hoovering back scads and scads of corporate welfare.

Plus, for the Bob Loblaw Law Blog devotees, there is the whole issue of the NHL violating an important legal principle. Sub judice restrictions don't apply in the U.S., let alone in civil court, but it still doesn't mean it's not jerkass arrogance:

"Confident that the fans and the sports media would back them up ... the NHL circled their wagons and put on a Balsillie Is Rotten campaign.

"The pinnacle of NHL hypocrisy came in remarks recently made by Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk. Melnyk is often deservedly ridiculed by the outside-of-Ottawa hockey press for his allegiance to a lame-duck general manager (Bryan Murray). Ottawa's recent run of personnel crises has been reflected in league and playoff results.

"Melnyk, as the sports press seems so quick to forget, was the subject of an Ontario securities commission inquiry which alleged misleading and untrue statements made in the financial statements of Melnyk’s company, Biovail Corporation. Melnyk, before the OSC chastised him, blamed his staff! He settled the charges in 2007, was fined $1 million and ordered to cease being director of his company, Biovail, for one year. The OSC record is no credit to Melnyk.

"What pricks the conscious of caring lawyers is the NHL pre-emptive strike against Balsillie even while the bankruptcy proceedings are sub judice in Phoenix. By sending out their general counsel Bill Day to media outlets to spin doctor the rejection of Balsillie by the NHL board based on, apparently, Balsillie’s lack of integrity and character, not only offends the rule of sub judice, but seems to be the epitome of hypocrisy.

"The media is lapping it up too. The venerable Sports Illustrated published an article which actually quoted Melnyk’s self-serving drivel.

Long story short, this is ugly. At least we now know where the NHL was coming from. It never really made sense why they were so gung-ho about Phoenix, other than Bettman's ego. As Make It Eight, Eh says:

"The NHL and the Reinsdorf group were looking to relocate this team either now, or within five years to another centre that fits the plan of the NHL.

" ... The NHL has shunned the fans of Canada, and is quickly shunning the fans of Phoenix.

"Jim Balsillie has a brighter future in the NHL than Gary Bettman, and let’s see who is around in 10 years.

"Jim Balsillie, despite being voted against, has been approached by other struggling franchises, and is the true white knight to help the destitute owners."

Who knows what will happen. There's a fatigue at this point. It is perfectly rational and understandable if you have shunned sports radio and probably will until it gets resolved, since the Howard Bergers of the world are way in over their heads with this story. It has been fun, though.

Thursdays with RIM Jim: Making head and tail of something that should be settled with a coin flip

(If you want a short and snappy answer about where the Phoenix Coyotes will play, just say Kansas City.)

A league with a dated perspective deserves a dated analogy, so the latest turn in the Phoenix Coyotes saga makes the NHL look like the scene in Old School where Will Ferrell screams, "We can't have anyone freakin' out out there! We gotta keep our composure!"

The NHL, as always, is expressing confidence it is going to prevail. There is a half a mind to snark off, like one of Jim Rome's listeners, "Dear Gary, pro sports leagues always prevail in court, sincerely, Al Davis, Oakland-Los Angeles-Oakland Raiders."

Meantime, the realization the Phoenix Coyotes drama has — with a tip of the cap to lame-duck Ottawa GOSINOG* Larry O'Brien — is more than a big swinging dick contest has really hit critical mass since this time last week. Judge Redfield T. Baum's ruling on Wednesday really takes the animus between Jim Balsillie, Gary Bettman and 26 owners of solvent-for-now teams out of play (see From The Rink). That should be burned into memory. Everyone has seen the Phoenix New Times article which laid out the depth of the sweetheart deal Jerry Reinsdorf stood to score from the city of Glendale, Arizona.

The New Times' Sarah Fenske notes that a "good city manager ... has to do whatever he can to keep the (team)" — stop cry-laughing, Ottawa readers — "But it's one thing to fight to save a team. It's another thing entirely to fix the playing field for connected insiders." Here is the trenchant part:

"Michael Reinsdorf, who is Jerry's son, had been hired to help manage the Arizona Cardinals' stadium in 2004. (His firm, IFG, got the contract as a joint venture with Global Spectrum, a Philadelphia-based firm that just happens to employ John Kaites as a lobbyist.)

"In the fall of 2008, Glendale hired Michael Reinsdorf's IFG to assess stadium operations at the Coyotes' home, Jobing.com Arena. It was IFG — which, again, is Michael Reinsdorf's firm — that suggested Glendale hire Beacon, as city officials confirmed to me.

"The Reinsdorfs have a long history of working with Beacon. In fact, court records show Beacon was sued in Los Angeles by a client who claimed Beacon had leaked a confidential report to, yes, Michael Reinsdorf.

"So when the Coyotes ran into trouble, Ed Beasley brought in Michael Reinsdorf's firm. At the suggestion of Michael's firm, he brought in a second company, one that had a history of dealing with Michael Reinsdorf. Then he stood by as that firm secretly met with Kaites and Jerry Reinsdorf.

"And now we're supposed to look at the firm's analysis as neutral, looking out for Glendale's best interests?

"I simply don't buy it.

"In May, the Coyotes filed for bankruptcy. Its current owners want to sell to an investor who'd move the team to Canada; it's their only hope to recoup even part of their investment, they say. Meanwhile, for reasons that are still unclear — to me, at least — Kaites and Reinsdorf have become the NHL's pick.

The great Stephen Brunt, who makes grasshoppers of us all, characterizes it by saying the "subsidies (Jerry) Reinsdorf is demanding are political dynamite in a place where few are sentimentally attached to the team."

Meantime, as James Mirtle notes, Balsillie's bid still has a legal leg to stand on:

"That the judge hasn't already thrown out Balsillie's bid says to me he won't feel obliged to do so before the auction itself, although we're certainly going to hear plenty of new arguments from the league on that front. And while some of the information presented by the NHL certainly paints Balsillie in such a way that makes it easy to see why they dislike him, the fact his dealings in Pittsburgh and Nashville were aimed solely at moving a team to Hamilton will not likely 'taint' him in the eyes of the court.

"Think of it from the court's perspective: If the biggest issues surrounding Balsillie's conduct relate to his push for a franchise in his backyard, would his winning the Coyotes bidding process not solve those issues?"

Mirtle also linked to an East Valley Tribune column, "Bettman responsible for Coyotes' mess," which made it sound worse than the Montreal Expos situation a few years ago:

"This has become a disaster of Titanic proportions. The Coyotes still don’t know who their owner will be, and they may not have an answer by the Oct. 3 start of the regular season. They don’t have a TV contract. Their season-ticket base is dwindling, and sponsors are scurrying away like cockroaches when the light comes on."

No one can really say for sure how the court will decide Sept. 10, which is just five days before Bettman's overpriced orphans of winter will play their first exhibition game. It's a little funny that no one seems able to definitively answer, "What's going to happen if Balsillie wins in court?"

The great site Make It Eight argues that Bettman has a chance to set "a precedent for accomodation" if the court accepts Balsillie's bid at auction. Go ahead and say that will never happen. To hazard a guess, if Balsillie won, the NHL would insist on holding a vote . Bettman would win in a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad-esque landslide and the league would run the Coyotes and try to scare up an investor who could plunk the Coyotes some place such as as Las Vegas Kansas City, which already has an arena built by the company which owns the Los Angeles Kings. After Wednesday, though, the league's power seems less absolute, but they have wriggled off the hook before.

Related:
Why an empty rink may be better than a local rink (James Mirtle, From The Rink)

(GOSINOG: Acronym for Guilty of Stupidity, If Not Officially Guilty. O'Brien's case perhaps should have never gone to court, but the damage was enough.)

Sixteen-year-old ballplayer jumps the queue — David Stern's head explodes

One can only assume NBA commissioner David Stern, who so fiercely defends his league's draft age minimum, is going to love hearing what's going on over in baseball.

It seems juicy enough to break the Clavin rule for: Bryce Harper, the 16-year-old phenom from Las Vegas who was the cover story ("Baseball's LeBron") in the June 8 Sports Illustrated, could enter the MLB Draft next year, before his high school class graduates. Scott Boras is his adviser, but you did not have to ask.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal detailed how Harper is going to go to a junior college, obtain his general equivalency diploma (as a lot of teen actors do) and possibly be eligible for the draft in 2010. S.I. said he could have been a top-5 pick this year. Taken a certain way, his father, Ron already sounds a tad defensive: "My son is going to live with us and still eat at the same table. His brother" — a left-handed pitcher who is transferring to the same school, College of Southern Nevada — "will be a mentor to him. Why can't it be a good story?" Perhaps it should be. If Bryce Harper is everything he's cracked up to be, he probably should play vs. 20-year-olds in junior college. He hit .626 this season and with a slugging percentage that could get him into Harvard if you took out the decimal place and passed it off as his SAT score. He's just like Jeremy Tyler, the 17-year-old hoops phenom who's passing on his senior year of high school to play basketball for money overseas.

This fruit tree is probably well picked over. Jason Rosenberg of Vote For Manny fame already covered off the angle that the poor Washington Nationals, once they pay a king's ransom for No. 1 overall draft choice Stephen Strasburg, might have another Boras-represented BPEALSLY (Bestest Prospect Ever, At Least Since Last Year) on their hands. (The Nats are a mortal lock to draft No. 1 overall next season, since they have the same record after 61 games as the infamous 1962 Mets.) Jeff Pearlman noted Harper is being robbed of a childhood and that this is further proof that youth sports are nuttier than a pecan log. This late in the game, it's best to reach for the top branch and use it to whack David Stern for his age minimum, which is blithely called the one-and-done rule.

If Scott Boras can get Bryce Harper into the MLB Draft in 2010 — maybe MLB could stop it, but the rule is you're eligible if you're 16 and have a high school diploma — it makes it harder for Stern to justify his age minimum, AKA the one-and-done rule. How can anyone justify making basketball players wait until they are 19 or 20 to start making money at the game? Please understand that the age minimum has less to do with education and protecting the welfare of basketball players. It's more about preserving college basketball as a free farm system for the NBA, plain and simple.

You are right if your first reaction is to say it is apples-to-pears to compare draft eligibility rules between basketball and baseball. The NBA's premise with the draft is that players should be pretty much ready to roll right off the assembly line (U.S. auto industry pun intended). Baseball, as Tom Verducci explained in his profile of Harper, "is so skill-specific that even the best, most physically mature young players typically must endure several levels of minor league apprenticeship to learn the game."

Out of that, baseball players from Canada and the U.S. have long had an option. They can sign with a MLB organization out of high school or go to college, mature emotionally and physically and still take a stab at baseball in their early 20s. The system has a lot wrong with it, but at least it involves a choice. Boras and the Harpers simply seem to be trying to exercise that option one year sooner, and it's not even clear if they will succeed. He would stand to college a huge bonus if he does sign out of high school (which you would have to figure he would. To recycle a joke that was current when Ken Griffey Jr. became a major league star at age 20, going to high school has knocked a couple years off Harper's pension).

The question becomes, how can you reconcile Bryce Harper, who is white, getting an option when a lot of people are squeamish about Jeremy Tyler, who is black, exercising the same option. Granted, Tyler, like Brandon Jennings did when he went to Europe in 2008 instead of college, is taking a step which involves repudiating the entire U.S. basketball development system. There is great hue and cry over a 17-year-old weighing offers from European teams. Imagine the reaction in Canada if a junior hockey player such as Kingston native Taylor Hall, who some believe could go No. 1 in the NHL draft if he was not too young, announced that he was leaving the OHL's Windsor Spitfires to go play in Russia. People would be royally P.O.'d.

Really, though, what Harper's move in baseball betrays is how badly Stern and the NBA would like to keep things as is. They are partially motivated by the status quo, but really, the NBA would hate to go down baseball's road. The league has enough financial challenges without having to pay to stock minor-league affiliates with players who, let's be honest, are very good but don't have big-league skills.

The farm systems in Major League Baseball are expensive to run. The cost recovery can be be underwhelming, since the organization has to have a lot of marginally talented players under contract so their future superstars have someone to play against. There is also a bit of a battle going on between MLB and its partner, Minor League Baseball, or MiLB, over money. Basically, MLB would like their little brothers to pay full freight when it comes to player costs.

Stern and NBA owners probably want little part of such a player development system in their league. It would cost money. It's better from a business standpoint to have someone playing college basketball, getting on ESPN, instead of playing in front of a couple thousand people in Great Falls, Montana.

It is probably blue sky thinking at its worst, but if the NBA was really so concerned about education, they could simply work collaboratively with all the stakeholders and establish something called the "NBA Scholarship." They would identify players with NBA potential, pay for them to go to school and give them honest feedback about when to enter the draft (I know, too naive by half). There is always the law of unintended consequences, but it might work to weed out agents, the diploma mills, the players getting someone to take their aptitude test for them (as Chicago Bulls star Derrick Rose is accused of doing in order to get into the U of Memphis for his one-and-done year). They could use a carrot-and-stick approach to make sure colleges opted in. The NCAA already takes scholarships away from schools if their basketball team doesn't do well in the classroom, just imagine when a coach is told he can't give a scholarship to a certain player since his team has a 17% graduation rate.

It also might help the NBA with talent identification. The Raptors, for one, have talked about greater collaboration between their franchise, Canada Basketball and Canadian Interuniversity Sport, but league and NCAA rules limit what they can do. How stupid is it that a sports league stands in the way of increasing or improving the talent pool in a country of 33 million people?

This has become a very long post, but people should try to work past tongue-clucking over Bryce Harper and Jeremy Tyler. They should also lose a little of the liberal guilt and stop seeing this solely as black and white ... how come you can't turn pro at 18 in basketball when it's commonplace for mostly middle-class and Caucasian tennis, golf and hockey players?

That works against asking tough questions. It was hilarious when, after it hit the news that about Rose allegedly not taking his SAT broke, you heard people try to blame this on the NBA. That is a total crock, since shenanigans in college basketball go back to the days when there was still a tip-off at centre after every basket. It's just mind-number to see traditional media types towing Stern's party line that "the overwhelming failure rate of America's most promising prospects" is a reason to raise the age minimum. The rub there is that, hey, news flash, there is always going to be some attrition rate with promising young athletes. As a random example, take the first round of the MLB draft back in 1999. Sixteen of the 30 players taken never played a single game in the big leagues, yet no one screamed for reform and the world, remarkably, stayed on its axis.

The rub is that Harper's case shows how the genie is out of the bottle in all the big ball-and-stick leagues. It shows where Stern has gone wrong taking a halfway measure that denies someone the right to get paid somewhat according to his ability. The genie will stay out of the bottle until such time that the big money dries up in sports (which it might, look at what happened to the Romans; sometimes it's as if the WNBA, with its 40-game regular season, requirement that players have a degree).

We should work past the hang-ups and follow the money. That's what Bryce Harper, his family and Scott Boras are doing. They are the honest ones, at the end of the day.

(Meantime, should one be sympathetic to the Washington Nationals' situation, being an unprofitable team which is going to have to pay big for Strasburg and might have to for Harper? A gut feeling is "no." For starters, the Nationals were put in Washington even though it did not deserve a team. Secondly, once upon a time the No. 1 pick rotated between the American and National leagues — AL in odd-numbered years, NL in evens. However, Bud Selig and the boys got greedy and changed it.)

Related:
Harper ready to give college try; 16-year-old Las Vegas High baseball prodigy registers at CSN, plans to attain GED to speed draft eligibility (Matt Youmans, Las Vegas Review-Journal)

More athletes should take pay cuts

A pro athlete's career span is finite, since they have to get what they can while they can, because if you think someone is still going to be playing linebacker in the NFL at age 40, you're sadly mistaken ... or you do play linebacker for the New England Patriots.

One question, though, as a fan, is why you don't see more players take pay cuts, especially in salary cap leagues. Pro Football Talk, via one of the Bay Area beat reporters, reported that San Francisco 49ers linebacker Jeff Ulbrich had his $2.23-million US salary cut to $950,000, a haircut of more than a million dollars.

Sometimes players do take less than market value to re-sign with their old club as a free agent, but it's not often you see this happen in the NFL. Typically, if someone is making too much to fit under the salary cap, he gets cut and someone else is signed, typically to a contract whose dollar value is inflated by the team and the media. The pieces on the chessboard get changed and people watching feel just as removed from the people on the field as they were before, because there's another guy playing the position that was manned by Jeff Ulbrich, although in a sport like football, most fans might not have noticed Jeff Ulbrich.

In the days before free agency when players weren't able to go freely from team to team (which, by the way, helps make franchises more valuable, which is why it's a mug's game to grumble about athletes "with no loyalty"), players were bound to their teams. Salary reductions from one season to next happened fairly regularly. Former Blue Jays manager Jim Fregosi, as a long-in-the-tooth third baseman with the Texas Rangers in 1974 (the year before baseball players won the right to free agency), had his salary cut from $90,000. He told sportswriter Mike Shropshire:

"You have to figure out how to prolong your shelf life. That's the key to longevity in this racket for players like me. Don't get pushy at contract time and wear out your welcome. Baseball players are just like motor oil and toilet paper ... a commodity with a set market price. If more players thought like I do, they'd last longer."

That represents a different school of thought and a sports world where there was much less talent to go around than in 2009. A couple decades before Fregosi, even Hall of Famers such as Robin Roberts (a Roy Halladay-type pitcher with the Philadelphia Phillies, whose 28-win season in 1952 has not been matched by any National League pitcher since) expected a paycut if they had an off-year.

That was also a world with no one on the scale of Scott Boras or Drew Rosenhaus; some teams were still trying to get players to negotiate contracts without an agent.

This is not some lament for a bygone, backwards era. It's a lament for a lack of intellectual honesty. The way it works in the NFL is a player signs a big deal, but the announced dollar figure often includes bogus bonus clauses that will never be achieved, like a quarterback getting $2 million if he participates in 75% of all special teams plays (quarterbacks are never used on special teams, except as the holder on kicking plays). A five-year, $30-million contract might sound impressive when you're reading the sports headlines in the morning on TSN.ca, but it's not a true picture of the player's compensation, or what his value is to the franchise. The player might get cut after a couple seasons and only see a fraction of that original dollar figure.

Meantime, fans get the idea that all 53 players on a NFL team are getting obscenely rich, when in reality, someone such as Jeff Ulbrich is making something much closer to well, about $950,000. Who knows, maybe if fans saw more of this, they wouldn't resent the jocks for making so much money if they saw them feel a financial pinch (instead of sneering 10 years later when you read about the former All-Pro who's broke).

The San Francisco 49ers should get rewarded for their honesty.

Baseball in Ottawa: Hope fades

To quote what The Tao of Stieb said when the Ottawa Voyageurs folded, "The latticework of circumstance continues to break our baseball-loving heart."

The news is not encouraging for those hoping to see pro baseball again in 2010, or ever. Independent baseball is taking some serious hits amid the global credit crunch, which means a few leagues could disappear.

"It's serious enough that some independent league officials expect that not all of the current leagues will still be around when 2010 arrives.

" 'I think this in many ways could be the toughest year for independent baseball," Can-Am League and American Association commissioner Miles Wolff said. 'In the early years there was all this excitement that this is something new. There was St. Paul and Long Island, where baseball was back. Now all those cities have matured. Now it's a mode where we have to continue. There are not a lot of new things happening to make people say, Wow.' "

"The crazy promotions that seemed fresh and new in the 1990s are now a regular part of the minor league experience. And where in the '90s there always seemed to be a new market to move to if a team should start to falter, the building boom is largely over these days." — Baseball America

Wolff hit the nail on the head. Indy ball has been a victim of its own success, since it shook up the minors and forced them to change the way they do busness. It went from being a dead industry with games played only in front of diehards to family entertainment. Ballpark Digest also noted the Can-Am League is teetering:

"The independent Can-Am Association is down to six teams this season; you have two extremely strong franchises (Brockton and Quebec), one OK franchise (New Jersey), one struggling franchise (Sussex), and one interesting experiment that could go either way (American Defenders of New Hamphire). We don't hear any prospects for new teams for 2010 or beyond, either ..."

This is going to factor into Ottawa's endless stadium debate. Knowing how it works in Ottawa, you can't imagine this will do much to disabuse city councillors who want to tear down the Coventry Rd. ballpark.

Ultimately, it should not be forgotten Miles Wolff did believe in this city and its ball fans, and city officials did come around during the past two winters. That should be a pleasant memory even if there's never another professional baseball game in Ottawa again. (Then again, I'm just one guy.)

Related:
Bad Time For Indy Ball; Recession will be felt throughout '09 season (J.J. Cooper, Baseball America)
Debt, turnover put future of Tornadoes in doubt (Ballpark Digest)

Batter up: New York Mets

It's that mystical, wonderful time of year where you commit to a team who you know fully well won't win. This season, in honour of an popular Internet meme, we'll present 25 things tangentially about each Major League Baseball team. At bat: The Nye Mets.

1. Carlos Delgado will hit his 500th career homer on Sept. 25 in Florida. That's not a guess. That's what's going to happen.
   
   
2. Left-hander Johan Santana, in his second go-round in the league, seems like a decent pick to win the Cy Young Award. Pedro Martínez and Randy Johnson each won in their second season after changing leagues, so ...
   
   
3. The estimable Allen Barra is positing that it's The Year of José Reyes. The leadoff man has been Tall Poppy Syndromed. Slow starts in 2006 and '08 didn't help hus cause. Reyes hit .356/.442/.596 in the first month of the '07 season and this is an odd-numbered season ...


4. There's been good debate all winter whether Citi Field will be a death valley park, even more so than Shea Stadium, which had exceptionally poor visibility.
   
   
5. Their starting pitching probably just has to be good enough. There are no big names, but right-hander Mike Pelfrey allowed only six home runs last season. Oliver Pérez is always going to be NYC tabloid fodder all season, but he was good over the final three months last season. John Maine is good except he's made of glass. Please keep in mind it's better for the old media if everyone just accepts the Mets have no starting pitching outside Santana.
   
   
6. Santana is being played up as a clubhouse leader. Championships are won in the clubhouse (even Bill James says so — probably), so it's possible the Mets felt the older Santana and Pedro Martinez together would not work.
   
   
7. David Wright, Delgado, centrefielder Carlos Beltrán and rightfielder Ryan Church are a decent meat of the order, at least for the National League.
   
   
8. Random announcer babble: "Daniel Murphy sees a lot of pitches." Drink!
   
   The 24-year-old is pencilled in as the No. 2 hitter. The Mets had a cast of thousands in the 2-hole last season.
   
   
9. Can Beltrán ever get any attention in MVP voting? No Met has ever won MVP.
   
   
10. No Mets pitcher has ever thrown a no-hitter, either.
    
    
11. You've heard it ad nauseam that the Phillies are attempting to become the first National League team to repeat as World Series champions since the '75-76 Reds. It might be hard to do it as second-place team behind the Metropolitans.
    
    
12. Picking up Gary Sheffield (obvious joke: Will he hit his 500th before Delgado, who's only 30 behind him?) is no-fuss, no-muss, for the most part. What's the worst that can happen with signing a 40-year-old tainted by the Mitchell Report, who cannot be stashed at the DH spot?
    
    Sheffield could give the Mets 350 good plate appearances.
    
    
13. A theory that can be ignored is that since David Wright had a big game-winning hit in Team USA's comeback win over Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic, he'll carry the Mets all season.
    
    
14. Give a good team enough chances and they'll be bound to win sooner or later. That held for the Phillies in 2008, so ipso facto, the Mets should make the playoffs are losing on the last day of the season two years in a row.
    
    
15. It would be a shame if Pedro Martínez doesn't sign soon.
    
    
16. Their Triple-A team, the Buffalo Bisons, is giving free tickets to the unemployed. That's not going to fly in Western New York. (The Jays having their top farm team there would have been nice, but it's not Buffalo's fault it didn't happen.)
    
    
17. The Mets don't do the whole farm-system thing much at all. It's cute that their Double-A team in Binghamton, N.Y., is called the B-Mets, and the logo includes a bee. Ralph Wiggum would approve.
    
    
18. One reason to be sentimental about the Mets: Starting catcher Brian Schneider is a former Expo. He gets the job done, although when a team's missed the playoffs a
    
    
19. There wasn't a lot of news coverage about it, but they added two closers from the AL West, JJ Putz in a three-way trade involving the Mariners and Frankie Rodriguez from the Angels. It could have been three, but Huston Street had a bad year and no one could figure out who was closing for Texas, including the Rangers (C.J. Wilson, 22 saves, but a 6-something ERA).
    
    
20. The 20th anniversary of Darryl Strawberry punching Keith Hernandez during a team photo session passed rather quietly last month. The joke at the time was, "It was the first time Strawberry hit the cutoff man all year."
    
    
21. It was easy to get sucked into being a Marxist about the new stadium bearing the name of a major recipient of the U.S. federal government bailout. Few bothered to point out that Shea Stadium's namesake, Bill Shea, was a heavy-hitter lawyer who lobbied the U.S. Congress to pressure the National League into putting a team in New York City — and then helped get a stadium built at, wait for it, the taxpayers' expense. Putting Citi Group's name on the new place is actually true to history.
    
    
22. Great trivia answer: They won a World Series before winning an Opening Day game (thank you, Real Clear Sports). The Mets lost their first eight openers before the Miracle in 1969.
    
    
23. Opening Day in Cincinnati might be snowed out. You can question the wisdom of scheduling a game in Ohio on April 5, but baseball season always starts in Cincy, except when there's a game the night before.
    
    
24. Former Met Gary Carter is managing the Atlantic League's Long Island Ducks, which the Good Lord willing, will provide further comic fodder.
25. "Unfortunately, the immutable laws of physics contradict the entire premise of your account ..."
    
    
    
    

Bad things do happen to good people...

Jeffrey Loria is getting his baseball stadium in Miami, that doesn't mean you have to like it. You can still stick in his craw and make him sick as a dog.

The rich are very different. Some people might have taken it personally if a judge told the local government they were big idiots for wanting to go in on the $634-million project, or if they were basically considered the worst thing to happen to baseball since George Will. Not ol' Jeff, though. He persevered. All it took was ruining one franchise in Montréal and running one in Florida on a shoestring.

Loria has basically lived like one of Ronald Reagan's welfare queens the entire time he has operated in South Florida. He paid $143 million for the Marlins after MLB took the burned-out rubble of the Montreal Expos off his hands and it's now worth $256 million, thanks largely to the fact he pockets revenue sharing instead of spending it on quality players. This actually violates the spirit and the letter of the collective bargaining agreement, since that money is supposed to be invested in players.

Meantime, there's nothing objectively wrong with taxpayer dollars going toward a sports stadium. It is essentially an open bidding process, since if a city doesn't play ball, the team leaves. That isn't the case here, since there really isn't any other city in the U.S. that has its act together enough to go after a major-league team. (Portland, Oregon? Las Vegas? San Antonio? Meh.) The politicians in Miami and south Florida didn't have to do this, but they did anyway, and a bad dude was rewarded. But hey, it's business; you can't damn people without souls.

Related:
Play ball: Miami-Dade agrees to pay share of Florida Marlins stadium (Miami Herald)

Sands have shifted under the Yankees' feet

Good friend, not just friend of the blog, Pete Toms' latest for The Biz of Baseball ties together a lot of threads pointing to a backlash against all things pinstriped. Pete seizes upon the fact that when Bank of America walked away from its deal with the Yankees, it cited "the mood of the country," not just the recession.

Instead of excitement about the new stadium and free agent signings, Yankee blogs, message boards and newspaper reports are rife with the comments of angry fans expressing their outrage over how and where their seats have been 'relocated' in the new stadium.

Pete usually marshals his facts and his arguments, which a lot of (present company included) don't always have the patience for.

Are the Yankees a Tarnished Brand? (Pete Toms, The Biz of Baseball)

Tech, Money & Sports: Michael Phelps vs. The United States of Idiocracy

I've had it. That's it. I'm done.

To borrow a phrase from one of my favourite blogsters, Chez from Deus Ex Malcontent, just get out the guillotine for those who are attacking Michael Phelps. Or find some industrial strength twine and sew up their mouths. In Obama's World, morons across America (and Canada) need a collective, very hard kick in the ass.

It's not news anymore that eight-time Beijing Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps was caught with a bong. I won't go into the pros or cons of pot smoking, or whether this was simply misplaced youth having too much fun during an age of omnipresent digital cameras and viral news stories.

It's more likely that Phelps – a man-child of epic proportions who has been one of the very few bright spots for America on the world stage as of late – was simply careless or naïve enough to not realize how careful an international celebrity like him has to be when it comes to letting loose. After all, this is America we’re talking about: A country that loves to tear them down as fast as they rise up.

One false move, one ill-advised photo and it’s over. Human nature dictates we're more likely to remember one single bad thing than a thousand (or in this case, 14, counting Phelps' six golds in Athens in 2004) good things a person has done.

Unfortunately for Phelps, he’s caught in the perfect storm of a) being an alleged role model, although it’s highly debatable if athletes have any obligation whatsoever at being role models simply because they’re athletes; b) a very successful Olympian, and c) caught smoking weed.

Of course, none of this is about morality, in spite of what shrill Ann Coulter-wannabe Elizabeth Hasselbeck (full disclosure: if I were Keith Olbermann, she’d be on my personal list of Worst People in The World everyday) thinks. Her bully pulpit on The View notwithstanding, she and the reactionary forces at work in the Richland County (S.C.) Sheriff’s Office seem in a time warp when it comes to pot use.

Pot use in North America is rising, not declining. Walk-of-life folk openly support and watch corporately made stoner comedies such as Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, Knocked Up or Pineapple Express.

Most people with even a modicum of common sense aren’t going to get too wrapped up over a guy toking up when they might do it themselves (if Phelps was caught, say, doing a bump or shooting up, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?). Hell, it’s even arguable that pot smoking is hardly a behaviour that should be condemned in comparison to the incredibly unhealthy behaviour of Phelps eating McDonalds' every day (funny how McDonalds is also a major Olympic sponsor, of course).

Naturally, this has everything to do with money.

Phelps is perhaps the single most influential brand mover – to borrow marketing lingo – in global sports today, aside from David Beckham, Ronaldo and possibly Derek Jeter. He has global reach with his supported brands – especially in, of all places, China (hey, the Chinese really took to Phelps even while he crushing the mostly Chinese competitors, strangely enough).

Sure, Phelps’ corporate image is no longer squeaky clean or predictably dull (only Corporate America could possibly think predictably dull is a sure-fire approach to business). But this isn't a bad thing for Phelps. He’s humanized himself beyond the superhuman feats he accomplished in Beijing. He’s more real now than he’s ever been before.

So far, Phelps’ sponsors like VISA are sticking by him. Sensible, intelligent sponsors will see this for what it is: a young guy who let loose for the right reasons at the wrong time.

It's been done: Can't spell pathetic without P-E-T-A

PETA was so much more likable when it gave the impression it really cared about saving all the furry animals instead of just getting the attention. These dingi have no right to sit in judgment of Michael Vick.



Thumbs-down for wasting money on an ad they knew NBC would never go for in a million years. Didn't The Simpsons already take the air out of Super Bowl ads that play off scantily clad women about 10 years ago? Remember? "The Catholic church ... we've made a few changes."

Related:
PETA’s Awesomely Sexy Veg Ad For Superbowl Rejected By NBC (ecorazzi.com; clip via Bob's Blitz)

Damn Vikings: Just pawn in game of life

Some people, bless them, can siphon out the emotion from rationalism when talks sprouts up of a major pro sports team lighting out for another city.

There is no scrambling away from the Minnesota Vikings/L.A. stadium talk. A not uncommon reaction over the past couple days, if you read the comments on the articles, is that it's a done deal, barring Vikes owner Zygi Wilf opting to pay the shot for a stadium in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region (and who gets rich spending his own money instead of OPM?). The Vikings will become the L.A. Stallions by 2012, surer than their namesakes did not have horns on their helmets. The mock-up for the stadium developer Ben Roski Jr. wants to build in Industry, Calif., even shows purple seats. That's about as subtle as Vikings coach Brad Childress' playcalling on some days. Adrian Peterson off left tackle, again?!

Introducing some bits of background seems to the best way to work through the fear. It's a good primer for what Toronto could be going through in the next 5-10 years with a certain baseball team. Granted, MLB hasn't gone 14 years without having a team in the second-largest U.S. city.

Minnesota politicians and voters have been on this merry-go-round for more than a decade over public funding for pro sports playgrounds, long before Lehman Brothers. Secondly, the standard reflex to moralize about governments subsidizing the sports industry is not as sound as most of us might believe, although you can't convince many people of such. Thirdly, it can argued that if one's favourite team relocates to another city, what it's to a fan of the team who has never visited that state?

Taking each point one by one:

1. Please keep in mind that Minnesota is one state that would draw a line in the sand (obvious Coen brothers reference intended) over spending on sports.
   
   This is the state which recently sent Al Franken, who's a wee bit left of centre by American standards, to the U.S. Senate. It goes beyond having an electorate which is a bit more lefty than other states.
   
   Steve Rushin, writing in Sports Illustrated eleven years ago, when it seemed like baseball's Twins were a goner and the Vikings' stadium snafu was in its embryonic stages, said Minnesota is "a proud and peculiar and perhaps enlightened state."
   
   Sports fans, especially the younger genarations, have grown comfortably numb with the notion of sky-high salaries and stadiums which cost a half-billion dollars. It would take something on the order of, wait for it, a global economic meltdown to change that mentality. Minnesotans, to use Rushin's sum-up, are different:
   

   "Minnesota, as I have written before in these pages, is the Don't Show Me State. The Norwest Center in downtown Minneapolis was designed to be a few feet shorter than the state's tallest building, the nearby IDS Center. Minnesota has 12,034 lakes, but it rounded the number down to 10,000 for the inscription on its license plates. In 1899 a Minnesota resident, the sociologist Thorstein Veblen, coined the phrase "conspicuous consumption," which aptly describes what Minnesotans find objectionable about so many exotic (which is to say non-Minnesotan) cultures."

   How Canadian of them.
   
   
2. It's an academic argument when unemployment in the U.S. is inching toward 8%, but while opposing public spending on sports stadium is a good convenient stance since it makes you feel socially consciousness, it is contestable. The Sports Law Professor, a few months ago, laid out an 11-part argument for why governments spending on new stadia is not objectionable.
   
   Team owners trot out self-serving nonsense when they're trolling for a new pleasure palace. It's easy enough to ignore. Fans get priced out, which sucks. There's usually some scandal over backroom shenanigans which usually results in some middle managers resigning or being sacked (see the VANOC debacle or the new Yankee Stadium). However, as TSLP put it, "Cities bid against cities, so presumptively the price/subsidy is a competitive one."
   
   It's beyond the pale if the Yankees reap the rewards of some fudged land assessments. It's apples-to-pears to make comparsions with the International Olympic Cartel. Once the Games are awarded, there is no competition. The hosts pay the shot, no matter what.
   
   The fact of the matter is that forking over the money is a necessary evil. The big ball-and-stick leagues see it as a way to limit competition. Bill James, about 20 years ago, wrote an essay arguing that North America could support at least 200 major-league baseball teams. There is probably enough talent to support half as many pro football teams. There is enough talent for about 60 NHL teams, which might mean Hamilton or Winnipeg would finally get a team.
   
   However, in reality, the public sets the bar with the NFL. Every few years, there is talk of a spring football league in the U.S., one that would trade on deeply held college rivalries. A team in Birmingham, for instance, would be stocked with former Alabama and Auburn players and so on.
   
   It would never work since fans are interested in watching athletes of that calibre when they are 18-22 years old. It's kind of the same as how no one wants to watch a 50-year-old Fonzie try to pick up girls. No one wants to see a 30-year-old Eric Crouch running the option. The leagues' TV partners also want teams in major cities and fans are conditioned to go along. People are already ticked off enough about a Pittsburgh-Arizona Super Bowl or the Tampa Bay Rays being in the World Series. The big small towns already have college basketball and football to themselves, anyways.
   
   
3. Then there is the emotional argument. Did it matter in the first place that the Vikings played in Minneapolis-St. Paul?
   
   It mattered more that they had Randall Cunningham and Randy Moss and that there were a historic, albeit hard-luck franchise. It was bandwagon to get on, the same as anyone else's fandom. A certain fatalism has become attached to rooting for the Vikes, but that's just me eggheading it up.
   
   In his book God Save The Fan, Will Leitch dedicated a chapter to his lifelong support of the St. Louis-Phoenix-Arizona Cardinals. His argument was that he is the loyal one for sticking by a team through relocation, saying, "they're just a corporation, but they're my corporation." He's been rewarded with his team making a Super Bowl appearance.
   
   In other words, if the Vikings moved and kept the nickname and colours, there would be no reason not to keep supporting them.
   

It's debatable how deep Wilf and the state ledge in Minny are into this game. Twenty-eleven, which is when the Vikings' lease on the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome ("It's a shame they named this place after a nice guy like HHH" -- Billy Martin), is coming up fast.

One sustaining hope is that the Vikings could play at the Minnesota Gophers stadium for two or three seasons while the 'Dome is converted to an outdoor stadium. The Chicago Bears and Seattle Seahawks, temporarily played at college stadiums. It would be a compromise, but it might be too penny-ante if Wilf wants to be in among the Top 5 NFL teams in revenue.

Related:
Vikings Loving L.A.? (Andrew Brandt, National Football Post)

Right to Deny: IOC passes judgment on the Right to Play-VANOC dispute

Following a dispute over sponsorship issues the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has banned humanitarian sports organization Right to Play from participating in not only the coming Olympics Games in 2010 in Vancouver, but all subsequent Games to follow.

This past October a dispute arose between Right to Play and the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC), however it seemed inevitable at the time the issue would resolve itself due to the negative light that would be shed on all parties involved if such a charitable foundation was blocked. A foundation that actually sprung from the Olympic movement by Olympic athletes.

In the end it appears that events went from bad to decidedly worse for the Toronto based, sports oriented foundation. The Canadian Press announced today that the IOC has decided Right to Play, a humanitarian group spreading good will and participation in sport to various regions around the world that may not have the opportunity without such assistance, has been banned from all Olympiads.

The international humanitarian organization Right to Play has been told by the International Olympic Committee it is not welcomed at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, or future Olympics...The ban will continue for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London and the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.

For a group that places the utmost importance on both educating and securing new athletes to support and contribute to their cause, this can be considered a critical blow. However when presented with the opportunity to attack the IOC themselves, Johann Koss, the President and CEO of Right to Play, decided to take the high road instead.

Koss hesitated when asked if by banning Right to Play, the IOC was violating its own goals.

"I don't want to comment necessarily on the IOC's decision," he said. "We have grown out of the Olympic organizing committee and the Olympic movement.

"This is our history and this is where we belong. I don't want to speculate on the issue and the decision made by the IOC."

Considering what has recently befallen Vancouver in organizing these Games this will surely not help improve their image. In fact appalling is a pretty good word that comes to mind when one is reminded that the original conflict arose from nothing more than a conflict of sponsors (Right to Play is with Toyota while VANOC has signed on with General Motors...will refrain to comment on who made the better decision there...). And even though the disputed advertising was not key to promotional material, not prevalent on the Right to Play website either, and that this has never been a concern in past Olympics the group has attended dating back to 1994, the recent rift that was created simply could not be repaired.

So as both the IOC and VANOC claim a rather infamous role in the charitable history books, the IOC is also left to deal with what appears to be quite the hypocritical decision on their part. They should provide a press release as to why they have attacked an organization promoting sport to youth all over the world, but then again communication may not be a strong suit of the IOC.

Koss said his organization tried to reach a compromise.

"After the initial discussion with VANOC and the IOC, we did present to them a way where we could work together," he said. "I did not get a response from that. That was five months ago.

"Since then we had not heard anything before I received this letter."

If and when the other side of the story ever comes out then these actions can be judged accordingly, but until then this is just one big disappointment. One can hold out hope, however, that this dispute is resolved in the future so that even if these Games are deprived of this great organization maybe future Olympiads will not. One can only hope...hey at least hope is in fashion right now!

Related:
IOC says Right to Play not welcome at Olympic Games any more (The Canadian Press)

Zen Dayley: Minor leagues a major concern

Our friend Pete Toms has provided some good context on baseball's coming labour War of 2012 over at The Biz of Baseball.

The blogetariat has been doing a lot of chin-wagging over what percentage of MLB revenues is paid out to players. They get about 52% if you don't count player development costs, which run about $20 million per team. You can see where this will be a problem — the players, in three years' time, are going to claim they see a smaller piece of the pie than their counterparts in other sports (which see about 58% of the money). Management is going to say, well, that's because we have so much outlay for keeping someone such as John-Ford Griffin and the other Quad-A players (seamhead argot for career minor leaguers) under contract, whereas the NBA and NFL have the NCAA to do their bidding.

Meantime, minor-league baseball teams, not that anyone needs the news alert, have become a gold mine in the United States. The public is willing to pay more for the ballpark experience. Their player costs are also taken care by their major-league parent, and as Pete says, that tab is getting larger all the time.

That's why a lot of teams are trying to have minor-league affiliates in close proximity — they want their cut. Meantime, since no one wanted your Toronto Blue Jays as a dance partner, they ended up with a top farm club located 3,600 km away in Las Vegas. As Pete explains:

"The increased involvement of MLB in the affiliated minors is perhaps an example of necessity being the mother of invention. Annual player development costs have risen to an average of approximately $20 million per club. Boston Red Sox Chairman Tom Werner addressed the subject in March with Sports Business Daily. 'Every major league club spends about $20 million a year on growing their talent,' Werner said. "We have a minor league system and coaches and trainers and all kinds of personnel that just aren't equivalent in football or in basketball, where you have the college system as a way of being their minor league.' "

This probably leads to the MLB clubs trying to get their Triple-A teams to pay something closer to the full freight for the Bernie Castro and Mike Hessman types of the world.

The way it works now is the Jays and the 29 other teams have to furnish their affiliates with players who are not serious prospects. Even someone who is listed among a team's Top 10 prospects by Baseball America is no can't-miss kid. However, they need the "parking lot players" so the upwardly mobile future stars have someone to play games against until they are mature enough for the majors.It could be, hey, you're raking it in, and this player's labour makes more money for you, the Triple-A owner, than it does for us.

There probably is the possibility this will lead to the Triple-A teams becoming more independent, as well they should be. The major-league parent would maybe provide 12-15 players. The Triple-A club would have to fill out the rest of the roster, perhaps with veterans with a tie to the area, not unlike the situation in the AHL, where 41-year-old Mike Keane is a player-assistant coach with his hometown Manitoba Moose, five years after he last played in the NHL. Perhaps those players get more bargaining power and more liveable wage.

It's something else to think about as baseball heads toward their next round of labour talks. Hopefully, this does some justice to Pete's piece.

Related:
A Detailed Look at the Ties Between MLB, MiLB, and Independent Leagues (Pete Toms, The Biz of Baseball)

Bad news for nocturnal rounders fans

Hearing of earlier starts for baseball playoff games would not mark the first time someone though, "Hey, one positive sports development to come out of the recession." Hey, at least one bloke believes it could be be great for the English Premier League, which is capitalistic excess straight out of Hank and Hal Steinbrenner's most fevered dreams.

Monday's Sports Business Journal predicted that it's likely that baseball will not be so much of the national past bed time this October.

First Fox announced that it is canceling its pregame show during baseball’s regular season. Now look for the broadcaster to start World Series games a half-hour earlier, closer to 8 p.m. ET. Fox has always maintained that later starting times helped ratings, which meant more people were watching. But this year, the World Series games went so much longer (average length for the three non-rain-delayed games was 3 hours, 15 minutes) and ended so late (average ending time was 11:43 p.m. ET) that ratings couldn’t keep up.

It is a small win for fans in the Eastern Time Zone. Too many baseball nuts, on the morning after a heart-pounding extra-inning post-season game, have been confronted with that empty feeling. It comes with realizing that you were the one twitburger in the entire company who stayed up until 1:15 to see who won and have no one to talk about with, let alone someone of the desired gender. C'est la vie.

There are some other intiguing predictions in that article, such as the NCAA basketball tournament being expanded to 96 teams. That one is for another time.

Related:
The year ahead in sports media, through a digital crystal ball (John Ourand, Sports Business Journal)

Snark break...

As you were wondering what happened to 10 years' worth of issues of Word Up magazine....

Construction is being delayed on a NFL stadium in the Los Angeles area, which might help Rogers Communications' chances of stealing liberating the Buffalo Bills. Or not.

In case you weren't feeling old enough already, there is talk of the Boston Red Sox drafting Carl Yastrzemski's grandson. Mike Yastrzemski is an outfielder, too.

Shame on Citigroup -- they keep their name on the New York Mets' stadium, but can't come with the $240,000 to sponsor a holiday toy train exhibit. Today's youth need to learn about riding the rails.

And you wonder why Canadians are smug toward the U.S. ... it's a little hard not to be when someone who's a "Philadelphia lawyer" believes that winning "143 seats in Canada's 278-seat Parliament" does not make a majority (it would, if not for those 30 additional seats) and that there's a province of Ottawa.

So the Sens gave up the lead three times last night against a Florida Panthers team which was missing five regulars to injury? That's a shame (really).

From the National Lampoon Sports Minute: "The chairman of the Chicago Cubs said he expects the team to be sold by spring training. And that will fix everything."

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

• It probably has no chance of succeeding, but a fan group is planning to sue the Bowl Championship Series.
  
• The Kurtenblog guys pretty well nailed it in regard to Boots Del Biaggio and Gary Bettman. Hockey's a great sport to survive the people who are supposedly in charge.
  
• People in Chicago ain't happy about Ron Santo not getting into the Hall of Fame.
  
• You really should read this interview with Outliers author Malcolm Gladwell. (Seriously, though, do Americans not know about hockey players having early birthdays? The assumption here was everyone knew.)
• Erik Bedard is likely safe with the Seattle Mariners, as much as that's possible.
  

Scary times, indeed

Another canary in the economic mineshaft: The Oakland Athletics, having dropped their grandiose plan of a ballpark village, are talking about a smaller stadium, right on a transit line.

Even Fremont Mayor and ballpark booster Bob Wasserman says he and his City Council colleagues "definitely" have to look at the idea, now that the tanking economy has forced the A's to put the rest of their "ballpark village" plan for 3,000 apartment and townhouses on ice.

Speaking as a layperson (oh, grow up), it seems like this is going to become more and more of a common thing, although it's hardly a ripple of evil since new stadiums don't necessarily enhance the fan experience, except for separating her or him from his money.

Over in England, Everton is going through a huge public inquiry over a stadium and retail project. This morning's Globe & Mail details how Montreal Canadiens owner George Gillett just took out a huge personal loan, because he's hip-deep in red ink between owning Liverpool (Everton's rival), a string of auto dealerships and "up-market ski resorts."

Gillett evidently can do the debtor's dance better than a lot of businesspeople. It's going to make for a different sports landscape in a few years, but those who are thinking that pro sports are getting too big might not mind too much.

Related:
Oakland A's talk of new stadium closer to BART (San Francisco Chronicle)

Zen Dayley: The two politicians behind 'Taxpayer Field'

One knows better than to hope those two New York city councillors will succeed in having the name of the New York Mets' new stadium changed to Citi/Taxpayer Field.

Citigroup, the title sponsor, is getting a huge U.S. federal bailout, so it's only sporting if the stadium bore the name of the people who might actually be paying for the 20-year, $400 million US bailout. Yours truly's batting average on these matters is really poor, but it probably won't happen, unless Citigroup completely collapses.

It is not the time for the seventh billionth rant about how governments should not be building massive stadiums for professional teams. This does not apply when it's a team you root for and you live outside the city in question, of course. It is fun to poke around Google for some background one the two New York pols. If James Oddo's name sounds familiar, he is a baseball nut who was behind the campaign to ban metal bats from high school leagues in New York City. He and the other councillor, Vincent Ignizio, are also involved in a lawsuit against New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg over his attempt to renege on a property-tax rebate.

Ignizio is a first-termer, who just turned 34 years old, and along with being involved in litigation against a billionaire mayor, he's also one of the lowest earners among councillors in New York.

Along with the metal bat crusade, Oddo has another claim to fame ...



Of course, that only makes Mr. Oddo more awesome. Whatever side someone that intense takes, you'd best be taking it. Taxpayer Field? Sounds good. Who knows, maybe they'll get somewhere with this, because if we're ever going to get rid of the scourge of these huge taxpayer-funded arenas and stadiums for huge corporations, it will probably start with younger politicians on both sides of the political spectrum.

Related:
Sentiment growing against Mets/Citigroup deal (Eddie D'Anna, Staten Island Advance)

Saving Ottawa Sports: Covering all the bases ...

It is 1,000 times more fun to write about games, but here in Ottawa, there's a lot more drama with the people in suits, not the ones on skates. A couple bullet points:

• From late last week, the Portland Mercury had some pretty choice words about Sennies owner Eugene Melnyk's bid for a MLS expansion franchise:

  "Let's face it, Ottawa doesn't have a chance. There's no way the MLS will force every team to fly all the way to tiny Ottawa to play. No freaking way. That said, Eugene Melnyk is the money man. He has stadium plans and apparently the backing of the Provincial government. I'm not opposed to Canadian teams, but this guy has no chance." (emphasis mine)

  Indulge your American exceptionalism, much? Portland is a metropolitan area of 2.1 million people; the national capital region is approaching 1.5 mil. It even has an international airport, on account of being the capital city of a G8 country.
  
  One also has to note the commenter claiming Ottawa would have no natural rival in MLS. Uhhhhhh ... anywho, that part about the backing of the Ontario government is an eyebrow-raiser. You'll remember that when the Sennies won the Eastern Conference title in 2007, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty did appear to glad-hand in the victors' dressing room.
• Please do a Google News search for Biovail, the company Melnyk founded (and lost control of). See what media outlets do not come up. Better yet, do a GN search for BVF-033.
  
  There is no evidence of a local follow-up to a Report on Business story from Sept. 26 that took a tough but fair look at Melnyk's loss of control of Biovail. It is quite possible that those three class actions filed this month will have have no impact on the Senators' bottom line. It is reasonable to say that hey, everyone gets sued once (hey, if you can't laugh at yourself). It is the cost of accumulating a certain level of personal worth -- it's like taking a penalty, just to let the other team know you're playing with some jam. In the business world, it's almost like a badge of honour.
  
  It's also hardly unusual (ahem) for a NHL owner to be up to his ass in alligators from a legal wrangling standpoint. One can't say what MLS commissioner Don Garber would think, though.
  
  Speaking as someone who does not have the head for business nor the body for sin, there is no intention to turn this into the Bob Loblaw Law Blog. However, if all that can be gathered during 10 minutes of Googling, it is reasonable to wonder why it's not a story in Hockey Country.
• Don't believe for a second that the clock is ticking on Ottawa CFL Team 3.0. It is a pressure tactic. If you have the means to tuck a a $7-million cheque in CFL commissioner Mark Cohon's pocket for the franchise fee, you are travelling on an open-ended ticket.
• A friend who is a reasonable man and who has lived here a lot longer believes the CFL team is just a carrot. The condos, the residential development, a hockey arena for the Soixante-Septs are the meats and cheeses for Roger Greenberg, John Ruddy and Bill Shenkman. They could easily forget about the CFL.
• Our friend Carl Kiiffner has a reminder that there is a more realistic chance of having professional baseball in town in 2009 than the CFL or MLS in the next few summers. Can-Am League commissioner Miles Wolff fought tooth and nail just to get the Ottawa franchise off the ground. The situation might have changed, but Wolff was willing to fund the franchise before he found the former owners who don't deserve to be mentioned in this forum.

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

Tech, Money & Sports: The Valour and The Horror

This is the moment where everything has changed. Again.

While OOLF is about sports, my particular niche here on the team has to do with the business of sports. The money game, as it were.

For years now, Americans have freely spent a breathtaking amount of their disposable incomes into sports: overpriced game tickets, merchandise, nights out at the bar watching the game with friends. There’s always been a certain level of comfort in using sports as a distraction, a shared journey into the conflicted beauty and horror that watching hockey, baseball, basketball, football or whatever brings.

But as anyone with even a passing interest in sports knows, the games we love are pricy endeavours, indeed. The days of average families being able to afford four tickets, food and drink at a baseball game without going into the triple-digit cost range passed us by years ago.

Yet now – this day, October 10, 2008 – things are about to change for the worse.

Much, much worse.

While it’s never good to turn what will be, in the long run, a moment in history superseded by whatever is to come, into a near-biblical calamity, there's no denying what many Americans (and much of the world, including Canada) are realizing today.

The U.S. economy is profoundly screwed – possibly for years to come.

And while the super-rich of America – you know, that five per cent of Americans who control 95 per cent of the country’s wealth? – bask in the knowledge they will be safe from the horrors of this nearly unprecedented financial collapse, the rest of America – the innocent victims of this terrible mess – will be punished for their leaders' mind-blowing incompetence.

The howls of anguish, disgust and outright rage from those analysts on CNN today is really just the final requiem for the Bush administration – a neo-conservative wet dream destroyed by years of greed, hubris and grotesque disregard for the American people. It’s pointless to even list off Bush/Cheney's CV of political disrepute now. That’s not the point of OOLF, even if we’re angry enough to say how we really feel.

No, what this blog is about is about sports – a global institution that is most definitely not recession-proof. Not anymore.

Case in point: the New York Yankees and New York Mets’ new stadiums, Citi Field and Yankee Stadium.

Now that the term “living within your means” will become the new and unavoidable mantra of economic success in the coming years, the cynical, middle-finger raising act of raising ticket prices at the new Yankee Stadium - $19 for one seat in the bleachers? – could spell serious trouble for the franchise’s shiny new Bronx-based three-ring circus. Granted, the average fan is nowhere near as important to an organization’s bottom line as he or she once was. But even in a media-drenched society like ours, the Yankees and Mets could simply not have released these Shrines to Super-Wealth at a worse time. It’s a symbolic act of self-indulgent, “they’ll pay what we say” logic that no self-respecting New Yorker would dare put up with (yes, even New Yorkers).

The already-precarious state of various NHL teams in less-than-solid markets – Atlanta? Florida? – could be pushed to the brink now, given how dependent most NHL teams are on ticket revenues. The potential financial collapse of teams unable to support themselves is a huge black eye for any sports-mad city. It’s even worse for the NHL itself – an unstable brand that lacks stickiness among loyal fan bases outside of long-term markets like Toronto, Boston or Chicago.

In normal economic cycles, most sports leagues would be classified as "recession-resistant" because of factors outside of individual sports fans' control: television contracts, in particular, sustain sports leagues in bad times because the revenues generated from eyeballs watching TV is lucrative enough to keep the gravy train going. A league like the NFL, which benefits from all four major U.S. network consortiums covering the sport, is one example of this.

But these are not normal times. Nobody knows how much worse things can get on Wall Street yet or when the pork-laden $700 billion bailout package will "work its way through the system" to restore faith in the U.S. banking industry. The real impact of this financial collapse has yet to be felt in large, wide ranging waves among ordinary Americans, which could be the real game-changer for the future of the U.S. economy. What happens when millions of people are foreclosed on or go into bankruptcy? What will be the long-term economic impact on American people and institutions alike?

In other words, it's virtually impossible to say with any certainty whether the old rules of sports economics will hold up in the next few years. Perhaps this is only a momentary blip, a final, terrible moment for the Bush administration before, hopefully, a new President comes in to inspire hope and change we can believe in. Perhaps things will get better. Or worse. Who knows?

In any event, the global economic uncertainty we all face now is part of a brand new economic cycle that may result in changes the likes of which we’ve never seen before. I have no answers, no predictions, and no idea. None of us do here.

All we do know is that everything has changed. Yet in the history of the world, there's always comfort in knowing nothing lasts forever. The bad times happen, the good times happen. Nations bounce back, economies bounce back. And America - once the world's shining light for the ideals of democracy, freedom and Dreams - is a strong nation that will and should recover.

Again.