Blog blast past: Hats off to our Ruthless capacity to live a lie

In the wake of George Steinbrenner's death, here's a piece on the closure of Yankee Stadium in from Sept. 22, 2008.

You can't talk about Yankee Stadium. There isn't any such place.

Cranky-panted Seamhead objections notwithstanding, it is impossible to not be touched on some level by the closure of the Stadium. One would have to be a sad bastard to begrudge anyone who gave in to the faux gravitas on Sunday night in the Bronx.

Look at it this way. A lot of people never visited the Montreal Forum, or maybe only got to do it once or twice. They still felt a sense of loss March 12, 1996, the day after the Canadiens played there for the final time. It's part of the understanding that pro sports would not exist without the glow you get from our shared existence as fans. I'm talking about the vibe that means two people can make plans to meet up with two other people they barely know after a game and already have the basis for a conversation.

That might be part of where the feeling of loss with the closure of the Stadium comes from, the loss of a first-hand experience. Speaking as a history buff who had the foresight not to study history in university and lose the ability to enjoy it, history is best when it's scuffed like one of Whitey Ford's pitches. Think about all the kids who'll never have the chance to be introduced to that now -- although with what the Yankees charge for tickets, plenty were denied that already.

Moving out of Yankee Stadium is another step closer to having our shared experience come even more prefab, sanitized and franchised.For instance, Maury Brown at The Biz of Baseball noted that Yankee Stadium III will have "a martini bar and a steakhouse on the inside – a ruse designed to recall the historic memory of the past while tapping into the wallets of those that come to a new stadium, not just to watch a game, but to be serviced in grand style."

In other words, you get Phil from Marketing's undercooked and watered-down notion of the 1940s and '50s passed off as historically based. Sterling Cooper would be proud; people think they are getting something, even if it's actually about as true to that bygone era as a typical Mad Men episode. Like, come on. Who has a martini and a steak at a ballgame?

So much for that famous ad that starred Humphrey Bogart: A hot dog at the ballpark beats a steak at the Ritz. And, of course, any baseball fan you'd want to watch nine innings of baseball with with drinks beers, always in the plural.

Enough about that, though. All in all, the Stadium sendoff owed more to George Orwell than to George Herman Ruth. This goes way beyond the Yankees ignoring their dismal 1986-92 era by not even having the common courtesy to bring out Steve "Bye-Bye" Balboni to wave bye-bye.

(Balboni was a laughably limited part-time DH who played two seasons in pinstripes and almost hit his weight over that time. In fairness, he weighed 225.)

Roger Clemens? To borrow Yankee TV play-by-play man Michael Kay's home run call, "See ya!" The disgraced right-hander was misremembered in the official record, even though it was just last season that the Yankees wanted him so badly that he signed a pro-rated $28-million contract for one season.

Ex-manager Joe Torre, who's now with the L.A. Dodgers, was similarly "disappeared." Never mind that Torre guided the Yankees to four World Series titles or that the image of him sitting stoically in the dugout is burned into my brain, thanks to Fox's death-by-a-million-quick-cuts style of presenting playoff baseball.

Torre won more titles than Hall of Fame Yankees manager Miller Huggins, who only had 15 other teams to contend with, and more than Ralph Houk, whose stature was such that he could only be portrayed in 61* by the guy who played D-Day in Animal House. However, he was fired and he's headed to the playoffs while the Yankees are not.

All of it rang a bit hollow, right down to the what-keeps-this-guy-alive Bob Sheppard's recorded player introductions. The Yankees ownership is likely feeling no pain over leaving. They have been trying to escape from that place since about 1981, when Snake Plisskin was appointed to the board of directors.

Remember the racially loaded innuendos George Steinbrenner perpetrated in the early '90s about the Bronx being too scary for his season ticket holders? It was all part of grand scheme:

"In truth, this was a happy occasion for everyone but the fans, who will need mortgages to afford tickets next year. The Yanks will finally own their own ballpark, the players will finally move from the utility closet in the basement into a real clubhouse, and the ownership will pocket fistfuls of cash from 60 luxury boxes.
-- Wallace Matthews, amNY.com

Translation: It mean the Yankees, whom you need to have in the playoffs so you can hate something and know that you're alive, are turning into MLSE with foul lines. (The closure occurred on the same weekend the Tampa Bay Rays, with a payroll just $5 million higher than perpetually injured Yankees pitcher Carl Pavano's contract, wrapped up their first playoff berth. By the way, Rays owner Stuart Sternberg grew up as a Mets fan.

All the "85 years" talk reveals is our admirable, Costanza-like ability to live, like, 20 lies at the same time. It neatly ignores that, as ShysterBall said, "For the record, the last home run in Yankee Stadium was hit by backup catcher Duke Sims. It happened on September 30, 1973 against the Tigers. After that game, New York played for two years in Shea Stadium and then 33 years in one of those unfortunate 1970s-era ballparks that are now finally and mercifully gone."

Then's there the reality that the Yankees' deal with New York City for public assistance for Yankee Stadium III stinks to the point that even proud Republicans are calling the baseball team "taxpayer-leeching pimps." Republicans using that language? You'd swear a Democrat was about to get elected president.

There is all of that and more. It's not a Yankee-hating thing (eh, maybe a little). Maybe all of this speaks to the general shallowness of modern life.

In the absence of clarity, the best way to deal is to give priority to the mythology of Yankee Stadium has value, too.

For pity's sake, it was the only place that could be called the Stadium without anyone asking which stadium. When Crash Davis went off on his "one more dying quail" rant in Ron Shelton's Bull Durham, he talked about how one more hit per week was the difference between being in the bush leagues and being in Yankee Stadium.

It was about as close to something anyone can understand as you're going to get in a Hollywood sports film.

Sure, as far as ballparks appearing in movies go, Kevin Costner also played a character who felt compelled to drag a famous author to Fenway Park. John Hughes knew Ferris Bueller's day off would be incomplete without a trip to Wrigley Field. That is only from a fan perspective.

What Shelton, the ballplayer turned writer meant, was that Yankee Stadium was the proving ground for a player. The media has dumbed that down over the years, but it does not make it any less true.

Yankee Stadium was Oz-like -- a fantasy world full of odd creatures with names like Billy, Mickey, Whitey, Yogi, Reggie, Jet-ah and Mariano. On one night in 1996, thanks to Jeffrey Maier and an egregious case of craven home-team officiating, it was more like the shower room in Oz for the Baltimore Orioles. (Yeah, I went there.)

Whatever you think of the Yankees, there is a sense of loss when you know that here on out, Aura and Mystique are likely just the nom de peel of A-Rod's, um, casual acquaintances.

All of that is being left behind in the greater name of greed. Sports is big business, but it still sucks.

Batter up: New York Yankees

It's that mystical, wonderful time of year where you commit to a team who you know fully well won't win. In honour of an popular Internet meme, we're presenting lists of 25 things tangentially about each Major League Baseball team. At bat: The New York Yankees.

1. One problem with gauging how CC Sabathia's signing will pan out in New York. Rob Neyer said it first, but there isn't a prediction model to use for 290-pound starting pitchers.
   
   
2. One Buffalo columnist imagined a major-league roster drawn entirely from the best players age 25 and under. One big takeaway: He didn't have a single Yankee.
   
   
3. That knee-jerk impulse about how Allen James Burnett only manages to throw 200 innings when he's in his contract year (and the one time he wasn't, he needed elbow surgery) was probably right.
   
   
4. Plain old Alex Rodriguez will be fine once he's back from hip surgery. It's the principle of the uncluttered mind. As for that photo of him kissing himself in the mirror: His advisors told him that he better start kissing some ass if he wanted to improve his image. He obviously misunderstood.
   
   
5. The early word on the New Yankee Stadium (the House That Lack of Couth Built) is that there's a jet stream out to right-centre field. The Yankees hit seven homers in the first two cash-grabs exhibition games there. Mark Teixeira, Hideki Matsui, Jorge Posada, Nick Swisher and Johnny Damon front a pretty left-handed lineup.
   
   
6. Stop saying Derek Jeter had a bad season by his standards (.300/.363/.408) last season. The law of diminishing returns kicked in for him around the middle of '07. He'll be voted into to start yet another all-star game and should still get on base at good steady clip, but he left the basestealing and extra-base power back somewhere in 2006. In the field, there are NFL nosetackles who cover more turf.
   
   
7. They will be the best third-place team money can buy.
   
   
8. Right-hander Phil Hughes, or as he's alternately known, The Reason Johan Santana's A Met, is still only 22 years old.
   
   
9. They have overtaken the Red Sox. It will cost a family of four $410 to attend a Yankees home game this season. Fenway Park had been the most expensive place for the past few seasons.
   
   
10. The upshot of the Yankees spending $423.5 million on three free agents is it's a reprise of the '80s, when they ignored the farm system. This time around, it's been tagged The Joba Impact.
    
    
11. Closer Mariano Rivera is still money. The heir apparent in the farm system is Mark Melancon, if Rivera ever retires.
    
    
12. Damon and Matsui are free agents after this season, so presumably that gives them added motivation.
    
    
13. Rivera and lefty Damaso Marte are the only relievers earning more than $1 million. Does that make the other relievers the equivalent of underpaid domestics?
    
    
14. Totally baseless parallel: Remember when the Montreal Canadiens moved out of the Forum in 1996 and lost out in the first round of the playoffs after dropping all three games at home? It could like that for the first little while at the new stadium.
    


15. Joba Chamberlain is in the starting rotation, at least for this month.


16. The $180-million man, Mark Teixeira, typically has slow starts, but fortunately, the New York media corps is pretty patient and laid-back.
    
    
17. Second baseman Robinson Cano should have a bit of a bounce-back season after hitting a sucktacular .271/.305/.410 in '08. He needed a late-season run just to get his numbers up that high.
    
    
18. The football game in the novel version of North Dallas Forty was set at Yankee Stadium (the Giants played there in the '60s). Words to live by: "Somehow, I always felt closer to the greats when I was hung over."
    
    
19. Yogi Berra has collaborated on a book with Allen Barra. Yogi is probably the only living Yankee who everyone liked and he turns 84 years old in May.
    
    
20. Co-chairman Hank Steinbrenner is secretly a Blue Jays fan. Spread the word.
    
    
21. The only way the Yankees' image could take more of a beating is if they had AIG's logo on their jerseys. What global ports empire would do a thing like that? Sorry, bad example.
    
    
22. Since neither NHL team in Ontario made the playoffs, you could vow not to shave until centrefielder Brett Gardner hits his first home run of the season. Gardner, AKA The Squirrel, has gone yard only nine times in four seasons.
    
    
23. Gossip websites probably just random enter names into some beta application which generates come up with an article. You're 10 years late to the party if you make a joke about how Derek Jeter and Jennifer Aniston should be together.
    
    
24. They're aging, schlerotic, in need of fresh ideas and have been suffering steady setbacks since 2005. But enough about the Republican Party.
    
    
25. Jaded Jays-fan backbiting aside, Yankees fans is good people, especially Jason at It Is About The Money, Stupid. You have to be courteous and friendly. Please remember that there but for the grace of God goes Roy Halladay's future team.

Batter up: Philadelphia Phillies

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

1. A gut feeling says they don't get back to the World Series due to the sheer randomness of post-season baseball. Besides, it's more fun, from afar, when Philadelphia teams are having a meltdown.
   
   
2. The doomsday scenario involves a major injury to a regular, getting less from the four starting pitchers whose names don't rhyme with Whole Camels and having the fielding drop off badly, since Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins (pictured) are bound to regress a bit after being so fabulous in 2008, while immobile Raúl Ibáñez evokes bad memories of Pete Incaviglia in left field. Brad Lidge also might actually blow a save one of these nights.
   
   
3. First-year GM Ruben Amaro Jr. is walking into a buzzsaw, taking over a World Series champion team. At least he probably knows what happens in the NFL in no team scores after 15 minutes of overtime.
   
   
4. There is little to no chance this is anything less than an 85-win team. They have so much offence, plus Cole Hamels is a Cy Young Award waiting to happen.
   
   
5. The Phillies are moving into the post-Pat Gillick era. Ask a fan in Baltimore, Toronto or Seattle how that usually works out. The Phillies won't tail off for a while, but they were among the NL's older teams in 2008.
   
   
6. It's a put up or shut up season for Ryan Howard, who's only averaged 51 homers and 144 RBI in the past three seasons but has been losing control of the strike zone, along with flailin' and failin' against left-handed pitching (.923 OPS in his 2006 MVP year, .826 in '07, .746 in '08).
   
   
7. Their first five hitters, Rollins, centrefielder Shane Victorino, Utley, first baseman Ryan Howard and Ibáñez, each swing from the left side. That's not great for Howard unless he makes some drastic changes.
   
   
8. The best way of expressing Jamie Moyer's age. Terry Mulholland played forever as a so-so starter, then as a pretty good middle reliever, then as a LOOGY (Lefty for Only One Guy) pitcher and finally retired in 2006. He's younger than Moyer by more than a year.
   
   
9. Chan Ho Park won the No. 5 spot in the Phillies rotation, which promises to be interesting since Philly's ballpark is such a bandbox.
   
   
10. J.A. Happ, one of the few 2007 Ottawa Lynx who's still in the Phillies organization, didn't win a spot in the rotation. He ain't happy, but he's starting the season in the majors, at least.
    
    
11. What does it say that the Phillies' most major-league ready pitching prospect, Carlos Carrasco, couldn't beat out Chan Ho Park?
    
    
12. By The Fielding Bible's reckoning, Jimmy Rollins was far and away the slickest-fielding shortstop in the biz in '08, yet he was on Team USA's bench when Derek Jeter made a crucial error during the semi-final of the World Baseball Classic. Pointing that out will never get tiresome.
    
    Rollins stole 47 bases last season with only three caught-stealings, not too shabby for a guy who was out a month after injuring an ankle.
    
    
13. Nor will calling Shane Victorino the Flyin' Hawaiian.
    
    
14. Lidge going 41-for-41 in save opportunities, plus another 7-for-7 in the playoffs and it probably wasn't even his best season. That probably came in with the Astros in 2004 (the year when he had 157 strikeouts and allowed just 57 hits).
    
    
15. Seventh- and eighth-inning relief will be a question mark early on while lefty J.C. Romero sits out his 50-game suspension for a positive drug test.
    
    
16. The Beep notes righty reliever Chad Durbin was third among NL relievers in double plays inducted in DP situations. Like Andy Van Slyke said during the last big recession in the early 1990s, who says there's an unemployment problem? Just give everyone a baseball stat to keep track of.
    
    
17. The Phillies' three-game margin over the Mets last season came by virtue of their dominance of the Atlanta Braves. They were 14-4 vs. 'Lanta, while the Nye Mets were only 7-11. In 2007, both teams split their 18 games vs. Atlanta and Apu Naheesapeemapetilon's favourite squadron won the division by a game. There's the rub with the unbalanced schedule.
    
    
18. Third baseman Pedro Feliz is coming off back surgery, and he's not that good when he's healthy. The Phillies have not been afraid to make moves, so third base could be a hole to fill, as long as they do it with a right-hander.
19. Minor-league right-hander Kyle "Son of Doug" Drabek has a lot of promise. Of course, TNSTAAPP (There's No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect).
    
    
20. One similarity between the current Phillies and their successful early '80s teams (World Series in 1980, NL pennant in '83) is that it's a tough roster for a young player to crack. It is notable that prospects guru John Sickels did not give any of their top 20 prospects a grade higher than a B.
    
    In the '80s, the Phillies let Ryne Sandberg and George Bell get away from them. This time around, they don't have anyone who's quite that good. Does that mean the Blue Jays were smart not to trade A.J. Burnett to Philly last season and take the compensatory draft picks instead?
    
    
21. It might bode poorly for recently released outfielder Geoff Jenkins that his old team "has long considered Jenkins and 41-year-old Matt Stairs to be too much alike." (Philadelphia Inquirer.) When your ballplaying analog is a short, stocky bald high school hockey coach who has half-a-dozen years on you, it doesn't bode well, although Jenkins will probably find work at the league minimum. If Kevin Mench could ....
    
    
22. There is actually a Phillies fan upset with Jenkins (salary: $8 million) being cut instead of Stairs ($1 million). This confirms all of the Philly fan stereotypes.
    
    
23. May 28 marks the 20th anniversary of Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt's final major-league game. Allen Barra's book Clearing The Bases is a few years old now, but he has a chapter arguing that Schmidt, not Willie Mays, should be considered baseball's greatest living player.
    
    Michael Jack Schmidt was a three-time MVP. He came third another time, but in retrospect it's really astounding that he could have a season like the one he had in 1977 and end up 10th in the voting. In '77, Schmidt OPS-plused 151 (fourth in the league), had 38 homers and 101 RBI while scoring more than 100 runs and drawing more than 100 walks, won the second of his 10 Gold Gloves at third base and just for good measure, was second in the league with 11 triples.
    
    Unfortunately for Schmidt, he hit third and Greg Luzinski, coming up behind him, hit 39 homers and 130 RBI. That was the last time a Phillies player was overlooked in MVP voting by a teammate with titillating counting stats, except for Chase Utley in 2006, 2007 and 2008.
    
24. It is a wicked burn that the Phillies' Triple-A team got moved from the capital of a G8 country to a place that was the subject of a depressing song by Billy Joel.
    
    
25. Matt Stairs, at age 40, finally got a World Series ring after playing for 23 teams in 20 seasons, in places such as Japan and Edmonton. Using Toronto media logic, you're supposed to feel bad for cheering for him.
    

Canada could use a fastball-throwin' sasquatch

Anyone who's watched the two Ontario-based NHL teams might find themselves agreeing with Derek Sanderson Jeter.

Top 10 Reasons To Watch the World Baseball Classic
by beisbolct

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.
  

Defeating the cliché ...

It was a privilege last night to take part in a sports journalism seminar at Carleton University (thanks again for having me).

One of the questions that came the bright-eyed J-schoolers posed was how get away from the clichéd answers athletes usually give in post-game answers. Well, under the heading of, "Once again, things that could have been brought to my attention yesterday," Bryan Curtis is wrote a piece for The Times declaring War On The Locker-Room Cliché. (Is it not cliché to be declaring war on something?) His opening salvo is pretty direct.

"Let's ditch the hackneyed, almost-useless tradition of the locker-room interview. There’s plenty to write after a ballgame without interrogating the players. The whole ritual proceeds from the idea that the sports press has gotten so professionalized that it feels it has to enforce the same standards of accountability as the political press. This is nonsense. If a political candidate makes a gaffe on the campaign trail, reporters ought to wring an explanation out of him. If (Derek) Jeter flubs a grounder, he doesn’t owe anyone a statement.

It's kind of like what Barry Bonds said 15 years ago about the obligations of athletes to the public compared to other entertainers: "If people pay $8 to see Batman, they don't get to hang around to get Jack Nicholson's autograph." (Remember, like Chuck Klosterman once wrote of Bonds, what he usually says is true, and this usually makes things worse.)

Curtis is might have been playing off the chapter in Will Leitch's God Save The Fan, specifically the chapter on the reporters who have to go into locker rooms. It sort of hits at a big theme, at least for us Gen Xers: Defeating the cliché.

There is admiration for the sports journalists who go into locker rooms as part of their jobs, get what they need and turn around something quickly on deadline. To some extent, we want them talking to that half-naked man. We need them talking to that half-naked man. More to the point, the 24-hour news cycle needs it -- actual people, maybe not so much. Like Leitch says someone , you only need three things if you follow a particular major-league baseball team:

1. Digital cable and the MLB Extra Innings package.
2. A Web connection.
3. A mute button ("Vital. This takes care of the hometown announcers.")

The point is valid. It's obviously of narrow interest, but if you're ever dropped a STFU after hearing another talking head go on about some team that is reeeeeellllling, you should understand why sports clichés are so noxious. It is also unclear how you get away from it, other than to change the entire model of daily journalism entirely as per Curtis' declaration.

That does not sound all that bad to a guy like me who is more of a features writer, which is newsroom code for "can't write on deadline to save his life."

Related:
Wake Me When You Say Something Interesting (Bryan Curtis, The New York Times, Nov. 2)

Snark break ...

As you were getting ready for the big derby between the Manchester I Don't Give a Craps and the London Not A Real Sports.*

David Shoalts is reporting that the NHL would give Jim Balsillie an expansion team in Toronto. Richard Peddie is quoted the Leafs board would do what's best for hockey, which raises the question of which tropical island they all plan to move to.

(If the team can be called the Toronto Toros, even better.)

You know how guys who work in construction get the winter months off? It's looking like that will be the case for Barry Melrose (you're surprised, why?).

A fan in full Vikings regalia congratulating Randy Moss for a scoring a touchdown for the New England Patriots ... it makes Brad Childress' coaching seem almost tolerable.

More great headlines that can never be written: "Anaheim Dick takes on Toronto."

One benefit to the National League refusing to play by modern baseball rules ... getting a kick from reading that Padres ace Jake Peavy, who is going to be traded, doesn't want to switch leagues because "he is a pretty good hitter, and he views that as an advantage."

Peavy's career average is .243. Not batting average -- slugging average. Leave the hitting to the professionals, Jake.

Mike Singletary, the newly installed 49ers coach, will probably be asking LensCrafters to make him a set of blinders after he sees J.T. Sullivan's efforts.



Last but not least, Minka Kelly has the sickly taint of the Jeter.

(For the future of humanity, Ms. Kelly ... as one of North America's sexiest southpaws, you should be dating David Price. Two left-handed parents have a 4-in-10 chance of southpaw offspring.)

Twenty people died for this joke ... and it's not even that good. A man writes a letter to Health Canada, "A while ago, the Stanley Cup came to my town and I kissed it ... I just want to know if this means there's any chance I could get listeriosis?" ... "No, the Cup has not come in contact with any Maple Leaf products since 1967."

You're all sick, you know that?

This post is worth nothing, this is worth noting:

• Our man at the Merc, Greg Layson, is reporting he has it on "very good authority" that Mike Morencie is out as head football coach of the Windsor Lancers. Whether it is university football or major junior hockey, it's about the wins and losses — well, except with the Kingston Frontenacs.

Zen Dayley: Judge Jeri smacks Jeffrey Loria with a fresh-caught marlin

You can keep Tina Fey -- this is the sharpest woman in America over the past week to 10 days.

The invaluable ShysterBall linked to an article about the ruling Judge Jeri Beth Cohen handed down in the Florida Marlins stadium lawsuit. As you know, the court denied the claim that it would be unconstitutional, based on the rather broad term "public purpose," to use taxpayer money to build a stadium for Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria.

That's the end-of-story for most people, even though Loria is the gentle soul who took the hammer from Claude Brochu and drove the final nails into the Montreal Expos' coffin. There's no objectivity here.

Cohen's written ruling, though, is a multilayered masterpiece. In not so many words, yet in language that upholds jurisprudence (granted, it's Florida, it wouldn't take much), she basically calls the city of Miami a bunch of big idiots for wanting to having anything to do with the Marlins, let alone drop $500 million on a stadium for a crappy baseball club run by jerks.

It's fun to picture Loria, after hearing the verdict read in court: "But you're not saying I can't have the stadium, right?"

This is very narrow reading by someone who still rues the day, Sept. 28, 2004, that the Expos died. On a more marco level, Judge Jeri's ruling is a must-read for anyone who hates the idea of big-league sports franchises that are practically a licence to print money receiving corporate welfare (although if you're going to project bile toward the filthy rich, there's are better targets this week).

It's a good idea to bookmark that article for easy consultation the next time a smooth sports operator starts talking about all the benefits that will accrue to a community if it builds a big sports arena -- like a 30,000-seat stadium for Major League Soccer, just to give a random example.

"There is no evidence in the record that the building of a stadium in Little Havana will increase attendance and, thereby, promote social cohesion. Simply put, no one will know whether a new retractable roof stadium will increase attendance... until it is built."

Line by line, Judge Jeri -- bearing in mind, this in a civil court, where the judge is supposed to soften the blow for the winning and losing sides -- just basically slams the city of Miami for wanting to hop into bed with Loria. She flat-out alls it "a sweet deal" for Loria and the Marlins and pretty much says, hey, the bozos who run this city are giving these clowns a stadium rent-free, but insofar as upholding the state constitution goes, "the court does not find it relevant."

In other words, it's not her job to make policy, but simply belittle the city officials who think they're progressive and pro-growth instead of simply stupid.

"... This court is well aware that more citizens may be opposed to the building of the stadium, even to retain the Marlins in Miami, than in favor of building the stadium. These considerations, however, may not sway this court..." (emphasis mine)

Really, that's a huge burn -- Jeffrey Loria can get his stadium, but it's been made perfectly clear that he's only getting through the idiocy of the powers-that-be in South Florida. The people in Miami didn't ask for Loria as owner, and it's not even clear that they're asking to keep the Marlins, but hey, it's not Judge Jeri's problem, nor should it be.

She simply hit her target with impeccable wit and timing. That's high comedy.

Should-be-aware-ofs

• The Rays' big win over the Red Sox, 10-3, might very well have wrapped up the AL East a week-and-a-half early. Much is will be made of the fact that the Red Sox are staring at a first-round matchup against the L.A. Angels, whom they're 1-8 against this season.
  
  The whole idea that two teams from the same division can't meet in the first round should be dumped. The Red Sox will have a better record than the AL Central winner, so why are they facing the No. 1 seed? (And why are baseball fans reduced to using basketball and football lingo like No. 1 seed?)
  
  The Red Sox finish their year 1-8 at Tropicana Field -- which is coincidentally their record against the Angels, whom they might end up facing in the first round of the playoffs.
• Jonah Keri's look at the whole notion of who knows how to win is worth a look-see, especially since there's a couple playoff spots (NL East, NL wild-card, AL Central) that no one wants to claim.

  Each baseball game contains so many random events that, with an eighth of an inch here or a fluke hop there, it could just as easily go the other way. The Twins have had a huge number of those random events go against them lately, just as they had many go in their favor earlier this year. The Twins now are what they have been all year: a talented team that might be a player away from winning a division title. The dice have just come up snake eyes a lot more often lately.

• MLB Trade Rumors passed along word that the Seattle Mariners might cut Erik Bedard (or "non-tender" him) after the season. Bedard's fall from grace has probably not been that sudden for people who understand PitchFx data.
• Ichiro Suzuki made it eight straight seasons with 200 hits tonight. Does anyone still care who leads the league in hits?
• Former Ottawa Lynx pitcher J.A. Happ got his first major-league win tonight.

Damn, the Jays

• The shock of J.P. Ricciardi likely coming back as GM, let's just say it hasn't fully metatashized.
  
  Walk Off Walk, for what it's worth, said that by the time interleague play rolls around next June, "J.P. Ricciardi should be building a contender with the Brockton Rox."
  
  On Ricciardi's Jays Talk appearance tonight was that the Jays are going to seek an "upgrade" at shortstop. Before the end of the show, he said the Jays were "happy with (Marco) Scutaro and Johnny Mac (McGlovin)."
  
  The free-agent crop for shortstops is pretty thin. The second thing Ricciardi said might actually make more sense.
• This actually happened: Alex Rios slammed a go-ahead home run vs. the Orioles tonight on the first pitch after a streaker interrupted the game by running on to the field.
  
  On the radio, Jerry Howarth joked, "You had to figure that might happen with Rocky Cherry pitching," which was a rather involved reference to Wild Cherry (You Sexy Thing, get it). It put the Jays ahead for the first time after being down 6-0...

  Rod Black: We've seen it all tonight.
  Pat Tabler: Unfortunately.

• Matt Stairs hit his first homer for the Phillies tonight. He's had just 11 plate appearances since the trade at the end of August, which of course raises the question whether the 2009 World Baseball Classic will be his valedictory.
• How about Mike Wilner citing the fact that Derek Jeter is a three-time Gold Glover? Unheard of.

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)

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)

MLB PLAYOFFS: THE END OF THE YANKEES, UNTIL APRIL

The Yankees are still a force to reckoned with.

Signed,

Notre Dame football, 50 Cent's career & The Liberal Party of Canada

Sometimes the words, they just don't come: Roger Clemens dropped off the roster for Ron Villone; Alex Rodriguez doing little until he hit a window-dressing home run (with the bases empty). Derek Jeter and his intangibles that can power small cities hitting into three double plays in four games. At least Mike Mussina finally found duties he could handle, being reduced to a mop-up man.

What was that about Cleveland's Paul Byrd and his good road ERA? It was good enough. A Cleveland-Colorado World Series almost has to happen now, although logic says the Red Sox have better hitting and pitching in the American League championship series.

BATTER UP: NEW YORK YANKEES

Counting down the seconds till Opening Day when life begins anew involves providing a "starting nine" for each major-league team, even Evil Empires. Presenting: The New York Yankees.

1. At first base, Josh Phelps: The guy whom the Jays ditched in 2004 is actually the Yankees' best bet at first base, since Doug Mientkiewicz can't hit and Andy Phillips is Andy Phillips. (The latter has been sent to Triple-A Scranton; it's rumoured that the Yankees got him to go by promising to fix him up with this sneaky-hot brunette named Pam who's a receptionist at a paper firm. Wait until he finds The Office is fictional and tapes in California.)
   
   Too bad the Yankees couldn't have stuck with last year's first base rotation of Phillips and Craig Wilson. A Wilson/Phillips platoon would have been perfect for such a team which has consistently shown little sack in losing 10 of its past last 12 playoff games since the '04 collapse -- despite having a payroll that's three to four times that of everyone else who's not the Boston Red Sox.
   
   Typical Yankee fan response: "Oh, yeah? At least we've been in the playoffs." Ooh, you got us there. Do you also go to public parks and cheer for the guy driving the lawnmower to give hell to those smart-ass blades of grass?
2. Carl Pavano is starting Opening Day: Who starts the first game of the season, the second or third won't matter across the run of 162 games. Still, it's Carl Pavano, the more upscale version of Sidney Ponson -- the lardass whom the Yankees were desperate enough to run out for three starts last summer when he was in no conditionally to pitch, mentally or mechanically. Pavano, forever known for giving up Mark McGwire's record 70th home run in 1998 -- watch your head, since it's due to land any day now -- once dated actress Alyssa Milano, who summed up their relationship thusly in a now defunct lad mag: "... just because you're 6-foot-5 and 260 pounds, it doesn't mean you're big all over."*
3. Jeets doesn't get the right credit: Since we're held hostage every October by Joe Buck and Tim McCarver polishing Derek Jeter's, uh, Hall of Fame credentials, this might be the Stockholm Syndrome talking: The captain should have two MVP awards by now.
   
   The Win Shares indicate Jeter should have been the American League's most valuable player last year. The same goes for 1999 when he hit .349/.438/.552 and created 149 runs while playing shortstop, which are sick stats even in the context of late-'90s baseball.
   
   Besides, anyone who matures from the dweeby teenager who once tried the early-'90s compromise of having a good hair day into the dude in the second photo is obviously the balls. Plain and simple, Jeter should have a MVP award. Yours truly is running low on reasons to chant, "Eff you, Jeter," every time he appears on the TV screen. (That's right, eff you. Saying the actual word would give the bastards are reason to look down on us uncouth Canadians.)
4. They are who they are: The Yankees and most of their fans are the worst kind of elitists. Have you ever noticed that Yankees fans tend to follow two extremes -- rich A-holes and cop/firefighter/corrections worker types who inevitable wear NYFD hats?
   
   But that's OK. It affirms the natural order. Some people will always have three times as much despite doing about one-third the work. As well the people who get up at 7 a.m. -- as opposed to those among us who have figured out how to make a decent living and sleep till noon -- will always be the first to have their agenda catered to by our elected leaders. (Oddly enough, the only Jays fans who really seem to get worked up when the Yankees visit the Rogers Centre are under 25 and look every bit like the scions of the Forest Hill and Rosedale crowd. What say you to that, Dr. Freud?)
   
   Some Yankees fans, believe it or not, are even attuned to the reality that George Steinbrenner's chequebook will let them enjoy more pennants and playoff appearances than you could get in 1,000 baseball fan lifetimes. They can take the ribbing as well as they dish out, unlike those walking studies in sociological frailities who cheer for that sellout team in Boston.
5. Retro Yankee: All together now: "Mattingly! I told you to trim those sideburns! You're off the team!"
   
   "What a grump... still like him better than Steinbrenner."
   
   Amen, Donnie Baseball. Amen. Don Mattingly (first base, 1982-95) is also a hero in these parts since he was the last left-handed thrower to play third base. The fact he played 14 seasons in pinstripes and never got to a World Series also reminds us that it's possible for the Evil Empire to go in the tank every 20 years or so.
6. Requiem for A-Rod: When fans got on Ted Williams back in the day, he tried to foul pitches into the stands in hopes one of the loudmouths would get drilled right in the larnyx (and Williams hit .344 lifetime, so he could be that precise). When sportswriters insulted him, he told them off, often in most colourful language. When Alex Rodriguez gets booed or someone writes something mean about him, it's not hard to imagine that he goes back to his hotel room, takes the phone off the hook and crawls under the blankets with a box of tissues and some Haagen-Daaz to watch The Notebook for the 193rd time.
   
   That's not A-Rod's fault. That's simply where society has gone in a half-century. Much like T-Emo, that weepy wideout, we shouldn't bemoan that the best ballplayer on earth is a drama queen -- we should embrace living in an age where a 6-foot-3, 210-lb. drama queen can also be automatic for 40 homers and 125 ribbies each season, even if he goes to pieces in the playoffs. A-Rod's problems are just a bunch of media bluster anyways, but it's fun to run with.
   
   (The Angels preview made reference to A-Rod having a thing for repeated viewings of The Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Those could be the only two DVDs he owns.*)
   
7. Hip hip Jorge: Seriously, get a Jorge Posada voodoo doll and start sticking pins in the areas of its rotator cuff and the sciatic nerve. Posada, who'll turn 36 before the leaves turn, has caught at least 130 games seven years in a row and his numbers rebounded last year after a so-so 2005, so he's apparently not wearing down. His backup, however, is 29-year-old rookie Wil Nieves, who's just happy to be there (and eager to thank God for everything.) If Posada could go down for an extended period, it would be so choice.
8. Need-to-know: The pitching isn't what it was a couple years ago, but the Yankees' balanced hitting up and down the lineup -- seriously, where's the weak spot? -- means everyone else in the AL East is casting their eyes on the wild card. Again. It's not right, it sucks, but hey, that's life.
9. One last thing: If there was any doubt that the Yankees are a bunch of jagovs , here's A-Rod and Mariano Rivera's idea of making time for their adoring public.
   
   

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

(* 1. Yes, that's totally out of context. But it's Carl Pavano.

2. Probably not.)

BATTER UP: KANSAS CITY ROYALS

We're counting down the seconds till Opening Day, when life begins again... Until, then, each day we'll have a "starting nine" for all 29 major-league teams, and if there's time, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Presenting: The Kansas City Royals.

1. Alex Gordon and Mark Teahen can play. Teahen lefty-swinging third baseman turned right-fielder (pictured) should give K.C. fans plenty of thrills -- right up until the Royals trade him in 2010 to avoid losing him to free agency. He's moved to the outfield to make room for Gordon, whom Baseball America recently named the No. 2 prospect in all baseball.
2. They didn't always suck so hard. A big wag of the finger goes to veteran Toronto Star columnist Dave Perkins for his recent crack that longtime Royals announcer Denny Matthews being inducted into the broadcasters' wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame over late Blue Jays announcer Tom Cheek amounted to a "reward for watching the always terrible Kansas City Royals."
   
   It was a clever line, sure, but Matthews was at the mike for that run when the Royals made the playoffs seven times in 10 seasons, culminating in their 1985 World Series title (and that wasn't even the best team they've ever had). No one needs to be reminded that in '85, the Royals beat the Jays in the American League playoffs and made at least one eight-year-old boy in Eastern Ontario cry, least of all the adult that boy grew into.
3. That said, they sucked hard last year and should continue sucking in '07. Baseball Prospectus has them pegged for a 67-95 record and another last-place finish in the American League Central. That said, they'll probably win their season series against the Jays (via Royals Review).
   
4. Oh, it's not all bad. Hiring general manager Dayton Moore out of the Atlanta Braves organization instead of recycling a "proven" GM should be a positive. Besides, there's nowhere to go but up. Moore bogarted hulking first baseman Ryan Shealy from the Rockies last July 31, while Gordon is pencilled in at the other corner.
5. New meaning to "Royal Throne." A picture of Royals pitching prospect Daniel Cortes drunk, naked and sitting on a toilet recently turned up at the blog Royales With Cheese.
6. Rollback prices? Not exactly: How do you explain an unprofitable team owned by a Wal-Mart billionaire, David Glass, giving a $55 million contract to free-agent right-hander Gil Meche?

7. Retro Cool Royal: The only choice here is the late, great relief ace Dan Quisenberry, who saved a then-record 45 games in 1983. He was one of the game's all-time wits, summarizing his submarine delivery with, "I found a delivery in my flaw." Or the time he described what happens when a slider doesn't break: "The batter still hits a grounder. Except the first bounce is 275 feet away."
   
   Between The Quiz and fans-turned-writers Bill James and Rob Neyer, Royals types are a pretty cerebral bunch. James wrote once that Quisenberry and the play-by-play guy, Matthews, had a running contest. They would give each other a 10-dollar word such as "divaricate" or "triumvirate." Matthews would have to slip his word into a broadcast, and Quisenberry would have to slip his into an interview -- and both had to make it seamless enough that no one would be the wiser (The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, p. 892).
   
   Since The Quiz died young of brain cancer in 1999, and the Royals have never found anyone like him -- for either their bullpen or their Scrabble team.
8. The ex-Jays whipping boy has returned. Veteran infielder Alex Gonzalez, who once appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated with A-Rod, Derek Jeter and Nomar Garciaparra (really!) and last seen hitting .111 in 20 games for the Phillies in '06, has come out of retirement and is at the Royals training camp. So he's kind of in semi-retirement.
9. Nobody f---s with DeJesus. Centre-fielder David DeJesus is the lefty version of the Jays' Reed Johnson -- a leadoff guy who doesn't do anything but get on base, but no one can figure out how. Besides, he has to be mentioned just to work in a lame Big Lebowski reference that's based on a mispronunciation anyways.

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

TOP 5: SECRETLY SUBPAR SERIES TEAMS

No less an authority than Thomas Boswell has called the St. Louis Cardinals the "worst team ever to reach the World Series," and while he’s probably right, it needs to be said that they only embody one kind of bad Series team.

Anyone can list the worst World Series teams (I just did, after all), but as Boswell pointed out, an 83-win team such as the Cardinals sneaking into the Series is, in his double entendre, "awfully wonderful," kind of noble even.

At least those teams were upfront with us about their mediocrity -- either that or they made a poor job of concealing it. Every few seasons, there's another kind of World Series team -- the secretly bad team that really wasn't that good, but somehow was good enough. They weren’t wild cards, they weren’t Miracle Teams, or even one-year wonders.

Call them the Secret Suckers. Some even managed to win the World Series, as you’ll see:

2000 NEW YORK YANKEES (87-74 regular season)
Most of us have tried to amnesia-ray ourselves into forgetting that lame latter-day Subway Series against the Mets, to no avail. This is another column, but that week where the Mets and Yankees met in October 2000 was a harbinger of a dark time ahead for our civilization, what with it falling between the debut of Survivor and George W. Bush's "election" to the presidency of the United States. Coincidence? Probably not.

Back to the point, though: the Joe Torre-Derek Jeter Yankees actually posted the second-worst record ever by a World Series winner, although it's a safe bet that you never heard Joe Buck or Tim McCarver mention that during the playoffs. If they did, it was probably just a means to swing into rhapsodizing about Jeter's "intangibles." (Jeter's "intangibles," as you well know, have been credited with putting out forest fires in and producing bumper rice crops, making you wonder why he even bothers with baseball.)

So why were they secretly subpar? Mainly, since they had won the two previous years, few people could see this wasn't a great team. It was good enough that year, though. The Yankees easily held off a disorganized Red Sox team and the undermanned Jays for the AL East, then beat a young Oakland team and the wild-card, pitching-poor Seattle Mariners to advance to the World Series. Then they played the Mets, and you can probably guess how that unfolded.

1983 PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES (90-72)
Would stand as the most anonymous pennant winner of the 1980s, although they did have four future Hall of Famers in Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton, plus ex-Reds stars Joe Morgan and Tony Perez (along with a 42-year-old Pete Rose, who that year became the last regular first baseman to go an entire season without hitting a home run. You'd have thought he was hanging on just to break some famous record or something).

The Phils' No. 2 starter, John Denny, a .500 pitcher across the other 11 seasons of his career, went 19-6 and won the Cy Young Award, but Carlton was just 15-16, and the Phillies didn't have another starter with a double-digit win total.

Hitting-wise, it wasn't much better, with not a single regular hitting more than .275. Morgan, though, at age 39, had enough left in the tank to post a .370 on-base percentage and score 72 runs, second-most on the team behind Schmidt, who as per usual, led the league in homers and OBP while winning his eighth consecutive Gold Glove.

Regardless, there was no driving force behind the Phils winning in '83. They had already satisfied the long-suffering Philly fans by winning the club's first and only World Series title three years earlier, and in '83 Philly had already seen another sports drought end -- Julius Erving finally won a NBA title with the 76ers.

Like the city's basketball team, the Phillies downed L.A. in the playoffs, but were beaten in five games by the Orioles in the World Series.

1984 SAN DIEGO PADRES (92-70)
Make the list it first and foremost for those brown uniforms that made them look like Burger King employees (how ironic that team owner Ray Kroc founded McDonald's).

Secondly, they were a one-year wonder, mostly made up of 1970s stars (Steve Garvey, Graig Nettles, Goose Gossage) and guys who never quite lived up to their potential (take a bow, Terry Kennedy, Kevin McReynolds and Eric Show).

They were an interesting bunch, though. One such guy was Alan Wiggins, one of those guys who had no true defensive position and not much of a baseball brain, but was in the lineup since he could run like hell. (Wiggins, sadly, died of AIDS just seven years later.) He stole 70 bases that summer and scored 106 runs, and the guy hitting behind him was a chunky 24-year-old outfielder named Tony Gwynn who hit .351.

The rest of the NL West played sub-.500 ball in '84, so the Padres cruised to their first division flag. (Based on their run differential, they should have been about an 87-win team, not 92.) They played the Cubs for the pennant, which means victory was pretty much foreordained, and they came back from a 2-0 deficit to win thanks largely to Garvey’s ninth-inning home run in Game 4 and a Chicago collapse in the decisive Game 5.

Once in the Series, they were no match for the Tigers, who blew them out in five games. It would be nice to report the Padres bounced back from that trouncing, but in '85 they went from winning the division by 12 games to losing it by 12 games. They wouldn't contend again until 1989, when they finished three games behind a Giants team that got a MVP season out of Kevin Mitchell -- a player San Diego had given up on two seasons earlier. Smooth move, Ex-Lax.

1985 KANSAS CITY ROYALS (91-71)
As with the Blue Jays, the team whom the ’85 Royals beat to reach the World Series, the K.C. team that won it all wasn’t necessarily the best one in franchise history. The Royals fans who haven't turned away in disgust from David Glass' small town cheap ownership can surely tell you that the 1976-77 editions that lost in the ALCS to the Yankees and the '80 team that was beaten in the World Series were both probably superior.

Whatever it was, the Royals -- fire up your cliche machines -- refused to lose in the playoffs, overcoming 3-1 series deficits against the Blue Jays and the Cardinals. And Cardinals fans would surely point out that Don Denkinger, with his blown call in the ninth inning of Game 6, helped make that happen. Even before the Denkinger play, there were some real doozies in the AL playoffs.

Aside from George Brett, Kansas City's lineup really didn't scare pitchers, save for pitchers who feared the stiff breeze generated when Steve Balboni (166 strikeouts) swung through a breaking ball. The outfield was a Motley crew -- as in Darryl Motley, Lonnie (Skates) Smith and Willie Wilson, who hit a combined 27 homers, the same total Jesse Barfield had for the Jays.

However, the Royals had pitching, plus they apparently had luck on their side. They haven't had much since, however.

1974 OAKLAND A's (90-72)
Wait, weren't Charlie O. Finley's Swingin' A's a dynasty that won its third consecutive World Series that year, taking out the Dodgers in five games? Didn't Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstein dedicate a chapter to them in their book Baseball Dynasties? Didn't they have three future Hall of Famers in Reggie Jackson, Rollie Fingers and Jim (Catfish) Hunter?

All true. It's also true that the ’74 A’s actually had the poorest regular season of any of the Oakland’s five straight division winners of the early '70s, and like the 2000 Yankees, really didn't have any competition within their division, save for an overachieving Texas Rangers team that Billy Martin whipped to a second-place finish. Plus, if you look at the All-Star Game results from that era, it suggests the A's were playing in what, like the current National League, could be considered a vastly weaker league.

So in hindsight, the A's can be considered a secretly subpar team, although the counter-argument is that they only pale compared to the other Oakland teams of that period. They had the AL's third-lowest batting average, .247, and went the entire year with no reliable first basemen or DHs, but they were second in the league in drawing walks and hitting homers, so that made up for the low batting average.

Meantime, between Finley and Hunter's contract squabble and near-daily fights between players in the clubhouse, the A's were certainly never dull. So they had that goin' for them, which is nice.

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

BASEBALL'S AWARD WINNERS

The form calls to pick the Cy Young Award, MVP and Rookies of the Year recipients in each league on here, the possible final day of the major-league baseball regular season:

AL Cy Young: Johan Santana, Twins. First American League lefty to win a pitching Triple Crown -- most wins, strikeouts and lowest earned-run average -- since Hal Newhouser in 1945, who did it a wartime season.

AL MVP: Derek Jeter, Yankees. As close as Jeter and Twins catcher Joe Mauer are in the batting race -- Mauer, attempting to become the first catcher to ever win the AL batting title, is ahead of Jeter .346-.345 -- the MVP race is even tougher to call. In the end, Jeter's all-around offensive skills (2nd in the AL runs, 4th in on-base average, a 900-plus OPS and 33 steals in 38 tries) combined with his mostly capable defence at shortstop edges out Mauer, whose offensive value is mostly contained in his batting average.

AL Rookie of the Year: Justin Verlander, Tigers. Wore down in the second half. Twins' Francisco Liriano was a leading candidate before missing much of the season with arm problems.

NL Cy Young: Brandon Webb, Diamondbacks. Goes into his final start as the league leader in ERA (2.88) and WHIP (1.11 walks and hits per inning pitched). No one's noticed since he pitches out in the desert. Winning will more than make up for him unfairly losing out on Rookie of the Year to Dontrelle Willis back in '03.

NL MVP: Carlos Beltran, Mets. A friend pointed out last night that the argument for 58-homer man Ryan Howard is that the Philadelphia Phillies would have gone nowhere without him. Unfortunately for me, at the time I didn't have the numbers; Albert Pujols has accounted for 11 more runs than Howard, and his Cardinals have counted 85 fewer runs than Howard's Phillies.

Miguel Cabrera has also accounted for more runs than Howard, and his Florida Marlins has scored 108 fewer runs than the Phillies. Here's the four leading MVP candidates and their run output as a percentage of their teams' totals.

Cabrera, Marlins: 26.49% (200 of 755)

Pujols, Cards: 26.48% (206 of 778)

Beltran, Mets: 23.55% (195 of 828)

Howard, Phils: 22.48% (194 of 863)

Honestly, that might not even be a good way, let alone the best way, to figure out a player's value to his team. So why Beltran? Well, the sense here is that his defence in centre-field (the other three are all corner infielders) more than makes up for Cabrera and Pujols' greater importance to their team's offence. It wouldn't suck if Pujols won, but it will if Howard does.

NL Rookie of the Year: Hanley Ramirez, Marlins. By far.

Related:
NL MVP: Howard vs. Beltran (Sept. 10)
AL Cy Young: Halladay vs. Santana (originally posted Aug. 27)

That's all for now. Off to watch the 67's and Frontenacs. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

AIN'T NO PARTY LIKE A LAME YANKEES VICTORY PARTY

You can't really say the Blue Jays avoided having the New York Yankees celebrate an AL East title at their expense since they won tonight, 3-2. Ultimately, the Yankees did back into the division title since a Red Sox loss clinched it for them tonight, but they are 5-1 against the Jays since Aug. 1, so yes, they did clinch the division at the Jays' expense.

Have to imagine that a Yankee victory party would probably going something like this:

Someone tossed a champagne bottle to Alex Rodriguez, who dropped it, only to have Derek Jeter make a diving recovery to keep it from hitting the floor. Picking up the bottle, Jeter tossed it to Jason Giambi, but the throw was low and the resulting stretch caused him to strain a hamstring muscle. So Giambi waved in Aaron Guiel as his drinking replacement.

Bernie Williams just stood around looking hopeless and confused.

Centre-fielder Johnny Damon tried to toss a paper cup to second baseman Robinson Cano. It reached him on the second bounce.

(Hat tip to Thomas Ayers of Batter's Box for the help.)

OTHER BASEBALL STUFF (AND 1 FOOTBALL NOTE)

• Missed this earlier but the Toronto Sun's Bob Elliott notes that the Jays' two biggest draws, the Red Sox and Yankees, apparently will only come to T.O. for mid-week series next season. Weekend dates against the Evil Empires typically draw 12,000 to 15,000 more fans than the mid-week games against them. Seeing as no other opponent has a direct impact on Jays attendance, this could probably hurt total attendance by 125,000 to 150,000 fans. Just remember that next year if you start seeing snide columns about Jays attendance remaining relatively low.
  
  Oh, and the L.A. Times isn't too impressed by the Dodgers having to play the Jays six times next year, but that's OK: Yours truly isn't that impressed by the L.A. Times.
  
• The Jays are only a game out of second place in the East, but if there's any concern about Roy Halladay (who came out in the fourth inning tonight), he shouldn't pitch the rest of the season.
• Slate's Robert Weintraub on NBC's NFL pregame show: "After two weeks of Football Night in America, I'm ready to head for Canada."
• Remember last week, when it was noted that Phillies slugger Ryan Howard isn't a MVP candidate? Sportzilla and the Jabber Jocks agree with me. (There's a sentence I never thought I'd read, let alone type.)
• The Tigers won, staying a half-game ahead of the Twins. The White Sox have run out of gmes in the wild-card race.

Back with more later. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

KAZMIR FOR THE CY YOUNG? FUN WITH WIN SHARES

As you may have noticed, yours truly is a closet Seamhead, or stat geek. Don't worry, like most of my brethren, I appreciate baseball for the simple joys. The myth about stat geeks, promulgated by curmudgeonly sportswriters, not to name any names -- cough.... Richard Griffin, Toronto Star -- is that the seamheads can't see the forest for the frees and are unable to appreciate the beauty in a well-turned double play or a beautifully placed bunt.

Bollocks. Trouble is, what the local play-by-play guys and newspaper columnists "just know" to be true has been shown, time and again, to be hogwash. The All-Star Game voting has begun and you likely won't hear the names of Carl Crawford, Curtis Granderson and Jose Lopez mentioned as potential starters, but the latest Win Shares ratings produced by Dave Studeman of The Hardball Times show that they should be at the forefront of the debate. So should the Jays' Alex Rios, who's not even on the ballot.

And believe it or not, but as of this writing, the deserving early-season front-runner for one of baseball's major awards plays for the freaking Devil Rays.

There hasn't been any "Scott Kazmir for the Cy Young" buzz yet, but there should be. The 22-year-old lefty far and away is the best pitcher in the AL thus far. When it comes to ranking pitchers, Hardball Times prefers to uses WSAB (Win Shares Above Bench), "in which each player's total Win Shares are compared to the Win Shares an average bench player would have received, given that player's time at bat, on the mound or in the field."

Kazmir has earned 9 WSAB, well ahead of the White Sox tandem of Mark Buehrle and Jose Contreras (who each have 6). What's Kazmir done? He's 7-2 on a team that's six games below .500 and is second in ERA in the American League (behind Contreras) while averaging more than a strikeout per inning.

It's probably next-to-impossible for a second-year pitcher on a team that most people snicker at to win a major award, but we're rooting for Kazmir. Just as long as the Blue Jays can miss his spot in the rotation from here on in.

Then there's the other awards. Remember the debate surrounding David Ortiz last season over whether a designated hitter should be MVP? Well, Chicago's Jim Thome has an AL-best 12.0 Win Shares, so get ready for that debate to be renewed as the season goes along. Something else Thome will have working against him is that he joined a team that was already the World Series champion, so there's no perception that he's carrying his team, as there was with Big Papi last season.

The second-best position player (if you believe DH counts as a position) in the AL is someone you've probably never heard of -- Jose Lopez, Seattle's second baseman. Lopez has good "counting stats," ( he leads all AL second baseman in hits and RBI), has been hitting above .400 with runners in scoring position, and is good defensively.

Of course, whether or not a little-known player on a sub-.500 Mariners team can get selected for the All-Star Game, let alone voted in by the fans, is anyone's guess.

(Who's the best-fielding second baseman in the AL? Aaron Hill. Naturally, my Blue Jays are thinking of making Hill switch to shortstop. Go figure.)

Similarly, if people look at the Tigers' surprising (i.e., schedule-generated) success, they're likely to point to their pitching, Chris Shelton's hitting, or the veterans, Ivan Rodriguez and Magglio Ordonez. Who knew that centre-fielder Curtis Granderson leads the Tigers with 8.8 Win Shares, third-best among AL outfielders? Granderson is a decent offensive player (.276, 845 OPS) and Win Shares also sees him as the second-best outfielder in the AL behind Chicago's Brian Anderson (who like Aaron Hill, has been something less than zero at the plate.)

Granted, you don't need Win Shares to know that the Diamondbacks' Brandon Webb (7-0, 2.44 ERA) has been the best pitcher in the National League, or that when it comes to the NL MVP, it's Albert Pujols by a couple of country miles.

But it does illustrate the extent to which Pujols is kicking ass and hiring an assistant to take down the names. A legit MVP candidate usually earns 35 to 40 Win Shares over a full season. As NL MVP last year, Pujols earned 38 and Alex Rodriguez earned 37 to cop American League honours.

The St. Louis slugger's 17 Win Shares are not only a full five more than the next-best player in either league, but it has him on pace to match the "record" of 59 Win Shares that Honus Wagner had back in 1908.

In a word, damn.

So to sum up, if we were picking the American and National league all-star teams today based on Win Shares, here's your starters;

AMERICAN LEAGUE
C Ramon Hernandez, Baltimore
1B Jason Giambi, N.Y. Yankees
2B Jose Lopez, Seattle
3B Eric Chavez, Oakland
SS Derek Jeter, N.Y. Yankees
OF Carl Crawford, Tampa Bay
OF Manny Ramirez, Boston
OF Curtis Granderson, Detroit
DH Jim Thome, Chicago
SP Scott Kazmir, Tampa Bay
RP Jonathan Papelbon, Boston

So leaving aside Thome and the pitchers, how many of these players will actually be voted in by the fans? ManRam and the two Yankees are fairly safe bets. Beyond that, I wouldn't bet on it. By the way, Alex Rios is the fourth-best AL outfielder -- not bad for someone who isn't even on the All-Star ballot.

NATIONAL LEAGUE
C Johnny Estrada, Arizona
1B Albert Pujols, St. Louis
2B Chase Utley, Philadelphia
3B Morgan Ensberg, Houston
SS Felipe Lopez, Cincinnati
OF Bobby Abreu, Philadelphia
OF Brian Giles, San Diego
OF Carlos Beltran, N.Y. Mets
SP Brandon Webb, Arizona
RP Brian Fuentes, Colorado.