Yanksfan Soxfan

Hey Jealousy

Seeing green when looking at Phil Allard.

Not Easy Bein' a Callup (or a Newspaper)

A great story in the Globe today from the soon-to-be-departing Gordon Edes about Bryan Corey, who's up-again, down-again season has been something of a trial for him and his family:

It can't be as bad as the last time, when he had to explain to 4 1/2-year-old Brooke that she wouldn't be coming to Fenway Park anymore to see Wally, or her friends that gathered nightly in the Sox family room.

It won't be like the first time it happened with the Red Sox, either, when he'd just made arrangements to have his car shipped up to Boston from Texas and discovered he wouldn't be here when it arrived.

The apartment in Braintree, the one he leased, gave up, then took back before his 30 days were up, at least it won't be like last week, when he slept on the floor without a stick of furniture in the place.

And Christine? She'll offer a comforting word - his wife always has - but he's seen the light dim in eyes that once shined with excitement but now try to mask the disappointment.

Along with being a terrific look at the behind-the-scenes life of a player whose future is not secure (Corey's no Ortiz or Ramirez, let alone a Casey or a Cora), this story is a reminder of how much the Globe's sports section will lose when Edes bolts to Yahoo!, leaving Amelie Benjamin as the lone baseball writer worth reading at the broadsheet.

Benjamin and the Herald's Rob Bradford will soon be the cream of the crop among Boston's baseball writers, and the Herald -- with Massarotti, Silverman and Buckley -- will clearly have the edge over the Globe as a staff, especially with Jackie MacMullan taking the Globe's buyout offer. Losing Edes and MacMullan is another big blow for a sports staff that used to be phenomenal, and today's story on Bryan Corey is a poignant reminder of what the Globe will be losing.

So, It's the Commies vs. the Bushites?

ESPN.com, in their annual baseball preview section, takes a presidential campaign theme (because that hasn't been tritely overdone yet).

Their "campaign slogans" for the Red Sox and Yankees?

Boston Red Sox: "Workers of the World, Unite"

New York Yankees: "Compassionate Conservatism"

Sure, that may offend your sensibilities, but at least it doesn't offend your intellect. Oh, wait ...

The Blue Jays think they acquired some needed grit and a winning attitude when they picked up former Cardinals David Eckstein and Scott Rolen.

Emphasis mine. Too bad they didn't pick up some needed talent, or some needed healthy players.

Working in a Bubble

I hesitate to link to Murray Chass, especially to a story regarding yesterday's mini-strike/delay caused by the Red Sox sticking up for their team staffers (in fact, this post is not about yesterday's events and I'd prefer they not become the subject of this post), but buried in his column today is a nugget that reveals quite a bit about reporting, or, at least, his reporting -- I hesitate to generalize. Deep in the story Chass offers this, regarding his attitude towards reporting on baseball's previous labor strife and, perhaps, his relationship to those outside his privileged position in the world of sports:

(Note: Unlike most everyone else who was affected, I looked forward to labor negotiations, strikes and lockouts. They provided a periodic change of pace and a challenge to report them.)

While I find this unsurprising it is akin, at least to me, to weather reporters who actually seem excited at the prospect of a deadly hurricane, who seem to bounce on their way over to the map on the wall, jazzed by the maelstrom and chaos caused by angry low pressure systems. While I understand the fascination with the chaotic, with the different, there is always something unseemly about this subtextual glee: there is danger, harm in these storms. With Chass, the analog is that labor strife in baseball has real economic consequences, and I am not just speaking about players losing their salaries or owners losing their revenue. There are untold employees who rely on baseball to either make a living or supplement their wages: park workers, vendors, business owners who lease near or adjacent to stadia. Not everyone involved in baseball is a fatcat executive in a luxury box who can backslap an all-star, and not every player is pulling down millions a year. So while I understand that, for Chass, there was a challenge in the reportage and an energizing change of pace for him as a journalist, I find it quite selfish and elitist, quite callous that he would actually "look forward" to events that might inflict tremendous suffering on scores of people.

Choose Your Own A-Rod Adventure

As genre pieces go, Seth Mnookin's A-Rod profile for next month's Men's Vogue breaks very little with A-Rodology convention. Is there the requisite mention of A-Rod's complicated relationship with former buddy Derek Jeter? Yes. How about a note or two about A-Rod's image issue? Yep. Is it sprinkled with a few details you might not have known about the universe's best player (ahem)? Sure. I guess I didn't know that early in his career, ice cream was A-Rod's whiskey and coke. Or that he likes art a lot.

Sketches of Spring

The New York Times today, in their Sunday Op-Art feature, recalls Spring Training circa 1962, with a wonderful slide show of drawings by the illustrator Robert Weaver. Weaver's simple black and white sketches are spare, articulate, and beautiful, even if they mostly feature the hated Yankees. With a few lines he catches the subtle details of baseball and its personalities. Worth a click.

Funny All Day

The Onion

Hole in One

Peter Abraham from Tampa:

Yogi Berra’s golf clubs arrived today. The man himself won’t be in for another week or so. The clubs were immediately placed in Girardi’s office. The manager of the Yankees has two duties in spring training: get the team ready and take good care of Lawrence Peter Berra.

That's classic beat writing, and it makes me smile—it's nice to know, after so much ugliness, the game can still do that. Position players hit spring training today. It's cold in New York, but I can't help but think of that opening scene in the Bad News Bears, with the sprinklers chuck-chuck-chucking, and the sun rising in the distance.

It's good to have the fellas back.

Losing an Argument

Tracy Ringolsby shows exactly the wrong way to question whether a player has used performance-enhancing drugs:

In the midst of Curt Schilling's holier-than-thou pronouncements about late-career booms, it would be interesting to have Schilling explain how he turned a lackluster career at the age of 30 into a dominating effort in the next decade.

At 30, having played with a Philadelphia Phillies team that included Lenny Dykstra and Pete Incaviglia, who were listed in the Mitchell Report, Schilling had a career record of 52-52.

Since he turned 30, Schilling is 164-94. What's more, he was 34 before he won 20 games for the first time and has done it three times in the past seven years.

As comments to Ringolsby's own story, comments on WasWatching's seemingly approving citation of the story, and comments on Baseball Musing's disapproving citation of the story all ask: Why is Ringolsby -- who I've always considered to be one of the better baseball writers out there -- using wins of all statistics to make his case?

Taken to its Logical Extreme

What about the Christopher Russo's children? The Mad Dog's argument against PED use brings it all back home.

As he says, God knows (3x) Russo is not "Father of the Year".