Why Braun and Why Now?

In my last post about Ryan Braun, I was left with the unanswered question…why did MLB “out” a reigning MVP?  Since the Mitchell Report, those players seemed off-limits to MLB.  For the life of me, I just couldn’t figure out why Braun and why now?  Well folks, I think I figured it out…It was to drive player salaries down.  How?  Read on.

Over time, I have become convinced that MLB commish Bud Selig et al at best ignored and at worst encouraged the use of steroids post strike (‘94) to reboot interest in baseball and crank revenues like never before. They saw something they liked in 1987 when offense spiked (remember when 1987 was called the live ball year? how funny is that?) Right after that, owners set about overhauling baseball’s ancient set of ballparks. From 1987 on, out of 31 ballparks, MLB replaced 24 of them.  Many of them were home-run hitter friendly or outright “smallpark-launching pads” (Camden Yards, Coors Field, Cincinnati, Houston, Philly, Pittsburgh). Not coincidently, these parks also had dramatically reduced seating capacities to drive ticket prices even higher.

Obviously, Selig and his crew got together over some beers and figured out that Koufax-Marichal 2-1 sleepers put fans in a coma and that chicks dig the long ball.  They devised a dead-simple scheme.  If people came to the park to see Mickey Mantle, how many more would come to see a whole team of Mantles?  You know what happened next.  2-1 nail biters gave way to 15-11 barn-burners, the Bash Brothers, McGuire and Sosa and Barry Bonds.  Ballpark attendance skyrocketed, prices soared and cash registers exploded.  The plan worked.

I’m pretty certain that the total cost of attending a game from 1994 on has quadrupled or more.  And as you know, the genie ain’t going back in the bottle. Once you have proven that you can get people to pay $500 for a regular season field level seat, you aren’t going back. What Selig/MLB Owners did was pure marketing genius. They didn’t have to improve their product or market it any better. They just had to enhance it through chemistry. Then they got new stadiums and exponential price hikes.

But that was only half the battle. The bashing came at a huge cost. Salaries skyrocketed across the board as rank-and-file players like Steve Finley and Jim Edmunds starting hitting dingers like Aaron and Mays. For example, Edmunds was making $625k in 1996. He jumped from 25 to 42 HRs between 1998 and 2000.  By 2006, Edmunds was making $12mm. So to achieve total financial victory, Selig and the owners had to reach the Bettmanesque holy grail of “cost certainty”. Max profits would then follow. The easiest way to do that? Return statistics to pre-steroid era. 42 Hrs might support $12mm, but 15 sure as heck won’t.  And the fastest way to return stats to the pre-steroid era is to scare the living bejesus out of the league by taking down one of its biggest stars.  Can you imagine all the pills, creams, powders and syringes that got flushed down toilets or tossed in dumpsters that day?  Now, does that mean salaries will return to 1986 levels?  Of course not.  But MLB wanted to do something to bring down costs and this was the fastest and most direct way possible.  Can you think of another product that has gone up in price 25x in a generation for what is essentially a lesser product? I know I can’t.

Braun minus Brains

The news about Ryan Braun testing positive for PEDs totally shocked me but for probably different reasons than most.  Up until now, I was totally convinced that MLB obeyed the code of “Omertà” when it came to bankable superstars…Throwing expendable has-beens under the bus while green-lighting cash cows like Braun to put fannies in seats with Ruthian blasts and crooked numbers.  Before Braun, I was totally convinced that MLB’s decision making process went something like this…especially on the Mitchell Report.  The list goes from most to least “expendable”.

(1) Lowest on the food chain are retired journeymen who somehow got caught.  The player list in the Mitchell Report is mostly made of of this flotsam.  Way too many players to list here.  One example in the report is Nook Logan.  Remember him?  Me neither.  I always thought that these players were “outed” to satisfy the public’s lust for blood for some public hangings just like in the wild wild west.  Well these players define expendable.  In all honesty, they probably did ‘roids mostly to hang on to MLB positions as opposed to breaking all-time home run records. In that regard, they are maybe the most forgivable of the group.

(2) Next are active “Rank-and-File” players.  J.C. Romero is a perfect example of this type of player.  Prior to the 2009 season, Romero was suspended 50 games for testing positive for androstenedione, a performance-enhancing drug banned by MLB.  “Rank-and-File” players will never compete for awards, have no endorsements at stake and of course will only get to Cooperstown by buying an all day pass.  These players take a seat for 50 games, then continue living the dream.  Who wouldn’t take that trade-off?

(3) Next are retired “Name Brand” players.  Chuck Knoblauch and Eric Gagne are great examples of this type of player.  Both players had significant achievements and MLB careers.  They also faded into total obscurity upon leaving the game.  MLB felt totally comfortable naming these names because (A) they’re retired, (B) they aren’t going to sniff Cooperstown and (C) they have no following whatsoever.  In other words, the sound of one hand clapping from a revenue and PR standpoint.  Again, these players were offered up on the Mitchell Report to lend “legitimacy” to the report with no real consequence to MLB nor the ex-player.

(4) Active “Name Brand” players come next.  This group includes Jason Giambi (The Sultan of Shot) and Miguel Tejada.  These players were former MVPs who were on the back 9 of their careers and without their syringes, were 5 putting on 17.   Their performance declines were so steep that they were embarrassing MLB and making a mockery of their awards.  Begging to be exposed, baseball obliged.  It wasn’t such a bad deal because it gave the player a chance to hug the public’s leg for forgiveness (which Giambi did).  America loves a great confession, so being outed was actually a great career move for Giambi who somehow emerged as a sympathetic figure.

(5) Finally we have the highest in this rogues gallery, the Scapegoats.  This group, not dissimilar to Lex Luthor, the Riddler or the Joker of DC Comics fame, all had “anti-hero” status while playing.  Roger Clemens (The B-12 Rocket) and Barry Bonds (Barroid) are charter members of this un-esteemed group.  In MLB’s calculus, these players had done more damage to their reps through their own antics than PED allegations, lawsuits and maybe even a little time inside could ever do.  Worst of all, they defied the baseball gods (Selig?) and were un-repentant.  They needed to be taught a lesson.  Baseball offered these names up with surgical precision…evaluating the cost to the game in revenue and publicity vs. gains in street cred.

Notice anyone missing from the above?  How about “Name Brand Superstars” like Pujols, Jeter, and Verlander.  And “Young Guns” like Kershaw, Longoria, and Ellsbury.   These players are inside the velvet rope and off-limits. Or so I thought.

From 2007 when the Mitchell Report came out until 2009, you could take my theory to the bank.  But maybe that wasn’t enough to satisfy the politicians.  Because in 2009, we had the first player to blow a hole in my well-thought out PED conspiracy theory…my old friend Mr. Aroid.  Aroid was the very definition of the Name Brand Superstar…And he was arguably the lead revenue generator for the highest grossing team in Baseball.  In other words, the kind of player that MLB and the Mitchell report had previously avoided with extreme prejudice.  His career trajectory had him right up there with Ruth, Aaron and Mays…but also Bonds and McGuire. And maybe because MLB had already dealt with the devil when they allowed Barroid to eclipse Ruth, they decided to not repeat history with Aroid.  So they hung him at high noon.  Problem was, given my antipathy for Aroid, I didn’t see that as a trend breaker.  But now with Ryan Braun, we have a situation that obliterates my theory.  We now have clearly moved on to a new era in PED testing…zero tolerance.

Ryan Braun is the essence of the Name Brand Superstar and his outing has me believing that baseball will expose anyone at this point.  I have to believe they’d even go for Mt. Rushmore players like Jeter if it came down to it.  What I can’t figure out is why the about face?  Seems to me that in the 5 years since the Mitchell report was released, baseball has somehow determined that no player is off limits, revenue be damned.  Why?  the public doesn’t seem to give a damn, paying staggering ticket prices and flooding ballparks like never before.  The only plausible explanation is this…that MLB flying high from one of the best season’s in memory, felt that now was the time to strike fear in every would-be cheater by taking down the biggest pelt of the Post-Mitchell era.  So given this new reality, lets move on to the suspect himself, Mr. Braun.

One thing that struck me in the past few days is the staggering amount of revenue at stake in Braun’s career. The Brewers believed so much in Braun last April that they extended his contract through 2020, even though he was already signed through 2015. The new deal – five years, $105-million (U.S.) – effectively made Braun a partner with the Brewers’ owner, Mark Attanasio.  One thing I have not been able to track down is whether Braun has a “morals clause” in his contract voiding it for conduct detrimental to the team.  If so, then a positive test puts it at risk.  If not, then the $105 million is not really in jeopardy for Braun.  But a boatload of money is at risk for Braun’s business partner, Mr. Attanasio if millions of disillusioned Brewers fans start showing up at Miller Park disguised as empty seats.  And that brings us to the end game…

With so much at stake, why would Braun and his business partner Attanasio risk a positive test?  There are only a few possible scenarios:

(1) Braun Took PEDs thinking he had “immunity”: Despite all the public noise about Braun being “clean”, this one is not that hard to for me to swallow.  Braun had a downturn in 2010 with his lowest HR (25) total and RBI (103) total of any full season in his career.  For a guy shooting to be recognized as the best player in baseball, those numbers don’t cut it.  Braun wouldn’t be the first player to feel that he was competing with juicers so why not level the playing field.  He also had to believe that as a “white hat” star, he was inside the velvet rope.

(2) Braun Innocently took an OTC product that triggered the high testosterone levels:  According to numerous reports, Braun’s testosterone levels were the highest on record.  Somehow that doesn’t seem to track with accidently taking an OTC supplement.  Let’s say for a second that its true.  That makes Braun and Attanasio MORONs.  If you had upwards of $200 million at stake, would you risk it all for some powder that you got at the local GNC?  No you wouldn’t.  Because you couldn’t have possibly read this far without Mensa level intellect.

(3) The Test was a False Positive:  This is a complete non-starter.  The testing process used by MLB has better technology than NASA.

Out of the three, I’m going with number 1.  Just like our prisons are filled with innocent men and women, I’ve yet to hear a player admit that they were juicing upon capture.  I think Braun was taking something to improve his performance and given his status as a Top-5 Stud, never dreamt that he’d get exposed.  He was living a Mitchell era fantasy.  Braun and everyone else will now have to adjust their clocks to 1 A.B. (After Braun).  It’s a whole new era and no cheater is safe.

Pujols Takes Talents to the O.C.

I thought I had seen it all when it came to money grabs over the years.  From Reggie to LeBron, I’ve seen athletes throw everything they have away for a “dollar-more”.  OK, in most cases it’s a hell of a lot more than a dollar more.  But on a relative scale, the money that sends free-agents out of town is ashtray change compared to the value of their current team’s offer.  And yet they are almost universally willing to toss away what they have worked their entire careers to build.  And what for?  an extra Lamborghini that never gets driven or the villa in Marseille that never gets partied in.  And despite all we have seen over the years, all the will he/won’t he media spectacles trying to explain the athlete’s angst to us mortals, this one took me completely by surprise.  I could never envision a scenario where Albert Pujols would flee one of the best baseball towns for the land of nipple rings and silicone.  I don’t think I’m alone.  I have monitored the interwebs over the last 48 hours and nobody can come up with a similar scenario.  The best any writer could do was Pudge Fisk leaving Beantown for the Chisox in 1981.  Pudge Fisk!  a Hall-of-Famer, but a guy who never won a HR title (Pujols has 2), never won a batting title (Pujols has 1), never finished higher than 3rd in the MVP voting (Pujols has 3 MVPs) and never won a title with Beantown (Pujols has 2).  In other words, not even close.  As a matter of fact, I have searched the biggest baseball database in the world, my own brain, and I can’t come up with a similar scenario to Pujols.  No other block buster free agent signing involved a player of Pujols stature and tenure, combined with the financial solvency of his current team.  When you compare those parameters to other players that come to mind (Reggie, Catfish, Dave Winfield, Jason Giambi, C.C. Sabathia…hmm…all Yankees) nothing maps.  And that’s because players with careers like Pujols (Ripken, Jeter) always stay put.  I suppose you could say the closest player to Pujols was Mr. October who was fresh off 3 consecutive World Championships, an MVP and a HR title with the A’s.  But Reggie was dealing with a cash strapped owner in Charlie Finley who was in the middle of one of the biggest fire sales in baseball history.  In contrast, the Cardinals seem to be flush.  They are #11 on Forbes magazine’s list with a valuation of $518 million.  By comparison, Al’s new team the Angels of California-Los Angeles-Anaheim  are two positions higher at #9 and worth $554 million.  In other words, in the same tax bracket as the Cards.  Are there other reasons behind the “the decision 2011?”  I’ve spoken with experts* who have speculated that LaRussa’s retirement left Albert feeling like St. Louis was rudderless.  And that maybe Pujols felt that Halos owner  Arte Moreno, with $50 million/yr pouring in from Fox Sports was building something in SoCal to overtake the suddenly shaky Dodgers who are dealing with their own financial demons.  And that maybe, just maybe there are some as yet to be revealed details surrounding the Cardinals and LaRussa’s sudden and seemingly unexpected departure.  All speculation at this point.  What we do know is that Pujols punted on canonization in St. Louis for…

Well lets now get to the baseball impact.  Pujols joins an Angels team that defined mediocrity on offense.  They finished 17th overall in runs scored in 2011.  As good as Pujols is, and in my opinion, he along with Manny Ramirez are the two best right hand hitters in MLB since Mays and Aaron, he’s not going to have much protection around him.  Peter Bourjos, Torri Hunter and Vernon Wells are not exactly Murderer’s row.  Ironically, the one player who could protect Pujols is surprising rookie Mark Trumbo, who despite leading the team with 29 homers in 2011, now finds himself in search of a position with Pujols cemented at 1B.  The change in venues won’t help either as from what I’ve read, the Angels ballpark is roughly equivalent to St. Louis for hitters.  Add to that the fact that Albert leaves a division that includes Cincinnati’s Great American Smallpark, the Cubs “Friendly Confines” and Pittsburgh to compete against Texas, Oakland and Seattle which aren’t exactly “hitter friendly” and you have a recipe for a step backwards.  Oh, did I mention that at 31, Pujols had the worst offensive season of his career. His career BA / OBP / SLG is .328 / .420 / .617. Last year it was .299 / .366 / .541.   He played in 147 games and had 579 AB.  Does that mean he can’t crank it back up?  No it doesn’t but with PEDS a thing of the past and HGH testing on the horizon, my money would be on him regressing, not improving.

Look, I have the utmost respect for Pujols and I would never bet against him.  His at bat with one down in the 9th trailing 7-5 in game six against Texas this year tells you everything you need to know about Albert.  Knowing full well that the season and most likely his St. Louis career hung in the balance, he pulled a Teddy Ballgame and crushed a double in the gap to ignite St. Louis’s comeback and eventual win in one of the greatest and most tension filled WS games in history.  He is…the anti-ARod, the anti LeBron.  If anybody can put a team on his back, its Pujols.  That said, he has huge challenges living up to that contract and very little upside.  I don’t get it and I’d like to think I would have stayed in St. Louis.  I wish him well.

 

* my son

They Were Expendable

I started writing this blog several years ago and over time, despite the name I gave my blog, I’ve made a conscious effort to avoid addressing anything overly controversial.  Believe me, that’s not my style.  I’d much prefer to let it all hang out.  But with the unpredictability of the Internet, I guess I took the cautious route and stayed inside a pretty narrow set of lines to avoid saying anything that could get me in trouble down the line.  But when something comes along as heinous and utterly despicable as what we have all learned went on at Penn State, I’m gonna have to stray outside my little box.  For here we have a story that crystalizes not only everything that is wrong with “Big-Time” college athletics, but goes much further.  For me, this is a situation that we see played out in many, many other arenas, from business to politics.  The linking thread of course is money and the desire by a few morally empty souls to protect an empire.  In this case, you have the University President, the Athletic Director, the Head of Campus Police and the Head Football coach who are all sitting on a gold mine.  The president earns over 600k per year.  The coach is not only highly paid, but is shooting for the all-time wins record in NCAA football.  The rest all have similar motivations which involves keeping the gravy train rolling along.  So when a report comes in in 1998 that a major coaching figure in the Penn State regime is raping young boys, a choice must be made.

Lets quickly replay the facts unsealed in the Grand Jury Report.  We start way back in 1998 with an investigation into improper contact between Jerry Sandusky, the accused rapist and and an underage boy that somehow results in a finding that no harm was done.  We then move to 2000 when a Janitor eye witnesses Sandusky performing oral sex on a ten year old boy in a shower.  Does the Janitor report it?  No, because he’s afraid of losing his job.  Then in 2002, we have an unpaid grad-school coaching assistant named Mike McQuery, bucking to get a paying gig who witnesses Sandusky raping a ten year old boy on a Friday night.  Does the 28 year old ex-Penn State starting QB, who was undoubtedly able to subdue the 58 year old Sandusky step in to break it up?  No.  Does McQuery report Sandusky, who was in the process of committing a felony to the Police?  No, he does not.  As a matter of fact, McQuery effectively sits on what he has just witnessed for a full day before allegedly reporting the incident to Coach Joe Paterno.  And when he does report it to Paterno on a Saturday, what does Paterno do next?  Remember, a young boy’s life may be in danger here.  Paterno also waits an entire day before allegedly reporting it to his superiors,  Athletic Director, Tim Curley, and Vice President, Glenn Schultz, who in turn notified the 600k man, Penn State President Graham Spanier.   What happens after that? Effectively nothing.  Sandusky has his rights to bring young boys to Penn State facilities revoked.  It was a toothless edict as Sandusky continued bringing young boys to Penn State as late as 2007.

If you’ve read this far, you are probably looking for the punch line and here it is.   I’ve read reams of reports on this situation over the last few days and one thing that is universally lacking in all accounts is motivation.  The pundits have all offered up opinions as to what must be be done from here.  None have speculated as to the “Why”.  No one dares say what must be said.  Well, if you’ve been reading my blog at all over these past few years, you know that motivation is the what I seek at all times. I’m not nearly as fascinated with outcomes as I am with what causes people to do what they do. We know that Paterno et al failed to do what most rationale people would do under similar circumstances. I say most because there certainly are a few out there that would have done EXACTLY as Paterno and gang did which was nothing.  The linking thread?  Money and an empire to protect.  You see, from the Janitor, to McQuery to Paterno, to the Administrators, the stakes got higher and higher.  But to each, what they were protecting was far more valuable than the lives of a few expendable boys from the wrong side of the tracks.  For the Janitor and McQuery, its relative pocket-change.  But when we get to Paterno, Curley, Schultz and Spanier, we are now talking about tens and probably hundreds of millions.  So they had a choice.  Report specifics to the Police or Shit-Can it.  Even though they had nothing to do with Sandusky, and nothing to hide, you can see their thought pattern.  Police reports lead to reporters.  And reporters lead to scandals.  Scandals lead to lost recruits and big-time donors.  Then god-forbid, the team starts to lose.  And when losses mount, well you know that heads are gonna roll.  Penn State stunk in the early 2000s around the time of Sandusky’s reign of terror and the last thing Paterno needed at that point was s scandal.  Hell, he was 74 years old and had been coaching there for 50 years plus.  He was just getting started.  So he and the rest of these criminals did what they had to to bury it and keep the cash registers humming.

I still hear way to much lawyer-speak and wishy-washy BS surrounding this case.  You have two eye witness accounts of Sandusky committing sex crimes against young boys.  You have coaches and administrators who had everything to lose and nothing to gain in reporting the incident burying the case.  And you had dozens of the most vulnerable children who had their lives stolen from them by a man in Sandusky who basically created a boy-farm for one purpose…to serve his carnal needs.  There cannot be any grey area here.  Sandusky is a given.  He goes away for life.  Paterno, McQuery, Curley, Schultz and Spanier must not only lose their jobs but must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.  I keep praying that once the world sees a few of these guys do the perp walk and hard time, it just might make the next time different.  Maybe a McQuery steps in and rescues the young boy.  Maybe the janitor drops a dime.  And maybe a Paterno get summarily fired.  He knew about Sandusky as far back as 1998, “retired” him in 1999, but let him have the run of the place after that with young boys.  I keep praying for a world where people do the right thing.  But when mega-bucks and empires are involved, prayers go unanswered.

Requiem for a Champ

Duane Thomas, the old Dallas Cowboy’s running back said it best…”if the Super Bowl is the ultimate game, why are they playing it again next year”?  We just had another ultimate game, a stinker between LSU and Alabama that was a field-goal fest.  And we’ll probably have a few more ultimate games this year.  But for anyone who was of age in the early seventies, there was and has only been one true ultimate game in our lifetime.  And it wasn’t even a game.  It was Ali-Frazier I, still the greatest single sports spectacle in the last 50 years.  For today’s generation, its hard to image that a boxing match meant that much but it did.  The fight had every possible story line coming in…for starters, both fighters were undefeated.  Then there was Ali’s magnetism.  In 1971, you had the Beatles, Joe Namath and Ali ruling not only sports, but pop-culture as well.  And the fight offered a perfect contrast in styles…In one corner you had Ali with his classic boxing style, his great looks and his unparalleled bravado.  In the other corner you had the menacing (that word was invented for Smokin’ Joe or George Foreman) Frazier who was the scariest man on the planet.  Smokin’ Joe had a perpetual scowl and a brute force style that was the polar opposite of Ali.  Like most, I was a huge Ali fan and wanted desperately for him to win.  Truth be told, I was scared for Ali.  He had recently unretired after conscientiously objecting to the Vietnam war.  After sitting out for 3 years, he only had a few warm up fights to get the ring-rust off, the last against Oscar Bonavena, a tomato can who wasn’t in the same galaxy as Frazier.  Meanwhile, Frazier had just won the heavyweight crown by battering Jimmy Ellis.  But this was Ali, so you just felt that even with the odds stacked against him, he would find a way to win.  Adding to the drama was the fact that the match was almost impossible to see live.  Again, it’s hard to believe, but back then,  nobody I knew has access to pay-per-view cable  TV and the fight was not broadcast live.   So, like millions of people, I went to bed with one thing on my mind, the outcome of the fight.

I was 14 years old at the time and had a paper-route.  I remember waking up early the next morning at about 5:00am or so to find out who won.  I was nervous as I unbundled the morning stack of papers.  When I cracked the paper open, I froze in disbelief.  Frazier had won.  I read about the fight, but it just didn’t register that anybody could actually beat the great Ali.  I have always been in awe about what Frazier accomplished that night.  Nobody, not Namath, not Koufax, not Mantle, Unitas, Montana, Russell, Jordan, Orr, Gretsky etc. etc. etc. ever won a bigger “match”.  I can think of no greater tribute to an athlete than to acknowledge that.  RIP Smokin’ Joe.

Just Win Baby

Al Davis died today.  Unless you’re as old as I am, you probably won’t understand the fuss and tributes that are going to pour out over the next few days.  After all, what you know about Davis is that he’s the Faux-Elvis kook who runs around in the white jump suits…the guy who turned the Raiders into a patsy.  The micromanager who goes through coaches like a Steinbrenner-wannabe.  The stone-age dinosaur who swore by man-to-man coverage and the vertical passing game long after zones and the west coast offense were the rage.  Unlike other legendary executives like Red Auerbach and Bill Parcells who somehow found a way to stay ahead of the trends, Al Davis was not made for these times.  His time was the 1960s through early 1980s.  And though he tarnished his legacy by fading out over the last 30 years, nobody had a greater impact on his game…nobody.

Let me take you back to the dark ages of football, the 1960s.  For those that can remember, the NFL was boring and almost unwatchable.  You had the same few teams that won every year (Packers, Colts, Rams, Browns), while the rest of the league flat-out stunk.  If you were a fan of any other team, you had no hope that your team would win more that 5 or 6 games, let alone finish .500.  Upsets just didn’t happen and the games were boring as hell.  Here’s the game plan:  Run on first down, run on second down.  That usually ended up with third and 6.  So pass on third down and that was incomplete.  Then punt on 4th down.  By the way…if you got down by 7 points against the Packers?  Fuhgeddaboudit.  Might as well turn off the TV.

For a young kid trying to cope with the grey, harsh winters of the Bronx in the 1960s, football didn’t offer much hope on Sundays.  Then along came Al Davis.  You switched the old black and white TV at 4:00pm from channel 2’s boring Ray Scott announcing yet another Giants blowout to channel 4.  Suddenly your whole world was different.  There in the brilliant, blinding sunshine and warmth of Oakland Alameda County Coliseum, was the AFL and Al Davis’s Raiders.  Curt Gowdy and Al DeRogatis were announcing and their energy was through the roof.  Gunslingers like Namath, Hadl, Dawson and the Raider’s Lamonica filled the air with footballs.  The NFL’s Run-Run-Pass-Punt and 10-3 final scores gave way to the AFL’s 700+ passing yards and 45-44 shoot-outs.  Make no mistake.  Al Davis was the key architect of that attack. 

Sure if you do the research, you’ll come to find out that Al was at least as well known for putting bad-boys who had run out of chances in soot and silver and getting every last ounce of talent out of them.  Amazingly, Bill Belichick has adopted that same approach lately with the Pats.  As Davis put football’s most colorful and sometimes menacing characters out there, his motto “Just Win Baby” became words to live by.  Suddenly it was ok to break curfew, enjoy an adult beverage (or something stronger) and ignore just about all the other rules of the Lombardi era as long as you had more points than the other guys on Sundays.  And for a renegade teenager growing up in the suburban wasteland of New Jersey in the 1970’s, that made all the sense in the world.

While his impact on football is immeasurable, more than anything else, Davis should be remembered as the father of the modern game.  So as you watch Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Matt Stafford piling up the numbers this Sunday, never forget that Davis saved you from an afternoon of 3 yards and a cloud of dust.  Most of you will never know what could have been.

Beantown Meltdown

Now that Boston’s collapse is complete, everybody with a pen or keyboard is searching for answers…when was it exactly that the collapse started?  I listened to a bunch of callers on WFAN in NY today talking about the Yankee series and the game on game on September 1 won on Russell Martin’s double.  The Sox record after that game was flat out brutal as every facet of their game cratered.  Others will point to their horrible April start setting a bad tone and maybe creating a bit of doubt in their collective psyches that jumped up to bite them when the September pennant race heat was turned up full blast.

As usual, I have a completely different take on the Sox meltdown.  You can trace it all the way back to July 31, 2008.  That’s the day that the Sox shipped Manny Ramirez out of town.  There is no question in my mind that Manny was the heart and soul of the 2004-2007 BoSox Golden Age.  Steroids aside, history will show that Manny was perhaps the most dominant right hand hitter in baseball since Aaron and Mays.  There was just no way to deal with that Red Sox lineup with Manny smack in the middle.  He almost always came up with men on base and after fouling off a couple dozen pitches (seemed that way anyway), he would always hit a laser into the gap clearing the bases.  And when he wasn’t doing that, he was drawing a walk to load the bases.  The guy was just an offensive force of nature.  I said it back then and I’ll say it again.  It will be another 86 years before Boston wins another world series because a Manny Ramirez comes along just about that often.

All championship teams come to a crossroad…whether to rebuild or reload.  Rebuilding means getting rid of many if not all of the players from the championship team.  Reloading means making small tweaks to the lineup to fill holes.  Theo Epstein, Boston’s GM chose to rebuild, jettisoning core players like Johnny Damon who would go on to win a championship with the Yankees.  When Boston signed Adrian Gonzales and Carl Crawford, I wondered in this blog how two media shy players from small-markets would adapt to arguably the worst fish-bowl media town in major league baseball.  I figured both would choke under the microscope and I was 50% right.  AGone defied my prediction and had an MVP type season.  But Craw had a historically bad 2011 and seemed to be in the middle of everything that went wrong these last few weeks.  I just could not believe that Theo Epstein threw that kind of cash at Crawford and I was ecstatic that the Yankees didn’t bite.  Props to the Baby Steinbrenner’s, who have shown restraint with their wallets that dad never did.

So where do the Sox go from here?  Lets start at the top.  I’m sorry, but I have to go along with my old buddy Buck Showalter who observed in a Men’s Home Journal article “I’d like to see how smart Theo Epstein is with the Tampa Bay payroll,” “You got Carl Crawford ’cause you paid more than anyone else, and that’s what makes you smarter?   Theo has yet to prove that he knows how the rebuild this franchise despite having baseball’s second highest payroll.  You could say that Buck’s comments apply to Brian Cashman, but Cashman has one important distinction from Epstein on his resume…he rebuilt the Yankees and won again in 2009.  I’m going on record right now to tell you that a third ring will never happen on Theo’s watch.  Epstein’s Crawford and Matsuzaka signings make Old Man Steinbrenner look like a penny pincher.  I say they need a new GM who’s a little less in love with his accomplishments and a lot more discriminating with his checkbook.

Now let’s move on to Francona.  As a Yankee fan, you’d think that I’d hate the Boston skipper, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth.  I really respect a guy who not only won Boston’s first two championships in almost a century, but did it with class.  Francona is the perfect guy for this franchise.  He’s comfortable in the background and that meshes well with Boston’s 25 players, 25 cabs mentality.   Francona must stay.  But the word on the street is that he’s out.  They say that all managers come with an expiration date, but in this case it’s a tragic mistake.

And now for the players.  This lineup never scared me half as much as the 2004-2007 squad did.  They have 3 MVP caliber players in AGone, Ellsbury and Pedroia and an All-Star in Kevin Youkilis.  The rest of the everyday lineup?  Meh.  Big Papi probably had his last big year in 2011.  I am convinced that Crawford will never execute in Boston.  He just does not have the cubes to play there.  At 30, his wheels will go soon and that’s his main weapon.  I say he needs to be shipped back to a small market yesterday.  They will need a SS, LF, RF and Catcher to compete next year.  As for the pitching, Lester is still a top of the rotation starter despite his flame out in September.  The rest…the scariest development for Boston is the descent of Josh Beckett.  There just may be too much wear and tear on that arm after so many big games.  And he’s the best they have after Lester.  You know a team is in trouble when they are trying to make a waiver deal for Bruce Chen to pitch the “play-in” game that would have happened today if needed.  The rest of the staff is either replacement level or worse.  The bullpen was a weakness all year and Papelbon didn’t do anything last night to change that.  Heir apparent Daniel Bard didn’t remind anybody of Mo in 1996 breathing down Wetteland’s neck 

Bottom line is that post-Manny, this team just doesn’t worry me that much.  And that’s a shame because 2004-2007 Yankee-Boston was must watch baseball.  Let’s hope Boston can restore the juice.

The Great Rivera

There are those moments in life when you know you are watching greatness. Moments when the hair on the back of your neck sticks up and you take note of time and place. Seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan for the first time. Watching Michael Jordan calmly sink a game winning jumper against Patrick Ewing and Georgetown. Watching Joe Montana to Dwight Clark.
With Mariano Rivera setting the all-time saves record today, I figure there will be a couple million articles detailing his unparalleled career. I’m not going to be the million and first. Rather than that, I wanted to take you back to the very beginning and a moment I’ll never forget.

I don’t remember much about the 1995 Yankee regular season. They hadn’t been a very good team for quite some time and although they had the best record in baseball in the strike-cancelled 1994 season, I thought it was a mirage. I was also travelling quite a bit on business in 1995 and can’t recall watching much live baseball that year. From a distance, I knew something good, something different was going on with this 1995 Yankee team…The Yankees had hit rock bottom in 1991 under the inept guidance of Stump Merrill limping to the one of the worst records in baseball. In 1992 they brought in Buck Showalter and the turnaround was immediate. In Showalter, they had the perfect manager for their team which at the time was made up of a declining Don Mattingly and a group of talented but hardened transplants like David Cone, Tony Fernandez, Wade Boggs, Ruben Sierra and Black-Jack McDowell. Some saw Buck as an anal-retentive micro-manager who measured the players socks to make sure that they were showing just the right amount of white. While that was true, his main effect on the Yankees and their destiny was to restore discipline and order after the chaos of the previous decade. Each year under Buck the Yankee steadily improved and by 1995 they were in contention for their first playoff appearance since 1981. With a win on the final day of the season, they secured the first-ever AL wild-card playoff slot.

Nobody knew what to expect in their ALDS matchup against Seattle. While their regular season records were fairly even, Seattle was stacked with future hall-of-famers Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr. and a young ARod. Under Buck, the over-achieving Yankees won the first two games of the series in NY in thrilling fashion. With the series headed back to Seattle, things were hardly in the bag. Seattle’s Kingdome was a notorious home-field advantage with ear splitting crowd noise. Even given that, the odds were that the Yankees could win one of three and move on to the ALCS. Of course nothing was easy for the Yankees back then and they proceeded to drop the next two games evening the series at 2-2. Desperation set in as David Cone took the ball for game 5. I finally turned the TV on and sat down for my first game of the series. I watched Cone pitch masterfully and the Yankees lead 4-2 heading into the bottom of the 8th inning. The ALCS was 6 outs away. Problem was that Cone had thrown a million pitches by then (he would finish with 147 which would never be possible with today’s focus on pitch counts) and he was gassed. The bottom of the 8th turned out to be Cone’s undoing. After Joey Cora flew-out to RF, Griffey Jr. homered making the score 4-3 Yankees. Cone then got Edgar Martinez on a ground-out and it seemed like the bleeding had been stopped. But then future Yankee hero Tino Martinez walked, ex-Yankee Jay Buhner singled. ARod ran for Tino and Cone walked Alex Diaz to load the bases. Coney battled pinch hitter Doug Strange in a six pitch sequence that no Yankee fan will ever forget. When Strange walked to tie the game at 4, you could feel the blood draining from your veins. The foundation of the Kingdome was shaking and you just knew the game was over. The bases were still loaded and it was a given that the next hitter Mike Blowers (amazingly another ex-Yankee who had hit 23 HRS and driven in 96 runs in ‘95) would be the guy to break it open. I had no idea what Showalter would do next. The season hung in the balance and the Yankees needed a miracle. Showalter signaled a pitching change for a young pitcher that I has never heard of named Mariano Rivera. I thought that was a head-scratcher. Clearly this moment called for a bigger name. But, by that time, Showalter had lost all faith in John Wetteland the Yankees closer who had been shelled in the series to the tune of a 14.54 .ERA. So it was to be Rivera. I’m sure they cut to a commercial break. When the game resumed, I saw this young, incredibly skinny kid warming up. Now all hope was lost. The kid had what I thought was a deer-in-headlights look. I figured he’d either groove a fastball for a ringing double into the corner scoring 3 runs or walk Blowers on 4 pitches. No way he was getting an out here. Utterly depressed, I awaited Rivera’s first pitch.

What I saw next will remain with me for as long as I live. The ball came out of Rivera’s hand like a laser. Over-matched, Blowers reacted like a little-leaguer. I have been watching baseball since 1965 and the only other pitcher I can remember with that action was Sandy Koufax. I sat there in utter disbelief wondering why Showalter hadn’t brought the kid in sooner. Rivera struck Blowers out on 3 pitches retiring the side and silencing the howling Kingdome.. Mo wasn’t nearly as sharp in the 9th, giving up a lead-off single to Vince Coleman and issuing an intentional walk to Griffey Jr. before giving way to the eventual loser Black-Jack McDowell. I remember thinking that Showalter had to leave Rivera in…his stuff was that electric. Seattle won it in the 11th on a walk-off double by Edgar Martinez plating Griffey Jr.

The 1995 playoff loss heralded major changes for the Yankees. Don Mattingly, the Yankees lone icon of the 80’s decided to retire due to chronic back pain. Mattingly’s replacement? Seattle’s Tino Martinez. The Yankees let their hard-hitting catcher Mike Stanley go in favor of a light hitting catcher from the Cubs named Joe Girardi. And amazingly, despite all his success in turning the Yankees around, Showalter was fired after the 1995 season. In retrospect, Showalter’s lack of faith in Wetteland and others (like Rivera) got him canned. Remember, Steinbrenner was still in his prime and if he could fire Dicky Houser after a 103 win season in 1980, he should as heck could fire Buck. Buck’s firing ushered in the Joe Torre era. Say what you want about Torre’s benefitting from the Yankee payroll, but unlike Showalter, he quickly figured out what he had in Rivera. In 1996, Torre used Rivera for the 7th and 8th innings and Wetteland in the 9th setting up the Yankees unbeatable 6-2-1 formula and bringing home the championship to NY after 18 years. Torre jettisoned Wetteland in ‘97 moving Rivera to closer. You know the rest.

The irony in all this is that Mo’s been so good, so utterly automatic that if anything, he’s under-appreciated. I believe that he’s in the discussion for greatest pitcher of all time. Sure, he’s a first ballot Hall-of-Famer, but will his name ever come up in the same sentence as Koufax, Gibson, Seaver and Carlton? I doubt it. Consider this…many Yankee fans barely remember the details around his record 42 post-season saves and how he put the Braves, Padres and Mets to sleep in the World Series. What sticks out are the three times he failed in the post-season in 17 years. His perfection was so expected that we remember hiccups like Sandy Alomar Jr. in 1997, The Desert in 2001 and Big Papi in 2004 more than the handshakes with Girardi and Posada. So if you read this post, take a moment to reflect on the greatness of Rivera. He’ll be gone soon and the 9th inning will be a whole lot more exciting.

Mets take off their Vest: In-Depth Blog Posting on the Exodus of Frankie

First off, I have to look at this move from the most important perspective…Fantasy Baseball impact.  As a former (that’s right former…I dumped Frankie for Bobby Parnell early this AM) Frankie owner, I was pretty pissed off that the Mets would do this in the “heat” of wild-card contention.  But coming in the same week that another of my studs (ARod) went out for 4-6 weeks, I’ve come to the sobering realization that this may not be my year.  Moving on to slightly less important issues like real Baseball is far less interesting, but I’ll give it a go.

I’ve written multiple posts about this type of move in the past.  Salary dumping was exactly what Bowie Kuhn used to stop dead in its tracks on a regular basis in the 1970s “for the good of the game”.  From the grave, I’m sure Bowie would be saying “Mets, you signed this guy to a contract with a $17.5 million vesting option for 2012 that kicks in at 55 games finished and now you want to ship him out of town for a bucket of balls and a broken fungo bat?  Oh, and you guys used him in non-save situations all year?  You guys are idiots.  We’ve got millions of fans who somehow think the game isn’t fixed, so it ain’t gonna happen on my watch”.  Bowie would have made the Mets keep Frankie.  That set of ethics went out the window a long time ago.  Faye Vincent was the last commissioner to actually uphold any of the core values of baseball and the owners executed him so that the game could be run in the best interests of ”making boatloads of money”  Competitive balance and scruples be damned.

A few weeks back someone asked “Can someone explain the logic of using Frankie to finish out games that are meaningless? has Collins read his contract? 25 more games finished and the Mets are on the hook for another 17 million…”.  Well that is easily explained now.  The Mets were showcasing Frankie.  They obviously had no intention of ever letting that contract vest and would have shipped him out even if they were in first place.  Take a look at what they just did.  This is a team that got off to a horrific start, endured the loss of most of its best players (Santana, Wright, Davis, Pagan and now Reyes) but somehow battled to within striking distance of a Wild-Card berth.  And now, they are getting their players back for the stretch drive.  We should be talking about the Mets second half surge right about now.  Instead we have a death watch on our hands as fans wait for Beltran to be dumped “to a contender”  What team would be allowed to dump one of the best closers in baseball under these circumstances?  What team would want to?  A team that been “Madoffed” that’s who.  As soon as the Madoff suit kicked in, you knew that this stuff was going to happen.  I realize that Selig has got his hands full with L.A., but at least L.A. isn’t strip mining the team for cash.  Selig dropped the ball on this one.  After 20 years of steroid abuse, could we expect anything different?

This whole thing is designed to look like the Mets are freeing up cap space for a big score with Jose.  Yes, this puts $17.5 mm back into the kitty.  Unfortunately, I have to predict that the Mets pursuit of Reyes is a smokescreen.  With “Moneyball” Alderson at the helm, expect your Metsies to shed payroll (e.g. “talent”) in favor of “undervalued assets” (e.g. “scrubs”) from here until the Madoff nightmare ends.  That approach made some sense in small markets like Oakland, but smells like exploitation in a large market like New York where the total cost of being a Mets fan probably dwarfs Oakland.…And guess what?  despite the Brad Pitt lionization of “Moneyball”, last I checked, the Oakland A’s never even made it to the WS on Billy Bean’s watch.  I just can’t see why fans keep handing what’s left of their hard earned pay to owners who could give a crap about winning.  But they keep doing it.  And until that stops in a meaningful way, these “white flag” moves will keep happening.

The Big Man Leaves the Band

Clarence Clemons has passed on.  It’s not a stretch to say that he was the single most important instrumentalist in rock history who didn’t play the guitar.  A quick scan of the potential competitors for that crown would be Garth Hudson (Keyboards: The Band), John Entwistle (Bass:  The Who), Phil Lesh (Bass: Grateful Dead), John Bonham (Drums: Led Zeppelin), Keith Moon (Drums:  The Who).  I can name a few others, but these were the obvious stand-outs.  IMHO, Clemons tops the list.  His sax was so integral to Springsteen’s sound, so utterly essential, that its impossible to imagine Springsteen without it.  The Clemons sound built and built from album to album.  You heard it on Greetings from Asbury Park and Wild, Innocent, but Born to Run took it to an entirely new level.  I remember seeing the cover of Born to Run for the first time.  It featured Clarence as the Boss’s equal.  That made an immediate impression on me.  I was only 18 at the time, but remembered thinking how much the Boss loved the Big Man to feature him that way on the most important album of his career.  And Clarence’s playing lived up to and even surpassed that top billing.  The legendary sax solo in Jungleland took its place in rock history along side guitar solos in Stairway to Heaven, Aqualung, Freebird and other air guitar anthems.  What other non-guitar solo can you say that about?  After that it got to the point where with each Springsteen release, you just waited for the sax solos.  As a matter of fact, Springsteen albums were evaluated based on how many sax solos they had.  Springsteen albums without the Big Man’s sax are considered weaker efforts by most Springsteen fans.  It’s an incalculable loss.  Nobody didn’t love the Big Man.  So as a tribute to the Big Man and his fans, I have compiled my list of his most important sax solos for your listening pleasure.  Rest in Peace Big Man.

Jungleland: The Daddy of all Big Man Sax Solos

This is the solo that put the Big Man on the map.  Millions of kids learned to play air-sax while resting their beers on the Osprey Hotel bar on this one…

 

Drive All Night: An underrated gem

This solo sneaks up on you.  Being one of the last songs on the double album the River, it never got the acclaim it deserved.  It’s a quintessential late night just finished a fifth of Jack Daniels and a pack of Lucky’s kind of solo.  Goose bump material…

The Last Great Big Man Sax Solo…

Like some, I was skeptical when the Boss released Magic.  He seemed to be running out of steam for years in the studio, reserving all of his passion for the road.  The fist time I listened to Magic, I just wasn’t feeling it until I dropped the needle (metaphorically speaking of course) on Long Walk Home.  I was listening to it on my iPOD and when that sax kicked in, I immediately welled up in tears.  Totally unexpected and easily one of his greatest efforts.

The Big Man could jazz it up with the best of them…

I first heard the Boss on The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. I was 17 at the time and for a kid who was listening to Elton John, David Bowie, ELP and Jethro Tull, Springsteen was something completely different. It wasn’t like anything else out there in 1974…not rock, not singer songwriter. I didn’t know what to make of it, but I knew it was something special. Here was a guy that was not only mentioning NJ in songs, but actually praising it. Having driven home many a night through the swamps of Jersey past exit 15 on the NJ Tpke, I was amazed by that. I loved the image he cultivated on this album, that of a barefoot scraggly street poet who was at once a vulnerable loser (Sandy) yet determined to win (Rosalita). The photo on the back cover was of a group of guys that I definitely wanted to hang out and share a beer with. And the person who stood out for me (after the Boss) was the Big Man. He towered over the rest of the group and had this beaming smile on his face. And the music…It was Jazz oriented and defiantly non-commercial (after this album, his label Columbia threatened to drop him if he didn’t crank out something that would shift some more units..out came Born to Run and the rest is history). New York City Serenade is one of the most beautiful songs the Boss has ever written, as great an example of his sophistication and musical genius as any song in his catalog. The Big Man lays down some backing sax that many Springsteen fans may never have heard. Give it a listen and appreciate the Big Man’s greatness.

A little short, but damn effective

This solo was an example of the work that people waited for on every Springsteen album.  Although it didn’t carry the tune a la Jungleland, it complimented it perfectly…

The Big Man’s breakout song…

Not necessarily a sax solo, just sustained gale force horn blowing by the Big Man.  His sax could make you cry like a new born baby in one instant and make you reach for a cold one and a pool cue in another.