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April 8, 2005PROPERTY OF THE BOSTON RED SOX
Jeff: Mariano Rivera continued his string of blown saves versus the Red Sox this week. He’s currently at four after a spectacular five runs in two thirds of an inning performance. Alex Rodriguez did his part by bobbling a potential double play ball, but Mariano needed very little help in this one. I’m not a big believer in psychological problems with single teams, but Rivera seems terrified to throw strikes to the Red Sox hitters. If it's Bill Mueller at the plate, I can understand, the guy could hit Mariano blindfolded. But there's no good reason to be walking Dave McCarty.
Rob: You can chalk up Mo's problems with the Red Sox in large part to the natural order of things. He's getting older, the Red Sox are the best hitting team in the major leagues, and between the regular season and the playoffs, they've seen him a ton over the course of his career. But you're right, none of that explains Rivera walking David McCarty. At that point, was there really much to lose by throwing strikes? It'll be interesting to see what he does against the rest of the league this year. Even more interesting to see what happens if Torre has to use him next week against the Red Sox at Fenway.
Jeff: What's even more interesting is watching the activity at nyyfans.com. After the first game there were 200 posts in the "Mariano struggles against the Red Sox" thread, within an hour of the end of the second game it had exploded to 600 and spawned a child thread about Rivera's being booed at the Stadium. It's an awesome combination of blind optimism, overreaction, overreaction to that overreaction, and arguments about the Varitek/A-Rod fight. I suppose the same description applies to every thread there, but this one has the volume turned up to 11.
Rob: I did think the booing of Rivera was a little out of line, though I can see how Yankee fans might be getting a little antsy about him. I guess sports really is all about what you've done for me lately. Rivera can take heart though - he's likely to get a good hand in Boston next week.
TICKETS! WHO NEEDS TICKETS?!
Jeff: If one of the guys hanging outside the Super Bowl in wind pants and a wife beater looked a lot like Vikings’ coach Mike Tice, it might have been him. Tice broke league rules by reselling some of his Super Bowl ticket allotment. There’s no lower form of life in the sporting world than the ticket scalper. On an unrelated note, the Rolling Stones are coming to Fenway this year and I’ll have two tickets. Bidding starts at $100 each.
Rob: Dude, you might as well start the bidding a bit higher than that. Old people are crazy about their concert tickets. Speaking of the Rolling Stones, is Otis Nixon the Keith Richards of baseball? Just a thought. Anyway, I know it's against the rules, but doesn't everybody do this? I seem to remember a story two years ago about the veteran Patriots counseling the players who had never been to Super Bowl as to how to go about selling their tickets. Sucks for Tice that he got singled In any event, there is actually one form of life lower than the scalper, and that's the guy who scams fans by selling tickets that he doesn't have. There was one Patriot season ticket holder who did that to about forty people this January. He'll be going to jail. What I don't understand is how he thought he wasn't going to get caught. He gave his marks his real personal information. Did he think they'd just shrug and say "Them's the breaks" when they showed up in Jacksonville and got fucked out of their money?
Jeff: The new scam around Fenway is the reselling of used tickets. The ballpark uses a barcode system to scan the tickets, leaving them intact. The scalpers' friends have started passing the already scanned tickets back outside the ballpark to be resold to some poor sucker on the street. It's pretty clever if you're devoid of a conscience.
Rob: See, that's just scalpers shooting themselves in the foot. You keep on doing that, and then no one will trust that they're buying real tickets anymore. And if scalpers don't have trust, then what do they have? Jeff: Well, the windpants and wifebeaters were already covered. They also have tattoos, drug habits, and an eighth grade education.
MILLER TIME
Jeff: Reggie Miller made his final regular season appearance (and barring a bizarre series of events, final appearance ever) at Madison Square Garden against the Knicks Tuesday night. Reggie said he expected to be booed but was pleasantly surprised by the positive reaction from the fans. I don’t understand why he expected a negative reaction. Sure, he kicked the Knicks’ asses over the years, but he never ran the ball to center court after a game winning shot.
Terrell Owens: Booooring.
Jeff: He never left the court before the game was over.
Randy Moss: Like they’d score ten points in ten seconds if he was out there.
Reggie Miller: I did score eight in nine seconds one time.
Randy Moss: Whatever.
Jeff: And the only trash he ever talked was to Spike Lee, and he doesn’t count.
Rob: There's a difference between the rivals you hate and the rivals you respect. You're going to boo both, but when they're gone, you'll miss the ones you respect. Someday Red Sox fans will probably give a big ovation to Derek Jeter, but they'll probably always want A-Rod to die choking on semen.
Jeff: That probably will happen, but it really shouldn't. A-Rod's made Jeter seem better in comparison, and praising Jeter at A-Rod's expense is fun for the fans and the players, but Jeter's still pretty easy to hate on his own. I wouldn't care at all if I never saw those calm eyes, the step and a flop "great plays," and the fucking fist pump ever again.
Rob: You're quite right about Jeter, actually. If I may add to the list, I'd like to never again see him hold that hand up to the home plate umpire as he's digging in to hit, and I'd like to never see him dive into pitches and complain about getting hit on the hands. I mean, seriously, how does a guy get hit on the friggin' hand that often? Hands aren't big. No, he's still a jerk-off.
THE ONE YOU LEAST EXPECT
Jeff: Major League Baseball’s new steroid policy found its first user, the Devil Rays’ Alex Sanchez. Or, if you read the news item too quickly, Rey Sanchez.
Rey Sanchez: Seriously, did every headline have to say "Ray's Sanchez?" Just great. Now I'm going to have to hear "Who's your dealer?" every time I play in Boston for the rest of the season.
Jeff: If I had one guess who the first guy caught would be, Alex Sanchez would definitely have been it. Four homers in 1800 career at bats, 5’10” and 180 pounds soaking wet, all the signs were there. Don’t take my word for it, let’s bring in an expert to give his opinion.
Mark McGwire: I’m retired, I don’t know anything about that.
Jeff: Did you want to talk about the congressional hearing?
Mark McGwire: I’m not here to talk about the past. I’m here to work toward the positives.
Jeff: Yeah, I guess there isn’t any way to put a positive spin on that. Anyway, Sanchez is actually the type of guy you’d expect to be juicing. Having just been released by the Tigers and barely hanging on with the D-Rays, he represents the fringe major leaguers who’ll do anything to move up from $5000 a month in the minors to a big league salary.
Rob: I think those are the only guys the steroid testing is ever going to catch. The young, unestablished guys don't have the money or the connections to get the same kind of undetectable stuff that the multi-millionaire sluggers get a hold of. You could probably make most of the top 5% of major league ballplayers pee in a cup every day and still never find anything to bust them for. I wonder if this means that at the next round of Congressional hearings, they'll call Cesar Crespo, Enrique Wilson, and Mike Benjamin to testify.
Jeff: It would be nice if they called people from other sports, too. I don't care how strong everyone says the NFL policy is, every team has at least 40 players bigger than Barry Bonds, and they didn't all get there by eating like an offensive lineman. It might be that undetectable stuff, or HGH, or something we haven't heard of yet, but there's no way the linebackers with necks bigger than their heads who keep tearing muscles aren't on something.
Ted Johnson: Seriously. What's up with those guys?
Rob: How about basketball players? Have you watched any film of the NBA from the eighties? The shorts aren't the only things that have gotten bigger. But what's really sad about this latest news is that it casts a dark cloud over the entire sport. No longer can a AAAA outfielder be able to have a halfway decent spring training and hook on with a cellar-dwelling ballclub without people whispering about how he managed to do that. Utility infielders, backup catchers, and even journeymen middle relievers will all be under suspicion every time they barely manage to stay in the game. It's sad.
SO WHAT ARE WE DOING TOMORROW?
Jeff: Tedy Bruschi has been at Patriots’ headquarters every day since recovering enough from his stroke to get out and about. Nobody is quite sure what he’s doing there, but they are sure it’s really hard to cut a guy who keeps showing up every day, especially when he almost died a couple of months ago. But really, unless the Patriots have room set aside under the cap for stroke victims who probably won’t ever play another game, they have very little choice in the matter.
Rob: The Patriots may have actually exceeded their quota of heartless cuts when they released Troy Brown after he spent a season playing offense, defense, and special teams, driving the team bus, refilling the Gator-Ade and doing Bill Belichek's taxes. Actually, everyone's being pretty tight-lipped about the Tedy Bruschi situation, so I have no idea what they'll do with him. He doesn't make that much money, so it might not be the worst thing in the world to keep him around if he can play the year after next. But Bruschi's no dummy. He had been going the Curt Schilling route and negotiating contracts on his own, but since his stroke, he's retained an agent. Taking that hometown discount doesn't look so smart anymore, does it?
Jeff: You can't say that for sure. The Patriots probably wouldn't
have kept him if they had to pay him more and Tedy might like hanging
out at their headquarters more than he would any other team. Trying
not to get cut by the Jaguars wouldn't be the same. |
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