Well the "Era of Good Feelings" in baseball lasted less than a week. Now we have a strike date set and instead of optimism, we have rhetorical jousting. According to stuff I read and heard over the weekend, players now get about 50% of the revenues taken in by MLB. I don't think anyone would be shocked and amazed to be told that there is a fixed upper limit to the fraction of money that can be paid out as salaries to players. Imagine the viability of a situation where 101% of the revenues went to salaries; how would the electric bill and the telephone bill get paid? So as you listen to the gasbags on both sides rant and rave over the next couple of weeks remember that baseball revenues are now in the range of $3.5B and the argument is about whether or not the players should be getting $1.75B of that total or maybe $1.85B under the next agreement. That is all that this is about. Hundreds of years ago, William Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet and in Act III Scene 1 he has a couplet that summarizes my feelings about the players union and the baseball owners. It almost makes me think that Shakespeare and Nostradamus must have been related:
"A plague o' both your houses!
They have made worms' meat of me."
In New York, the labor negotiations and the lawsuits between the two owners of the Mets as to the price at which one would buy out the other has to have been distracting. Otherwise these geniuses might have noticed by now that they have assembled a squad that costs nearly $100M that stinks. They are not merely underachieving; they stink. As of this date, the NY Mets are in last place in the NL East; they trail the Atlanta Braves by 21.5 games; they even trail the Phillies by a game. The Mets have a losing record at home and only three other teams in the NL share that ignominy. The other three are the Pirates, Cubbies and Brewers. When the Mets were crafted for this year as a result of s spending binge on players in the off season that have produced next to nothing, no one in NY would have believed that the team would be lumped together with the Pirates, Cubs and Brewers in mid-August. So can someone answer a question or three for me:
How does Bobby Valentine keep his job?
Does he have incriminating photos?
Are farm animals involved?
In Chicago, the Cubbies' fans are fed up. It took a while but they seem to have had enough of these sad sacks. On Saturday, the Cubs gave up a grand slam in the top of the ninth inning and then the team began a rally in the bottom of the ninth. However a base running blunder got a cup caught in a rundown between third and home and the fans began to chant, "Go on strike! Go on strike!" They kept that up until the final out was made.
Here's a good line from Scott Ostler about pitchers – and managers – being unwilling to pitch to Barry Bonds:
"Bonds gets walked more often than a dog with a digestive problem."
Miami Dolphins' linebacker Derrick Rodgers will be offered a plea bargain on charges that he hit and kicked his wife and whacked a man who was with his wife with a metal chair and then "resisted an officer with violence". Naturally, the prosecutors could not discuss the plea bargain but they did revise the charges. The case is scheduled to be heard next month. I wonder if the charges will be reduced to "littering" and the sentence will be community service wherein Rodgers plays for the Dolphins thereby bringing entertainment and pleasure to the local community. It is NOT beyond the realm of possibility.
Terrell Davis chose to retire after multiple knee injuries and surgeries and the diagnosis of a "degenerative condition of the left knee". Davis' career stats are 7,607 yards on 1,655 carries and that is 4.6 yards per carry. Given his two Super Bowl championships – and the fact that he was a major part of the teams that won those two championships – I think that Davis is a bona fide candidate for the football Hall of Fame.
Friday night the Tampa Bay Bucs beat the Jags in an exhibition game even though the Bucs only ran for 35 yards on 21 carries. In the Tony Dungy era, that stat line would have meant disaster. Things have changed in Tampa…
Blackie Sherrod reported this weekend that José Sulaiman – head of the World Boxing Council – is suing Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis for $56M. This has nothing to do with contracts or anything like that; Sulaiman claims that when Tyson and Lewis held that news conference where the brawl broke out he was knocked to the ground and had his dental bridge broken. Then when he got up, he was "spat upon" by Tyson. Even if all of this is true and even if I thought that the fighters went out of their way to take a shot at José during the scuffle, I still could not bring myself to hear the phrase "fifty-six million dollars" without laughing out loud and pointing to the plaintiff. As Blackie Sherrod put it, "Where o where are the Three Stooges when you need them?"
Finally, a Welshman playing in the English Premier League used the referee's toilet prior to a game last Spring. Evidently, this was some kind of protest about officiating and evidently he was less than totally fastidious about the conditions surrounding the event. Last week, the Premier League fined him $15K "plus costs". I can only wonder what elements were included in the "costs".
But don't get me wrong, I love sports...
