Thanks, Rob

Normally, if a big site like ESPN or Deadspin links to ShysterBall, I know where the hits are coming from immediately, because my stat counter shows the referring link. At around 12:30 this afternoon, however, I looked at my counter and noticed that about 500 people had more or less simultaneously clicked on this blog, all as a result of a simple Google search for "ShysterBall." Over the course of the afternoon, a few thousand more popped in for a visit.

Uh-oh, I thought. I must be in trouble. Since I'm a lawyer, I'm a natural pessimist, so my first thought was that someone was saying some very bad things about me somewhere, and folks were coming to gawk and mock. A few minutes later I realized that the traffic uptick was attributable to Rob Neyer who, during his usual Tuesday chat, said that ShysterBall was his favorite baseball blog.

To say I am flattered is an understatement.

While Rob has no reason to know this, ShysterBall would not exist were it not for him. It was 1998, and I had just finished seven years of schoolin' and was about to start the day shift. Somewhere during those seven years baseball and I had gone from dear friends to mere acquaintances. Sure, I watched a lot of games -- watched my Braves win the World Series even -- but it wasn't the same as it had been when I was a kid. I was a passive fan, with the things that had charged my enthusiasm for the game in my youth -- baseball cards, computer simulations, and actually playing the game -- in my past.

That all changed when, less than a month after taking the bar exam, I discovered Rob's column on what was then called "ESPN SportsZone." It was a revelation. Five days a week, this voiceless man in red faux flannel would challenge nearly every lazy assumption I had about the game. Telling me things like RBIs weren't the most valuable measure of a hitter. That strikeouts weren't the worst thing in the world. That Dante Bichette wasn't really any good.

What's more, unlike all of the talking heads I'd known to that point (and most since) Rob didn't make his pronouncements from on high and expect you to take his word for it. He showed his work. He encouraged you to run the numbers yourself. Not that it was all numbers, of course. Sure, they drew me in at the beginning, but it was the prose that kept me coming back. Rob could friggin' write. Still can, by the way, in a clear and uncomplicated voice that made even the most complicated concepts seem quite simple, which was extremely important to a mathophobe like me. I read Neyer every day.

Flash forward to late 2001. Barry Bonds is about to pass Mark McGwire, and I get an email from my buddy Ethan, forwarding an article Bob Costas had written for MSNBC.com, complaining that Bonds' achievement (and McGwire's before him) had "ripped baseball from its historical moorings." This wasn't a steroids column -- if Costas claims today that he always knew about juicing he's lying, because he didn't go there in the 2001 piece -- but rather a simple rant about how the numbers didn't mean anything anymore because they were out of whack with what he, growing up in the age of Maris and Mantle, had come to consider normal.

I read the article a few times. A few short years before I would have taken it at face value, but knowing what I knew by then -- what Rob and others with whose work I had, through him, become familiar, had taught me -- I knew it was horse shit. Costas was too focused on raw numbers. He made no effort to appreciate the differences in eras and contexts. He was using his voice of authority -- and the popularity of his recent book Fair Ball: A Fan’s Case For Baseball -- as a bludgeon with which to bash away dissension against his particular brand of sepia-toned orthodoxy. As a thinking fan, I felt insulted.

So I wrote a screed. It was just a sloppy, expletive-filled email back to Ethan, explaining all of the reasons why I thought Costas was wrong, drawing on the basic sabermetric concepts I then knew as support. Ethan forwarded that screed to a friend of his who was starting a webzine, and that friend emailed me, asking if I was willing to come down out of the bell tower for a minute, edit the screed into a coherent article, and allow him to publish it in what would become Bull Magazine.

So I did. And then I wrote another article and another, and kept writing them throughout the 2002 season. Some people even read them. Joe Dimino -- who I knew only as "Scruff" at what was then Baseball Primer -- was the first guy to link anything I wrote. Then Repoz (secret identity: Darren Viola) played up my scribblings. I didn't have the keys to Bull so I have no idea how many people read my stuff, but I do know that Rob read it, because he sent me a nice note, telling me I did a good job. It pretty much made my year.

Circumstances (i.e. Bull going dark, my legal career getting screwy, and my wife having kids) led me to quit writing in 2003. At the time I thought it would be a brief hiatus, but it stretched on for years. Which would have been fine if I had never gotten that praise and encouragement from guys like Joe, Repoz, and especially Rob. I'd go months without so much as thinking about baseball during those years, only to one day see something that I felt I should be writing about because, dammit, I knew I had the chops to do it, because some smart people who knew from crappy baseball writing had once said so.

It all came to a head back in April, when I revved up my engines again and started ShysterBall. Writing little posts about Alyssa Milano wasn't exactly the same thing as Batman hitting the streets again in The Dark Knight Returns, but it was huge for me in that for the first time in over four years, I had a creative outlet. Writing the blog for the past seven months has brought some added focus and structure to my life that had been lacking in recent years. More importantly, I've been enjoying the hell out of it.

But I wouldn't be doing it if it weren't for Rob Neyer.

Thanks, man.

Gross

Literally, I mean. As in here are the twelve dozen free agents, broken down by position, ranked, and briefly commented upon, courtesy of Jeff Passan at Yahoo!.

Query: If you owned an independent league team and had some extra cash lying around, would you try to make this happen?

C: Sal Fasano
1B: Robert Fick
2B: Miguel Cairo
3B: Russel Branyan
SS: Royce Clayton
LF: Orlando Palmiero
CF: Jerry Hairston, Jr.
RF: Trot Nixon
DH: Mike Sweeney

SP: Jaret Wright
SP: Mark Redman
SP: Eric Milton
SP: Russ Ortiz
SP: Aaron Sele
CL: Jose Mesa

I probably would. It'd be fun. I'd challenge MLB teams to exhibitions and stuff.

Enough fun for now. Keep the page bookmarked, as Passan will be updating it as the offseason goes on.

Posada to Stay With Yankees

They went and added a fourth year, so Posada will presumably end his career in pinstripes. Which is probably how it should be. My favorite bit from the story:

After being schmoozed by Mets general manager Omar Minaya Monday afternoon during a lengthy lunch at Le Cirque, Posada and his agents finally received the offer from the Yankees they had been hoping for all along.

Really, Minaya? You were trying to woo one of the most beloved Yankees to Queens by taking him to Le Cirque? Are you aware, Omar, that despite the fact that Le Cirque continues to do wonders with its foie gras terrine, it does a sorry job with risotto Milanese? That even though its ethereal Dover sole meunière makes you believe that the fish was put into the seas to await its appointment with butter and lemon, its drab lobster salad makes you question the crustacean’s gastronomic calling?

Le Cirque indeed. That may work with Paul LoDuca, but Jorge Posada has a little thing called class.

More Efficient Use of Government Resources

Yesterday we had a city council getting into the business of what RSNs a cable company should carry, and today we've got a county commission weighing in on the Ford Frick award:

A Butler County commissioner is giving a boost to Joe Nuxhall's quest for the highest honor in baseball broadcasting. The two-week campaign, backed by Commissioner Greg Jolivette, starts today. The goal, he said, is to encourage residents to get their native son honored in the Baseball Hall of Fame . . . A rally will be held at 10:30 a.m. today in the atrium of the Butler County Government Services Building, 315 High St., Hamilton.

Thank goodness all of the crime has been solved, the potholes have been fixed, and the buses are running on time.

Fainaru-Wada to Join ESPN

Six years ago, I looked at a picture of the world's greatest newspapermen. I felt like a kid in front of a candy store. Well tonight, six years later, I got my candy. All of it!

Welcome, gentlemen, to the Inquirer. Make up an extra copy of that picture and send it to the Chronicle, will you please?

I Prefer Preacher Roe

Pope Benedict XVI will make a short road trip to Yankee Stadium and the Nats' new park in Washington in April, and you know what that means:

John the Baptist bobblehead night!

The Tigers Nab Their Second Jones of the Day

Todd Jones signs for 1 year/$7M, which is about a $2.2M raise over 2007.

I'm guessing a million of that is the Zumaya tax.

Jacque Jones to Detroit

That's the rumor anyway. Not exactly exciting news, but nothin' else is going on, so we'll take it. From the article:

Jones, who is due to make $5.5 million in 2008, would play leftfield for the
Tigers. It’s not clear if he would be an everyday player there, or if the club
would use a platoon of Jones and Marcus Thames or Ryan Raburn.

I think a Jones Raburn platoon could be fun, given that Jones, a lefty, hit lefties better than righties last year, and Raburn, a righty, hit righties better than lefties last year. Reverse platoon, baby!

That said, is having Jones around really all that much of an improvement over plugging Raburn in full time? I mean, Raburn isn't anything special, and giving up Infante for Jones is no great loss, but Jones will cost $5 million next year, and even in today's market, that's not chump change.

In the end, I'm not sure that Jones is even likely to outproduce Craig Monroe next year -- who, by the way, cost the Tigers just about the same as Jones last year -- and he was DFA'd for his trouble.

Please Take Notes Mr. Shanoff

A writer by the name of Nathaniel Shockey has an extremely good point about today's hype-obsessed media and its lack of perspective:

Last year, the Golden State Warriors completed the greatest first round upset in the history of the NBA playoffs. This year, Barry Bonds broke the most important record in all of sports. Coincidentally, the Colorado Rockies just went on the most amazing streak in baseball history, followed by the second greatest comeback in baseball history by the Red Sox, surpassed only by their comeback only three years prior . . .With all of these unprecedented events happening right now, one can only imagine how incredibly boring the previous 230-odd years must have been for our American ancestors . . .

. . . our culture’s obsession with drama seems to have turned us all a bit stupid . . . as long as we’re in denial about everyone and everything being the best, worst, most important something, then those things that matter the most will almost certainly transpire while we’re not even looking.

Check it, and his other stuff out.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

While my own politics are something of a mess -- I can argue for or against almost anything depending on my mood -- I am fairly certain that the Board of Alderman in Milford, Connecticut is wasting its time on stuff that it shouldn't be:

The Board of Aldermen unanimously approved a resolution last week to ask Cablevision, the city's cable franchisee, to add the New England Sports Network to its lineup here . . .The resolution, proposed by Alderman Martin Hardiman, a lifelong Red Sox fan, passed more in a show of unity and support than anything else, officials said. It notes that Milford has Mets, Yankees and Red Sox partisans, and that baseball "is an important part of our community's common culture."

Now if you'll excuse me, I am off to Milford to sell a monorail.

Fake Forbes

They've built a 1/64 size model of Forbes Field at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, complete with little spectators inside:

Science center officials say the ballpark model will be 1/64th the size of the original ball park. The recreated park features a crowd made from 23,000 cotton-tipped swabs and an animated batter that swings.

It must be a representation of dime-a-dog day or something, because not once in the history of Forbes field did the Pirates ever average 23,000 fans a game for a whole season. Even in 1960 they only drew a little over 22,000.

(Bear with this kind of stuff. only 132 days until Opening Day)

Leo Durocher Was Tappin' That

The actress Laraine Day died on Saturday. I knew who she was because I'm a Hitchcock fan and I've seen Foreign Correspondent a few times, but I didn't know this:

Studio executives pigeonholed the dark-haired actress as "attractive ordinary" and seldom paired her with top directors who could have boosted her career. "Let someone else be the world's greatest actress," she said with characteristic geniality in 1953. "I'll be the world's greatest baseball fan." The actress' affinity for baseball came out of her second marriage, to Leo Durocher, the legendary manager of what were then the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants . . .

. . . She became known as "the first lady of baseball" and accompanied Durocher and the Giants to Cuba for spring training. She traveled with the team during the regular season and in 1952 wrote "Day With the Giants," which the New York Herald Tribune called "an amusing, informative book, the first to report on baseball from the viewpoint of the wife." Although they divorced in 1960, the couple remained friends until Durocher's death in 1991. When he was posthumously inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., it was Day who was chosen from his four wives to attend.

It's October 3, 1954. You're the manager of the New York Giants. With the help of a young Willie Mays patrolling center, you've just swept a 111-win team to win the World Series and you're boarding the morning train back to New York. In addition the the victory banquets and plaudits from the greatest city in the world, you've got a smokin' Hollywood actress who loves to talk about baseball waiting for you at home.

Yeah, I'm guessing it was pretty good to be Durocher.

Good Move

In November, one has to look everywhere to find baseball news. Even the bold-happy gossip pages:

We hear: That Red Sox Golden Glover Kevin Youkilis will shave off his goatee tomorrow night to raise some dough for his Hits For Kids charity. Yooooouk will take it all off for a $5,000 donation from Gillette at the Cask ’n Flagon at 5 p.m.

Thank God. He was starting to look like Jim "the Anvil" Neidhart.

Florida is Delusional

The Marlins are asking for the world in exchange for Cabrera:

The Florida Marlins are trying to hit a grand slam in trade talks involving All-Star third baseman Miguel Cabrera, executives involved in the discussions say.

The price is so prohibitive and includes multiple top-tier prospects -- the kind of young players that are hardly ever traded anymore -- that executives believe the Marlins will have to drop their price significantly to deal Cabrera. Because the requests have been jaw-dropping, teams say they don't see anything happening until the winter meetings next month.

It's possible that the west coast loser of the A-Rod sweepstakes will still pony up for Cabrera, but if this story is accurate, it seems that first Scott Boras and then the Florida Marlins have gone out of their way to turn off the Yankees' interest in their hottest properties. Which, one would think, is an odd way of doing business.

It's like McDonald's putting up a "no fat chicks" sign.

Maggie's Farm

I'm not saying it has never happened, but can anyone recall a baseball team treating a player like this:

The Minnesota Vikings have docked wide receiver Troy Williamson one game check for missing last Sunday's game against the San Diego Chargers to attend the Monday funeral of his maternal grandmother . . .Coach Brad Childress told Twin Cities-area media following Thursday's practice that the decision was on a "business principle" of the Vikings organization . . . Childress cited the cases of two players, Minnesota defensive tackle Pat Williams and Indianapolis wide receiver Reggie Wayne, who appeared in games shortly after the deaths of family members.

Say what you will about MLB's often contentious relationship with the players, but at least there's a history there -- recently anyway -- informed by two powerful entities battling on more or less equal terms. What's more, once those battles subside, the acrimony tends to be pushed to the background, and the relationship tends to be a typical employer-employee affair. The owners generally treat the players with respect, and people tend to approach their jobs and their personal lives like adults.

In contrast, the NFL treats its players like indentured servants who should thank ownership and the league at every turn for being allowed the privilege of sacrificing their bodies and long-term health for the current TV deal. Ownership can terminate contracts on a whim while the players are stuck. Fines are routinely levied in such a way as to constitute ex-post facto laws. Players were, until very, very recently, punished for missing optional offseason workouts (and some have suggested that they are still punished for it). The pension system is atrocious, post-career health care for on-field injuries is a joke, and the life expectancy for ex-NFL players only looks good when compared to professional wrestling and coal mining.

There may be reasons for all of this -- how Gene Upshaw still has a job I have no idea -- but it all leads to a sport that can only be enjoyed by totally ignoring everything that happens off the field. And as I think this blog established a long time ago, I'm not the sort of person who can limit my consumption of a sport to the game itself.

Obviously all professional sports are big businesses, but it seems as though only the NFL routinely goes out of its way to remind us of this, eschewing even the pretense that it's just a game and its players are out there to have some fun. And even if it is just a pretense, I think it's an important one.

Who among us hasn't indulged the idyll fantasy of life as the 10th guy in the bullpen? Such daydreams aren't about the glory, obviously. They're about being around a game we love during a long but enjoyable season with all of the ups and downs that entails. About having a job so cool -- ballplayer! -- that you would wake up each morning excited to go to work. There's a humanity to baseball, its rhythms, its personalities and its rules that allow us to envy the guys who get to play it for reasons other than simply the paychecks and bottom-of-the-ninth heroic fantasies. Now ask yourself: whenever you hear about the off the field life of a random, workaday NFL player, do you ever wish you were him? An entire mythology has sprung up around the not-good-enough-to-make-it ballplayer. The NFL's version is a near-tragic drama.

I appreciate that this is a subjective judgment. Baseball is obviously my first sporting love, so I am predisposed to prefer almost anything about it to almost anything about football. But I would have to think that it's a problem for true football fans on some level too -- the thoughtful ones anyway -- and when your fans are troubled, how deep can their devotion truly be?

Am I off base here? Football fans: how do you deal with this stuff?

Your Latest Conspiracy News

According to Newsday, talents no less than Jake Peavy and Eric Bedard are being dangled -- or are at least being discussed as potentially dangleable -- as teams like the Mets look for alternatives to trading for Johan Santana.

It's likely that this is your run-of-the-mill New York media wishcasting ("hey, it's New Yawk! Everyone is going to come here eventually!). San Diego and Baltimore aren't so stupid as to deal the cornerstones of their franchises, are they?

But part of me -- the same part of me that owns all of the X-Files episodes -- wonders if this isn't more evidence suggesting that ownership has embarked on a coordinated strategy of market depression this offseason. First, every third baseman since Clete Boyer is made available this winter, then Theo and Larry encourage every GM to stand up and spill their secret plans to their would-be competitors. Now a bunch of front line starters are supposedly available? At the same time Johan will be trying to negotiate a contract extension in exchange for him dropping his no trade clause?

Collusion? I still doubt it because, my unhealthy fixation on the X-Files* notwithstanding, I tend to be the sort of guy who needs to see some actual evidence of something before I start hurling accusations, and actual evidence of nefariousness is wholly lacking at the moment.

Still, it's worth monitoring.

*Actually, the unhealthy part of the fixation is really more about Gillian Anderson, but that's not important right now.

Brett Myers is kind of an ass

Remember back when the Phillies front office used to publicly disrespect their players to suit their own ends? It was awful. Now they seem to be going out of their way to talk up one of their guys, only to have that backfire too:

Before the Phillies completed the deal for Lidge, manager Charlie Manuel and GM at Gillick phoned Myers at his Jacksonville, Fla., home. Assistant GM Ruben Amaro said Myers "in some ways was a little reluctant [to move back to the rotation]" but described him as "the ultimate team player."

"We put Brett in a tough role last year as a closer, and he excelled at it," pitching coach Rich Dubee said. "He can excel as a starting pitcher. He has excelled in the past. With him and Hamels, we have a solid 1-2 punch. It definitely helps our rotation greatly."

Those are some nice words from your Assistant GM and pitching coach. So, how does team player Brett Myers respond?

Said Myers: "There are positives in this. I think I've proven myself as a closer and as a starter. If the time comes and I'm on the market as a free agent, instead of two teams needing a starter and two needing a closer, I can make myself available as both to 30 teams.

"This doesn't mean I'm unhappy in Philly. I love the team. I love the fans. But from a personal standpoint, this certainly can help me in the long run."

Glad you're in it for the Phillies, Brett.

The Cabrera Derby

The Angels are getting into the act now, which ups the list of teams interested in Miguel Cabrera to, oh, about 71.

According to the article, Cabrera can expect something like $15M in arbitration this year and $19M next year. Given the current market, those are exceedingly reasonable prices for the production Cabrera can be expected to provide. Heck, even if a team was simply willing to take him for the next two years and worry not about trying to sign him to an extension, the bang they would get for the bucks they would pay would be quite attractive.

For their part, the Marlins are looking for young players with high ceilings. You know, guys like Miguel Cabrera.

Torre's Book

Torre's book deal raises two immediate questions for me:

1. Did the Dodgers know when they hired him that the man they expect to turn their dysfunctional team around and lead them into the playoffs was going to be spending most of 2008 with his mind on his old team and the last twelve years? Granted I don't have a ghost writer for ShysterBall, but I have found that my ability to multitask is inversely related to the length of whatever it is I'm writing; and

2. According to the article, Torre is getting a $1.8M advance. By comparison, Andre Agassi was given a $5M advance for his book last year. Does anyone think that nearly three times as many people are going to buy Agassi's book than Torre's?

Analysis of the Lidge Deal

Nate Silver thinks it through, and concludes that the Phillies got hosed.

Helmets for Base Coaches

Apparently it's a go for next year.

With all respect to the memory of Mike Coolbaugh and his family, this seems unnecessary. One of the reasons Coolbaugh's death was so shocking was because nothing like that had ever happened before. At least not since Ray Chapman anyway. Is it a danger? Sure, but walking out of one's house each morning presents a danger too. What's more, there's a pretty strong reason to believe that a helmet would not have saved Coolbaugh's life -- the ball hit him in the back of his neck below his ear -- so this isn't even a case of closing the barn door after the horses have already escaped. It's like blocking the storm drains.

In the final analysis, however, it doesn't cost much of anything to put the coaches in helmets so it's not as if doing so should cause anyone to lose any sleep. Still, I never cease to be fascinated at the human propensity to not only respond after the fact, but to respond in curiously wrongheaded, albeit well-intended ways.

Lolich

Mickey Lolich thinks he should be in the Hall of Fame.

Well, he's wrong. Nice career. Quite the gamer and quite the personality, but if he's Hall of Fame worthy, so are about thirty or forty other guys I could name. At some point you have to shut the door lest the place become ridiculous.

But I'll always have a place in my heart for Lolich. Partially because my parents knew who he was. They weren't baseball fans, but they were from Detroit and even casual fans knew about the 1968 World Series hero. Just hearing them talk about any ballplayer made whoever it was loom larger in my mind than his production probably warranted.

Also, as some may know, Lolich ran a donut shop in Lake Orion, Michigan for many years after he retired. One Saturday in 1984 my Dad drove my brother and me there in order to meet him. When we got there, the woman behind the counter said that Lolich was out. As soon as she said it, our faces fell. Seeing this, she quickly added "actually, he just stepped out to run an errand, and I'm sure he'll back any moment." She went into the back for a minute as we got donuts, and then came back out.

About 20 minutes later Mickey Lolich walked in with a big smile on his face, came right over to where my brother and I were, and said "you must be the guys lookin' for me!" He was great. He signed our cards and shot the breeze with us for a long, long time, stopping only occasionally to acknowledge a new customer entering the place. He said he was more proud of his 1968 World Series home run than he was of his three wins because "I won a bunch of games. I only hit the one home run."

He also had a lot of mildly negative things to say about Rusty Staub, the guy he was traded for after the 1975 season. The one I remember was that, according to Lolich, Staub would use new batting gloves for almost every at bat, and because of that people thought he was a prima donna. I don't know if that's true or even uncommon, but Lolich seemed animated about it even though he had been retired for five years at that point. Given that, aside for 38 games at the end of the 1979 season, Staub and Lolich were never even in the same league together, I can only guess that the whole batting glove business was something he first heard from his teammates on the Mets.

That stuff aside, he seemed like a really nice guy. He said that Kaline was always friendly, and that you couldn't say that about most of the superstars back then. He said that everyone gave Oyler good-natured crap for being unable to hit his weight. Jim Northrup had the best sense of humor on the team. The younger players were kind of in awe of Eddie Matthews, but it was obvious he was washed up when he came over, which made everyone kind of sad. Everyone loved Gates Brown. You get the sense that he could have gone on for hours, but eventually my Dad, realizing that we were monopolizing Lolich's time, said it was time to go.

In hindsight it was obvious that he was at home relaxing that Saturday morning and only came in to the shop because a couple of kids showed up asking for him. He didn't have to do that, nor did he have to spend as much time with us as he did. Because he did, however, I will always have good thoughts about Mickey Lolich.

Even if I don't think he's a Hall of Famer.

(link via BTF)

Hey look -- a trade!

The Phillies get Lidge. He's certainly not as automatic as he once was -- he blew eight saves last year and is getting the rep as a head case -- but maybe a change of scenery does him well. I think the bigger deal out of this is that it should allow Myers to slide back into the rotation where he should provide more value.

I think the most interesting thing about this trade is the Ed Wade factor. It's amazing how often you see a new GM dealing with his old team. In Washington, Jim Bowden is well on his way to establishing the Reds-East. We've also seen Dayton Moore go out of his way to pick up ex-Braves. I'm sure there are other examples.

If you're an owner and you've hired a GM who was fired elsewhere, you obviously see something good in him. However, don't you also have to acknowledge that, hey, the guy was fired at his last stop, in part because of the players he had. Indeed, aren't you more likely to attribute his failures at his last stop to players who your guy was right to acquire in the first instance, but who ended up not panning out through no fault of your new GM?

Obviously there's a lot more to that (it's more likely that it was the other 20 or 21 players he's not acquiring that were the problem) but I just find it kind of odd how often we see new GMs going after their old players.

A-Rod Conspiracy?

Will Carroll, reporting for Baseball Prospectus from the GM meetings in Orlando, passes on some whispers he's hearing:

Get your tinfoil hats out and don’t blame the messenger here, but a lot of people are starting to espouse some conspiracy theories when it comes to Alex Rodriguez and baseball. If you haven’t noticed, there’s a lot of 3B on the market suddenly. Miguel Cabrera is being shopped, Scott Rolen is making news about his no-trade clause, Mike Lowell wasn’t re-signed by the Red Sox despite many thinking it would happen in concert with the Curt Schilling signing, and Adrian Beltre is being mentioned as an available commodity. Is someone trying to inflate the supply and hold Rodriguez’s value down?

Carroll kind of doubts it though:

If baseball can’t agree on instant replay, what makes you think they could pull off a grand conspiracy?

I agree with Carroll that such a conspiracy is highly unlikely, but not necessarily for the same reasons. After all, baseball's genius owners once did actually attempt to pull off an even grander conspiracy. Indeed, instead of simply trying to depress the salary of one free agent, they once (actually three times) tried to collude against them all.

But hey, it's the offseason. We gotta talk about something, right?

The D.C. City Council Gets What They Bargained For

There is a some first class righteous indignation coming out of the D.C. City Council over the Nationals' decision to host a black tie charity gala and their FanFest in the Maryland suburbs rather than the District:

"I guess we're like Charlie Brown or Rodney Dangerfield. We can't get respect," council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D) said yesterday. "This is just an outrage" . . ."We gave them a $611 million free stadium. I think that entitles us to have their gala at our businesses," council member Carol Schwartz (R-At Large) said.

No, it doesn't, Ms. Schwartz. If you wanted such an entitlement, you would have made it a condition of the funding, which you didn't. As for you Mr. Gray, you forfeited the right to respect when you willingly gave hundreds of millions of dollars to a baseball team with scant few strings attached and only the hope that, out of the goodness of its heart, it would go above and beyond its formal obligations and try to do nice things for the city. That was the deal. You made it, and you did so with eyes wide open and the entire metro area watching, so stop your stinkin' crying.

None of this is to say that the Nats are evil for hosting their events in Maryland. Sure, prudence and political savvy may have counseled that they try and do more things in D.C., especially so recently after being given so much money by the city, but (a) they were never required to; and (b) Kasten and company spell out some decent business reasons why they didn't in the case of these particular events, the best of which was that they were given free space for their gala by the Maryland hotel, and that means more net money goes to the charity.

That aside, this is what happens when governments get in the business of subsidizing multi-billion dollar businesses without asking for much of anything in return. You were suckers for paying for a building that will make the Lerners and their brethren in baseball ownership millions, but you were never misled.

Stop the phony outrage, City Council, and take the political medicine you have coming to you.

Update: Chris Needham (he of the excellent Capitol Punishment blog) makes an excellent point in comment #1 below.

(photo from the Onion. I'll take it down if you are the Onion and you complain)

Royals' Jumbotron

In searching for that handsome portrait of Dayton Moore in the previous post, I came across the official blog of the Royals' front office. Even if they aren't going to be spilling a bunch of team secrets there -- most companies tend to use their blogs as conduits for press releases rather than as a forum for the usual bloggy ruminations -- I like to read "official" blogs like that from time to time because, occasionally, you stumble upon interesting stuff.

Like this post, that reveals a casualty occurred during renovations of Kauffman Stadium:

Plans to keep the "Royals" script from the JumboTron around Kauffman Stadium quickly fell apart when the actual "Royals" script fell apart. Moments after coming off the top of the JumboTron (and this blog entry getting posted), the structure broke apart. November 02, 2007.

Thankfully, it does not appear that the "Royals" script had any family.

Some Perspective

As more and more steroid-connected names leak out in the run-up to the Mitchell Report, sportswriters' anti-PED rhetoric is likely going to ramp up back to where it was last summer when Bonds was chasing Aaron. It's the offseason. There's not that much to write about. It's just going to happen, so we should try not to get too worked up about the writers' inevitable hyperbole.

But we should be highly skeptical of one component of that hyperbole, and that's the line of reasoning that will go "the fact that player X is in the steroid conversation is really causing trouble for him in the free agent market."

I simply don't buy that, mostly because of quotes like this one from Royals GM Dayton Moore:

"Unfortunately, there was a period of time in baseball that we all know now that circumstances like this were occurring,” Moore said. “I think you’ve got to put it into perspective to that particular period of time even if it is a negative mark on the game.”

For what it's worth, I don't know how anyone can approach the issue in a way other than the way Moore says it right there unless they are simply interested in being alarmist. It's a fact. It's not one that we can wish away, nor is it one that excuses anyone from doing their job.

More to the point, if there is one GM thinking like that there are certainly others, and if there are several GMs thinking like that, those who may have once been inclined to tread lightly with respect to PED-connected players will swallow their pride in the interests of competition, meaning that the Jose Guillens of the world will get signed despite all of the sound and fury that comes from our nations' newsrooms.

Sure, Ryan, Sure . . .

Ryan Zimmerman broke a bone in his left wrist and needs surgery. His story: he was swinging a bat while working out with friends last weekend and something just cracked.

Hurm.

Look, I know nothing about Ryan Zimmerman, but I do know (a) that he swung a bat several thousand times between February and October without hurting himself; (b) that I've never heard of ballplayers getting together with their buddies in the offseason to swing bats as a means of working out; (c) that I have heard of ballplayers getting together with their buddies in the offseason to hunt, goof off, and horse around; and (d) that it is strongly in Zimmerman's best interests for any offseason injuries to be baseball-related, lest he get in big trouble and have his pay docked.

Other than that do I have any reason to think Zimmerman is lying? No. But in light of Jeff Kent's truck washing and Clint Barmes deer meat, it smells funny, and I bet people in the Nats' front office will be asking him a LOT of questions about how the injury occurred.

Schilling's Deal

Curt "the Sieve" Schilling describes his new one-year contract with the Red Sox. Upshot: he admits he left some money on the table, but in the end, it was all about wanting to stay in Boston, and Boston wanting him back. He admits that one of the incentives in the deal involve his weight. He also reveals that he gets $1M if he receives a single Cy Young vote.

This, I should point out, is as good an argument as any as to why bloggers don't get to vote in these things. Because if I had a vote I'd immediately email Schilling, offering to vote for him in exchange for, say, $100,000. If pressed, I'd defend myself by talking about how he's the heart and soul of the rotation or something. There have been way sillier votes in the past.

UPDATE: I'm not the only one who had this idea.

In any event, I've said it before, but while Schilling can be a bit of a blowhard at times -- note his gratuitous shout-out for the Sox to sign Lowell at the end of his post, thereby making Theo's job that much harder -- the blowhard tendency is far outweighed by his candor and the opportunity he provides all of us to see a process that is not usually seen. Someday dozens of players will have blogs like this, and we will have forgotten how unique Schilling's is today.

Replay

They're talking about it down at the GM meetings, and there is support, but that support seems contingent upon it being used only for home run calls:

Several GMs say they will support replays, in at least a limited form. The most likely use being whether home runs stayed fair or went foul, and whether balls went over fences or hit the top and bounced back.

"It depends on how it affects the pace of the game,'' said Padres General Manager Kevin Towers. "If it doesn't draw out into balls and strikes and tagging guys at second base, then it might work.''

Towers, you may recognize, is identifying the age-old problem of the slippery slope. Many may oppose some form of limited replay because, they may feel, it will inevitably result in challenge flags and long game stoppages as some booth ump reviews whether or not King Felix came to a complete pause at the belt before delivering a pitch with a runner on base.

And I have a lot of sympathy for that view. If replay is to be implemented at all, I want it to be unobtrusive. And limited. Having lived in Bush's America for the past seven years, I have come to assume that if those in power are given an inch, they will take a mile, and people will suffer for it. No, baseball replay is not the same thing as waterboarding, but if implemented, you're likely to see more words written about it in the American media than that which has been written about torture, and that's some measurement of its importance, right?

But I acknowledge that to be an emotional reaction, not a logical one. In a logical world -- and I think baseball still qualifies as logical -- one cannot simply rest on the bare identification of a slippery slope and claim it to be dispositive. As blogger/law professor Eugene Volokh pointed out in a really neat Harvard Law Review article a few years ago, you can't just plead slippery slope and be done with it. Rather:

If you are faced with the pragmatic question "Does it make sense for me to support A, given that it might lead others to support B?," you should consider all the mechanisms through which A might lead to B, whether they are logical or psychological, judicial or legislative, gradual or sudden. You should consider these mechanisms whether or not you think that A and B are on a continuum where B is in some sense more of A, a condition that would in any event be hard to define precisely . . . You should think about the entire range of possible ways that A can change the conditions — whether those conditions are public attitudes, political alignments, costs and benefits, or what have you — under which others will consider B.

In other words, a lot of slopes we encounter aren't necessarily slippery. There may, in fact, be many logical and practical footholds that prevent us from sliding from relative high ground that is the review of borderline home runs into the crevasse of video umpires. The point is that those footholds have to be defined, basically to their very essence, in order for us to have a strong enough structure in place to prevent decision A (replay in home run situations) from resulting in decisions B, C, D, and so-on (replay everywhere). We have to decide how, at their core, calls which we feel are OK to review are different from calls we don't think are OK to review. If we can't do that, we slide.

I'm not entirely sure what those footholds are yet. You can't just say only "objective" calls will be subject to replay, because unlike football, baseball doesn't have that many pure judgment calls. The ball either got there before the runner or not; the ball was either fair or foul. What's more, those calls that we do consider judgment calls -- balls and strikes -- have shown that they aren't necessarily unsuited for technological solutions (See Ques-Tec) and really aren't that subjective once we think about it. After all, a strike zone may be an imaginary box, but as far as the rules go, it is just as real as the foul line. You likewise can't say that only those plays that lead to runs (like home runs) are subject to replay, because if sabermetrics have taught us anything, it's that virtually everything that happens on a baseball diamond has a positive or negative impact on runs scored.

I'm not sure where the line can be drawn, but it does have to be drawn, and it can't be drawn arbitrarily. It's not enough to say that plays X, Y, and Z will be subject to replay, and all rest will not be. You have to establish why, at their core, plays X, Y, and Z work for replay and others don't.

If we don't, we will slide, slide, slide someplace we don't wish to be.

Kazmir Rumor

One of the things I loathe about sports radio (and many team-specific online communities too) is when a team's fans start making up crazy trade scenarios that, while wonderful for their own team, wouldn't happen in a million years because it would require the GM for the other team involved to be a blithering idiot. If I had a nickel for every time I heard some Reds fan around here spout his latest "Griffey to New York for Cano, Chamberlin, and cash" scenario, I'd be living large.

It's another thing altogether when a reporter says stuff like this because, theoretically speaking anyway, he has to have a source for this stuff. Example? The New York Post's Joel Sherman talking crazy about the Rays dealing Scott Kazmir:

An executive familiar with Tampa's thinking said if the offers for Santana grow to a substantial level, then the Rays would test to see what they could get for Scott Kazmir.

The thinking is that because Kazmir is three years from free agency as opposed to one year for Santana, he might bring nearly as much in return.

Great thinking! Maybe he'd even bring something really valuable like a cheap 23 year-old All Star pitcher who led the league in strikeouts!

Oh, wait . . .

And yeah, I know I'm a little bit late to this (fun discussion here), but that's what happens when you suffer through business travel.

Schilling Staying in Beantown

Never underestimate the power of a good boot-lick. A few days after Schilling waxed effusive about the class of the Red Sox front office, he reports that:

Talks with the Red Sox are moving. Theo and I have spoken multiple times daily over the past week and given the current situation I am feeling very confident that we will be able to finalize a 1 year contract to allow us a chance to finish our career as members of the Red Sox organization.

There are some things to iron out and details that must be finalized for both sides but barring something unforeeen [usual Schilling sic] or outrageously odd happening I feel very comfortable that I will finish my career here.

So that looks close to done. And, if he really is getting a one year deal and that deal makes him comfortable that he is going to finish his career in Boston, we're looking at 2008 as the farewell tour as well. Which was expected I suppose. The point is that Schilling hadn't previously announced it.

An Open Letter to the Orioles Employee Who Read This Blog at 2:54PM This Afternoon

Dear Baltimore Orioles Employee,

While I am quite proud at the growth in readership ShysterBall has experienced since its debut back in April, it is not yet so wildly popular that I can't browse the hit stats from time to time, looking for interesting IP addresses to see who, exactly, reads this stuff. Once in a while, an interesting one sticks out. One assigned, for example, to an ISP named "baltimoreorioles.com," that landed here just before 3PM this afternoon. One that, based on how it found this blog, has given me great cause for concern.

Why am I concerned? Because, Mr. Orioles Employee, I know you didn't come here on purpose. I know that ShysterBall was just one of many search results for some information you were seeking. Some information that, if I were an Orioles fan, would inspire dread, fear, and loathing in copious amounts. This is the Google search that brought you here:

"ray king free agent"

At the moment, the fifth hit for that search is this piece I wrote last week about free agents filers. The one in which I wrote "[Francisco] Cordero is probably a must-sign. Ray King is whatever the opposite of that is." The same Ray King who stunk up the joint most of the year, but especially once he went to Milwaukee in a desperate bid to help the Brewers. The same Ray King whose K/BB ratio has been decreasing at roughly the same rate his weight has increased, and who now can be counted on to allow something closer to two base runners an inning than one. In short, a guy you don't want to be considering to fill out your 2008 bullpen, Mr. Orioles Employee.

In writing this, I don't mean to criticize you for surfing the net in order to find some live arms for next year. Information is information, and you can find it anywhere, so good on ya for getting your Google on. But please understand sir, the Internet can be a dangerous place, and I'm sure that if you look hard enough, you will find someone somewhere, saying that Ray King may be worth a flier. Just keep in mind, Mr. Orioles Employee, that whoever says such a thing is probably on AOL dial-up and has Hamster Dance bookmarked. In other words, this is not someone to be trusted.

But I am, Mr. Orioles Employee. I am to be trusted because I know of, and even vaguely remember a time when the AL East was dominated by the Orioles, not the Red Sox or Yankees. I remember when a four game series against Baltimore meant my team was probably going to drop three rather than get well. I didn't root for the Orioles then and I don't now, but there was a certain comfort in knowing that Baltimore was going to cruise to 95-100 wins each year, because dammit, that was the world into which I was born.

Earl Weaver wouldn't have Ray King in his bullpen. For the sake of Charm City, Mr. Orioles Employee, you shouldn't either, so please, stop Googling Ray King.

Sincerely,

Shyster

Business Trips Suck

The tragic irony of ShysterBall is that the very things that make it possible -- my ability to write coherently, to objectively analyze news and data, and to formulate (hopefully) persuasive arguments -- are the result of a legal career that keeps me from devoting the time and effort necessary to make this blog everything I want it to be.

What to do about it? Well, I'd gladly take a meeting with anyone reading this who has the power to hire someone to write about baseball full time. Short of that, I have to take my lumps and go on the occasional business trip, all the while thinking about the topics I would write about if I were able to remain snugly in front of my computer.

But travel it is for Monday, as I make a 24 hour jaunt to lovely Madison, Wisconsin to try and sort out a dispute between a couple of companies who can't find it within themselves to bury the hatchet and dismiss some litigation that no one -- most especially the people prosecuting it --enjoys. Absent a winter storm or suicide (the latter more likely than the former) I should be back ShysterBalling on Tuesday morning.

See you then.

Russell to the Bucs

John Russell will apparently be named the Pirates' new manager tomorrow.

Pete Toms -- ShysterBall's most frequent commenter, arguably its most loyal reader, and a blogger in his own right -- pointed out to me that Russell may be best-suited of all of the potential candidates to manage the Pirates given his experience managing the Ottawa Lynx during its dead-man-walking 2007 season. Say what you want about the Pirates, but we are all fairly confident that they will still be playing next season, so maybe the inherent hopelessness of managing in Pittsburgh won't affect him as badly as it would others. Other interesting things about Russell:

He was the Pirates third base coach from 2003-2005, but was fired along with Lloyd McClendon. This means that the Pirates made the decision that he wasn't good enough to be a coach on their team, but two years later decided that he was good enough to be placed in charge of it. Granted there is a new GM in town in Neal Huntington, but one has to wonder if, organizationally-speaking, the Pirates were wrong about Russell now or if they were wrong then, because it has to be one or the other.

According to this article, Russell was unpopular among some Pirates fans during his tenure as third base coach because of the frequency of runners he waved home that were thrown out at the plate. The same article notes that among the other finalists was Joel Skinner who, you may recall, represents the opposite extreme. I'll be charitable to the Pirates and commend them for being aggressive with the Russell hire.

I don't know much else about Russell. As a former catcher and then minor league manager he has followed the tried and true path to the bigs. He has had some success at earlier stops. Numerous creative Google searches were unable to reveal any indication that he's either a wacko loose cannon or a calculating demi-genius, so he's probably somewhere in between.

Not that it matters too much given the fact that no one has ever suggested that the only thing standing between failure and success in Pittsburgh is the right manager.

Sosa Wants $7M

Sammy Sosa says he wants to play again next year -- and maybe for several more years -- provided, of course, that someone pays him $7M.

"I feel victorious, and I think I proved that I have what it takes to stay in the major leagues," he said at a news conference. The 38-year-old outfielder said he expects several offers next week when teams begin negotiations with free agents.

Show me the team that makes Sosa -- a 39 year-old DH with a barely league-average bat -- a $7M offer, and I'll show you a team that hasn't a bleedin' clue as to what it's doing.

But, hey, he's Sammy! Surely someone will want that sunny disposition and infectious enthusiasm for the game hanging around the clubhouse, right?

"It was devastating when manager Ron Washington called me into his office and told me they were going to cut back my playing time," he said. "My reaction was to go home and quit."

Um, OK, maybe not.

Rumors Articles Are Worthless

Nothing has changed the way people follow baseball more than the Internet has, but let's be clear -- there is a limit to the amount of useful content out there. A lot of it is never even intended to be worth a damn, but rather, simply exists in order to garner some eyeballs in order to jack up the stats. The best example of this are the "rumors" columns, often appearing sans byline, always peddling baseless or highly recycled nonsense.

Exhibit A; a "rumor" piece about Griffey to the Braves, based solely on Terrence Moore's looney tunes column from Thursday.

If that's all it takes to warrant a rumors piece, let's try this one on for size: Sources are telling me that in an effort to bolster their new focus on young pitching, the Yankees plan on DFAing Abreu and Damon, signing Andruw Jones, Torii Hunter, and Corey Patterson to play outfield, eliminating the outfield bleachers, and pushing the fences back 70 feet. I can't reveal my source yet, but he's someone I trust implicitly.

Remember, mum's the word.

The Red Sox' 2003 Letter to Schilling

Curt Schilling has posted (with permission from Theo) the letter the Red Sox brass sent to him just before showing up on his doorstep in November 2003 in an effort to get him to come to Boston.

It's a fascinating read, walking the fine line between candor and boosterism, ass-kissing and praise, while never once (in my mind) falling to the bad side. It's the sort of letter I'd want to get from an organization silly enough to woo me. It's also the sort of letter that teams like the Pirates and Orioles couldn't write in a hundred years, even if they wanted to.

Above all else, this post shows Schilling's blog at its best, giving us the inside view that no one who hasn't played the game -- and that's almost everyone who writes a word about baseball -- could possibly write.

I hope that in the future more players follow Schilling's example and take up blogging.

I love the smell of spinning in the morning

You've lost your manager and got bad press for it. You lost your star slugger and but for the grace of stupid timing by his agent, you would have gotten bad press for it. You may even be losing your popular all-star catcher, and if you do you're going to get REALLY bad press for it. What do you do to stop the bleeding?

If you're the Yankees you leak a story that makes you look reasonable and the rest of the world barking mad.

Which isn't to say it's not true. But there may very well be more to the story that Olney's sources aren't telling him. We don't know though, because there is no evidence that Olney sought comment from Boras on the leak, er, the report, and God knows Boras hasn't exactly been eschewing the media this week. There is also no apparent sourcing at all for this statement:

The timing of how this played out, and the fact that Rodriguez did not meet with the Yankees to hear their offer before making his decision, has led some baseball officials to surmise that a deal with another team may already be in the works.

It strikes me that you need more than "some baseball officials surmising" in order to run with a tampering charge. If no one would go on record with this, even anonymously, it is nothing more than simple grumbling from frustrated Yankee brass.

Bill James Ranks the Top 50 Young Stars

Bill James being Bill James, which means a lot of sophisticated and rigorous analysis, communicated with ease, clarity, and a dash of humor. Here's some of the latter:

21. C. C. Sabathia, Cleveland lefty (26). I have to tell you, as a baseball fan, I absolutely adore C. C. Sabathia. I always have. I've compared all these players to somebody else. It is sacrilege to compare C. C. Sabathia to any other pitcher. He is totally unique. For one thing, although listed weights of baseball players are so bogus that it's hard to see the point of listing them, C. C. has to be the heaviest player in major league history. He's huge -- 6'7"and has an aircraft carrier frame supporting large piles of necessary and unnecessary flesh, all of this adorned with comic little ears that stick out from his face as if the Lord couldn't find a flat place to put them. He has a unique delivery, hanging his massive leg in the air in seeming defiance of both gravity and nature, yet he is balanced and graceful. He projects a sort of genial warrior calm on the mound. He was an outstanding pitcher when he reached the majors in 2001 and has gotten steadily better, cutting his walks from 95 in 180 innings to 37 in 241 innings. He's 26 now, like Peavy, and his age is pushing him downward on this list; he is less of a young talent, and more of a mature product. But I don't think I've ever missed a C. C. Sabathia start in Kansas City when I was near KC or in Boston since I've been in Boston, and I hope he pitches forever.

Update: Hmmm, maybe the analysis -- and my initial reading of the column -- was not so rigorous after all. The BTF Primates (Furtado -- are they/we still allowed to call ourselves that?) have their knives out, and they identify a number of omissions, oddities, and outright lunacy with James' list (e.g. where's Pujols? Where's Zambrano? Why is Russell Martin so damn low?).

For my part, I plead James fanboy (and say what you want about the analysis, he's still fun to read). I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for James to clarify or recant any of this -- he's got bigger fish to fry working for the Red Sox -- but, yeah, upon reflection, the list, she is strange.

Why Is This Man Smiling? UPDATED

Because he may very well soon be an exceedingly overpaid catcher. The Daily News reports that the Yankees are dithering and the Mets' are poised to pounce on Jorge:

Mets sources say GM Omar Minaya has identified Posada at the top of the team's list of free agent targets. Like he did with Pedro Martinez before the 2005 season, Minaya might be willing to go above and beyond to secure the rights of a possible Hall of Famer.

If the Mets offer Posada four years - or possibly five - it would leave the Yankees in a difficult spot, as they would be committing more years than they wish to a catcher who will turn 37 next summer.

I love Jorge as much as the next guy, but if the Mets offer Posada five years, they're crazy. True, he has fewer miles on the odometer than a lot of 37 year-old catchers, but the list of effective 42 year-old catchers is a short one. Really short, as in Carlton Fisk and, like, no one else that I can think of at the moment. First base? Well, the list of forty year-old catchers who were effective after being converted to first base is pretty damn short too, consisting of, um, give me an hour or two to think of one because I can't.

Of course if the Mets do swoop in and give Posada a ridiculously long contract, the story won't be about how the last two or three years of it are wasted. Rather, the story will be about how the Yankees seem to be suffering from institutional gridlock that is preventing them from getting anything done this offseason.

The effects of the Yankees' seeming disarray, however, will be temporary. The effects of the Mets signing a lot of dumb contracts will last a long long time.

Update: reader Pete Ridges (see comments below) did the legwork that I was inexcusably too lazy to do myself, and figured out exactly what we might expect from a catcher entering his 40s. As I suspected, it's basically Carlton Fisk and rotting corpses.

Here's the list Pete created at B-R.com/PI.

There have been 61 catchers who played 50% or more of their games at catcher after turning 40. These 61 catchers hit a combined -- combined! -- 97 home runs. Carlton Fisk hit 72 of those. There are other mind-boggling factoids like that in Pete's list, and I invite you -- and Omar Minaya -- to discover them for yourself.

Varitek's Halloween Surprise

With kids aged 2 and (almost) 4, Halloween is a special time at chez Shyster. My neighborhood was crazy this year too. One guy I know was handing out full-sized Baby Ruth bars, which created quite a commotion. One house had a cooler filled with Captain Morgan's and cider for the parents. Between all of that and chasing the little ones, I was beat by the time I went to bed Wednesday night.

But I wasn't the only one. It seems that Jason Varitek bit off more than he could chew too, as he sat in his driveway handing out autographs and goody bags to the neighbor kids:

This Halloween, Jason Varitek gave trick-or-treaters something infinitely more valuable than a king-sized Snickers bar. The Red Sox captain sat in a lawn chair at the top on his driveway and handed out autographs, signing baseballs, hats, shirts, pillow cases stuffed with candy, and a green alien glove from a youngster's costume . . .

. . .Two police cruisers came to direct traffic and control the crowd, which swelled to some 50 youngsters and parents on a leafy block in the tony village of Waban, in Newton. "Varitek looked really tired," said Chris O'Connell, 45, who brought his sons Joshua, (dressed as a Japanese ninja), 9, and Zeke, (Darth Vader), 7, to get autographs. "It was great - for him to be sitting out there after 9 o'clock on Halloween says a lot about the guy."

Sources report that Heathcliff Slocumb gave out slow-pokes and those nasty little candies in the orange and black wrappers, after which his house was teepeed repeatedly.

Kay Rips Torre

Michael Kay on his ESPN radio show the other day:

"There are things about Joe Torre, if I wanted to come out and say, would show how cold and calculated he really is . . . Joe Torre is for Joe Torre. ... The graveyard of Yankees coaches is loaded with bones of coaches Joe Torre did nothing about."

I'm not going to jump on Kay for saying that. Strong opinions are good fun! Even if they constitute a bit of hyperbole, comments like Kay's are the sorts that lead, eventually -- once less-impassioned analysts and historians investigate the basis for them -- to a more realistic and nuanced view of guys we are always too quick to deify. Torre probably has a lot of faults. Someday, when someone writes the definitive Derek Jeter biography or something, we'll learn about them, and we'll probably have things like Kay's swipe to thank for them because they'll get someone thinking about whether Joe really is just for Joe.

Now, why Kay never felt it necessary to say such a thing until Torre was already out the door is another matter, but media criticism isn't my strongest suit, so I'll leave that to someone else.

One Question Answered

In all of the Torre-to L.A. discussion, one thing that keeps popping up is whether hiring Joe makes it more or less likely that A-Rod would sign with the Dodgers. Most things I've seen about this suggest that Torre and Rodriguez weren't all that close, and that A-Rod was allegedly humiliated by being dropped down low in the batting order in the 2006 playoffs, thus chilling the relationship even further. Based on Torre's comments yesterday, it would seem that that line of thinking is out-of-date:

Torre, who managed Rodriguez in New York the past four seasons, was surprised A-Rod opted to end his contract with the Yankees.

"I know he liked it here, and I know he enjoyed the Yankees this year more than any other year," Torre said on WFAN. "We kind of forged this relationship this year and I don't know what clicked, to be honest with you, because I don't think I did anything different."

For whatever that's worth, anyway. I still think he's more likely to sign with Anaheim.

Da Sox

The Boston Herald's Tony Massarotti breaks down the 2004 Red Sox vs. the 2007 Red Sox, concluding that the 2004 Sox would win a series between the two teams in six games.

The column reminds me of the old Bill Swerski skits on SNL. Massarotti should have just teamed up with a couple other Boston guys and ended it like this:

Simmons: Now, gentlemen, let me ask you this: What if Da Sox were all 14 inches tall, you know, about so high? Who would win?

Massarotti: Against Da Rockies?

Simmons: Yes, give 'em a handicap.

Massarotti: Sox over Rockies in six games.

Shaughnessy: Yeah, it would be a good series. Mini Sox over Rockies 4-2.

Massarotti: What about Papelbon? Would he be mini, too?

Simmons: No, he would be full-grown.

Massarotti: Oh, then, uh.. Mini Sox win 4-1.

Less Sexy Managerial News

The Torre to L.A. and Girardi to New York stories are exciting and all, what with the playoff implications and dynastic overtones, but those aren't the only teams who will have new managers in 2008. In case you forgot, the Pittsburgh Pirates need a new boss too. No one knows who it will be yet, but there's one guy not getting interviews:

As of Thursday, [Ken] Macha said that he had not been contacted by the organization regarding the managerial opening, though that's not to say that the former A's manager is not interested.

"I do have interest in managing again, and I've lived here my whole life," said Macha, who makes his home in Murrysville, Pa., just east of the city. "I know Pittsburgh as well as anybody. It obviously wouldn't be coming to Pittsburgh, it would be being here."

You know, my law firm often looks to geographic connection when assessing associate candidates because we want to make sure anyone we hire is going to be happy hanging around Ohio and not want to jump ship to Chicago or something. This, however, is the first time I've heard of a managerial candidate for a Major League Baseball team making such a pitch.

It may not be a dumb pitch, though. Given the Pirates' typical brand of idiocy, I can totally see them picking Macha over a superior candidate simply because they wouldn't have to pay moving expenses.

Posnanski is going to get carpal tunnel

The Chunichi Dragons just won the Japan Series over the Nippon Ham Fighters on a perfect freaking game. Posnanski was there covering it all for the KC Star because Fighters' manager Trey Hillman was just hired to manage the Royals. JoePo was blogging the series to give the folks back home a taste of Hillmania.

Here's his account for the Star . Set some time aside because it is of usual Posnanskian proportions. He also claims he may write more for his personal blog when he gets back to the States.

He has an 11-hour flight ahead of him in which to write it, and I would assume that the man carries four spare laptop batteries with him just in case.

I am placing the over-under at 10,000 words.

Todd Jones Just Got Richer

Joel Zumaya -- the unluckiest bastard on the planet -- just underwent major shoulder surgery due to injuries suffered while evacuating for the SoCal fires.

Um, yeah, a lot of DANCING

Papelbon on Letterman last night:

Letterman: "So take us now from the moment the out is recorded to tonight. What has the celebration been like. I know you had a parade in Boston."

Papelbon: "Yeah, well, we had a parade, not much sleep, a lot of partying, a lot of drinking."

Letterman: "A lot of dancing?"

Papelbon: "A lot of dancing, you know." (audience laughs).

Twins Free Agent Notes

The Star Tribune's Joe Christensen talks Torri, Johan, Carlos and . . . Rondell?

I know Rondell White has been a pin cushion for criticism, but he remains a favorite of beat writers wherever he has played. I sent him a text message after seeing his name on the free agent list yesterday, asking if this means he’s going to keep playing. His response: “1 % chance! All da best big Joe.”

I will likely never be a beat writer, but I'd love to have major league ballplayers calling me Big Craig.

Thanks Jackie!

The Dodgers don't have to go through the charade of interviewing minority candidates they don't plan on hiring:

Teams are generally directed to interview at least one minority candidate for open managerial jobs, but the Dodgers were granted an exemption in this case by commissioner Bud Selig.

“The Dodgers have a great record on minority hiring throughout the organization," baseball spokesman Rich Levin said.

You bet they do. Besides, it's quite clear that Torre has some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager, or, perhaps, a general manager. And he's quite buoyant too.

A-Rod Saves October

It ain't been said until the Onion says it.

"A-Rod's decision about free agency is what I have been waiting for all October," Boston resident Nat Boyle said. "Would A-Rod forfeit the remaining $91 million on his contract? Would the Texas Rangers be responsible for subsidizing $30 million of his salary? I mean, ever since I was a kid, that's what October has been all about."

The Inevitable Batshit Crazy Terrence Moore Ken Griffey Column

Death. Taxes. The AJC's Terrence Moore's annual plea to Braves management to acquire Ken Griffey:

Let’s try this again. After all, we’ve typed these words before, but never have they made more sense. The Braves need a center fielder until their youngsters are ready, and veteran Ken Griffey Jr. loves Bobby Cox, the accomplished Braves manager, and Griffey’s Cincinnati Reds aren’t going anywhere soon.

Isn't it cute how Moore thinks that Griffey can still play center! If Griffey played the 8 for Atlanta oddsmakers would have a hard time figuring out what would happen first: Junior's hamstrings literally exploding, or the Atlanta pitching staff beating him with pillow cases full of soap, Private Pyle-style.

What we need are more free agent centerfielders

Add Corey Patterson to the list. If Mike Cameron was Plan D, Patterson (.269/.304/.386) is probably Plan Q.