Category Archives: Baseball

Baseball, Biography, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

Rodriguez is not giving back any of the money

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The money made him do it.
Money is the second oldest motive in the world, after all. Willie Sutton famously said he robbed banks because that’s where the money is. The Menendez brothers. The Lindberg baby kidnapping. Bonnie and Clyde. Wall Street.

All about money.

We understand. People do awful things for money. Heroic things. Careless things.

Except, of course, Alex Rodriquez already had the money. More money than any baseball player ever. More money than Madonna, just to make a nice, neat circle.
Rodriguez already had the talent, too. That’s why he got the money. More talent than, well, certainly Madonna, and anyone else in baseball, including Mr. Clear and Mr. Cream himself, Barry Bonds.

How awful it would have been if A-Rod had been judged to be worth only, oh, $20 million, or even $15 million. What a shame. What a sham.

A man has to protect his over-inflated worth, or what’s a CEO bonus for?

Rodriguez is not giving back any of the money. Not for the years 2001 or 2002 or 2003, nor is he returning the MVP award he won in Texas. He is not refuting his distinction as the youngest player to ever do just about everything.

Sorry, Ernie Banks, you kind old gentleman. A-Rod is still the sluggingest shortstop of all time.

Rodriguez is not saying, please, don’t count any of the 156 homers hit during that time, nor please ignore any of the phony deeds that got him to the Yankees, to New York, where even Rodriquez’ money is more than anyone needs for doing nothing very vital.

Are you worth that much money, Alex? I will be as soon as I take this shot.

What’s in the shot? Dunno. This is a loosey-goosey time. Everyone’s doing it.
The President of the United States finds the news depressing. He said so at a press conference that somehow, after the economy and war and terrorism had been dealt with, just naturally got around to Rodriquez, A-Fraud as is his new alias.

And the President is especially depressed about the message sent to the kids out there.
Don’t do this, kids. Don’t do it if you want to make $27 million a year, hang out with celebrities, challenge the greatest records in the greatest game, be considered the best there ever was.

Deny everything until you can’t and when you no longer can, be ready to say you are sorry, really sorry. Sorry for being foolish, sorry for being naïve, sorry for being part of a loosey-goosey time in baseball, sorry for…well, you know. All of it.

Don’t accuse the reporter who got the story of stalking you because that just seems petty, but do make sure to confess to a friendly baseball eminence, someone who will treat you with deference and never make you say out loud the actual word, “steroids.”

You may come away leaving the impression that you had done nothing more serious than put cinnamon on your sunflower seeds.

There are many good lessons here for kids. No reason to be depressed about that.

Spread the blame around. Give a share to Tom Hicks, the Texas owner who paid him all that money, and to Seattle, too, I suppose, for not being a grand enough stage for a 25-year-old with great hand-eye-coordination. And his agent Scott Boras for concocting the contract in the first place.
Blame everyone before Rodriguez.

If there was “enormous pressure” to perform on a last place team, why should Rodriquez feel any less pressure playing for just as much money in the House that Ruth Built? Maybe, as his postseason failures grow, what Yankee fans resent is that he does not think enough of them to do what he did for Texas.

In the five years since Rodriquez confesses he did what others did, what he felt necessary to justify the wealth he accepted, he has been a terrific player, if not Derek Jeter in the New York heart. In the same way that Bonds was great before the pharmaceutical deceit that will define him forever, so does Rodriguez repel sympathy. Maybe more so.

Rodriguez was the anti-Bonds—and I suppose that title now falls to Ken Griffey, Jr.—the natural specimen of power and skill, unpolluted by either chemistry or conceit, and surely that perception made it difficult for Rodriquez to confess before now.

It’s that image thing again. In Texas he had to be better to justify the money. In New York he had to lie to protect the original lie. Lie. Lie. Lie.

The so-called Steroid Generation of Baseball is defined by lies, finger-wagging, stone-walling, Congress defying lies, and now that Rodriguez has told some of the truth he seems more forgivable than Bonds. Or Roger Clemens. Or Miguel Tejada.

Bonds may go to jail for lying. That’s the difference between lying to a grand jury and lying to Katie Couric.

Baseball, Crime, Professional, Rocky Mountain News

The mugbook is running out of pages for athletes

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The mugbook is running out of pages for athletes who are less than they seemed, when great physical achievements are diminished by human weakness. The fault is theirs, of course, but ours, too, and maybe the cereal maker who puts them on the side of the box.

We perpetually wish that the breakfast of champions is not what it often turns out to be.

Those eight gold medals were carefully arranged for the photo of Michael Phelps. Nice picture. As we were reminded by Donald Rumsfeld, it is not the action but the pictures that matter.

And now the other one, the one where it looks like Phelps is swallowing a telescope, rather a device for inhaling marijuana, will not last as long, but it is more recent.

Barry Bonds faces trial soon and Michael Vick is about to be sprung, proving only that the door swings both ways. The brother, yes, the younger brother of Mark McGwire shops the story that McGwire himself won’t tell, about all of it. Roger Clemens? The muck hardens.
So why do we keep this up, those of us who still have the means to do it, glorifying strength and speed and hand-eye coordination? Caution always come later, and as in the case of the Steroid Decade in baseball, without enthusiasm.

We have let Kobe Bryant back in from his brief exile, a prize for being the best player in basketball, just as Michael Jordan was passed without real scrutiny into his gambling associations.
So, too, will this pass with Phelps, a young hero much over-prized and guilty of little more than having similar appetites of the young. There is no designated punishment for being a disappointment.
The list of Olympic champions is rife with vacated victories, some still fresh from Beijing, those who tested positive for performance enhancers, which, by the way, Phelps has not. There must be examples of swimming after pot but more likely nachos after pot.
It is not that Phelps’ indiscretion is a small corner of the very big picture, it is simply that he is not as represented, and that will be something his marketing folks will have to sort out.

As for Bonds, what has seemed endless almost to the point of piling on is about to reach a resolution. Bonds will be officially condemned or officially forgiven, though in the minds of the world there will always remain only the first one.

Bonds cannot get off any more than Tiger Woods can make us forget how brave and foolish competition can make a man. If Woods never plays golf again or can’t play it as Woods again, there will always be that Sunday in San Diego.
The moments that last, that seem pure and clean, are too few to lose, and so we guard them and scrapbook them and are all the more disappointed when they are soiled. We just never seem to learn to separate the feat from the character, or lack of it.

Bonds must now face an accounting, evidence being notes and recordings and whatever was gleaned from the raid of Bonds’ mother-in-law’s house, all to prove that Bonds lied, not exactly the central concern of the sport that passively allowed him to become the greatest home run hitter of all time.
What baseball wants, and what we want, too, what all sports want, is the promise of innocence, never more represented than in the sleek, shaved body of Phelps, in a sport that washes its heroes as it glorifies them, a sport watched once every four years, and only when a Phelps or a Mark Spitz is doing it.

I have passed through the home town of Super Bowl MVP Santonio Holmes, not the hell hole he described, Belle Glade, Florida. Just another collection of souls and strip malls, supporting agriculture, but no Walmart as he said.

I did not see a single dope seller on any corner, though I may not have passed the right corners, including the one on which Holmes himself confessed to selling drugs. Had it been the reverse, MVP first, drug dealing second, we would be as unforgiving as we are with Phelps.
Timing does matter, then, and the fall is always down, never up.
When Red Smith, then in his 70’s, was asked why he kept writing sports, he answered, “In case I meet another Joe DiMaggio.”

We must keep looking.

Baseball, Biography, Chicago Tribune, Professional

SUTTER’S FINGERS HIS SAVING GRACE

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WEST PALM BEACH, FLA. – Except for enough hair on his face and head to stuff a small mattress, Bruce Sutter is as ordinary as any of us who makes $1.7 million a year working roughly seven or eight minutes a week.

Sutter likes hunting and fishing, ignores exercise and avoids lifting anything heavier than a 5-ounce baseball or a 12-ounce can.

“I get my exercise on the mound,” Sutter said, swabbing off the sweat he had gathered by watching his new Atlanta pitching mates try to advance imaginary baserunners on a remote field at the Braves’ spring-training complex.

When Sutter left St. Louis to gain greater wealth as the most significant free agent of the winter (“What it boiled down to was they didn’t want me anymore,” he said), Cardinals’ manager Whitey Herzog moaned, “I am now 45 games dumber.”

What makes Sutter different from the rest of us, as well as from the 100 or so members of his own fraternity of late-inning game-savers, is the way he holds the baseball.

The first two fingers of Sutter’s right hand look long enough to scratch both ears at the same time. That is a good trick at parties but not something anyone would give him $48 million to do, which the Braves have agreed is fair over the life of Sutter’s new contract–a life that will most likely last longer than his own.

Sutter’s right wrist is long enough to keep him from buying his shirts off the rack. He wraps his fingers around each side of a baseball, snaps his wrist and tickles the underside of the ball with his thumb as he releases it. His thumb ends up between his fingers, just like yours does when you pretend to steal a baby’s nose.

And that, pretty much, is how the forkball is thrown.

“I know the mechanics of the pitch,” said Johnny Sain, the Braves’ pitching coach who has been around Sutter for less than a week, “and I surely know what it does when he throws it. But why it works so well I’m kindly hoping to learn from him myself.”

Good luck. Sutter can show it and will explain it if he’s in the mood, but he is as mystified as the next guy as to what makes the forkball–or the split-fingered fastball–the deadliest pitch since the Sirens sang to Ulysses. “All I know is that it is easy for me to throw,” Sutter said. “I don’t think a lot about it, where my head is or my shoulders are. I wouldn’t make a very good pitching coach.”

Other pitchers have tried it, or so they claim, most notably the staff of the champion Detroit Tigers. But Sutter holds the patent.

“It looks like a fastball, but it’s not,” said Braves’ center-fielder Dale Murphy, who has had as much success hitting it as anybody. “It looks like an off-speed pitch, but it’s not. Usually when you swing at it, it’s not a strike.”

Sutter learned the pitch when he was in the Cubs’ farm system, in Quincy, from the late Fred Martin. Sutter was a 20-year-old prospect who had signed for $500, in contrast to the $500,000 signing bonus the Braves gave him 12 years later.

Sutter remembers Martin showing a group of young pitchers how to throw what he called an off-speed curve. Because of his long fingers and his wrist snap, Sutter realized that he could throw the ball harder than it was meant to be.

What a batter sees when Sutter’s ball comes at him is a fastball that suddenly disappears below his knees.

“When Sutter is pitching well,” said Atlanta’s Bob Horner, “the ball jumps under your bat.”

“It’s kind of like a dry spitter,” Sutter said.

And the beauty of all of this is that Sutter only has to show off when his team is ahead, and for not very long.

“I’ve never pitched for more than five innings in one game in the major leagues,” Sutter said.

Most batters see so little of him, their knowledge of how to hit his pitch relies largely on rumor.

“I have more trouble with slap hitters,” Sutter said. “But they usually bring me in to pitch to the stars in the big situation.

“I only face a hitter maybe three-four times a season, so none of them can really get familiar with the pitch. And I throw it 95 percent of the time. “I’m not an intimidator like a Rich Gossage, where if he has one slip, he could end a guy’s career. Mine is a freak pitch. It goes spiraling in like a football, but I can’t explain it any better than that. I know that when it’s working best, I can’t see it break. And if I’m in the game for more than two innings, we’ve lost.”

Sutter’s value, as with most things in baseball, must be put into numbers. He saved 45 of St. Louis’ 84 victories last season and won 5. No Atlanta relief pitcher had more than 16 saves.

Atlanta lost nine games after leading in the ninth inning; St. Louis lost only two. Had those numbers been reversed, the Braves might or might not have caught San Diego, to whom they finished second, but Ted Turner’s money is saying that they would have.

“I can’t really help a fourth- or fifth-place team,” Sutter said. “I can’t make a team a winner by myself. The team has to be good enough to give me a lead to protect. I think the Braves are that good.”

“The worst feeling you could have,” said Murphy, “was to see Sutter get up in the bullpen. You’d tense up just knowing you had to get some runs before he got into the game.

“Now it’s somebody else’s turn to sweat.”

Baseball, Chicago Tribune, Professional

BASEBALL FINDS A PERFECT GAME

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Arbitration has been a part of baseball for a dozen years now, but that doesn’t make it any easier to explain. It works basically this way.

Baseball players don’t have to ask the owner of the team for a raise. They can ask the government.

One considers the wisdom of this arrangement.

The last time I asked the government for anything–a new driver’s license –I got mail for the next two months trying to sell me plastic seat covers.

The driver’s license came much later under separate cover.

That has been my experience with the machinery of arbitration, and baseball players have my sympathy. I imagine the real reason so many of them never actually sit down with an arbitrator is because they have no idea how to fit seat covers on a Ferrari.

Still, 98 players filed for arbitration this year, preferring the modern method of settling contract disputes to the old way, which served baseball diligently for more than 100 years.

Baseball has always resisted rushing headlong into progress. The guiding creed of baseball is to wait before putting one high-button shoe in front of the other. It took the National Labor Relations Board to change things.

This is how arbitration is supposed to keep order in baseball.

A player takes all of his statistics before a stranger who judges whether they are worth what the player thinks they are.

An owner takes his statistics before a stranger, who is surprised to learn that the owner is talking about the same player who was in just a few minutes before.

Batters show things like runs batted in, hits and runs scored.

Owners show times grounded into double plays, strikeouts and times picked off first base.

Pitchers show earned-run average, victories and strikeouts.

Owners show winning runs allowed, losses and bases on balls.

The arbitrator then figures out who is the poorer liar and makes a decision.

Players and owners used to sort this stuff out between themselves. This was before agents and the NLRB started poking around in the grand old game.

The owner would sip his mint julep and try not to look at his watch while the player made his case, and then the owner would decide how much money the player would get.

This seemed sort of one-sided to the players.

Long arguments and holdouts would result, and the best players would generally get half of what they asked for, while mediocre players would be traded to Cleveland.

Not only are things much more democratic now, thanks to arbitration, but the public gets to watch.

In order for arbitration to work, the arbitrator needs to know how much money players of equal ability and position are making.

The owners provide this information to the players’ union, which passes it along to its members.

The players want to know how much someone else is making so they can ask for at least as much money without blushing.

Before arbitration became an annual February adventure, the only people who knew what ballplayers earned were sportswriters, who had heard the figures from the barber of a front-office secretary’s husband.

This was known, in the business, as a reliable source.

Nobody ever thought of coming right out and asking Carlton Fisk how much money he made. Only golfers, auto racers and jockeys tell us that, and we all know what kind of athletes they are.

Arbitration has removed from baseball any reason to be devious, which has changed a lot of general managers into accountants, not a pretty sight.

The only hitch in all of this is that the arbitrator can decide on only one salary figure, either the player’s or the owner’s.

If, as has been determined from a reliable source, Leon Durham wants $1.1 million and the Cubs only offer $800,000, there can be no compromise at $950,000.

The mere threat of an objective judge deciding on the higher figure tends to cause unreasonable panic in front offices and baseless arrogance in the clubhouse.

What happens is players ask for more money than they think they can get and the owners counter with more money than they think they should pay.

And the ultimate irony is that usually the whole thing is settled without an arbitrator.

The player makes so much money he doesn’t have to play as hard as he did when he was poor, the owner cries poverty and raises ticket prices, which he was always looking for an excuse to do anyhow, and everybody blames the government.

I would say the system is perfect.

Baseball, Chicago Tribune, Professional

‘SUBWAY SERIES’ TAKES FANS FOR RIDE

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Baseball in Chicago is arranged under the tidy assumption that Cub fans and Sox fans will never have to suffer the company of each other except on public transportation or during the odd elevator ride when, for lack of other literature to help endure the trip, they might read one another’s T-shirts.

That is often what passes for literacy among the faithful of each team, neither of whom has ever been fascinated by the alphabet but can tell you in an instant how far behind in the standings the other guy’s team is.

There is a comforting reassurance to this natural order of things, for each fan has not only the success of his own heroes to encourage him, but the failure of his neighbor’s to make him feel better.

It is a wonderful system and one that should be protected for the good of all.

When the Cubs are up and the Sox down, as is the most recent arrangement, some gloating is evident. Cub fans take to wearing pictures of cuddly bears and even the name of the city we all share, while Sox fans are stuck with Eddie Einhorn.

The Cubs’ constituency has always felt it had the advantage in these encounters, having one more letter in its last name than do the modern Sox, who used to have a first and a middle name but have recently lopped off color and place as redundant or too taxing to be read all in one sitting.

The Sox are just the Sox, happily truncated and phonetic, a distinction that is sufficient enough to foster a private superiority over the Cubs. No place name is needed to identify Sox allegiance, and even more than casual inspection will reveal no hint of geography.

The Sox know who they are, and so do their fans, who conveniently ignore the city of Boston and its Sox of a different color, as well as the perpetual error of Noah Webster and his heirs, who insist on spelling Sox funny in the dictionary.

Life progresses through the seasons here with mostly civic tolerance to these differences, and outright violence is infrequent, especially since the Sox again started tucking their shirts in and wearing pants that cover their knees.

The Cubs stay in their warren to the north and the Sox in theirs to the south, at least for now, though the suspicion is growing that the Cubs may move south and the Sox north and west, if you can believe anybody who uses the words “new” and “stadium” in the same sentence.

No matter. The point of all this is to examine an announcement that the two teams will confront one another on the field in 1985, a year that is already racing past us.

Plans have been made to have an exhibition game at Comiskey Park on April 29, a date that would otherwise be left innocently vacant of baseball and could be set aside for something useful.

Next year, the two teams would do the same thing at Wrigley Field, though just when has not been determined.

This would appear to be one swell idea, or two if you count home-and-home games separately. Not so.

The only decent thing the Cubs and Sox can do to satisfy their fans is to meet in the World Series. Both teams would have had to put away the rest of their companions over the long season and set up an authentic showdown.

Meaningless exhibitions will satisfy no one. Some arguments should never be settled for fun, or worse, as appears the case here, for profit.

The Cubs and Sox used to play each other often, and the fact that they haven’t for a while has not resulted in a great outcry for them to resume. In the past, assorted charities benefited from the games, which was at least a noble if predictable excuse.

These games will be played not for the fans, or for charity, but for the Cub and Sox payrolls. The two teams will split the proceeds.

In other words, the Cubs and Sox will be exploiting the fragile emotions of their audience for the money, which reduces the whole thing to the level of wrestling, except no one will know ahead of time who the winner is.

But too many people will care.

Baseball, Chicago Tribune, Football, Professional

Choice Comments for Our Also-rans

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OBVIOUSLY, WHAT THE JOCKS of Chicago could use more than a second chance, or second place, is an all-purpose concession speech.

They need something handy to whip out during those increasingly frequent moments when they are asked, like bronze medalists, why they failed.

If the time should ever arrive when they do not fail, they are on their own, which is not an imminent problem. For now, I am delighted to provide multiple-choice reactions, useful for all teams, seasons and goats, or whichever Chicago animal has been most recently skewered.

The generic apology is always a grand place to start.

“The people I feel sorriest for are (the fans) (Walter) (Coach Ray) (all of the above). We wanted to win it for (them) (him).”

You see how it works. And it works every time.

In moments of extreme stress, the names of Ernie and Gale may come to mind also, and brief sympathy may be earned for invoking Artis or Minnie, but Bull, in the singular or the plural, is too risky to consider.

THE MOST NOBLE of motives having been established, a selection may then be made from the following:

(“We wanted it too much.”) (“We were trying too hard.”) (“The problem, silly us, was overconfidence.”)

Who can argue with effort? Or conviction?

And this is exactly the point where one is tempted to vow, “Wait ’til Next Year.” Not a good idea. Next Year in Chicago can be traced back roughly to the Battle of Hastings, which was lost, according to dispatches, on a routine ground ball to the right side.

Here are the alternate choices:

(“Soon.”) (“Eventually.”) (“Whenever.”)

It was okay when Chicago sports teams were private disappointments, mumbling into a few sympathetic ears, but they have begun to lose with the world watching and must accept a greater responsibility. They must be prepared to impress strangers as well as keeping their own constituency from investigating alternatives, like Wisconsin or suicide, a tough choice.

The Sox, the Cubs and the Bears, in that order, have been maddening teases lately, and the Bulls and the Black Hawks threaten more of the same. The Sting is the exception here and relieves the author from having to translate alibis Teutonically, no small favor.

IN ALL CASES, the best thing to do is cry. Tears can be overdone, but are always effective. In fact, depending on how dramatic the loss is, tears are expected and may have a variety of their own.

(“Sniff.”) (“Sob.”) (“Weeeeaaghhh!”) This last one should be used only by field goal kickers, relief pitchers or insecure foul shooters, and only when the camera is on. Linebackers, power forwards and catchers should hit something obvious. I suggest field goal kickers, relief pitchers or . . . No matter. Losers are expected to be miserable. Otherwise, losing is pointless, no pun intended.

And yet, Chicago has been elevated from the City of Losers to the City of Nonwinners, which ought to be the next thing pointed out.

This notion is easily planted by anyone who can count.

“There are (24) (22) (12) teams that were at home watching us, wishing they could be here.”

Not to be forgotten is the chanciness of it all.

“When you get into the playoffs, it’s all (a roll of the dice anyhow) (the luck of the draw) (the inconclusiveness of a short series).”

“Playoffs are lots of things, all of which rely on (fate) (whim) (luck).”

“There are no losers, only (survivors) (discards.)”

THE MOST AWFUL possibility to consider each time this happens is that there is something wrong with us and not with them. It is an instinct fertilized repeatedly by succeeding generations of heroes who never seem to be enough in talent, commitment or number.

Hence, every Chicago sports failure must be expected to address the tradition of losing. Insensitive oafs will keep bringing that up every time there is a new casualty, as if a broken heart is the only connection between then and now. Explanations tend to be snippy.

(“I wasn’t even born in 1945.”) (“I never saw Doug Atkins play.”) (“They aren’t making Canadians like they used to.”)

That’s okay. It is too frightening to consider that the problem might actually be among ourselves, in the water we drink, the air we breathe, the elevators we ride or, as I suspect, the pizza.