Category Archives: baseball

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If you were Ozzie Guillen you’d be fired

I like Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen. He’s an old school manager a la Billy Martin — hard-drinking, profane with a high baseball IQ. Politically, he’s not what you’d call bright.

The fracas started over the weekend, when Time magazine published an interview on its website in which the Marlins skipper said he “loved” Castro. “I respect Fidel Castro. You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that [expletive] is still here.”

I’d argue that Ozzie wasn’t praising Castro’s policies, just his tenacity (of course it’s easy to be tenacious when you’re a brutal dictator). If I ran the world I wouldn’t fire Guillen because I think intent matters when it comes to controversies like these.

Unfortunately, most people disagree. Particularly, Miami’s Cuban community, many of whom live in Little Havana, site of the Marlins’ shiny new ballpark. They aren’t forgiving of Castro’s useful idiots, and with good reason.

They also make up a significant portion of the Marlins fan base. The team will pay dearly for Guillen’s remarks.

Imagine if you said something that alienated a large part of your company’s clientele. Would you keep your job?

Probably not.

It’s not a First Amendment issue — Guillen has the right to say whatever he wants. And businesses have the right to fire people who fuck with their bottom line.

It’s an imperfect reality, but consider the alternative. In Cuba Guillen would be exiled, tortured — maybe even killed.

Words matter, sometimes more than they should.

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Bud Selig is an agent of the NFL sent to destroy baseball

I'm tone deaf. Or am I?

The man who’s run the sport I love into the ground must be doing so deliberately. Bud Selig isn’t baseball’s caretaker, he’s its undertaker, responsible for P.R. blunders so staggeringly ignorant they must be intentional.

The latest: disallowing Mets players from donning the caps of the NYPD, FDNY, PAPD and other first responders, as the team did 10 years ago when it returned to the field 9 days after 9/11. Then, as now, MLB said no.

Mets players, then as now, said fuck you, Bud, but this time the Used Car Salesman was prepared to squash any mutiny. According to Mets pitcher R.A. Dickey, Bud’s henchmen literally took the hats from the dugout.

What could have provoked such soulless overreaction? The bottom line, of course. The “official” American flag hats the Mets were mandated to wear, along with every other MLB team, are now available for $36.99 on the league’s official website.

To be fair, Bud needs to hoard every last cent, as he’s largely responsible for turning America’s pastime into little more than a boutique sport. Television ratings have nosedived since he took over in 1992; now the World Series barely outdraws and NFL exhibition game. Attendance is also down through much of the sport, despite baseball’s dishonest calculations.

Under Bud’s watch, the owners of the Cubs, Rangers and Dodgers have declared bankruptcy. The Dodgers, once the gold standard of all professional sports franchises, have been gutted by the team’s heavily leveraged owners, who were endorsed and approved by the Used Car Salesman.

Don’t forget the cancellation of the 1994 World Series. And the steroid scandal.

He’s even partly responsible for George W. Bush’s presidency. Seriously.

Fay Vincent — baseball’s former top dog — relayed a story about how George W. wanted to succeed him as commish. Selig had apparently told Bush he would support his candidacy, but Vincent warned him not to trust Selig.

Vincent was right. Bud wanted the job for himself and the owners wanted someone who wouldn’t act independently.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, Bud claims he’s presiding over baseball’s golden age. No surprise, since shameless propaganda is the trademark of  enemy agents.

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ATLmalcontent’s Person(s) of the Year

My choices didn’t end war, cure pestilence or even excel in their chosen profession. But MLB umpire Jim Joyce and unheralded Detroit Tigers starting pitcher Armando Galarraga demonstrated rarely seen class earlier this summer, betraying the newly treasured American tendencies of hollow apologies and victimhood. Man up, they did.

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Host is not a verb

From an early age, I had two (seemingly unrelated) passions: newspapers and baseball.

When I was 16, I scored an interview for a sports clerk’s position at my local newspaper. After the standard queries, my future boss, SKA, asked me which team former big league catcher Bob Boone, who shares my surname, played for. I knew the job was mine. SKA wanted two things: competence and baseball literacy, a tall order in the heart of (college) football country.

SKA could be intimidating, and you best not pet his peeves: “1. Host is not a verb!; 2. Host is not a verb!!; 3. HOST IS NOT A FUCKING VERB!!!” I learned. He wasn’t a role model, but a harbinger.

I didn’t realize it until today when I read SKA’s latest Facebook dispatch:

I’ll never understand the Bobby Cox haters. Fourteen straight flags, 2,500 wins, Atlanta’s only championship and brilliant job this year getting an undernourished roster through a pennant race. Yet it’s never enough for the bandwagon goobers who think baseball is the same as high school football and if you don’t win it… all every year, you suck. Those who know nothing about the sport should shut up.

“In return for liking this status, I’d like for you to say something positive about soccer,” wrote a commenter.

OK, it ain’t high school freaking football, how ’bout that? Or worse, college football. There’s no BCS, they don’t schedule Eastern Southwestern Podunk State for homecoming and the mascots don’t try to dry hump each other in the end zone while there are perfectly suitable cheerleaders nearby for such purpose. And at least soccer doesn’t exist for the sole purpose of letting middle-aged Winnebago pilots get shitfaced every Saturday on a college campus, a place many have never been during the week when actual classes are in session. I’m just sayin’.

We also share a volcanic, though harmless — and often humorous — temper. But I still have my hair.

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Why is Limbaugh obsessed with race?

“That cracker made a lot of African-American millionaires,” the radio commentator said Tuesday on his show after the New York Yankees owner died at age 80. “He fired a bunch of white guys as managers left and right.”

I know he was being facetious, but why bring it up in the first place? Seems to me Limbaugh is the one seeing the world through a racial lens.

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hypocrisy in sports coverage

Don’t interpret this as a defense of A-Roid, but why are football players who’ve been caught juicing never held to account?

Rodney Harrison and Shawne Merriman are two of the NFL’s best defenders, and neither player’s career has been tainted by revelations of steroid abuse.

They’re not household names, but you’ll notice the sports media always seems to excuse the sainted NFL. Same with Congress (though it has no business getting involved in either sport).

Does anyone doubt that PED’s are as pervasive in football as they were in baseball?

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you won’t be reading any memorable essays about the arizona cardinals

I’m not sure if it’s a consensus, but a lot of people will tell you baseball is boring.

Just as many say they find reading a book taxing.

Neither provides instant gratification, like football or a Bond flick.

So I guess it’s natural that baseball has often served as muse for great writers. Take this this classic essay by the late John Updike:

Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs—hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn’t tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted “We want Ted” for minutes after he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.

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wanted: a surly giant to do my bidding

Your mission: Head to Turner Field and start punching everyone with a Cubs hat or jersey. Men, women, children … it doesn’t matter. They deserve it.

Well, not really. The ones who actually hail from the Windy City or nearby are exempt. After all, I remained a Braves fan while living in L.A. — not because the Braves were trendy at the time. I was born and raised with the team, and I’m loyal.

Unlike many Atlantans. Let’s face it: as pro sports towns go, we’re the worst. When the Hawks played the Lakers last winter, two-thirds of the crowd wore purple and gold. They chanted “MVP” every time Kobe Bryant went to the free throw line. They booed when the Hawks scored.

I doubt there’s 10,000 native Southern Californians living in Atlanta; maybe five percent of that Hawks crowd hailed from L.A. So why so many Lakers fans?

‘Cause they’re hip. They’re trendy. You don’t see 10,000 Dodger fans at Turner Field. But you will see 20,000 Cubs fans tonight and tomorrow at The Ted, er, Wrigley South. They are the same people who watch “American Idol” and read John Grisham novels.

They have no soul, and they deserve to be beat up by a surly giant willing to satisfy my bloodlust.

Lacking that, I’ll settle for this appropriately profane tirade delivered 25 years ago by then-Cubs manager Lee Elia (they oughta replay this on the giant screen at Turner Field tonight and every time the Cubs come to town):

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“braves win! braves win! braves win! braves win … braves win!!”

Cabrera hits, Sid slides, Braves win (Skip’s signature call).

I was at that game, so I didn’t hear the radio broadcast. Fortunately it was replayed repeatedly as I drove home that night, and I remember screaming and pumping my fist, as euphoric as I’ve ever been. Even shed a few tears. Ridiculous, perhaps, but Braves fans will understand.

(Cynics are embarrassingly sentimental.)

When I arrived in Athens around 2 in the morning, the streets were still lined with fans. I drove down College Ave., high-fiving the assorted drunks.

“I was there. I was there!” I bragged.

Thanks to Skip’s call, so were they.