Murray Chass articles about the not-yetness of J.D. Drew’s contract with the Red Sox in the three weeks before January 25: five.
Articles in the week since the final details of the contract were announced: one.
Nonsensical, logically inconsistent suppositions (based, naturally, on anonymous sources) contained in said article by the only baseball beat writer on record who has compared himself to Woodward and Bernstein: one. (”Word out of the Drew camp was it agreed to the out clause to allow the Red Sox’ doctor to save face after a second opinion supposedly found nothing suspicious about Drew’s shoulder. But the final structure of the contract seems to enable Boras to save face because he recommended that Drew walk away from the Dodgers’ deal. Had the Red Sox contract extended the out clause to the final three years, Drew could have wound up with only $28 million.”)
Corrections attached to any of Chass’s Drew-Red Sox articles, despite the on-the-record insistence by the story’s main characters that Chass’s unnamed sources are completely incorrect: Zero.
In other news:
* Schilling wants to see how many up-and-down years he can tack on to the end of his career, declaring he’ll play in 2008. He also says, “”It wouldn’t be in New York. No. I could not make that move.” I love when Red Sox folk heroes lay it on the line and say they’ll never play for the Yankees.
* Phildaelphia Inquirer columnist Jim Salisbury makes the point that revenue sharing is having some not-so-great effects on player salaries and small-market spending. Weird. I feel like I’ve heard something like that before.
* The world of baseball writers can be a pretty clubby place; it’s why I love guys like Keith Law, who think nothing of spanking colleagues for voting for Justin Morneau for MVP: “The reality of baseball is that a great offensive player at an up-the-middle position is substantially more valuable than a slightly better hitter at a corner position. And when that up-the-middle player is one of the best fielders at his position in baseball, there’s absolutely no comparison. Joe Mauer was more valuable than Justin Morneau this past season. … I have a hard time fathoming why any voter would put Morneau at the top of his ballot with so many obviously better candidates — Mauer, Jeter, Ortiz, Jermaine Dye, unanimous Cy Young Award winner Johan Santana or the criminally neglected Carlos Guillen (the best player on the AL pennant winner) — and in reality, more than half the voters did just that.”
Along those same lines, Sunday provided me with a reminder of why I love Bob Ryan. His column about the boneheads who left Ripken and Gwynn off their Hall of Fame ballots is a true classic; it’s not every day a sportswriter calls out his brethren for being, well, retarded. Some choice quotes:
“What if someone actually thought I were one of the eight who didn’t deem Cal a legit Hall of Famer or the 13 who didn’t think Gwynn had done enough to get in? I may not leave the house without a bag over my head.”
“Can you honestly look me in the eye and say that this man should not be in the Hall of Fame? Yes or no?”
“The primary reason, we are often told, is that some members of the voting body have a personal policy not to vote for someone the first year he is eligible. I cannot begin to comprehend the depths of such idiocy.”
“But please don’t think I’m one of them. I did the right thing. I swear.”
Awesome: the man is actually embarrassed that someone might confuse him for someone else from his profession.
So yeah, apparently the Sox and the Rockies are discussing a trade that would bring Todd Helton to Boston. On the one hand, it’s hard to argue with adding a guy with these career numbers: .333 average, .430 OBP, .593 (!) slugging (good for fourth among active players…behind Pujols, Bonds, and Manny ), 286 HRs, 996 RBIs. And a 2-6 of J.D. Drew, Papi, Manny, Helton, and Youks is pretty damn intense. (I know, I know: the Jewish god of Denis Leary routines doesn’t belong in that rarified company, but his pitches-per-at bat would help tire some arms.) On the other hand, the average age of the 2-5 hitters would be over 32, and the Sox would owe those four players a total of 13 years…and the two best players (#24 and #34) going off the books first. Without debating the effect of Coors Field on Helton’s career numbers (and his road splits aren’t nearly as extreme as you’d suspect), he sure as shit ain’t a player on the upside of his career, and even if the Rockies eat about half of the $90 mil he’s owed over the next five years, that’s a lot of cash to be laying out.
What’s so confusing about this is a Helton acquisition would seem to be precisely what the Red Sox have tried so hard not to do: pay lots of money for past-their-prime superstars. That’s Yankee behavior. Meanwhile, the Yankees are trading guys like Sheffield — a formerly prototypical New York pick up that suddenly seems as if he’d fit in perfectly with the Sox mid-to-late 30’s contingent — in favor of prospects. What’s going on here? Is it opposite day (or off-season)? I hope not. I always thought that episode kind of sucked.
I’ve already come clean about my man love for Ben Stein, especially as it relates to his column in the New York Times’s Sunday business section. The current state of American capitalism has been depressed ol’ Ben as of late despite the fact that, as he often reminds us, he’s been incredibly lucky in life, love, and business.
His latest masterpiece (punnily titled “A Hard Rain That’s Falling on Capitalism,” and yes, there are Dylan references throughout) has Stein saying he “feels queasy” as the behavior of the country’s CEO’s. “These misdeeds and many, many more are hammer blows at the granite foundation of trust we built in the 1940s and ’50s. How long democratic capitalism can survive these blows before it gives in and gives birth to revolution or to an out-and-out aristocracy, I am not sure,” he writes. “Empires come and go. Economic systems come and go. There is no heavenly guarantee that capitalism will last forever as we know it. It’s built on man’s notion that he can trust his neighbor with his money, and that if the neighbor misbehaves, the law will chase him and catch him, and that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom, that even the nobles get properly handled (Bob Dylan again) once they have been caught. If that trust disappears — if the system is no longer a system for the ordinary citizen but only for the tough guys — how much longer can the miracle last?”
Yeow. Stein thinks that trust is disappearing. And it scares him. “Each day’s newspaper, it seems, brings more tidings of unrestrained selfishness and self-dealing and rafts of powerful people saying it’s good for us to be robbed if only we truly understood the system,” he says towards the end of the piece. “The problem is, we’re getting to understand it all too well. And there is no one in Washington — absolutely no one — to help.”
Let this sink in for a minute. Ben Stein — capitalism stooge, former Nixon speechwriter, longtime insider — is so disgusted as the state of our current economic system he fears for its future. And this is despite the fact that he’s done well enough to reach this epiphany while floating on his back in his Malibu pool.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
By the end of the day, the Red Sox and J.D. Drew will have signed a contract. (I know at least one person who’s gonna be pretty disappointed by this.) The conspiracy theorists who speculated that the Sox had “come to terms” with Drew merely as a way of greasing the skids with Scott Boras in advance of the Dice-K contract have been proven wrong.
The two sides came to some specific agreements concerning Drew’s surgically repaired shoulder; the deal is similar to the ones the Tigers worked out with Magglio and Pudge. The details are pretty straightforward. Now we can all focus on pitchers and catchers…
Longtime readers will know that Murray ain’t my only obsession; I’ve also been fixated on the notion of process versus results, especially as it relates to baseball (and stock picking). Honestly: who else do you know that could incorporate Robert Rubin’s economic policy and why the Boston media doesn’t write about the positive things happening in Red Sox Nation? (On two seperate occasions, no less?)
There’s a strained way that this relates to Trot Nixon and one of the most discussed at-bats of the 2004 World Series. The scene: Game 4, 3rd inning, bases loaded, 2 out, Sox leading 1-0, Nixon at the plate with a 3-0 count. Jason Marquis serves up a meatball that Trot nails; the ball is mere inches away from being a grand-slam. (The fact that that ball didn’t leave the park speaks to Trot’s diminished power…but I digress.) The Sox were roundly praised for giving Trot the green light on 3-0, especially with Marquis struggling and a walk scoring a run. Except Trot wasn’t given a green light; he simply blew the sign. Taking a pitch was arguably the right move: Marquis was struggling, there was nowhere to put Trot, and Shaggy McShouldaBeenSeriesMVP was on deck. In the end, it didn’t matter, Terry’s a genius, and Trot’s folk-hero status is brought up one more notch. But it’s worth pointing out that the play didn’t go down as planned; it went down despite not being planned…
I know, and I’m sorry for the extended absence. It’s just that I’ve been finishing up an assignment, engaging in the futile/frustrating search for New York real-estate, and planning a wedding. (I know you all care. You can admit it.)
But events have now made it impossible to continue my wormholding for any longer. So be warned: you ain’t never heard a mind as perverted as mine.*
* Note: this is not actually true.
