Friday, June 27, 2008

More Baseball Quickies

1. I am goddamn sick and tired of people unleashing their inner Republican every time an athlete makes a mistake. In some cases, yes, a law-and-order point of view is totally warranted. Trying to bring a handgun through airport security? You’re an irresponsible asshole and you deserve to be punished. Beat your girlfriend and stiffed her on child support payments? You should be locked up for a few months until you realize that real men don’t beat on women. Beat up your GM? You ought to...



What Shawn Chacon did was irrational and extreme. One should only resort to physical violence in self-defense. But Pearlman’s article is offensive. Why is this guy insulting Chacon? Why is he calling him names? When did we forget that there are two sides to every story? Just as Chacon was totally wrong for throwing his boss to the ground, Ed Wade was way out of line in his tone with the pitcher. You can’t talk to people that way. You can’t demean your employees and curse at them.

I don’t condone violence but I also don’t condone employers being verbally abusive in the workplace. In some twisted way, Ed Wade (and PJ Carlessimo before him) got what they deserved. They’ll remember their run-ins the next time they decide to use their position of authority to talk down to their employees.

And to Jeff Pearlman I simply say this: John Rocker is an asshole, but he’d have had every right to clean your clock, you self-righteous little shit.

2. I’ve railed time and again that MLB has a different standard of treatment for the Yankees. Because the Yankees are good for business – both attendance and TV ratings alike – I’ve noticed that they are given an inordinate amount of night games. Now, as a person who works during the day, I don’t mind getting home knowing that most of the weekday games are on after I get home from work. But from a labor justice point of view, this is pretty unfair.

Case in point, the Yankees recently played an interleague series with the Pittsburgh Pirates. This will likely be one of the only times (if not the only time) the Pirates are able to sell out PNC Field. The Yanks have a day/night doubleheader scheduled today against the New York Mets. The first game (2:05 pm) will be at Yankee Stadium and will be a makeup of the rain-cancelled game originally scheduled for May 16th. The second game (8:05 pm) will be at Shea Stadium and will kick off the normal three game “road” portion of the series for the Yanks.

At any point over the last month, MLB could’ve moved up the start of last night’s finale in Pittsburgh from 7:05 pm to 4:05 pm and still guaranteed a better-than-average turnout for the Pirates. Moving up last night’s game would’ve allowed the Yanks to leave Pittsburgh at a decent hour in order to prepare for today’s taxing doubleheader. Further complicating matters is the fact that last night’s game had a 2.5 hour rain delay before the game was finally cancelled. So not only did the Yanks have to stick around Pittsburgh knowing that they’d get back to New York in the wee hours, they had to sit through a rain delay only for them to be forced to come back on an off-day on July 10th.

Other teams are given “getaway” games at earlier hours. Considering the fact that MLB has known about the Yanks tight schedule for a month, it would’ve been the right thing to do to let the Yanks play earlier on Thursday.

I’m tired of the Yanks being used as baseball’s meal-ticket. I’m tired of every other team taking advantage of what a home series against the Yanks means to their bottom line. There needs to be a tradeoff. You either take our money (revenue sharing/luxury tax) or you schedule games more equitably for the Yanks. Why should the Yankee players suffer one iota so that rich owners in other cities can get richer?

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