Really, Baron?

In the aftermath of Mark McGwire's non-shocking admission this week, Baron Budhausen had this to say:

The use of steroids and amphetamines amongst today’s players has greatly subsided and is virtually nonexistent, as our testing results have shown. The so-called steroid era — a reference that is resented by the many players who played in that era and never touched the substances — is clearly a thing of the past, and Mark’s admission today is another step in the right direction.

Really, Baron? The Steroid Era is a "thing of the past?"

I think the Baron needs to accept a bit of wisdom from William Faulkner (perhaps the greatest American writer from south of the Mason-Dixon Line): The past is never dead. It's not even past.

Part of the reason we're still having this discussion is because very few people -- owners, players, fans, and media -- were willing to talk about the prevelance of steroid and other PEDs in the late '80s and early '90s.

Oh, we're willing to kvetch about it now. But in real time, too many of us (and, yes, I'm including myself in that mix) were having too much fun to worry about it in real time.

We'll be talking about 'roids in 2020. The Baron is dumb if he thinks otherwise.

Jeebus Help Me

I considered not blogging about this, because I'm making a more concerted effort to stay positive and not carp on every little thing that annoys me. But I'm weak, so you get a poorly-constructed blog entry about the latest piece of sh$t to spew from the Tower.

Jim's already compared Mike Downey to the drunk guy two barstools down from you at the Copper Grid (or your favorite dive bar).

Downey's done nothing to dissuade me from the veracity of Jim's take with his missive from a few days ago. Gentle Reader, if you are of stout heart and have a super-human tolerance for crap (and you must, since you're still reading this) click this link for what might be the most embarassing thing ever published by the same paper that once employed Ring Lardner, Mike Royko, and Jerome Holtzman. Well, most embarassing thing this month, that is.

In an effort to explain how this kind of drivel makes its way into print, I will employ the same pseudo-clever, fake Q-and-A format Downey used in the ten minutes it took him to write this sorry-ass excuse for a column. Hey, if it's good enough for a Hall of Fame-ballot-totin' columnist at a major metropolitan daily, it's good enough for some guy in his basement...

So, Mike, are you pleased with how that Clemens piece came out?

Hell, yeah! Knocked it out of the park!

Why the Q-and-A format? And why the know-it-all tone, which served only to insult both your subject matter and your audience?

The answer to both is that I'm incredibly lazy and didn't feel like making an effort. My boss told me I had to fill 600 words. And, by God, I did!

Fair enough. This question is for you, Mike Kellams. You are editor of the Tribune's sports section. How could you wave this steaming pile into print?

Well, I'm incredibly lazy, too. And I didn't feel like making an effort to make Mike make an effort. It was either print Mike's piece or have a big chunk of white space on the front page of the sports section.

Jeebus help me, you lot make me sick. How do you sleep at night?

Like babies.

Where, Indeed?

Big Mouth came out today and said that Carlos Zambrano is his BFF. And he's got no time for anyone who was dissin' his man earlier this year:

It's also true he [Zambrano] seems to struggle early every season. But it's well worth the wait when he comes out of hibernation. He started this season 4-4 with a 5.61 earned-run average. Remember the public gnashing of teeth?

In his last 10 starts, he is 7-3 with a 2.29 ERA. Where are the teeth-gnashers now?

Let's set the Way-Back Machine for 2 June 2007. Those happy few who purchased a copy of that day's Tribune found this nugget of joy waiting for them:

Given the way Zambrano unraveled before our eyes, turning Barrett into both a scapegoat and a punching bag in a shamefully unprofessional display -- and yes, also that 5.62 earned-run average he is lugging around -- there's no way for the Cubs to justify giving him the five-year, $75-million contract he should have had in his pocket long ago. Not anymore.

With that being the case, it's time to trade him and clear the decks for next year's free agent signings.

That was from Dr. Phil. Scanning a few inches up and to the left on page four of that day's sports section gave you this profound insight:

Zambrano is among the best pitchers in baseball, but he has looked like just another guy the first two months of the season. He's 5-5. The Braves had 20 hits Friday, 13 of them against Zambrano.

Zambrano is supposed to be better than this. Instead, he has a bad habit of zoning out for an inning or two every game. Aces win games. They don't stand on the mound wondering whether Batman could beat up Superman, or whatever it is Zambrano thinks about when he loses track of things.

He turned 26 Friday. He's not a kid anymore.

You'll never guess who wrote that. Actually, you won't guess, 'cause I'm gonna tell you. It was Big Mouth.

Unfortunately, online records from the first week of June are spotty at best, so no links are available. Go to your local public library and pull the microfiche and look for yourself.

So where are the teeth-gnashers now? A few of them are sitting in Tribune Tower, trying their hardest to disappear their strongly-held opinions of June.

And one more thing -- Batman could so totally kick Superman's ass. Partly because Supes is a stand-up guy who believes in fair play, while Batman is a sociopath who will do anything to win. But mostly because Batman carries around kryptonite for just such a contingency...

Call the Waaaah-mbulance

Shorter Mike Downey: It's just not fair that reporters get fired for making up stories, enjoying pool parties with their sources, and calling young women prostitutes! After all, athletes get in fights in the dugout, cork their bats, and call other reporters f@gg*t and they don't get fired.

This post is only tangentially about baseball, but it's a great example of how your press corps works. Downey's column nominally expresses outrage that these pampered athletes get away with murder ("or at least assault," he waggishly says), while "Average Joes" get canned for much lesser offenses.

His case would be more persuasive if he spent some time talking about those "Average Joes." Instead, every one of his examples was a print or broadcast journalist whose transgressions were on par with the sins of those privileged athletes.

And Downey goes on to claim that famed New York Times fiction correspondent Jayson Blair isn't any worse than Corky Sosa and that Ozzie's homophobic slur was just as bad as Don Imus' wacky brand of racist, sexist "humor."

Perhaps most incredibly, Downey is shocked that a TV news reporter covering a local woman's disappearance can't chill by the pool with said woman's husband (who, it turns out, is a person of interest in the police inquiries) without generating a Vortex of Armageddon™ at the same time bad, evil, naughty Carlos Zambrano gets away scot-free after punching out his catcher.

Are athletes given breaks that the rest of us mere mortals aren't offered? Of course. And so are the journamalists Downey defends in his self-serving piece.

But Downey isn't interested in telling us about the perks he and his cohort enjoy. Neither is he interested in the "Average Joes" he panders to. He just wants them to undersand how unfair the world is.

Don, Jayson, and Amy got canned -- but Sammy, Carlos, and Ozzie got to keep their gig. What a world, what a world!

Deal Him Out

The Cubs have been on the market for about a fortnight. To go with the speculation over who’s going to buy the team, we’re treated to speculation about who won’t buy the team.

Here’s Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal:

I've got a better chance of winning a Nobel Prize than Mark Cuban does of owning the Cubs.

The fix is in, and the Cubs aren't even on the market yet. The fix is in, just as it always is under commissioner Bud Selig when a club is sold.

The Cubs' next ownership group will feature an MLB insider, or someone connected to an MLB insider, or someone who used to be an MLB insider and wants back in.

It sure as heck won't be the maverick Cuban, who would be about as welcome at an MLB owners' meeting as Brad Pitt would be at an Aniston family reunion.

How do we know?

Because Jerry Reinsdorf, the White Sox's influential owner, tells us so.

Reinsdorf, who also owns the Chicago Bulls, hinted to the Chicago Tribune that he would work against Cuban, his fellow NBA owner.

"It is a matter of public record that when Cuban was approved to buy the Dallas Mavericks, the vote was 29-1," Reinsdorf said.

Is it too much to hope that MLB owners wait for people to actually express interest in buying a team before they start bad-mouthing them? I guess it is…

They Write Letters

It seems I wasn’t the only one moved to dark, mordant chuckling over Dave van Dyck’s wailing and gnashing of teeth over the relocated press box at U.S. Cellular Field. The eds at the Tower saw fit to print two letters from readers taking our wayward press to task for their whining.

The first, from T. Bron in Tinley Park IL, says:

Those complaining writers would do well to remember that many of their readers can’t afford to attend more than a couple of White Sox games a year. They also ought to realize that some of their colleagues cover things in the real world, like the war in Iraq, and I doubt they’re doing it on wall-to-wall flat-screen TVs.

Suck it up, guys, and count your blessings.

In fairness, T, the press corps have already done the first part of your directive – they do, in fact, suck.

And Brian Hughes of Chicago checks in with this:

So the White Sox’s decision to move the press box to a less desirable location isn’t going over too big with the press. Who cares? Why don’t they buy a pair of binoculars like I have to when I sit in the seat that I paid for, along with parking, food, and beer?

What are these guys going to complain about next – the shrimp cocktail wasn’t cold enough at the free pregame luncheon?

Bwa-ha-ha! Kudos to you Brian – although I have often referenced the free spread available for our hungry journamalists, the shrimp cocktail is the perfect detail to illustrate this particular folly. Wish I had thought of that.

Unfortunately, all good things come to an end. Glenview’s Chip Marshall gets in what I’m sure will be the first of many takes on this subject:

For the life of me, and as a long-suffering Cubs fan, I still can’t fathom the logic behind Cubs general manager Jim Hendry’s decision to trade [Greg] Maddux for [Cesar] Izturis during the 2006 season, perhaps the worst in memory. Bad enough the Cubs organization let the future Hall of Famer get away at the onset of his prime, via free agency, for nothing in return. Worse yet might be allowing Maddux to escape a second time with very little if anything to show for it.

I agree with Chip that Izturis does qualify as “very little if anything.”

However, he must have a very short memory. Or perhaps he is very young. There are several years that immediately spring to mind as being worse for my heroes than 2006. Like this one. Or perhaps this one. And this one. And for fans of a certain age, these three seasons will bring back cringe-worthy memories.

Chip, if you’re a Cubs Fan, you should know one absolute truth: it can always get worse.

But Chip’s more egregious statement is his assertion that the Cubs “let” Maddux depart as a free agent after the 1992 season. Perhaps this is also a function of his lack of long-term memory.

In the fifteen years that have passed between then and now, the predominant media script of the Maddux negotiations is that Cubs GM Larry Himes was a jerk who hardly made an effort to keep the Cy Young Award winner. While Himes was indeed a jerk, to say he “let” Maddux go is a gross misrepresentation of what happened.

If you look at the real-time reporting, you will see that Himes tried to get Maddux signed throughout the ’92 season, at one point offering the largest contract the team had ever given a pitcher. And if you look at what Maddux was saying in real-time, you don’t need to be a mind-reader to get the feeling that he didn’t want to come back.

I’ve threatened to do this before, but now I think I’ll go back through the archives and examine this subject in more detail. Like all scripts, if offers a pleasing tale. And like all scripts, it plays the fans for rubes. Himes did plenty to find fault with; we shouldn’t have to make stuff up in order to prove what a weasel he was…

Great Googaly Moogaly Part 2

TRIBUNE TO SELL CHICAGO CUBS FOLLOWING 2007 BASEBALL SEASON
25% Interest in Comcast SportsNet Chicago Also to be Sold

CHICAGO, April 2, 2007—Tribune Company (NYSE:TRB) announced today that it plans to sell the Chicago Cubs and the company’s 25 percent interest in Comcast SportsNet Chicago after the conclusion of the 2007 baseball season. The sale is expected to be completed in this year’s fourth quarter.

"The Cubs have been an important part of Tribune for more than 25 years and are one of the most storied franchises in all of sports," said Dennis FitzSimons, Tribune chairman, president and chief executive officer. "In our last season of ownership, the team has one mission, and that is to win for our great fans."

I'll go out on a limb right now and predict that whoever buys the team will be denounced as a moron within forty-eight hours of the sale...

UPDATE: The message board at Chicago Sports.com is open on this subject. Unsurprisingly, White Sox Fans are the first to post. And here I'd been told for years that it was Cub Fans who were rude and unemployed...

Shorter Baron Budhausen

With all the competitive balance we've got nowadays, everything's hunky-dory for MLB. And all the revenue-sharing has money pouring into the coffers of teams like the Twins, Expos, and Marlins. But despite of all that revenue-sharing money, there's no way those teams can survive without taxpayer-funded stadiums.

New Math

Here's a nugget of joy from Dr. Phil:

MLB accepted a seven-year, $700 million deal with DirecTV seemingly without considering that it had in effect taken access to the game away from potentially millions of its most passionate fans—specifically, the transplants who have moved away from their hometowns but still live and die with their teams. [emphasis mine]

Millions of fans? That's funny -- I see in a sidebar right next to Dr. Phil's article that there were a total of 500,000 subscribers to Extra Innings last year.

"Potentially" is one of those weasel words that writers like to use in order to puff up their arguments. And before you ask, yes, I will cop to using similar tactics in my own work. It's an old, useful trick.

But it's also weaselly. Dr. Phil will rush to tell you that the DirecTV deal will mean that millions of people who may or may not want the package will not be able to get Extra Innings. You have to read the Trib sidebar to see that 230,000 subscribers got their baseball fix with cable or the Dish Network. There's nothing potential about that lot. They're the folks who will be left out, unless they change their providers.

230,00 is a pretty big number. But apparently not big or impressive enough for some...

Give a Hoot – Read!

Contrary to popular belief, I do take an interest in the world outside of baseball. And when I want to catch up on that world, there’s nothing like settling down with The New Yorker.

But there’s nothing quite like settling down with The New Yorker and discovering that the worlds inside and outside baseball intersect in unexpected ways. Like in the 19 March 2007 issue, which includes a profile of attorney Harley Lewin by staff writer Larissa MacFarquhar (no link, sorry – the folks at The New Yorker don’t keep archives on line).

Lewin is a lawyer specializing in copyright infringement. If you’ve ever bought a “Gucci” purse off the back of a truck on Canal Street in New York, Lewin is probably on the trail of the guy who’s supplying goods to the truck driver.

It’s an interesting read, made even more so by its tangential connection to the world of baseball:

A few years later, Reebok told Harley that it was having sneaker problems down at the border. Counterfeit shoes had been showing up all over Arizona and Texas and Southern California and that company had decided the problem was Mexico. “Conventional wisdom was you didn’t go near Mexico,” Harley says. “It was dangerous, it was drugs, it was corruption. I, of course, didn’t know that.” After some nosing around, he figured out that something like half the counterfeit shoes in Mexico could be traced to a guy named Byron McLaughlin, who lived just over the border in a suburb of San Diego. Byron McLaughlin had been a major-league baseball player in the seventies and early eighties—he had pitched for the Seattle Mariners – but in the mid-eighties his career foundered and he started playing in the Mexican leagues. He made a deal with a couple of Korean companies to manufacture cheap counterfeit sneakers – Reebok, Converse, Vans, Adidas – for the Mexican market. By the time Harley caught up with him, his business was booming: in a good month he would sell around eighty thousand pairs of sneakers for about three-quarters of a million dollars. (As Footwear News reported, McLaughlin pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges but fled the country before sentencing and is believed to be living near Cannes).

Note to Mariner Fans visiting today – now you know why ol’ Byron hasn’t shown up for any old-timers days lately…

Congratulations, Baron Budhausen

This just in.


Well done, Baron! All those years, of lying, deceiving, bullying, shakedowns, and looking the other way have finally paid off!

It must have been that "This Time It Counts!" thing that tipped the scales for you.