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Torii Hunter made some comments recently that raised a few eyebrows, when he called Latino players “imposters” who are not black in a story published by USA Today:
“People see dark faces out there, and the perception is that they’re African-American. They’re not us. They’re impostors. Even people I know come up and say: ‘Hey, what color is Vladimir Guerrero? Is he a black player?’ I say, ‘Come on, he’s Dominican. He’s not black.’ …
While he admitted that it was poor word choice, he declined to apologize for the comments. And to be honest, I don’t think he has to apologize–in fact, when in the Dominican a few years back, I had a tour guide pointedly tell me that the reason that he disliked the Haitian kids that were begging us tourists for a dollar was because they were black, unlike him. So I think a lot (if not all) Latino players would agree that they are not black–meaning, as he indicated, that the only problem with Hunter’s statements would be the use of that word “imposter.”
Aside from that, though, I think that Hunter did touch on one subject that is probably going to be an increasing problem with the way MLB is structured–especially if Latino players do actually “Take over [the game],” as Ozzie Guillen said in response to Hunter.
It’s been what, three weeks since pitchers and catchers started reporting to camps in Florida and Arizona?
And while I’m not following it all that closely yet one thing is conspicuously absent this spring: Things are awfully quiet with the New York Yankees.
This year around this time news of Alex Rodriguez’ past positive steroid test came to light.
Around that time there was also news of the hip injury that cost A-Rod’s the first month of his season, though it also got him out of the spotlight for awhile.
There was a constant buzz through the offseason about how Joe Girardi would do replacing Joe Torre as manager.
Throughout the offseason there was plenty of coverage of the Yankees’ maneuverings through free agency, which amounted to about a half-billion in guaranteed salaries for CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira during a time when most other teams in the league were pinching pennies.
What a difference a week makes.
A few days ago I was thinking of writing a post praising the Minnesota Twins for being aggressive and filling nearly every hole in the team’s lineup heading into year one at Target Field.
I never quite got around to that post. And Tuesday morning the Twins’ fortunes took a dramatic turn for the worse when the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that closer Joe Nathan is likely out for the year with a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow.
In addition to the new ballpark, the offseason acquisitions of Orlando Hudson, Jim Thome, JJ Hardy and the Winter League performance of Francisco Liriano had enthusiasm higher than I ever recall it heading into Spring Training. The mood on Minneapolis sports talk radio is decidedly more sanguine this morning. The Nathan injury is huge. He had some struggles at the end of the 2009 season but his numbers still put him well among the league’s elite closers.
Inside the organization the Twins did some work to solidify the bullpen late last season and during the offseason. Guys like Jon Rauch (from Arizona) and Clay Condrey (from Philadelphia) join holdovers Matt Guerrier, Jesse Crain, Jose Mijares, and Pat Neshek, who is returning from arm problems of his own, give the team the deepest mid-innings relief corps it’s had in years.
Brushbackpitch.com last night wrote that the Pittsburgh Pirates continue to be an aimless joke of an organization. They proved that true over the weekend by non-tendering Matt Capps, a reliever who before 2009 had three solid seasons pitching out of the Pirates’ bullpen.
General manager Neal Huntington furthered the ridicule he and the rest of the Pirates organization should receive by blaming the media for the move.
Yes, in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette Sunday, Huntington is quoted saying all trade talks for Capps dried up after the paper reported the week before that there was a possibility the team could non-tender Capps.
Sorry Mr. Huntington. That excuse is pathetic. Every team gets media scrutiny during the winter meetings and throughout the season, most probably more than the Pirates. Making your decisions based on a couple paragraphs in the local newspaper is short-sighted and dumb.
Among his other lines, according to the story: “It’s not that hard to replace a reliever with an ERA of 5.00 or 6.00.”
Do you think some injuries might have had something to do with his struggles last season? Did he warrant a contract somewhere between what he would have gotten on the open market and what the cheap Pirates organization was likely unwilling to pay?
The fact of the matter is this: The Pirates have been pathetic for two decades. They have never been more pathetic and aimless than they are right now. And a blind person throwing darts could have made the personnel moves you have the last two seasons and not missed at as high a percentage.
Pirates fans should be livid by how this organization has been run in recent years. But the sad simple fact of the matter is they are probably too bored or resigned at this point to care.
What a putrid joke.
There are Major League Baseball teams that can only compete for a couple years at a time or every few years because despite Commissioner Bud Selig’s best efforts to play up the league’s new, pretend “competitive balance” they can’t keep all their good players from leaving for large-budget teams when they reach free agency.
Those teams often overlap with other teams that can’t compete because their ballparks simply don’t produce enough revenue to keep up with the Red Sox and the Yankees, who just successfully bought their latest World Series championship.
Finally, there are teams who might fall into either of the previous categories but who really can only blame their own organizational and management ineptitude.
The Pittsburgh Pirates, as we’ve written before and will write again, have once again fallen into that category. The fans in the Steel City have had little reason for nearly two decades to maintain any optimism about this team, despite ponying up a few years ago to build one of the nicest new ballparks in the country.
Two years ago the Pirates were coming off one of the few promising seasons they’d had – they still posted a losing record but they had several young players at key positions entering 2008. By the All-Star Break in 2009 they had traded or otherwise gotten rid of seven of eight position players and several members of the pitching staff as well.
The 2009 season included trading Nate McLouth for prospects among other transactions that moved players around but did little to show the organization actually has a plan for getting better in the long term.
The Pirates’ latest blunder was non-tendering Matt Capps. Capps is coming off a bad, injury-riddled season no question. But for the three seasons before that Capps put up good-to-great numbers as both a setup man and closer. As he heads into his arbitration years he deserved better from the organization than this sudden boot. And the fans continue to deserve better than an organization that seems unwilling to pay anybody to get into their money years with the team.
After dominating the Twins and Angels in the early rounds of the American League playoffs, Alex Rodriguez’ postseason failings have resurfaced during the first two games of the Fall Classic.
Rodriguez is 0-8 with six strikeouts against Philadelphia so far.
His lack of contribution in game one helped the Phillies steal the first game. Luckily for him – and Yankes fans, starved for a winner after a whole decade without a World Series championship – three high-priced Bronx Bomber free agent acquisitions from this year and years past helped the Yanks salvage game two.
Matsui, a Yankee since signing a $21 million, three-year contract in 2001, led the team with a 2-3 night that included a home run and a walk.
Two of this year’s $423.5 million trio of free agents also came up big tonight. Mark Teixeira, who signed an eight-year, $180 million contract back in December, also homered.
A.J. Burnett, who signed a five-year, $82.5 million contract a few days after Teixeira (paltry by Yankees standards, probably because of the injury risk he carries), threw seven strong innings. He gave up just one run and struck out nine.
Those performances loomed large tonight after the highest of the high-paid free agents, CC Sabathia (seven years, $160 million – how do you think Burnett feels about that after tonight), pitched seven strong innings but was bested by Cliff Lee on Wednesday night.
For the record, players the Yankees actually developed (Derek Jeter, Robinson Cano, Brett Gardner, Melky Cabrera and Jorge Posada – or just under half of the 11 position players who played tonight) went a combined 4-13 with one run and one RBI. Mariano Rivera pitched two innings for the save.
(Johnny Damon, who the Yanks lured away from the rival Red Sox for a $52 million, four-year deal in 2005, went 0-4.)
So the high-buck Yankees salvaged the split as the series heads to Philadelphia where the slightly less high-salaried Phillies will host the next three games starting Saturday.
Can’t hardly wait.
Congratulations to the New York Yankees. After going a decade without winning a World Series, watching the rival Red Sox win two and missing the playoffs in 2008 for the first time since 1995, the Bronx Bombers abandoned – or at least set aside – their plans to build with their own prospects.
$423.5 million and three of the top free agents on the market last offseason later they’re back in the World Series.
Congratulations, Yankees. You opened your pocketbooks to the point where it would have been almost impossible for you to screw it up. And I’m guessing you’ll win the Fall “Classic” in five games at most.
I’m typically not a fan of the frivolous ways people use the U.S. court system. They sue when they burn themselves after not checking the lid on their McDonald’s coffee or when an incorrect weather report allegedly results in someone catching the flu because they dressed too lightly.
But a woman who sued the Philadelphia Phillies when the team played a switcheroo on her 12-year-old daughter after the girl caught Ryan Howard’s 200th homerun ball …
Well, I think it’s too bad it got to the point where the family took legal action, but shame on the Phillies and on Howard for taking advantage of a naive kid to get the slugger his souvenir ball.
According to CNN, after the girl caught the ball a Florida Marlins representative took her to the Phillies’ clubhouse where a Philadelphia rep told the child and her brother that if she left the ball she could have Howard sign it. When she returned with her grandfather after the game, the team provided her with a ball signed by Howard, but not the original ball.
First off, it’s commonplace for fans to trade landmark balls back to players for different merchandise. Otherwise the fans have the option of taking the balls onto the open market. According to the CNN story, the Howard ball might have been worth a couple thousand dollars at most.
But quotes in the story make it sound like the girl, Jennifer Valdivia, wanted the ball more for sentimental reasons. And that also is her right.
So, again, shame on the Phillies for taking advantage of the girl and her family by playing the switcheroo. Shame on Howard for not meeting with her to sign the ball – or offer her some alternative such as a game-used bat or another ball signed by Howard. He had the chance to create a fan for life – and possibly get his ball back in the process.
But instead Howard and the team played the role of bully. And so yes, I am glad the family got a lawyer and filed suit. When notified that the girl and her lawyer were seeking the ball and compensation in excess of $15,000 Valdivia got her ball back.
Chalk one up for the little gal in this case. And thank you Phillies for making my rooting interest in your playoff series easy. Go Rockies.
Watching Sports Center this morning, to see if ESPN actually manages to cover a baseball game between two teams in flyover country–which may have been the best game of the 2009 season. And, as normally happens on the rare occasions I tune in, I’m reminded of just why I hate what Sports Center (and ESPN in general) has become.
It’s bad enough that during Sports Center–the show that made its claim to fame by showing highlight after highlight of virtually all of the previous day’s sporting events–from the big game to the largely irrelevant ones–was repeatedly pimping their story on the history of the Pie to the Face in Major League Baseball.
Truly ground breaking sports journalism there.
But on top of that, they once again managed to put their ESPyaNkees slant on things–in the story preview sidebar, they managed to squeeze in a headline as a lead in to the story, entitled “Yankees Walkoffs.”
That’s right, they took a stupid story, and put the Yankees spin on it, because apparently Yankees starting pitcher AJ Burnett has pied several players in the face this season after walkoff wins, including Melky Cabrera, Alex Rodriguez, Johnny Damon, and some rookie catcher that was a September call-up (Francisco Cervelli maybe? I was so enthralled by the thought, time and effort put into the piece that I missed the name).
Glad I can once again go six months without checking out Sports Center…
Fredi Gonzalez took a young, inconsistent team with a $36 million payroll and won 87 games during the 2009 season, good for second place in the National League East.
His reward? Florida Marlins officials reportedly talked with Howard Johnson about a position with the organization and rumors are spreading that Gonzalez may be fired.
Owner Jeffrey Loria, a frequent target of Brushbackpitch.com for being the cheapest owner in Major League Baseball, actually believes this team underachieved, according to SportsIllustrated.com’s Jon Heyman.
“We don’t talk about rumors; we never have,” team President David Samson reportedly told reporters after the game, according to a story at the team’s MLB.com site. “The answer is after every season we always evaluate everyone, so that is normal. We’re all disappointed. Certainly, winning 87 or 88 games is a positive for the organization, but our goal every year is to make the playoffs. That’s that. Rumors come out all the time this time of year about all sorts of things. From our perspective, there is nothing different about this year than the 10 others I’ve had in baseball.”
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