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Bud Selig is reportedly upset and “embarrassed” that the Mets went public with the fact that they were not allowed to wear special hats to honor New York City first responders to honor the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
This is a further example of how clueless the commissioner of Major League Baseball really is–he should be embarrassed that he and his office made the decision in the first place. And he should be even more embarrassed that the hats they wore in pregame were physically taken away from the players, after it was heard that they may conspire to wear them anyway–the players had given the league an out (tell the players they can’t, players do it anyway, fine the players, donate the money to a charity supporting first responders).
And he shouldn’t be surprised–especially in today’s modern world, where players are constantly tweeting and actually interacting with fans–that the players would go public about the situation.
MLB dropped the ball on this one–multiple times now. And if Selig was smart, he would look in the mirror, and figure out a way to fix the situation.
Why do I not think that’s going to happen?
I hoped it was a bad idea that would fade away after the season ended but as Major League Baseball approaches its winter meetings next week it appears that further expansion of the playoffs is not only going to be on the table, but is likely to pass with little opposition.
Thus Major League Baseball will take one more step toward becoming another league that waters down its regular season in favor of a playoff format that invites too many teams to take a shot at the championship.
I initially didn’t like the expansion to four playoff teams with a wild card included but it was a necessity when each league was split into three divisions. And I grudgingly will admit that it has created some fantastic races, this year included when San Francisco, San Diego and Atlanta fought tooth and nail to the season’s final weekend over the last two playoff spots.
Often times former catchers make good major league managers. Sometimes they get fired anyway.
Major league journeyman Matt Walbeck spent two years at the helm for the Altoona Curve, the Double-A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates. In 2009 the team finished in sixth place in the Eastern League. In 2010, the team captured the first Eastern League championship in its 12 year history.
On Sept. 29, Pittsburgh told Walbeck his services were no longer needed.
I’m not going to pretend I followed the Curve during their championship run, nor am I going to say I recognize even one of the names of the players on the team’s roster during the 2010 season. I can’t say I know anything about Walbeck as a manager or much about his background – other than I watched him play catcher for the Minnesota Twins back during the team’s dark years in the early 2000s.
But when a guy wins a championship, even in the minor leagues, it would seem he is doing something right.
The Pirates, who last had anything resembling a competitive team in the major leagues in 1992, only released a one sentence statement: “We appreciate Matt’s efforts and wish him the best in his future endeavors but felt that it was best that we allow him to pursue other opportunities,” according to general manager Neal Huntington via the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
Dejan Kovacevic, the Post-Gazette’s Pirates beat writer, updated the story later with a comment from an unidentified source indicating that the move came from concerns about Walbeck’s communication with staff and players.
Okay, maybe he was a bad communicator. He won a championship at the Double-A level for an organization that, for two decades in the major leagues, has had virtually nothing to be excited about at all.And he was 312-224 in four seasons managing in the Detroit Tigers’ system.
Granted, there is more to managing in the minors than winning. But the Pirates finally have some young guys – Andrew McCutchen, Pedro Alvarez, Jose Tabata and Neil Walker among others, that interestingly have come from the minors over the last couple seasons. Not all played under Walbeck. Some did. And for an organization that has shown little promise for two decades, I would think continuity would be a good thing for a team that must have done something right in 2010 to win the league championship.
Walbeck certainly didn’t do it himself, but someone had to help those players reach that level.
Maybe the Pirates will prove this was the correct move. Maybe the players won the championship in spite of Walbeck rather than because of him. If so I’ll fall on my sword later.
Until then, it would appear to me that the once-proud Pirates franchise has given the city of Pittsburgh and baseball fans around the country another illustration of how the organization has spent two decades as a laughingstock.
Brushbackpitch.com has railed against the Florida Marlins and owner Jeffrey Loria several times for his use of baseball’s luxury tax money for personal gain.
Today Jeff Passan from Yahoo! Sports uses documents obtained by Deadspin to put the franchise’s distortion of its financial situation to get Dade County to approve a new ballpark, which will open in a couple years.
Deadspin has spent the last several days exposing financial documents Major League Baseball owners likely never wanted made public (Marlins’ president David Samson called it “a crime” in Passan’s piece, which might technically be true).
Passan’s column is good. I haven’t read the entire Deadspin series yet, but from what I’ve seen and heard, it’s worth a look. It takes a look at “the other side” of the game, which compared to the gracefullness with which Joe Mauer can hit opposite-field doubles all season long and makes it instead look as ugly as watching Delmon Young patrol the outfield.
But it’s the reality of professional sports these days.
The good news–apparently, four months ago (also known as the heart of the NFL Season), Bud Selig realized that a) baseball needed more parity, and b) his efforts (if he’s made any) weren’t going to cut it. So he named a 14-person “special committee for on-field matters,” promising that all topics would be in play and “there are no sacred cows.”
Unfortunately for baseball fans, Selig apparently found 14 people even more stupid than himself to be on the committee.
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.
RACINE, Wis. – I’m no baseball analyst, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
And when I picked the complimentary USA Today off the floor in front of my door this morning, I turned to the sports page and saw a story about Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, and their respective contributions to the New York Yankees this season.
“It’s incredible how important these guys have been,” Johnny Damon told the paper. “I feel like they’ve been worth about seven or eight games a piece.”
AMAZING HOW IMPORTANT THEY’VE BEEN?!?!?
You spent $423.5 million last offseason to bring them in. I’d say for that amount they’d damn well better be important or the Steinbrenners would have every right to be as stuffy and huffy as they have been the last seven or eight years while the Yankees have languished below mediocre by their high-priced standards.
The economy may be driving attendance at Major League Baseball games down somewhat in 2009, but it hasn’t stopped teams from
making sponsorship deals (PDF).
Research from Westminster, Colo.-based Costigan & Associates indicates that MLB’s teams have 168 total “major sponsor” deals, including 18 naming rights agreements, with 88 companies encompassing 36 categories.
Interestingly, despite well-reported industry struggles nationally, the banking and financial services sector remains one of the strongest categories. Bank of America has five sponsorship deals. Wells Fargo has four and PNC Financial has three, according to the research.
Malt beverage powerhouse Anheuser-Busch is the most frequent major sponsor partner with 17 deals. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. continue to duke it out for soft drink deals, each netting 12 for the 2009 season.
Costigan & Associates is a sports and entertainment marketing firm that specializes in the evaluation of sponsorship and naming rights deals. Its founders, including principal Charles “Chuck” Costigan, came from The Bonham Group, an internationally-recognized firm that succumbed to economic issues early this year.
Costigan is a 10-year veteran of the sponsorship industry who has provided in-depth analysis and strategic recommendations to many blue-chip brands including the O2 Dome, IBM, the NFL, the NHL, JPMorgan Chase, and several individual teams, universities and organizations, according to a bio at the company Web site.
Interleague play, to some the scourge of American culture, will end for the 2009 regular season on Sunday. To hear some baseball purists and radio talk show hosts (among others) speak, you would think that Interleague play is the single largest problem facing the game today, dwarfing the challenges posed by steroids, the economy and Scott Boras. I’m glad to know that there are people out there with passionate opinions about the game, but come on guys. Get a hold of yourselves.
At the beginning of IP this year, Jayson Stark went and found a group of players who don’t like it. Aside from revealing Adam Dunn to be a complete whiner, Stark’s column tries to take an objective look at some of the things that make the players unhappy.
The major complaints seem to be that there are more “meaningless” series’ (i.e. Kansas City vs. Houston) than there are “rivalry” ones (like the Yankees vs. the Mets), it goes on too long, the travel can make things really difficult, and of course my personal favorite: “it’s not fair.”
I have some pretty strong opinions on the unbalanced schedule, and it occurs to me that we should explore that topic very soon. I’m the rare guy who is a fan of baseball’s schedule, and nothing gets me itchy quicker than someone telling me “it’s not fair”. Dude. You’re a professional ball player, playing at the highest level. If the New York Yankees had to play the New York Mets, and the Tampa Bay Rays had to play Edison Community College, I’d say that’s not fair. You’re playing another major league team. Stop talking and sit down. You’re embarrassing yourself.
Donald Fehr, the legendary – some would say infamous – executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association announced his retirement Monday. If you are one of the three regular readers of this page, then you would expect to see some rejoicing right now.
We here at Brushbackpitch.com have been extremely critical of Fehr. He is one of the five or six people in baseball most responsible for the financial inequities of the game. His attitudes begat Scott Boras, which is an absolutely unforgivable sin. And although baseball now has a comprehensive drug testing policy – or at least that’s what Bud Selig says – Fehr has fought the idea of drug testing at every stop.
From illegal narcotics to steroids, Fehr has consistently maintained that drug testing is an invasion of privacy. If Fehr had had his way throughout his 25-plus year tenure, baseball players today would resemble the Looney Tune Monstars from Michael Jordan’s mid-90’s movie Space Jam. They’d be ‘roided up beyond belief, hitting 861 ft. home runs and sliding head first when they stole a base so as to not break the vials of cocaine in their back pockets.
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