Winter Wonderland

It's been a few days since we last spoke, Shawn Chacon and all that. Saturday's piece was picked up by Repoz over at the Website Formerly Known as Baseball Primer (a/k/a the Baseball Think Factory), which turned up a number of responses you might be interested in taking a peek at. The one most pertinent to Chacon and the Yanks comes from Mitchel Lichtman, Primer callsign MGL:

Chacon, on the other hand, has had some success as a starter. His NERC (normalized ERC) in 2003 was great. 2004 was the year of the closer experiment, which was a disaster for whatever reason (although still part of Chacon's "history"). I have Chacon projected to be a good (better than average) pitcher. I think that Pecota's projection for him is flat out not even close, but I could be wrong. I have a lot of respect for their projections overall. While it is indeed tricky to project players coming from the Rockies, even using proper park adjustments, there is one thing that no forecasters do that I do, which will make a big difference in the projections. That is to adjust for the hangover effect for Rockies players. IOW, their road stats while playing for the Rockies need to be adjusted quite a bit as well as their home stats. When Rockies players switch teams (or go from another team TO the Rockies), their road stats (not including their road stats in Coors Field) go up substantially (or down substantially if they are GOING to the Rox). If you don't adjust for that, you will substantially under-project players like Chacon.

So basically I think that Chacon is a pretty good pitcher (and should post around a 4.50 ERA for the Yankees) and that Small sucks. Wright is not half the pitcher that Chacon is. I think that he (Wright) is terrible as well.

You can check out the whole thread, and the entirety of MGL's comment, here. Lichtman's a terrific baseball mind, the proponent (and if I recall correctly, inventor) of the defensive metric UZR, and one of the co-authors, along with Tom Tango (a/k/a TangoTiger) of The Book (as in "Torre's managing by the Book this inning, bringing in Rivera to protect a three-run lead"), a book on baseball strategies that I very much look forward to reading. Between that, the already-released Winners by Dayn Perry and John Sickels' annual Prospects book, and most importantly, Baseball Prospectus's 1-2 punch at the end of the month--the 2006 Edition of their annual, and Baseball Between the Numbers...well, a baseball fan could be busy reading straight through opening day.

*****

It honestly didn't feel like 26 inches of snow, and certainly didn't feel like the biggest single-day snowfall in New York...ever. Worst thing about the blizzard? When I went out for supplies (this was Sunday evening, after the snow had pretty much stopped) I saw boys running around with what looked like oversized scissors. On the end of each "blade" was what looked like an ice cream scooper.

It took me a few minutes to realize that this was some sort of gadget for making snow balls (no, I did not find out the hard way). We've come to live in a country where the young can no longer be bothered to pack their own snow balls, by hand. I find this very depressing.

*****

I was ignoring the Winter Olympics, for all the usual reasons and then some. I don't think you should call Turin "Torino" unless a) you're in Italy or b) you're willing to call Rome "Roma," Venice "Venezia" and Pizza Hut pizza "disgusting," all the time. I don't care how many drinks Bode Miller has before he goes skiing, or what name Johnny Weir gives his right-hand glove. I don't care much about the X-Games, and therefore snowboarders on a half-pipe aren't high on my list of things to see.

So I skipped the Opening Ceremonies, and ignored the Olympics all weekend long. But on Monday, just when I thought it was safe, the Winter Olympics sucked me in...again!

It started off innocently enough. I was flipping through channels, and saw Tom Cheek, the speedskater. I remembered seeing something about Cheek in a headline somewhere on the Internet, so I was curious. Stuck around to watch him win the gold (ah, tape delay...turns out that was the story that I'd originally seen out of the corner of my eye). By then, inertia had taken over, and the Russian couples were figure skating. Sudden flashback to the Cold War, I'm sticking around for that. Then the Chinese, the Russians' main rivals for the medals, were back up, with a pair named "Pang and Tang."

(SIDE NOTE: This pairing alone, not even getting into the subsequent "Zhang and Zhang" pairing must have incited Bill Singer levels of xenophobic "humor" around the U.S., and perhaps around the globe. Days later, we may all finally be recovered from lousy jokes involving chop sui, doubletalk chinese, and that old tried-but-true, "Me love you long time." It's just the cost of living in an incompletely evolved culture.)

Up came the Russians who ultimately won the gold, Totmiyanina and Marinin, and my first human interest story of the 2006 Olympics, as NBC taught us all about how the male of the couple Max, who looked to be 6'6" or so, dropped the female--Tatyana on her head, in international competition two years ago. True to the story, the Russians created a performance which was completely free of mistakes, but tentative--more about not screwing up while in the lead (and not dropping your partner on her head, again) than about expressing the true beauty of ice skating.

After the Russians took a commanding lead, NBC had to keep our attention by announcing that the last couple of the night, the aforementioned Zhang and Zhang would be attempting a move "that has never been done before in competition" a throw with a quadruple spin. So Z and Z ("they're not related," someone--Mary Carillo, I think--tells us helpfully) start their routine, and right away, they're doing their quadruple lutz throw (or whatever it is) and the whole thing is completely fouled up. Zhang Dan (that's Ms. Zhang) goes down on the ice, hard, and stays down, having fallen awkwardly after only three and a half of her planned four revolutions.

And as she's down, it looks like the night's over--give the gold to the Russians, the silver and bronze to Z'n'Z's teammates, call it a night. After falling, they no longer had any chance at the gold, and since it was the beginning of their set, if they were to continue, Z'n'Z would have to make ALL of their required jumps and whatnot, all on Ms. Z's bad knee.

I bet all of you know by now how this turned out. But the whole thing just reminded me of why anyone cares about the Olympics--young people, who've waited four years to prove themselves on the world stage, and who are willing to put themselves through anything just to finish, even when it looks like there is no hope.

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Another reason I'm more pro-Olympics than I was Monday morning: Bryant Gumbel's big, stupid mouth.

Here's Gumbel on the Winter Olympics, "So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention. And try to blot out all logic when announcers and sports writers pretend to care about the luge, the skeleton, the biathlon and all those other events they don't understand and totally ignore for all but three weeks every four years. Face it, these Olympics are nothing more than a marketing plan to fill space and sell time during the dreary days of February."

Since every other word in that diatribe could just as easily be applied to the Summer Games, and Gumbel doesn't seem to mind them, I would guess that Bryant's big issue is the "paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention." Of course, Bryant's fantasy GOP convention is full of Asians and almost totally devoid of Latinos, so I'm not so sure that any of Bryant's whining holds much water.

But just as a side note, the Winter Olympics were not invented to "fill space and sell time" in February. They predate television. And, regardless of what Gumbel may think, the Winter Games weren't created as part of a racist (or even GOP) plot to give Europeans athletic supremacy over Africans. We're not talking about athletic apartheid. It's just sports. If sportswriters don't pay much attention to luge and the skeleton during non-Olympic years, it's only fair to note that those same writers seem to only notice the triple-jump and shotput only on leap years, as well.

But then again, tripe like this is typical of Gumbel's "bravery" now that he's on HBO. Just the fact that Gumbel is against something turns out to be a pretty good reason to support it.

*****

On that same vein, here's hoping that Bryant comes out against Spring Training, which starts tomorrow. Once again, we seem to have survived the long, cold Winter.

Chacon and on and on

Finally, some news about the Bombers! The Yanks settle before arbitration with Shawn Chacon for $3.6 million for the 2006 season. That number is the clear mid-point between the Yanks' Arb offer of $3.1 million, and the player's $4.135 figure (I wonder what the extra $35,000 was for?).

The feeling is that Chacon was playing over his head when he reached the Yanks last season, and went 7-3 with a 2.85 ERA. That's mainly because his opponent's batting average on balls in play--that is, how opposing batters did against Chacon when they weren't striking out or hitting homers--was a meager .240 while Chacon was in pinstripes. To put that in context, the best pitcher in the AL last season, Johan Santana, allowed a .265 BABIP, and the National League Cy Young Award winner, Chris Carpenter, allowed a .285 BABIP.

It's likely that Chacon, who's a flyball pitcher and who doesn't strike out many guys, will see his batting average on balls in play against him rise next season, and his performance will suffer as a result. Take a look at Chacon's hot-off-the-presses PECOTA card: Nate Silver's projection system predicts a 5.04 ERA for Shawn next season. That's brutal. Chacon's collapse rate, that is, the chance that his translated ERA will increase by 25% or more, is 45%. Now, you might think that doesn't sound so bad--he has more than a 50% chance not to collapse--but that rate is more than twice Chacon's "improvement rate" of 21%.

In short, PECOTA thinks that Chacon will be worth $2.75 million this season, nearly a million dollars less than the Yanks will pay him for 2006. Except in durability, PECOTA doesn't consider Chacon much of an improvement over Jaret Wright (projected 5-5, 5.14 ERA in 91 innings), Chacon's likely competition for a rotation spot. And if you think PECOTA's harsh on Chacon, you should see how it brutalizes Aaron Small (5-5, 5.47 ERA in 90 innings).

There are many times when my analytical mind conflicts with my Yankee fan heart. I want PECOTA to be wrong about Chacon and Small (not so much Wright, but we've gone over this before). Both of them are good stories, seem to be nice guys, and were entertaining enough to watch pitch last season.

But logically, two flyball pitchers who strike out less than five men per nine innings each aren't likely to set the American League on fire, even with the Yanks getting improved outfield defense from Johnny Damon. Analytically, you have to look at a guy like Small, a 34 year-old who's scuffled around the minors since the George HW Bush administration and who has a career 4.93 ERA (at AAA!) and you have to see a player who had a fluke season last year. It's nice to see Aaron Small cash in on that gorgeous 10-0 season (Small settled his arb case with the Yanks for $1.2 million late last month), but I also hope he saves as much as he can, and doesn't live too extravagantly in '06--since he can't really count on paydays like this every season.

Like most people involved with BP, I'm very proud of PECOTA, and I think it's the best thing going in the extremely challenging area of performance prediction. The changes that have been made to the PECOTA cards this year--there's more information than ever, there--make it worth the price of a subscription all on its own. Some of the new features, like MORP--the statistical gizmo that predicts the monetary value of a player's expected performance--are just incredibly cool.

But in the case of Chacon and Small (and, incidentally, Chien Ming Wang...but that's a whole other story) I really, really, hope that PECOTA's dead wrong. Every year, the system will be wrong about some players, and sometimes extremely wrong--here's hoping the Yanks' pitchers manage to buck the odds, for the better.

*****

Speaking of my work at BP, I dropped a joint on the Yankees and the WBC, for Notebook on Friday. The obligatory taste:

Despite all this carnage, the Bronx Bombers will probably be well-represented with high-profile players in the WBC. Johnny Damon seems determined to play, as does Derek Jeter. Rodriguez is also committed--unless he changes his mind again, that is. Wang, Miguel Cairo, Ron Villone and Bernie Williams could all still wind up on their countries’ 30 man rosters.

That the Yankees’ ballclub is resisting the World Baseball Classic is no surprise. The Yankees were the only team to vote against the WBC’s creation, and they have consistently resisted allowing players from their organization to play in the Olympics or other international competitions. However, the fact that so many individual players have decided to step out and announce their decision to snub the WBC--rather than declining more quietly--indicates that maybe George Steinbrenner isn’t alone in his lack of enthusiasm for international tournaments.

By the way, today's Daily News reports that of the Yankees potentially playing in the WBC, Ron Villone is unlikely to play for Team Italy, while Miguel Cairo would be tickled pink to be on Venezuela's roster.

*****

This is the best news I've read in a long time. The only thing that could've made it better was if Rickey Henderson were coming to coach the Yankees, rather than the Mets. Not only do I think that Rickey has a great deal to offer a ballclub from a coaching standpoint (I think it's no coincidence that the only useful season Roger Cedeno had in his career, he was Rickey's teammate) but he's also one of the great quotables in the bigs, on the level of Yogi Berra.

It honestly wouldn't make much sense for Rickey to coach the Yanks, who have few young players and no young speedsters on the roster. The future Hall of Famer has his work cut out for him with Jose Reyes, a player who's greasy fast but has shown considerable resistance to coaching (remember when the Mets hired a personal trainer to teach him to avoid his perennial hamstring pulls?). While Reyes's base stealing may not need much help--he led the NL in steals last season, swiping bases at an 80% clip--if Rickey can somehow get Reyes to respect the strike zone, the Mets shortstop (career .303 OBP) could become, in the words of Burgess Meredith in Rocky II "a very dangerous person."

*****

OK. Who thought this was a good idea? Isn't it hard enough being a Catholic already without Michael Jackson getting involved.

"Gee, Michael, you and the Church have so much in common..."

*****

In better music news, last night I caught the Barry Harris Trio at the Village Vanguard with La Chiquita, and one of our friends, Dave. Best jazz show I've ever attended, made the more so by the playful manner in which the band veterans--drummer Leroy Williams is probably the youngest, and he's in his late 60's--interacted with each other and with the crowd that came in for the 11 o'clock set. Harris, one of the big Bebop pianists out of Detroit, played with his back to the audience for the most part--which meant he must have been making faces because he was constantly cracking up bassist Earl May. The trio were often talking to each other, conversationally and just below the music, in a way that suggested that the audience was just some friends who'd stumbled into a studio session.

After the first time the Vanguard staff tried raising the house lights on him, Harris really cut loose, doing a soft little scat, in which he was joined a woman in the first row who must have been a friend of his, and then turning around on his piano bench to encourage the whole crowd to sing along. It was beautiful, and intimate, and everything that's good about jazz in New York.

If you can get down to the Vanguard (that is, if there isn't too much snow) Dr. Harris is playing there tonight and tomorrow night. I can't recommend the performance highly enough.

Sports Shock in the Caribbean

Get home late, turn on the Caribbean World Series. The potential championship game, the Caracas Leones (Lions) playing for Venezuela against the Licey Tigres (Tigers) for the Dominican Republic. Somehow, at 9:00, they're playing the 1st inning, on a game that was scheduled to begin at 7:00. Since I hadn't planned for this, and am too tired to liveblog it, I'm just sitting down and jotting down the odd note here and there.

Nice, nice, nice. D.R. gets on the board early against former (current?) Red Sock Jeremi Gonzalez, getting out to a 2-0 lead in the 1st. Venezuela threatens to come back immediately in the bottom of the inning against Juan Cruz, but are somehow stimied despite two walks in the inning.

There's no warning on the screen whether the game is live or on tape. I check MLB.com to run the gamecast on the computer while I watch. Oops, game on tape! I get a quick preview of what the game will look like in the fifth inning, while again wondering why the broadcast on YES is running so damn late.

While I'm bitching about the broadcast, I might as well mention that we're looking at the broadcast team of Sample and Leyritz again. We're also having sound problems, so Leyritz is mainly inaudible--kind of like the teacher in a Peanuts cartoon, he's off-camera, you can tell that he's speaking, you can't can't make out a darn word of what he's saying. Billy Sample, with his superior diction, can be understood every other sentence, like a Brooklyn cab driver. As you'd expect with a clinching game for Venezuela in Venezuela, the crowd noise is huge, with screaming, clapping, merengue, thunder stix, and that staple of Latin American baseball, the home team's marching band doubtless causing earbleeds for miles 'round.

In Caracas's case, their brass band only plays one tune, which goes "TaaaDaaa tadatadatada TaaDaa TaaDaaa."

I have heard this at least 400 times by now. I hate it with a passion normally reserved for people who cut in line at the supermarket, or who are unkind to children and animals. I will be humming it tomorrow, in Court. I hope to have it out of my head sometime before my tenth wedding anniversary.

The teams each score a run in the fourth (sac fly for Licey, Ramon Hernandez homer for the Caracas Leones), before things get serious in the sixth inning. Scoring aside, the memorable part of this game is the defensive play. Pigpen makes a great stab into foul territory for a looping line drive. Anderson Hernandez, who's probably my favorite player of the tournament, makes a great backhand play. The Venezuelan leftfielder, Javier Herrera, makes a beautiful diving play in foul territory, into the bullpen dirt.

But the defense breaks down in the sixth inning, when Timo Perez helps Venezuela tie the game. First he flubs a leadoff base hit by Marcos Scutaro, allowing Scutaro to go to second. A couple of outs later, Jose Valverde replaces Juan Cruz. He proceeds to hit his first batter, Hernandez, and then there's a line drive to straightaway right field. For some reason, Timo! appears to be playing on the warning track against a righthanded hitter, he charges in, dives...and the ball skips past him for a triple. Scutaro and Hernandez score, tie game.

I now hate Timo! almost as much as I hate the Caracas brass band song.

Following the end of the sixth, there's some sort of bizarre delay in getting to the next inning. For a while, the screen is frozen on a long shot of the stadium in Maracay, while Sample continues to talk, Leyritz continues to mutter incomprehensively, and the song continues to play, on continuous loop: TaaaDaaa tadatadatada TaaDaa TaaDaaa!

Some sort of bizarre, and relatively unexplained scuffle has broken out on the field. For all we know, it could be Uggie Urbina breaking out of prison. It has something to do with the camera guys, one of whom helpfully hurls his camera at some guys in yellow shirts. No one knows who the guys in the yellow shirts are, because Jim Leyritz is explaining it, and hrs impossible to understand. The only thing we know for certain is that they're not baseball players, and they're not members of that marching band, who are still playing The Song.

When things get going again, the Dominicans follow the pattern of their previous confrontation with Venezuela, taking the lead on a Sandy Martinez homer. After the homer, Licey brings in crazy reliever Julian Tavarez to hold the lead, which he does in the bottom of the seventh and the eighth. In the top of the eighth and the ninth, the Dominicans squander leadoff baserunners, including a two-on, no outs situation in the ninth.

Then came one of the most shocking ends to a ballgame that I've ever seen. With Jorge Sosa on the mound, Ramon Hernandez singles to lead off the inning. The Leones sacrifice a pinch-runner over, and the pinch-runner scores on a single by Red Sox shortstop Alex Gonzalez. Gonzalez is caught making a wide turn for second, and the cutoff man throws to one of the middle infielders (it looks like shortstop Erick Aybar) to get Gonzalez in a rundown. Aybar(?) runs Gonzalez back toward first base, and once Gonzalez's momentum is built up to the point he can't stop Aybar(?) throws to first base...to no one. It actually looks like he might have confused Venezuela's first base coach for firstbaseman Jose Offerman. Gonzalez doesn't advance from first, but he would have been out if Licey didn't botch the run down.

Still it's one on, one out, with the bottom of the lineup coming up. Licey can still get out of this, and win the game in extra innings.

Henry Blanco, a guy with a major league batting average of .219 comes to the plate. Sosa throws a ball, then on his second pitch does his job and pops Blanco up to very short left. It's a high fly, the shortstop, Erick Aybar, goes back for the ball, and the left fielder, Napoleon Calzado, rushes in. Then, suddenly, it becomes obvious that Aybar has lost the ball. He turns to look at Calzado, who had slowed a tick trying to avoid a collision, and then tried to lunge forward to make a play. Aybar tries to get out of Calzado's way...AND THE BALL HITS HIM ON THE TOP OF THE HEAD, HARD, AND RICOCHETS PAST THE RACING CALZADO, ROLLING INTO LEFT FIELD.

The camera focuses on the ball, which looks like it will keep on rolling to the warning track, but we can hear the crowd as Gonzalez rounds the bases. No Licey fielder even enters the picture. The game is lost, and the cameras pick up Gonzalez as he's mobbed at the plate.

I am in shock. My wife comes out to see, but there is no replay. Just me staring at the TV, where a bunch of Venezuelans are having a semi-violent on-field celebration (Gonzalez is scuffling with the people who are rushing him on the field).

The last six paragraphs took me two hours to write. I feel numb, right now. Venezuela deserves the title, they were an implacable, relentless opponent in the tournament, and they grabbed two games right out of the Dominicans' hands. But that is one horrible way to lose.

Backs Against the Wall

As it pretty much looked when the two teams met on Saturday, the 2006 Caribbean World Series will come down to Venezuela and the Dominican Republic, playing head-to-head, in Maracay, Venezuela.

The Venezuelan squad is unbeaten, courting defeat on Saturday against Licey and on Sunday, when they went to extra innings with winless defending champion Mexico. Monday's 5-1 victory over Puerto Rico was close through six innings, tied at one, until the host team broke through against the Boricua relievers. Earlier in the day, the Dominicans had won a pitching duel against Mexico, 3-1, to keep their dreams of a championship alive.

With one loss, the Dominicans have to beat Venezuela on the final day of the tournament in order to stay alive, and then win a playoff on Wednesday if they want to take the title. The Venezuelans, on the only hand, only need to win one of two games, with the home crowd firmly behind them.

I highly encourage you to tune in, on YES or by MLB.tv, to see how this turns out.

****

A detail from tonight's game, that I'm sure will get past all the fellas who are fainting at the prospect of major league pitchers throwing full-force in March. Danny Bautista, a 24 year-old starter with the Orioles, threw 86 pitches in five innings of work on Tuesday for Licey. In February.

I don't quite know what to make of this. Should O's fans be up in arms about this, declaring jihad upon Rafael Landestoy if Cabrera feels a twinge in his elbow or shoulder this summer? Or will they understand that for years, players have been giving it their all to represent their country in winter ball? Has anyone actually studied whether folks who pitch in winter ball do better or worse than their counterparts over the course of a season?

Review: Match Point

Saw Match Point on Saturday. To say that it's the best Woody Allen film in years isn't saying much. To put it more precisely, it's definitely his best since Deconstructing Harry and probably better than anything since Manhattan Murder Mystery. Match Point doesn't, however, reach the level of Crimes and Misdemeanors, the film to which it is most often compared, because it is pretty much a remake of Allen's 1989 masterpiece.

Now, that isn't a terribly damning statement, since Crimes was one of the best movies of the past 20 years. Here's the setup on Match Point: Chris (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is a former tennis tour standout, who's now the house pro at a posh club in London. Dirt poor and living in a studio with a fold-out bed, he's determined to improve his situation, as evidenced by a scene where we see him double-fisting a paperback copy of Crime and Punishment with a second paperback--a study guide with a title like "Understanding Dostoevsky."

Chris's chance comes when he starts giving lessons to Tom, a son of priviledge with a rusty backhand. After forcing into his conversation with Tom the fact that he loves opera, Chris finds himself invited into Tom's world of wealth: the private box at the opera house, the weekend at their country house, and the covetous glances of Tom's sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer). Soon enough, he's shagging the sister, dropping Dostoevsky references on Tom's dad, and being sized up for a spot in the family business, which operates out of a huge Faberge Egg-looking office building, which I guess symbolizes the vague cutting edge of luxury, like the Empire State Building or the late Twin Towers once did.

There's only one fly in the ointment for Chris's relentless climb to the social top, and that's Nola (Scarlett Johansen), a struggling American actress. When Chris first meets Nola, the attraction is instantaneous--he's busy commenting on her "sensuous lips" and on the verge of inviting her to test the springs on his fold-out when he learns that Nola is Tom's fiance.

Obviously, even after Nola becomes off-limits to him, Chris does not stop desiring her. And this being a noir movie, eventually he will have to decide between "the lady and the loot," and the only option he will have if he wants to keep his choice is...murder!

Now, the most refreshing thing about Match Point is the un-Woody Allen-ness of it. Allen isn't in the movie, and unlike every other recent Allen film, there isn't a Woody Allen stand-in character -- that's a younger actor, encouraged by the director to do his best impression of Allen as a performance: see Will Ferrel in Melinda and Melinda, Kenneth Branagh in Celebrity, Jason Biggs in Anything Else. Instead, the characters speak in naturalistic tones and none of them drop into Allen-esque patois of artificial, neurotic, rambling stream-of-consciousness talk. Allen finds a different voice for his characters, and it sounds authentic (although I'd love to hear from a real Londoner who's seen the movie on this point).

You'd pretty much forget that Allen was involved in the movie altogether if it wasn't for the lascivious way the camera focuses on Johansen--particularly in the sex scenes. That's recognizably Allen in his dirty old man mode, which nonetheless feels much more appropriate with Rhys Meyers in the lead than it would if the young actress were getting it on with Woody or one of Woody's avatars.

Getting back to the plot, for any of you who have seen Crimes and Misdemeanors (and if you haven't just stop reading, go rent it, and see it now--the Internet will still be here when you're done) what happens next won't be terribly surprising. Chris's dilemma is much like Judah Rosenthal's in Crimes: he wants a great many things for himself without accepting any of the consequences that come with them. As in Crimes, Chris's plight is viewed from Allen's atheist/nihilistic viewpoint, where there is no merciful God and no cosmic justice. That's appropriate to the film noir aspects of the movie.

However, in the course of "streamlining" the film to be more purely a thriller (which is an odd concept, as supposedly Match Point is the longest movie that Allen has ever made, and its pacing is often sluggish), all the philosophical aspects that made Crimes so powerful--the metaphysical discourses, suicidal PhDs, blind rabbis, and imaginary confessions--have been reduced to a single near-cliche image. It's a tennis ball hitting the top of the net, with only luck--not karma, God, justice, or providence--deciding whether the ball lands on your side of the net, or your opponent's.

The image is used twice, effectively, in the movie. However, "some things depend on luck" is a pretty thin premise for a feature film, which leaves Match Point as a slightly unsatisfying experience, at least compared to Crimes and Misdemeanors. I still recommend it highly for Rhys-Meyers's excellent lead performance, and fine supporting turns by Mortimer, Matthew Goode as Tom, and Brian Cox as Tom and Chloe's father. Johansen, though she looks terrific, is a bit of a disappointment in a role that's a bit unevenly-written, neither femme fatale nor girl next door.

But the bigger story of Match Point is that Allen--a filmmaker a lot of people had written off--is back, reinventing himself and taking a new direction. That's good news, and plenty of reason to see a movie all on its own.

...And Other News

Got interrupted during my last Blog entry, so I didn't get to the "Other News." Here goes:

Yesterday's game was a gut punch for the Dominican team. The Dominicans put up a "picket fence" from innings 2-8, after scoring two runs in the opening frame. They were up 7-2 going into the 7th inning, when the wheels fell off. The Venezuelans overpowered the Dominicans in the late innings. A three-run double by Luis Rodriguez and a two-run shot by Japanese League standout Alex Cabrera tied the game at 7 in the 7th inning. The Dominicans took the lead again in the bottom of the inning, only for the Venezuelans to tie it again in the top of the 8th.

The Dominicans took their final lead of the night on a home run by noted power source, Jose Offerman(!?!) and went into the top of the ninth with the game in their hands...only to lose it to the newest Red Sock, Alex Gonzalez, jacking a three run shot.

In the bottom of the ninth, Venezuela stood behind the best closer in the tourney, Francisco "K-Rod" Rodriguez. D.R. had their chances--Miguel Tejada slammed a lighttower shot that just barely went foul, before being retired on Rodriguez's fastball, and outfielder Alexis Gomez, doubled before Rodriguez unleashed his hellacious slider--the one so good, you know it has to be grinding his arm and shoulder into hamburger--against Ronnie Belliard. Pigpen never stood a chance.

*****

Talking about any other baseball news basically means talking about Johnny Damon's hair. All I'll say is that you'd think that after Giambi and A-Rod, newcomers to the Yanks would stop getting themselves blond highlights. This madness must end!

*****
In the interest of self-promotion, there's another bit of my work up at Baseball Prospectus, on the Pirates, and their acquisitions of Joe Randa and Jeromy Burnitz (link here, last article on the page):

The meme when a young team like the Pirates makes moves for veteran mediocrities like these, and like the earlier acquisition of Sean Casey, is that the vets are needed to teach the young turks how to win. This is the type of idea we’ve dismissed out-of-hand in the past, but which probably deserves a little more respect than we’ve given it.

Nonetheless, the idea doesn’t hold here, because this crew of veterans that the Pirates have brought in is distinguished by their lack of winning, and their dearth of postseason experience. Between Burnitz, Randa and Casey, none has spent a whole season with a division-winning club. The only one of these guys to see a postseason plate appearance was Randa, who played in the Division Series last October after being a deadline acquisition by the Padres. He did a pretty nice job--four for eleven with a walk and a double…in a three game sweep by the Cardinals.

The 2005 Padres (final record 82-80) were only the second winning team Randa had ever been on. In ten full seasons in the Show, his teams have finished last in their division five times. In his eight full seasons, Casey’s Reds finished under .500 six times. After beginning his career with the 103-loss 1993 Mets, Burnitz almost made it to the playoffs in the 1996 season with the 99-win Cleveland Indians…before he was dealt away to the Brewers, at the August trade deadline, for Kevin Seitzer. All told, ten of Burnitz’s 12 full seasons have been spent on under-.500 teams.

This isn't meant to minimize these fellows’ achievements in the majors. One of the points we frequently raise here is that winning players aren’t better people than the guys that came up short. It’s just that if these guys are supposed to teach the youngsters to win, it should be pointed out that these veterans might find winning a novel experience, themselves.

After all, when the going gets tough this season, what’s the inspirational speech they’re supposed to give their young teammates? “When we were losing 100 games back in 2002, we could have given up…”

So, what does everybody think about this idea of bringing in veteran players to "mature" your club? Is there anything to the intangibles?

Clash of the Titans and other News

Talking Caribbean World Series again, the Dominicans beat Mexico, and the Venezuelans beat Puerto Rico to bring the two undefeated teams together in the third day of the tournament's round robin phase. Venezuela's been dominating its opponents, and after this game, but this matchup (hopefully) will be a bigger test than what they've faced before.

Venezuela/DR is the second game on today's schedule, and you can watch the action live on MLBTV.com, or on tape delay on the YES Network at around 7:00 or 7:30 (it starts after Mexico/PR ends).

Live Blog: Caribbean World Series

I'm laid up at home, which means that I've got time on my hands. Luckily, there's also baseball on TV--Puerto Rico vs. the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean World Series, on YES. So I'm live blogging it, even though the game is actually being played on tape.

6:34PM

The announcing team is Billy Sample and Jim Leyritz, which gives me The Fear. They start off in what looks like a studio, so despite the fact that both men are in short sleeves, I bet that they're announcing this off a video feed rather than on location.

Here are the lineups for the two sides:

Dominican Republic -- Licey Tigers

2B Anderson Hernandez
DH Erick Aybar
SS Miguel Tejada
1B Willie Otanez
LF Napoleon Calzado
3B Ronnie Belliard
RF Timo Perez
C Sandy Martinez
CF Melky Cabrera

P Juan Cruz

Puerto Rico Gigantes

SS Alex Cora
2B Ruben Gotay
CF Jose Valentin
LF Pedro Valdes
DH Alex Cintron
1B Edwards Guzman
3B Luis Figueroa
C Jon Lin Pachot
RF Jose Feliciano

P William Collazo

Top 1st -- Three up, three down. The last out is Miguel Tejada, which brings up an issue with the WBC. Everyone has been sniping this week about star players possibly getting injured in the WBC, yet they forget that some pretty big names play in Winter Ball. No one's whining about the possibility of Tejada breaking his leg right now.

Bottom of 1st -- After a nice slap hit down the leftfield line, Ruben Gotay does some bonehead running, getting gunned out by Orioles farmhand Napoleon Calzado.

Top 2nd -- Calzado swings like a blind man at three pitches from the lefthander Collazo.
Ronnie Belliard (misidentified by Sample as "Rafael Belliard") hits into a DP grounder, but beats it out. Belliard looks like Manny Ramirez these days, and his uniform's so sloppy, that watching him in the Dominican Winter League in 2004, I nicknamed him "Pigpen." Gotay makes a nice play on a Timo Perez grounder to end the inning.

Bottom 2nd -- Cruz is struggling here, which is a bad sign for Oakland, given that he's
not exactly facing a major league lineup. Gets out of a two-out two-on jam, thanks to a nice play by Belliard.

Top 3rd -- After a seeing-eye leadoff single by catcher Sandy Martinez, Melky Cabrera comes up. Cabrera shows some nice selectivity, running the count to 3-0, and ultimately working a walk off Collazo. Mets farmhand Anderson Hernandez follows with a bloop hit, to load the bases for Angels farmhand Erick Aybar. Aybar taps into a 5-2-3 DP. Bad job. Still, with Tejada at the plate and first base open, it's a shock to see Collazo challenge the former MVP. Tejada drills it down the thirdbase line, hard enough that it gets stuck under some padding in foul territory. Collazo is ultimately bailed out by the fact that Willie Otanez forgets that there are such things as cut-off men--on a single, he goes too far rounding first, and gets nailed, on a play that looks like a 9-1-3 putout.

Bottom 3rd -- again, Cruz in a jam, one-out, two-on for Jose Valentin. Valentin, who played 3rd for the Dodgers last season, is expanding his repertoire by playing center field in Winter Ball. Valentin coughs it up, popping up to Pigpen after running the count to 2-0. Still, Pedro Valdes bails him out by blasting a 3 run shot to dead center, just past Melky's reach. PR leads, 3-2.

7:46

After some technical difficulties, we're off the inning-by-inning work, for a while.

Billy Sample's brutal on play-by-play, constantly mixing up the names of the Hispanic players. One side has a junkballing lefty whose last name is Collazo, the other a lanky left fielder whose name is Calzado. They're not interchangeable, Billy.

Meanwhile, the King, Jim Leyritz, doesn't have an announcer's voice. But he is paying attention, noting that the Dominicans had to send someone up there to take some pitches when Collazo got two outs on three pitches in the top of the fifth.

Meanwhile, the camera work reminds you just how good major league baseball broadcasts of the HD Era are. Compared to what we're used to, this Caribbean League footage from Puerto Rico looks like it's being shot from underwater...at night.

Still it's baseball, with people who are trying to win, so I'm watchin'.

8:05

In the top of the 6th, two on, one out, they've pulled William Calzado, in favor of Orlando Roman. The only thing I know about Roman, other than he's righthanded, is that he's a "refuerzo," or reinforcement, to the Gigantes roster.

In the Caribbean World Series, each of the Caribbean countries is represented by the team that won their local Winter League championship. In this case, the Licey Tigers won the Domincan Championship, and the Carolina Gigantes (Giants) won the Puerto Rican Winter League. The roster of each championship team is then augmented with a limited number of players from other teams' rosters. On the PR team, Feliciano, Valentin, Cintron, and Pachot are all reinforcements, since I guess that the Gigantes were really weak in the outfield. Tejada and Cabrera were both reinforcements for the Dominicans.

This Roman guy isn't looking too good, allowing a game-tying single to Ronnie Belliard, and then hitting Timo! in the knee to load the bases. Former major leaguer Sandy Martiners gets struck out on three pitches by the next Puerto Rican reliever, whose last name is Agosto.

Valerio de los Santos, another guy who's seen some service time in the majors, takes over in the bottom of the inning for Licey.

While I'd always cheer for the Dominicans in the Caribbean Series, beause of my Dominican heritage, it's a little bit sweeter for me this year because I have a pretty direct link to the Licey ballclub, one of the two teams that plays in D.R.'s capital, Santo Domingo (the other capital team is called Escogido). It turns out that my great-great grandfather, along with a great^2 granduncle, were among the founders of the Licey ballclub, back in 1907. So I'm an in-born fan.

Speaking of Licey, one of the non-reinforcements, Anderson Hernandez, hits a one-out triple in the top of the 7th. Pressure's on Erick Aybar--who's playing DH (or BD--Bateador Designado) after being displaced from short by Miguel Tejada, but who plays ahead of much-hyped former Red Sock Hanley Ramirez on the Licey club. Aybar doesn't come through with the man on third, so Tejada gets walked with two outs. Fool me twice, shame on me, I suppose. The Gigantes follow with a pitching change, and Willie Otanez at the plate.

The reliever is righthander Federico Baez. Baez feeds some good breaking stuff to Otanez, but hits a Baltimore chop over the pitcher's head, fielded by the shortstop who throws slightly off-line, and the ball is knocked out of firstbaseman Guzman's mitt. Calzado pops one out to Valentin to end the inning, D.R. leads, 4-3.

8:40

Pigpen makes a great play from one knee to lead off the bottom of the 7th! going to his left, Belliard caught the ball in the hole, tumbled to the ground and rolled over to make a great throw to first from one knee.

While De Los Santos works the inning, we see lefty Carlos Perez warming up (along with former Diamondbacks closer Jose Valverde) in the pen. Perez is one of the Perez brothers, along with former Yankees Pascual and Melido. Perez is interesting because he's a quasi-fugitive from justice, who has stayed in D.R. for the past few years after a young woman sued him for rape, and won a huge default judgment. He's still alive, still pitching, and (last I heard) still trying to get back to the majors, even at the age of 34. But the second he draws a salary in the United States again, his accuser will be there to garnish his paycheck. Although Perez protests that he's innocent, he didn't do much to support that claim by leaving the U.S. mid-case and letting his accuser win by default.

Blech, what a sordid thing to be writing about, when I'm overjoyed to be watching my first baseball in months. Part of me doesn't want to believe that Carlos is a rapist, just because I used to enjoy watching his brothers pitch so much. Pascual was such a goofball, that it's easy to forget that he was one of the worst free agent signings in Yankee history once upon a time--he signed in November, 1989, pitched 14 innings in 1990 and got injured, was still injured in '91, when he only got 74 innings in. And then he was busted on the old substance policy, and disappeared from Major League Baseball.

But when Pascual Perez was doing his thing, he was damn entertaining. I remember his pick-off throws between the legs--Perez would bend low, like Mike Mussina, when he pitched from the stretch. Sometimes he'd peek at the runner between his legs, bend even further down, and flip the ball from between his legs, kind of like a standing football snap. Pascual was a good hitter and baserunner, which didn't figure since he was tall and gangly.

All the Perez brothers were animated figures on the mound, prone to celebrate strikeouts with a fistpump or, if the K ended the inning, a little dance coming off the mound. Many complain bitterly that such exuberance is unprofessional, and sometimes it was (after all, Carlos struck out only 448 guys in his 823 major league innings, and he was extremely celebratory for each one of those whiffs) still, I tend to dislike the stony stoicism of so many major leaguers today. There just isn't enough color, sometimes. The Perez boys were color, all right.

And speak of the Devil, in the bottom of the 8th, Perez is on the mound. Perez still has the same herky-jerky motion, and attendant control problems that so often accompany such a motion. Still seems to throw hard enough, though. During his major league career, Carlos was a control pitcher, who didn't strike out many or walk many.

More boneheaded baserunning by P.R., as Valentin gets picked off by Perez. Good thing, too, since Perez then walks Valdes, and is replaced with Jorge Sosa of the Braves. A grounder and two singles later, P.R. has tied the game at 4.

Sosa looks like a guy who was sent to the Winter League to work on his breaking ball, but doesn't realize that his countrymen would appreciate it if he treated this game like it matters. His slider has been high and over the plate, and one of those hangers over the plate was the ball that Luis Figueroa hit to tie the game.

Man, is Billy Sample bad. Licey pinch-hits for Melky in the top of the ninth, and Sample's caught with his pants down. Maybe they are on-site after all. Leyritz makes his first mistake of the evening, claiming that Hernandez, who gets an infield hit after the unknown pinch hitter grounded out, is the "leadoff hitter." Moments later, he catches himself like a guy who's just hit a rough spot on the sidewalk, "ONE out and Hernandez on first." Now Erick Aybar comes up, and is identified by the on-screen graphic as Cabrera. Aybar hits into a double play, and now Sample can't remember how many outs there are. Bottom of the ninth coming up, tied at 4.


9:27

Jose Valverde is the new Dominican pitcher. Valverde throws hard and straight, with bad mechanics that have his push leg swinging around his landing leg after each pitch pitch. With one out, Alex Cora singles off Willis Otanez's glove at first. The King, whose voice is the low rasp of a pack-a-day smoker, is doing a nice job, despite his boner last inning. He mixes in anecdotes about his own winter league experiences with nice observations on the field.

Ugh, hard grounder takes an insane bad hop on Tejada, making it 1st and 2nd with one out. Jose Valentin is up, and despite all the lovely things Plachtke had to say about Valentin last year, he's being praised by Sample and Leyritz as clutch. Well, he advances the runners with a big hopper to the first baseman.

Not exactly the kind of clutch we had in mind.

So with the winning run 90 feet away, it's Jorge Padilla--a pinch hitter I never heard mentioned in the broadcast, facing Valverde. First base is open, but Valverde just pours in the gas, smoking Padilla on a fastball high and outside.

This leads to one of those Perez-style celebrations American baseballists seem to mind so much.

9:39

It's still Baez in the top of the 10th, as Tejada leads off. Two quick outs by Miguel Tejada and Otanez, leaving things up to Napoleon Calzado. Calzado got a hit earlier in the game, but his swing looks like it has a Grand Canyon-sized hole in it. Calzado fists an easy fly to left, giving the Puerto Ricans another shot to win the game.

The D.R. team--indeed, most of these winter teams--are somewhat hack-happy. Which make for some innings where the team looks like worldbeaters, and others where they go down easy, like a completely different team.

Eddie Ramos, an unaffiliated pitcher, is the new Licey lanzador in the bottom of the 10th. Ramos looks a bit like Pascual Perez did, with a big 'Fro under his cap, a windup that has him all over the mound on every pitch. It leads to a little dance move at the end of each pitch, as he straightens out his lower body (which has gotten all twisted up in his follow-through), and backs up the mound. All he needs to do is throw an Eephus pitch, and I'll think that this is just a fever dream.

After two quick outs, Ramos starts getting hit, and soon it's 1st and 2nd, with Feliciano at the bat. Ramos is able to pop Feliciano up to strand the runners.

9:58

Houston, we've lost the announcers! In silence, punctuated only by cheering and the umpire calling out "ball!" Pigpen walks. Alexis Gomez, who apparently came in after Timo was hit by the pitch, pops up a bunt, which falls between the catcher and first baseman, but just barely. They still get Pigpen at second, because he couldn't get a good jump with the ball in the air.

Now it's a man on first for Sandy Martinez. Bit of trivia--Martinez was actually on the 2004 Red Sox team, getting in three games at the end of the regular season. This makes me wonder, was that enough to get him a World Series Ring? A half-share of the World Series loot?

Not that I'm still bitter or anything. Sandy pops out, leaving things up to...Melky Cabrera?

Oh, yeah, Sample's phantom pinch hitter was actually Melky. Melky does a nice job, stroking a single to right, getting Gomez to second, and forcing a pitching change.

The new pitcher is Brad Salmon, as the sound from the announcers weaves in and out like a drunken driver. Salmon's pitching to the the Player of the Game (so far), Anderson Hernandez. Salmon's all over the place, and the count runs to 3-2, before Hernandez smacks his fourth hit of the game, and brings in the go-ahead run. The Puerto Ricans then forget about Hernandez, who steals second without a throw, or even a pitch, as the Gigantes were appealing at a base, apparently claiming that Melky didn't touch second on his way to third.

Again, an astute observation by Leyritz that the ball is live during that appeal. I wonder, is that a stolen base or just an advancement on a throw? It becomes academic with the third out, but any way you slice it, Dominicans lead, 5-4.

Ramos stays on for the bottom of the inning, still doing his little dance swivel after every pitch. Alex Cora leads off with a double deep in the rightfield gap, putting the tying run in scoring position with nobody out, and immediately bringing big Roman Colon out of the pen for Licey. Colon's in the (Detroit) Tigers organization, and he brings a boring fastball (or maybe even a sinker) to bear on Ruben Gotay, who nearly ties the game on a sinking liner that's barely caught by Otanez.

One out and runners on again for Jose Valentin. Valentin takes Colon's fastball for a ride to deep right field, which is caught by Gomez. The fly moves the runner over to third, and leaves it all in Jorge Padilla's hands.


With a guy on third, Colon is peppering the ground in front of the plate, and to his credit, Martinez blocks two pitches that could have tied the game. Padilla fouls off the first payoff pitch; Colon gets a visit at the mound from Miguel Tejada (a "Hey kid, don't f--- up" visit) and then...screen goes blurry with digital "snow". We miss the pitch, but then again, so did Padilla. Game over.

Thanks for sticking with me through the Live Blog of the leadoff of the Caribbean World Series. Catch you later, when hopefully, I'll be healthier.

Flight 93

Fit of insomnia tonight, found myself flipping channels while meandering between a few writing assignments. On A&E, I see that the next thing on is the September 11 movie, Flight 93, about the hijacked Newark-San Francisco flight--presumably en route to Washington and the Capitol--that crashed in rural Pennsylvania after the passengers revolted against the highjackers.

I'd seen some good reviews, and the movie had come up in conversation with my brothers during our family dinner on Sunday. So I said to myself, "I'll just catch a few minutes."

Forty minutes later, I turned the TV off. It wasn't that the movie was bad--the reviews were dead-on--it was that, even four-plus years later, I could still feel that sinking feeling in my stomach. The same feeling that I had that morning, when I was running late for work, put on NY1 (the local all-news cable channel) to check and see if I needed to put on an overcoat, and found the weather report preempted by footage of the World Trade Center on fire.

The world was so different at that time, that when I saw One and Two World Trade on fire, "plane" wasn't in the top 5 explanations that came rushing into my mind. (To share some embarassment with you--and show how useless my brain can be before my first cup of coffee--one of the thoughts that popped into my head before "plane" was actually "meteor." For a moment, I looked at those assymetrical fires and thought "the trajectory is all wrong for a meteor to have hit both buildings.")

Back to the TV movie, Flight 93 is told in an un-exploitative, matter-of-fact way that seems ripped right out of the 9/11 Commission Report. Despite the lateness of the hour, the queasy feeling I got when they replayed the footage of the second plane hitting its target, I was riveted by the story--and would still be watching right now, if A&E hadn't let me off the hook with a commercial break a little bit after the half hour mark (the movie was being presented with limited commercials). When I shut off the television, my hand was shaking--the segment before the commercial break showed the highjackers storming the cockpit--and I was agitated. I still am.

I'm glad for that commercial break. I really want to see that movie, but now is not the time (literally--the film doesn't end until 2:45AM). Still, I wonder when I'll be ready to see something like this, even in TV movie reenactment. I sure wasn't ready the first time around.

Redux

...In Which We Return to Stuff We've Already Talked About, Recently.

For example, I have a new piece up over at Baseball Prospectus, an expansion of the post I wrote here earlier about the Angels'/Anaheim lawsuit ("What's in a Name?"). Since we've already gone over the legalistics, I'll give you a taste of an interesting factoid about the team that unseated the Yanks in 2002 and 2005:

Given that [Edgardo] Alfonzo has been worth less than seven WARP over the last three years, and only just turned 32 years old, he’s aged about as well as McCoy after visiting Gamma Hydra IV. Nonetheless, Alfonzo’s addition, along with the departures of Ben Molina, Paul Byrd, and Jarrod Washburn, leave the Angels with a team that’s stacked at third base (Alfonzo joining Chone Figgins, apparently-lapsed prospect Dallas McPherson, and Robb Quinlan) but thin in the outfield, at catcher, and in the rotation.

Given the current roster composition, PECOTA projects that the Angels would be the second-worst offensive team in the league, after the Royals, in 2006. That’s even with highly-touted Casey Kotchman taking over at first base, and incumbent first baseman Darin Erstad returning to center field. The next wave of Los Angeles of Anaheimian offensive talent--shortstop Brandon Wood, second baseman Howie Kendrick, Cuban refugee Kendry Morales--have played a grand total of four games at the Triple-A level (all by Wood), and are each presently blocked at the major league level. While one has to admire the Angels’ player development system, and their discipline in thinking of the long-term, this season could prove a rude awakening for Angels fans who have grown used to contending over the past few years.

In context, for the past two years the Angels have been right in the middle of the pack in terms of runs scored (7th place). Although the team is successful mainly because of its outstanding run prevention, the last time they finished lower than 10th in runs, the team finished below .500. Could be hard times in Los Angeles of Anaheim.

Revisiting Zomboid! ("Transcendental Donkeys?"), the New York Times finally got around to reviewing the play, and seemed just a little less confused than I was. As one Foreman fan who wrote in might like to note, the reviewer doesn't talk about Zomboid! being a laugh riot, and certainly not an intentional laugh riot. Still, it's a cool review of a cool performance piece. I recommend checking both out.

One downside about the WBC ("Names, Notes and Such") is that it may cause as much strife around the world as joy. At least it has in Panama, where Mariano Rivera has gone from being a local deity to being an unpatriotic SOB. The criticism actually seems to be getting to the Sandman:

Rivera's defense is simple and seemingly irrefutable: He's yet to pick up a baseball this winter and insists he won't be ready to throw a mid-90s fastball by the first week of March.

Rivera called Panama's manager Roberto Kelly, himself a former Yankee, to officially remove himself from the roster. Rivera said Kelly wished him well; the conversation ended without rancor. But peace between the two Panamanians hasn't softened the winds of war back home, where fans continue to question Rivera's priorities, if not his national pride.

"They're killing me," he said by telephone this week. "They're ripping me apart. It's like my head is in Haiti, my legs are in China. I never said anything to anyone about the team being incompetent. I never said Panama is incompetent. They have a chance to win like any other team, as long as they play hard. This is about my arm."

This is Mariano's second straight year with issues in Panama, after he didn't spend much time back home last off-season, after the tragic death of his relatives in an electrified pool. Now he's a pariah in Panama because of the WBC. It's a shame for a person some considered to be a legit presidential candidate there, when he retires.

Schrodinger's Baseball

I know it's a silly thought, but do you ever feel like the act of observation changes the result of what you're observing?

Maybe it's a sports thing. Most every sports fan has some story, about how they thought their unrelated behavior, sometimes hundreds or even thousands of miles away, changed the course of a sporting event. Every October, someone out there isn't changing their undershirt or their socks because those socks are "good luck." We don't mention no-hitters in progress because of the possibility we'll jinx it. During Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, my brother sat on his terrace from Hideki Matsui's double until Aaron F. Boone's home run because he stepped out into the cold (wearing only a t-shirt, if I recall correctly) and the Yanks chose that moment to rally against Pedro Martinez, Grady Little chose that moment to lose his damned mind.

I'm just saying this because I picked up the newspaper today, and got water poured on two of the prospects that got me most excited. Remember the other day when I mentioned my excitement about Barry Bonds playing in the World Baseball Classic? Well, that ain't going to happen. Barry's out, worried about getting injured. Remember the idea I discussed with Brother Joe about the Yanks picking up Piazza? That one sounds like a loser, also (at least according to Bill Madden).

It's kind of jarring to see Mike Piazza as the kind of guy whose agent is publicly making calls to publicly indifferent teams. Unlike some of the former superstars getting persona non grata treatment this winter--such as Jeff Bagwell and Frank Thomas--Piazza isn't really damaged goods. It's extremely likely that he can still be a useful part of a team, particularly one where he could DH occasionally.

It could be that the Yanks' indifference is just the new house negotiation style, courtesy of the new, improved, Brian Cashman. After all, Mike Piazza isn't a bargain if he costs seven or eight million dollars a season. But on a day like this, I can't help but have the silly thought that I should have kept my mouth shut.

Transcendental Donkeys?

This weekend, I found myself at St. Mark's Church in the East Village, there to attend a work of the Hysterical-Ontological Theater, by the name of Zomboid! (Film/Performance Project #1).

OK. I feel I may have lost some of you. Stay with me: I promise some sports at the end of this post. This is a New York slice-of-life thing.

Backing up a moment. About two weeks ago, my wife, La Chiquita, forwards me an email from her actress friend Lian, about Zomboid. To lure us to join her in a night of experimental theater, the following promo blurb was attached:

For many years Richard Foreman has performed dense, multi-layered theater for sold out audiences. But now he risks everything!

As announced - he is departing from his normal theatrical mode and beginning a new adventure. ZOMBOID! marks the advent of a series of performances dominated by projected tableaux vivants against which live actors (and in the case of ZOMBOID!, multiple transcendental donkeys) appear and disappear.)

ZOMBOID marks the space of a new and uniquely Foreman kind of philosophically oriented performance which lives in the heretofore unfathomable territory between projected image and on-stage corporality.

As La Chiquita put it, "I don't think we can let [Foreman] down when he's risking it all on heretofore unfathomable territory." I was a little leery about transcendental donkeys, but when you live in New York, you can't really afford to be a wuss about these things.

Back at St. Mark's we're sitting in a small, packed theater waiting for Zomboid! to begin. A woman's face is projected on two of the three stage walls. The third has a rectangular hole in it, like for a crawl space. The stage is simple, but cluttered with props, most notably a huge eyeball with Hebrew characters on it...and a stuffed donkey--maybe 50% of life size, looking for all the world like a much bigger Eeyore.

I'm not much for experimental theater, overall, but what little I know I'll share with you. The most difficult thing about it is that your experimental theater troupe is actively attempting to push your buttons, make you uncomfortable, disconcert you, and just plain be weird. This makes it pretty hard to figure out, even in retrospect, whether the performance you saw is actually...good, or not.

I mean, there could be something deep and intellectual about a woman, wrapped in a carpet, singing to a stuffed donkey in a childlike voice. Or not.

The other thing about about experimental theater, is that you have to control the giggles. Some of the stuff they're saying and doing is going to sound way funnier than it's supposed to be, and if you lose it, if you start laughing, not only are you going to be labeled an experimental theater busher, you're not going to be able to actually sit through the performance. Since it's so hard to tell good experimental theater from bad experimental theater, just making it through the performance is most often your reward--it's something like climbing a mountain or completing a marathon.

So about ten minutes into Zomboid!, I figured I was doing pretty well. The live troupe is four women and one man, and in the manner of such things they're identified not by their names but by their descriptions--"Beret" for example, is Temple Crocker, dressed, goth-style all in black, but wearing a beret. They're all dressed in black, a woman in a tutu, a woman with a "neck scruff", a woman with long hair, and the guy, who's identified as "6'2" Male." They, along with the sound/video crew threw everything and the kitchen sink at us--they're buzzing along the stage with the props, only occasionally speaking, music's playing, intercut with the occasional uttered word or phrase, not always in english, sometimes from a disembodied voice, sometimes coming from one of one of the Australian-accented characters on the matching video screens.

From time to time they feel a need to flash very bright lights in our eyes. Often, one or more characters on the set or screen will be blindfolded. Nonetheless, it's all going OK.

Then it happens. A voice, using one of those distortion technologies, like a TV-movie serial killer, is e-nun-ci-a-ting words ve-ry slooooowly. It's okay, I figure I can deal with that, but then it belts out a word so simple, funny, yet predictable, that it killed me:

DONNNNNNNKEEEEEEEY!

I held it together, but just barely. It hurt. It was so hard not to laugh, I almost cried.

I guess we all suffer for Art.

****

Alright, the promised baseball talk. The Red Sox are chatting up the Indians, hoping to net themselves Coco Crisp to patrol the centerfield pasture recently abandoned by Johnny Damon. The deal's still fluid--Sunday it was supposed to be a straight up swap of Crisp for Andy Marte, today it's a six-player deal, and under any circumstances it seems that the whole thing hinges on Cleveland acquiring Jason Michaels (remember when the Yanks coveted him?) for chump change.

The interesting thing about the proposed swap is how we downgrade or upgrade the abilities of players, depending on whether they're just arriving to our team, or going away. Once upon a time, talking up Damon's skills was the typical Red Sox fan's primary hobby. Now that Johnny's a Yank, Coco Crisp would make the Sox "much, much, better, this year."

Don't get me wrong--I like Coco Crisp, he's a good young player with the emphasis on "young." But if I'd suggested that Crisp was a better centerfielder than Damon (mind you, Crisp spent most of last season in left field) folks would be screaming about Yankee bias.

Not that Yankee fans are any better. To most Yankee fans, Damon wasn't the best leadoff hitter in baseball coming into this off-season. But now that he has a new haircut and pinstripes on his uni, he sure looks a lot more like Rickey Henderson to some guys. It's just the way of the world.

We'll be watching the Crisp situation, because, nothing else is going on in baseball right now.

On a different note, we can all sleep safer now that Rocco Graziosa is serving the rest of his misdemeanor sentence for sucker-punching David Wells. Right now, there's a bit of worry about star athletes receiving preferential treatment in the Courts, particularly in light of some very sympathetic (and rightfully so) press that former reliever Jeff Reardon is receiving in the wake of his bizarre jewelry store robbery last month.

It's hard to imagine Reardon going to jail in light of the relatively recent tragedy of his son's death, and the seemingly-obvious craziness of his actions. At the same time, you have to ask if a less well-known thief would get a pass just because he's had some real hard times, and has been taking prescription drugs. Indeed, drug-using, mentally disturbed petty thieves typically get some very harsh treatment in the American justice system.

Not arguing, just wondering.

Back to Rocco, usually I'd be wondering about his incident with Wells, the possibility of David's fame and relative popularity (at the time) in New York tainting the judicial process. But then I remember Rocco hamming it up for the cameras outside of the courthouse during his trial. And then I read that our pal Rocco's on probation for feeling up an unconscious 21 year old on New Year's Eve...and I don't really worry so much about the scales of justice, for him. He had a jury, and an Appellate Term panel, and now he has a jail cell.

That's pretty much as it should be.

A Moment of Silence, Please

She came, she lit up all our lives, and just like that [snap!] she's gone.

I'm taking the Anna Benson trade hard.

Sure, Anna was crazy. She had a big mouth and loved to run it off. But she was probably the best thing the Mets had going. Well, her and David Wright.

Without Anna, who will be Santa's very special helper next Christmas? Why couldn't Omar Minaya think about the children before making this trade?

In return for Mrs. Benson (and her husband) the Mets receive Jorge Julio. Julio was the Orioles' ex-closer, a hard thrower who didn't last in the closer role, and whose performance has gotten worse every season since his breakout year in 2002. They also get righthander John Maine, a promising player who seems to have hit a wall at AAA.

That's not a great rate of return for Kris Benson. For all that I've criticized Benson, the trade that brought him to New York, and the Mets' subsequent market setting signing last off-season, the market finally adjusted itself to the point where Benson's contract worked out--with Jarrod Washburn and Matt Morris getting $9 million per year, and Kevin Millwood getting $12 million per year, paying a league-average pitcher like Benson $15 million over the next two years doesn't seem all that crazy anymore. Even with Baltimore picking up Benson's contract, you'd have to think he was worth more than one bad reliever (even if he's only 26 years old) and one C-level prospect.

Julio gave up one homer every five innings last season, and a 5.90 ERA. I haven't seen his PECOTAs or anything, but you'd have to think that even moving to a much better ballpark, he isn't likely to do much better than Benson's 4.13 2005 ERA--and he'll pitch 100 or so fewer innings.

All I'm saying is, Jorge Julio better have one darn hot wife...

Names, Notes 'n' Such

One thought left over from yesterday's poorly-edited piece on the Anaheim Name Case: why do we go along with all these team namings and re-namings? Why did anyone call the Angels the "L.A. Angels of Anaheim" when they went with the name change last year? Why does anyone call the football Giants and Jets "New York" when they're actually pretty deep in New Jersey? Is there any justification for this? If you're a New Jersey tax payer, paying for infrastructure on a proposed new stadium at the Meadowlands for these teams, aren't you steamed that these guys are happy enough to take your money, but they won't take your name?

Take it a step further. Why do we give in to the folks who sell off stadium naming rights? When someone decides to re-name an existing ballpark "3COM" or "US Cellular" or some other unpronounceable crap, why do we play along?

Every time I hear a reporter choke their way through one of these corporate monstrosities, I imagine the scene in Roots where they're whipping LeVar Burton, trying to get him to say that his name is "Toby," not Kunta Kinte.

I think the rule should be that these sponsorship deals are like someone giving themselves a nickname: if it's a good nickname, you can use it, grudgingly; if not, they're on their own. When the late, great Ol' Dirty Bastard wanted to rename himself Big Baby Jesus, did people go along with that? Heck, no. He was still the ODB. Same rule should apply here.

****

Our Long National Their Brief Regional Nightmare is Over. All of New England can now sleep safe, as their homegrown dreamboat-intellectual-with-a-guitar GM is back, even if no one will say whether he's actually a GM again. Now Kid Theo dedicates himself to a life chained to Fenway, with the Curly Haired Boyfriend as the vulture who pecks out his liver every day. How nice.

For the inevitable press conference next week, they really need to stage a big, fake hug-and-kiss photo op between Theo and Lucchino. Here's my preemptive offering for the inevitable caption contest:

"You're like something I can't scrape off the bottom of my shoe, junior."
"You'll be dead within year, old man. Dead."

What can I say, it's been a boring off-season.

One of the things that has demolished my WBC column is the continuous stream of mamby-pamby will-they-or-won't-they waffling that comes out of the Classic. For example, the powers-that-be finally agreed to let the Cubans participate, in an international tourney, which sure is big of them. Alex Rodriguez, after yet another "I'm not sure I'm going" stint, and after having been placed on Dominican Republic's provisional roster, is with Team USA...um, all the way, right?

All this mess has made it hard to root for what should be a no-brainer for any baseball fan. Short-form, here's five reasons to watch the Classic:

1. Baseball that matters in March. No mystery about this, it's simply more baseball at a time when the alternative would be watching B teams in Spring Training. I'm already fiending pretty hard for some baseball on the tube, so I'll probably be a raving maniac by March.

2. The Shuuto. I want to see a pitcher with mechanics we've don't see in the U.S., throwing a pitch no major league pitcher throws.

3. Barry Bonds. At the WBC, he'll be under the Olympic drug testing regime. It won't help anyone who believes that Barry Bonds has a magical undetectable genetically-taylored super-soldier serum flowing through his veins, but it might allay some doubts (or create some new ones if Barry stinks up the joint) as Bonds heads toward Ruth and Aaron in 2006.

4. Team Italy. What's the over/under on how many players on the final roster will actually be from the U.S.? I'd love to see footage of Italian reporters interviewing guys whose Italian language skills are about as good as mine. (Expect a lot of "Ah. Aha." dropped into those conversations. Worked for me.)

5. The Off-Chance Someone Might Shock the World. I expect this would be very bad news for A-Rod, but could you imagine the attention that would be drawn to this if Team USA lost, or came close to losing? Much of the disinterest so far has come from the assumption that Team USA will easily whup any other team on the planet. The second it looks plausible that the best ballplayers in the world might hit the canvas--and it could happen--all sorts of ears are going to perk up.

What's in a Name?

As mentioned (somewhat obliquely) in Sunday's post, the case of one of the most-derided name changes in history has gone to Court this week. Arte Moreno and the Angels organization are being sued by the municipality of Anaheim, over whether their ridiculous name change--from the "Anaheim Angels" that won the World Series in 2002 to the "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" who beat the Yanks in the ALDS last season (but lost to the World Champs in the ALCS)--violates the Angels' lease.

On the one hand, it looks like, under the plain language of the contract, the Angels found a loophole to make them Los Angelenos of Anaheim rather than Anaheimians. The contract says only that the Angels will "include the name Anaheim" in any team name, and specifically rejected contractual language that would limit them to only the name "Anaheim Angels." Sounds pretty straightforward, right?

The City, on the other hand, is arguing that no language was put in the contract was put in barring the Angels from adding another city name because...well, it's stupid! There was no way that Anaheim could envision a tragedy of nomenclature on the level of the "... Angels of Anaheim." They say that baseball's tradition has only allowed one geographic reference--the name of one city or state--in any team's name at any time, and that it was understood within the contractual language that any name would adhere to baseball's tradition in this regard.

The Angels have been a team with an identity crisis for their entire existence. For the first four years of their existence, they tacked on "Los Angeles" in front of their name, then for the next 30 or so years, they were the "California Angels," before becoming the "Anaheim Angels" for seven years after their latest lease negotiations, and a stadium renovation that cost Anaheim at least $30 million, according to ballparks.com.

In the law suit, the City seems somewhat absurd, claiming $200 million in damages from the Angels' switch to the L.A. name. It doesn't seem as far-fetched, when we consider the overblown "benefits to the community" Major League Baseball claims whenever they're trying to convince a municipality to finance a new ballpark. While the too-simple contractual language does seem to give the Angels the edge, there are fundamental issues of equity that seem to go in the City's favor. Basically, Anaheim funded ballpark renovations in exchange for an advertisement--their name attached to that of the Angels team. Including the name of another, better-known municipality defeats that purpose of making Anaheim a "major-league city." In the new naming scheme, they're back to being an obscure suburb of L.A.

No other advertiser would stand for that, and neither should Anaheim.

Bye-Bye Jorge?

Here's a conversation-starter from New York Daily News columnist Bill Madden:

Poor Benji Molina, who weeks ago found himself without a chair when the music stopped and still is looking for a team. What were the odds that Alan Embree (Padres), Fernando Vina (Mariners) or, for that matter, Bret Boone would get jobs before Molina, who hit .295 with 15 homers and 69 RBI last year? Molina turned down three years, $21 million from the Mets and will probably wind up with a one-year deal from the Blue Jays. But now that Molina can probably be signed on the cheap, maybe the Yankees should consider signing him and releasing Jorge Posada (who they have to pay anyway next year) in order to save themselves $12 million on the '07 option that kicks in if he starts 81 games in '06? Just a thought, although they would probably have to first consult with Randy Johnson.

Now, this is just something provocative from a Sunday columnist on a slow, slow week. The rest of the column is about how Mark McGwire won't get into the Hall of Fame on the first try (man, that story should only be worth about eight or nine thousand words to Madden between now and next January), pot shots against John Thorn and Jeff Bagwell, praise for pitching coaches who cheated during their playing careers (stark contrast to the vitriol targeted at McGwire, when steroids weren't even banned in baseball during McGwire's career) and pimping baseball banquets, including one he runs. Nice.

The idea that Jorge's gonna give way to Benjie Molina is pishposhed in Murray Chass's New York Times column:

Some speculators thought the Yankees might trade Posada and sign Molina, but Cashman scoffed at the idea.

"We've never tried to trade Jorge Posada," he said. "I've had teams express some interest in him, but I've never picked up the phone and made a proposal for Jorge Posada. But that's been written about quite often."

The theory behind the idea that the Yankees would trade the 34-year-old Posada stems from the option in his contract for the 2007 season. If he is the starting catcher in 81 games next season, the option becomes guaranteed for $12 million and he receives an option year in 2008 with $4 million guaranteed.

Now, Jorge has shown definite signs of decline, is 34 years old, and is going to be making big money for the next two years. Meanwhile, Benjie is three years younger, has a better defensive reputation, and was only three points of EqA behind the Yankee backstop.

But isn't it supposed to be the "real baseball people" (and mainstream sports columnists always put themselves in that group) who cherish the leadership that a Jorge Posada brings to the table, the hard-nosed winner-ness that comes with Posada's collection of World Series rings? My money says that if the Yanks took Madden's advice, by mid-June he'd be flaming them for having let the "heart and soul" of the team leave.

What do you think?

Runaway Rocket

Another solo flight for me on Notebook, this time covering the Astros. Figure this one may actually be interesting to Yankee fans because it deals with Roger Clemens, who is currently an X-factor hanging over baseball--still one of the best pitchers in the game, available to all and sitting on the sidelines...for now. The Rocket has already declared that he won't decide on a new team until after the World Baseball Classic (yes, that article is still coming), but he's not elligible to sign with Houston until May 1, because of the 'Stros decision not to offer him arbitration. Here's a taste from the article:

Clemens taking off the month of April is not necessarily a bad thing--each of the past two years, the Rocket has worn down in the second half of the season. In 2005, his ERA jumped by nearly a run after the All Star break. If Clemens were to re-sign with the Astros in May, he stands a chance of being fresher down the stretch, and perhaps more durable through October.

However, as things stand now, Clemens is a free agent, also coveted by at least two other former employers, as well as by Texas’s American League franchise. Not to call the Rocket fickle, but he has been known to change his mind about team allegiances. And if Clemens scampers off with another team, or rides off into the sunset, the Astros are stuck with the unenviable task of replacing his MLB-leading 9.4 SNLVAR.

The dregs remaining in the free agent barrel won’t be able to replace Clemens’ production. Only Jeff Weaver would bring some fraction of Clemens’s value to the table. We mean that literally--Weaver’s SNLVAR in 2005 (4.2) was less than half of Clemens’, but was also 2 wins higher than the next best free agent starter. Weaver would bring innings to the table, and would fit very well in the Houston’s Juice Box given his susceptibility to lefthanded batters, (.875 OPS and 46 HR against him over the past three years) and his relative dominance of righthanders (.632 OPS, 24 HR over the same span).

The problem with Weaver is price--he’s a Scott Boras client and unlikely to pitch for a discount. Signing Weaver for the $8-10 million Boras is likely seeking would foreclose the possibility of signing Clemens, should he decide that pursuing the pennant in Houston would be a fun use of his time this summer, and would probably put a crimp in the team’s ability to dish out raises to their arb-eligible players--Morgan Ensberg, Brad Lidge, Adam Everett, and Dan Wheeler. Unless, that is, they can convince Jeff Bagwell to retire due to injury.

Clemens's situation reminds me a bit of that of the protagonist in Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. For those of you not into foreign flicks, it's the same story that was remade by Sergio Leone as A Fistful of Dollars (arguably Clint Eastwood's breakout movie) and most recently by Bruce Willis as Last Man Standing.

The protagonist of each of these stories is a badass (masterless samurai in the original, independent gunfighter in the others) who wanders into a town in the middle of a gang war. The two feuding factions almost automatically sense that he's someone to be reckoned with, and immediately start trying to recruit him, each believing that he's the key that will turn the tide in their favor.

In the original, there's a great scene where the two factions have a squirmish in the town square. As each gang approaches from their respective side of town, our guy climbs a structure in the middle of the square (a water tower?) to get a better view of the competition. As the two gangs ineptly try to wage war with each other, the warrior sits, neutral and literally above the fray, his intentions a mystery to both sides. The ultimate free agent.

I wonder if a similar scenario will play out in a small town called the AL East next Spring?

Goose Egg

Just a quick note from the end of my lunch break.

The word came down about a half hour ago from Hall of Fame, with only Bruce Sutter getting the necessary 75% supermajority of baseball writers needed to get that bronze plaque in Cooperstown, New York.

My first reaction is anger. I don't see how you can put Bruce Sutter in the Hall of Fame while excluding Goose Gossage. If you don't believe in relievers in the Hall of Fame, I understand that--it's hard to justify letting a pitcher into the hall that's pitched only a small fraction of what the top starters have done.

But if you let relievers in, then be consistent. Gossage was dominant, and had much greater longetivity than Sutter. Gossage contributed to championship teams, and had a 2.87 ERA in postseason play. Yet he wasn't within 10% of getting elected in this, the best possible year for his cause.

It's disappointing. Maybe I just don't "get" Sutter, because when he was at his best, I was pretty much an AL-only fan. Does anyone else see why on Earth the BWAA electorate would consider Sutter Gossage's superior?

A Real World Series

Working on a piece about the WBC which should be ready tomorrow. In the meanwhile, I'd like to draw everyone's attention to a related development. Over at Baseball Prospectus, they're doing a simulated series between the North American "World" Champions--the Chicago White Sox--and the Champions of the Nippon League--the Chiba Lotte Marines of Japan.

The simulation uses the Diamond Mind baseball program, and translated stats by BP's Clay Davenport to bridge the gap between the Nippon League--with its smaller baseballs and ballparks--and Major League Baseball.

This real World Series, dubbed the Battle of Champions by BP's Dave Haller (who's also one of my wingmen on Notebook), is already up to Game 2. You can read the game stories for Game 1 here and Game 2 here, and Dave's overview of the project and its methods here. Without ruining any of the fun--quick, go read the articles and come back!--I will say that the simulation's results have been extremely cool, so far.

One question that I'd love to present to any Japanese fans of the game, is how a Japanese player playing for the American squad would be received by his countrymen (and women). If (to take us away from the example of the Sox and the Marines) Hideki Matsui were to blast a big home run against gyroballer Daisuke Matsuzaka, in a hypothetical Yankees/Seibu Lions series, would Japanese fans be happy that it was Matsui (and not some foreigner) who beat them, or upset at Matsui for helping a U.S. team beat a Japanese club?

Mad Max: Beyond Pro Player Stadium

New Notebook piece up at Baseball Prospectus (here's the link, second article down). This time the victim is the Marlins, whose major league roster gives evidence of a grand disaster, and made me think of 1980's futuristic post-apocalypse movies. Here's a taste:

After the apocalypse, civilization has collapsed. Grown men eat dog food straight out of the can while scavenging for gasoline. An entire infield is dispersed across the continent. Roving gangs of minor league pitchers prey on the weak, desperate for a place on the 25-man roster.

In those few places where society, in some form, persists, petty warlords insult each other’s height, and argue about how to pay for a retractable Thunderdome.

Oh, things are ugly in Southern Florida.

Thinking about Mad Max raises some questions. Sure, it was cool for Max to have his leather jacket and drive "the last of the V8 Interceptors" but given the heat of the Outback, and the scarcity of fuel, wouldn't he have been better off with a reasonable windbreaker and a subcompact, preferably something with a Wankle engine?

Just askin'.

Happy Birthday Post-Its

Yesterday was the WTDB's second anniversary. I (cad that I am) celebrated by not posting anything.

The problem is, I've been trying to put 2005 into perspective, and it just wasn't working for me. I just couldn't decide on a perspective. The Yanks? There isn't a larger theme to their 2005, really, just a combination of the themes we've run into in the past--team getting older; my, isn't that expensive; another year that most fans would envy, but not us. There's nothing really to say here. A personal perspective? I have much to be thankful for in 2005--nuptials to La Chiquita foremost among them--but that's a snoozefest, even for an audience as small and hard-core as mine. A blogger's perspective? Double the snooze, and raise the nausea of above. I put out the suggestions box a couple weeks back on how to improve this space; anyone with ideas feel free to leave a comment back there. I know that I have to turn out more content (the 159 entries I posted in 2005 won't do, even supplemented with 37 pieces at BP) and regularize the writing schedule. But that's just navel-gazing.

As pointed out by Jeff Angus, the year-end/beginning article is somewhat lazy and frequently passe. So aside from the little bits above, I'm not doing it. On to some good old-fashioned notes.

*****
One of the 20 or so posts that I started writing last year, but did not finish, was about the World Baseball Classic. Basically, it was born out of a defense of Alex Rodriguez's decision to play for the Dominican Republic in the WBC, a decision that Rodriguez was catching some heat for.

Alex killed that piece by deciding to duck out of the WBC completely last month, now, he's put the tournament back on my radar by supposedly agreeing to participate as part of team USA.

The decision itself isn't that interesting--rosters aren't set on these games, so there's not much fun to be had handicapping the squads, yet. However, Rodriguez has set another PR (public relations, not Puerto Rico) low mark, because by declaring he was playing for the Dominican squad, then saying he was undecided, then saying again that he was playing for the Dominican Republic, then saying he was out, and now saying he's in and playing for ol' USA, he seems like a waffling, weak-willed, unpatriotic (I just couldn't continue the alliteration, there) Hamlet-wannabe.

It was a tough decision to screw up, but A-Rod managed to do so. I'd initially admired Alex's decision to play for team D.R. because 1) as a fellow Dominican-American, I can relate to what he was thinking, and 2) it was one of the few times in his career that Rodriguez was set to do something that wasn't the "easy" thing to do. It was a gutsy call, one likely to be both unpopular with many fans and unprofitable (financially, at least). It looked like a principled position, even if you didn't agree with A-Rod's principles.

Unless you're one of the people who has volunteered to put yourself in harm's way to protect this country, it's pretty easy to drape yourself in the flag and declare yourself a patriot. It's much harder to explain that it's not disloyal to the U.S. to honor your heritage by playing for another country in a baseball tournament. It's not like Rodriguez is a necessary cog to put team USA over the top in this competition: at third base team USA still had David Wright, Chipper Jones, Troy Glaus, Morgan Ensberg and possibly Eric Chavez to choose from; at shorstop, Derek Jeter, Michael Young, and Jimmy Rollins.

But even if A-Rod wants to wrap himself in the flag now, it's an empty gesture--everyone will remember that playing for the Dominican Republic was his first choice, and now it looks like he's only playing for the U.S. because Bud Selig ordered him to, or because he wants to appease the crowd. In other words, he's left himself in a position where he can't possibly please anyone.

I know I've said this before, but I keep on trying to figure out what player in baseball history has been as good as Alex Rodriguez, while not being in any way graceful. Bonds is a horror with the media, but he's got panache in his game. Ripken's game was just as unadorned as Rodriguez's but he was nowhere near as good, and he had that Iron Man strong silent type thing going for him. Do we have to go back to Rogers Hornsby? Does anyone who was familiar with Hank Aaron as a player want to weigh in on this?

*****

The Mets have acquired Brett Boone. I suppose that's because golf course workers in New York don't receive enough abuse, or perhaps because when you have Kaz Matsui on the roster, anyone looks good.

*****

Speaking of Mets, while Brother Joe was in NYC for the holidays, we had a chance to discuss the Pinstripers a bit. The one player he was surprised the Yanks weren't pursuing? Mike Piazza. If you think about it a bit, Piazza fits: the Yanks could use a righthanded bopper/DH/insurance against something happening to Jorge Posada. Plus it has all the earmarks of a George Steinbrenner move, tweaking the Mets fans while making the club stronger.

The question is, is Piazza ready for a part-time role? Is he priced out of the Yanks' budget (don't laugh)? I say that if Piazza is still unsigned in a couple of weeks, we might hear rumblings.