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Happily Ever After

Once upon a time, there was a baseball team.  Continue Reading

Postseason Starts With A Curve

Tony La Russa pulled out another of his sleight of hand tricks today, stating that Chris Carpenter would be the Game 2 starter in Philadelphia, sending Carpenter out just three days after throwing a complete game shutout.

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• Carpenter to pitch Game 2 (yourenotagolfer.mlblogs.com)
• MLB Playoff Predictions: Who'll Win Every Series, Including LCS and World Series (bleacherreport.com)
• La Russa Surprises with NLDS Rotation Announcement (vivaelbirdos.com)
• Braves Loss Caps Cards' Incredible Run to Playoffs (suburbanmen.com)
• Cardinals to use Chris Carpenter on short rest in Game 2 (hardballtalk.nbcsports.com)
• Cardinals rate third in NL for most 90-win seasons (retrosimba.com)

Guest book review: THE CAPTAIN: The Journey of Derek Jeter

by Ian O'Connor. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011

by Ron Kaplan

But the expiration of his contract at the end of the 2010 season presented a problem for the team: What to do with him? Should they give a 37-year-old shortstop with diminishing skills the long-term contract he wants to end his career in the sacred pinstripes, or do they risk the enmity of their fans for allowing him to sign with another team? A Hobson's choice, to be sure.

Eventually, the Yankees compromised by giving him a shorter deal for beaucoup bucks. But when Jeter got off to a slow start, the haters couldn't wait to say "I told you so." There was even a recent front-page story about his decline in The New York Times. But a two-home run performance on Mothers' Day seemed to silence the critics --- for the time being. That's one of the things that's so intriguing about the timing of Ian O'Connor's THE CAPTAIN: The Journey of Derek Jeter. When he began the project a couple of years ago, did he perhaps expect Jeter would "relocate" or retire? Did he want to take advantage of what might be the popular figure's swan song? And when it didn't transpire that way, why did the publisher decide to push ahead, knowing there would be more to come?

Just prior to its release, THE CAPTAIN made headlines in the local tabloids, focusing on the frosty relationships between Jeter and a few of his teammates, most notably former "BFF" Alex Rodriguez. Leave it to the likes of the Post and Daily News to focus on one aspect in an otherwise near-perfect career to inflame the situation (and boost newspaper sales). Whether or not that issue is out of proportion to the rest of the book is irrelevant. In fact, it is precisely Jeter's goody-two-shoes persona that probably cries out for reviewers and sportswriters to find that one nugget of controversy.

The book is overwhelmingly complimentary, praising Jeter as a hard-working athlete, always trying to improve himself. He is respectful; he would call his manager "Mr. Torre," rather than more informal appellations; and he remains unfazed to a large extent by his celebrity status. (Of course, one can always fall on the "half full/half empty" school of interpretation. O'Connor would have the reader do a lot of reading between the lines.) Being a living legend isn't easy. Fans and employers expect nothing short of brilliance, and when they don't get it, the sniping begins, primarily in the form of shots that appear in the media. And who among us is ever thrilled by criticism?

Jeter, too, is not a saint. He has his moments of pique, where he shows annoyance at teammates who do not live up to his standards. O'Connor credits (blames?) him for having an unpopular player traded, but offers no hard evidence. In fact, if there's a knock on the narrative, it's the writer's frequent employment of innuendo. In the section "Note on the Authors Interviews and Sources," O'Connor acknowledges "piecing together the narrative" by "lean[ing] on scores of interviews with Jeter that I either conducted or participated in over the course of his fifteen-year career" (Jeter is now in his 17th season). Some media and sports pundits and reviewers have questioned the accuracy/fairness of this method of reportage; Jeter himself has offered a few complaints.

One almost wishes O'Connor had waited until Jeter retired for a more appreciative coda for one of the finest players of his generation. Despite its overall positive portrayal, as it stands, it comes across as obviously incomplete.

(Ron Kaplan hosts Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf, a blog about baseball literature and other media. This review originally appeared on Bookreporter.com. Reprinted with permission of the writer.)

Playing Pepper 2011: New York Yankees

Two years ago, I started a series I called Playing Pepper, where I asked questions of bloggers of each major league team about the season to come.  Not only was that informative and entertaining, it led to the spawning of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance.  With spring training coming up, it's time to get back into shape by again playing a little pepper.  Continue Reading

Playing Pepper 2010: New York Yankees

Last year before the season began, I posed five questions to a blogger for each team, so as to get to know the rest of baseball.  I focus so heavily on the Cardinals that sometimes the rest of MLB can pass me by.  That went very well, so much so that it spawned not only a postseason edition but was part of the impetus for the formation of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance.

So this year, I've brought Playing Pepper back, with a little bit of a twist.  Instead of five questions, I posed 10 questions, and this year every team got the same set.  Plus, tapping into those BBA connections, I sent them to every blogger representing that team in the BBA.

We'll try to do two a day in a general alphabetical order---ah, who are we kidding, we'll get them up when we get them up.

New York Yankees
2009 Finish: 103-59, first in AL East, won World Series  Continue Reading

Preparing The Ground

Are you ready to see Matt Holliday walk?

That seems to be the thrust of today's story at the Post-Dispatch.  Some of the verbal dancing we've come to expect from ownership makes a return, as they seem to start letting people down easy in regard to their Holliday wishes.

While it might not be the best way to go about it, it's not anything reasonable fans are surprised at.  Indeed, the more surprising thing was to think that they might really try to keep him around.  As I have said before, unless they planned to take payroll to the $125 million range, there would be too much money tied in all of this, with Albert Pujols, Chris Carpenter, Adam Wainwright and Kyle Lohse already bringing in major portions of the payroll.

I have never honestly held my breath on a Holliday return, though I realize that it's still possible.  I just don't know that tying up that much long-term is in the best interest of the franchise.  Holliday's a great player, to be sure, but I don't think that'd help the stated goal of staying as competitive as possible as often as possible.

I do want to see them take that monney they might have spent on Holliday (or at least a substantial portion of it) and bolster the club for 2010.  There's a report that they were interested in Vicente Padilla.  That's not the direction I'd like to see, and thankfully Matthew Leach basically shot that down.  I still think I'd like to see a Ben Sheets/Rich Harden type gamble, because you are never going to get talent like that at a lower price.

It really will be interesting to see what ownership does this offseason, because there's not a lot of really attractive options.  It may be some one-year deals and look to do this again next off-season.

Changing gears, I want to mention a situation that came to my attention through the Baseball Bloggers Alliance.  There is a blog called The Yankee Universe that covers, as you might imagine, the Yankees.  However, it's likely not to be called that much longer, since the Yankees and MLB have come after them with a cease and desist order.  The bloggers' response can be found here.

This seems like a tough situation.  On the one hand, it seems petty for the Yankees to come after a blog.  I mean, honestly, does anyone think that it's an "official" blog?  Are there any such things?  Anything that is official from a player or team is more of the press release/bland generalities genre, not actually a discussion blog.  While people like Matthew Leach blog for the official site, they aren't team blogs by any stretch of the imagination.  So if you are seeing analysis and discussion, you can't actually think that it's approved by a Steinbrenner, can you?

Add to that side the fact that it's your fan base, and in general you don't necessarily want to do irritating and picky stuff with your fans, because that's a darn good way to make them ex-fans.  They are promoting your brand and advertising your team, so you'd think you'd want to help them do that.

The flip side of that, though, is that the Yankees apparently have been using "Yankee Universe" in a charity fashion, which does lend to some confusion, and the simple fact that you have to defend trademarks, because if you don't, eventually you lose them.  (One of the few things I remember from college business law.)  If you don't stop people from using them without permission, there comes a point where you can't claim it as yours.  It sucks, but from a long-term perspective, it has to be done.

The BBA ran into this during our voting of post-season awards.  Since we were using MVP, Cy Young, etc. as our titles, which were registered to the Baseball Writers of America, we got an e-mail requesting we change our award titles, which we'll do next year (as soon as we figure out what we want to change them to).  Some of our membership questioned whether they can do that, as other organizations use similar terms, but when you are a small group, you don't argue with anything that could cause legal trouble unless you are 120% sure you can deal with it.

Which means that, no matter the rightness or wrongness of it, most likely The Yankee Universe will become known as something else in the coming days.  If someone in that organizaiton was more open to new media, though, you think they could have worked out some sort of compromise or agreement rather than using the considerable weight of the franchise to squash a fly, as it were.

A good weekend to you and yours and we'll get back together next week to talk about the winter meetings!

Twigs For The Stove

First off, congratulations to the Yankees.  I'm not a Yankee hater, due to their tradition mainly.  I'm not big on the fact that they spent so much and won, but when you look at how often they spent a ton and lost, you can see that's not completely the reasoning.  Besides, it's been nine years.  While that's not that long for a lot of teams, it does mean that there's been plenty of other winners this decade.  Interesting that both old Yankee Stadium and the new place were christened with championships.  Of course, only one other team has done that, and we remember it well.

There have been just a few small items that were Cardinal related in the news lately.  First, the Blue Jays claimed Jarrett Hoffpauir off waivers.  Hoffpauir continues the interesting "former Cardinal" theme the Jays have had recently.  (After they got Scott Rolen and David Eckstein, a friend of mine who has family there stated there were shirts proclaiming the "St. Toronto Blue Cardinals.")  Hoffpauir's window effectively closed when Skip Schumaker made an effective transition to second.  Factor in Julio Lugo being around all year and Hoffpauir wasn't going to sniff playing time.  He'd slipped in the prospect rankings anyway, but if he gets a chance in Toronto he might be a servicable backup.

The Pirates are interested in talking to Rick Ankiel.  We all know that Rick is going to go somewhere else after this season; it's almost guaranteed.  A situation like Pittsburgh would actually be a good place for him.  He could work on being a hitter, probably put up some solid numbers in that park, and not have to worry about carrying a team or being a piece toward a post-season puzzle.  With him, Andrew McCutchen and Garrett Jones in the outfield, Pittsburgh would have a pretty interesting offense.

Not unexpectedly, the Cardinals released Brad Thompson yesterday.  I've noted many times how Thompson's effectiveness had declined pretty much every year.  If he can't get the sinker over and get the ground balls, he gets lit up.  With the bullpen being pretty defined already, there wasn't much of a spot for him anyway, and since he was going to be eligible for arbitration, it's best to get it out of the way now.  Thompson did have highlights as a Cardinal and he'll always be remembered, but it was time to part ways.

Finally, Joe Strauss indicated that there have been discussions between the Cardinals and Scott Boras.  It sounds like it was more of a presentation of an initial offer rather than real in-depth negotiations for the rights to Matt Holliday, but it's a start.

With the World Series over, things should start heating up soon.  Mark McGwire will probably talk next week, if I was to guess.  I know that they'd held off making him available to the press until the Series was done.  Probably early next week, maybe the week after.  (The cynical would guess the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to minimize some of the talk, but I doubt that'll happen--or it'd work.)

15 days from now, the free agents have to file.  I think we'd all be shocked if the Cards were able to keep Holliday before that time, but it's something to keep an eye on.  I know they want to use this exclusive window as much as they possibly can.  The winter meetings will be held Dec. 7-10 in Indianapolis, so there will probably be a lot of talk leading up to that.

The offseason is here!  Let's see what the Cardinals do with it!

Playing Pepper Postseason: New York Yankees

If you were reading this blog before this season started, you may remember a series I did called "Playing Pepper", where I asked five questions of a blogger covering each major league team.  With the season coming to a close, I thought I'd tap into the talents of the newly formed Baseball Bloggers Alliance and ask five new questions of the bloggers covering the postseason teams.   Continue Reading

Book Review: Munson

Playing Pepper 2009: New York Yankees

As the players start getting themselves ready for another season, I thought it'd be a good idea to do the same.  I contacted a blogger for each major league team and posted them five questions.  This is the result.  You can find the tentative schedule of teams here and today's main post is right here.

It's pretty fashionable to hate the Yankees.  And they definitely give you reasons, especially when you look at the money they threw around this offseason. If fear leads to anger and anger leads to hate, you gotta figure envy comes into play somewhere in there as well.

When you think about the history of the Yankees, though, it's hard not to be in awe of the players that have worn the pinstripes and the success they've had.  On the whole, a strong (but not too strong) Yankee team is good for baseball.

I sent my five questions over to Brian, who writes at In Mo We Trust as well as being the creator and maintainer of the whole Blogs By Fans network, and he gave some insights on the offseason the Yanks had and the expectations of New York fans.
  Continue Reading