Sports Writing

Apparently, Bronson Arroyo is following in Ortiz’s footsteps and releasing an album. I guess he’s not just a ballplayer… he’s an entertainer. (Okay, so I just re-watched “The Office”.)

I always enjoy Jayson Stark’s column on random facts - this week he does the favour of pointing out that for all the NFL’s supposed parity, MLB has had different champions every year since 2000, and in the last 8 years, 16 out of 30 MLB teams have made the LCS, almost identical to the 17 out of 32 NFL teams that have made the conference finals.

The Boston Herald has more on the alleged kidnapping (fingers crossed) of El Guapo: According to one member of Sox management, Garces had expressed fears of a kidnapping in the past. Each time Garces signed a new contract, he asked that the salary not be released until after his family had left Venezuela for the start of the season.

w00t!! Pointed to Progressive Boink’s very funny Dugout, which envisions ballplayers instant messaging. A sample: WinBenSteinsBrenner: Now, before we begin, I have a very important and personal question to ask you.

The house of Larry Mahnken, blogger at Replacement Level Yankees Weblog (one of the Net’s few sources of lucid, clear Yankee analysis) and writer at the Hardball Times, has burned down. If you have the means, please do support him by leaving a tip in the tipjar on his site.

“I would like to keep the ball, too. … I think everyone on the team should have gotten a little piece of the ball. He’s the only one who noticed to keep the ball. Not even Keith Foulke thought to.” (From ESPN)

Random Internet surfing brought me to Number Fifteen, a Kevin Millar fansite. Interesting - I’ve heard many debates about the relative merits of Millar as a player, but I’ve never really heard someone gush over him. Well, until now. Fun stuff - even has photos from in-store appearances.

A Large Regular points out that Anna Benson was only joking about sleeping with all the Mets should she find Kris cheatin': There’s no way I would touch some of those guys with a 10-foot pole. I don’t care what Kris did. Some of them are disgusting.

Slight baseball deviation… I finally got to see the Pats on TV! Sadly NFL doesn’t have anything like MLB.tv, so those of us over in distant shores have to got to go with whatever’s on Monday Night Football (shown Tuesday morning here) and the playoff games. Great job by Brady. Whoever said he was just a dink-and-dunk short-passer? Clearly the best big-game QB in the business. Huge game by Branch - he likes the big stage, methinks, as does Vrabel. But the Harrison return gets my vote for best moment of the game.

Y’know, I’ve been thinking a bit more about Randy Johnson’s little Manhattan conniption, and one thing struck me - he used his right hand to block the camera. Funny how no matter how angry pitchers such as RJ or Kevin Brown get, they always know to use the non-pitching hand in moments of anger. I guess that’s years of conditioning.

Has Rich Garces been kidnapped? I certainly hope not. The Magallanes Navigator’s closer Richard Garcés is missing since last Monday the 17th, when he played as a reinforcement for the Pastora team against the Caracas Leones (Lions).

So Oil Can Boyd wants to make a comeback. It’s quite shocking that he’s only 45, I really do think of him as belonging to another era completely, forgetting that he retired at the tender age of 31. Clearly he loves Massachusetts: last team he pitched for was Lynn, pitched in an exhibition game in Cambridge last summer, and now he’s trying out for Brockton.

So one of the greatest ex-Sox pitchers ever surpasses another in the money stakes: Roger Clemens agrees to pitch for the Astros for $18m, surpassing Pedro Martinez’s record $17.5m salary for a pitcher.

Some funny bits on contract clauses from Jayson Stark’s column: Terry Adams always wanted to be a starter. Apparently, the Phillies haven’t completely dismissed that possibility - because his new contract would pay him an extra $875,000 if he makes 32 starts this year.

A-Rod shoots his mouth off again, this time on Curt: “We beat him up a couple of times during the season, and he sat crying on the bench,” Rodriguez recalled of Schilling. “Then he lost Game 1 in the series, and he wasn’t talking.

Doug Mirabelli talks about Doug Mientkiewicz and the storm-in-a-teacup that was Ballgate: “You are the dumbest guy in America if you give the ball back,” Mirabelli told Mientkiewicz. “I tell you right now, if I had that ball I’d lock it up and bury the key somewhere.” Mirabelli said

I can just imagine the trailers for the inevitable TV movie: What if they won it all… and you weren’t awake to see it?

From the Boston Herald’s “Inside Track” column, which often has nice bits on the Sox… this one’s about a Sox player’s naughty bits. In other shocking Schilling revelations, No. 38 confesses that nothing comes between him and his Red Sox uniform.

So Rajah Clemens wants $22m. That’s ridiculous. You can ask for your uniform number for arbitration now? To be fair, Clemens did get only $5m for 2004, of which $3.5m was deferred. And $27m total for 2 seasons including one Cy season is actually around the market rate (Randy Johnson got $13.5m for last season). Pity the market doesn’t work by compensating for past performance…

So it looks like the Sox signed Bellhorn and Arroyo to one-year deals. Great to see ’em back. These deals mean the Sox avoid arbitration. Funny how it’s called “arbitration” but the process seems to be “let the arbiters choose between either the player’s proposal or the team’s”. If there’s no meeting in the middle, how is that arbitrating?