Sports Writing

Some people are getting their panties in a twist about the very thought of Pedro meeting with Steinbrenner. Nothing wrong with meeting Steinbrenner, I think. Pedro’s a free man. And even if he had no intention of signing for the Yankees, he should know at least what they’re offering.

So AL MVP results are in, and Vlad’s the man. Sheffield being second over Manny is annoying though. I think of Sheffield as “There’s Something About Gary”, since, like the Cameron Diaz character in the movie, he found some cream, had no idea what it was, and still put it on his body.

Here’s the numbers for the Carlos Beltran bidding war, courtesy of Will Carroll. As I said on SoSH, if those numbers are accurate and for guaranteed contracts, the Yankees offer (8 years, $18.1 million per) looks the best. Too much of a risk signing up for the Angels and then trying to get better than 3 years / $15 mil per once he’s 32.

Ooh, this week’s New Yorker has Roger Angell wrapping up the season. He’s a baseball writer from the old school - I remember his meditations in the New Yorker on family life and on his mother and his stepdad E.B. White - and his words still resound like poetry. Here’s his take on the heartstopping point in Game 5 where Wakefield is pitching in extra innings:

Rick Reilly rites Rortiz rin… okay, Scooby-Doo voice aside, Rick Reilly writes Ortiz in as his vote for Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year. And a glowing tribute it is too, noting not only Ortiz’s 3 game-winning hits in the postseason, but also the All-Star game homer. Plus some classic Ortiz quotes, including:

“Hey, we could use him. We could definitely use him.” - Richard Seymour on Johnny Damon’s energetic entrance. The Sox were at Foxboro to show off their trophy. Nice. Now for it to become a sort of mutual ceremony - November the Sox appear at Foxboro with the World Series trophy, April the Pats appear at Fenway with the Vince Lombardi…

Omar Vizquel is getting 3 years, $12.25m? Wow. That’s ludicrously high, and I hope it doesn’t affect what the OC thinks he should be getting (any more than $7 million and I say the Sox should look into alternatives). I have no idea what Brian Sabean is doing, except cornering the lucrative AARP market. Maybe he’ll get John and Julio Franco next - heck, they’re still available.

I suppose this would be a good test of the new drainage system.

Are New York sports teams cursed? Heh. When things go wrong people like to look for any possible explanation. But in retrospect, you could say there was the accretion of fate-tempting moments for the Yankees, including Sheffield’s boast and there were incidents such as Tom Gordon’s champagne eye injury. Celebrating too hard? Did this lead to his crap Game 5? And then John Olerud stepped on a bat, necessitating the use of Tony Clark… cue the Twilight Zone music.

The Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka gave up only 1 ER on 5 hits in his complete game against the MLB All-Stars yesterday. He won’t be eligible to play in the majors for the next three years because of Japanese free agent rules, but that’s quite a feat. His post-game quote says something about the Sox’s increased fame worldwide though:

Another day, another waiver wire pickup by Theo Epstein - LHP Billy Traber. Looks like a low-risk, potential high-yield move to me. Worse thing happens, he doesn’t recover well from Tommy John (he wasn’t throwing that hard even before surgery), hardly any money lost. And I like anyone who’s one-hit the Yankees, even Mike Maroth.

Peter Gammons’ column this week is, as is expected, hot stove stuff with a lot on Boston. He had this to say about Carl Pavano: Pavano has serious interest in the Red Sox because he wants to pitch with a mentor, and Curt Schilling is a longtime respected comrade.

One of the filmmakers of 1918 - The Film, an independent film about the Sox, contacted me: I just finished shooting a film about Sox winning the World Series. It’s a comedy about two life-long Red Sox fans who miraculously land tickets to the World Series. Completely professional too, we shot in High Definition. We used all local guys and even used a Dunkin Donuts as a set. All the planning was done before the playoffs even started. Aswe started filming the Sox were down 3-0 to the Yankees.

Apparently Jason Varitek is asking for a 5 year $50 million contract, as per Scott Boras on WEEI. I love Tek - heck, like I said before, Tek is my freakin’ middle name - but that’s a ludicrous demand for a 33-year-old catcher. I know you start high but isn’t there a point in negotiations where the other side goes “wow, he’s starting so high that even meeting him in the middle’s too much”? I don’t know if Boras’ strategy is right… he was a great negotiator for his players during the boom years, but will that work in this era of belt-tightening? (Kevin Millwood anyone?) I guess we’ll see how it plays out…

Can I say how excited I am to see Red Sox World Series bobble head dolls? Mmm. Pedro holding the trophy. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Curt Schilling seems to have been tooling around Sons of Sam Horn a lot lately… like his comments here on Pedro being the #1 free agent, and the need to sign Jason Varitek (he posts as “gehrig38”). Great stuff. So that’s what people do while waiting for ankle surgery.

Also, seeing as I was talking about a possible World Cup, here’s a pic of the only major leaguer ever to have been born in Singapore, Robin Jennings.

Ortiz hit a monster homer in Japan. 514 feet! It looked like it carried beyond the international date line and landed in the day before. Here’s the quote from the pitcher, Shunsuke Watanabe:

Over at Sons of Sam Horn, there’s a discussion on the ongoing renovations to Fenway, which sidled nicely into the age-old debate on whether to move Fenway. I’ll skip aside the business perspective for this post (quick summary of my view: there’s already huge revenue from Fenway despite small crowds, and there are big ‘ifs’ regarding viability of paying back loans). From the standpoint of this architecture buff, there’s something that strikes me as inauthentic about many “quirks” in new ballparks exist only as an allusion to the fact that earlier ballparks have quirks. One of the things that’s nice about the Green Monster is that it exists as a way of fitting a ballpark into an urban space. (My favourite football/soccer team is Everton, which has a church that stands in one corner of the stadium, so I suppose I have a thing for urban integration.) A random quirk in a suburban park would just be a simulacrum of a feature.

Looks like the World Cup is on its way! Incidentally, the idea that the World Series is named for the New York World is an urban legend. It’s nice to think that the origins of the name weren’t self-aggrandising, but it’s not true.