THE LINE OF THE WEEK

Mets broadcaster Gary Cohen recalling his sometime contributing partner Ralph Kiner, as quoted by Richard Sandomir in the New York Times:  “'All I can tell you,” Cohen said, “is that there was no time that he worked a game when we didn’t think it was the best day of the week.'”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/sports/baseball/ralph-kiner-the-enduring-met-retires-to-his-eternal-korner.html

One of the great home run hitters in major league baseball history, Kiner broadcast Mets games for 50 years, from the franchise's debut in 1962.

Two wonderful moments in his broadcast career were
(1) this exchange, recounted in Bruce Weber's Times obituary,

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/sports/baseball/ralph-kiner-slugger-who-became-a-voice-of-mets-dies-at-91.html?hp

was with Mets catcher Clarence "Choo Choo" Coleman on his inimitable post-game show Kiner's Korner:  Asked Ralph: “'What’s your wife’s name, and what’s she like?” Coleman replied, “Her name is Mrs. Coleman — and she likes me, bub.'”

(2)  Passed on by another longtime broadcast partner of Kiner's, Tim McCarver to Sandomir, occurred when Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of Janet Leigh visited the broadcast booth.  Kiner took Jamie Lee aside and quietly said, "‘Jamie Lee, my name’s Ralph Kiner, and you were just introduced to us and I wanted to tell you that I used to date your mother.’ And she throws her arms around his neck and says, ‘Daddy!’ "
Uncharacteristically, Kiner was speechless.

Kiner, whom I met several times during my days covering the Mets for WCBS Newsradio 88, and WCBS-TV (Channel 2) in New York, was as kind, friendly, intelligent, and completely unpretentious a fellow as I ever met. 

As my good friend, the former Met outfielder Ron Swoboda, whose dedication to the game had made him a perpetual Kiner favorite said, "Kiner was a gem of a guy whose brain was as sharp as the stories he told.  He knew where all the bodies were buried, which made the stories he told off-camera even better." 

I wish I had heard some.

Kiner's passing, at 91, precedes by just a few days the arrival of pitchers and catchers at baseball training camps in Florida and Arizona.  Folks in Heaven are delighted that Kiner's Korner, filled with Ralph's insights into the first season since 1946 that will start without him, has risen their way.

GETTIN' READY FOR THE WORLD SERIES

The best teams won.

The World Series will have the perfect set-up to be a classic; it will match up not the hottest or the luckiest, but the best team in each league, the Boston Red Sox and Saint Louis Cardinals.

It gives me no pleasure to report this.  I rooted against the Sawx and the Cards in every series up the playoff ladder.  But truth is truth.  And is that one the grand things about sports, they tell the truth, winners always win, losers (however gallantly or undeservedly) always lose, and the result does sum up the story of the event.

This time, the truth about baseball 2013 is remarkably affirming.  The best teams won for all the right reasons: they had the best front office managers, the best on-field manager and the best mix of very talented players, almost all of whom had years to be proud of.

The second-bests, the losers in the recent League Championship Series, the Detroit Tigers and Los Angeles Dodgers were worthy pretenders.  Their executive managers, field managers, and most of their players had good years and decent post-seasons, but not with the breadth, depth and consistency of the winners.

The teams assembled in Boston and St Louis over the year are great credits to their General Managers, Ben Cherington and John Mozeliak.  Cherington’s makeover of last year’s last-place finishers will be noted in baseball’s history books.

Among Boston’s starting lineup, only Centerfielder Jacoby Ellsbury, Second Baseman Dustin Pedroia, Catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Designated Hitter David Ortiz were inherited.  Third Baseman Will Middlebrooks was moving from a rookie year spent largely in the minors or on the bench to a starting role.  He did OK and is likely to be replaced next year.  In fact, it looks like he was replaced 2 games ago by another of the delightful young talents bursting onto the major league scene, Xander Bogaerts, who already reminds me of Baltimore’s superkid Manny Machado. Tigers’ Shortstop Jose Iglesias came from Cuba to the Red Sox, where, earlier this season, he saved the club while regular SS Steven Drew recovered from an injury.

When Drew got healthy, Iglesias became tradeable (because Bogaerts is already conceded to be Boston’s SS for the next decade.  Lucky Sox.)  Iglesias went to Detroit, where despite a few misplays in the field, he established himself in the Tigers’  just-concluded post-season, as their long-term SS.  Iglesias, who is one of the best fielding shortstops to show up in years, is 23; Bogaerts just turned 21.  In a 3-team maneuver, Boston got for Iglesias, the Chicago Whites Sox pitcher Jake Peavy, who moved into the team’s regular pitching rotation, and pitched consistently well, before having a nightmare outing against the Tigers.  Peavy had great stuff, but no command at all, issuing a bunch of walks – very unusual for him – and watching several pitches move into dangerous hitters’ zones.

The Peavy move was the capstone on Cherington’s year of Great Acquisitions.

He had already changed the batting order considerably by adding free agents outfielders Shane Victorino and Jonny Gomes, back-up catcher David Ross, and another catcher who would be re-routed to First Base, Mike Napoli and a backup for him, Mike Carp.  Outfielder Daniel Nava who had for years been a pogo-stick that popped up to Boston and down to minor-league Pawtucket was established as the spare.  And they all prospered.

Pedroia fought through injuries, and prevailed.  Ellsbury lost weeks to injury, but came back strong.  The 2 First baseman had among the best years of their careers, enjoying the fabled Fenway Effect (an antique, supremely eccentric playing field, statistically well-established as a “hitter’s park.”).  All the rest played up to who they are, which in the cases of Victorino, Gomes, and Ross meant, not only solid, if middling talents tucked inside tough, serious, focused professional ballplayer bodies, but gregarious spirits, welcomed and appreciated in the clubhouse of every one of the several teams each had played for. 

They helped heal a team which last year had been a study in fragmentation, manager Bobby Valentine at odds with many of the players, and coaches, and among the players themselves, cliques and backbiting seemed to divide pitchers from field players, this one from that one.  It was ugly, and so was the won-lost record.

This year, under manager John Farrell, the gregarious newcomers and proud Red Sox lifers grew together.  They grew beards, many of them, funny beards.  They laughed at them, tugged at them, knitted together around them.

And they remembered how to play baseball.  How take pitches to expose what was being thrown and wear the pitcher out; how to advance and score baserunners, with or without actual basehits; how to string together walks and singles and “keep the line moving” without the traditional Red Sox crop of home runs.  Over the last 20 years, the 2013 team would rank #11 in Home Runs, but #8 in runs scored. 

On the pitching side, they survived.  Their best starter, Clay Buchholtz was hurt for months.  Their big pre-season addition Ryan Dempster was mediocre, and in the bullpen their first 2 closers, Joel Hanrahan and Andrew Bailey were lost for most of the season.  But manager Farrell, a former big league starter and pitching coach, and his new pitching Coach Juan Nieves found answers.  Big lefty Felix Doubront proved a serviceable starter, and then Cherington brought in Peavy, and with a healthy Buchholtz, and thriving veterans John Lester and John Lackey near their career peaks, the rotation got good.  The bullpen got just as good, especially as Junichi Tazawa and Koji Uehara took over the 8^th and 9^th inning responsibilities.  Uehara always pitched well in Baltimore and Texas, and I always thought I liked him even better than his managers did.  His great half-season in Boston rang every told ya so chime in my body.

Like their hitters, the Red Sox pitchers didn’t overwhelm you, but they consistently out-command you, out-think and out-execute you.  Add it up, and the truth is Boston won more games than any team in its league this year as well as both its playoff series.  They were the best team.

So were the Cardinals, also tops in their league in wins in-season, and playoff victories post-season.  While Ben Cherington radically rebuilt his Sox, John Mozeliak just perfected an already-productive lineup. 

When, standout First Baseman Allen Craig lost 6 weeks to injury, Matt Adams stepped right in and supplied more power, if a lower batting average than Craig.  Second Baseman Matt Carpenter blossomed into one of the best players in the game, breaking team records held by the sainted Stan (the Man) Musial.  SS Pete Kozma, of whom little was expected when he was rushed in from the minors where he was considered a marginal prospect, to fill in for injured Rafael Furcal late last year, has continued to surprise by producing few surprises, good solid defense and barely acceptable offense (although he did produce at crucial moments), enough to keep the pot boiling.  At third, David Freese played hurt all year and it showed.  But he too, performed best when needed most, and the rest of the team more than covered for his less-than-his-best play.  The outfield features the superb glove of John Jay in Center, and the power bats of Matt Holliday and Carlos Beltran in Left and Right.  Both Holliday and Beltran excelled in the playoffs.  Beltran is notorious for doing that.

Of all the players mishandled in recent years by the miserable NY Mets, none can compare, in talent and undeserved abuse, to Beltran.  Rushed back from serious injury, Carlos was often ripped, sometimes by anonymous mice from his own front office, in the tabloids’ back pages.  But, he was well-liked and completely respected by his teammates in the clubhouse.  Even when they were left bereft the Mets rank and file celebrated Beltran’s liberation when the Mets traded him to the Giants, from whom he went to the Cardinals..

The key to the Cardinals is their Catcher Yadier Molina.  The only question about this offensive and defensive standout is whether he is the best catcher in the game or the best player in the game.  The youngest, and by far the best, of 3 major league catching brothers, Molina’s arrival was the reason why his manager Mike Matheny, his predecessor as Cardinals backstop, was traded away from St Louis.

Like the Sox, the Cards play smart, consistent, disciplined baseball.  More explosive across the lineup than the Red Sox, they also excel at “small ball.”  They all, like Molina, reflect Matheny’s influence.

Probably not coincidentally, the area of greatest improvement in the Cardinals over Matheny’s 2 year tenure is pitching.  Here, like the Sox, the Cards lost their ace, Chris Carpenter, but not for months, for the whole season.  They also saw their projected 5^th starter Jaime Garcia founder.  But luckily Adam Wainwright returned after an injury-ruined 2012 to step in as ace, veteran Lance Lynn performed well, and 2 rookies Joe Kelly and Shelby Miller did even better.  Then, in mid-September, the Cardinals unleashed their 2102 first draft pick Michael Wacha, and from that moment to this one, he’s been the best pitcher in baseball.

In the bullpen, again like the Red Sox, the Cardinals lost their closer, saw his replacement falter and wound up using a stable of rookie or almost-rookie studs whose 95-100 mph stuff has consistently snuffed their opponents.  Kevin Siegrist, Carlos Martinez and Trevor Rosenthal have given Cardinals’ opponents only 6 innings to get all their scoring done.  From the 7^th on, fuggedabouddit.

The two managers, and they should be (notwithstanding several other worthy claimants) the Managers of the Year, share several salient characteristics.

Both were players.  Neither were stars (although Matheny had a stellar “inside” reputation for defense and working with pitchers).  Both speak softly and carefully to the media, but each is reputed for complete control of their rosters.  Both have the same extra motivation to succeed.  Each saw his playing career prematurely ended by injury.

Farrell was a better than average starter for the Indians when he tore an elbow.  He hung on after missing 2 years, to play 3 more, but you and he don’t want to talk about the results.  He was just 33 when he retired.

Matheny was just a year older, an established starter at St Louis and then San Francisco, when a series of foul balls off his mask left him with post-concussion syndrome.  After most of a year on the disabled list, he, too, quickly retired, and without even a year of fallow, or training, or build-up, he was hired by the Cardinals to replace the certain Hall of Fame manager, Tony LaRussa.  His team last year lost in the League Championship Series, 4 games to 3, losing the last 3 in a row.  This year, so far, they’ve won it all, and will probably be favored over the Red Sox.

The teams first game is on Wednesday.  The time off will be good for the pitching staffs and will raise a great question; should the Cardinals open with their veteran ace, and reliable post-season standout Wainwright, or the kid Wacha who is hotter than a Hatch Green Chile? 

I’m pretty sure LaRussa would go with the vet, only slightly less sure about Matheny.  My guess is Lester and Buchholtz will start the first 2 for Boston.

The Cardinals play in a much bigger park than Fenway, and hit fewer home runs.  But doubles?  This team has 9 players with at least 20 2-baggers, 8 with 25 or more…Carpenter and Molina have 99 between ‘em, while Holiday, Craig and Beltran share 90 more.  Look for them to play “wall ball” off Fenway’s “Green Monster” high and shallow behind left field. If they do, the Sox will be hurting.

Boston likes to run.  Yadier Molina is one of the best at stopping stealing.  My guess is, he’ll be tested, and will do fine.

Don’t count out Boston.  This team of bearded characters (and yes, damn right, mine was the first beard in network TV news and sports!!) has character, way beyond the beards and have proved all year, they are winners.  Only the Cardinals deserve the chance to apply a different label.

And speaking of just deserts, the Red Sox and Cardinals have among the most engaged, engaging, knowledgeable, emotional fan bases in baseball.  The crowd cutaways, which can be so distracting, will likely be very entertaining in both Fenway and New Busch Stadium.

 I don’t love either team, but I have to love this Series.  And that, like the eventual outcome, is the truth.

 

 

 

 

NOT SYRIA, NATS' BASEBALL

Baseball writer Steve Goldman posted today on the Washington Nats painful season.

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2013/9/6/4701542/davey-johnson-mike-rizzo-bryce-harper

I felt compelled to respond, and to take a break from Syria.

Steve opens with a shot at one of my favorite NYC hardball scribes, the Daily News' Bill Madden, (whose biography of George Steinbrenner is an outstanding read.) I start with that.  Then, oy, the Nats.

First, let me say, I love Bill Madden, but his judgment on Davey Johnson …disqualified from Hall of Fame consideration because of this terrible Nats’ year… is just absurd.  If Red Schoendienst is in (deservedly, I think), Davey deserves to be.  He was at least as good a second-sacker, not with the glove, but certainly better with the bat, and has had a better career as a manager.

Now, the Nats:  I agree Davey has not done a good job this year, but agree more strongly that the real fault lies with Mike Rizzo and the cards he dealt his manager.

Steve Goldman oddly forgets to mention Rizzo’s dismissal of his 3 capable bullpen lefties (in favor of Zach Duke, no less) which hurt badly for the first half-year.  For the future, Krol looks promising and Abad serviceable, but this is something that must be addressed before next season. 

Was Soriano a good investment?  Maybe.   Was he a big mistake? Not in himself, but as part of the shabby treatment of Drew Storen, it was disastrous.  In short, was last year’s bullpen (except for its last inning) better than this year’s.  Absolutely.  Debit that to the GM.

Notwithstanding Dan Haren’s recent resurgence, he killed the team for the first half of the year, and probably should have been replaced in the rotation by late May.  But, again unaccountably missing from Goldman’s analysis is Taylor Jordan, who gave the Nats virtually nothing but well-pitched starts after Ross Detwiler went down.  With “National Det,” both Johnson and Rizzo saw their dreams rather than the obvious – he was not the same guy as last year after April, but it took a month or more of sticking with him to prove the point.

Why did it take more than half a year for Denard Span to hit like Denard Span?  Some questions do not have answers.  But would an everyday outfield of Michael Morse, Bryce Harper and Jayson Werth been better than Harper-Span-Werth?  I think so, even if Morse had gotten hurt here as he did in Seattle and been replaced by Tyler Moore.  I also think, not signing Adam LaRoche and moving Morse to 1B (after making the Span deal) would have been better than 2 years of LaRoche, a great glove, but whose year last year was an obvious “career year” outlier in a remarkably steady playing lifetime. This year is the “bad year” outlier; next year should be just average (.260, 25 HR, 90 RBI), over which a full-time Tyler Moore might be an improvement.

Espinosa’s glove carried him, deservedly, past his sell by date.  Rendon’s second half slump has been worrying, but for me at least, not frightening.  I still think he’s a potential  .300 hitter, if only an average glove. A guy I want to see is Zach Walters of the 29 HR power, if scary 38 errors at Syracuse.  Maybe he or Rendon should go to 3B with bad shoulder = bad throws Ryan Zimmerman moving to 1B.

Steve Lombardozzi is a great utility guy, but if he can be traded for something more valuable, there’s a kid named Josh Johnson, who showed OK defense, hit .300 with no power at SS for both Harrisburg and Syracuse, who might fill the 5^th infielder role.

And speaking of minor-leaguers not on Goldman’s radar screen, how about CF Billy Burns?  If Eury Perez makes sense as a September pinch-runner  (he went 23 for 31 stolen bases at Syracuse), doesn’t Burns (who swiped 74 in 81 attempts at Potomac and Harrisburg and out-hit Perez) make more sense?

Young pitchers?  There seem to have been no fewer than 4 at Harrisburg.  Nathan Karns we saw.  The good news is, after his so-so stint in DC, he pitched even better in AA than before his call-up.  Caleb Clay sounds like another Taylor Jordan, not overpowering stuff, but league-leading control, below 3.00 ERA, and lots of consistency at Potomac and Harrisburg.  The hard-throwing hopeful is A J Cole (brought back from Oakland in the Morse deal.) High A-AA combined, 10-5.  And finally, a prospective closer named Aaron Barrett..26 saves at Harrisburg, 7 more at Syracuse.

It’s true there was little pitching, no starters, of interest in Syracuse, but that’s because the Nats, like a growing number of teams, stashed their best prospects at AA.

And with the rest of the schedule loaded up within the NL East, it ain’t over till it’s over.  If we can cream Miami, Philly and NY (as we should) and face down Atlanta (as we haven’t) and one of the 2 Central Division non-winners totally collapses (the longest shot imaginable), …..??

Hope springs eternal (and falls in September?)  

 

THE BASEBALL SCANDAL’S MAN OF MYSTERY

What did Antonio Bastardo know, and when did he know it?  When did Bastardo, a very valuable relief pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, know that he was on Major League Baseball’s suspension list, for buying (and presumably using) outlawed Performance Enhancing Drugs from the now-defunct Biogenesis “Clinic” during the 2012 season?

Of the 15 players marked for punishment in baseball’s Biogenesis scandal, only Bastardo’s banishment has almost certainly eliminated his team from 2013 post-season contention.

Like Ryan Braun, the Milwaukee Brewer’s All-Star left fielder who led the parade of self-described penitents in accepting, 2 weeks ago, his rest-of-the-regular-season suspension, All-Star shortstop Everth Cabrera’s team, the San Diego Padres have no prospects for the post-season.  All-Star outfielder Nelson Cruz’s Texas Rangers, and All-Star shortstop Jhonny Peralta’s Detroit Tigers are so good, even their painful absences leave them, respectively, a strong contender and a virtual lock to make the post-season playoffs. 

Leaving aside the Yankees’ third baseman Alex Rodriguez, whose appeal against his 215 game suspension (like all the PED suspensions, without pay, which is A-Rod’s unique case is well over $20 million a year) gives him one last chance to “be a star” for the rest of the season, and perhaps, -- and it would be near-miraculous,-- to drag his injury-riddled team into the playoffs, the other 9 suspendees hardly matter, to their teams, to most fans, to almost anybody outside their immediate families.

The answer to when Bastardo knew should determine his future with the Phillies. If he knew before July 31, MLB’s trading deadline, and kept it from his team until Sunday night, which is when his General Manager Ruben Amaro, Jr. says he first found out, that in Bastardo’s unbelievably inadequate words, "something might be going on," he should never again enter their clubhouse.

The Phillies were, at best, a long shot for the post-season even with Bastardo giving them pretty consistent excellence as their 8^th inning set-up man.  But Amaro apparently thought they still had a chance, and thus, held off trading several of his veteran players for younger prospects from teams who were loading up for serious runs at the playoffs. Many fans, many baseball “experts,” consider Amaro’s non-moves to have been a major mistake.  Had he known he would be without Bastardo for his team’s last 50 games, he might well have done differently, and that might have made a difference for the Phillies next 10 years.

Amaro may now allow some of those veteran players (3B Michael Young, C Carlos Ruiz, All-Star pitcher Cliff Lee) to change teams in waiver deals, but his options are fewer, and his return will likely be smaller. 

Because Antonio Bastardo gave him no warning.   

The other 2 clubs in the playoff running, the Rangers and the Tigers, both had plenty of advance notice that their guys were in trouble, enough time to make plans for life without Cruz and Peralta, and in Detroit’s case, to trade for a replacement shortstop.

So it’s a consequential question -- what kind of a warning did Bastardo get?  His name had never been in the papers, had never been leaked by MLB sources to any of a thousand possible reporters.  So, maybe he thought he’d squeaked through.  Sources tell me, other players have.

So, when did MLB put Bastardo on notice?  By Sunday, when he said, "something might be going on," he knew he had already cut a deal with MLB, to give up playing and getting paid for the rest of this season, in exchange for silence about the substance of his misdeeds, and a clean bill to start over in spring training of 2014. Was that deal done overnight?  Or was it hammered out between Bastardo’s agent (and lawyer?) and MLB over some period of time?

If the latter is the case, more shame on Bastardo.  If MLB waited till the last minute, it’s a big question “Why?”  And, why did MLB not let the Phillies in on the secret?  The team’s ignorance, of Bastardo’s coming punishment, of the dramatic reduction of their forlorn playoff pretensions, has hurt them, their fans, and most likely, affected the competitive balance, present and future, of the National League East. 

Bastardo’s role in nurturing that ignorance is close to unforgivable.  The Phillies are talking about his return to the team in 2014, but I don’t see how they can mean it. But if MLB was also responsible, their share of the blame is huge, and close to unfathomable.

In keeping with its mass judgment and cosmetic, “move along,” strategy, Major League Baseball’s (and the players’ union’s) conspiracy of silence denies fans the facts they need to make particular judgments about individual players.  The folks who buy the tickets and bring their valuable eyeballs to the TV screen deserve to know not only who did what, but also, in this case, who knew when. 

Baseball’s lack of candor is making a bad case smell much worse.

LIAR, LIAR, BASEBALL PANTS ON FIRE

Here’s the important thing we know for sure about the breaking news in Major League Baseball’s performance enhancing drug scandal: suspended star Ryan Braun is afraid of Anthony Bosch.  Put into a position where he would have to go mano a mano  with the man behind the closed South Florida Biogenesis “anti-aging” clinic, now alleged to have sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of PED’s to ballplayers, Braun folded his.

Alex Rodriguez, also prominently featured as about to be suspended in widespread leaks I decried in an earlier blog, http://davemarashsez.blogspot.com/2013/07/drug-punishments-impending.html, had his own leaks spread around which indicated that he was prepared to face down his latest accuser.  Someone close to A-Rod alleged to the NY Daily News that Bosch had begged to be bought off, before he agreed to take money and legal protections to testify for MLB.

My guess is, Rodriguez and his advisors are considering their options.  He had been saying he would be back on the field for the Yankees by August 22.  Now, he has halted his rehabilitation from surgery, because, he says, he has injured a quad muscle.

Helping A-Rod assess his situation, finding a least-damaging-to-all-concerned outcome, are among the smallest reasons why Braun and Major League Baseball need to put some facts on the table.  The inarticulate mumbling going on now actually hurts all concerned.

Here is what Braun has said so far about being banished for the rest of this season (66 games) and deprived of about $3 million in salary: “As I have acknowledged in the past, I am not perfect. I realize now that I have made some mistakes. I am willing to accept the consequences of those actions. This situation has taken a toll on me and my entire family, and it is has been a distraction to my teammates and the Brewers organization. I am very grateful for the support I have received from players, ownership and the fans in Milwaukee and around the country. Finally, I wish to apologize to anyone I may have disappointed – all of the baseball fans especially those in Milwaukee, the great Brewers organization, and my teammates. I am glad to have this matter behind me once and for all, and I cannot wait to get back to the game I love.”

For this, and all the quotes in this piece I am indebted to the blog of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s Thomas Haudricourt.

http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/216496651.html

Braun has issued a printed statement.  He is as afraid to face the media as he is to face Anthony Bosch.  And with good reason: his record of lying about his case.

From the Haudricourt collection:

Immediately after arbitrator Shyam Das has cleared him, because the allegedly dirty samples had been mishandled, Braun said:  “I am very pleased and relieved by today’s decision. It is the first step in restoring my good name and reputation. We were able to get through this because I am innocent and the truth is on our side.”

The next day, at a local Milwaukee sandlot field: "If I had done this intentionally or unintentionally, I'd be the first one to step up and say, 'I did it. By no means am I perfect, but if I've ever made any mistakes in my life I've taken responsibility for my actions. I truly believe in my heart and I would bet my life that this substance never entered my body at any point.”

After it was revealed his name was on a Biogenesis list of those who owed Bosch a lot of money: “During the course of preparing for my successful appeal last year, my attorneys, who were previously familiar with Tony Bosch, used him as a consultant.  There was a dispute over compensation for Bosch’s work, which is why my lawyer and I are listed under ‘money’s owed’ and not on any other list. I have nothing to hide and have never had any other relationship with Bosch.”

That was enough to fool me: consistent, logical statements from a player who had heretofore had a good reputation, lacked any of the physical characteristics of a “juicer,” and had an established record of all-star quality play long before and the year after he allegedly “flunked” a drug test for the first time.

And now, like a lot of fans, I want to know everything.  And, for a variety of reasons, all parties should be hurrying to fully inform.

Why did Ryan Braun “confess?”  I have to put confess in quotes, because, “I have made some mistakes,” confesses to nothing. 

Ryan, did you dose yourself with testosterone before the National League Playoffs in 2011 just give yourself an edge?  Was it your first use?  Your only use?

Why do you fear Anthony Bosch?  Would it be just your word against his, that he sold you drugs, that he was more than “a consultant?”  Or would it be his word and documentation of your debt and what it was for?

Or was your choice to give up a remnant of an already lost season for the Brewers and a remnant for a huge salary, with a multiply-huger contract extension already signed, because your blank-paged plea saved you from much harsher penalties and an endless campaign against you by MLB, featuring accusations placed in every form of media from the leaders of the game, Bosch and the press room’s amen corner?

Ryan, until you spell it out, everyone will assume the worst, that you juiced and lied and lied and lied.  And no one will believe you have really taken ownership of your crimes until you enumerate them, and denounce them, specifically and in detail.  Anything less will be taken, rightly, as sniveling.

And MLB, if you hold to your present course of obfuscation, “We commend Ryan Braun for taking responsibility for his past actions,” said Rob Manfred, Executive Vice President, Economics & League Affairs for Major League Baseball, people will wonder what kind of a case against Braun you really had.

Manfred, a former Deputy NYC Mayor under Rudy Giuliani, is certainly offering no prosecutor's statement of facts to prove that the player’s deal was not just a calculation to call off a threatened war of unflattering leaks and pettifoggery forever.

Worse, Manfred is acting like we should believe this was no big deal, nothing to see, and that we should all move along.  “We all agree that it is in the best interests of the game to resolve this matter.”

Just buy your tickets for 2014, MLB is saying to Brewer fans, Braun has done nothing we’re not willing to forgive and forget. “When Ryan returns,” Manfred said, already looking forward, or is it, looking away from what's real, “we look forward to him making positive contributions to Major League Baseball, both on and off the field.”

Hate the player; love his home runs.

Somehow, I think most baseball fans, most disinterested observers, will want more than that.  Ryan Braun and Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig (not his surrogate) should tell the truth.

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

DRUG PUNISHMENTS "IMPENDING"

Remember how the Obama White House re-defined “imminent,” as in an imminent threat of terrorism, to “not necessarily anytime soon”?

 

Major League Baseball (MLB) seems to feel the same way about the word “impending,” as in impending punishments for players who broke the rules on Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) through association with the now-closed Biogenesis Clinic in South Florida, and so do the pet journalists who uncritically swallow and pass on these vague threats. 

Since the first Biogenesis document dump to the Miami New Times this winter, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig has been promising action, and on a weekly (daily during All Star Game Week) basis, sources “close to” MLB have been saying Judgment Day would be coming soon to a TV screen, website or newspaper near you. 

This week Selig mounted the soapbox at The David Letterman Show to reiterate that his “tough”, “thorough” investigation was nearing a climax, promising with classic Seligian anti-climax that judgments and punishments would occur “sometime in the future.”  Sort of like that “imminent” terrorist attack” that makes it legal for the US Government to kill or arrest you.

Since its contract with Major League Baseball guarantees the Players Union the right to challenge any charges, and the union will challenge each and every one of them, Union leader Michael Weiner added 3 words to baseball's re-definition of “impending”: “not this season.”

Weiner also estimated that the number of suspensions of his player-clients could number be “5 to 500”.  The 2 most frequently mentioned names are the widely-loathed Alex Rodriguez and the MLB-despised Ryan Braun.

A lot of people, reportedly including a lot of his past and present teammates, don’t like Rodriguez because, in addition to being an insufferably vain braggart, he is an admitted liar and PED-abuser, who, in fact, lied for years about past PED use.

MLB hates Ryan Braun because he “beat” them in a PED case brought against him because his lawyers were able to convince an impartial arbitrator that well-documented errors in the handling of his suspect specimen made it inadmissible as well as doubtful as evidence against him. 

MLB responded to the decision by swiftly and pointedly (and point-headedly) firing the arbitrator.  This was, of course, a message to all future arbitrators and drug testers that MLB would accept only the results it wants.  As if any court would accept “evidence” whose protocols had been so violated.  As if the record for errors in forensic and clinical labs weren’t perfectly clear: they all make errors.

Exactly how many and how frequently is hard to say, but the standard guesstimate is that clinical labs make errors in as few as 4 cases in 1000 or as many as 3 in every 100.  Other studies set the laboratory error rate much higher.  And don’t believe the bullshit that the athletic drug labs are any better.  WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency has fired deficient labs and reinstated falsely-accused athletes with some recent frequency. 

WADA long resisted admitting the possibility of error, even after 4 respected Norwegian scientists blasted them for the 2006 banning of race walker Erik Tysse.

Here’s what the 4 critics wrote:  “The primary data presented by WADA are of poor quality and have been treated and interpreted in a deviant and superficial manner.

“It is pretty clear that the evidence presented is far from proving any guilt.  

"The present case is an example of misuse of scientific methods.

“WADA’s behavior in this case jeopardizes their credibility.  They must adhere to good scientific practice, as this is crucial for their efforts to prevent the misuse of PEDs and for gaining the respect and trust of athletes and the general public.”

Of course, in the case of MLB’s vendetta against “5 to 500” players, “scientific practice” practice will not be involved.  There are no "pending" flunked drug tests on record against any of the dozen or more players whose names have been leaked to news media.  A few of the named have flunked and been punished for using PEDs in the past, but no new tests will be cited against them.

So, forget science, but what about “legal practice?” Will the players get a day in court or before any kind of panel of their “peers”, baseball peers or citizen peers?  Nope.  Commissioner Selig does fine, says Commissioner Selig, playing investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury.  But in the case of A-Rod, what might a court make of the fact that Anthony Bosch the disgraced former head of the Biogenesis Clinic reportedly (on A-Rod’s thinly supported say so, we must add in Bosch’s defense) went to Rodriguez asking for hush money, and being turned down, before selling his testimony to MLB. And like a jailhouse snitch, Bosch is getting not just money, but a Get Out of Civil Court Free card, from MLB.

Braun, of the mishandled specimen samples, says his contacts with Bosch were not about buying PEDs, but about Bosch's being a consultant in Braun's maddeningly successful case against “impending” MLB suspension.  While encouraging reporters to put Braun’s name near the top of the list of “suspects,” no sources at MLB have offered any refutation of this, other than to impute guilt from Braun’s refusal to cooperate with the “investigation.”  Darn that Fifth Amendment!

It is easy and correct to be against the use of PEDs, even though many of them do not so much enhance “artificially” higher performance levels by athletes, as they quicken recovery from injuries or wear and tear which may be inhibiting an athlete from reaching his or her “real” performance levels.

It is easy, and too often inccrect to spew and repeat undefined "charges, and just as several Constitutional principles protect people accused of crimes from wrongful prosecution or conviction, so too, athletic institutional discipline must follow rule of law, especially where wrongful charges can permanently damage careers, incomes, and personal reputations.

A new case to watch involves the recently-accused Jamaican track stars Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson, both Olympic medalists with long, clean careers behind them.  They got a new trainer, and after their first races with him, tested “dirty.”  They say they suspect the trainer, Chris Xuereb, tried to put something over on them and WADA without their knowledge or participation. 

This is not the first time such a plea for exoneration has been made, and not always falsely.

Let’s hope imminence does not preclude justice in the Powell and Simpson cases, and that the proof for Bud Selig’s “impending” punishments will be scientific and irrefutable.

In the meanwhile, MLB’s sources and the media recipients of their leakage should just shut up.  

As should the incessant marketers of "imminent" terrorism.