Baseballhead:
The Silly Season

Michael Cox

Welcome to this home stretch edition of Baseballhead, which was turned in a tad late because The Bangles' Behind The Music was on.

It's the final week of the regular season, and for those of you in most MLB cities, it's your last chance to see the home team until April. Take this opportunity to head down to the park one last time, get one last beer and dog in you, and if you live in Boston, to yell one last time, "Dante Bichette? What the hell were you thinking, Duquette?"

In fact, many of the members of the Red Sox themselves have been wondering what their GM is smoking lately, between his foul fall pickups and his blissful ignorance of Carl Everett's tirades. Everett, who apparently bet someone that the "clubhouse cancer" is not a myth, has apparently decided against paying good money for anger-management classes when he can vent directly at his teammates.

Everett himself has no idea why people would dislike him for screaming at his colleagues and disobeying team rules. It must be the media, that's it. Unfortunately for him, blaming the press is a fool's game, one you can't win even when something has been blown out of proportion by reporters. With his GM apparently backing him up, Everett has license to shrill.

Mind you, had Duquette decided to suspend or fine Everett, you can be sure the Players' Association would wade knee deep in Big Crappy, with co-boss Gene Orza experienced in defending clients with tempers (see: Lattrell Spreewell).

But we'll have to wait until next year for the next chapter, and Everett won't be going anywhere unless perhaps the Indians feel like the Robbie Alomar/Wil Cordero Memorial Rehab Center can handle a new client.

Item: Months after Major League Baseball declared the bidding open for the upcoming TV contract, they have a bidder. Fox weighed in on Monday with an offer of $2.5 billion for six more years of baseball -- including every playoff and World Series game. That's $417M per year -- hardly the annual billion-plus Bud Selig has been rubbing his hands for.

Of course, for most of us a 48% increase over the current $290M per season would sound great, but in comparison to the deals made with the NFL and NBA it's disappointing to say the least. Mind you, Monday Night Football still beats WWF Raw in the ratings (at least so far), while most MLB playoff games are outdrawn by (I see you cringing already) Big Brother.

Will the bidding increase? Sure. NBC has said they'll make an offer, and perhaps some conglomerate of cable networks can combine to make an offer as silly as Turner did for NBA games. But really, with the baseline established by Fox, don't expect the new TV deal to enable the Twins to trade for Albert Belle.

Item: The Mariners and A's are providing the only thing resembling a down-to-the-wire race this week, with the M's bats regaining their August form in time to drop three straight to Oakland. Still, the road will be harder for the A's from here on in -- literally. If they manage to come within a half-game of Seattle by Sunday, they'll fly to Tampa for a make-up game with the Rays on Monday. Then, if they win (and who'd bet against that?), they fly overnight diagonally across this nation of ours to face the M's at Safeco Field in a one-game playoff.

Toss into that pot the chance that the Indians are only one game down in the wild card chase and could be tied with the single-letter teams Monday as well. If this occurs, the winner of the Seattle-Oakland contest gets the division, and the loser gets bupkus, due to rules that state the Tribe won't have to play off against the loser.

That would be a shame.

Item: Finally, it's time for playoff predictions -- thing is, the playoff teams haven't been decided yet.

So what? There's only one prediction I can look myself in the mirror after making -- the World Champion could be anyone. In the parlance of the bookmaker, "pick 'em."

The teams going in really hot are the M's, A's and Giants, possibly leading to West-coast dominance. However, in a short series anything could happen, and teams like the Mets and Yankees are set up for 1-2 sure wins in a series.

So, the only thing I won't predict is an A's-Giants World Series -- we all know how Mother Nature felt about the last one.

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