Baseballhead:
They'll Manage

Michael Cox

This week's Baseballhead is brought to you by Red Devil energy drink: it's gotta be a powerful drink -- there's a freakin' devil on the can!

Speaking of going down the bog (ask a British friend), it's been nothing short of amazing to me how the New York press has continued to chew on that big mouthful of sour grapes that is (or more precisely, was) the Lou Piniella saga. Mind you, nothing seems to captivate the northeastern sports fan like a good old conspiracy theory, and the Mets had a good strategy going in: offer nothing in compensation -- offer less than nothing -- and put pressure on the Mariners by leaking information to the rabid mentally challenged terriers in the NY media.

Unfortunately, the M's had a perfect counterstrategy, reportedly nicknamed the "Hello, we're way over here at the other end of the country and couldn't care less" gambit. That, coupled with the fact that the team from Piniella's own home state made a reasonable offer, pretty much sank the Mets' strategy.

Of course, this didn't deter the usual gang of idiots from making the reasoned determination that Seattle really refused the Mets' offer out of some sort of vendetta. Exactly what sort of vendetta they haven't mentioned, but it must have been a pretty big vendetta to turn down...er, what did the Mets offer again?

Ah, there's the rub. By all accounts, the Mets made exactly two offers. The first was a combination of one second-tier prospect from List A and one third-tier prospect from List B. The Mets wanted to protect their four remaining first-rate prospects, and I understand their reluctance to part with the few guys they could possibly package together to get rid of Mo Vaughn.

Seeing no major-league material whatsoever on the two lists, the M's then came back with a proposal that would have swapped All-Star second basemen, with the declining Robbie Alomar going to Seattle for the dicey Bret Boone and his oversized contract. The folks at Newsday practically swallowed their tongues over the fact that the M's would have got the better of that deal, neglecting the fact that that's the whole idea.

The plot thinned when Fred Wilpon and Steve Phillips countered by offering Rey Ordonez, apparently indicating that they also forgot the whole idea. Although I live almost three miles from the Mariner offices, the laughter woke me from my midmorning nap. As a result, neither the M's nor Mets made any further contact, and the Devil Rays took advantage of the Mets' petulance. (When the D-Rays are taking advantage of you, you know you've got issues.)

Yes, it was clear that Piniella preferred Flushing Meadows over his own Tampa, despite his stated reason for leaving, which was to be close to his family (they can call NY-to-Florida flights "shuttles" all they want, but a thousand miles is still a thousand miles -- and that's when the Mets aren't on the road). It's also clear that agent Alan Nero, who seems to represent practically every manager in baseball, spent a lot of time complaining to the media when he should have been slapping Phillips upside the cranium for making insulting compensation offers. (I mean, what does it tell Piniella about his value as a manager when Rey Ordonez is the final bid?)

In the end, it all worked out for the Mets after Phillips made an emergency phone call to ask Billy Beane if he could talk to Art Howe again. I personally wouldn't have even bothered with Piniella at all if Howe was available, and the fact that they completely missed out on Buck Showalter shows ineptitude of Gilliganian proportions, but apparently the Mets were running a tad low on ex-Yankees since Yogi Berra started talking to Steinbrenner again.

The people who should really be worrying now are Mariner fans. Although in theory Piniella is eminently replaceable, the parade of managerial ne'er-do-wells Gillick has been flying in for interviews should be enough to cause night sweats. Terry Francona, Jim "130 Pitches" Riggleman, Buddy Bell and worst-manager-of-the-90s front-runner Tony Muser have been welcomed as candidates so far, making Seattleites wonder whether they might do better to just bring back Dick Williams.

More likely is the idea that the threat of signing Muser or Bell is designed to make Mariner fans breathe a sigh of relief after they give the job to one of their well-qualified but less famous internal candidates, which include bench coach John McLaren or "coaching consultant" Lee Elia.

Although during the Piniella saga the local press portrayed Dusty Baker as the front-runner for the Seattle opening, Gillick has refused to say whether he'll even give Baker a call this week when his contract with the Giants officially expires. It looks like the real Baker wooing will come from the Cubs (get it? Cubs? Woo? Ya gots ta follow along here), who've pretty much said they'll have a bed of cash prepared for Dusty's nude lounging convenience.

That's in stark contrast with the Giants' best offer: about the same as they paid last year, and Peter Magowan will consider not being quite so mean. On the other hand, if you have to choose between managing the Giants for union scale vs. managing the Most Ill-Concieved Collection of Free Agents in Baseball for all the bratwurst on Lincoln Avenue, that's still gotta be one tough decision.

This Just In: Steinbrenner Not a Nice Man: MLB's new labor agreement has fallen hard upon the halls of Yankee Stadium, where Da Boss has responded to the new luxury tax and revenue-sharing plans by firing low-level employees and raising ticket prices, making it clear that he's not taking it all too well.

Of course, neither the layoffs nor the price increases are rational responses to the new plans, but how often do you expect to see the words "Steinbrenner" and "rational" in the same paragraph? Both are purely symbolic, nothing more than an angry owner responding to a cut in his profit margin by making the "little people" scream. And as we all should know by now, ticket costs are determined by the laws of supply and demand, so no matter how many times he says it's mean ol' MLB's fault, the last thing the Yankee owner would do is cut off his cash cow's nose to spite its face.

That's not to say I don't sympathize with the folks who'll have to pay between $2 and $10 more per seat next season. Let's just say that New York still has the best ticket-price-to-rent ratio in baseball.

A Pulitzer? Really?: With the echo of Thunder Stix barely out of the air, most of the post-World Series chatter has been about -- oh, yeah -- Barry Bonds, and how he's apparently a bad seed infecting all of baseball with his, er, badness. (I watched the whole frickin' Series, and I failed to see all that bad attitude. I guess you really had to look for it.)

The nadir was a crotchety-grandfather-like ESPN.com piece on how the kids today don't understand, by no less than the supposedly legendary David Halberstam. The article started out calling Bonds "The Great Narcissist" in the very first sentence, and went on from there with such gusto that if Halberstam were a younger man I'd think he was being sarcastic. Bringing the column home, he rambled:

My friend Johnny Bach, the basketball coach who used to coach in Chicago, who now coaches the Washington Wizards, and who was one of Michael Jordan's favorite coaches, used to say about Michael, a throwaway line really, that when Michael was playing, it never looked like he was doing it because some judge had sentenced him to play basketball. Regrettably, that's a fairly incisive thing to say about all too many of our contemporary athletes, and especially about Barry Bonds.

(And you thought I was the king of the run-on sentences.) The irony here is that Halberstam's column reads like a piece he had to write to fulfill a community-service responsibility. To be fair, I understand Halberstam has written some excellent books. My guess is that he has a very good editor.

about the author

Michael Cox also knows that the kids today don't understand, but it's actually because of that infernal rock 'n' roll. Tell him it's a passing fad at mc@strikethree.com.