Baseballhead:
Unsettling Thoughts

Michael Cox

I'm back and feeling my oats, Baseballheadians, even if I have no idea how a phrase like "feeling my oats" ever got coined. In honor of the odd vertigo-like symptoms that afflicted me recently, I've compiled a list of other stuff that weirds me out (all baseball-related, although hearing bass on the new White Stripes record is right up there)...

The players are advocating another playoff round. Not the owners. The players. I'm still trying to figure this one out. I mean, I'm sure the union ran some numbers and figured out they can come out ahead financially, but how?

The Division Series we already have has been pawned off on cable channels like ABC Family, so I'm pretty sure that another round isn't going to be seen as a valuable broadcasting commodity. Giving a bye to the four teams with the best records sounds good, until you realize those teams will be sitting idle for the better part of a week, bats getting rusty and arms getting unused.

Then there's the matter of when to play the extra round. Extend the season into November and risk snowouts in northern cities? Or shorten the regular season—something that's only likely to happen when they can pry the cash-cow ballparks out of the owners' cold dead fingers?

And these are just the logistical issues. The current playoff structure already features luck as a major factor (to Yankee fans' recent dismay). Do you shorten the initial series to a best-of-three, making a team's 162-game march to the postseason little more than a footnote to a crapshoot?

And why create all this turmoil for little financial return? Union rep Al Leiter put it this way: "I'm a perfect example of why the playoffs should be expanded. I'm not a hockey or basketball fan, but when the playoffs come I watch."

Let's see: the NHL's playoff structure knocked the Red Wings and Avalanche out in the first round, and now has the 6th- and 7th-best teams in the West playing for their conference title to the tune of a 20-percent drop in TV ratings. Last year's NBA championship was the lowest-rated in ages.

I'm not sure there are enough Al Leiters out there to go around.

The All-Star Game will use about the same strategy as it has for the past 20 years. You're a fool if you think that World Series home field advantage is going to mean Barry Bonds will bat all nine innings of the 2003 All-Star Game, or that Mike Mussina will pitch six. It simply means too much to players to get an All-Star swing in, and it means too much to a pitcher's club that he's able to make his next start.

And don't forget that these are the best 64 players in baseball. I mean, Gary Sheffield may not start in the NL outfield, but he's hardly chopped liver. Neither is Austin Kearns, or Jose Cruz Jr., at least right now. C'mon, you can start a whole new lineup every three innings and they'll still be great players, deserving of at-bats and innings pitched. Plus, with the expanded lineups they can keep the Tigers' representative on the bench (in case of extra innings, you understand).

So what's so unsettling about that? This: all the new "prize" will mean is that FOX will endlessly remind you, "now it's for real!"

Julio Lugo will be welcomed with open arms somewhere.

"Really, I just want to play. I want to let this waiver period pass so I can put it behind me. I just want to start playing and forget what has happened." - Julio Lugo

While spousal abuse amongst MLB players is likely equally or less prevalent than it is in "the outside world," it's still a problem to be dealt with by the entire community, including the team. And Lugo, who at press time is still unrepentant, should either come clean and seek help or be found innocent in a court of law (a plea bargain to a lesser charge does not constitute being found innocent) before he can "put it behind him."

Fortunately, the Lugo case shows baseball is starting to take spousal abuse lightly. (Another odd thought—the new attitude could be due to actually having a victim within baseball's ranks, i.e. one Chuck Finley.) Lugo's career now travels the road marked by the recent examples of Bobby Chouinard (out of baseball) and Pedro Astacio (worse—a Met).

Bud Selig will have almost four more years to figure out new ways to make MLB more like hockey. Up to now, Selig's ideas have all been based on the idea that the fans either a) are stupid and easily distracted, b) don't give a rat's ass, or c) will eventually forget how there were two separate leagues, that you had to win a division to make it to the playoffs, etc.

And there's a whole passel of new ideas in the pipeline, according to ESPN.com's Jayson Stark, who apparently has the Commish's ear after an angry Selig phone call resulted in Stark's public genuflection last year. (Rob Neyer refused to compromise, and now he never gets Selig quotes.) Ideas like a North America vs. The World All-Star Game (it's worked so well for the NHL) and a 154-game schedule (Ha! Just Ha!) are being floated, and I suspect a FOX executive is on 24-hour call to lend his expert opinion (look at how well FOX handles the baseball they already have!).

It's almost as if no one realizes that baseball is this really cool game, and that maybe if smart people started trying to sell it, smart people might be interested in seeing a game or two. Basically, the more Selig messes with MLB, the more he's demonstrating that he thinks MLB is unsaleable crap. That was fine when the NBA had to do it, because that was unsaleable crap. Selig wasn't hired to revive a dying patient.

Well, at least it wasn't dying before Selig took over...

I can't get excited about Raffi's 500th. Sorry, but decades from now Rafael Palmeiro will be more well-known for his Viagra ads and for winning a Gold Glove as a DH than for anything he accomplished on the field. He was a great-but-not-immortally-so player with a long, almost injury-free tenure. An overall swell guy.

He'll go to the Hall, of course, because few sportswriters look beyond the counting stats (hey, it got Phil Niekro there), and I won't complain. But neither will I care much.

Jose Canseco was blackballed. Okay, okay, so I was just saying that to humor him.

Apparently Alex Rodriguez did the same thing, because after Canseco told the press that A-Rod had informed him that he'd been barred from playing, young Alex immediately issued a complete denial. So either Rodriguez knows more than he can tell, lest his lifeless body be found in a car trunk, or as Canseco told his tale of woe Rodriguez was simply not listening and absent-mindedly nodded "uh-huh" one too many times.

I'm pretty sure it was the second one.

Jack McKeon lurks in shadow, waiting to pounce on managerial openings. He'd move like the silent wind, too, if it wasn't for that damn arthritis. He's soon going to make Connie Mack's final years seem comparatively brisk and vital.

The folks in Florida now have a full complement of geriatric managers, with McKeon in Miami, and Lou Piniella, who at 59 is a baker's dozen years younger but may still need a LifeAlert button when he waddles out to protest a bad call, in Tampa. ("I'm not sure what happened. I was trying to pull third base out of the ground, then I fell and I couldn't get up.")

Sammy Sosa's missing toenail. 'Nuff said. Puts shivers up my spine.

about the author

Michael Cox also finds Martha Stewart's voice oddly unsettling. Suggest it would be perfect for a P.A. announcer at most big-league ballparks at mc@strikethree.com.