This Was the Week That Was
(or Something)

Michael Cox

Let's take a break from our regularly-scheduled rants to look at some current events, with the requisite sarcasm...

Item: A team of MLB all-stars will be playing Japanese all-stars again this year, and again the series will be played entirely in Japan. Why has such a series never taken place in the US? Speculation dredges up the following:

• Because the series would take place after the World Series, all games would have to be played in domed or sun-belt ballparks, and the idea of missing out on the lucrative stadium bucks is enough to keep such MLB heavyweights as Steinbrenner, Angelos and Reinsdorf from lending their seals of approval;
• MLB currently $ee$ big buck$ in Japan - the goal is to divert many, many yen to America, so damn the stateside fan;
• The powers that be don't think people would attend such a series. Of course, the powers that be think the people want radical realignment...

Item: Peter Angelos thinks MLB should share revenues more fully, and those revenues should be used to build ballparks for the "have-not" teams. Well, he actually didn't say anything about sharing revenues more fully, because he'd have to do the sharing. ("Hey, Oakland, here's five million smackers. Go build yourself a state-of-the-art facility.") Angelos also thinks MLB should jettison some teams. ("Hey, Oakland, here's a pink slip.") One presumes he doesn't mean the teams with spanky new ballparks, hmm?

Item: Shortly after Nomar Garciaparra is signed to the richest deal ever for a second-year player, he falls and (almost) can't get up, leading to the largest battery of tests I've ever seen for a player presumed to have a mere strain. You can almost imagine the beads of sweat on GM Dan Duquette's noggin...

Item: One down, one to go...Don Beaver's ballpark proposal got shot down in the Triad by a hefty margin, and Charlotte doesn't look likely to do any different. I'd be skeptical of approving a ballpark for a team that's likely to remain in Minnesota, too.

Item: Meanwhile, the legal battle over the Twins up north is getting pretty ugly, with motions and countermotions looking almost Simpsonesque. However, MLB has already conceded one point simply by fighting Hubert Humphrey III's attempted investigation with such fervor: MLB is definitely scared of the skeletons that could be dragged out of their closet...

Item: The Tigers said sayonara to my favorite whipping boy, Pete Incaviglia, only to acquire my second-favorite whipping boy, Jeff Manto. You know when something's so funny that you can't even talk for the next fifteen minutes because every time you open your mouth, you start laughing again...?

Item: A rumor circulated last week that Toronto offered the powerless-in-'98 Jose Cruz, Jr. back to Seattle in return for Paul Spoljaric, who was half of the duo Seattle got for Cruz last July. Somehow, the esteemed Peter Gammons somehow got the idea that the M's asked for the deal but Toronto refused. He was the only one to print this. And you wonder why so many of us laugh at poor Peter...

Item: Speaking of media idiots, the class-action suit in Philly over underpoured beer resulted in some of the worst attempts at comedy I've ever seen by sports network commentators broadcasting the news. When you understand that the underpouring (discovered by an investigative reporter) has allegedly ripped fans, Phillies and the city of Philadelphia off to the tune of half a million clams, and that this isn't the first time that concessionaire Ogden Entertainment has come under public fire for its practices (in Seattle, their KingDome health violations multiplied like cockroaches, until the media investigated...notice a pattern?) the "brew-ha-ha" seems a tad more serious...

Item: Last but not least, Kerry Wood pitched a masterpiece at Wrigley Field last Wednesday. At the tender age of 20, he surprised everyone by pitching his age in strikeouts, which only goes to show that no matter what kind of crap you can toss all around it, at the heart is something precious and valuable - a game.

Michael Cox would have gone to see a game in the Triad's new ballpark, but still thinks that it was a lot of money to try and lure the Bulls from Durham. Oh well. Tell him where your seats would have been by writing him at mc@strikethree.com.