the_nub_nov.html
November 2008
Archive
(Posted
11/29/08)
For Wage-earners and Ballfans, 'Misery
Loves Company'
Who could blame the many Mets fans who exulted in
mid-September as the Yanks fell out of the AL playoff race?
Wouldn’t Yankee partisans soon enjoy watching
the Mets fade, yet again, in the NL playoff chase?
Better believe it. The axiom
“Misery loves company” is as true in
baseball as it is in real life.
So, shouldn’t we find comfort in the
news that baseball
buff/financial wizard Warren Buffett saw shares in his prime stock
plummet by
more than a third since October 1? Or
that Henry Paulson’s reputation “will never recover” (in the words of a
hedge-fund manager) and that Forbes magazine president Steve Forbes
calls
Paulson “the worst treasury secretary in modern history”? And how about this expert observer’s comment
on the performance of Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke: “He
was behind the curve at every stage of
the (financial crisis) story. He didn’t
see the housing bubble until after it burst.
Until as late as this summer, he downplayed all the risks
involved…I
would be surprised if Obama wanted to reappoint him when his term ends”
- in 2010. (Dean
Baker, of the
Center for Economic and Policy Research – quoted in the latest New
Yorker). Aren’t those of us caught up in
the economic meltdown entitled to gloat about the big boys taking hits
like us?
The answer, we submit, is: not now, not
on this Thanksgiving
weekend. We should try for the moment to
be generous, to show some understanding: no one is perfect, etc.
This charitable approach can be set
aside – it says here –
when incompetence overlaps the businesses of finance and baseball. Case in point: the teaming up of Citigroup
and the Mets. Citigroup,
which needed a bailout to avoid
bankruptcy, is committed to paying $20 million a year - $400 million
over a
20-year period – to have its name erected atop the Mets’ new stadium. Newsday’s Wallace Matthews suggests a revised
name for Citi Field – “Bailout Ballpark.”
Here is how he sees the Mets’ Faustian bargain:
“That
$20 million per year - which, by the way, the Mets don't
seem all that eager to invest in the free-agent market despite another
dismal
late-season collapse - is coming out of your paycheck and mine,
funneled
through the federal government to the failed executives of Citigroup,
and
ultimately winds up in Fred Wilpon's pocket.
”This amounts to not only the worst kind of corporate welfare, with no
punishments meted out and no strings attached, it also adds up to 20
years of
free advertising for a bank with nothing to brag about but a vault full
of
fail.
”The Mets should be embarrassed to emblazon their new park with the
name of an
outfit whose players performed even worse than the team did last year.
They
should be ashamed of using your money to advertise their (worthless)
services.
If they had any ethics, they would cancel the deal now and start
looking for a
sponsor that can actually pay its own bills.”
With Willie Randolph’s exit,
Omar Minaya has been taking most of the flak for the Mets’ own version
of the
bailout – two end-of-season dives. That
the decision-making buck stops with owner Fred Wilpon is seldom noted. Wilpon clearly thought the spending splurge
that brought Pedro Martinez, the two Carlos - Beltran and Delgado - and
Billy
Wagner was sufficient to keep his team competitive for more than a few
years. He was right; true, he has to
invest in a Johan Santana one season and maybe a Brian Fuentes or a
Trevor
Hoffman this time around. But with another
Minaya Special - a new blue-chipper (and perhaps a light-blue one) plus
bargain-basement hole-fillers to add to a strong existing base - the
Mets will
be able to compete…and fall short.
Maybe
late-season “meaningful
games” are good enough for Fred. If he
truly cared about the post-season, he’d focus on building a productive
player-development operation It’s
something the Mets have been lacking for too long, and without which
they’ll
continue being what they are now: apparently good enough for Fred, but
not
quite good enough to make the playoffs.
(Posted: 11/25/08)
NYC's Upcoming Electoral All-Star Event
The potent early summer Red Sox lineup that
included
Pedroia, Big Papi, Manny and Youk has a political equivalent in NYC’s
2009
public advocate contest. The lineup of
hitters
seeking to win the city’s second highest elective slot features four
candidates
with impressive playing records.
The veteran of the group is Norman
Siegel, the civil rights
lawyer, who, at 65, is taking a third turn at this electoral plate.
Supporters
say his record at fighting government on behalf of protesters and
aggrieved
private citizens has earned him the mantra “Norman Is the Public
Advocate.” Siegel’s
problem: he trails his main young opponents in fund-raising; an
ambiguous
factor - he’s also less of a Dem party insider than the others.
Among the three touted younger
prospects, City Council
teammates, Eric Gioia has been in the lineup, albeit unofficially,
longer than
the others. Gioia is the Dustin Pedroia
of the trio, energetic, intense, working ‘round-the-clock at expanding
his reach. His driving ambition and the
resentment it
has caused outside his Queen bailiwick could handicap his effort.
Bill de Blasio is the Chipper Jones of
the group, a leader
beyond his Brooklyn district who
distinguished
himself in actively opposing the extended-term-limits power grab by
Mayor
Bloomberg and most of the Council team.
He did uncharacteristically back away from a matchup with
incumbent
Marty Markowitz for Brooklyn BP. But de
Blasio is the only one of the three who could benefit from running for
a third
Council term to say he wouldn’t play that game.
John Liu is the Ichiro of his Flushing
district and the city at large. He has
awakened, not only his fellow Chinese constituents, but Asian
communities
throughout the five boroughs. Liu’s
appeal has been broad enough to attract $3 million in contributions,
more than
any of the four top-tier candidates. (Gioia is second, having raised $2
million.) Liu’s indecisiveness as to which contest to enter - he
was
the last to join the PA all-star event - could be a negative as the
race
unfolds.
Manhattan/Bronx Assemblyman Adam
Clayton Powell IV is a
fifth candidate in the contest. Although
only 46, Powell first held elective office 17 years ago.
He would seem to be a time-worn Moises
Alou-type entry, making a nothing-to-lose effort. Powell
can return to his Assembly post if his
campaign falters. In that context, the
campaigns of Gioia and Liu (and even de Blasio) will be watched to see
if
either has second thoughts early enough - before summer - to drop out
for the
surer bet of seeking to return to the Council.
- -
-
If the Mets, Yankees and Red Sox were hopeful the Arizona
Fall League would help them identify farmhands with unrecognized
promise, they
came away disappointed.
Proven players like Daniel Murphy of the Mets and
Phil
Hughes of the Yanks did well despite injuries - Murphy hit .397 in 15
games,
Hughes went 2-0 with a 3.00 ERA in seven games; the Sox’ Clay Buchholz
could
only manage a 1-2, 3.86 in five games.
But signs of newly emerging prospects were scarce: a first-year
catcher
in the Mets’ system Josh Thole hit .319 in 19 games, and a Yanks’
double-A
second baseman Kevin Russo hit .309 in 30 games. The
Red Sox had not a solitary hitter of
note. Bobby Parnell, who pitched in six
late-season Mets games, went 3-1, 2.25.
He struck out 20 in 20 innings, walking nine.
The Fall League gave Atlanta
most to be happy about: Double-A pitcher Tommy Hanson had the most
wins, the
most strikeouts, the best ERA - 0.63 – and the best record, 5-0. Braves’ high single-A catcher Tyler Flowers
led
the league in homers with 12 in 75 AB’s.
The best all-around offensive player was Colorado’s double-A
shortstop
Eric Young, Jr; he batted a league-leading .430, scored the most runs
and stole
the most bases, 37 and 20, respectively, in 31 games.
- -
-
Lob from Left field: The scoreboard in Venezuela after
country-wide elections Sunday showed the pro-Chavez side winning 17
states to
the anti-Chavez’s 5. The NY Times’
predictable take on the vote: “VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION GAINS IN SEVERAL
CRUCIAL
ELECTIONS”. The numerical result was
mentioned in the last of the 13-paragraph story. Equally
predictable: If Hugo Chavez had won
22-0, the Times headline would trumpet something like this: VENEZUELAN
VOTE
SHOWS CHAVEZ SOLIDIFYING DICTATORIAL RULE”.
Is it not revealing in this era of U.S. government handouts to
Big
Finance, that the Times, like Team Bush, persists in denouncing a
socialist
system aimed at helping the poor?
(Posted: 11/22/08)
Big
Decisions for Obama, Yanks, Red Sox
Decisions, decisions.
Team Obama has a big one to make,
regarding an extra-inning
electoral contest in Georgia. The Yankees and Red Sox must decide on a move
important to the baseball world concerning a free-agent pitcher.
The Georgia
contest, for a U.S. Senate seat, pits Democratic challenger Jim Martin
against
Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss.
The two had to continue their battle beyond regulation time
because they
finished close enough to warrant a run-off. That
special election will be held a week from
Tuesday, December 2.
The Yankees and Red Sox have both
expressed interest in A.J.
Burnett, who went 18-10 for Toronto
last season. Other teams covet the
oft-injured righthander, as well, but the Yanks and Sox have the
financial
clout to outbid them. It may take at
least a five-year $75 million offer to get the deal done.
The background to the Martin-Chambliss
playoff is the Senate
scoreboard showing the Democratic team (including two independents)
with a
58-40 margin in the upper chamber. The
contest
in Georgia
is one of two for Senate seats still up for grabs.
The other is a match being decided by recount
in Minnesota
between
Dem challenger Al Franken and Repub incumbent Norm Coleman. Should Franken outscore Coleman in the end, a
Martin victory on 12/2 would fulfill the Dems’ dream of a
filibuster-proof
60-40 majority.
President-elect Obama’s yet-to-be-made
decision: whether to
interrupt his transition efforts to campaign for Martin.
Such an intervention would compromise his
stance as an aspiring political “unifier” rather than a partisan. Another consideration, as E.J. Dionne put it
in yesterday’s Washington Post: “A new president with soaring popularity may
not want to subject himself to such an early test on
not-entirely-hospitable
terrain.” Meanwhile,
polls show Martin trailing Chambliss in red-state Georgia
by several points. The crucial role Obama
could play was acknowledged
by a Republican political consultant in Atlanta: “(Martin)
can’t do it without
Barack Obama,” he said, “it’s just as simple
as that. “Does he care, or does he not?”
There’s a
chance that the Red Sox are just kibitzing on Burnett, to push his
asking price
up and make him painfully expensive for the Yankees.
That’s the suspicion of the Boston Globe’s
Nick Cafardo:
“Do
we think the Red Sox really want to spend
$80 million over five years for Burnett, who has made 30 or more starts
in only
two of his 10 seasons? Doesn't sound
like a move Sox general manager Theo Epstein would make…Burnett is a
high-risk
player, but when he's healthy, he's a high-reward player. That's what
he was in
2008…his best season the majors. But at 32…can he be depended upon to
be that
for the next five years?
“In
an offseason in which the Yankees are
setting the bar pretty high in these otherwise tough economic times,
they are
in position to blow any team, including the Red Sox, out of the water
for a
player. That was evident in their six-year, $140 million offer to CC
Sabathia,
and the five years, $80 million they're possibly willing to offer
Burnett. Who knows what else (they have)
in mind to
help fill those expensive seats in the new $1.3 billion Yankee Stadium.”
-
- -
The latest scoreboard reporting on the other Congressional
league gives the Democratic team a 256-174 margin over the Republicans
in the
House. The Dem gains so far: 31
seats;
there are five unresolved races in the House.
- o -
(The Nub is a team
effort skippered by Dick Starkey. Comments
to dickstar@aol.com
are welcome, as are subscription requests.
Previous Nubs can be found by clicking below.)
(Posted: 11/18/08)
Bloomberg,
Yanks Set to Spend to Win
The city’s political and baseball powers – Team
Bloomberg
and the Yankees – know victory in 2009 depends on the source of their
strength:
m-o-n-e-y. Mayor Mike will have to hit
the airwaves hard to overcome his running for re-election as the
anti-democratic
candidate. The Yankees can only hope to
match the Rays and Red Sox in their division by spending to add two top
starters and a couple of top-tier position players.
A rough estimate of what the add-on annual
cost will be in each case: $80-$100 million.
The reported $140 million for six years
the Yanks are
offering CC Sabathia breaks down to a single-year pricetag of $23-plus
million
alone. That seems to have blown away all
of CC’s other suitors. Bloomberg’s
projected outlay for ’09 - most of it seeking to justify via sustained
TV blitz
his stance on extending term limits - is expected at least to match the
$84
million he spent in winning the office in ’01.
Bloomberg’s Democratic opponents -
Queens/Brooklyn
Congressman Anthony Weiner, Comptroller Billy Thompson and Queens
Councilmember
Tony Avella are three of the most likely candidates; none of them will
come
close to raising the kind of money conventional wisdom says will be
needed to
stay competitive with the mayor. But
whoever survives the primary to go one-on-one with Mike will be able to
run as
the “people’s” champion. Here’s a
campaign
pitch to throw at the mayor, offered free of charge:
“HE’S RUNNING AGAINST ALL OF US.”
-
- -
What are we to make of the Yankees’ deal for Nick Swisher as
a likely replacement for Jason Giambi? Swisher
is only 28 (Giambi will be 37 next season), so it’s fair still to see
some
potential in him, his record up to now inconclusive.
Let’s check to see what Oakland GM Billy
Beane, who signed him out of Ohio State,
saw in
Swisher. Here is how Michael Lewis
describes Beane’s take in his baseball classic “Moneyball”: “(Swisher) has…raw
athletic ability…(and) the stats Billy…ha(s)
decided matter more than anything; he’s proven he can hit, and hit with
power;
he drew more than his share of walks.”
Swisher
drew a walk every seven at bats last season, but he
struck out once every four-plus AB’s.
Giambi’s equivalent stats were similar, but Jason hit eight more
HR’s -
32 - in 40 fewer AB’s than did Swisher. But Nick costs less,
has the better glove and no drugs-use baggage.
The clincher as to why the switch may be seen as helpful to the undemonstrative Yanks comes from this
“Moneyball” excerpt:
“’Swisher is
noticeable, isn’t he?’
says Billy, hoping to hear more about…how Swisher really is.
“‘Oh,
he’s noticeable,’ says an
old scout. ‘From the moment he gets off
the bus he doesn’t shut up’.”
- -
-
An off-season skim of “other” ballplaying: New coach Mike
D’Antoni, with his upbeat style and downsizing of Stephon Marbury, has
made the
Knicks watchable again.
As for the Nets, the deal president Rod Thorn had
to make -
sending unhappy Jason Kidd to Dallas
for Devin Harris - makes the NJN’s surprisingly competitive. Harris, with three-straight 30-point games,
could be a budding super-star.
Even Brooklynites, born to be haters of
all manner of “Giants”
teams - are joining the football Giants bandwagon.
The defending NFL champions are seductively
well-balanced, a sinuously methodical playoffs-bound machine. The Jets have Brett and the fabled Favre
tradition to inspire and try to stabilize them, but they are more
wobbly than
solid. The shaky truth may surface
Sunday when they face the 10-0 Tennessee Titans.
(Posted: 11/15/08)
Bloomberg Hitting a Stadium-Related Slump
The last time Mike Bloomberg’s popularity slumped
– in ’05 -
he was on the wrong side of a doomed West Side
stadium project. The mayor has hit a
slump again, over the undemocratic extension of term limits. His chances of battling out of that bind have
come up against another stadium debacle, this one in the Bronx. The new
Yankee Stadium is a big-ticket, state-of-the-art
ballpark designed to be a profit center for the Steinbrenner family
and,
secondarily, a magnet for fans.
Bloomberg’s problem as the economy
worsens, is that the
arena he helped make happen has become a public relations nightmare. Fans who, whether they knew it or not, forked
over hundreds of millions of public dollars to help build the
extravaganza,
will be priced out of attending “premium” – that is, the most
attractive –
games. Even the corporate elite is
bailing out as the financial crisis gets ever more critical: $4.2
million worth
of luxury suites are so far going begging for the ’09 season.
Meanwhile, Congress is investigating
Team Bloomberg’s
inflating the value of the Stadium land to allow the Yankees to float
high-return bonds to help cover costs.
Although an unfavorable result wouldn’t send anyone to jail, it
would be
another brush-back to Bloomberg. Amid the
financial giveaways, the mayor’s cardinal sin concerns the surrender of
public
parkland: he and his political teammates allowed 22 acres of green and
open
recreational space to be lost to the Stadium project.
NY Times columnist Jim Dwyer lined up a
bat-rack full or
reasons why Bloomberg won’t have an easy time extricating himself from
the
Stadium connection. The latest promotion
of the new ballpark, notes Dwyer, comes at a time when the mayor “says
he has
to close health clinics, shut libraries one day a week, not hire a new
class of
cops and raise property taxes.”
And, looking ahead:
“The new
Yankee Stadium, with all its architectural dazzle, will open
in the spring; less certain is when the public parkland that Bloomberg
gave to
the team will be replaced.
“The full
reckoning on Mr.
Bloomberg’s judgment…will most likely not come for a few years, long
after he
has run for a third term as mayor by arguing that he has been the
wisest and
steadiest of stewards – just the man of the city during hard financial
times.”
- -
-
In hard financial times, what could be better for ballclubs
than “cheap pub.” It’s the season when
all 30 MLB teams get puffy ink by letting their fans know they’re in
the
bidding for CC, Manny, Teixeira, Burnett, etc.
The everyday phrases everywhere: “We have an interest in…”
“We’re
serious about signing…” ”We’re not out of the picture…”, etc.
The Yanks, with their deepest of
pockets, are odds-on
favorites to sign Sabathia. That the
Mets are allegedly competing for CC is a laugh.
But hey, it doesn’t hurt to get free favorable mention, no
matter how
empty of substance. It will be no surprise
here if the Yankees wind up adding Oliver Perez to their rotation. Joe Girardi liked what he saw in Perez when he
was a Yanks broadcaster. “He has a
chance to be good,” Joe said. He may well
still think so.
The Boston Globe’s Tony Massarotti
presents this persuasive
argument for teams proceeding with caution as they seek starting
pitching on the open market:
“In
2006, multiyear deals were given to a
cast of starters that included (in alphabetical order):
Miguel
Batista (three years, $25
million)
Adam Eaton (three years, $24.5m)
Orlando Hernandez (two years, $12m)
Kei Igawa (five years, $20m)
Ted Lilly (four years, $40m)
Jason Marquis (three years, $21m)
Daisuke Matsuzaka (six years, $52m)
Gil Meche (five years, $55m)
Mark Mulder (two years, $13m)
Mike Mussina (two years, $23m)
Vicente Padilla (three years, $33.75m)
Jason Schmidt (three years, $47m)
Jeff Suppan (four years, $42m)
Woody Williams (two years, $12.5m)
Barry Zito (seven years, $126m)
“Of the pitchers on that
list, only Lilly (32-17 for the Cubs), Matsuzaka
(33-15 for the Red Sox) and Meche (23-24 with a 3.82 ERA for the
Royals) have
pitched consistently well, while the remaining pitchers on the list
have
suffered from varying degrees of injury, inconsistency,
ineffectiveness, and
ineptitude.”
- o -
(Posted
11/06/08)
How Jackie Robinson Helped Open the Door
for Obama
We’ve credited the term the “Jackie Robinson of
politics” to
HBO’s Bill Maher. He saw Barack Obama as
treading a fine line in his campaign the way Jackie did as baseball’s
black
pioneer – the need to show restraint, coolness under fire, in the
contest for
the presidency.
Newsday’s
Shaun Powell says that, as well as a behavioral model,
Robinson helped open the door off the field for Obama and other
African-Americans:
“This
country's appetite for winning has been almost as powerful as its
desire to
discriminate. That's why sports led the way. That's why…Jackie became a
folk
hero while the nation resisted social change…
“People
who say Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball always get it
half-right. Robinson integrated America.
He put blacks in boardrooms, teacher's lounges, doctor's offices and
construction sites. It was because of his temperament and skill, tested
in
turbulent times, that America
began looking at blacks in an entirely different way. Obama's
campaign was well-run, but it had
nothing on Robinson’s.”
Footnote: On hearing
new Dodger Jackie speak in well-articulated, declarative sentences, a
boy in
Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, began to recognize that educational level, not
color, was
what made his black neighbors seem different.
Only one of four reasons the Atlantic’s
James Fallows gives for helping elect Barack Obama is positive; John
McCain’s
support of most Team Bush policies, his impulsive decision-making, and
choice of
Sarah Palin are the negatives. But here
is why Fallows says Americans did well to vote for Obama:
“The tone, the
policies, the cast
of mind, the talent, and, yes, the hope consistently represented by
Obama
during these past two years on the trail.
(Now that) he is elected, disappointment will certainly follow.
The
expectations now projected upon him far exceed what any mortal can
achieve. But to give the country a new chance, a leader must
inspire, and
he can.”
The sure-to-be-cut-down
expectations is the subject of this
pitch by the antic journal The Onion:
“Obama
will be charged with such tasks as
completely overhauling the nation's broken-down economy, repairing the
crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300
million
Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of
his
duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning
up the
messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense
scrutiny and
so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even
bothered
applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, "It just
goes
to show you that, in this country, a black man still can't catch a
break."
- -
-
Ballplayers who’ve struggled for reasons of health or age in
the previous season know it’s a bad sign when GM’s express optimism
about their
futures. At the execs’ meeting in Dana
Point, CA, this week, Omar Minaya said he believed Luis Castillo was
going to
recapture his pre-Mets form in ’09. Theo
Epstein said he was sure Mike Lowell would be fully recovered from his
hip
injury when spring training starts. The
spin-free version (in both cases): “I’m building up this guy in hopes
of
finding a taker.”
Epstein’s response - according to the
Globe’s Nick Cafardo -
when told agent Scott Boras thought Jason Varitek deserved a Jorge
Posada-like
($52 million for four years) deal: “(Theo) made
no comment, but his facial reaction wasn’t that of a man who was in
agreement.”
The
Yanks have the money to make serious bids for C.C.
Sabathia and Mark Teixeira; the Mets, paying $10 million to the
sidelined Billy
Wagner, will be lucky to land Colorado’s
sub-premium reliever Brian Fuentes.
ESPN’s Peter Gammons wrote what amounts to an early pre-season
epitaph
for the ’09 Mets:
The Mets… are not going
to jump over the luxury tax
threshold, so they will continue to build around David Wright, Jose
Reyes and
Carlos Beltran, hope that Mike Pelfrey will continue his quantum leap
forward,
and do their best to fill in around them…
After
the past two years, a slow start in a new ballpark could be ugly.”
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