Angell
In discussing one legend, Jackie Robinson, the writer Roger Angell reminds us what a legend he is as well, whether writing about baseball or his life.
Tag: "baseball"
The Death of Free Agency
Free agency in baseball is basically dead, at least for high-end players. Players’ current teams are buying the best players out of free agency with long-term deals that will keep most of them on the same team for the majority of their careers. Just this week there was the 8 year deal for Justin Verlander and 9 year deal for Buster Posey. Then last night word came that the Rangers were extending Elvis Andrus for 8 years at $120 million. Personally, I think that’s a staggering amount of money for a good but not great player, albeit one that is only 24 and likely to get better. But they have the money and they want to lock in players. Jonah Keri has much more on this. I don’t see this as a bad thing at all. Players are getting paid big money. Owners get bankable stars. Fans get to root for a player over a 15 year period, like in the days before free agency. The only downside is that some of these contracts are going to become albatrosses over time. Unfortunately, I think that probably includes Felix Hernandez in Seattle.
Anyway, it also means that the days of the Yankees buying everyone might be over, or at least limited to the occasional Jeffrey Loria salary dump, as Jonah suggests. I certainly think that’s a good thing.
Also, Opening Day!!!
Baseball Challenge
Given that there’s no longer any reason to display even mild interest in the NCAA Tournament, it’s time to look ahead to Major League Baseball. The structure of the ESPN Baseball Challenge system appears to have changed, but our challenge remains essentially the same:
League Name: LGM
Password: zevon
The prize, as always, is a gift of the victor’s choice from the LGM store. However, I have grown so frustrated and angry at M. Ricci’s four year winning streak that I am willing to offer the following additional “bounties” to the man or woman who deposes Ricci:
- A blogpost at LGM, from a blogger of your choice, on a topic of your choice.
- A podcast at LGM, from bloggers of your choice, on topics of your choice.
Hopefully these boons will be sufficient to break the terrible tyranny of M. Ricci over the LGM Baseball Challenge.
The Yankees Problems Are Solved!
Now this is a Yankees move I can approve!
The New York Yankees and Los Angeles Angels are closing in on a trade that would send outfielder Vernon Wells and a large amount of cash to the Bronx, sources told Yahoo! Sports on Sunday.
While Wells has a no-trade clause, he informed the teams he would accept a deal to the Yankees, one source told Y! Sports.
The 34-year-old likely would play left field and move into the Yankees’ injury-battered everyday lineup. They are expected to start the season with Curtis Granderson, Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter on the disabled list.
Someone get Brian Cashman on the phone. Chone Figgins is also available and he’ll definitely keep the Yankees under the luxury tax line!
Are Corporations Amoral?
It’s rare that I disagree with Rob Neyer. But I have to push back on his column about Major League Baseball owners deciding to eliminate the pensions of their non-player employees, despite being quadzillionaires who could obviously afford it. One thing I like about covering labor issues in professional sports is that it’s the only field that grabs the attention of enough people that the little things like this get into the spotlight. Employers around the country are destroying pensions, but when NFL owners lockout referees over it or MLB owners try it, it opens space to talk about it.
Anyway, Neyer argues that corporations are amoral rather than immoral:
But with just a few exceptions, big companies aren’t in the business of respecting people; they’re in the business of sucking as money from their customers and as much labor from their employees as possible, while exacting the maximum amount of profits. They are not generally immoral; they are intrinsically amoral. Eliminating pensions isn’t evil, and perhaps not even shameful.
Corporations have made such inroads into our consciousness that this kind of formulation is common, even among people generally politically progressive like Neyer. Corporations are not some disembodied beast. They are made up of human beings with human values. We as a society allow these wealthy humans who make up a corporation to exercise power up to a given limit, depending on our own values. In times like today, or in the first Gilded Age, when corporations exercise relatively maximum power over society, to create philosophical justifications for their existence that free them of responsibility to larger society. Profit taking becomes naturalized, rather than a socio-economic-political choice. Whether this is the Social Darwinism or Gospel of Wealth of the late 19th century or the weird corporation-as-human creation of the modern Supreme Court, these ideas give corporations room to make very human choices without suffering consequences or even criticism.
It doesn’t matter what big companies are in the business of doing. They are controlled by people who are seeking to maximize wealth at the top of society. It matters to what extent we allow those rich people to do this. Today, we allow them to do about whatever we want, a consequence of a sixty-year pushback against the New Deal that has convinced lots of Americans that business knows all. This attitude allows Bill Gates to shape education policy for no other reason than he is rich. It allows for immoral fallbacks on “fiduciary responsibility” to shareholders to justify any policy, no matter how antisocial. It allows for a Supreme Court to declare that corporations can openly buy elections.
Corporate dumping of toxic chemicals into rivers is in fact evil and shameful. That’s because doing so is a decision made by human beings to maximize profit at the cost of hurting nature and people. The same goes for union-busting, for pension-slashing, and for race to the bottom politics. So long as we apologize away the behavior of corporate leaders by naturalizing their behavior, the things that upset us about corporate control over society will continue to occur. Only by pushing back against corporate ideology do we make society more equal. And that includes for the employees of Major League Baseball.
Worst Chavez Obit
The coverage of Hugo Chavez’s death has been almost universally terrible. But this piece from Associated Press business reporter Pamela Simpson takes the cake:
Chavez invested Venezuela’s oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world’s tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi.
The true sign of national greatness–absurdly large skyscrapers and nice things for rich people.
This sums up much about the business community’s beliefs in 2013. Health care and education for the poor is a waste of money. Glitter and income inequality, that’s the ticket.
Jim Naureckas with more:
In case you’re curious about what kind of results this kooky agenda had, here’s a chart (NACLA, 10/8/12) based on World Bank poverty stats–showing the proportion of Venezuelans living on less than $2 a day falling from 35 percent to 13 percent over three years. (For comparison purposes, there’s a similar stat for Brazil, which made substantial but less dramatic progress against poverty over the same time period.)
Of course, during this time, the number of Venezuelans living in the world’s tallest building went from 0 percent to 0 percent, while the number of copies of the Mona Lisa remained flat, at none. So you have to say that Chavez’s presidency was overall pretty disappointing–at least by AP’s standards.
The new Gilded Age indeed.
Meanwhile, Major League Baseball provided its own classy moment, refusing to honor the request of the Venezuelan World Baseball Classic team for a moment of silence before an exhibition game against the Marlins.
Given that Jeffrey Loria is a far greater monster than Hugo Chavez could ever dream of being, this is particularly egregious. But at least Major League Baseball can now return to the unregulated exploitation of young Venezuelan boys.
BBWAA, Here I Come
I am apparently now a CNN-worthy expert on the World Baseball Classic.
WBC
My latest at the Diplomat is on the opening of the third World Baseball Classic.
The Dominican Republic, led by Robinson Cano, Jose Reyes, and Hanley Ramirez, is the odds on favorite to win the Classic, followed by the United States and Japan. In 2009, however, a strong Dominican team failed to escape pool play, losing twice to the Netherlands. The popularity of the WBC in Korea and Japan may give those teams an edge in morale; U.S. play in the first two tournaments occasionally seemed lackadaisical, as players looked ahead to the Major League season.
Indeed, the major league connection has proven a handicap for many of the American teams. Major league teams have discouraged many of their players (especially pitchers) from participating in the WBC due to injury and exhaustion risks. Consequently, some of the most devastating players in baseball, including Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, Justin Verlander, Felix Hernandez, and Johnny Cueto, are sitting the WBC out. On the other hand, the participation of Joey Votto lends no small degree of punch to the Canadian team.
The broader question is the extent to which the WBC helps produce a Pacific rim baseball community. Although major Japanese and Korean stars have played in the United States (and American players are common in Japan), the trans-Pacific relationship remains substantially outside the integrated system that characterizes baseball in the Americas. Of course, whether such integration is desirable is an altogether different question; baseball has a distinct character in each of Korea, Japan, and North America, adding a regional and cultural richness to the sport.
Given that I am now a person who has written about baseball in America, I believe that my invitation to join the Baseball Writers Association of America shall arrive any day. In anticipation, I am already becoming indignant about steroids, and increasingly impressed by the feats of Jack Morris. In any case, I will cheer heartily for Canada if Joey Votto is part of the team (unclear at the moment); otherwise, United States.
Embracing the Evil
It’s nice that the Yankees are embracing what we here at LGM have known forever:
Part of the Yankees’ argument: a concession that in the baseball world, they are, in fact, the “Evil Empire.” In its legal papers, the team referenced a number of articles from the past decade using the term in connection with the Yankees, and conceded that the team has “implicitly embraced” the “Evil Empire” theme by playing music from Star Wars during their home games.
The panel of judges sided with the Yankees, ruling that the Yankees are strongly associated with the phrase. Allowing anyone else to use the phrase exclusively would likely cause confusion, ruled the judges.
“In short, the record shows that there is only one Evil Empire in baseball and it is the New York Yankees,” wrote the judges. “Accordingly, we find that [the Yankees] have a protectable trademark right in the term . . . as used in connection with baseball.”
Now if we can only get the Chicago Cubs to trademark the term “irritating morons” we’ll be getting somewhere.
Running Taft
As baseball fans know, every stadium has some version of the “race” between innings where the fans can root for a meaningless computerized competition between different colored objects. In Seattle for instance, it’s speedboats. Usually these remain computerized.
The Washington Nationals have taken a different tack, having people in president outfits run the race. They have 4–the Mt. Rushmore presidents. Until now:
The most anticipated move of the Washington Nationals offseason was finally made Friday night, as the club announced that William Howard Taft would become the 5th Racing President.
The justification for this is that Taft was the first president to throw out a first pitch, for the Washington Senators in 1910.
The real reason: the world likes to see fat men run.
The clear next frontier is to have a James Madison character. The battle between a fat man and a tiny man who barely weighed 100 pounds is sure to enrapture the baseball-game attending public.
The Day the Legends Died
Stan Musial, one of baseball’s greatest hitters and a Hall of Famer with the St. Louis Cardinals for more than two decades, died Saturday. He was 92.
Stan the Man won seven National League batting titles, was a three-time MVP and helped the Cardinals capture three World Series championships in the 1940s.
The Cardinals announced Musial’s death in a news release. They said he died Saturday evening at his home in Ladue surrounded by family. The team said Musial’s son-in-law, Dave Edmonds, informed the club of Musial’s death.
12th career in WAR, but had only one season with WAR over 10. Crazy combination of consistency and longevity. Salary peaked at $75000 from 1951-53, ~$620000 in inflation adjusted terms.
Has another single day seen the death of two baseball legends of this magnitude?
Earl Weaver RIP
The great Earl Weaver has passed.
Earl Weaver, the fiery Hall of Fame manager who won 1,480 games with theBaltimore Orioles, has died, the team says. He was 82.
Weaver was traveling on an Orioles fantasy cruise in the Caribbean when he collapsed in his room with wife, Maryanne, at his side on the cruise’s ship at about 2 a.m. Saturday, the New York Daily News reported.
Weaver never regained consciousness, the report said.
