Category: News

News Item: Baseball Lockout Ends

I said last week that baseball’s work stoppage would amount to a big nothing, and it did when a deal was struck on Thursday. Big whoop.

Although echoing the media hysteria mentioned last week was Boston Globe Sports Business Reporter Michael Silverman describing it as something that “infuriated fans.” It did? Where’s the evidence of that, pal?

There was some reporting on the financials, but they didn’t seem to have much significance so you have to wonder what it was all about.

The dumbest part is that if the All-Star game is tied after nine innings the league that wins the Home Run Derby will now be declared the winner. How stupid is that? Just leave it a tie, Rob.

What was bargaining in mutually agreed upon changes like a universal DH throughout baseball, and the mechanism to address more changes for 2023. They include pace of play issues, possibly banning the infield shift and making the bases larger. Not sure if I’m for the ban, as major leaguers should learn to hit the other way to beat it, and I don’t get what larger bases will do, but both sides working together to improve the game is progress.

News Item: Round 1 To Brooklyn

Brooklyn took the early lead in the debate over who won the James Harden–Ben Simmons trade.

Thanks to a complete 3-17, 11-point no show by Harden, Philly got smoked by 29 at home in the first match-up since the trade went down and Simmons didn’t even play. But, to his credit, he did show up on the bench to get roasted and he gets a bonus point for that.

News Item: Stat Geekdom Finally Comes Up With Good One

Here’s a stat from the new-age stat geekdom I can get behind. It’s Celtics center Robert Williams holding everyone he defends to 6 percentage points below their normal field goal percentage. That means if the combined FG percentage of the guys he covers is 50, they only shoot 44 percent against him. That tells you what kind of man-on-man defender he is.

News Item: Ridley Suspended For Doing Something NFL Promotes

When I was in the PR business in the ’90s and the NH Lottery was my client, a bill was advancing in the legislature to make football betting cards legal. I went one day with Lottery Director Jim Wimsatt to hear a young NFL PR flack, who my memory says was a young Roger Goodell, though a search couldn’t verify that, testify before the committee considering it, to voice the NFL’s opposition to the bill. After it was over Wimsatt, who loved talking to the press, did an impromptu press conference and predicted the NFL would be against betting on football until it could figure out how to get a piece of the action.

He was correct; that day has now arrived and their ongoing hypocrisy is worse than ever, exemplified specifically by suspending wide receiver Calvin Ridley last week for at least a year for betting on a few games while he was sidelined with mental health issues. A suspension handed out by an organization that is the official sports betting partner of Draft Kings, in whom Patriots owner Bob Kraft was one of the early investors, and whose game broadcasts every Sunday are chock full of ads promoting legal betting on its games.

And while I have nothing against sports betting, it seems ludicrous to suspend an inactive player for doing what ads on their games are inviting viewers to do. So, Roger, is gambling good or bad?, ’cause your actions send a very mixed message.

News Item: NFL Free Agency Opens

To paraphrase the famed sideline rant by legendary Green Bay Coach Vince Lombardi during a breakdown for his five-time champion Packers, here’s a question for Coach B as the new NFL year gets started: What The Heck Is Going On Down There?!

A year ago the Pats had the best secondary in football. But that was before he failed to get a long-term deal done with JC Jackson in advance of his free agency year even as he was throwing $175 million around at lesser free agents. And that was before he screwed up the Stephon Gilmore stalemate. Now both are gone with no obvious successors.

No SB was won in the Brady era without a top-flight cornerback. Ty Law was there for the first three. Then you put up a doughnut for 10 years until Darrelle Revis arrived in 2014, followed by Malcolm Butler in 2016 and Gilmore in 2018.

News Item: Flores Lawsuit Gets Stronger

The lawsuit ex-Dolphins coach Brian Flores filed against the NFL for discriminatory hiring practices picked up a little ammo last week thanks to moves related to two big-name quarterbacks. Quarterback-needy (OK, QB-desperate) Denver’s choice of Nathaniel Hackett and rejection of Flores was based on the notion the ex-Green Bay OC could bring disgruntled and wanting out of GB Aaron Rodgers with him to Denver to solve their QB ills. And since Flores couldn’t make that happen, his interview was a sham, the latest bogus Rooney Rule forced interview. But Rodgers magically became un-disgruntled when the Pack made the reigning MVP the highest-paid player in history. Which I always suspected his phony disgruntled act was designed to produce all along. That forced Denver, ah, to punt, sending three players and a boatload of draft picks to Seattle for QB Russell Wilson. Since they could have done that no matter who the HC was, that weakened the rationale for taking Hackett in the first place, and should give his legal team an extra arrow in the quiver.

News Item: Brady Un-Retires

I don’t care if you play or don’t play. So our only question is, Hey, Tom, when did you become such an attention-seeker?

Well, with the announcement last week that the first two series of the 2022 baseball season have been canceled due to the lockout, get ready for an onslaught of sky-is-falling claims from the baseball media.

You’ll hear familiar phrases like “tone deaf,” “greedy,” “exploitation,” baseball’s becoming a “niche” sport and it could go the way of horse racing and boxing, which at the midpoint of 20th century were two of the nation’s three most popular sports. Oh, and of course there’s also the “how could they do this?” unseemly money grab when people are suffering in a brutal war in Ukraine.

The latter is valid, but was also used during the dust-up over who’d get what during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

In fact, the onslaught has already started with no fewer than four columns in the Boston Globe last week alone. The last was by usual voice of reason Tara Sullivan and carried the title “Indifference has replaced interest in baseball and it is unfathomable the sport let itself get here.”

Two came from Dan Shaughnessy. I call him the prince of darkness because of his knack for making any misstep seem like a triple homicide. I’ve been reading the guy since the 1980s and during that time there have been numerous sports work stoppages and last week’s columns were dusted off “Armageddon is here” iterations of those written during the other disputes.

Then there was young Chris Gasper’s Norma Rae-inspired screed that (seemingly) took longer to read than War and Peace. It took the owners to task for exploiting the poor players. Problem is that amid all the overwriting he never got around to why we should care that players are being exploited.

And while I know full well the owners are lying and have been crying poor since before miserly Charles Comiskey’s pernicious ways made it seem like a good idea to eight of his White Sox players to throw the 1919 World Series, let me infuse all this with a little perspective. Or is it reality? Or sanity maybe?

The Players Association just rejected a proposal to make the minimum annual salary $700k as too low; the annual average salary is north of $4 million while an unlikable stiff like Bryce Harper makes $40 million a year for each of the next eight years. A guy who was so indispensable the Nationals won the World Series right after he left as a free agent.

So if that’s what exploitation is, someone, please, please, PLEASE exploit me like that!

Since the players are the actual product they certainly have a right to fight for what they help the owners take in. But with what they already get, why should anyone care one what they get, win or lose? Especially when they individually are just as greedy as the owners.

They claim to all be in it together. But that‘s only because a united front gives them needed leverage in their fight with the owners. But once that’s out of the way, it’s every man for himself.

Consider Max Scherzer, who took the Yankees to task last week for manipulating the competitive balance tax to hold their spending at the luxury tax threshold at “just” $188 million. Which he said considering their profitability they shouldn’t do.

That’s the same Scherzer who just signed a deal with the Mets to make a whopping $42 million for each of the next three years, while the guys at the bottom are making $600k. If Max were really interested in all his brothers in the labor battle he could kick, say $12 million of his $42 million into a fund for the guys at the bottom to split at the end of the year like a World Series share. It would still leave him with $30 million per, which I’m guessing he can get by on. And if others in his tax bracket like Harper and Mookie Betts did the same they could probably get the minimum guys over a million a year.

But we don’t hear that from Max, because he wants to get every last dime he can get out of the free market for himself. Especially since that’s what the Players Association preaches in fighting to avoid a salary cap like the one in the NBA that’s such a drag on salaries poor Russell Westbrook only makes $47 million a year.

Besides, that would be socialism. Except isn’t that, for better or worse, what a union actually is?

Fine. But if Max and his exploited compadres can do that, why can’t the Yankees? Then it’s may the better man/group win.

As for this adding to the woes of baseball’s declining national interest, I would point out that since there has not been a work stoppage in baseball, none of the decline (between 2007 and 2019) has anything to do with bickering over money.

Not to mention that while some may grumble during it, it’s all soon forgotten and fans come back every time. True even when a strike canceled the 1994 World Series and an entire NHL season was wiped out by the lockout of 2004-05. So don’t listen to the doomsday prediction because history shows they’re wrong every time.

As for the fan indifference mentioned by Ms. Sullivan, while it’s real at the moment, I’d argue it’s not specifically for the sport itself. It’s more of the “been there done that, so wake me when it’s over” variety.

So instead of looking at the glass being half full, this could actually be an opportunity to fix what really is causing the decline in attendance. Make one of the bargaining concessions be putting a structure in place for players and owners to jointly address everything from the cost of tickets to the pace of play to altering the way stat geek baseball is sucking the excitement out of the game.

That would make this stoppage constructive and if it takes until even July, it’s time well spent.