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Bar Chat

08/05/2013

Suspension Time

Phillies Quiz: 1) Name the single-season leader in RBI. 2) Who is the only player, post-1900, to steal 60 or more bases in a season? 3) Name the four to hit 250 home runs in a Phillies uniform. Answers below.

MLB and A-Roid

As I go to post, Major League Baseball is reportedly making its suspension of Alex Rodriguez public early Monday morning. A-Rod apparently already knows the penalty. He will play, however, in Chicago, on Monday.

The following is for the record. Yes, I’m as tired of it all at this point as you are. But I’m also just building the archives...which are the single best history of this disgusting era in baseball that you’ll find anywhere.

A-Rod reached out to the commissioner’s office Saturday, through the players union, and also contacted the Yankees directly. The commissioner’s office ignored A-Rod and has given him its ultimatum...accept a suspension through the end of the 2014 season, or as many as 214 games. He would also lose $36 million in salary.

Of course if A-Rod had kept his mouth shut on Friday night following a rehab game in Trenton, maybe MLB would be talking to him.

“I will say this, there’s more than one party that benefits from me never stepping back on the field. That’s not my teammates and not the Yankee fans.”

Asked why he feels he’s being “singled out,” Rodriguez responded, “What do you think?” He later was asked why he believes that is the case.

“I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. I think that’s the pink elephant in the room,” Rodriguez said, referring to the remaining $100 million the Yankees owe him on his $275 million deal. “I think we all agree that we want to get rid of PEDs; that’s a must. All the players, we feel that way. But when all this stuff is going on in the background, and people are finding creative ways to cancel your contract, that’s concerning for present (players) and I think it should be concerning for future players, as well.”

One Yankee official told the Daily News, “This is typical Alex. Instead of taking responsibility for his actions, he blames everybody else. It wasn’t the Yankees who introduced (Rodriguez) to Anthony Bosch. It wasn’t the Yankees who introduced him to Dr. (Anthony) Galea, or anybody else.”

MLB is convinced it has voluminous evidence proving Rodriguez violated the game’s collective bargaining agreement in 2010, 2011 and 2012 by obtaining performance-enhancing drugs from Anthony Bosch and Biogenesis, plus he obstructed Bud Selig’s investigation and lied to MLB about his PED use. MLB has shown its evidence – including emails, texts and phone records, as well as a witness who is said to have seen Bosch injecting Rodriguez with PEDs – to A-Rod and the Players’ Association.

Ken Davidoff / New York Post

“If A-Rod can’t agree on a settlement and vows to appeal, his suspension figures to come via the Basic Agreement, a mechanism that would keep him off the field as he waits for arbitrator Fredric Horowitz to hear his case. If Rodriguez is suspended through the Joint Drug Agreement, then he could play through his appeal.

“The Basic Agreement doesn’t spell out an exact time line for an appeal if Rodriguez is suspended by Article XII(B), best known as the ‘best interests of baseball’ clause, but the Players Association would request an expedited hearing, then it would be a matter of Horowitz finding time in his schedule. In this scenario, Rodriguez’s case could be heard and ruled upon by the completion of the 2013 season.

“Selig also is considering suspending Rodriguez by using Article XI(A)(1)(b) of the Basic Agreement, known as the ‘integrity of the game’ clause, which empowers the commissioner to hear the appeal (although the union still could jump through myriad legal hoops to bring the case to an arbitrator). Yet the Players Association would fight hard against a precedent in which a player doesn’t get to appeal his case in front of an independent arbitrator, and the current Basic Agreement features a letter from Selig to Players Association executive director Michael Weiner assuring he wouldn’t use this clause to negate players’ rights.”

“(The) ramifications if Rodriguez does decide to fight back – and if his lawyers can successfully throw enough mud on Anthony Bosch to actually win in arbitration – are so potentially ruinous to the sport it gives you the bends just thinking about it.

“Look, it is pretty clear Rodriguez is at the point where he has nothing to lose. He has admitted past steroid use. At the very least, he has allowed himself to stand far closer to Bosch than he ever should have, regardless of the nature of their relationship. There is no salvaging his reputation. The Hall of Fame is a lost cause. His future in the game is murky at best.

“But baseball itself? It doesn’t need a protracted war, and certainly doesn’t need the muddy battles of attrition this campaign surely will bring. It’s bad enough baseball finds itself in bed with a star witness, Bosch, whose very name makes most reasonable people want to find the nearest shower.

“But Bosch under cross-examination? Baseball under cross-examination?

“For a sport that relies so heavily on its place alongside apple pie, hot dogs and Chevrolet in the rarefied realm of Americana, such a public circus would be catastrophic. And baseball would be all alone, too. When Roger Clemens skated and Barry Bonds squirted free in past years, it was the feds who took the hit for those prosecutorial failures. And people never much mind treating the feds like piñatas, no matter how egregious the target.

“This would be different. This is different. This is a 79-year-old commissioner and a 38-year-old shortstop-turned-third baseman, both of their legacies lying in the middle of the table. Selig better be right here.

“A-Rod is either deserving of a lifetime ban or he’s not. He may very well have done everything he is accused of, but what we have here isn’t a genuine assessment of his offenses but rather a squeeze play by Selig, an attempt to pressure A-Rod into forgoing his due process. Whatever the evidence against Rodriguez in the Biogenesis affair – and it may be significant – the commissioner is unmistakably less interested in a fitting penalty than he is in shutting up A-Rod – and at the same time bolstering his own weak reputation on PEDs....

“A-Rod is the perfect defendant for a show trial. He is despised alike by spittle-flecked hecklers behind the plate who scream at him for not hitting in the clutch and by solemn self-appointed keepers of the emerald chessboard’s sanctity for admitting four years ago to PED use during a three-year stretch with Texas from 2001 to 2003. He’s an incurably self-conscious phony who incredibly still insists he’s ‘a role model,’ an awkwardly hapless stumbler who is always getting caught, whether frequenting a shady clinic or letting Cameron Diaz feed him popcorn on camera like Cleopatra taking grapes from a love slave. He is a tone-deaf egotist who never understood the deep resentment he engendered by being baseball’s highest paid player and then not producing astronomic numbers. The reaction to him by fans and critics has always been excessive to the point of disturbing. My friend Joe Posnanski wrote maybe the truest thing ever about A-Rod and his audience: He gives them ‘guilt-free hate.’

“But none of that is reason to ban him for life. It’s one thing to scorn and ridicule him and another to align him with the Chicago Black Sox.”

“So it is possible one of the great careers ever is ending this way. Playing at Double-A, throwing out conspiracy theories. But not talking about whether he has continued to use steroids since 2009, when at a press conference admitting prior use he asked to be judged from that day forward.

“He should understand how this judgment will work. Even if the Yankees are after his contract and MLB is after his profession and they are doing it in unholy cahoots, the ongoing trial is about whether Alex Rodriguez used PEDs these last few years and then tried to impede an investigation seeking to prove that.

Ball Bits

--Detroit’s Max Scherzer moved to 16-1 on Saturday. I’d say that’s the definition of gaudy. 

--Tampa Bay has to be worried about All-Star pitcher Matt Moore (14-3), who went on the disabled list with a sore left elbow. [But just saw a report today that he is throwing with little discomfort.]

--Us Mets fans are very depressed, having lost our captain, David Wright, to a hamstring injury. Some say he could be out as long as five weeks, which will really mess up his baseball card if he finishes the season with less than 70 RBI (he has 54).

After an absolutely hideous 6-2 loss to the Royals on Sunday, the Mets are 0-2 in the Sans Wright Era and the traditional second-half collapse appears to be in full swing.

It also doesn’t help that the 49-60 Metropolitans are 22-32 at home. Citi Field is turning into a morgue....

--....As opposed to PNC Park in Pittsburgh, where the 67-44 Pirates, 38-20 at home, are selling the place out. There isn’t a single baseball fan on the planet that doesn’t want the Bucs to not only make the postseason, which is a lock at this point, but get into the World Series.

--The Yankees’ CC Sabathia is a 0-3, 12.37 ERA in his last four starts. For the season he is 9-10, 4.78.

CC is being paid $23 million this year and is guaranteed $71 million 2014-2016, with an option for 2017. Something tells me he gets the $5 million buyout in ’17.

--Baltimore’s Manny Machado finally hit his 40th double after going 22 games without one.

--So after a 3-2 loss to the Tigers on Sunday, the Chicago White Sox are a putrid 40-69, after going 85-77 last season.

But don’t blame my man Adam Dunn! Did you know he hit .274 for the month of June, .277 in July, and has started August 7-for-17? It’s true...it’s really true! Heck, his overall average is up to .226. [.328 OBP]

--Not for nothing, but the Angels’ Mike Trout is proving last year was no fluke...not that there is a fan alive who doesn’t know the guy is for real. He hit .358 in June and .379 in July...

--June 21...the Dodgers were 30-42. Aug. 4...61-49. A 31-7 streak.

--In defeating the Reds 15-2 on Sunday, the Cardinals were 10-for-18 with runners in scoring position. For the season they are now a staggering .339 in those situations.

--Should the Reds and Indians both make the playoffs, it would be just the second time since 1901 that both do so in the same season, the other being 1995.

The Cubs and White Sox have qualified in the same year just twice, 1906 and 2008.

--In his Hall of Fame induction speech on Saturday, Bill Parcells said he had made a request of the Hall of Fame committee:

“The only thing I would ask them is when they put my bust in the Hall tomorrow, I would like it to be somewhere near Lawrence Taylor so I can keep an eye on that sucker.”

Curiously, the only players Parcells mentioned in his speech were LT, Harry Carson and George Martin, despite a ton of his former players being in attendance. Then again, he was probably afraid to leave someone out if he started rattling off names.

“In the years since Bill Parcells has stopped coaching, people have tried to find holes in his resume, and suggest that he was somehow overrated because he coached over there in Jersey.

“They ought to go back and look at what he did with the Giants after he was 3-12-1 his first year and nearly got fired.

“They ought to remember that after he won his two Super Bowls with the Giants, he took New England to the Super Bowl and took the Jets to the AFC Championship Game, and probably would have taken the Jets to the Super Bowl the next year had Vinny Testaverde’s ankle not exploded in the first half of the first game of the season.

“And remember that he might just have taken the Cowboys back to the big game if Tony Romo hadn’t fumbled a snap on a game-winning, chip-shot field goal against Seattle.

“Bill Parcells is one of the great football coaches of all time, and one of the very greatest since another Jersey guy named Lombardi.”

--Samuel G. Freedman of the New York Times had a piece on the omission of former Cincinnati Bengals’ great, Ken Riley, from the Hall of Fame. I needed myself to be reminded Riley isn’t in. I just assumed he was. After all, Riley still ranks fifth all time in career interceptions with 65. “Yet 19 defensive backs with fewer interceptions have been inducted. During Riley’s years, 1969 to 1983, the Bengals posted a cumulative winning record with five trips to the playoffs and a Super Bowl appearance in 1982, when they lost to the San Francisco 49ers.”

Riley has never made the list of named finalists, either in his initial 20 years of eligibility or during his last five as a senior. “To cite one comparison, Roger Wehrli, who was in the league virtually the same number of years as Riley and had 25 fewer interceptions while playing with the losing St. Louis Cardinals, was voted into the Hall six years ago.”

But Riley was named All-Pro only once and never chosen for the Pro Bowl. Wehrli, for instance, made seven Pro Bowls and was All-Pro three times.

--The case of Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Riley Cooper is a sad and disgraceful one, Cooper being revealed on a video at a Kenny Chesney  concert uttering the N-word in a vicious way. Cooper was expected to play a prominent role in the Eagles’ offense this year, especially after the season-ending injury to Jeremy Maclin.

In an initial statement, Cooper said: “I am so ashamed and disgusted with myself. I want to apologize. I have been offensive....I owe an apology to the fans and to this community. I am so ashamed, but there are no excuses. What I did was wrong and I will accept the consequences.”

For his part, Kenny Chesney said: “All I do is get off my bus and try to give the fans all the heart and passion I got. That’s where it starts and stops; that’s all I think about....

“The music I make is about living life, loving life and loving everybody – no matter who they are. That’s how I was raised, and what someone else does or says doesn’t reflect who I am or what my fans stand for.”

Eagles teammate LeSean McCoy was emblematic of reaction in Philadelphia.

“I forgive him. We’ve been friends for a long time. But in a situation like this you really find out about someone. Just on a friendship level, I can’t really respect someone like that.”

McCoy said his relationship with Cooper no longer will extend beyond the football field and there’s nothing Cooper can do to change that.

It should come as no surprise that the next day, Friday, Riley Cooper left the Eagles to undergo counseling.

“The last few days have been incredibly difficult for me,” Cooper said. “My actions were inexcusable. The more I think about what I did, the more disgusted I get.....

“Right now, I think it’s important for me to take some time to reflect on this situation. The organization and my teammates have been extremely supportive, but I also realize that there are people who will have a tough time forgiving me for what I’ve done.”

--Can you believe the new format for the Pro Bowl? Instead of the AFC-NFC format, captains will pick 43 players per team regardless of conference.

Now I haven’t watched a second of a Pro Bowl since I was a kid – to me being forced to do so would be torture – but what a stupid idea. Why the NFL insists on having the game is also beyond me.

Plus, they are changing the game rules to eliminate kickoffs as a safety measure, which means there will be no kick-return specialist Pro Bowl roster spot.

I won’t get into all the other changes because you shouldn’t care.

College Football

USA TODAY Preseason Coaches’ Poll

1. Alabama
2. Ohio State
3. Oregon
4. Stanford
5. Georgia
6. Texas A&M
7. South Carolina
8. Clemson
9. Louisville
10. Florida
11. Notre Dame

Five SEC teams in top ten.

--Meanwhile, Louisville, with star quarterback Teddy Bridgewater (who’s going to be great fun to watch this year), picked up another big weapon...former Auburn running back Michael Dyer.

Dyer, recall, ran for 1,000 yards in each of his freshman and sophomore seasons before being forced out of school due to brushes with the law. He had similar problems at Arkansas State.

Then he surfaced at Arkansas Baptist, picked up an associate’s degree, and, according to some, has his life straightened out. He is eligible immediately.

--Chris Dufresne of the Los Angeles Times, one of the better scribes on the CFB scene, says watch out for Western Kentucky. They open with Kentucky and then Tennessee. If they win both, they’ll be ranked and in position to run the table...and then...maybe get a BCS bid!

--Dick Kazmaier died. He was 82. Kazmaier won the Heisman Trophy in 1951 as a Princeton halfback and then rejected a career in the NFL, saying he had achieved all he wanted in the sport and could make more money in business. He was the last Ivy Leaguer to win the Heisman. He also graduated second in his class, went to graduate school at Harvard, and did indeed have a successful business career.

In his three varsity seasons, Kazmaier passed for 2,404 yards and rushed for 1,950. As a senior, he led the nation in rushing with 1,027 yards in nine games.

--Tiger Woods won for the 8th time at Firestone at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. The seven-stroke victory was his fifth of the year and 79th of his PGA Tour career, just three shy of Sam Snead’s all-time mark of 82. He also has 8 wins at Arnie’s Bay Hill and 8 at Torrey Pines (including his U.S. Open victory on the course).

So it’s on to the PGA Championship at Oak Hill in Rochester, N.Y. Tiger has already commented the greens there suck after a practice round earlier this week.

--Missy Franklin won six gold medals at the world swimming championships. 16-year-old Katie Ledecky won four golds. Needless to say, the future of the American team looks bright.

But how good was Franklin’s performance, in besting the four golds she picked up at the London Olympics?

The 18-year-old became the winningest female swimmer ever at the worlds. She also joins Michael Phelps, Mark Spitz, Australia’s Ian Thorpe and East Germany’s Kristin Otto as the only swimmers to capture as many as six golds at either worlds on an Olympics.

--The Washington Wizards reached agreement with point guard John Wall on a five-year, $80 million contract extension. He showed signs of breaking through to the elite level of the league last season, but I question his consistency.

--Be very afraid. As a story in USA TODAY has it, shark sightings have risen along the East Coast, especially off the coast of Cape Cod due to the exploding seal population, which is bringing great whites closer to shore. This is an exciting development here at Bar Chat.

--So remember when I told you how investigators here in New Jersey raided a bunch of bars and charged them with duping customers into thinking they were buying high-end liquor, when the establishments were substituting cheaper brands? 13 of the locations swept up in “Operation Swill” were TGI Friday’s and the owner of eight of them just settled with the state, agreeing to pay $500,000 and have the state monitor his facilities for one year.

What I didn’t know when the story first hit, though, was how “In one case, a bar allegedly mixed rubbing alcohol with caramel food coloring and served it as scotch. Another bar was accused of pouring dirty water into an empty bottle and passing it off as liquor.” [Star-Ledger]

“Twenty-six passengers on a Qantas flight from Santiago to Sydney were struck down with a gastro intestinal illness midflight on Thursday, resulting in a mass vomiting and diarrhea episode.”

Paramedics met the flight when it landed at Sydney. The victims were all part of the same tour group returning to Australia after celebrating World Youth Day in Brazil.

In case you’re wondering, that was a 13-hour flight and there were fewer than 10 toilets on board.

--Country star Randy Travis is out of the hospital, but relocated to a rehab facility. Following his stroke and surgery July 10, Travis’ doctors said his recovery would entail months of intense physical therapy.

Top 3 songs for the week 8/5/67: #1 “Light My Fire” (The Doors) #2 “I Was Made To Love Her” (Stevie Wonder) #3 “All You Need Is Love” (The Beatles)... and...#4 “Windy” (The Association...highly underrated group...) #5 “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” (Procol Harum... very overrated...) #6 “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” (Frankie Valli...always think of one thing when I hear this...The Deer Hunter...) #7 “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” (The Buckinghams...had one terrific year...) #8 “White Rabbit” (Jefferson Airplane...song about a little girl’s bunny that escaped from its cage and was hit by a combine....or maybe not...) #9 “Pleasant Valley Sunday” (The Monkees ...we miss Davy Jones....) #10 “Little Bit O’ Soul” (The Music Explosion...tune isn’t aging well...but then I’m not either, come to think of it....)

Phillies Quiz Answers: 1) Chuck Klein had 170 RBI in 1930. 2) Post-1900, the only player with 60 or more stolen bases is Juan Samuel, 72, 1984. [Jimmy Rollins has never had 50, in case that was your guess.] 3) 250 HR: Mike Schmidt, 548; Ryan Howard, 311; Del Ennis, 259 (1946-56...overall, he had 288 in his career and drove in 1,284); Pat Burrell, 251 (2000-2008).

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