Scott Boras Smokes Crack

Scott Boras, baseball super-agent for Alex Rodriguez, Barry Zito, and the soon to be free agent Carlos Zambrano, has a new idea that could have only come from the mind of someone using powerful and deadly mind expanding drugs. Some might say it’s strange for someone so rich and influential to be under the influence of such substances, but ever since Ed Muskie got all whacked out on Ibogaine in 1972, anything is possible in America if there is enough corruption involved. New York scribe Bob Klapisch describes the idea in depth: Expand the World Series to nine games, with two of the 1st nine games in presumably neutral grounds and warm-weather cities to enhance the stature of the game. This will give high-profile business types yet another glory-hole to suck-off their high level clientele.

First off, this plan is complete and total lunacy. Baseball is supposedly already planning on extending the playoff format to seven-game series in the division and championship series. Throw in an extra two games in a warm weather city will push World Series games deeper into November, which will make fantastic television when the Red Sox, Yankees, Cubs, (and if God is kind) the White Sox and O’s will be playing in the snow. Second thing, unless the games are played in outer-space, can there really be a neutral ground in baseball? A site like Florida has the Marlins and future powerhouse D-Rays, Texas has the Rangers, and even though no one in California takes baseball seriously, it’s still got three five teams in state. If the Braves play the Tigers in Miami, who is going to have more fans in attendance—the team that plays a few hundred miles away, or a team that plays in the city that’s the US equivalent of Port-au-Prince?

Believed to be your average Haitian.
And do you know what’s worse outside of this general insanity? It’s that the doddering old nincompoop Bud Selig is actually taking the time to humor him. In case everyone didn’t already know, the labor-vs.-management struggle that in many ways has been the history of professional baseball, makes the mass genocide between the Hutus and the Tutsis look like a skirmish between the Hatfields and the McCoys by comparison. This is the guy who has been drastically driving up the price of free agents for years, now has the ear of the principal negotiator for ownership? Bart Giamatti would be rolling in his grave.

Maybe Boras has his motives. Maybe he thinks that by expanding the stature of the Series it’ll make baseball more popular, his players higher in demand, and ere go, himself more rich. Maybe by playing a game always in Florida, teams can just transport a 600 pound (and by that time, client) Miguel Cabrera via semi-truck instead of a much more dangerous private jet. That’s an Aalyiah tragedy waiting to happen. But more realistically, Boras is smoking crack. Tina Turner said that crack was for poor people, but is there really any other explanation, here? Crack makes the mind feel crazy things—paranoia, mania, and fanatically greedy. All these were in play when he came up with this blasphemous idea. Lay off the crack Scotty, and our game will be just fine.

"Remember kids, don't smoke crack."

UPDATE: There are five California baseball teams: LA, San Fran, Anahiem, San Diego, and Oakland/Freemont. Thanks to Ben, Rob I., and the people who e-mailed.

White Sox Fans-- Your Season is Over

After getting swept by the hapless Cubs, reports are beginning to surface that a fire sale is now being planned for the Chicago White Sox that’ll make the Reds yearly reach-around look like the Mulder-Haren trade, as yet another season ends in ignominious failure. While some bastions of support still exist (generally within the prison population of Illinois) it’s understood that when your club is only a game and a half up on the Kansas City Royals, it’s time to give up the ship. This is a welcome development for most baseball fans, because despite winning a World Series in 2005, the Southsiders haven’t exactly become America’s team.

Outside of Internet phenom Jim Thome and the ever entertaining Ozzie Guillen, there isn’t a lot to like with this brand of White Sox. Ever since Jose Contreras was reunited with his family and was placed in a lower-pressure environment, the guy lost a lot of his good story and drawing power. Any team that values Scott Podsednik can’t be taken seriously, and the media blow-ups the team’s General Manager has with past players leave a bad taste in viewers’ mouths, since the world will remember Frank Thomas long after Kenny Williams is dead. Injuries abound with the 2007 club, and while almost none of it could have been planned or corrected, these kinds of things don’t happen to the Dallas Cowboys of the world. Unless of course you’re Michael Irvin.

This one goes out to Lt. Winslow.
The fact is, outside of a banner World Series victory in recent memory, the White Sox are probably one of the most wretched franchises that’s ever graced the national pastime. Before an 88 year championship drought was extinguished, they were even more pathetic than the Red Sox, but with far worse press coverage. Really, outside of providing misery for their own followers and fodder for the fans of other teams, the most notable thing about the CHW’s were those uniforms with the shorts, which were also some of the historically bad variety. Just like Rutgers football really has no place in the pantheon of great college teams, the White Sox don’t probably belong in the list of great teams and perennial contenders along with the Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals, A’s, and Dodgers. Ere go, this team was doomed from the start—it was written in the stars.

Now, does this mean things can’t get better? In a macro sense, yes. But good trades of essentially the entire team could put the White Sox in prime position to repeat some semblance of their 2005 success, provided the Twins, Indians, Tigers, and Royals, all get progressively worse as the years go by, and that has a pretty good chance of happening, right?

…………NOT!!

It’s time to revel in glorious schadenfreude, and outside of watching (VaJay)Jay Mariotti poking White Sox fans with a stick through his gilded cage, the greatest thing about the early demise of the White Sox are the wailings of the insidious Ken “the Hawk” Harrelson. If you are a person who believes in “goodness” and “truth” then Harrelson is almost certainly the Joesph Goebbels of a Major League Baseball organization. Not only during his announcing is he out-and-out rooting for the Southsiders, he tells outright lies to keep the fans entertained. Seeing Iraqi Information Minister Harrelson do the play-by-play for one of the league’s worst teams will bring delight to the millions of viewers who can actually see WGN.

Congratulations to the 2007 Chicago White Sox. For about the first month of the season, you guys hung in there pretty well. Unforunately, this would not be the case throughout the rest of the baseball year. The new rallying cry of your team will now be “Let’s not be worse than the Royals.” It’s an accomplishable goal, I think. Probably more so than winning another World Series this century, anyway.

“He Gone.” And by this I mean “traded.”