Because we haven’t been professionally trained or have a masthead to work under, we are not allowed to question anything. At least according to Geoff Baker of The Seattle Times:

But there is a training that has to occur. You either learn it in school, or learn it on-the-job at a paper before going out in the field. Or from me. But you have to get some training before you head out there. That way, you don’t embarrass yourself nationally, as this blogger just did, or risk ruining a ballplayer’s reputation when you may not be right.

I don’t think the blogger, Jerod Morris, embarrassed himself. He laid out a case that pointed a direction that wondered if Ibanez was on some PED. Passive-aggressive, true, but I’d rather read that than Morris come out and say definitively that Ibanez was on something without proof. Hell, I did the same thing 5 days prior, with less statistical “evidence”. As I noted at the bottom of that posting, we’d be lazy to assume everyone is innocent.

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The 2009 versions of “I have a famous dad” belong to:

• Asaad Ali, the youngest son of boxing great Muhammad Ali, drafted in the 40th round
• Michael Yastrzemski, the grandson of Red Sox icon and Baseball Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski (by Boston, naturally)
• Gavin McCourt, son of Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, was drafted in the 39th round Thursday by the Boston Red Sox.

Anyone I missed?

This is a few days old, but what an interesting tale. The sad story of Brien Taylor, from high school phenom to Exhibit #1 of “What happens if your draft pick is a bust”:

He was 6-foot-4 and not fat and not skinny. He looked like a man. He swaggered like one, too, when he was on that mound, all presence and intimidation and fear. Batters started the walk to the plate with a chrysalis in their stomach, and by the time they saw that fastball, it metamorphosed into a full-on butterfly. Lord, that fastball. They swear it tickled 85 when he was 12, and Willie “Ray” Taylor, his daddy and catcher, remembers the sting when it caught the mitt’s heel. Like a thousand bees at once.

“I’ve been through 28 drafts,” Scott Boras says, “and Brien Taylor, still to this day, is the best high school pitcher I’ve seen in my life.”

More than a tale of woe, it’s an fascinating review of how the Yanks tried to lowball Taylor compared to Todd Van Poppel, with accusations of racism tossed in, and how this changed the tactics for agents thereafter.

The offer was also $900,000 less in guaranteed money than Todd Van Poppel, the ballyhooed Texas right-hander, had signed for in the previous draft.

“They had the attitude that these poor black people from the South were stupid and didn’t know any better,” Bettie says. “And we were. But, let me tell you, we learn quick.“

From June 3, the day the Yankees chose Taylor, Bettie drew the line of demarcation: Pay him Van Poppel money or he’s going to college. The Yankees raised their offer to $650,000. She said no.

“When I went in, I told them what I wanted,” Bettie says. “And I wasn’t going to budge from that.“

Along came Boras, who Bettie had read about. She knew he wrangled the Van Poppel deal, and she was going to need help. Major League Baseball had sent in a representative to kindly ask the Taylors to accept the Yankees’ offer. The scene resembled a mafia sitdown, and Bettie wouldn’t have been surprised if a dead fish showed up on her windshield.

Single-handedly she was changing how baseball did business, empowering the players who, for so long, had been stunted by a rigid bonus structure.
[...]
“It was not about the money for me,” Bettie says. “I told them what I expected, and it was a matter of respect and equality and pride.”

Ya know what, I believe her completely, and you know I rarely believe people who claim it’s not about the money…

We can only wonder what might have been had he not turned his shoulder into spaghetti.

Reader Keith K. clued me into this one:

When I first heard that Ibanez was speaking out against a blogger for daring to question the purity of his bloodstream this year, I thought that he heard/read this. Evidently not.

“I’ll come after people who defame or slander me,” he said before last night’s game against the New York Mets. “It’s pathetic and disgusting. There should be some accountability for people who put that out there.”

A column in yesterday’s Inquirer brought to light an Internet blogger who wondered if Ibanez had used such drugs.

However, I DO like his tact here:

“Unfortunately, I understand the environment we’re in and the events that have led us to this era of speculation,” he said.
[...]
“You can have my urine, my hair, my blood, my stool – anything you can test,” Ibanez said. “I’ll give you back every dime I’ve ever made” if the test is positive.

“I’ll put that up against the jobs of anyone who writes this stuff,” he said. “Make them accountable. There should be more credibility than some 42-year-old blogger typing in his mother’s basement. It demeans everything you’ve done with one stroke of the pen.”

Whew, I’m not 42 and thankfully my parents have no basement. But I am always accountable.

And in case you weren’t sure where I stand on Ibanez’s surge:

Do I think that Ibanez is cheating in some way? No, I don’t think so. But doesn’t it, at least, look like the same late-career outlier that we now look back at for other players and point out “ah ha!”? We’ve done this for every player we thought/knew was using.

Brian Cuban, Mark Cuban’s brother, has some pretty interesting things to say about Manny:

As a wise man once said: “You can’t fix stupid“.

Example #489,204:

The dreadlocked slugger, who also talked to manager Joe Torre, told reporters he isn’t going to formally address the media about what led to his 50-game ban because it’s in the past.

“I don’t want to be a distraction for this team,” Ramirez said. “What happened, happened. I spoke to [owner] Frank McCourt, I apologized, I spoke to Joe, my teammates and I’m ready to move on.

“I didn’t kill nobody, I didn’t rape nobody, so that’s it, I’m just going to come and play the game.”

You’d think that maybe, just maybe, Manny would remember the McGwire mistake: “I’m not here to talk about the past“. Except that he clearly doesn’t. If we’ve learned anything from those who have been outted: being upfront and honest (at least a reasonable attempt at honesty) goes a long way in a player’s public relations rehabilitation. Worked for Pettite and others quite well. McGwire, Bonds, Clemens and others similarly defiant, not as much.

The last sentence, about murder and rape… well that’s about as dumb a comment as you can make. I’ll leave it at that.

Boy, after yesterday’s whining, I was happy to read something refreshingly honest and reasonable from Tony Massarotti of the Boston Globe today. Of course, the Boston faithful are sick of hearing it, though.

Given the resources with which the Red Sox operate, we all know that they forever will have options, and Theo Epstein rarely fails to have an alternative plan for virtually every scenario. So long as the Sox have a big payroll and a productive farm system – kudos to the baseball operations department for this – they will have wherewithal to enhance the big-league roster with signings and trades. Still, given the amount of dead money the Sox now have on the roster — Ortiz, Lugo and Drew will earn a combined average of $36 million per season, this year and next — it now seems downright silly that the Sox may have lost out on Teixeira for as little as $2 million a year, especially when Teixeira would not have required a forfeiture of talent like that they sacrificed in, say, the Josh Beckett deal (Hanley Ramirez).

Many of us don’t regret the Beckett move and never will. But the point is that the Red Sox might have had Teixeira for nothing more than money, which now seems like an even better deal at a time when the Sox have some wasted money on their payroll.

Maybe Teix was never really interested in Boston other than as a stalking horse for the Yanks. Maybe he was sincerely torn. We’ll never know, unless he shares his thoughts once his playing days are over.

But Mazz’s comments are true; the only cost for a free agent is money (and a draft pick) and for a team with the financial prowess like Boston, falling $2M short given their other expenditures seemed shortsighted. True, the Yanks might have upped their offer again, but that’s another thing we won’t ever know for sure.

But, I’m happy to let this stuff pass under the bridge at this point. Whining doesn’t help. Enough of the handwringing.

Sox fans, you guys are 6-0 against the Yanks so far this season after the 7-0 shutdown last night. Yet your beat writers are still obsessing about Teix as the ‘one that got away’. Strange, no?

A FOTB, Mark the Persistent Writer, was not a big fan of my posting of The Grape Lady falling down on Friday. I understand that laughing at people get hurt is walking a fine line, but it appears that I wasn’t alone in my love of this video. To wit:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T-JfYYaBpA&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

If you like lists, the draft and nostalgia… here ya go: the #1 pick in every MLB draft since 1984…

• 1984: Shawn Abner, New York Mets
• 1985: B.J. Surhoff, Milwaukee Brewers
• 1986: Jeff King, Pittsburgh Pirates
• 1987: Ken Griffey Jr., Seattle Mariners
• 1988: Andy Benes, San Diego Padres
• 1989: Ben McDonald, Baltimore Orioles
• 1990: Chipper Jones, Atlanta Braves
• 1991: Brien Taylor, New York Yankees
• 1992: Phil Nevin, Houston Astros
• 1993: Alex Rodriguez, Seattle Mariners
• 1994: Paul Wilson, New York Mets
• 1995: Darin Erstad, California Angels
• 1996: Kris Benson, Pittsburgh Pirates
• 1997: Matt Anderson, Detroit Tigers
• 1998: Pat Burrell, Philadelphia Phillies
• 1999: Josh Hamilton, Tampa Bay Devil Rays
• 2000: Adrian Gonzalez, Florida Marlins
• 2001: Joe Mauer, Minnesota Twins
• 2002: Bryan Bullington, Pittsburgh Pirates
• 2003: Delmon Young, Tampa Bay Devil Rays
• 2004: Matt Bush, San Diego Padres
• 2005: Justin Upton, Arizona Diamondbacks
• 2006: Luke Hochevar, Kansas City Royals
• 2007: David Price, Tampa Bay Devil Rays
• 2008: Tim Beckham, Tampa Bay Rays

For every Chipper, Junior or ARod, you get a bunch of Bryan Bullingtons, Brien Taylors, Matt Bushs or Jeff Kings. Good luck, Strasburg.

Call it in the air…

For some reason, I thought this sorta whining coming from the Boston media was done, that somehow we were beyond this (note the subtitle: “Yanks buy first place and perhaps a title“). Guess not.

There was nothing particularly savvy or skillful about it, of course. They were dealing with Scott Boras, so they knew that honor and integrity would play no part in the process.

Just money. Lots and lots of money.

In other words, it was a New York Yankees kind of deal right from the start, a chance for them to buy the biggest house on the block and act like they built it with their bare hands.

Yankees general manager Brian Cashman didn’t even have to travel to Mark Teixiera’s home to grovel. All he had to do was sit back, checkbook in hand, and let Boras do his thing. In the end, the slimy superagent did not let him down.

Awwwwww. That’s so sad. Boo hoo. Boston was $10m “short” in their efforts to buy first place, Mr. Callahan. Don’t act so one-sided, looking down on the Yanks for doing exactly what you were prepared to do.

Even though they already had a pretty good first baseman and third baseman, the Sox didn’t try to hide their affection for the best free agent on the market. They pounced on Teixeira like Brian Williams on Barack Obama. They made a bold offer of about $170 million over eight years.
[...]
Cashman did as he was told. He topped the Sox by a sizable margin. Final number: $180 million over eight years with a full no-trade clause.

And don’t dare call that difference “sizable”, because it represented just 6% of their total offer and that’s not material by any stretch when you’re whalehunting. That’s close enough for the Sox ownership to call Boras and say, “call” and get Teix if he wanted to come to Boston for the same money as NY.

The Yanks do what they always do; use their financial might. And with some $80m+ coming off their payroll last year, all they did is backfill (with the best players available).

Mr. Callahan, you can hate on Boras all you wish. Makes no difference to me. He was only doing his job. And doing it damn well. If you think Boras would somehow treat the Sox differently than any other team, you’re a fool. He’s an agent with a singular mission: securing the largest deal for his clients. To think that he’d play favorites with Boston merely because they had worked well together in the past is either naive or dumb.

Also, don’t try to portray Boston as some small market club, innocently being clubbed by the big, bad Yanks. As you noted, Mr. Callahan:

It is easy to say the Red Sox should have known better, but after lavishing outrageous contracts on other Boras clients, including J.D. Drew and Daisuke Matsuzaka, maybe the Sox thought Boras would give them a fair shake. They thought wrong, and they got burned.

Pot, kettle? Not quite, I know. But close.

Just quit the whining. The Sox are an incredibly run organization with great talent up and down, and plenty more on the come. Whining is not something the organization does; they react and fix things as well as any other club. Why aren’t you, Mr. Callahan, lauding your team for being only a game out of first despite a sinkhole at DH and slow starts by Beckett and Lester (though obviously both have come on like gangbusters lately, especially Lester), rather than whining about the Yanks’ spending. It’s not a new story.

UPDATE (6/9/09, 11:15am): Deadspin’s take on the transfer fees being paid in soccer and how it might related to MLB:

Perhaps someone with a more secure grasp of international sports could explain why U.S. sports don’t try this transfer fee stuff. When teams like Milwaukee and Oakland and Minnesota watch their best players waltz away for big bucks contracts (or maybe get pennies on the dollar in a trade), would it help if Boston and New York had to dump big piles of cash on their old desks to take the talent? Or would it just give the small teams even more incentive to hoard money and stay terrible? The agents would certainly love to get in on that action.

Fun idea.

A double Zoilo Versailles reference, from this day in baseball history on B-R.com:

• 1966 – The Minnesota Twins rocks the Kansas City Royals with the first five-home run inning in American League history. Rich Rollins, Zoilo Versalles, Tony Oliva, Don Mincher and Harmon Killebrew connect in the seventh inning to give the Twins a 9-4 victory.

• Deaths: 1995 – Zoilo Versalles, infielder; All-Star (b. 1939)

DISCLAIMER: This is not intended to bash the fans of any particular team, but rather serve as an example of how hypocritical we can all get regarding the voting for the All Star Game.