I know what A-rod's problem is....
BODY THETANS. He needs some auditing and he's almost rich enough to pay for it! But not for long...
Coco looks pretty scary in CF, but not so bad at a corner OF. I'd like him in RF with Ellsbury in center. Saw Ellsbury at Hadlock the other day and was won over with a single, SB, advance on groundout, score on sac fly. Also had a clue on difficult line drives directly at him (toughest ball for a CF, I think). He excites me. Now what will we do with Wily Mo?
BTW, met Eric Neel (ESPN Page 2) on a trip to Eureka, CA last month. He says Jeter is a good guy. I don't buy it, but at least Captain Intangibles has one fan outside of McCarver...
I like Eric Neel's writing - his piece on Vin Scully on baseballanalysts.com was so good it made me jealous - but I'm guessing the extent of his interpersonal communications with Jeter is yelling "Go, Jete-Jete, go!" at a Yankee game.
Great points all! To your point about Eck: One of the things I just don't understand is NESN's inability to find someone, besides Eck, who can carry the pre and post game shows. Have you ever seen guys with less personality than Rice, Dicarscino, Horn and Corsi? Eck brings personality, insite and edge to the telecast. McCarthy was okay. Who is scouting this talent and why don't they just ink Eck to a lifetime deal?
I heard someone in NYC suggest trading A-Rod and Philip Hughes for Alfonso Soriano, a "real Yankee." One could only wish the Yankees would do something that stupid... but these days, Cashman seems to be putting a stopper in most of the truly idiotic trade ideas.
Reynolds will be missed. In the absence of Gammons, he was by far the best of the BBTN crew. I assume he must have done something really bad to get fired, especially with Gammons on the PUP list.
I do hope we get to keep Eck, who proves that an ex-player can (a) have a personality, and (b) provide real insight. The ESPN guys are stone-faces (Tino), apologists (Destrade), or cartoon characters (the Krukster). There must be more Ecks out there.
The best of the remaining ESPN crew, by default, is Steve Phillips. He's an egomaniac, and these days he's on the air way too much, but he does provide some genuine insights at times and he's not afraid to say something unpopular for fear of imperiling his next job. Which is what usually happens with ex-managers and GMs.
Allow me to amend my previous post: Tim Kurkjian's the best on BBTN. He slipped my mind because he's not on the show very often. Steve Phillips is the best of the mediocre "ex- bunch," the former MLB employees.
Jeff Brantley used to be pretty good, but he's become the very model of the egotistical smirking "you never played the game" type.
Well, ESPN did sh**can Gregg Easterbrook pretty darn quickly, and all he did was suggest that Michael Eisner should remember he was Jewish. So maybe Harold Reynolds took a shot at old Walt Disney's legacy. Maybe his comment that "Carl Everett needs to tone down his Mickey Mouse sh**" next to the water cooler may have been the straw that broke the camel's back.
Then again, maybe they decided they didn't want a well-spoken and coherent analyst with proper grammar around, as he might accidently bring Stuart Scott back from the darkside.
Sorry for the double post, but I had a few other things:
I still have the Angels-Sox 2004 ALDS on VHS (remember VHS?), and Tony Gwynn looked like a Manatee with a collar back then.
I was told by a guy I know in the Sox clubhouse that Mark Bellhorn topped Hillenbrand's level of stupidity, but it came more in the "greasy, dipping constantly" variety. A nice guy because he never realized people were making fun of him.
The Yanks didn't give up on Leiber, Cashman just misplayed it. They had an $8mm option on him which they didn't excercise because they thought there would be no interest for him and they could resign him for less than $8. The one time the Yanks try to be cheap, and it blows up in their face.
Phillips isn't bad, but he's clearly got an agenda in this A-Rod stuff. Back when he was the Mets GM, he got in a public pissing match with A-Rod and Boras over their contract demands (the big thing in the tabs being the demand for a suite at Shea, which isn't that uncommon - hell, Jason Kendall has one in Oakland) and he clearly has no use for A-Rod. So I have to take it with a grain of salt when he says the Yankees have to trade A-Rod now before his value gets any lower.
I'd say the whole A-Rod thing reached its lowest point when BBTN spent a good 10 minutes talking about his completely irrelevant throwing error against the Jays - completely ignoring that he hit a three-run homer that game. At some point he's got to realize that no matter what he does, unless he's playing for the Sox, the media's always going to hate him. And when he figures that out, he'll be a much better player.
Any chance that Reynolds was just reciting the Jeremiah 29:11 verse on his baseball card -- "For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." -- when he leaned in and gave that young girl a big hug? Probably not, but when you fit it to a certain context, it could sound pretty creepy.
Your with me leather!
I love Carl Everett jokes. I live in Chicago and I'm a White Sox fan. I attended a game a couple years ago, when Everett was playing for the Sox. I was sitting with a few friends a few rows behind the Sox dugout.
His first time up, Everett hit a slow roller up the third base line that should have gone for a hit. Third base had been playing him deep, and the ball took forever to get up the line. Forever.
Of course, Everett was thrown out by a mile. As Everett walked back to the dugout, the park fell oddly silent, one of those random moments of quiet that sometimes descends during a game. A friend of mine took full advantage, yelling, "A stegasaurus would have made it," just as Everett approached the dugout.
The entire section broke up, and Carl stopped at the steps of the dugout to glare at us. Good times.
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