WED, July 9th - MON, July 14th - The Baseball Part of the Trip (Part IV)

NEW YORK CITY, 7/14
(for a little while, and then North Jersey)

The plan all along had been to try our best to attend the Home Run Derby at Yankee Stadium on the Monday before the All-Star Game. Since this is the last season that the Yankees will play in the old Yankee Stadium, I really did want my kids to try and experience an evening there before it closes down. So on Monday afternoon, we made the trip into the Bronx with two tickets in hand, and needing two more.

We arrived in the Bronx around 4:00PM, exiting onto River Road and getting a good look at the new Yankee Stadium which is right across the street from the current (soon to be old) Yankee Stadium. In talking to my dad, despite his status as a Red Sox fan, he miraculously maintains friendships with many Yankee season ticket holders. Apparently, the new Yankee Stadium will house a baseball experience that is at least five times better than the current baseball experience for Yankees fans because the prices of tickets are literally quintupling. I, for one, completely understand; I mean, how else can you afford to pay set up relievers $6M per year? Seriously, upper deck tickets in the new Yankee Stadium have a face value of $400 apiece! After walking around the Bronx, I am going to make a calculated estimate that approximately 0% of the people living in the neighborhood near the park will be able to afford to go to a game. Thank God for the YES Network, though!

Jumping down off my soap box, I had a number in mind for the other two tickets; if I couldn't acquire them for less than $300 combined, my plan was to flip the two tickets we had for maximum profit margin and then go find some other activities for the evening. As it turned out, not only could we not find tickets for less than $300, we couldn't find any for sale at all! Seeing the dearth of available tickets, I put a 30 minute shot clock on finding tickets before it would become time to flip the two we had and go to Agenda B for the evening. My daughter was mildly fearful of her well being walking around the Bronx, and my sons decided to make up a new game called "Who can high five more homeless people?" So the sooner we resolved the ticket acquisition (or sell off), the better. As it turns out, we sold the two we had to a couple of baseball fans from Virginia, netting enough to pay for our gas and our activities for the evening. Only problem was, we weren't sure what those activities would be. We got back to the car, which miraculously I was able to park on the street while we were hunting down tickets, thus saving me from having to donate a kidney to pay for parking in the Bronx. I pulled out the atlas and noticed that we were a quick jaunt over the George Washington Bridge from North Jersey. It was at this point that I recalled a Youtube video done by Sopranos fixture and good friend of "The Sean and John Show", Joe Gannascoli ("Vito Spatafore" from the Sopranos); the video describes a Sorpanos reality tour. Here it is ...



So in my continued efforts to garner Father of the Year, I thought "What better way to spend the rest of the afternoon than to visit some Sopranos landmarks?" To be clear now, my kids do not watch "The Sopranos" (not until they are at least 12 years old, I say), but they do know who some of the characters are and they've seen the final scene on Youtube because they are big fans of Journey. (Sopranos fans know the Journey/final scene correlation.)

We started with a little trip over to Lyndhurst to take a picture in front of La Cebeles, which is a Spanish restaurant that serves as the home of Vesuvio. On the show, Vesuvio is owned by Tony's boyhood friend Artie Bucco's, and it continually spirals downward in terms of food quality and clientele throughout the arc of the Sopranos series.

Next we jumped over to Satin Dolls on Route 17 in Lodi, which is better known as the Bada Bing to Sopranos fans. This was the one landmark that I did not ask my kids to pose in front of, as there reaches a point in a Sopranos reality tour where you wonder if Child Protection Services would get involved. So I merely told my children that Satin Dolls was a "dance studio" and left it at that. Not exactly a lie, but certainly not the entire truth either.
Once I finished the "How to explain a strip club without really explaining it" obstacle course with my kids, we headed up the Belleville Turnpike in North Arlington to Pizzaland. Anyone who has seen the Sopranos opening credits probably subliminally recognizes the place pictured to the right. It's on for a total of about 2 tenths of a second in the opening montage but the bright green letters and the sheer joy that I experience when seeing the word "pizza" are enough to make it easy to remember.

After scarfing down a quick slice and a Coke at Pizzaland, it was time for the two main events of the impromptu Sopranos reality tour -- Tony's house and Holsten's, which is where the final scene was located. We drove all the way out to North Caldwell which is an absolutely beautiful suburb located out in the hills of North Jersey, and after winding our way down many wooded back roads, we pulled into a cul de sac and found 14 Aspen Drive, and maybe the most recognizable house for a family on TV. At worst case, it is second behind the kick ass duplex monstrosity designed by Mike Brady on "The Brady Bunch". (Thankfully, unlike Mike Brady, Tony Soprano had the foresight to (a) hire someone else to design his house, (b) build a back yard without Astro Turf, and (c) make sure the house had an occupant to bathroom ratio better than 5 to 1.)

Last but not least, it was time to get some dinner at Holsten's in Bloomfield, NJ. Now when I figured out that we would be making this trip over the bridge from New York, I figured that getting dinner at Holsten's would be fun, but potentially a really long wait. I mean, if I lived near the place where they filmed the final scene of the Sorpanos, I'd be eating there every night. I figured there would be a line out the door and we'd have to be patient. Well, apparently, the novelty has worn off for residents of Bloomfield because not only did we walk right in, but we also ate in the exact booth where they filmed the last scene! Yes, the sign in the booth says "This booth reserved for the Soprano Family".

You remember the final scene, right?



Three things that are depicted at Holsten's in the Sorpanos that are different in real life at Holsten's:

(1) The mural in the Sopranos is different than the actual mural currently (and normally) on display at Holsten's. You can see the normal mural in the picture to the left.

(2) The booths don't have the little jukeboxes at them. Those were added to the TV show for obvious reasons. No jukebox, no Journey.

(3) The mysterious guy sitting at the counter in the Members Only jacket, who some theorize killed Tony after going into the bathroom and getting a gun (a theoretical "Godfather" homage), actually walked into the LADIES room. I don't know if that makes it more or less likely that he killed Tony, but it does make it more likely that the seat didn't get put down in the ladies room that night.

And for the record, I ordered a bowl of onion rings for the table like Tony....

HOLSTEN'S - BLOOMFIELD, NJ
FOOD: ONION RINGS
GRADE: "BEST IN THE STATE, FAR AS I'M CONCERNED". SOLID A.

WED, July 9th - MON, July 14th - The Baseball Part of the Trip (Part III)

NEW YORK CITY, 7/12
(via Philadelphia)
Having finished up all of our business in D.C., we took to the road on Saturday morning to begin heading north. The ultimate destination on this trip had always been the Connecticut shore, and now I was a mere six hours away. The trip from D.C. to the Connecticut shore is surprisingly easy. If you Mapquest it, the directions are basically this:

1. Find I-95
2. Head north on I-95 until you get to the state where liquor stores all close at 8:00 PM.

Our agenda for Saturday consisted of lots of windshield time and two stops -- first, we were going to in the south side of Philadelphia for lunch at the legendary Pat's Steaks; second, we had tickets to the MLB All Star Fan Festival at the Javits Center in Manhattan.

We arrived in Philadelphia right around noontime, and since the Phillies were playing an afternoon game, this means we arrived right in the middle of the lunchtime crush of Philly Fans getting their steak on before the game that day. The temperature hovered somewhere between 95 degrees and "surface of the sun", so cramming roughly 1,000 overweight Philadelphians onto one street corner, all with a common goal of devouring red meat had the air of a cruel joke from the gods. Regardless, the Pendergast family jumped into the cheesesteak fray, happily so.

If you've never been to the south side of Philadelphia, just rent Rocky 1 or Rocky 2, and you'll get a pretty accurate feel. It's the Italian section of Philadelphia and the row houses/apartments are plentiful. Also, in this part of town, you'll find the Italian market, probably most famously displayed in Rocky 2, where Rocky jogs through the market proudly waving and fist pumping to every passerby. Most importantly, you find the three-way street corner of 9th Street, Wharton Avenue and Passyunk Avenue housing Pat's King of Steaks. Worth noting, it's located right across the street from the almost as legendary Geno's Steaks, thereby making each day a Steak War in the Italian section of Philadelphia. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for the sitdown when Pat and Geno sat with the Steak Boss (presumably Rocky's boss Gazzo from Rocky 1) and divided up the steak territory on the south side.

The first challenge in doing business at Pat's is making sure that you order properly. Since the line to eat is usually about 50 or 60 people deep, they have a very efficient method of taking orders that involves insider lingo (i.e. "give me two steaks, no onion, wiz wit', to go") and a shot clock of about 10 seconds to get your order conveyed. Somewhere, the Soup Nazi is nodding with approval. After ordering, you take a walk down to the pick up window passing by another window in front of the actual grill where the delectable mountain of red meat is constantly being refreshed. Seriously, looking at that grill piled high with steak, I felt like Rudy's dad walking into Notre Dame Stadium for the first time. "This is the most beautiful sight these eyes have ever seen." Me, I went with the cheese steak, no onions with provolone (as opposed to cheese whiz, thereby making my sandwich a "wiz wit'out"). Sitting in a crowded Italian section of Philly already gives this meal a minimum of a B+ on atmosphere alone. The food did nothing to detract from the grade.

PAT'S KING OF STEAKS - PHILADELPHIA, PA
FOOD: CHEESE STEAK w/ PROVOLONE (wiz wit'out)
GRADE: A+++

Having successfully escaped the south side of Philly without getting caught in the Pat vs Gino crossfire, and with bellies full of red meat and various forms of processed cheese, we jumped back onto I-95 to head to New York City for the All-Star Game Fan Festival. Originally, we had planned on going to Shea Stadium to see the Mets play the Rockies, but we called an audible and decided against it for a couple of reasons:

(1) The aforementioned temperature.

(2) I've been to Shea Stadium before so it didn't really have "Bucket List" status for me. And my kids ... well, they'll never know the difference. To be honest, crossing Shea Stadium off of your "baseball stadium visited" bucket list is a akin to crossing Toledo off of your "cities visited" bucket list. If it doesn't happen, your quality of life hasn't really been impacted one way or the other.

So instead of sweating like stuck pigs at Shea, we decided to head to Manhattan to the Javits Center for the All-Star Fan Fetsival. If you've never been to this event, it is essentially one of those convention center style events with various booths containing different baseball experiential-type games, such as clocking your fastball on a radar gun, taking batting practice against in a cage, or singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame". Conspicuous by their absence were the booths were you could take fantasy injections of HGH, testify on fantasy Capitol Hill, and date a Mindy McCready lookalike, but I'm hopeful these will be in place next year!

The business plan for an event like this is simple -- sell tickets for $30 a pop for people to come inside and (1) stand in line for an hour to take part in the aforementioned events and (2) spend another $200 on All Star Game gear. It's essentially the Amusement Park Business Plan, where the one-time expense of admission to the event buys you the right to stand in line and spend more money all day. Good times. And when you're doing it amidst thousands of Jeter and A-Rod jerseys ... well, even better times.

The big selling point of the event was the ability to get autographs from some of the legends of baseball, including Rollie Fingers and Fred Lynn. Naturally, by the time we arrived at the event, the legends had left to go get up on the early bird special at Denny's. So we let the kids have one crack at batting practice, had my daughter sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" (available on CD! Yes!), and we hit the road for the Connecticut shore. I'll chalk up the All-Star Fan Fest as a healthy reminder of the age old adage that "Amusement parks suck".

Onward and upward ....

WED, July 9th - MON, July 14th - The Baseball Part of the Trip (Part II)

WASHINGTON, D.C., NATIONALS PARK
Astros vs Nationals, 7/11

At this point in the trip, I was no longer traveling solo. My kids made the flight from Chicago to Pittsburgh on Thursday, and I did what any self-respecting father would do -- I gassed them up on Mountain Dew and hit the road to head to our nation's capital for a couple days of education on our nation's history and, yes, more Astros baseball. We were also joined in Washington, D.C. by the patriarch of the Pendergast Family tree, my dad Paul. Since I don't think you peruse this blog for stories about the Lincoln Memorial or the Smithsonian, I will skip ahead and get right to our Friday evening at the Washington Nationals new ball park -- the ultra creatively named Nationals Park. (How did they come up with that one???)

We arrived at the ball park right around game time. I had a media pass waiting for me, so first order of business was getting tickets for my dad and the Penderkids. I left ticket duty up to my father who is to ticket acquisition what Tiger Woods is to golf. After watching him masterfully work a scalper over for three tickets under face value (the drive), somehow talk his way into the ball park with only three tickets for four people (the chip), and then find five seats 20 rows up behind the third base dugout (the 25 foot putt for eagle), my respect level for the old man was never higher.

As for the ballpark itself, it is the newest one in the big leagues so from a standpoint of comfort, convenience, spacious concourse areas, and a vast amount of food selections, it was exactly what you'd expect. However, it was my trip to Nationals Park that made me realize that we're going to have to start grading these new ballparks on some sort of sliding scale. Since they are all being built as sort of a correction to the sterile, generic, metallic/concrete beasts of the 1960's and 70's (Riverfront, Three Rivers, Veterans Stadium, to name a few), every single one of the new parks grades out from good to excellent on the comfort and aesthetics scale. What would bring the Nationals Park grade down to something in the low B range for me was the overabundance of visual and auditory encouragement to cheer, scream, yell, or "make some noise". It seemed like the jumbotron (extra points for jumbotron in HD, by the way) and the visual screens on the front of the upper deck were constantly telling us to do something, and doing so in a blend of bright color and booming noise that made it all feel like a bad acid trip at a Metallica concert. It came off almost amateurish.

Other notes from the Nationals Park visit:

- I have never caught a foul ball in my life at a game. Not at a minor league game, major league game, little league game, or even a beer league softball game. I left my kids and my dad for a few minutes to go handle some business at the Nationals' media relations desk, and when I came back, my kids were celebrating their grandfather snagging a fly ball off the bat of Nationals CF Willie Harris. When I'm 61 years old, I hope I am snagging foul balls at major league games. And sober, too. That would be good.

- The game itself was a complete waste if you are an Astros fan (which I am, my kids are, and my dad sort of is now after visiting Houston in late June for the Red Sox series). Roy Oswalt (and his 4.56 ERA) started the game and pitched one inning before leaving with a recurrence of this mysterious hip ailment that he has. So that means the game was left in the hands of the Astros bullpen, which is a little like leaving a spelling bee in the hands of Jessica Simpson. Anyway, Chad Paronto came in and gave up three runs in two innings. Then Dave Borkowski came in and did his best impersonation of a golf tee, giving up seven runs including two mammoth home runs.

Dave Borkowski, who as of this typing is no longer with the Astros, is absolutely brutal. Quick actual sports take, I am not nearly as offended by guys like Alex Rodriguez making $28M/yr as I am by guys like Dave Borkowski making $400K/yr. I mean, at least Alex Rodriguez is really good at what he does. At least people pay to see Alex Rodriguez. Dave Borkowski absolutely sucks at his job, he is the absolute worst, a total laughing stock. If he disappeared from the face of the earth, major league baseball wouldn't feel a thing. In short, nobody has ever bought a ticket to see Dave Borkowski, and no one has ever TIVO'd a game because there may be a Borkowski sighting. Yet he will make 10 times what a teacher will make this year. That bothers me. Not A-Rod, or Puma, or even Carlos Lee getting paid big bucks. (Ok, maybe Carlos Lee a little bit...)

- Once Borkowski gave up runs 9 and 10 in the sixth inning and we were firmly in the apocalyptic aftermath of another Astros pitching meltdown, I decided to email my friend Alyson Footer. For those of you who don't live in Houston, Alyson covers the Astros masterfully for MLB.com and is the perfect sounding board during 10-0 blowouts because she will respond with just the right combination of sarcasm, wit, and clarity. Fortunately, in addition to being a baseball guru, she can capably discuss topics like kiss-cam, Billy Joel, and Tom Cruise's epic performance in "Top Gun". Alyson was sitting up in the press box at Nationals Park so we got onto the topic of the ball park itself. We agreed that maybe the Nationals audio/video folks were a bit over the top in presentation, but that the one thing that was a five-star winner was the Dead Presidents race that they do between (I think) the fifth and sixth innings.

They have people in Presidential costumes with huge, oversized heads racing around the perimeter of the ball park, starting in centerfield and ending at home plate. You can see in the picture to the left, the presidents involved are Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Abe Lincoln, and George Washington. This event is very similar to the sausage races at Miller Park in Milwaukee. Truth be told, costumes with oversized heads are never "not funny". They are ALWAYS HILARIOUS. Without exception. Kind of like claymation characters. The fact is dudes made out of clay are always ten times funnier than the exact same dude in flesh and blood. It's a fact. Anyway, the Presidents race is a surefire winner. Alyson and I collectively lamented the fact that we have no "oversized headed costume race" in Houston, and decided that maybe it's time we started a movement to get one. Astros fans deserve it. We briefly debated who the contestants would be, knowing full well that they had to in some way capture the rich tradition of the city of Houston and in particular the ballpark itself. From there, the choice was obvious -- each night, the Astros need to conduct Disgraced Enron Executive Racing. Go get some costumes with oversized heads of Jeffrey Skilling, Andrew Fastow, and Ken Lay and race them around the yard between innings in orange jumpsuits. "Skilling is coming up around the oustide, Fastow is trying to hold him off ... meanwhile Ken Lay is going the WRONG WAY!!!"

- Food wise, at the recommendation of Brian Powell from the uber-blog Awful Announcing, I went to the Ben's Chili Bowl concession stand and went with the Chili Bowl Chili Dog. Ben's is a D.C. institution and their franchise inside the ballpark is their second location, adding to their historic site at 1213 U Street in D.C. As ball park chili dogs go ... hell, as ANY chili dogs go, this one was a beauty. Mustard, onions, chili, oh my ....

BEN'S CHILI BOWL - WASHINGTON, D.C.
FOOD: CHILI DOG
GRADE: a very spicy, hot A

WED, July 9th - MON, July 14th - The Baseball Part of the Trip (Part I)

PITTSBURGH, PNC PARK
Astros vs Pirates, 7/9
After five days of a road trip agenda that was predominantly centered around barbecue, alcohol, and SEC cities, it was time to inject another facet of Americana into the mix. And really what says "good ol' USA" like the Pirates and the Astros on a random Wednesday night in July? IT's MOEHLER ... IT'S VAN BENSCHOTEN ... LIVE AT PNC PARK!!!!!

I had heard for a couple years now about how awesome PNC Park in Pittsburgh was, mostly from my dad. A couple years ago, he and his wife went on a road trip around the country seeing various ballparks throughout the Midwest and Northeast (I know, the apple doesn't fall from the tree). Miraculously, my dad remains married to this day. Anyway, he gushed about how great PNC Park was, that it was his favorite ball park he saw the entire trip. So I had to see for myself.

Despite the fact that at this time of year my radio show centers more around topics like the chances of Tom Cruise making a "Top Gun" sequel than rabid discussion of the Pirates and Astros battling to see who is the taller midget, the Pittsburgh Pirates were kind enough to provide me with a media pass to the game. As you can see from the picture above (taken from seat 46 in the front row of the PNC press box), the engineers got it right with this yard. Bordering the Allegheny River and with a beautiful view of the highly underrated Pittsburgh skyline, PNC Park is exactly what the baseball gods had in mind when the renaissance of nouveau ball parks started with Camden Yards back in the early 1990's. The only problem as I see it is the fact that the Pirates haven't put a compelling product on the field since Barry Bonds skipped town in 1994. Since then, a combination of a mass exodus of marquee stars (Bobby Bonilla, Doug Drabek, Bonds), poor decision making (Jason Kendall for $10M a year anyone?) and the general financial dysfunction between the haves and have-nots in baseball have left the once proud Pittsburgh franchise a laughing stock. So you have a gorgeous jewel of a ball park with an utterly crappy baseball team. Imagine the producers of the movie "Vacation" deciding to put Amy Winehouse in the Ferrari instead of Christie Brinkley. That's what this was -- a beautiful vehicle with the homeliest of gnarly scum whores driving.

To be fair, this Pirates team has some young players you can get behind, most notably center fielder Nate McLouth, but bad is bad, and this team is ... well, as Charles Barkley would say "they not turbull, but they not verah good." The banners on the wall say it all -- the last time this franchise accomplished anything truly noteworthy was when the Pops Stargell-led "We Are Family" Pirates won a World Series in 1979, coming back from 3-1 down to beat the Baltimore Orioles.

And yet miraculously, the Pirates were able to convince the city to build them maybe the most plush yard in the bigs. As I sat high above the field before the game, I watched each of the 13,000 fans file into this 40,000 seat superstructure (seriously, it was so sparse that the usher to fan ratio allowed for each paying fan to have his/her own personal usher .. or so it seemed). All I could think of was the argument that all of these owners who are/were seeking new ball parks in mid-level to small markets espouse -- that without a new park, they won't have the revenue streams to compete with the big boys. And yet here are the Pirates with the most beautiful yard in the league, and on July 25th they are practically in last place and dumping Xavier Nady (and his .330 batting average) and Damaso Marte for a bunch of New York Yankee farmhands. Same old Pirates, same old baseball. But it is a damn fine yard, a Ferrari to be sure. Too bad the team is Amy Winehouse.

PRESS BOX NOTE: Perhaps my proudest moment as a media member was one that none of you will ever see nor hear. You see, the Pittsburgh press box is glassed in with windows before and after the games. During the games, they open the windows allowing for you to feel like you're at the park but also allowing in a fair amount of insects on warm July nights. Well,
after the game there was a junebug sitting to the left of my seat on the counter at seat 46. Well, perhaps fearing that PETA may actually consider an annoying little flying insect an animal, rather than squash my new press box neighbor, I decided to flick it down the counter away from my personal workspace toward seats 47, 48, 49, and so forth. (NOTE: There was no one sitting to the left of me so it wasn't as though I was depositing a new pet into someone else's area.) Well, I gave the little bugger a mighty flick with my right middle finger and it went in the laptop extension cord hole past seat 50! SWISH!!! You can see the hole in the counter to the left of Seat 50. To give you an idea of the degree of difficulty of this shot, it's like the equivalent of chipping in from about 120 yards, according to my calculations.

I don't know why I am sharing this with you other than to show how it's really the little things in life like flicking a defenseless junebug about 25 feet into a two inch hole that make life worth living. Isn't it?

PITTSBURGH CUISINE NOTE: For those wondering, yes, I did make it out to a Primanti Brothers restaurant while I was in the 'Burgh. If you haven't had a Primanti Brothers sandwich, you are missing out on one of the truly unique sandwich eating experiences. If you're not sure if you've had one, then you haven't. The sandwiches have been a staple in Pittsburgh since the 1930's. There are times where eating establishments or food companies will combine seemingly unrelated food products into one eat-it-simultaneously amalgamation with hopes that they are discovering the eating equivalent of plutonium. Sometimes the results are historically great, like when the dude accidentally plunked his chocolate in the other dude's peanut butter. VOILA! Reese's cups are born! Other times the results give you disastrously sharp stomach pains all day, like McDonald's deciding it would be a good idea to use miniature, maple saturated pancakes as the bread device for a breakfast sandwich. VOILA! The utterly horrific McGriddle is born, complete with complimentary Pepto Bismol.

Primanti's sandwich combination (freshly made cole slaw and french fries cut right in the store, along with your choice of meat and the best bread you will ever sink your teeth into) just works. There's no other way to put it. And like anything this gluttonous and messy, it's always better at around 2 in the morning with a twelver of Iron City beer coursing through your veins.

Me, I went with the roast beef. It's the old reliable, never disappoints. Got the lovely and talented Aubrey to flash the double rods as well. Viva La 'Burgh!!!

PRIMANTI BROTHERS - PITTSBURGH, PA
FOOD: ROAST BEEF SANDWICH (w/ slaw and fries)
GRADE: rock solid A

MITCHELL REPORT-PALOOZA!!

Wow, what a day. Who would've thought the Mitchell Report would provide so much fun. We were first treated to a rousing morning of rumors and innuendo of whom would be on the list (Albert Pujols, anyone?), followed by George Mitchell's press conference (recommended viewing for any insomniacs out there), and then the treat of reading the report itself where the jaw dropping description of Brian McNamee injecting Roger Clemens buttocks full of juice was enough to subdue the anger that my Alex Rodriguez-Johnny Damon steroid exacta ticket was not going to cash in on this fateful day.

In the end, I'm glad that the vultures can finally leave David Wells and C.C. Sabathia alone and know that their bodies are the result of hard work, and the only chemical that they've ingested is Yellow Dye #5 (found in Twinkies). Rock on, big men!

For those of you looking for some time to kill, the Mitchell Report itself is some of the best reading I've come across in quite sometime, complete with images of canceled checks and Fedex tracking slips. So f-ing sweet!

Other Mitchell Report links!

• Learn more about the guy who ratted out Roger Clemens. It's McNamee Time! [ESPN.com]
• Want to know what Barry Bonds' teammates knew about his shenanigans? Who doesn't?!? [ESPN.com]
• As usual, Deadspin has a few nuggets, including some Suzyn Waldman video footage. [Deadspin]
• The list of alleged users. [The Big Lead]
• For those of you who don't feel like reading the list, then sit back and enjoy the dulcet tones of Youtube legend, Kige Ramsey, as he reads you the names. Most of them are pronounced correctly. Apologies on behalf of Kige to Benito Santiago (Kige calls him Bento), Jack Cust (Kige, obviously with pizza on the brain, calls him Crust), and Josias Manzanillo (Kige calls him something that sounded like Joseph Menzifdghltehs) [Youtube]
  
• Now the actual list from Mitchell versus the "leaked list" that circulated on Thursday morning. [Hugging Harold Reynolds]
• Best Headline of this whole ordeal. [Hugging Harold Reynolds]
  
• Roger Goodell's "reaction" to the entire Mitchell escapades. [Kissing Suzy Kolber]

And finally, Bud Selig's reaction to the report.



Justice will be served, cheaters -- SELIG STYLE!! Somebody go wake up the Gimp.

A-Rod Begs For Forgiveness

This is the thing I hate about baseball.

To recap, Scott Boras and Alex Rodriguez orchestrated one of the most ill-conceived attempts to break the bank in the history of team sports. A-Rod opts out of baseball's richest contract with baseball's most storied franchise, leaving $72M on the table and leaving the Yankees $21M lighter in the wallet (a subsidy from the Texas Rangers that required A-Rod to actually be a Yankee for them to collect it). Adding dishonesty to arrogance, he cites the uncertainty of the futures of Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, and Andy Pettitte as the reasons he is opting out, thus completely ignoring the real reason (cue "cash register ringing" wav file). A-Rod then sends Boras, who may or may not be Satan (we're still working on this one), out into the baseball wilderness with a bunch of graphs, charts and Powerpoint presentations to pitch to his potential audience (at the time believed to include the Mets, Cubs, Dodgers, and Angels) why The Chosen One is worth $350M over the next 10 years. Only one problem -- the potential audience actually consisted of one team. The team he left at the altar a couple of weeks ago -- the jilted Yankees.

So once the Powerpoint presentations to baseball's richest franchises not named the Yankees were all finished (to the rousing sound of crickets chirping), Scott Boras and A-Rod realized their worst nightmare. "Holy shit, there's no $35M/yr market for a lamb-killing diva whose testes shrink into his abdomen when the calendar turns to October!" (Let alone the $30M/yr the Yankees had been willing to offer A-Rod in a multi-year extension just before he opted out of his deal). So A-Rod did the only thing he could do, swallow his pride, plant his tail between his legs, and go back to the Yankees, knowing full well that the Yankees would still probably offer $5M more/yr than any other suitor. You see, if "Bidding against Yourself" were an Olympic sport, the Yankees would be Mark Spitz and Eric Heiden rolled into one (see Rivera, Mariano, proposal to; OR see Posada, Jorge, signing of). A-Rod was also ordered to leave Boras at home, kind of like when a company is ordered by a client to change the sales rep on their account. "Sure Alex, we'll meet with you, but leave the beady eyed sales guy with the faux combover at the office. Bring the hot chick instead." (Note: It's worth mentioning that Alex's wife seemed to be heavily involved in this process, perhaps smelling a future divorce settlement.)

The fact of the matter is that I don't think anyone (other than the team who wound up with A-Rod) was going to offer A-Rod anywhere close to the $27.5M he wound up signing for. A-Rod and Boras grossly miscalculated his worth. There is no doubt that Alex Rodriguez is the best regular season player in baseball. But is it really worth paying him $30M when that can fetch you a decent third basemen and two good arms? Especially when A-Rod seems to do his best work in the middle of August against the Royals and the Devil Rays? When the score is 9-2? Boras really thought that other baseball teams wouldn't see this? It's one thing to have a "devil may care" attitude when you're signing Ted Lilly to a $10M/yr deal; it's another thing entirely when you have to scratch out $350M to one player AND that player has a history of postseason failure AND that player is seen by many as a phony and a prima donna. There's really only one team with the combination of money, stupidity, and history with A-Rod to pull this off -- and they got him.

One very underrated subplot amidst the A-Rod signing is the foreshadowing of how much fun it's going to be to watch the Brothers Steinbrenner run the Bronx Bombers (into the ground?) these next few decades. This from Yankees senior VP Hank Steinbrenner:

"... and if an agent gets out of line or makes bad decisions, then that's going to hurt the player. And obviously, that's one of the things that happened here."

So it would appear that Hank thinks Boras' decision to go for more money was miscalculated and wrong. (Before the Yankees came along to bail Boras and A-Rod out, I didn't disagree. No one else would've paid A-Rod anywhere near $27.5M per year.) But when it was suggested the Yankees overpaid to re-sign A-Rod, Hank goes into crazy spin mode, saying that there were others out there who would've paid more than the Yankees:

"There are a few cynics who say, 'Well, he really couldn't get this there.' Trust me, he would have gotten probably more. He is making a sacrifice to be a Yankee, there's no question. ... He showed what was really in his heart and what he really wanted."

So let me get this straight, Hank. You think A-Rod was given bad advice by Scott Boras. This bad advice consisted of Boras telling A-Rod to opt out of the last three years of his contract because he felt A-Rod could make more than he was going to make in those three years under his then-current deal ($24M/yr, by the way). Yet according to you, Hank, there were many other teams out there who would've paid more than the $27.5M which A-Rod eventually got from you. (Let's not even get into how he eventually wound up making more money from the Yankees themselves.) So how exactly was this bad advice, Hank? I mean, A-Rod and Boras didn't get the $35M/yr they wanted, but thanks to you, Hank, A-Rod did get a sizable raise and assurance that he'd get paid into his 40's, not to mention a bunch of bonuses tied to revenue increases centered around his chase of the all-time home run record held by "he who shall not be named".

If we're scoring at home, here's how all of the luminaries involved in this signing grade out:

SCOTT BORAS: The deal finally gets done when he is very publicly removed from the negotiations. His misfire on A-Rod's market value and his door-to-door sales approach reinforce the world's hatred of diabolical sports agents. Presumably, he does still get his commission, but his "Boras gets what he wants" aura takes a major hit. Survey says? LOSER

BROTHERS STEINBRENNER: They have to foot the bill for all of this over the next 10 years, and are setting a nice precedent of paying players well over market value into their 40's. This should be fun to watch. Mitigating factor is that they are rich, however that is more than canceled out by the fact that they look like their old man. No amount of money is worth that. Survey says? LOSERS

YANKEES FANS: The front office of their favorite team has just ensured them that they will not win a World Series until at least 2018, which means that there will be teenage offspring of Yankees fans very soon who start to go through the same "will the Yankees ever win a World Series in my lifetime?" paranoia that I went through as a Red Sox fan in the 1980's. This makes me very happy. Survey says? LOSERS

ALEX RODRIGUEZ: Gets $27.5M over the next 10 years, a 15% raise over what he was slated to make in 2008, 2009, and 2010, despite sucking in the postseason, having the personality of a twice baked potato, and wearing purple lipstick when it gets cold outside. Survey says? WINNER

Yeah, this is the thing I hate about baseball.