One of the more interesting byproducts of Cleveland Indians pitcher C.C. Sabathia’s shutting down of negotiations for his next contract until after the upcoming season is how it plays so perfectly into the massive inferiority complex of the Cleveland populace. Call it the law of unintended consequences.
When Sabathia pitched in a meaningless pre-season game against the Yankees on Sunday, a game in which Sabathia was about as effective as he was in the playoffs last season, it sent both the Cleveland and the New York media into a minor frenzy. No matter how posed, the essence of the questions was the same: will Sabathia find himself in New York after this season?
It’s a question that Indians fans have basically been asking since Sabathia signed his last contract. In fact it’s a question that Cleveland fans ask every time any decent player on any Cleveland team gets within sniffing distance of free agency, if the fascination Cavaliers fans have with the speculation about LeBron James’ next employer in two years is any indication, and it is.
If the deciding factor for Sabathia is money and length of the contract, then the answer as to whether or not he’ll be in New York next season is probably. The Yankees, along with a handful of other teams, don’t ascribe to the same sort of business metrics to which most of the rest of the league pay attention. They stake no claim to adhering to a budget, at least in the common definition of that term, and thus embrace the freedom that comes with the removal of such pedestrian and self-imposed restraints. No one anywhere doubts that if it takes coming up with the most money and the longest term contract to land Sabathia, the Yankees will find a way to make that happen. They always do.
But if securing that last dollar available isn’t as much of a priority as quality of life, then fans of the Yankees probably won’t see Sabathia leading their young rotation next year. This isn’t a slam on life as lived in the big city, either. It has much more to do with not grabbing the last buck as the tradeoff for enduring the unflinching and often unfair scrutiny of the New York media market.
According to Paul Hoynes’ summary in Monday’s Plain Dealer, after his outing Sabathia encountered the usual three or four Cleveland-based reporters. He undoubtedly encountered the usual softball questions as well which would have been followed by the inevitable puff piece profile in the local paper which seeks to neither enlighten nor inform. But when Sabathia looked surprise that the locker room wasn’t overrun with the drones from Sector G in the form of the New York media horde, it was a look that lasted but an extra second or two as several reporters from New York, as Hoynes describes, streamed into the locker room.
Though Sabathia seemed somewhat ready for the obvious questions coming his way this time, it would be best for him to take note that it won’t always be that way. In Cleveland, a bad outing elicits nothing more than a shrug from the local media, or perhaps just a mild tsk tsk. Throw a bad pitch in New York and Sabathia’s liable to find a reporter from the Post sifting through his garbage cans looking for reasons.
Sabathia, of course, isn’t talking much in the way of specifics about his contract status. He merely repeats the same tired lines he’s been coached to say in order to deflect the inquiries his self-imposed status created. But it was that one answer to that one question that undoubtedly that will most feed the inferiority complex beast that hovers over Cleveland in general and its sports team in particular. As reported by Hoynes:
“Q. In a perfect world, is your preference be to stay in Cleveland? [sic]
A. In a perfect world, of course, I've been here since I was 17. We’ll just have to see what happens.”
Locally, that is as much of an admission that Sabathia is going to New York as anything else fans are likely to hear all season. Cleveland is not now nor will it ever be considered “a perfect world.” But beyond the lack of trappings of a city in a perpetual struggle with respectability, it won’t be a “perfect world” because what Cleveland lacks in cache it also lacks in cash. New York is flush with both.
When fans see the fact that Sabathia shut down off-season negotiations without even giving the Indians the courtesy of a response to its four year deal at approximately $17.5 million a season plus a healthy raise on this year’s salary, they naturally draw two conclusions: Sabathia is after the last dollar and there is no chance that the Indians will pay it. It’s hard to argue either point. The fact, though, that Indians fans next assume that Sabathia’s destination has to be the Yankees is fed less on fact and more on envy.
No matter how great a city New York might be in general, it might as well be Gomorrah on steroids to Clevelanders who see the Yankees as an embodiment of the arrogance and swagger that offend the Midwest sensibilities of a once proud industrial town. They may not be alone in that view, but Clevelanders also see a healthy dose of the Yankees success over the last three or so decades being fed in some measure by various Cleveland connections, not the least of which is owner George Steinbrenner.
All this may be true, but it no more places Sabathia in New York than it did Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome or Albert Belle. The odds of Sabathia staying in Cleveland may be slim, but it won’t be because he necessarily desires the last dollar on the table or that he has a misguided notion that success in New York is necessary to legitimize his career.
The truth is that there may be only a handful of teams capable of paying Sabathia the kind of contract his accomplishments dictate, but as long as it’s a handful, the Yankees have probably less of a chance at landing him than some of the others. Leaving one team for another always involves a variety of tradeoffs, but there is enough available cash floating around a variety of major league cities to convince Sabathia that he can land at one of them and the tradeoffs from the sanguine existence he’s enjoyed in Cleveland will be minimal.
As for Indians fans, the inevitable loss of Sabathia will add to a more than healthy inferiority complex to be sure, but it shouldn’t. The loss of Sabathia will no more deal a blow to Cleveland’s status as a major league city than did the losses of Ramirez, Thome or Belle, or even the year after year failures to win the World Series. That little dose of reality may be little solace to those still pining for that one title in their lifetimes, but it is the truth.
The other truth, the one that might elicit some comfort, will have to be in the form of the Yankees likely coming out on the short end in the Sabathia sweepstakes, just as they did with Johan Santana. The guess is that Sabathia won’t chase the last dollar, even if he chases most of them. Striking that modest compromise will keep him out of the clutches of the Yankees, bring him some semblance of peace of mind, and give Yankees fans reasons other than the recent Red Sox domination to feel just a tad inferior themselves. And for the poor soles in Cleveland, who last experienced a World Series title 60 years ago, to this they can say “welcome to the club.”
Showing posts with label George Steinbrenner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Steinbrenner. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Another Bad Seed
It’s always nice when the acorn doesn’t fall too far from the tree.
If anyone thought that when Yankees owner and former Clevelander George Steinbrenner voluntarily stepped aside from the daily grind in favor of his two sons, Hank and Hal, baseball’s flagship franchise might be ready to find a better way to balance its self interest with the overall good of the game, think again.
In the short time since he’s become the de facto face of Yankees, Hank Steinbrenner, is proving to be quite a successor to the rather large and boorish shoes of his more famous father.
When Alex Rodriguez initially refused to extend his contract and instead opted out, Hank blew the first of what’s turning out to be many gaskets. He vowed not to negotiate any further with Rodriguez or his agent Scott Boras. A few days later, he was doing just that, ultimately signing Rodriguez to a new, equally ridiculous contract.
When the Minnesota Twins were busy trying to play the Yankees off the Boston Red Sox for the services of Johan Santana, Steinbrenner threw down an ultimatum, threatening to pull his offer off the table. The Twins didn’t bite but the Yankees stayed in the talks. In fact, well after Steinbrenner’s rant, the Yankees kept right on negotiating, up until the point that the New York Mets swept in and stole Santana from the Twins.
Maybe these were just examples of the neglected son finally getting the keys to the car he was ill-trained to handle. Maybe, except that these episodes did signal that Steinbrenner won’t be much of an agent of change in stemming the tide of economic insanity that his father helped usher into this modern era of baseball. That hardly surprises. But where Hank could do some real good is on the issue of steroids. Unfortunately, that’s the real test he’s failing right out of the gate.
Exhibit A occurred when he claimed to be irked that baseball was supposedly being singled out while football in general and the NFL in particular were supposedly getting a free pass with respect to steroids and performance enhancing drugs. Unintentionally hilarious, Steinbrenner told the Associated Press last week “everybody that knows sports knows football is tailor-made for performance-enhancing drugs. I don't know how they managed to skate by. It irritates me. Don’t tell me it's not more prevalent. The number in football is at least twice as many. Look at the speed and size of those players.”
With nothing more than his own gut feeling to back this up, Steinbrenner completely failed to appreciate that as part of baseball’s ownership elite, he and his family are as culpable as anyone in this mess baseball finds itself in.
The last time anyone looked Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Jason Giambi and Chuck Knoblauch were all recipients of the Steinbrenner family’s largesse and all three high profile players are at the heart of the steroids scandal. And let’s not forget that it was the Steinbrenners, too, who employed Brian McNamee, an admitted steroids distributor. Steinbrenner also has been quick to embrace Pettitte’s illegal use, despite the growing body of evidence that Pettitte signed his latest contract with the Yankees, just days before the Mitchell Report was released, knowing but not disclosing to anyone that he would be named in it. If Steinbrenner is irritated, he needs look no further than the family album to figure out why.
But in case Steinbrenner isn’t into self-reflection, then he can at least look at the differences between football’s approach to steroids and that of his own sport. In that same story from the Associated Press, Greg Aiello, the NFL’s spokesman noted “we’ve had year-round random testing with immediate suspensions since 1990 and we conduct approximately 12,000 steroids tests a year.”
What Aiello didn’t say but didn’t have to was that the NFL and its union have mostly been out ahead of the steroids problem while baseball and its union had to literally be threatened by Congress with the loss of their antitrust exemption before embracing even a semi-meaningful testing program.
No one is foolish enough to think that simply having a testing program will completely eliminate the inherent stupidity of some players who think they are smart enough to beat the system time and time again. Indeed each and every NFL season brings its share of player suspensions. It’s just that the public perceives, and for good reason, that the NFL has had a relatively effective mechanism for dealing with its problem players.
Baseball, as everyone knows, has treated steroids with a wink and a smile. It didn’t start testing for steroids until about 10 years after the NFL. Moreover, it’s not as if baseball owners have ever taken a particularly strong stance against them, refusing to draw a line in the sand each time the players’ union refused to negotiate on the subject. By backing down instead of standing up, the owners let baseball’s steroids era flourish. It’s why, even to this day, the public still perceives that baseball’s system for dealing with illegal drugs is a joke.
The other thing Steinbrenner seems to be forgetting is that baseball, under the so-called leadership of Commissioner Bud Selig, purposely singled itself out by ordering the Mitchell Report in the first place. Having placed itself in that white-hot spotlight, it’s a little disingenuous for the likes of Steinbrenner to now complain.
But that won’t stop him of course. It’s a Steinbrenner trait. In comments to the New York Post last week, Steinbrenner said that Red Sox fans shouldn’t jeer Pettitte too loudly because “they [the Red Sox] had plenty of players doing this stuff, too. It’s just that those players weren’t mentioned in the Mitchell Report.” On the one hand, he’s probably right. Given the pervasive use of steroids in baseball, it’s rather doubtful that some members of the Red Sox didn’t have their own version of McNamee somewhere.
On the other hand, why would Steinbrenner think that Red Sox fans should act any differently than, say, Yankees fans? It’s not as if his hometown faithful are known for treating the opposition with respect and dignity. And it’s not as if the Yankees, along with their cross-town counterparts, the Mets, aren’t ground zero in this latest scandal. But in what is looking to be a Steinbrenner family trait, it’s better to attack than fix, deny rather than acknowledge.
At some point, hopefully before it’s too late, Selig and the rest of the thumb suckers that run baseball will speak in one credible voice on all the ills that infect their game. It’s the path to salvation for a sport in desperate need of some good news. But it looks like it won’t happen soon. Given the rather fast start Hank Steinbrenner has gotten himself off to, it looks like Selig and his cronies would have a better chance of nailing Jello to a tree.
If anyone thought that when Yankees owner and former Clevelander George Steinbrenner voluntarily stepped aside from the daily grind in favor of his two sons, Hank and Hal, baseball’s flagship franchise might be ready to find a better way to balance its self interest with the overall good of the game, think again.
In the short time since he’s become the de facto face of Yankees, Hank Steinbrenner, is proving to be quite a successor to the rather large and boorish shoes of his more famous father.
When Alex Rodriguez initially refused to extend his contract and instead opted out, Hank blew the first of what’s turning out to be many gaskets. He vowed not to negotiate any further with Rodriguez or his agent Scott Boras. A few days later, he was doing just that, ultimately signing Rodriguez to a new, equally ridiculous contract.
When the Minnesota Twins were busy trying to play the Yankees off the Boston Red Sox for the services of Johan Santana, Steinbrenner threw down an ultimatum, threatening to pull his offer off the table. The Twins didn’t bite but the Yankees stayed in the talks. In fact, well after Steinbrenner’s rant, the Yankees kept right on negotiating, up until the point that the New York Mets swept in and stole Santana from the Twins.
Maybe these were just examples of the neglected son finally getting the keys to the car he was ill-trained to handle. Maybe, except that these episodes did signal that Steinbrenner won’t be much of an agent of change in stemming the tide of economic insanity that his father helped usher into this modern era of baseball. That hardly surprises. But where Hank could do some real good is on the issue of steroids. Unfortunately, that’s the real test he’s failing right out of the gate.
Exhibit A occurred when he claimed to be irked that baseball was supposedly being singled out while football in general and the NFL in particular were supposedly getting a free pass with respect to steroids and performance enhancing drugs. Unintentionally hilarious, Steinbrenner told the Associated Press last week “everybody that knows sports knows football is tailor-made for performance-enhancing drugs. I don't know how they managed to skate by. It irritates me. Don’t tell me it's not more prevalent. The number in football is at least twice as many. Look at the speed and size of those players.”
With nothing more than his own gut feeling to back this up, Steinbrenner completely failed to appreciate that as part of baseball’s ownership elite, he and his family are as culpable as anyone in this mess baseball finds itself in.
The last time anyone looked Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Jason Giambi and Chuck Knoblauch were all recipients of the Steinbrenner family’s largesse and all three high profile players are at the heart of the steroids scandal. And let’s not forget that it was the Steinbrenners, too, who employed Brian McNamee, an admitted steroids distributor. Steinbrenner also has been quick to embrace Pettitte’s illegal use, despite the growing body of evidence that Pettitte signed his latest contract with the Yankees, just days before the Mitchell Report was released, knowing but not disclosing to anyone that he would be named in it. If Steinbrenner is irritated, he needs look no further than the family album to figure out why.
But in case Steinbrenner isn’t into self-reflection, then he can at least look at the differences between football’s approach to steroids and that of his own sport. In that same story from the Associated Press, Greg Aiello, the NFL’s spokesman noted “we’ve had year-round random testing with immediate suspensions since 1990 and we conduct approximately 12,000 steroids tests a year.”
What Aiello didn’t say but didn’t have to was that the NFL and its union have mostly been out ahead of the steroids problem while baseball and its union had to literally be threatened by Congress with the loss of their antitrust exemption before embracing even a semi-meaningful testing program.
No one is foolish enough to think that simply having a testing program will completely eliminate the inherent stupidity of some players who think they are smart enough to beat the system time and time again. Indeed each and every NFL season brings its share of player suspensions. It’s just that the public perceives, and for good reason, that the NFL has had a relatively effective mechanism for dealing with its problem players.
Baseball, as everyone knows, has treated steroids with a wink and a smile. It didn’t start testing for steroids until about 10 years after the NFL. Moreover, it’s not as if baseball owners have ever taken a particularly strong stance against them, refusing to draw a line in the sand each time the players’ union refused to negotiate on the subject. By backing down instead of standing up, the owners let baseball’s steroids era flourish. It’s why, even to this day, the public still perceives that baseball’s system for dealing with illegal drugs is a joke.
The other thing Steinbrenner seems to be forgetting is that baseball, under the so-called leadership of Commissioner Bud Selig, purposely singled itself out by ordering the Mitchell Report in the first place. Having placed itself in that white-hot spotlight, it’s a little disingenuous for the likes of Steinbrenner to now complain.
But that won’t stop him of course. It’s a Steinbrenner trait. In comments to the New York Post last week, Steinbrenner said that Red Sox fans shouldn’t jeer Pettitte too loudly because “they [the Red Sox] had plenty of players doing this stuff, too. It’s just that those players weren’t mentioned in the Mitchell Report.” On the one hand, he’s probably right. Given the pervasive use of steroids in baseball, it’s rather doubtful that some members of the Red Sox didn’t have their own version of McNamee somewhere.
On the other hand, why would Steinbrenner think that Red Sox fans should act any differently than, say, Yankees fans? It’s not as if his hometown faithful are known for treating the opposition with respect and dignity. And it’s not as if the Yankees, along with their cross-town counterparts, the Mets, aren’t ground zero in this latest scandal. But in what is looking to be a Steinbrenner family trait, it’s better to attack than fix, deny rather than acknowledge.
At some point, hopefully before it’s too late, Selig and the rest of the thumb suckers that run baseball will speak in one credible voice on all the ills that infect their game. It’s the path to salvation for a sport in desperate need of some good news. But it looks like it won’t happen soon. Given the rather fast start Hank Steinbrenner has gotten himself off to, it looks like Selig and his cronies would have a better chance of nailing Jello to a tree.
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