HNY

I've been out of the country (and offline) for the last week or so - regular blogging will hopefully resume next week. In the meantime, I just wanted to say thanks to all those of you who stop by here regularly - thanks for reading and making it all worthwhile.

Have a great New Year: be happy, be healthy and, most important of all, keep the faith...

Movin' on

The Red Sox have bid farewell to another two of the key players on their World Series team, both of whom are California-bound: shortstop Orlando Cabrera will be playing for the Anaheim Angels next season, and Dave Roberts - author of The Single Most Important Stolen Base In Red Sox History™ - will be playing for the San Diego Padres.

It was bound to happen sooner or later - Cabrera is surplus to requirements following the Red Sox' acquisition of Edgar Renteria, and Roberts - though happy to contribute in a Best Supporting Actor role last season - is good enough to be in most teams' starting lineup. I'll miss these guys in the Red Sox lineup, but I wish them well with their respective new ballclubs.

Update (& salute):
He may have moved on to greener pastures, but this will still be my favourite Red Sox jersey for a long time to come:

Update n° 2:
Just so that Jo doesn't feel left out (see comments below), here's a tribute to our team's #31, MVP of the 2004 season:

"I stare out the window and wait for spring"

It's getting towards that time of the offseason when I start to get a little itchy and my thoughts turn - more seriously than idly - towards spring training and the new season it will herald. It was therefore nice to see SI.com feature an excerpt from a book which - if Santa Claus and Amazon have done their job properly - should be waiting for me in my Christmas stocking on December 25th: Faithful, by Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King (yes, that Stephen King...).

The excerpt features two entries from Spring Training 2004, the second of which is King's and which ends like this:

It's too early to play really hard, and too early to wax really lyrical, either (God knows there's too much labored lyricism in baseball writing these days; it's even crept into the newspapers, which used to be bastions of statistics and hard-nosed reality -- what sports reporters used to call "the agate"). But it can't hurt to say that being here -- especially after a serious bout of pneumonia -- feels pretty goddamn wonderful. It's like putting your hand out and touching a live thing -- another season when great things may happen. Miracles, even. And if that isn't touching grace, it's pretty close.

Oh, shit, that's too close to lyrical for comfort, but it's been a good day. There was baseball. So let it stand.

Now there's a phrase to bring a warm smile to a cold winter day: "It's been a good day. There was baseball". Roll on the month of March...

The Big Unit & The Big One

One of those multi-team mega-deals that baseball specialises in seems about ready to go down - it looks like the Big Unit could be going to New York after all. The details are a little too complex for me to get my head around on a Sunday afternoon - I'll wait to see how it all turns out before trying to dissect the particulars.

Meanwhile, down in Oakland, the Big Three have now become the Big One - just a few days after trading Tim Hudson to the Braves, Oakland GM Billy Beane has traded Mark Mulder to the Cardinals. Beane has a reputation for getting value-for-money stars-in-the-making, so it will be interesting to see how this works out for the A's. Should A's fans be worried about losing two-thirds of their stellar starting rotation? Well, it's not going to make contending any easier, but MLB.com's John Schlegel says that now is the time to trust Beane's judgement.

Have to admit, it's getting better

It looks like the Mariners are about make a(nother) huge splash in the free agent market: they have agreed terms with Adrian Beltre.

It would therefore appear that Paul in fact didn't get the 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle after all - rather, he got exactly what he wished for.

David Pinto says the deal

"may be the best free agent signing of the year. [...] Beltre is the rare free agent (like Roberto Alomar and Alex Rodriguez) who hits the market on the way up. A great job by the Mariners to acquire this youngster."

Pretty Good Blog

One of the true pleasures of the offseason is having time to read about baseball whilst awaiting its return in the spring. I've written previously about those who write about the sport for a living - the professionals, if you will - but tonight I thought it was time to talk about the amateurs. With time the word 'amateur' has lost some of its original connotation and is often set in opposition to the word 'professional' (with all those unspoken undertones of sloppy or half-finished work) but I'd like to set the record straight - the French talk about people being 'amateur', and it simply means someone who has a passion for a particular thing (music, wine, baseball, writing...).

The reason I bring up the definition is because there are 'amateurs' out there whose work proves that just because you're not getting paid to do something doesn't mean that you aren't going to do it as well as somebody who does it for a living. Cursed & First's Beth earns her living doing something other than writing (about baseball, at least), but if you can read this piece and then try to tell me she's not a writer, then you need to go back to school and start learning your alphabet all over again.

Show me the money

Much has been made of Pedro's motives for moving from Boston to Queens (even if a deal still hasn't been officially announced) and he's being painted as some kind of ruthless mercenary for switching clubs just because someone offered him more money. The Globe's Bob Ryan chimes in with an interesting piece on Pedro's so-called true colo(u)rs, and he makes some valid points, not just about Pedro, but about baseball players in general.

Their sporting prowess means that we admire and sometimes idolise these guys, we put them up on pedestals and create shrines for them in the Hall of Fame, but we sometimes forget to stop there, and we require higher standards and more integrity of them than we do of ourselves and of the people who surround us. Ryan is right to remind us that they do what they do for money, just like the rest of us mere mortals. The amount of money - though obscene to many - is irrelevant, at least in this particular debate, because we're talking about relative sums. When we look at things in absolute terms, then of course it's ridiculous to pay someone $15m - $20m to throw or hit a little white ball around a field, but the market value of the services of these superstars has been defined by ownership and TV contracts and us the fans, and it is what it is. However, if team A (let's say, for the sake of example, a New York ballclub desperate to make a big splash over the winter meetings) decides that it is worth their while to pay Pedro $54m over the next four seasons (even though no other team has come close to a similar offer), then who are we to say that Pedro is wrong to take what they're offering?

We no longer live in a world where people - whether they are ballplayers or IT consultants) are loyal to their employer through thick and thin. When it happens, it's an admirable thing (you only need to look at the careers of Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn to see that), but it really no longer is the norm. I've been working for about twelve years, and I've already had four times as many employers (4) than my Dad did in his entire 43-year career (1).

ESPN's Peter Gammons also shares his thoughts on the Pedro deal (the "Mets money talks for Pedro" headline should give you an idea of how he sees the whole thing), and he brings up an interesting point related to this deal, which is that Pedro forcing the Red Sox' hand for more money and then signing for the Mets because he didn't get it leaves him very little room for manoeuvre in the eyes of the New York press and fans:

In Boston, Pedro was allowed to do whatever he wanted -- show up whenever and take vacations. The Boston media were easy on him for what he had done. They gave him a mulligan for not attending Game 6 in New York. He went months without talking to the media for what he considered slights. He reacted angrily to fans who booed him. By and large, he was given slack because for a seven-year stretch he was the best right-handed pitcher in the history of the franchise.
[...]
In New York, there will be no pass, nor should there be one. This is completely a mercenary decision by Martinez, and he will have no room for complaints whatsoever if he is savaged by New Yorkers. Why not? Pedro Martinez went to the Mets solely because they offered him more money. Period. If he doesn't perform to the standard GM Omar Minaya has promised his owners, it won't
be a pretty picture.

I really wish Pedro the best in New York, if only because that particular scenario is a disaster-movie-in-waiting.

Hold your horses

It would appear that the deal struck between Major League Baseball and the city of Washington D.C. is not quite as solid as everyone was led to believe. Only time will tell if the whole deal is going to fall through, but right now Thomas Boswell says that the nation's capital can kiss its new team goodbye.

Pedro: over & out

It looks like Pedro will be leaving New England and heading for the Big Apple. The feeling from Red Sox Nation seems to be: "Thanks for the memories, Petey - we love ya, we'll miss ya, but at that kind of price for a pitcher your age we'll get over ya...".

Meanwhile, those on the other end of the deal like the idea of what they're getting.

Christmas shopping

We may love our baseball players or we may dislike them intensely, but at the end of the day, nothing brings home the fact that they are just a commodity more sharply than baseball's annual winter meetings. The GMs present in Anaheim this coming weekend will all be busy trying to match their Christmas wish-lists with their available budget. A lot of names are being thrown around, and Jayson Stark has a round-up of the big names who might well be wearing a new uniform by the beginning of next week.

Gentlemen, your chequebooks if you please...

A voice in the wilderness

Bill James has an interesting piece on Barry Bonds over at The Hardball Times. Although I don't like Bonds very much, and although there seems to be enough smoke here to suggest that something nasty is burning nearby, James does have a point.

Back to basics

I'm not going to comment on the recent BALCO revelations or on the subsequent exchanges betwwen Major League Baseball and the Players Association - go to pretty much any sports website or blog and most of what could be said is being said (though if I had to pick one take on things that I like, it would probably be Paul's). The reason I'm not going to comment is not because I've suddenly decided that being an ostrich is a really good idea - rather, it's because what I feel about the situation 1) won't alter anything that happens in Major League Baseball and, more importantly, 2) won't in fact fundamentally change the way I feel about the game.

I received an e-mail recently from someone who has been reading the blog for a while and who commented on the lack of cynicism here in the Baseball Desert. Even though this wasn't the first comment of this nature that I'd had, I hadn't given the subject much thought until now. There are probably several reasons for the lack of cynicism - one possible reason is not having been overexposed to the sport like many people have been (given the limited access I've had to baseball over the years, being jaded and cynical would be akin to Robinson Crusoe being rescued from his desert island and then complaining that the ship's crew keep serving him lobster and champagne). However, I think that the main reason is that, despite having finally found my team this year, I would still be happy to describe myself as a fan of the game. I love the MLB version of the game, I love the Red Sox' version of the game, but if all that were to fall to pieces tomorrow, I would still love the game itself, those nine innings played between the foul lines, wherever those foul lines might be.

There's a scene in "For Love of the Game" where the owner of the Tigers explains to Kevin Costner's character why he's selling his ballclub (basically because "the times, they are a-changin'"...) and Costner says "The game doesn't stink, Mr Wheeler - it's a great game", and that's my feeling right there. There's a lot that's not right with the big-money, big-stakes version of the game, but the game itself doesn't stink - it is a great game, whether it's played at Fenway Park or a Little League field in Pennsylvania.

This was brought home to me last weekend after a lengthy period spent pondering whether I was going to continue playing baseball myself. Work, family commitments and aching knees were all pushing me towards calling it a day (which would make me eligible for the Hall of Fame ballot in 2009), but I went along to our weekly practice sesion anyway. For a variety of reasons (notably the three mentioned above) I hadn't played much baseball over the last five or six weeks, but then I got out there on the field - on a cold, foggy Sunday afternoon in December - and a strange thing happened: as I picked up a baseball and started to toss it around I had an epiphany (and an instant response to my 'do I hang up my spikes?' dilemma). I'll let Roger Angell explain:

It weighs just over five ounces and measures between 2.86 and 2.94 inches in diameter. It is made of a composition-cork nucleus encased in two thin layers of rubber, one black and one red, surrounded by 121 yards of tightly wrapped blue-gray wool yarn, 45 yards of white wool yarn, 53 more yards of blue-gray wool yarn, 150 yards of fine cotton yarn, a coat of rubber cement, and a cowhide (formerly horsehide) exterior, which is held together with 216 slightly raised red cotton stitches. Printed certifications, endorsements and outdoor advertising attest to its authenticity. Like most institutions, it is considered inferior in its present form to its ancient archetypes, and in this case the complaint is probably justified; on occasion in recent years it has actually been known to come apart under the demands of its brief but rigorous active career. Baseballs are assembled and hand-stitched in Taiwan (before this year the work was done in Haiti, and before 1973 in Chicopee, Massachusetts), and contemporary pitchers claim that there is a tangible variation in the size and feel of balls that now come into play in a single game; a true peewee is treasured by hurlers, and its departure from the premises, by fair means or foul, is secretly mourned.

OK, not very sexy so far, but bear with me a second...

But never mind: any baseball is beautiful. No other small package comes as close to the ideal in design and utility. It is a perfect object for a man's hand. Pick it up and it instantly suggests its purpose; it is meant to be thrown a considerable distance – thrown hard and with precision. Its feel and heft are the beginning of the sport's critical dimensions; if it were a fraction of an inch larger or smaller, a few centigrams heavier or lighter, the game of baseball would be utterly different. Hold a baseball in your hand. As it happens, this one is not brand-new. Here, just to one side of the curved surgical welt of stitches, there is a pale-green grass smudge, darkening on one edge almost to black – the mark of an old infield play, a tough grounder now lost in memory. Feel the ball, turn it over in your hand; hold it across the seam or the other way, with the seam just to the side of your middle finger. Speculation stirs. You want to get outdoors and throw this spare and sensual object to somebody or, at the very least, watch somebody else throw it. The game has begun.

Yes it has - it has begun here in the Paris suburbs and it will begin again elsewhere when winter ends. I can't wait.

How long is it to 'pitchers and catchers'?

Busy schedule

Now, you can call me anal-retentive (or Al, for short), but given that I'm not going to crack the starting rotation in Boston - or in fact anywhere - next year (mainly due to the fact that I'm an out-of-shape thirtysomething who throws about the same speed as his eight-year-old daughter) nor am I likely to get offered a GM's job (too damn old), I think that this is definitely a job I would have liked a shot at.

The thought of trying to juggle 162-game schedules for 30 different teams spread out over 28 cities and 6 divisions is mind-blowing - it's like the ultimate jigsaw puzzle - but there must be an immense feeling of satisfaction when a plan comes together.

If the Sports Scheduling Group doesn't make the grade, I'll get on the phone to Bud Selig to see if he'll give me a chance. Our first phone conversation will go something like this:

"So, Bud, since we're still looking to increase baseball's popularity outside the US, I suggest we schedule a Yankees / Red Sox game overses on Opening Day... Yeah, I know the Yankees weren't happy with Japan last year, so I'm thinking something more manageable...Erm, no, I don't think Fidel would be open to marketing Los Yanquis in Havana...I was thinking a little further east, Europe maybe?...Do I have any good ideas as to the city? Ermmmmm...I dunno - lemme think for a second. How about Paris?"

Off-topic

One of the things I love about the offseason is that my favourite bloggers are writing not just about the Hot Stove and whether Armando Benitez is a good fit for the Giants, but also about a whole host of interesting subjects, from the steady decline in quality of Robert B. Parker's detective novels to the time they worked for the Coen brothers.

With that in mind, I figured today would be a good day to post something unrelated to baseball, since I finally received a couple of CDs I've been eagerly awaiting for the past week or so. The release of this one has been well-documented, so I'll leave the job of writing about it to the professionals, especially since I haven't yet had the time to sit down and listen to it properly. However, CD #2 went into the CD player in the living-room as soon as I got home and has been there ever since.

I don't know what it is about bluegrass that attracts me, but as an English guy living in France whose favourite sport is baseball, I've learned not to question the whys and wherefores, but rather just to enjoy things as they come. However, if I had to stand up in court of law and defend my love of bluegrass, I would probably build a case around the combination of a technically difficult musical genre and the expression of very clear and simple sentiment. Lyrically, a lot of the songs are country staples - songs about love and loss and heartbreak (although those themes obviously aren't confined to country music) - and melodically there are few surprises. There are some artists I listen to because their work is full of surprises - you never quite know what's waiting just around the corner, and I think that what makes bluegrass / country so attractive to me (outside of the fact that - just like baseball - you don't get much of it in Manchester or Paris) is the fact that it's the polar opposite of that: it's a musical form where you pretty much always know where you're going. I suppose it's a bit like choosing between Stravinsky and Mozart - one is constantly challenging, to the point of being almost inaccessible, the other is endlessly comforting, at the risk of being predictable.

There are exceptions to the rule (particularly "newgrass" artists) but generally bluegrass, partiularly in its Alison Krauss incarnation, plays that latter role for me, although it does so with a grace and technical prowess that make it nonetheless fascinating. A rock icon once said that a song of his ("a cross between Mozart and Bach - a kind of Mach") was "simple lines, intertwining", and that seems to sum things up pretty well. In a sense, it's an escape, because it takes a complicated mess of a world and boils it down to a essence that is pure of voice and simple of expression, but from time to time that's welcome relief.

So, this British redneck is off to enjoy the album one more time tonight - I'll catch y'all later...