“You see a Manny Ramirez, you see an A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez), you see (Derek) Jeter … Guys that I played against and with, these guys you’re talking about cannot compare,” Rice said to Little Leaguers gathered in the cafeteria.

Stay classy, Jim. Somehow you got into the Hall of Fame and, just a few weeks later, you feel the need to crap all over today’s stars. What an ambassador for the game.

What’s also funny, Jim, is that you can compare the players from your era with those from the modern era. There are statistics for that. I won’t discuss Manny Ramirez or A-Rod because of the steroid issue (and it’s clear that Rice has adopted a holier-than-thou attitude on that subject), so let’s focus on Derek Jeter. I’d love to hear from Rice regarding which shortstops from his era were better hitters than Jeter. I don’t think Rice played with Arky Vaughan or Honus Wagner, so he probably won’t be able to come up with any.

“We didn’t have the baggy uniforms. We didn’t have the dreadlocks,” Rice said. “It was a clean game, and now they’re setting a bad example for the young guys.”

Asked later at a news conference to list current players worthy of the Hall, Rice suggested Seattle Mariner outfielders Ichiro Suzuki and Ken Griffey, Jr., and Chicago White Sox slugger Jim Thome.

Really? That’s the best list that he could come up with? I agree that all three belong in the Hall of Fame, but aren’t there a few really obvious candidates out there? Randy Johnson, John Smoltz, Pedro Martinez, Mariano Rivera, Albert Pujols, Ivan Rodriguez, to name a few.

He said he believes current Hall of Famers who did not cheat don’t want players who took performance-enhancing drugs to join them in the Hall.

Flexing the muscles in his right arm, Rice said, “That’s all the steroids you need. … It’s called God-given talent.”

What a piece of work. I guess Rice is feeling a little cocky due to his recent HOF election, which is still a mystery to me. I know that there is a lot of disagreement on this, but, in my opinion, Rice is not a HOF caliber player. He was a very good player, but not worthy of Cooperstown. Things are going to get awkward over the next few years when the baseball writers realize they elected Rice, but don’t want to elect Fred McGriff or Moises Alou. I guess McGriff and Alou weren’t as “feared” as Rice.

The last sentence of the article sheds some light on the interest level in Rice’s perspective. It reads like a little bit of an eff you from the AP writer:

He got a standing ovation from players and coaches, though some of the 11- to 13-year-old players were yawning or had their heads in their arms on the table about 15 minutes into the talk.

Sounds like your speech was a real showstopper, Jim. If it were Manny, A-Rod, or Jeter doing the talking, I doubt any of the Little Leaguers would have been daydreaming.

“You can’t pitch a perfect game. No one can.” (Awkward silence) “Except Don Larsen.”

And a bunch of other guys. It’s weird that he used Larsen as his example, when Mark Buehrle pitched a perfect game three weeks ago.

Stark has assembled the “The All-Money Player Team,” the selection criteria for which appears to be a player’s clutch hitting ability/postseason performance record. Apparently, Chipper Jones is the starting 3B for the squad, based on his .870 career postseason OPS. That’s a great postseason OPS, but it’s a little less impressive when you consider that Jones’s career regular season OPS is .956 (which, by the way, makes me realize that Jones is much better than I thought he was; this guy is going to the HOF). So Jones is “All-Money” because he’s really good in the postseason, even though he’s significantly worse in the postseason than in the regular season? (By the way, A-Rod’s career postseason OPS is .844, suspiciously close to the “All-Money” benchmark of .870, even though A-Rod is generally considered to be one of the worst postseason performers of his generation).

To find the the starting SS for the “The All-Money Player Team,” Stark ditched the stats altogether, choosing Jimmy Rollins because “Who loves The Big Moment more than this man?” What does that even mean? Is “The Big Moment” a baseball term that I just haven’t heard yet? Also, Rollins’s career postseason OPS is .732. But that doesn’t matter because he loves The Big Moment. Apparently, in order to be “All-Money,” you don’t have to perform well in The Big Moment, you just have to love it. That’s what I told the admissions officer at Yale when I applied during my senior year in high school: “Don’t worry about the fact that I got a 600 on the SATs - what matters is that I loved taking the SATs!” (It didn’t work, which explains why I’m sitting in white sweatpants in my Mom’s basement, writing a snarky article for a baseball blog).

Chase Utley is the starting 2B for “The All-Money Player Team,” which is hard to dispute. However, Stark bestows the honor on Utley because he “hasn’t taken an inning off since birth.” I’m not really sure what that means, especially since Utley has averaged just under 150 games played during his four full seasons in the majors. So it appears that Utley has actually taken off approximately 108 innings each of the last four seasons. Also, isn’t Utley “All-Money” because he’s really, really good at baseball, not because he’s apparently never taken an inning off.

Following the unveiling of the “The All-Money Player Team,” Stark puts together a series of other hypothetical squads, which are actually even more ridiculous than “The All-Money Player Team.” I’ll spare you an analysis of those teams, since I’m sure most readers have already bailed on this post.

And I shouldn’t really give Stark too hard a time. He was probably told by the ESPN.com editors to put together a quirky column for the web site’s MLB Season Preview and this is what he came up with under deadline.

While looking at the ESPN average draft selections, it’s become apparent that the A-Rod slide has begun.  After having surgery on Monday, his average draft position has fallen from 2nd or 3rd overall to 29.9.  It will almost certainly fall to somewhere within the 3rd round (or below) before the drop ends.

How long you let him slide may go a long way in determining the final standings in your league.  While the risk is certainly real, this feels a little too much like the great Pujols elbow scare of 2008.  The fantasy draft for my main league fell right at the height of the speculation about Pujols missing most of the season…and because of this, he fell to about the 25th pick overall.

Needless to say, that turned out to be possibly the best 3rd round value in the history of fantasy baseball.

At least we know in this case that A-Rod will be missing some weeks. But as long as you can identify a late-round backup that will produce at a reasonable level for the first few weeks, I’ve got to think that letting him slide past the 3rd round will help deliver a steal for someone else.

It’s been tougher than a $4.99 steak. Got chased by Dobermans eight times. Had to hire five different sticky-fingered third-graders. Broke into the wrong house twice.

But it’s finally done. I’ve been able to retrieve every single MVP award that was wrongfully won by every single suspected ‘roid ranger over the past 20 years. You can see them all shining on the table next to me. Got the stains off them and everything. Now I’m ready to give them to their rightful owners.

I’m tempted to comment on Reilly’s hackneyed Creative Writing 101 lead, but it’s not worth it. I will point out, though, how lucky we all are that Reilly knows exactly which players took steroids and which didn’t, so that he can properly redistribute these MVP awards.

And why not? If Bud Selig can talk about giving Barry Bonds’ phony-as-tofurkey home run record back to Hank Aaron, why can’t we right all the wrongs of the Syringe Binge?

Is Reilly looking to do some term-coining in this column? “‘Roid Ranger” and “Syringe Binge?” Really? Also, is tofurkey really phony? I thought it was actually made of tofu.

Let’s start by bringing former Red Sox Mike Greenwell up to the podium. Greenie lost the 1988 AL MVP to Jose Canseco, who admitted in his book, “Juiced,” that he cheated worse than Rosie Ruiz that year to win it. Canseco even told Howard Stern that Greenwell, now a high school coach in Fort Myers, Fla., “should stop by the house” to pick up the award. No need, Mike! Here it is. Should look sweet on the mantel.

Now this is just lazy. I know Reilly is trying to be cute here with the Rosie Ruiz reference, but it doesn’t make any sense. Ruiz famously cheated in the Boston Marathon in 1980 by entering the race in the last mile and not running the first 25 or so miles (similar to what got caused Geoffrey the butler deported from to flee the U.K. in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air). In 1988, Canseco took steroids, played 158 games, hit 42 home runs, stole 40 bases, and had an OPS+ of 170. So how did Canseco cheat worse than Ruiz? Canseco cheated by taking steroids, but at least he played the games and actually hit the home runs. Ruiz didn’t run 95 percent of the race. The only way that Canseco’s cheating could be comparable to Ruiz’s is if he didn’t play most of the season, somehow hacked into the MLB and Elias Sports Bureau computers like Ferris Bueller adjusting his attendance record, and entered in 40 home runs into the record books that he never hit. Then, he played the last ten games of the season and hit the final two home runs. I know Reilly’s trying to be funny, but at least try to make sense.

By the way, “Greenie” seems like an unfortunate nickname to use in an article about performance-enhancing drugs.

“Man,” Greenwell said when I called him. “I guess I’ll just say it’s been a long time coming. I even remember telling Jose once, ‘Man, I’d love to have your power.’ And he said, ‘Come to Miami and I’ll hook you up!’ But I never did.”

And why not?

“My wife and I were trying to have a baby and she basically said if I went on steroids, she’d kill me.” Now he’s got two boys. Healthy ones.

Is it me, or is the “healthy ones” sentence really weird? Is he implying that the children of steroid users are unhealthy?

(Don’t feel bad for Canseco. We’re replacing the award he never deserved with one he did: the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. Jose, can you see how much we believe you now?)

Someone better tell Steve Coll. His book, Ghost Wars, which detailed the CIA’s involvement in covert wars in Afghanistan that gave rise to Al Qaeda, actually won that award. You’re right, Rick: Juiced was definitely a more important piece of writing than Ghost Wars.

Step up here, Mike Piazza. The late Ken Caminiti of the San Diego Padres stole your 1996 NL MVP, then admitted he was into more juice than Jack LaLanne. Yes, it’s 13 years late, but the nameplate is new! And here’s yours from 2001, Luis Gonzalez, after you finished behind The Barry Bonds Pharmacy. We won’t even mention the home run title you would’ve won that year.

Reilly is really pushing it with the cheeky comparisons. Tougher than a $4.99 steak; phonier than tofurkey; juicier than Jack LaLanne. I feel like I’m reading Dennis Miller’s Rants.

Now, for the man of the night. I have a U-Haul of hardware here for Jose Alberto Pujols Alcántara of the St. Louis Cardinals. You already have two MVPs, Albert, and you’re about to get three more, since Barry Bonds ripped you off worse than Bernie Madoff to win the award from 2002 to 2004. You hit .335 and averaged 41 bombs those years and yet you finished second behind the clearly creaming Bonds in ’02 and ’03, and third behind Bonds and Adrian Beltre in ’04. We’re throwing out Beltre since, while he denies ever using PEDs, he fell off the face of the planet once baseball put in stricter steroid suspensions in 2005. If he wasn’t cheating, I’m the Queen Mother. And this is history we’re making here. It gives you five MVPs, and nobody else in baseball history now has more than three. Just don’t let us down on this thing, Albert. You know what we’re talking about.

Worse than Bernie Madoff? Really? Pujols missing out on MVP awards is worse than a scumbag bilking $50B from charities and people’s life savings? I care about baseball – probably too much – but this is over the top. 

My favorite part of this paragraph, and what truly reveals Reilly to be a grade-A bonehead, is his argument that Pujols should get all three of Barry Bonds’s recent MVP awards, even though Pujols finished second to Bonds only twice. And Reilly accomplishes this by disqualifying Adrian Beltre’s second place finish in 2004 because “he fell off the face of the planet once baseball put in stricter steroid suspensions in 2005.” Yet, earlier in the column, Reilly awards Bonds’s 2001 MVP award to Luis Gonzalez. In 2001, Gonzalez, at age 33, hit 57 home runs and slugged .688. In 2002, Gonzalez his 28 home runs and slugged .496. In fact, he never hit more than 31 home runs or slugged better than .549 in any other season of his long career and, over the past few seasons, he’s hit more like Luis A. Gonzalez. Beltre’s 2004 season was incredibly anomalous as well, when he hit 48 home runs and slugged .629. His career highs otherwise are 26 home runs and a .482 slugging percentage. But at least Beltre was 25 years old in 2004, so there is a slight chance that his performance was legitimate, as opposed to Gonzalez who mysteriously turned into an unbelievable power hitter for one season at age 33.

Listen, Reilly: you can’t assume Beltre was on steroids, but give Gonzalez a free pass – it’s sloppy and makes you look foolish. If you believe that Gonzalez’s 2001 performance was all natural, then I guess that makes you the Queen Mum (isn’t she dead, by the way?).

Speaking of letting people down, Alex Rodriguez admitted last week he cheated like a Three-Card Monte dealer from 2001 to 2003 as a Texas Ranger. He was the AL MVP in ’03, stealing it from then-Toronto Blue Jay Carlos Delgado, who finished second. Just to recap: He cheated. He admitted it. He won the MVP. And yet the people who gave Rodriguez the award- the Baseball Writers’ Association of America-decided last week that he could keep it. “It’s [A-Rod's] award to do what he wants with,” BBWAA secretary-treasurer Jack O’Connell told a reporter. “Listen, the wool was pulled over all our eyes. We had an election and those were the guys that won. The awards are theirs.”

Just to recap, Rick, you muddled the timeline. It actually went like this: He cheated. He won the MVP. He admitted it. This is important. In your version, the MVP was awarded after he admitted cheating, which would make taking back the award not as problematic as a retroactive stripping of the award five years later.

Thank God O’Connell isn’t a judge. Yes, you admit you robbed the bank, but what the hell, why don’t you go ahead and keep the cash? Buy yourself something nice.

This is getting embarrassing. It’s like Reilly never mastered analogies. Did they not have the SAT when he was in high school? When someone robs a bank, they intentionally place the teller or bank president or whoever under duress, most likely with a threat of violence, which then induces the individual to turn over the money. In the case of the 2003 MVP award, A-Rod cheated and was awarded the MVP by the baseball writers. I have not heard any allegations that A-Rod threatened the baseball writers with violence, which caused them to award him the MVP. The writers were free to award it to anyone of their choosing and they chose A-Rod. 

Thank God Reilly isn’t a judge. In his courtroom, you can be convicted of robbery if a bank teller gives you extra money just because he/she wants to.

“The awards are theirs”? What is the BBWAA motto: Tread on Us? Shame on O’Connell and every writer who agrees with him. These people let this whole Rage Age go down right in front of their notepads-left it up to Canseco to break the story-and now they’re rewarding them? Coddlers.

Way to throw your colleagues under the bus.

So step right up, Moises Alou, here’s your MVP for 1998, when you finished behind Sammy Sosa and the Dubious Dinger, Mark McGwire. Here’s yours for 2000, Frank Thomas. You were fleeced out of it by admitted ‘roider Jason Giambi.

There you go, gentlemen. Please accept our belated congratulations. And don’t make us regret this later on.

Remember, we know sticky-fingered third-graders.

I love how Reilly rips baseball writers for failing to blow the whistle on steroids, yet he’s so naive that he thinks that there are players from that era that are above suspicion. Reilly’s plan for redistribution of the MVP awards doesn’t work because he’s missing the point. The lesson of the so-called “Steroid Era” and the recent A-Rod outing is that we do not and cannot know who took steroids and who didn’t. If Reilly really feels that justice needs to be done with regard to MVP awards that were awarded to admitted or suspected steroid users, he should argue that no one should get the MVP awards for those years. It’s like he’s being willfully ignorant. If you’re not suspicious of every player of that era, then you’re not paying attention.

from the NY Daily News (February 8, 2009)

Eating $270M worth it for the Yankess to finally ditch A-Rod by Bill Madden

This is for real. This was actually the title of the article.

Cashman: Hey Bill, Brian Cashman here. Look, keep this under your hat, but we need to ditch A-Rod. We just can’t figure out how…any ideas?

Madden: Got it! How about eating the remaining nine years and $270M on his contract?

Cashman: Dude, that’s totally worth it.

As difficult as it is to imagine eating $270 million, the Bombers will be making a statement, not just for the Yankee brand but for baseball as a whole.

They will be applauded for it.

The Yankees operate under two basic tenets: The relentless pursuit of championships and the fierce protection of their brand. If they are going to remain true to both, then they have no choice but to sever ties with Rodriguez.

Yankee Tenet #1: the relentless pursuit of championships. In order to remain true to this tenet, they must sever ties with Rodriguez. The guy who leads the team in HRs since 2004 (208)? The guy who’s won two MVP awards since joining the team? The guy who’s OPS+’d 153 since becoming a Yankee? Yeah? Getting rid of him (and paying him a quarter of a billion dollars to play for someone else) will help their relentless pursuit of championships?

Yankee Tenet #2: fierce protection of their brand. Simply not true…I see guys selling homophobic “Brokeback Jeter” and “A-Rod Swallows” t-shirts on Boylston Street after every Red Sox game. I guess I can’t say for sure, but I highly doubt these are Yankee-sanctioned products. This makes me question how fiercely the brand is being protected.

He is right about other teams applauding if the Yankees cut A-Rod though…they’ll be applauding how much easier it will be to beat the Yankees, and how they could sign A-Rod for a “cheap” salary since the Yankees would still be on the hook for $270M.

Now, everything about the pursuit of championships and the Yankee brand is a mockery if A-Rod is the centerpiece of this team.

The World Series doesn’t count if the Yankees win next year. Could you imagine how disgusted the Yankee fans will be if their favorite team wins the World Series at any point during the next nine years?

As painful as swallowing that $270 million might be, there will be consolation for the Yankees when no other team elects to besmirch their brand by taking in A-Rod – even for nothing.

I need a drink.

The days of 2002, when the biggest New York sports controversy was much, much sillier

Hoof.