Who Are These Dopes And Why Are They Ruining Baseball?

"The players association's intransigence and the arbitrary nature of its action are responsible for the deal's demise today. Reports that negotiations are continuing and shall continue are inaccurate." -- Lucky Luccino, on the end of Renaissance of the Red Sox, stillborn, half-term aborted.

It's another sign of the out-of-touch with the corporate world encroaching, imposing its stamp upon the sanctity and holy purity of the world of sports when it takes a degree in Quantitative Macroeconomics and Contracts Law to understand the anatomy of a baseball trade gone sour. Does anyone else get a headache trying to sort that A-Rod, for whom the contract was written, was willing to diminish the value of his contract, through deferrals, by $28 million; union lawyer Gene Orza would allow only $12 million?

Let's face it, Orza does not want to set precedent to decrease contracts. Doing so means first and foremost, that the bloodsucking agents would have to reduce their enormous intake. Secondly, it means the nobodies of the baseball world, the utility infielders, for example, would be forced to live on less. The Basic Agreement disallows reductions in signed contracts except where other "actual or potential benefits" are negotiated to offset the reduction.

If it hadn't already after the "actual and potential benefits" jibberish, here's where the migraine begins to kick in:

"In this case, sources indicate Orza agreed to the $13-million reduction after Boston agreed not only to extend the opt-out clause but to give Rodriguez marketing rights to the Red Sox logo, hats and uniform. Rodriguez's original deal allowed him to opt out after only 2007, the seventh year of his historic 10-year contract. The marketing concession could be worth $1 million annually to a player of A-Rod's stature."

Is this even English?

I've tried to narrow it done to a logical framework: The player whom the contract was written for is not allowed to take a reduction in pay even if it means Championships and professional happiness, because he listened to the wisdom of Sir Snorting Pig-With-Greed-Filled-Snout, the arsehole and agent for the ages, Scott Boras, who has never indicated an interest for anything but his own insatiable greed masquerading as the benevolent care of his clientele, and signed a deal which was never logical to begin with and signed it with a team that had no prayer of going anywhere but down.

The MLB players association refuses to allow the Red Sox to lessen the value of A-Rod's $252 million contract.

Even though the player is willing to sacrifice salary, the players association argues that other players making considerably less might be pressured to restructure their contracts. And the next thing you know these poor, starving professional baseball players are going to be eating dinner out of garbage cans and begging for spare change on street corners because A-Rod takes a contract cut to admit he was an idiot and made a mistake?

It's taken A-Rod three years to figure out he should never have listened to Boras. Now he wants out. Boras' job should be, just like it should be the job of the union that's supposed to represent his best interests, to help A-Rod get him out of the mess his agent hypnotized him into signing.

On the other hand, you could just blame A-Rod himself, as Bob Ryan of The Boston Globe, noted:

"So A-Rod made his choice. He took the money. He could have taken $18 million or $20 million, but he gleefully accepted an average annual salary of $25.2 million, and now he wishes to God he were making a lot less money because now he is miserable in Texas," Ryan writes. "He wants to come to Boston, and he still might. But the truth is that he'd already be house-hunting in Greater Boston if he hadn't already made a bad decision to go for every last buck three years ago."

If he hadn't listened to Boras and his inane-clown-posse demands, A-Rod wouldn't be house hunting in Boston, lad. He'd have been living in Queens and wallowing in a last place Mets uniform, in case you don't remember.

The other thing I can't figure is why A-Rod is acting like such a nonce. Rodriguez made it clear yesterday he would go to Boston only with an agreement that met the union's "approval."

"In the spirit of cooperation, I advised the Red Sox I am willing to restructure my contract, but only within the guidelines prescribed by union officials," Rodriguez said yesterday. "I recognize the principle involved, and fully support the need to protect the interests of my fellow players."

So who put the screws to A-Rod? What could they have threatened him with to prevent him from walking away from the union altogether? Are we to believe that the greediest player in baseball, who signed a contract with Satan is now trying to martyr himself for the sake of his fellow players? Take his poison like a good little prisoner for signing on with such an idiotic, greedy deal to begin with?

This is a grand conspiracy by Bud Selig and his Illuminati legions of anti-Red Sox conspirators to promote the sanctity of the Babe Ruth Curse mythology and help useless parasite agents continue to make their billions.

*****

Baseball To Be Destroyed

Or perhaps the lesson learned: how years and years of futility and failure can eventually turn one insane --

Hoping to exorcise the demons of a star-crossed team and its most infamous fan, a Chicago restaurant paid more than $100,000 Friday for the foul ball that has come to symbolize the Cubs' futility.

Harry Caray's restaurant plans to destroy the ball in February, and will ask Steve Bartman to help.

The ball in question is of course, the ball that appeared headed for Moises Alou's glove when it deflected off Bartman's hand. It landed in the lap of a 33-year-old lawyer sitting behind him in the eighth inning of Game 6 of the National League Championship Series at Wrigley Field on Oct. 14.

At the time the Cubs were five outs away from their first World Series in 58 years. But the team collapsed after the mishap, allowing the Florida Marlins to score eight runs. The Marlins went on to win baseball's biggest prize.

"This is our way to heal," said Beth Heller, director of marketing for the restaurant, "and we're asking him to heal with us."

*****

Revisiting The Land of Stupica

The Daily News' Mike Lupica, is off and whining again. This time he's on about Joe Horn, a 32-year-old wide receiver who scored a touchdown against the Giants, reached down into the goalpost where he'd hidden a cell phone, then made a big show out of taking it out and punching in a number.

I just love it when a talentless panty-sniffer like Lupica gets on his high horse and rides: he's a penchant for sermonizing and this latest whimpering is no different:

"This is supposed to be the kind of free expression and exuberance that makes pro football less stuffy and much more fun. That is one way of looking at it, certainly.

Here is another way: Horn acted like a jerk, one who put a lot of thought and planning into proving that to the country. Then he made the whole thing even worse by sounding like a complete phony afterwards, saying he did it for his dear sweet momma, and for his kids. Right."

Right, and Lupica isn't a showboat rocking his legs back and forth, sitting on two phone books in his highchair on ESPN's The Sports Reporters like mini-Me, pontificating and letting his voice raise a few octaves in mid-sentence so that he sounds like a screeching little girl going through a painful menstrual cycle? Shuddup, ya bum.

There isn't anything wrong with players being creative. Just like T. Owens' celebration, the Sharpie pulled from the sock, inspirational genius for the celebration of success. After all, let's not forget, taunts aside, what both of these guys had in common was that they had to score touchdowns for their dramatic little performances to have any meaning.

It is annoying, at times, the celebrations and the explosions of ego but these guys are out there willing to risk their careers and their long term health with one bad tackle so there must, by right and ritual, be an overwhelming sense of relief when one succeeds without getting killed and helps the team as well by scoring points.

Celebrating shouldn't be legislated by the likes of a small-minded and pompous twit like Mike Lupica who scored HOW MANY touchdowns in his illustrious NFL career? I know the guy is paid to give an opinion, any opinion, no matter how stupid or shrill, but to pick on poor Joe Horn for a little creative inspiration is just a lame little form of jealousy on the part of Lupica.

Now if you want to have an opinion against Joe Horn's act, do it the smart way, like Troy Aikman, a man, unlike Mike Lupica, with plenty of experience playing NFL football:

"Look, I played with two of the most colorful personalities in the game of football in Michael Irvin and Deion Sanders and nobody enjoyed celebrating more than they did when they got in the end zone but they did it within the framework of the rules. For no other reason, even if you remove the cell phone or you remove the sharpie and you say let's celebrate and all that, I have no problem with that.

The facts are that pulling out a cell phone is against the rules and if no other reason, that's why it's wrong. The league, in my opinion, gives these guys tremendous freedom to be able to celebrate, get creative and get artistic and all those things. But it specifically says you cannot have a foreign object."

That's the ticket. Catch him on a technicality. You cannot use a "foreign object". Gee, that sounds just like professional wrestling. No pulling a rubber truncheon out of your jock or taking one of the team benches or the Port-O-Cool gizmo and smashing it repeatedly on the sidelines in celebration.

So remember that fellers, next time you want to celebrate your successes. Perform the Danses des Cygnes or run around the sidelines doing interpretative dances, or sing, or wave your hands to the crowd but DO NOT celebrate with a foreign object, like firing a gun off or a cannon or using a Sharpie or making a cellphone call. "Foreign object" indeed. What's next the NFL-sponsored hunt for weapons of mass destruction in endzone celebrations?