September
With the Red Sox well out of the playoff hunt, the locker room discussion turned to individual achievement, and most particularly David Ortiz, who was on the verge of breaking Jimmie Foxx’s club record for home runs in a season.
Ortiz, who should have won the MVP in 2005, was asked one evening if he thought he deserved consideration for the award in 2006, despite his team floundering down the stretch.
“I’m right there,” he said, “but I’m not going to win it. They give it to Alex [Rodriguez] one year, even though his team was in last place, so now they can’t play that BS anymore, just because your team didn’t make it. They gave it to Alex that year because of his numbers. But they always have a reason to vote for whatever, so that’s why I don’t worry about it.”
“But they’ll vote for a position player, use that as an excuse. They’re talking about [Derek] Jeter a lot, right? He’s done a great job, he’s having a great season, but Jeter is not a 40-homer hitter or an RBI guy. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve done for your ball club, the bottom line is, the guy who hits 40 home runs and knocks in 100, that’s the guy you know helped your team win games.
“Don’t get me wrong — he’s a great player, having a great season, but he’s got a lot of guys in that lineup. Top to bottom, you’ve got a guy who can hurt you. Come hit in this lineup, see how good you can be.”
Jeter responded with: “Our focus here isn’t on individual awards. We’ve still got something to play for.”
Ouch.
Ortiz tossed his hat into the ring for eventual winner Justin Morneau of the Twins, picking him over Minnesota teammate Joe Mauer, whom some think was the most deserving candidate to be mostly overlooked by the voters. “Tell me about the guy bringing him in,” Ortiz said. “I’m not saying anything about my man [Mauer], I love that kid, but you’ve got to talk about Morneau because he’s the guy who’s done what people haven’t done in years there.”
Still though, Mauer became the first catcher to win the batting title since the Boston Braves’ Ernie Lombardi in 1942, and his .429 OBP was third in the AL, right behind Travis Hafner and Manny Ramirez. And while many baseball fans wouldn’t have had a terrific problem seeing Jeter or Morneau win the MVP, it’s tough to argue that Mauer was virtually ignored by the baseball writers, finishing no higher than third on any one ballot.
Morneau’s a nice pick, but Mauer was the right one.
In other news:
So, apparently what happened here is that during the second half of a preseason game between the Panthers and Dolphins, Dick Stockton and Daryl Johnston pleaded with viewers to stay tuned because someone was going to win a car. Later in the game, Tony Siragusa handed Panthers uber-fan Greg Good a toy Porsche.
But, with a complete lack of anything else going on in Charlotte, an Observer columnist ran a Page 1 (Page 1!) column decrying why Good deserved the car. A real one. Fox then buckled, and gave him a Ford truck.
Wow, the power of the Charlotte Observer. Now can they write a Page 1 piece on getting rid of McCarver?
“If I’d experienced failure like that at ‘A’ ball, nobody gives a (expletive), but I experienced it at the top level,” Meredith told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “It’s still stayed with me. I couldn’t be doing what I’m doing now without the memory of 40,000 people booing me. I know they say it’s nothing personal, but, man, I’ve never forgotten that.
“The Red Sox gave me a shot, and I blew it pretty much. But when I was traded, it became a motivating factor. I told myself that somehow, someway, I wanted to make them wish they hadn’t done it.”
Mission accomplished.
John Wolfson writes:
The problem with Bill Buckner is that when he’s not trying to forget about that softly skipping grounder, he’s scheming to squeeze every last nickel out of it. Every so often, an overnight package arrives on the doorstep of Buckner’s house in Boise, Idaho. Stuffed inside are hundreds of copies of the same photo: The ball is already past Buckner, the first base umpire is thrusting out his arm to indicate a fair ball, and Mookie Wilson is in full sprint for the bag. These pictures await only the few alchemic strokes of Buckner’s autograph marker that will transform them into gold. He and Wilson have an exclusive deal with a New York memorabilia company that sells the signed photos: $99 for an 8-by-10, $119 for a 16-by-20. As part of their relationship with Steiner Sports Marketing, Buckner and Wilson also appear together a couple of times a year at signing events in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, pens in hand, grinning into an ocean of orange-and-blue Mets caps.
As a strict civil libertarian, I oppose prohibitions on prostituting oneself, but Buckner’s nauseating sanctimony long ago slipped into outright hypocrisy: It wasn’t his fault. He just wants to forget the whole thing. Everyone’s so nasty to his family. Buckner is the child who pokes a stick in the hive then whines about the stinging. “I got over it right after it happened,” he once told an ESPN.com writer who found him signing photos with Wilson in the basement of a Connecticut hotel. Well, Buckner, we did not. The agony of your bungled play kept burning long after you hobbled out of town.
“I don’t care what any Red Sox fans think about this,” Buckner said to the ESPN writer. “I busted my butt for them and I had a lot to do with getting us to that point.”
