This ought to be good ...

Actually, I kinda agree with the felon.

The Bronx is Vernon

Repent your sins to your Lord.

Kiss the ring of Selig and you might get a nice writeup on MLB.com.

I almost stopped in the middle of the first sentence ...

"The Yankees missed the playoffs in 2008 and immediately went out and spent around $425 million to get CC Sabathia — the way he is losing weight, he is probably just C Sabathia now —"

Did you laugh at that joke?

Did you find it humorous?

CC Sabathia is losing so much weight, his name is probably just C Sabathia.

Well, I have bad news for you. If you laughed at that, you should probably remove yourself from society.


"and A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira. Now they miss the playoffs in 2013, and money like A-Rod’s has come off the books and they spend nearly $475 million on new baseball players, newest being Masahiro Tanaka, greatest pitcher Yankee fans have never seen, but one they absolutely had to have or the monuments would all fall down."

Lupica doesn't understand simple finance.

The Yankees didn't actually spend $900 million in two off-seasons. They committed to spend $900 million, divided by several players, over the course of several years.

There is a big, big difference.


Also, I don't think "missing the playoffs" affects the spending patterns of the Yankees as much as he seems to think.

Even in the midst of a three-peat, was there a sudden reluctance to sign free agents? Did the Yankees become penny-pinchers in 2010?


"That is $900 million in total contracts in just two cold baseball winters, so you can only imagine what might happen next winter if somehow the Yankees, spending the way they always have, can’t win their division or get one of the two wild cards in the American League."

I can only imagine!

I think, if the Yankees miss the playoffs this year (shorthand for "can't win their division or get one of the two wild cards in the American League"), they will spend approximately $2 trillion in free agents signings in the 2014 off-season.

Bullpen alone? $400 million.

They will buy every left-handed pitcher in baseball just to get them off other teams. Send them to the minors if you have to or just pay them not to pitch in the majors.

They will sell Yankee Stadium and become a modern-day barnstorming team, intentionally splitting the games of a double-header ... and then charging extra for the tie-breaking third game. Their team will be sponsored by Chico's Bail Bonds and all the monuments will be torn down and replaced by a Bingo Long statue.

I feel relieved that others criticize Selig.

As Selig plans his farewell tour / PR blitz, it ought to be obvious that the ARod takedown was a personal vendetta.

With all due respect ...

... you really have no idea:

"The testosterone creams and lozenges, the human growth hormone, the IGF (insulin-like growth factor), the pregnenolone (steroid that may hide the use of anabolic steroids), the clomiphene (fertility drug also used to increase testosterone levels), the DHEA and the GHRP 2/6 (banned hormones said to increase output of HGH, and all the rest of A-Rod's complex drug regimen amounted to what the head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency Wednesday called 'the most potent and sophisticated drug program developed for an athlete that we've ever seen.'

And that includes Lance Armstrong's sophisticated protocol."

Popping a bunch of pills on a schedule now qualifies as sophisticated. The pills that gave Alex Rodriguez the immense power to hit baseballs to the warning track.


"We have ever seen" seems to be the key phrase.


World War II, a mathematician was charged with developing the most efficient armor for fighter planes. The initial study involved examining the bullet holes on the planes. Seems obvious. Put the armor in the places where planes get hit the most.

But, no.

These were the planes that made it back.

The planes that got shot down? We can't study their bullet hole patterns.

The answer is in the data we can't see. The planes that made it back survived the attack. The planes that didn't make it back needed to be strengthened. So the armor needs to go where we don't see the bullet holes, ensuring maximum protection.


It should go without saying, but here it is, anyway.

The most sophisticated doping regimens are precisely the doping regimens that are evading your detection.

I don't blame the arbitrator.

He's a pawn in Selig's final PR blitz.

Comforting to see that not everyone is buying it:

"At the end of the 60 Minutes report, all is ugliness. A-Rod is guilty and lying, surely, Anthony Bosch seems a first-class lowlife, Rob Manfred comes across as Old Man Potter from 'It’s a Wonderful Life,' and the only winner in the whole mess — THE ONLY WINNER — seems to be the drugs themselves, which apparently work miracles and, if used right, are undetectable.

So what point of all this again?

Scott Pelley ends the report like so: 'And Bud Selig has announced his retirement from the game. Part of his legacy is the establishment of the toughest anti-doping rules in all of American pro sports.'

There it is. Bud Selig, who has been commissioner over the worst drug scandal to ever hit American sports, who presided over a game that ten years ago DID NOT TEST for drugs, got 60 Minutes to put that line at the end. Part of his legacy is this glorious chapter of buying papers from Bobby, threatening and paying off Boesch and nailing Alex Rodriguez.

The report ended and only then, if you watch the Internet videos, do you get the biggest lesson of all. You get to see who sponsored the report.

Viagra."

Madden gets his pound of flesh.

"Through all this disgrace, A-Rod sounds as if he still thinks he controls his destiny in baseball.

Well, here’s a bulletin for him: He controls nothing."


Maybe you can lend him some of your incontinence medication, you miserable old turd.


"It was not surprising, given his narcissistic, delusional nature, that A-Rod’s immediate response to the record drug suspension baseball arbitrator Fredric Horowitz levied on him Saturday was defiance. The deck was stacked against him from Day 1, the arbitrator was biased, Major League Baseball was corrupt in the manner in which it made its case against him, the Yankees and Randy Levine conspired with MLB to get his contract voided and, by golly, he is going to court to get exonerated for all of this."

Let's go through it:

Deck was stacked; arbitrator was not biased; MLB was corrupt; Yankees and MLB did not conspire, but they Yankees are happy that MLB did their dirty work for them.

So ARod is correct in 2 out of 4 of his complaints summarized herein.


He is guilty of taking steroids. That should be 50 - 100 games, like everyone else. (Yes, he foolishly turned down a shorter banishment, but that was before Bosch came forward. When hit with 211 or threatened with a lifetime ban, I'd imagine the cost-benefit analysis shifts.)

He is guilty of being a narcissist. Not a crime. Zero games.

Hie is guilty of being delusional. Not a crime. Zero games.

In fact, many of the ballplayers who Madden happily covers are guilty of at least one of these things, if not all three.


While Madden briefly mentioned the idea that ARod ratted out other players, that is a worse crime than anything mentioned above. It may be true, it may not be true, it's kind of hard to tell. Lots of leaks.

Some rumors indicated that ARod was co-owner of Biogeneis or got a finder's fee.  If so, that's not just a suspension, that's prison.

But here's what gets me the most. Boschs' reliability is questionable for sure, but Bosch suggested on "60 Minutes" that ARod threatened Bosch's life. I have not seen one columnist recoil in horror at this suggestion (though I briefly heard Stephen A. Smith on the radio). Again, that's prison.

I truly wonder if Bill Madden thinks that narcissism is a worse crime than, you know ... Crime crimes.


So we got the evidence, MLB's case is strong enough for an arbitrator. A criminal court would have probably tossed all of it, but this isn't a criminal court.

But unless we have evidence that ARod worked for Bosch or threatened Bosch, then I still don't understand why he should get more than 50-100, like everyone else.

If there is evidence that ARod committed those crimes, then call the cops and get him out of here. It's out of MLB's purview at that point

Selig's PR strategy will work.

"But this whole ordeal was completely necessary. And it was done through a process that by now is regarded as time-tested and fair.

Baseball doesn't necessarily 'win' in the literal sense when one of its biggest names is suspended for one year for violating the collectively bargained drug policy. But baseball did what it had to do in this case, to preserve the integrity of its drug-testing program and to preserve the integrity of the game itself.

On Saturday, an arbitrator hearing Rodriguez's appeal of a 211-game suspension ruled that Rodriguez would be suspended for 162 games, the entire 2014 season."


ARod never failed a drug test. So tell me about the integrity of its drug-testing program again?

Ponder the amount of time and effort MLB used to get this suspension against one player. Now imagine they used those resources against every other player.

This is why this strikes a lot of people as unfair.

It's not that ARod is innocent, it's that the "integrity of the game itself" is laughable when Big Papi is handed the World Series MVP by the same man who crusades against ARod.

You tell me if it's a personal vendetta when Selig is on "60 Minutes" claiming he'd never seen anything like it in 50 years. Yeah, that's because you weren't looking, pal.

Three Winners

"It could very well be that Sept. 25, 2013 vs. the Rays was Rodriguez’s last game.

The winners also are obvious: Bud Selig and the Yankees."

Alex Rodriguez's lawyers also won, unless they are refunding their money.

The whole steroid era.

I like the guy who says he won't vote for anyone from the steroid era, but then votes for Jack Morris.  It also means he will never vote for any baseball player ever again.

Because nobody cares about wild cards.

I challenge anyone to remember 2013's MLB exciting wild card one-game matchups.  Just name the four teams involved.  You can't do it, can you?