Oscar Gamble Society

Is there anything really wrong with Ramirez taking an extra week vactation to “take care of my mother”?

Today’s report: Despite not planning to report to Red Sox camp until March 1, Manny Ramirez is reportedly scheduled to appear at a car show in Atlantic City Saturday.

Now there clearly is a difference between Spring Training and training camp, but there are several players who miss the first couple weeks of training camp with contractual issues (see Walter Jones) Is it so bad to just say, I don’t feel like showing up until March 1st. I don’t have a reason other that I am not interested in learning about the fundamentals of the game. I mean does Manny Ramirez really need to work on his bunting skills, or hitting the correct cutoff man?

Lest you think the NCAA has nothing more important to do than ensure students don’t earn too much beer money during summer break, the august body has found additional ways to distinguish itself. Last night marked the final appearance of the University of Illinois’ 81-year old mascot, Chief Illiniwek, the result of a long and misguided campaign of political correctness to rid the academy of native American nicknames, emblems and mascots. For the time being, the NCAA appears willing to tolerate the University retaining the name of the state that chartered it, notwithstanding its identical etymology to that of the deposed mascot.

Well, as they say (sotto voce) at Dartmouth - wah hoo wah!

So Trot Nixon’s in Cleveland, and JD Drew replaces him in Boston.  Is that a good thing?

Let me start by saying that I am definitely a proud member of the Trot Nixon fan club.  Quite frankly, as a Sox fan - or even just as a baseball fan in general - how can you not be?  But like it or not, major league baseball is a business - and did the Sox make the right business decision by replacing Nixon with Drew for the next several years?  Some may actually be giving an emotionally-driven “no”.  After looking at some stats, I say “definitely yes”.

But it’s not a straight up replacement, as Drew will be making a *tad* more than Nixon.  Indeed, I’ve heard folks wonder why Drew should get $14 million/year.  To that end, I’ll include some of Carlos Lee’s and Alfonso Soriano’s numbers - as they’ll be getting almost $17 mil/yr on 6- and 8-year contracts respectively.  Let’s look at the facts.

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With Baseball season upon us, isn’t it nice to watch Sportscenter and see some news about the national pastime? You would think so…… I submit that ESPN has become unbelievably lazy. Is there really no actual baseball news? I have seen most of the episodes from the past week, and the “baseball” content has been littered by stories more appropriate for the E! network.

Does anyone (including Jeter/AROD) care about the relationship between the two of them? How is this a story? More importantly, how is it a featured story that lasts multiple days? And then, not only do they air the fluff piece, ESPN also decides to kiss Jeter’s A** by distorting the stats. They reported that Jeter is clearly the superior post season player and AROD is only productive in meaningless regular season games. The facts utilized are that Jeter went 8-16 against DET last year, while AROD struggled to go 1-14. Could they use a smaller sample size to make the point? Its not like this was the only postseason either of them had played, but the point was to show Jeter’s dominance over AROD in the playoffs. Career postseason numbers: AROD 860 OPS, Jeter 862 OPS….Hmmmm.

The other story revolves around Barry Bonds. Is it really a story to see what the mood is of Giants camp the day BEFORE Bonds arrives? Do you really think that Bonds is going to say anything that is newsworthy? If it is anything relating to his contract or the trial, or his failed amphetamenes test, his answer will undoubtably be no comment, so who cares… move on and do some real reporting.

There are plenty of items worth reporting? Obviously the RedSox signing of DMat is a huge story, and worthy of reporting, but wouldn’t it be nice if they actually reported something new/interesting? I was interested to learn that he does long-toss from 220 feet (150 feet is typical) but of course, I didn’t learn that from Sportscenter.

Would be possible to do a story that didn’t relate to the Red Sox/Yankees/Bonds? I would be interested in features of players coming back from injuries like Jason Isringhausen or Bartolo Colon, or even a feature about what the heck happened to Zack Greinke last year???? I would think that ESPN has a budget large enough to have a reported cover more teams than BOS/NYY/SFO?