Oscar Gamble Society

When Gil Meche signed with the Kansas City Royals, one had to start to compare it to some of the worst free agent deals from years past. One deal that turned out about as poorly as possible was the Texas Rangers signing Chan Ho Park to a 5 year deal worth $65 million in 2001/2002 offseason. So which deal was worse??Chan Ho Park signed with Texas in 2002 after he was coming off a season where he was 15-11 with a 3.50 ERA,1.17 WHIP, 218 K in 234 innings, with 26 quality starts out of 35. He was 28 years old and in his prime at the time. It wasn’t like he had had one fluke good season. He had pitched at least 190 innings for 5 consecutive years, won at least 13 games each year (with a high of 18) and his ERA was under 4.00 for 4 out of the 5 years. Admittedly, that was in pitcher friendly Dodger stadium. He was arguably the best pitcher on the free agent market at the time, and Texas had to overpay, because there is no free agent pitcher that has voluntarily gone to pitch in the 110 degree heat of Arlington (outside of Kenny Rogers - who is certifiable). 2001/2002 offseason was actually a little more crazy than this past offseason, and there were some ridiculous contracts signed that year. That always happens the offseason after the CBA is announced. There was no indication at the time that Park was about to completely implode. Obviously it didn’t work out for the Rangers, and cost them Alex Rodriguez as well as 4 years to recover from the contract, but there was at least an argument at the time, that Park would be a solid #2 starter. I’ll start off by saying that I used to be a huge supporter of Meche. He was on my fantasy team in 1999, his rookie year, and was pretty good, before he lost almost 2 years to injury. Like Park, Meche has benefitted from pitching in a severe pitchers park in Seattle. Like Texas, Kansas City has to overpay to attract Free Agents. That is basically where the similarity ends. Meche has a horrible track record of injuries. Major/recurring injuries as well like his shoulder. It isn’t like he had Tommy John surgery and is recovered from that. The likelihood that Meche spends ample time on the DL is very high. Meche is a severe flyball pitcher that had minimal success in the vast Safeco field. Meche has NEVER pitched 190 innings in his life. Meche’s best ERA has been 3.81 in 85 innings in 2000, and that is the only season he has had a sub 4.00 ERA. Most importantly, Meche was no where near the top pitcher on the market this offseason. There were several pitchers to choose from with equal success to Gil Meche. The fact that he signed for more money/more years than Jeff Suppan is laughable. It would be difficult for the Meche contract to turn out as poorly as the CHP contract, but that doesn’t mean that it was a better decision for the Royals to sign Meche than it was Texas to sign Park.

Miller has challenged Anheuser Busch to a friendly wager, with naming rights to their local baseball parks as the stakes. The proposed bet is on the total points accumulated this season by Dale Earnhardt, Jr., driving the Budweiser #8 car, and Kurt Busch, driving the Miller Lite #2 car. If Junior finishes ahead of Busch, then Busch Stadium gets renamed Miller Lite Stadium during a future Cardinals - Brewers series in St. Louis. If Busch (the driver) wins, then Miller Park will be rechristened Budweiser Park during a future series in which the Cardinals visit Milwaukee. And Milwaukee has certainly had its share of visitors. French missionaries and explorers came as early as the late seventeenth century to trade with the Native Americans.

Gary Bettman says he’s staying on as NHL commissioner for the duration of his contract, which runs until 2011. Goody. Think where the sport would be without his sage leadership. There would be teams playing in Canada, instead of the Mohave Desert or the Caribbean Basin. The All-Star Game would still be played on a weekend, and possibly even advertised beforehand. Had he not been around to cancel the 1994-95 season, the league could have sustained the momentum it enjoyed in its largest media market when the Rangers won the Cup for the first time in a half-century. And it took this man of action less than a decade of watching the game suffocated by the neutral-zone trap to tweak the rules so the best players could do things like skate, or score goals. So I think it safe to say that, absent the visionary Mr. Bettman, we wouldn’t even recognize the NHL as we know it today. And now we can look forward to at least four more years of his guidance. Outstanding.

Fresh off the Super Bowl, those of us with a redneck streak turn to the sport that holds its “Super Bowl” at the start of the season - we are less than two weeks away from the Daytona 500. Let me state my biases up front: I root for Tony Stewart, in no small part because isn’t afraid to let the product pitch-man mask slip and speak his mind from time to time. Conversely, I am fairly convinced that Jeff Gordon - who generally only interrupts his anodyne corporate-speak to whine about how his problems are all someone else’s fault - represents all that is wrong with America, and is quite possibly an Al Qaeda sleeper agent. That said, a couple things have caught my eye this week. Both represent battles of will between drivers and management, one successful, one doomed:

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer had an interesting article about the short-lived effort to form a drivers’ union in NASCAR on the cusp of the inaugural race at Darlington in 1969. Evidently Bill France preferred to run the race without Richard Petty, David Pearson, or the other stars of the day than permit them to organize, and essentially stared them down. In a sense this was just another medium-sized business resisting unionization in the region of the country least hospitable to unions - a very dog-bites-man story. But I just thought it was an interesting side note to the economics of NASCAR, which as a family-owned institution is sui generis among popular sports.

Then there are the ongoing negotiations between Dale Earnhardt, Jr., who needs no union to increase his bargaining power, and his stepmother Teresa, owner of DEI. It mystifies me that negotiations have been allowed to drag on for so long. This is going to produce the most lopsided deal since Merv Griffin tried to fleece Donald Trump. Is there really nobody left at DEI who can take Teresa aside for a reality check and impress upon her that, for all intents and purposes, Junior is DEI? If he decided to follow in Dale Sr.’s footsteps and drive for Richard Childress, is there any doubt that Budweiser would go with him? Martin Truex, Jr. is a fine young driver but hardly the guy you want to stake your future on if you’re DEI, and a less valuable teammate than Harvick would be if you’re Junior. So it’s hard to see how Teresa can do anything but capitulate and give Junior whatever economics he wants, including equity in DEI for he and his sister. Half of something is still better than all of nothing isn’t it?

OK, I’m done now.

UPDATE: According to ESPN Junior has named his price: majority ownership of DEI. Same theory should hold for Teresa - 49% of the loaf is better than no loaf at all. Though she might have secured better terms had she not trashed him in the WSJ. Incidentally, I think Junior is the only superstar driver who could really pull of the “I didn’t realize how big I was” thing. Gotta love a guy with an eight-figure income who lives in manufactured housing.