Daily Archives: April 4, 2007

While there’s no make-up date scheduled for yesterday’s game just yet, there were a few drips of news yesterday. Well, three to be exact. Johnny Damon, who left Monday’s game with cramps in his calves now appears to have something closer to a strain, which puts his availability in doubt for the time being. Melky Cabrera was going to start in center field in yesterday’s game until it got rained out. Ron Villone, who was officially released at the end of spring training, signed a minor league deal with the Yankees yesterday and will report to triple-A Scranton. He can opt out of the deal if he’s not on the 25-man roster by May 1. Finally, Chein-Ming Wang’s rehab continues to move swiftly. He’s been throwing in the bullpen and might throw a simulated game this weekend.

By Bryan Smith

Read Alex Belth long enough, and you start to pick up the guy’s biases. I’m not talking his love for rap, Ken Burns or Central Park, but the Yankees that command most of his ink: Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera. Notice the trend.

I’m not bashing my friend Alex here, as I think any team diehard (myself included) does the same thing. As baseball fans, or really, as sports fans, we are drawn to the players we can only imagine in one uniform. Bernie, Rivera, Derek Jeter, these guys are Yankees. Being homegrown is to be one step closer to being a fan favorite. As loved as Paul O’Neil was, he was half a Red. As dominant as Roger Clemens was, he had shoved it for years with the Beaneaters.

If the Major League Baseball draft was different, and trading up in the draft allowed, Derek Jeter would not be New York’s captain. Heck, he probably wouldn’t be their shortstop. Because if trading were allowed, George Steinbrenner would have moved up in the 1993 draft after reading his staff’s reports on a young stud in Miami. Despite taking Jeter the previous year, the Yankees would have bought the top pick from Seattle and drafted Alex Rodriguez.

After suffering through 1994 with Mike Gallego, the Yankees would have never signed Tony Fernandez. Rather, they would have opened 1995 with A-Rod at short, and New York would have fallen in love with him over the next 464 home runs. Jeter would be one helluva leadoff hitter, still loved in New York, but always second fiddle to the Bronx shortstop.

That’s what is funny to be about baseball: although we don’t realize it, fan allegiances to players are as determined by player development as they are effort and media friendliness.

Alex has asked me to write about the Yankees farm system once a month this season because I think he senses a new era with this organization. Starved to end this World Series drought, the Yankees are returning to what defined their ’90s dynasty: scouting. The Yankees demanded their farm system provide them with a foundation – and it did in spades, with all the aforementioned homegrown talents – and then leaned on Brian Cashman (and Steinbrenner’s wallet) to decorate the interior.

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It’s cold and it is raining in New York. Instead of making thousands of fans–not to mention the players–suffer through the conditions, today’s game has been postponed.

By Bruce Markusen

The baseball world absorbed several significant losses during the month of March. A former commissioner, an All-Star catcher, a World Series stalwart, and two baseball lifers have all passed away in recent weeks. Here are tributes to their lives in the game.

Ed Bailey (Died on March 23 in Knoxville, Tennessee; age 75; throat cancer):

A five-time All-Star, the left-handed hitting Bailey was regarded as one of the National League’s premier catchers of the late 1950s and early 1960s. His prime seasons came with the Cincinnati Reds and San Francisco Giants, before he bounced to Milwaukee in 1964, came back to San Francisco in 1965, and then finished out his career with the Chicago Cubs and California Angels in ’65 and ’66. Bailey enjoyed his finest season in 1956, when he hit .300 with a career-high 28 home runs for the Reds. Over the course of a 14-year career, Bailey hit 155 home runs and collected 540 RBIs. He participated in one World Series, hitting a home run for the Giants during their 1963 Series loss to the New York Yankees.

Bowie Kuhn (Died on March 15 in Jacksonville, Florida; age 80; complications from pneumonia):

The second longest tenured commissioner in major league history behind Hall of Famer Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Kuhn served in baseball’s highest office from 1969 to 1984. His tenure coincided with one of the most tumultuous eras in the history of the major leagues. During Kuhn’s watch, player salaries escalated through arbitration and free agency as the Players Association assumed a far more powerful voice within the game’s infrastructure. Kuhn frequently battled union chief Marvin Miller, both at the negotiating table and through the press, with Miller gaining major strides for the players through both collective bargaining and the decisions of independent arbitrators. Known for his law-and-order approach to running the game, Kuhn frequently attempted to discipline players and owners. He attempted to censure Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, suspended Denny McLain for his ties to gambling and organized crime, disallowed the player sales of Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers, and Joe Rudi by Oakland A’s owner Charlie Finley, and suspended three members of the Kansas City Royals (Willie Mays Aikens, Jerry Martin, and Willie Wilson) after they were arrested for buying cocaine.

COMMENTARY: After first learning of the death of Bowie Kuhn, I read and heard several accounts that described the former commissioner as a pompous stuffed shirt who often seemed stiff and uncomfortable. Well, that was never my experience with Kuhn. I talked to him several times during my years at the Hall of Fame, including an interview that I conducted in front of an appreciative crowd in the Hall’s Bullpen Theater. The former commissioner struck me as thoughtful and well spoken, even charming at times. He took an interest in my work at the Hall of Fame, which is not always the case with guest speakers who come to Cooperstown. I once gave him a ride from the Otesaga Hotel to the Hall of Fame; he was gracious and open during our conversation, and grateful for having saved him from a long walk.
After talking to Kuhn for awhile, it became obvious that he was both a fan of the game and a believer in old-school values. Those are two characteristics that rank highly with me. He was also knowledgeable about the Negro Leagues, having attended games at old Griffith Stadium in Washington. He had a real interest in preserving baseball history, which motivated him to donate his collection of papers from his days in baseball’s front office. He wasn’t just a suit who held the office of commissioner while waiting for something better to come around. This was a man who had a genuine love for the game, and took pride in trying to defend some of its values.

Still, as a commissioner, Kuhn was far from perfect. He made his share of mistakes, which the media of the seventies and eighties usually portrayed in earnest. His legacy was mixed, with some obvious failures, some more subtle successes, and a nearly endless supply of controversy and conflict. But I think it’s safe to say that he was a very important and significant commissioner, a man who presided over the game at a time when it faced major upheaval because of labor issues, drug problems, expansion, the growth of television, and the presence of strong personalities in both ownership and the union. Rather than skirt these issues, he usually faced them, sometimes for good and other times for bad. In writing a complete history of baseball, I think that an author would have to devote at least one chapter to the reign of Bowie Kuhn.

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