The Spy that Came in from the Old: A Tribute to Tom Glavine

Cheese Cloth Retrospective:

Forgiving Tom(ahawk) Glavine




Now I've definitely taken some shots, some would say unwarranted and unprofessional, at Tommyboy (to be fair, I also attacked his family and his integrity) in the past, so my creditibility here is a bit strained.* But even the Soviet Union went back and touched up history occassionally. Why not bury the hatchet, er, tomahawk? So I figured a little love wouldn't be out of place, the day before the 2007 opener. Besides, what better way to christen my new feature, Cheesecloth Retrospective?

The Problem:

Agent Tom Glavine. The man sent to the Mets by his handler, Control John Shuerholtz, to undermine the Mets in the early 2000s. I got a lot of mileage out of this gag, and for a while, it really seemed possible that the venerable, sandbagging, questec questioning, eye-rolling, hall-of-fame-bound Glavine was underperforming for a very very bad Mets team for a reason.

He was a spy.

How else to explain why any intellegent person would choose playing for Art Howe over Bobby Cox (unless you're Cox's wife and trying to avoid his blows, of course)?

And the pitching, oh the pitching. His supposed #1 pitching was, well, toothless. How could someone with such great bonifides decline so precipitously? And why did he need to keep bringing up the Br*ves in every interview? It was a suspicious coincidence because, unlike the Alomar case, there was motive involved.

The character arc

Then he started getting results. Then the near-career ending injury almost happened. I started to soften.

The relapse

But then there was the goshdarned hemming and hawing before the 2007 season. He really liked the Mets, but uh...is it possible the Br*ves would want him back? This charade strained belief--of course the Br*ves didn't want him back, they're trying to win, dammit!

I'm thinking, well, the guy does have a nice head of hair. And his wife is pretty attractive. Attractive people always have good judgement. Either that or I've been looking at a picture of Tom with that actress with all the sisters from the South all these years.

Tom Glavine...is he just one of the guys?

Gary Carter will shake his hand? Aw, maybe he's not so bad. He was alright last year, especially in the playoffs, and had a decent spring.

VERDICT: Almost grudging acceptance
[but still holding my breath when he starts against the Br*ves on Saturday]

So get to work Toothless, and earn my love!

*I can put as many commas and parentheticals in a sentence as I want, its my blog.

...coming soon: Forgiving Timo Perez

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Still Negotiating?

Bud is still an asshat, but is there hope for loyal fans to get Indemand?

Exhibit one: the MLB is rolling in an "unbelievable" amount of $$:

Phil Rogers column:

[Bud Selig says] "I was talking to [Kansas City Royals owner] David Glass earlier, and he was saying that revenues [for MLB] were at $1.2 billion when he bought the team," Selig said. "I remember meetings when we talked about how we could get it to $2 billion. Now we'll be at $5.5 billion and growing. It's unbelievable."

Selig is right. It is unbelievable. Only a little more than a decade after owners and players wiped out the World Series because they couldn't agree on how to divide the pie, it has grown to a size no one would have predicted.Ticket prices have soared, the integrity of once-sacred records has been compromised by steroids and human growth hormone, World Series games have routinely ended after school children were in bed, and yet Selig has steered MLB into an era of unprecedented prosperity.

Now, in the classic pro-sports style, the MLB is saying it's not about money.

(Bullshit artist formerly known as DuPuy) DuPAYme, in his own words:

“This was not about maximizing profits for us,” DuPuy told the commerce committee, insisting that what drove the league to cut the DirecTV deal was a guarantee that it would launch Baseball Channel to its entire subscriber base of more than 15 million customers.

I can see why BIG CABLE finds this unreasonable and you will too, if you're Joe or Jane Fan, when you look at your bill and you're paying for a baseball channel and 300 spanish cooking chanels you can't fathom wanting.

But, overall, the MLB sounds like it got caught with its hand in the cookie jar, or like a kitten tangled up in yarn, if kittens could talk:

DuPuy, MLB's chief operating officer, says there's nothing nefarious about the deal."Our hope is that iN Demand and Dish opt in and that all fans have an opportunity to receive the Extra Innings package," DuPuy told the Associated Press. "This is not about iN Demand or Dish not being able to match the DirecTV offer; it is about their willingness to do so."This was a negotiation at arm's length over several months. DirecTV set the market. It is up to the other bidders to meet it."

If the deal isn't about money, then these MLB guys are dumber than I thought. And they're even saying they thought it through::

"I agonized over" the decision to go with DirecTV, Selig said. "Obviously our objective is to get our product in front of as many people as possible. ... But the number of people who can't get DirecTV is very, very small."

That scares me even more.