Month: March 2008 (Page 12 of 21)

John Romano of the St. Petersburg Times calls Yankees’ manager Joe Girardi a hypocrite for not speaking out about how Shelley Duncan spiked Rays’ middle infielder Akinori Iwamura when sliding into second base in a spring training game on Tuesday.

And I don’t mind that Girardi felt Rays infielder Elliot Johnson crossed a line by bowling over Yankees catcher Francisco Cervelli in a spring training game last week. No matter what the Rays, or Pete Rose, or anyone else says, baseball has always had unspoken rules about the time and place for aggressive play.

What I do mind is that now Girardi is acting like a hypocrite.

The New York manager continues to tap dance his way around questions concerning Shelley Duncan’s spikes-high slide into Rays second baseman Akinori Iwamura.

Girardi tried to avoid the topic after Wednesday’s game, and then again 24 hours later. He said he still hasn’t seen a replay, despite video on ESPN, numerous newspaper Web sites and several YouTube posts.

And this is only spring training! Can’t wait to see how this plays out when the games actually matter.

Richard Justice of SportingNews.com had something rather interesting to say in one of his recent articles – that Bud Selig is the best commissioner baseball has ever seen.

He brilliantly steered the sport from the dark days of the 1994 World Series cancellation to record-setting growth. He is the biggest reason baseball has labor peace, parity and attendance that has increased for four years in a row.

A new generation of ballparks has been built under his watch, and he expertly guided baseball into the Internet age.

His only fault is that he failed to quickly understand the impact steroids were having on the game. The same, too, is true of owners, general managers, trainers and doctors.

Steroids happened. We can’t ignore that. Selig also pushed for the best testing agreement in the sport’s history and had the guts to order George Mitchell to tell as much of the story as he could.

Okay, I don’t disagree that Selig has put asses back in seats. I also don’t disagree that he’s made the game profitable again. But to dance around the steroids issue by saying, “he failed to quickly understand the impact steroids were having” is a joke. He failed to understand because he was banking off it. If Selig wasn’t making money off of players hitting 500-foot home runs, do you think he would have jumped on the steroids issue a little sooner? Maybe even make himself look like a hero for trying to keep the game “clean?” Hmm…