The Futility Infielder

When we're not fantasizing about rebuilding a downtrodden franchise as its GM or replacing a skipper who should be run out of town, we seam-headed bloggers spend plenty of time pondering the life of a ballclub's beat reporter. It sounds like a sweet deal: you get to see all the games, travel to all the ballparks in the league, spend hours talking to players, coaches and the manager, and generally glimpse behind the curtain at how a team works. You're talkin' baseball all day long, and they PAY you to do it. A bad day at the ballpark beats a good day in a fluorescently-lit cubicle.

Bronx Banter's Alex Belth has a lengthy and fascinating interview with Buster Olney, the reporter for the New York Times who covered the Yankee beat from 1998 to 2001 --a pretty good run which saw the team reach four World Series and come within an inning of winning all four. Prior to that, Olney covered the Mets, the Orioles (when they were good), and the Padres (when they weren't); now he's traded in the horsehide for the pigskin, covering the NY Giants because the travel demands are less intensive.

In addition to offering a less rosy view of the beat life and its effect on a person, Olney's got *plenty* to dish about the inner workings of the recent Yankee and Met clubhouses and about the game in general. Essential reading for fans of either team, not to mention just about everybody else.

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The latest on Yankee reliever Steve Karsay is that Dr. James Andrews examined his shoulder on Tuesday and found no rotator cuff damage, but gave him two cortisone shots. The aforementioned Mr. Belth emailed Baseball Prospectus injury guru Will Carroll about Karsay's woes. Here's what Carroll had to say:

[Karsay] needed relief in two distinct areas. NEVER a good sign and one that they're already thinking he's at significant risk. Still, it's just inflammation and not something surgical so there's still a chance he'll come back. Give him a week's rest and he can pick up his rehab again. Chance of recurrence? 100%.

I believe the proper term for that is double-ouch.

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In a whole new league for recurring ouches is ESPN's disaster timeline for Montreal's Olympic Stadium. I'm not sure whether "comical if it weren't so sad" or "sad if it weren't so comical" is the proper description of the Big Owe, which hosted what is likely its final home opener on Tuesday. But I do know that a million drunken monkeys at a million drafting tables couldn't come up with a worse design for that roof than stadium designer Roger Taillibert did.

And the monkeys who designed the roof at Milwaukee's Miller Park didn't do such a hot job either.