The Futility Infielder

And you should be too...

• Caught between two batches of player comments, I partook in an email chat about the Dodgers with fellow bloggers and Dodger fans Rich Lederer, Rob McMillan and Jon Weisman, the latter of whom has the transcript of our little roundtable. Suffice it to say that the hiring of Giants assistant GM Ned Colletti as Paul DePodesta's successor fills me with dread (thanks to Jon for inviting me into this little powwow, by the way).

• My man Alex Belth might be his best when his writing only tangentially touches on baseball. This guest piece at Baseball Analysts (Lederer and Bryan Smith's site, where I delivered my Sausage Race piece) is a touching must-read. I think I've got something in my eye.

• The Cy Young voting was, to put it bluntly, for shit, especially in the AL, where Johan Santana got jobbed. The MVPs I'm much happier about. Steve Goldman has an excellent piece of reader mail in the latest Pinstriped Blog on the AL winner: "Aren't you being just a little disingenuous in your A-Rod column, when you wonder why Yankee fans haven't embraced him? Yankee fans aren't smarter than other fans (I wish they were, especially the ones I end up next to at sports bars, but —) The "blame your best player for your team's failure" syndrome has long been identified. If you don't win, it's his fault! — lack of leadership. See all the negative things ever written about Bonds."

• In the wake of ESPN Rag's expansive cover story on steroids in baseball, we've got a stiffer new policy, one that starts the penaltlies at 50 games, includes a lifetime ban for the third offense and testing for amphetamines ("greenies"). Will Carroll has an excellent Q&A about the new policy. In the New York Sun, Tim Marchman explains why the deal is good PR but a horrible precedent in terms of Congressional involvement. Since this may be behind the subscription wall for some, I'll excerpt:

I still think the idea of Congress subjecting Americans to international law is dubious at best, especially when that law is to be administered by the International Olympic Committee, and I still think Congress was wrong to threaten to write laws that would forbid ballplayers and other athletes from taking legal substances.

This last point is subtler than it is usually thought to be. Because the federal government subsidizes professional sports through various elements of the tax code - especially those that allow municipal bonds meant for the construction of ballparks to be issued tax-free and those that allow corporate entertainment in pricey luxury boxes to be written off as a business expense - it does have a legitimate interest in the inner workings of those sports. The appropriate way to protect that interest, though, would be to threaten sports owners with the revocation of those elements of the tax code, not to threaten legislation of the game.

The difference is important. In the former scenario, the government says that the corruption and illegitimacy brought about by drug use in sports is an issue important enough that the government is willing to forego revenue over it; in the latter, it keeps on subsidizing wickedness while creating a class of citizens to whom a different set of laws applies.

Of course, Congress would never take tax benefits worth billions away from sports owners - plutocrats who in their day jobs as CEOs contribute millions to re-election campaigns and party committees; so, rather than dealing with the problem through the appropriate means, it bullied players and owners into cutting a new deal by claiming the law would be re-written if they didn't.

I can't sign on to that. Process is important, and there are things much more valuable than ensuring juiced-up shortstops can have the book thrown at them if they fail a drug test - things like ensuring Congress doesn't illegitimately intervene in the workings of American businesses. Yesterday might have been a good day for baseball, but it was a bad day for the country at large.

Speaking of those tax benefits...

• ...Nobody covers stadium issues like Neil deMause. This chat, this BP piece, and this Village Voice piece are all required reading for those of you who care about new ballparks, particularly the ones slated to come to the Bronx and Flushing Meadows in 2009. Some frightening stuff there, including the part about $800 million in hidden costs; throw in Bruce Ratner's Brookyn Nets boondoggle and you're up over a billion for New York taxpayers. Quoth deMause:

* YANKEES: $379-469 million ($140m in city funds, $15m in city rent rebates on current stadium, $0-90m in Metropolitan Transportation Authority capital expenses, $55m in tax-exempt bond subsidies, $44m in property-tax savings, $22m in sales-tax breaks on construction materials, $103m in forgone city rent revenues)

* METS: $435 million ($85m in city funds, $15m in city rent rebates on current stadium, $75m in state funds, $96m in forgone city parking revenues, $55m in tax-exempt bond subsidies, $39m in property-tax savings, $16m in sales-tax breaks on construction materials, $54m in forgone city rent revenues)

* NETS: $399 million ($100m in city funds, $100m in state funds, $50m in tax-exempt bond savings, $21m in property-tax savings, $14m in sales-tax breaks on construction materials, $114m in discounted land price)

So much for the defeat of that West Side Olympic/Jets stadium when it comes to saving New Yorkers money.

• Back to drugs. On the greenies topic, accompanying Jack Curry's piece in the New York Times is a photo of Jim Bouton (circa the time I met him)and a quote from Ball Four: "We don't get them from the trainers because greenies are against club policy, so we get them from other teams who have friends who are doctors of friends who know where to get greenies." Funny that Sen. Jim Bunning's sanctimony about performance enhancers doesn't cover the players of his day who were "beaned up." Or that Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war, can find the time to posture on this issue when he's got bigger fish to fry.

Speaking of fish to fry, it's back to reading the tea leaves of toolsy High-A outfielders and the General Managers who love them...