Osama bin Laden, the Mets, and the Phillies

I hope you will indulge me with a (mostly) non-baseball post regarding the news that Osama bin Laden is no more.

I was watching Channel 11 news last night, and at around 10:40 p.m. or so, one of their anchors made a very strange announcement: That President Barack Obama would be addressing the nation with a national security announcement, and that it had nothing to do with Libya.

My very first thought was that it was something to do with Osama bin Laden. Here's what I wrote on Facebook last night:

"Just saw that President Obama is about to make a national security announcement in around 15 minutes. Could it mean that Osama bin Laden has been nabbed?"

A few minutes later, news started trickling out that not only was Osama found, but that he was dead. President Obama said, "Justice has been done." My response to the news was a lot less eloquent. "Ding, dong, the &^%$# is dead!" I wrote on Facebook.

In flipping around the dials last night to watch the coverage, I heard about Philadelphia Phillies fans (and Mets fans in the ballpark) united as one, chanting, "U-S-A! U-S-A!" So I watched some of the game. It used to be that when breaking news came out during sporting events, fans who brought radios to the game would spread the word (when I was at the Pine Tar Game, that's how we first heard what George Brett was flipping out about.) Now word spreads via smartphones.

Squawker Jon and I were wondering what the Phillies and Mets players were thinking, as the chants went around. Apparently, they were the last people to know in the ballpark.

I normally wouldn't have been watching the end of a 14-inning Sunday night Mets-Phillies game to the bitter end. But I did actually catch the end of the game, and saw the Mets win.

* * *

I have lived on Staten Island for a decade. When I first moved here, I used to love gazing the Twin Towers when walking to the Staten Island Ferry. Then I saw huge plumes of smoke where the buildings used to be. Now, I see the Staten Island 9/11 memorial. This morning, I will stop there again, and pay my respects to those who were murdered on September 11, 2001.
 
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Listen to Me on the Radio This Morning

I am going to be on the radio at 10:30 a.m. today, squawking about the Yankees. You can hear me talking to host Mike Lindsley on Syracuse's The Score 1260 AM. You can click here to listen live online. Mike is now a weekday host from 12-2 p.m. on the station. Congrats, Mike!

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Jose Reyes' George Brett Pine Tar Moment

In 1983, George Brett went berserk when an umpire's controversial call cost him a homer and appeared to cost the Royals a victory over the Yankees. Last night, Jose Reyes went berserk when an umpire's controversial call cost him a triple and appeared to doom the Mets to defeat. But the Royals would eventually win that game, and last night, the Mets ended up winning as well.

See video of Reyes' reaction after getting called out at third.

See video from the Pine Tar Game (Squawker Lisa was at this game!)

Unlike the Royals, the Mets did not have the call overturned, but they also did not have to wait 25 days to finish the game and get the win after the American League ruled that Brett's homer should be allowed and the game would have to resume at that point. Instead, the Mets rallied, not once, but twice, in the late innings to beat the Nationals and win their sixth straight.

If this turns out to be a magical year for the Mets (not that I think it will, but that's the nature of magical years - you can't predict them) the magic began last night. How else do you explain Daniel Murphy homering to tie the game right after Reyes was called out, making a bad play at second in the bottom of the eighth to help the Nationals score the go-ahead run, then doubling in two runs in the ninth to seal the win?

The most magical thing I will hope for this season is that the Mets find a way to keep Reyes. He's the catalyst who hit a clutch extra-base hit in the eighth inning of a 2-1 game and legged it out for what should have been a triple. Then, when he was called out, he displayed fire you wouldn't see from most Mets.

The reality check is that, even after winning six straight, the Mets are still 11-13, but at least they are out of last place and look headed in the right direction.

***

One final note on last night's game - Rick Ankiel had to give up pitching because he couldn't control his pitches from the mound to the plate, yet he was able to make an unbelievable dead-on throw from the outfield wall to third base on the Reyes hit.

A Look at Bloomberg Sports Front Office 2011

Before the start of the season, I had a chance to go to the launch of this year's edition of Bloomberg Sports' Front Office fantasy baseball software. I've been checking out the Front Office 2011 the last few days.

The Bloomberg software enables you to sync up your fantasy league if you play Yahoo!, ESPN or CBS Sports. There are a variety of sites, both free and pay, where you can look up players from your team, but even if they allow you to maintain a roster, you have to manually update it when you make changes.

With Bloomberg, however, I set it up to sync with my ESPN league whenever I logged on. So the first thing I see is a league dashboard tailored to my team and my league.

The dashboard features a bar graph (the product launch emphasized how Bloomberg is big on graphical representations of data) showing how my team compares to the rest of the league in each statistical category. Below the graph are recommendations for free agents and lineup moves. The default is for all statistics, but clicking on an individual bar in the graph brings up specific recommendations for free agents and lineup moves to help that statistical category.

When I checked the recommendations yesterday, I was surprised to see my top two suggested free agent pickups were Rays first baseman Dan Johnson and Blue Jays outfielder Juan Rivera. These players are barely owned in my league. At the start of the week, both were hitting under .150.

But Bloomberg has a proprietary "B-rank" that ranks each player, and they rank these players higher than most other places.

Perhaps they are on to something, because Rivera had three hits and his second homer in three games last night and has raised his average to .210. Johnson went 1-for-2 with two walks, which at least moved his OBP over .200 (his BA is .143).

I'm not sure how helpful the lineup suggestions are - most of the ones I've gotten tend to be along the lines of "bench so-and-so because he is not playing today." I also keep getting encouraged to put the Cardinals' Ryan Franklin in my lineup, when he is on my bench for a good reason - he's lost his closer job and is much more likely to hurt my team than to help it.

One feature that wasn't available at the start of the season but is now operational is the trade analyzer, which recommended several trades for me. One trade would have me deal Nationals' starting pitcher Jordan Zimmermann for Rays' SP James Shields. At the moment, Shields is doing a lot better and he has a bigger name, so I'm not sure why the other team would want to make this deal. But the two pitchers are not far apart in B-rank, and in Yahoo! at least, Zimmermann's overall ranking is higher.

Bloomberg is offering free five-day trials of Front Office 2011. A season subscription is $19.95. You can check out their software here.

Omar Minaya Appears at Fordham; Mets Keep Winning

When the Mets were in free fall earlier this month, I grew sick of Terry Collins' postgame news conferences, when he kept insisting that the Mets would turn it around and go on a long winning streak. At one point, I think he mentioned winning nine of eleven, another time, something like winning six straight. I just wanted the Mets to win one straight.

Turns out Terry was right - the Mets have now won five straight. 5-0 since Jason Bay returned. And 5-0 since R.A. Dickey, after the team's last loss, said:

We can't just keep telling ourselves, 'Oh, we’re a better team than this.' We may not be. And we've got to be honest about that, and identify what we're doing wrong, and do it better. That's the only way you have any real growth…

Dickey is one of the few Mets to show leadership qualities. Now let's hope he can snap his own losing streak Wednesday and help the Mets continue to win.

Before the game, I went to see a panel discussion at Fordham moderated by Lenny Cassuto, co-editor of "The Cambridge Companion to Baseball." The panel included former Met GM Omar Minaya, baseball historian John Thorn, baseball writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Alan Schwarz and Matthew Jacobson, a Yale professor and contributor to the Cambridge book.

It was a lively discussion on topics ranging from the declining number of African-Americans in baseball to instant replay. Some of the sharpest exchanges revolved around steroids. Thorn saw no need to make any changes to the record book, even going so far as to suggest that if Babe Ruth played today, he would be Matt Stairs. Schwarz said that he did not look forward to telling his young son that the home run record was held by Barry Bonds. Thorn replied that Bonds was the best hitter he's ever seen, and Thorn had seen Ted Williams play.

The panel was also not always in agreement on baseball's popularity in the U.S. When Minaya said that he saw plenty of baseball fields whenever he was on a plane coming in for a landing, Schwarz asked if anyone was on those fields and Cassuto said that he had just read that more and more baseball fields are being paved over.

When Minaya said that his purest experience of seeing a baseball game might have been in Cuba, Schwarz noted that "they have a hell of a salary cap."

Minaya said he would not want to see a robot determining balls and strikes because you need to be able to "go out there and argue."

Minaya mentioned that he had played ball in Tuscany, which made me think of Rick Peterson's statement when the Mets got rid of him that they were replacing a hardwood floor with Tuscany tile.

I'm still not sure that the Mets are better off with Dan Warthen, but the way the pitching has been the last few days, the Tuscany tile is looking pretty good.

On Philip Humber, Phil Hughes, Breaking Up No-Hitters, and Booing After a Missed Pop-Up

Last night, when Chicago White Sox pitcher Phil Humber was in the seventh inning of a no-hit game against the Yankees, I tried to jinx him on Facebook by talking about it. And within 20 seconds (I am not kidding!), Alex Rodriguez got a hit to break up the no-hitter. It was the highlight of the evening for me! (Oh, and by the way, a friend pointed out that if Humber had succeeded in throwing a no-hitter, he would have been the seventh ex-Met to do so, with the Mets still never having a no-hitter of their own. I loved telling Squawker Jon that!)

Now, the not-so-fun stuff. After a setback Monday, Phil Hughes has a date with an MRI tube today. I don't understand why the Yankees have been so reticent about having Hughes checked out earlier. I wrote on April 9, after his second start, that he should get a medical exam. It's now April 26, and he's finally going to be checked out, weeks after being put on the disabled list. What was the holdup? Did the Yankees had to get a referral from their HMO or something?

I felt terrible for A.J. Burnett -- we had the Great A.J. last night, but the Yankees couldn't get any runs to help him.

There was something very weird that happened in the ninth inning, when Rafael Soriano was on the mound, that I thought would be a pretty big story. But I only saw it mentioned in a Wally Matthews ESPN blog entry, and at the end of a Star-Ledger game article. Alexi Ramirez hit a popup in the ninth inning. Soriano pointed and motioned, as if to say that he couldn't get it. Derek Jeter came charging in, but he wasn't quick enough catch the ball, which dropped to the ground.

And then the crowd booed. Yes, Yankee fans were booing! Now, it was unclear whether the fans were booing Jeter, or Soriano, or both, but Twitter and Facebook were all a-flutter last night over the incident. (Unless I missed it, the YES Network, of course, didn't get into discussing the booing, and didn't show the clip again in the postgame wrapup.) At any rate, I thought this would be a much bigger controversy, but it's downplayed in today's papers. Very strange.

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In Defense of Ian O'Connor's Derek Jeter Book

Yes, I'm going there. After many months of criticizing ESPN New York columnist Ian O'Connor for his writing a half-dozen fawning articles about Derek Jeter this winter without disclosing that he was writing a book that promised "unique access" to the Yankee captain, I actually feel compelled to defend O'Connor on a couple of things that I think he's being unfairly criticized for.

First off, there's the curious case of Jeter going up to New York Post writer George King the morning after the Post published a front-page story about the book. That article discussed how The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter revealed how Jeter's dislike of teammate Alex Rodriguez put A-Rod in the Yankee "snubhouse" (The Post's term, not O'Connor's!)

In a followup piece by King entitled "Jeter: It's not my book," Jeter didn't confirm or deny any of the tidbits. But he told King:

"Make sure everyone knows it's not mine," Jeter said. "I had nothing to do with that book."

Well, nobody had suggested that Jeter had actually authored the tome himself. But if he really had "nothing to do with that book," a book that has been promoted of giving "unique access" to Jeter, then why is he quoted talking to O'Connor in the book, according to an ESPN New York article about the tome? And why would Newsday columnist Ken Davidoff, who witnessed the King-Jeter conversation, write that "Jeter was aware [the book] was being written and agreed to be interviewed for it"?

Not to mention the fact that O'Connor did over 200 interviews for the book, many of whom were people in the Jeter camp. Did Jeter have control over everything written in O'Connor's book? Doubtful. But he did agree to be interviewed for it, and many of the people close to him were also interviewed for it. To say that he had "nothing to do with" the book is pretty disingenuous.

The second thing I will defend O'Connor on, albeit in a backhanded way, is the notion that he was somehow out to get Jeter. I've even heard him compared to Selena Roberts. Really? Roberts wrote nasty column after nasty column about A-Rod before writing an entire bile-filled book on him. O'Connor is just the opposite. In a town where burnishing the Jeter legend is par for the course with New York columnists, O'Connor is in a class by himself. Remember these moments, all written without any mention of the upcoming book?

* October 24, 2010:  In an article entitled, "Expect Yankees to splash cash on Jeter," O' Connor said, "I believe a fair deal would be for four years at $23 million per."

* October 28, 2010:  O'Connor writes a bizarre column tying in Joe Girardi's job fortune to Jeter's, saying that Girardi should get a warning with his next contract saying, "Change, or we'll hire someone else to bench The Captain."

*November 21, 2010: O'Connor interviews Jeter's personal trainer Jason Riley for a column. Ian managed to keep a straight face when Riley said "I think it's very realistic" for Jeter to play through 2017, and when Riley said, "The desire to be the greatest can never be turned down by Father Time."

O'Connor also uncritically ran this other Riley comment (basically, most of the article is an infomercial for Jeter and his trainer): "You can't put an age on the heart of an athlete, and Derek's got one of the purest hearts in sports," Riley said. "He's not going to allow himself to have another down year, if he even considers 2010 a down year. His internal drive separates him from others. I've worked with very few people who go after the game like he does." The piece ends with O'Connor saying, "If the trainer is right, this next contract Jeter signs won't be his last." Oy.

* December 5, 2010: Regarding the Yankees coming to terms with Jeter on a new contract, O'Connor wrote, "The Yankees could have offered Jeter minimum wage, free parking and cab fare to and from the ballpark, and he would have found a way to accept it."

* March 26, 2011:  "For now, Jeter is still Jeter, a future Hall of Famer who just needed some extra face time with the hitting coach, Kevin Long. With the contract done and the footwork adjusted, the smart money says the captain will make something of a comeback this year."


There's also O'Connor writing for the Bergen Record in spring 2009 that the Yankees would be a better team without A-Rod, and that the team should just release him. So it's not like O'Connor is a Team A-Rod writer.


I haven't gotten to read O'Connor's book yet, but I just find it hard to believe that O'Connor did a hatchet job on the captain. Go to Houghton Mifflin's web site and read the book description, and an excerpt from Chapter One, and see what I mean. Heck, the book starts with this line, "Like all good stories about a prince, this one starts in a castle." Does that sound like an author with an agenda to get Jeter? I don't think so. Just because O'Connor has written that Jeter isn't always perfect doesn't make this a smear.

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