No News Like Good News with Gary Gnu

The Mets have announced an 11:00 am (PST) news conference to officially announce Art Howe as manager of the New York's National League train wreck.

In other news, Bud Selig is slapping hands.

The Commissioner's Office is fining the Mets $50,000 for the leaks surrounding the Manager-Go-Round during the World Series.

Let's see; a payroll of $100 million, franchise value $450 million, possible contract $14-15 million...fine about illegal specualtion regarding the contract $50,000.


PRICELESS

"Yah, that seems about right."

Okay, Selig is slapping wrists in a Paul Lynde manner rather than Hammurabi.

A punishment of 4 thousandths of the total of the proposed deal is hardly worth envoking.

This is more ridiculous than the $50,000 the Rangers had to pay for illegal tampering with Grady Fuson.

Why are we surprised?

This is the Bud Selig era of administration. Screw up, cook books and make sure you win friends and influence people through bribes, kick backs and abusing your power.

By the way, did anyone else see the CBA deal? It's been gutted. The world draft is out, compensation for free agents is back in. Nothing has changed. So the Player's Association basically handed Seligula his ass and he kissed their feet for the ordeal.

It reminds us of Christopher Columbus weeping at the foot of the throne to regain his titles just before his death.

Some have been saying that Seligula doesn't get credit for saving baseball from a strike.

Please.


When administration does not have the balls to get a decent deal and caves in to the demands of labor, that's not leadership. That's pandering. That's basic business administartion 101.

Basically what the late August snafu boiled down to was Selig being unable to avoid the confrontation altogether months in advance to save MLB the sake of the embarassment. Any significant changes agreed to have been dropped. Sniff, sniff, does anyone else smell George Steinbrenner's legal team?

The drums may be uinaudible right now, but Seigula's ass is in a sling over this. As the next contract looms or if another ambitious owner decides to mount a coup, Bud Selig might just be the next Richard M Nixon. Without the charisma and warm and fuzzy feelings.

We find it amusing that Selig does anything. You would think that Sandy Alderson would have stepped in and starting taking control of the PR situation.

RANTINGS, ER, RATINGS

We don't really think that Nielsen Ratings are the way to go to when discussing MLB or sports at all, for that matter.


We live in Northern California and the yelling and screaming we heard this season during the World Series was louder than last year. Sure it was because the Giants were involved, but there are far more Barry Bonds haters than people realize.


Further, don't people get together to watch major sporting events? Don't they go to bars and restaurants?


Our streets were littered with cars several times in the last weeks.


A great AP article stated that ratings were down, even in California. Yah, might have something to do with the fact that 75,000 to 100,00 people weren't at home. Instead they were working security, driving the buses and serving the beer at the games. Not to mention the games started when most of them were still in traffic.

The key is that NBC and some of the other networks have realized that cost efficiency now translates into pointing out week ratings to keep the cost of labor down. While NBC execs are trying to win back the cast of Friends for another year (please, God, Buddha, Krishna, NO!) they are slamming ER and the West Wing (can't say we care too much) to try and lower the cost of keeping those shows and still keep their ratings high enough to stay on the air.

LABOR

John Sickels recently pointed out that the draft language of the draft (we love labor jokes) of the Collective Bargaining Agreement has been gutted. One of the rallying cries of Seligula was the draft. Now MLB has basically given in to the Player's Association on everything.

Death and Taxes

So basically Bud Selig badmouthed baseball for 18 months until push came to shove in late August and then tried to patch the game back together with his CBA deal. Sort of like the King telling the peasants that they wouldn't have to pay taxes for the land they live on this harvest...but they're going to war next spring against a king in another land so they've all been conscripted as well as being required to pay double taxes and produce twice as much next year.