That’s not really what’s happening, but it is a scenario proposed by Ben Kabak over on Double Play Depth. It equates the drug testing fiascos of steroids, and now HGH to something that is so damaging, the two should step down for the good of the game.
Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening. After the way the comissioners before Selig were treated by the owners, I seriously doubt they will ever allow again an independant commish who has some real authority to say no. They don’t want that, they want someone who if they can’t at least push around, someone who will think and act they way that they do.
I try not to think too hard about these doom & gloom issues with baseball, but they’re becoming more and more evident as time goes by, and makes me wonder what my daughter is going to remember. After the NHL lockout, they had one of the big two like this step down. Unfortunately the “We’re the player union – we don’t do that” will prevail. Actually I feel that’s more Fehr than the actual UNION, but hey…
I’m sure we’ll hear some remark from Marvin Miller too soon. I wonder when the government will open up a can of whoop ass on these guys – I see it coming. Actually, I saw the HGH issue in every attempt to make the steroid testing stronger. They never addressed all these other issues, you know it was coming. You just knew it.

After reading various blogs and news reports this morning on the DFA’ing of Antonio Alfonseca, I must have totally missed how he wasn’t pitching good or something. Must have been some of the games I’ve fallen asleep on, or just missed totally.
Shame, as he seemed like a fun guy from what I could read.

If you’re reading my site, then I’m sure you know this already. Former Ft Worth Star Telegram reporter TR Sullivan is the beat writer now for texasrangers.com/mlb.com on the Rangers. Anyway, the weekly mailbag feature has been pretty much a useless one, as it used to be filled with questions like “When will the Rangers get some hitting?” and “When will Hicks spend some money?” – real hard hitting questions there.
Anyway, since TR took over the quality of the questions has gone up. I’ve read them all the time, but never said much about it. However, in the issue sent out this past Monday, TR used a question I sent. Here’s what I asked:

I have a question about tying the All Star Game to the World Series home-field advantage. When it was first implemented, there were quite a few statements made about it being a “two-year experiment”, and that the idea would have to be voted on again by the player’s union after those two seasons were up. I know we’re a year or two past that now, and haven’t seen any formal announcement of it being extended, how long, etc. What is the actual formal status of the “This one counts” All-Star Game stuff? Was it approved indefinitely? Is there a chance it will be revoked/changed/altered? I’d really like to find out this information.

TR replied with this:

The Players Association has approved of its use through the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, which runs through this year. It will likely be an issue — albeit a minor one — in the upcoming negotiations. The owners want it, but there are players who have been vocally opposed to it.

My response is good. I doubt it will much change, but I really would much rather home field be tied to something more concrete like which league has the better record in the regular season. Not the All Star game win. I understand the owners wanting the All Star game to count for something. I’m not against that, but I’m not for tying the World Series to that. Tie it to something else; although I don’t know what to tie it to at the moment.
What would you do?

Quite a bizarre trade scenario. Would you do it? Yeah, I probably would. Especially if the Cubs picked up some of his salary. Check this out.

Have any of you ever tried MLB.tv? I did for a month a year ago or so, but found it to be slow and the selection of games has the same limting feeling that the MLB Extra Innings Package does. These things might be more interesting if they allowed you to watch ANY game by ANY team with ANY feed you wanted.
There’s a great article about MLB.TV online today here; you should go check it out.
I’ve been a subscriber to Gameday Audio for as long as they’ve had it on MLB.Com now (about 5, maybe 6 years I think?) Anyway, it’s a great value – $15 for the whole season, all games, all feeds, plus archives. Yes, it’s audio only, but I have to recommend it over the TV option.
UPDATE Monday evening: Since I posted that article, this really cool article turned up on Baseball Prospectus, it’s about the future of MLB.TV. If they could solve the streaming problem, this could be really cool. It’d be perfect if there were no restrictions on what games I could watch. I understand local blackouts, but non local games? I should be able to see whatever I want – and I’m talking to you Peter Angelos and Comcast. Shame on you.

Test. Having some server problems.

Well, Barry Bonds finally got home run #714. An awful lot has been said about him, mostly bad. Some good, but the majority of the talk is about steroids, and that stuff. I’m not entirely sure what to make of all of it. I’d be lying if I said I knew all the facts (unlike all the hotheads on sports talk radio who seem to know everything and aren’t afraid to tell you about it). Is he totally innocent? Probably not. Is he completely guilty of everything he’s been accused of? Probably not.
I’ll say this about him. Even if he was a roid freak, you don’t gain skill from that. You don’t get to where you are even if you took more steroids than anyone else in history. He’s accomplished a lot, and has been one of the greatest hitters of all time. So congratulations to Barry for tying Babe Ruth. It’s a great milestone, and I hope someday we can talk about baseball with him again as opposed to what went in his arm. I heard someone on XM within the last week say something that’s quite interesting. All the guys who have been accused of doing steroids the last few years who are still playing all seem to have “slimmed down”. Bonds hasn’t. He’s still the bulky dude he’s been the last few years, if he was on Roids and came off, he’d be skinnier than he is now. Not like he was in Pittsburgh, mind you, but still smaller than he was recently.
Speaking of Pittsburgh, I wanted to get my wife to tell a story here that she’s told me a few times about Barry Bonds refusing to pay for cookies he ordered from my wife when she was working at a mall cookie store many years ago. This is a cool story, thanks to my wife for letting me post it here:

Back in 1987, I worked at a gourmet cookie store in a local mall in the Pittsburgh area. One of my semi regular customers was Barry Bonds’ wife who worked at a clothing store in the mall. I don’t remember her name, and don’t know if she is still married to him, but she was extremely nice and would chat with me when I waited on her.
One day, Barry came into the store with her, and ordered 2 oatmeal raisin cookies and a carton of milk. The bill came to around $2.00, but he wouldn’t pay. He thought it was beneath him to pay that much for cookies, and the fact that he was Barry Bonds. He walked out of the store without paying, and his mortified wife quietly slipped me the money. I felt so bad for her, as it was obvious that she was embarassed, but mad at Barry, as he snubbed me personally, and almost got me into trouble. This happened very early in Barry’s career as a Pittsburgh Pirate, but it showed me the type of person he was. I never cheered for him at Pirate games, even when he was doing well. In fact, at the first interleague game with the Texas Rangers, I was probably the only person loudly booing him.
Now, at this job I waited on Steeler players including Franco Harris that I could barely talk to as I was so nervous, and NONE of them treated me like dirt. Barry Bonds did, and I have never forgotten that.

I looked it up while posting this story. Barry Bonds made $100,000 in 1987 according to this page. $100k in 1987 and couldn’t afford $2 for a couple cookies and milk? No comment.

I don’t normally do in game updates, but Kevin Mench just hit a grand slam in this afternoon’s game. That sets a new Ranger record for consecutive games with a home run, now having hit one in six games.
Kevin has six home runs and 20 RBI in the last 6 games, and as I write this, the sixth is still going on. :)

From pretty much the time that Kevin Mench became a Ranger, we kept hearing about how big his head is. Well, apparently his feet were too big, too. In reading around tonight, I saw this text on a photo caption of his.

Texas Rangers’ Kevin Mench hits a two-RBI double in the sixth inning against the Seattle Mariners, Thursday, April 20, 2006, in an MLB baseball game at Safeco Field in Seattle. Mench entered the game with zero RBIs in his first 10 games and he has missed five games this season because of a sprain in the second toe of his right foot, but a specialist has determined that Mench’s shoes were a half size too small and on Thursday, he moved to size 12 1/2 from the size 12’s he says he has worn since he was 15.

A specialist, eh? How much money did that guy charge the team and Kevin to tell him he needed a larger shoe size? The wrong shoe size really seems like a reach for the fact that he had zero RBI going into tonight’s game (which is in the bottom of the 8th inning as I write this).

http://danharen.mlblogs.com/
Discovered that the A’s pitcher Dan Haren has his own blog on the mlb.com site. Made me wonder how many other players have them. I’m pretty sure the only Ranger that had one recently was David Dellucci, who is now a Phillie anyway. The first player I’m aware of that ran his own website, and this started several years ago was former Ranger pitcher CJ Nitkowski.
But I would like to see more of what Dan Haren is doing – talking about what the players do on the plane, etc.