April 21, 2009

This Axis of Evil is Berry, Berry Bad for Beisbol

Two members of Dubya’s “Axis of Evil” – North Korea and Iran – continue to cause no end of trouble for the USA. And one day soon I’ll write about them.

In the meantime, it’s time to earn my entry into the brotherhood of Truly Weighty Columnists by writing a rhapsodic column about baseball, this one occasioned by the opening of the new Yankee Stadium, which naturally leads to the subject of Major League Baseball’s own Terrible Trio.

Any roster of baseball’s Boys Behaving Badly has to lead off with one Barry Bonds. The ex-Giant didn’t originate baseball’s steroid epidemic, but his Frankenstein’s Monster act unquestionably created the greatest threat to the Integrity of the Game since “Say it ain’t so, Joe!”

Bonds may be retired (involuntarily), but his opprobrium continues to overhang MLB. For example, last week’s micro-mini-celebration of Gary Sheffield’s 500^th dinger merely served to recall Sheff’s admission that Barry B had invited him into the Performance Enhancing Drug wing of the infamous Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative. (Sheffield claimed he didn’t know what the substance known as “clear” contained. Yeah, just like former Sen. Roger Jepsen thought that sex spa was a “health club.”)

Even the off-season’s biggest news relates to back to Bonds – the PED confession of Yankee third-sacker Alex Rodriguez, the onetime Great Clean Hope who would wipe the stain of Barry’s shame from the home run record books.

Of course, the only reason that damned spot persists is the passivity of Bud “What Me Hurry?” Selig, the owner’s own owner-commissioner who never met a problem he couldn’t sweep under the rug. Alongside his heresies – shutting down the strike-interrupted 1994 season, instituting interleague play and having the outcome of the All-Star exhibition determine home-field advantage for the World Series – Bud will be remembered for his “see-no-evil” presiding over the steroid era.

But even Bud may not be able to submerge the latest dastardly deeds of the Axis’ third spoke – those Damn Yankees. The full extent of the Bombers’ perfidy was on display in the unveiling of their spanking-new $1.5 billion playground for the rich and famous. Yes, you read that right: $1.5 billion for a stadium, including $400 million in public money, in the midst of a recession that has shaken the Big Apple to its Mighty Core.

The Yanks and their new home provide apt metaphors of all that is wrong with the self-styled Capital of the World. Flush with prototypical New York cash and contempt, the franchise swept the offseason free-agent market clean of its biggest prizes – 2007 Cy Young Award-winner C.C. Sabathia, fireballer A.J. Burnett and slugging first baseman Mark Teixeira – for a total of $423.5 million. That spree left them with the game’s four biggest contracts for the bargain price of just under $800 million.

Four-tenths of a billion dollars may be a yawner for a nation getting accustomed to the Monopoly money of bailouts, stimulus and omnibus, but perennial Steinbrennerian spending is more than enough to blow out baseball’s salary structure and leave small-market teams gasping.

Yet to finance the new ballpark and this discomforting expenditure pattern, the Yanks further embarrassed baseball by charging a soak-the-rich $2,500 per game for its poshest, closest-in seats – an greed orgy that had even owners’ apologist Selig sputtering when interviewed during the game that inconveniently interrupted the new park’s over-the-top launch.

So how appropriate that amidst the nauseating array of first pitches, homers and so on in the inaugural contest, a small-market squad – my Cleveland Indians – dispatched C.C. to the showers before laying a nine-run inning on an assortment of relievers en route to a 10-2 thumping of baseball’s Evil Empire.

P.S.: Two days later the Clevelanders delivered another humiliation. Final score: 22-4. With a large number of those empty $2,500 seats making for a really ugly background on national TV.
 

Perhaps now we can send the Tribe to deal with Messrs. Kim Jong II and Ahmadinejad.