SOX GRABBED A JOHNSON OF THEIR OWN...CHARLES...BUT RELEASED HIM IMMEDIATELY...APPARENTLY, THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE CHARLES IN THE RED SOX ORGANIZATION...RIGHT DR. CHARLES "P.C." STEINBERG?

B.K. BROILER-KIM SENT TO THE ROCKIES
Sox save $400,000; woohoo!. Deal contingent upon Sox ownership approval.

THIS PICTURE PROVES THAT THE REPORTS ARE WRONG: KIM ACTUALLY DID TRY AND MAKE 1 FRIEND IN BASEBALL.

WHEN PIGS FLY...FOR THE CASH

HUB SOURCE:
A HUB MLB SOURCE CONFIRMS CHB STORY...$OX AGREED TO SCHEDULE S.T. GAMES IN ARIZONA AS PART OF THE SCHILLING DEAL... AGREEMENT IS FOR 2 YEARS...RED SOX NATION HAS GOBBLED UP THESE TICKETS...D'BACKS LIKELY RAKE IN AN EXTRA $1.5 MILLION PER GAME(conservatively), SO LIKELY AT LEAST $6 MILLION. GOOD DEAL FOR THE $OX, AS THEY DIDN'T HAVE TO INCLUDE CA$H IN THE SCHILLING DEAL. D'BACKS WERE ONLY GOING TO DO DEAL IF IT GAVE THEM FISCAL RELIEF. ONLY LOSERS ARE THE PLAYERS, WHO HAVE TO FLY TO THE WEST COAST FOR 2 MEANINGLESS GAMES BEFORE FLYING BACK EAST TO NEW YORK TO FACE THE YANKEES. IF THE SOX LOOK SLUGGISH TO START THE SEASONS, THEN QUESTIONS NEED TO BE RAISED TO THEO AND THE TRIO. IT IS NOT JAPAN JETLAG, BUT STILL IS NOT HELPING THE SOX PLAYERS GET READY FOR THE YANKEES. A SPLIT SQUAD IS BEING SENT, SO HOPEFULLY THE AFFECT SHOULD BE MINIMAL. WAS THEO HAVING A COUPLE OF VODKA TONICS WHEN HE AGREED TO THIS? THIS SMELLS OF LUCCHINO ALL THE WAY. GOOD DEAL FROM A BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE.

Hub Insider-Scottsdale, Arizona

-This is a New England Sports Hub exclusive

Tom Brady was spotted with friends, including current Giants pitcher Kirk Rueter, in the stands along the first base line at a Giants/White Sox spring training game on Thursday afternoon. He signed autographs for some young fans; most autograph seekers were kept at bay by park staff during the game. Once the game was over, Brady was mobbed by fans, but was very gracious about the attention.

The 2-time Super Bowl MVP participated in San Francisco Giants batting practice on Friday morning, dressed in full Giants workout gear. Players made a few friendly wagers on whether the former left handed hitting catching prospect (Tom was drafted in 1995 by the Montreal Expos in the 18th round of the MLB draft) would hit one out. He showed his rust at first, then showed some pop to the gaps, and a nice stroke to right field. The sound coming off the bat rang of low A ball, at best.

Brady then went to shag balls at first base, but thought better of it after a few hard shots came his way, and moved out to chat with some Giants players and friends in right field. Brady finished his tryout by shagging some fungo flies.

About that action in the outfield; the naysayers were right, as Brady failed to reach the wall, let alone pop one over. Power outage aside, life is good for the Patriot's star quarterback. -NF

NO SYMPATHY FOR BASEBALL'S DEVIL

HUB RUMOR: URLACHER COULD BE A PATRIOT ON OR BEFORE DRAFT DAY. The Bears would seek a #1 draft pick and cap relief. Urlacher would renegotiate his deal in order to set himself free, ala C.D.

Sorry: Charlie to Enter the NBA draft-NCB - Source: UConn's Villanueva to declare for draft

C.V. will cash in by being drafted in the first round, but is putting his longterm future at risk by leaving early. Calhoun knows what it takes to get his players prepared for the NBA; Charlie still needs to develop many facets of his game, especially on the defensive end. NBA execs that saw him on the bench during the crucial final minutes in the loss to N.C. State in the NCAA tournament will give pause before him in the lottery. This guy is taking the opposite path of NBA rookie of the year Omeka Okafor, who graduated in 3 years as an honor student and was truly NBA ready. It's definitely a mistake; just how critical a blunder it is will not be known for several years.
File under: BIG MAN PROJECT. -NF

What side of Randy "Moon" Moss will Patriot fans see on September 8th? I know one side that I hope we don't get to see again.

1994-95: Moss landed at Marshall after losing scholarships to Notre Dame (pleaded guilty to battery) and Florida State (positive marijuana test).

1997: Was consensus All-America pick for second consecutive season; finished fourth (behind cornerback Charles Woodson and quarterbacks Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf) in Heisman Trophy voting.

1998: Drafted in first round, 21st overall, by Minnesota. Was second receiver drafted, behind Kevin Dyson (16th by Tennessee). . . . Earned rookie of the year, All-Pro and Pro Bowl honors, setting the rookie record for TD catches with 17 -- including a three-TD game at Dallas on Thanksgiving.

1999: Fined $10,000 for verbally abusing official in Nov. 14 game. . . . Again selected to Pro Bowl and was game's MVP.

2000: Fined $40,000 for squirting official with water in Jan. 16 game (later reduced to $25,000). . . . Kicked off an airplane June 12 in Charleston, W.Va., after becoming argumentative; government, league chose not to fine him. . . Fined $25,000 for making contact with official in Oct. 29 game. . . . Named All-Pro and selected to Pro Bowl.

2001: Joined Pennsylvania ValleyDawgs of semi-pro United States Basketball League for one-game stint in May. . . . Agreed to eight-year deal worth up to $75 million, making him the NFL's highest-paid non-quarterback. . . . NFL fined Moss $30,000 for four taunting incidents. . . In Dec. 5 teleconference, Moss said that he plays hard when he feels like it. ``If I want to go out here and play at my highest level, I'll do that,'' he said. Coach Dennis Green reprimanded him the next day; veteran receiver Cris Carter followed suit. . . . Vikings fined Moss $15,000 for abusing a corporate sponsor on the team bus after a loss at Philadelphia on Nov. 11.

2002: Arrested and jailed Sept. 24 in Minneapolis after allegedly pushing a traffic officer a half-block with his car. A third misdemeanor charge was added after police found marijuana in the vehicle (ESPN.com had reported that Moss tested positive for marijuana during 2001 season.) Moss pleaded guilty to the first two charges in a plea agreement; the marijuana charge was dropped and he was fined $1,200 and given a stay on a 30-day jail sentence. . . . Selected to fourth Pro Bowl.

2003: Fined $5,000 for taunting in Nov. 23 game. . . . Earned All-Pro and Pro Bowl honors.

2004: Moss' name came up in March trade rumors, with Miami and Arizona among possible suitors. . . . Fined $5,000 for role in a Sept. 26 scuffle. . . . Partially torn right hamstring caused Moss to miss first three games of career.

2005: Left field as Vikings attempted last-gasp onside kick in season-finale loss at Washington. . . . In first-round playoff win at Green Bay, Moss celebrated his second touchdown by pretending to moon crowd. The move drew a $10,000 fine, and plenty of criticism. Moss, unfazed, countered, ``Ain't nothing but 10 grand. What's 10 grand to me?'' . . . Rumors of a trade involving Moss surfaced after Vikings' Jan. 16 playoff loss to Philadelphia.
Source: Mercury News archives, NFL.com.

CAB-RERA TO HEAVEN

We can safely say that without "The Deal", the Sox wouldn't have won it all in 2004.

AND TO THINK...

WE CAN'T BUDGET THE $$$$ TO GET THE SMELL OUT OF THE KENMORE T STATION

CURT DIDN'T HELP HIMSELF OR THE KIDS WITH HIS SERGEANT SCHULZ PERFORMANCE. IT IS HARD TO BELIEVE THAT HE DIDN'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT HIS 1993 PHILLIES TEAMMATES AND ROIDS; Daulton...Dykstra, Hollins...Kruk...Well, not unless a Big Mac is considered performance enhancing. -NF

GREEN PIECE!!!

CATAMOUNTS SHOCK SYRACUSE; Truly a cinderella story for outgoing head coach and Vermont Homegrown Senior Coppenrath

IF THE SHOE FITS: CINDERELLA VISITS BILL LEE'S HOME STATE

UCONN PUT IT IN CRUISE CONTROL IN THE 2ND HALF AND LET UCF BACK INTO THE GAME IN THE FINAL MINUTES

PALMEIRO AND SOSA VEHEMENTLY DENIED STEROID USE...McGWIRE REFUSED TO SELF INCRIMINATE...WITH BONDS AND MCGWIRE ALL DONE, SOSA'S 66 HR SEASON IN 1998 MAY ACTUALLY BE THE LEGIT RECORD.

DICK RADATZ WAS THE ORIGINAL INTIMIDATING RED SOX CLOSER

AS I GET OLDER, DICKIE V. GETS LOUDER. I STILL ENJOY HIS ENTHUSIASM, HOWEVER; ESPECIALLY THIS TIME OF YEAR.

Sunday, March 13, 2005
Hubbub
Filed under: Baseball News— Jeff Kallman @ 7:43 pm
ITEM: New England Sports Hub has, or believes it has, a simple enough solution to deal with the needle and the damage done, actual or alleged.

HUB FACTS: Roger Maris had only 7 more AB’s in 1961 when he hit 61 homers than Babe Ruth did in 1927 when he hit 60; Maris still has an asterisk next to his record.

HUB FIX: All records broken prior to 1988 will stand in the record books. An asterisk will be placed next to all records broken in 1988 and beyond that reads:

*After 1988; performance enhancers were introduced to MLB by this date.

Roger Maris, in fact, had fifty more at bats (590) in 1961 than Babe Ruth had in 1927 (540), but a mere seven more plate appearances (698) in 1961 than Ruth in 1927 (691). The American League ERA in 1961, by the way, was 4.02; in 1927, it was 4.14. I submit, then, that it was a little bit harder for Maris to pop 61 into the seats than it was for Ruth to pop 60.

And, as others have pointed out, we long enough deemed Maris the legitimate single-season record holder, even as we never cared—and should not have cared—how long it took Henry Aaron to become the career holder, particularly considering that Aaron hit against better pitching lifetime than Ruth did: The league ERA against which Ruth hit as a full-time position player was 4.12. (Coincidentally, that is the league ERA against which Barry Bonds hit through the end of the 2003 season.) The league ERA against which Aaron hit, covering his career through the season in which he broke Ruth’s lifetime mark, was 3.69.

As for the infamous asterisk, it never existed, except by way of an infamous suggestion from Hall of Fame sportswriter Dick Young, then with the New York Daily News, after then-commissioner Ford Frick (a former Ruth ghostwriter) made the whole megillah of “separate records” in the first place. Young, according to Maris biographer Maury Allen, suggested to Frick—when the commissioner gathered a round of sportswriters to discuss the “issue"—that “everyone” uses an asterisk “when there’s a difference of opinion,” and never mind that the difference didn’t exist until Frick made it an issue.

(Forgotten well enough: Not only was Mickey Mantle running reasonably even-up to Maris in the 1961 home run race, until Mantle was flattened down the stretch by a hip abscess, but Jim Gentile of the Baltimore Orioles was at one point considered a competitor to the Yankee tandem, for at least two thirds of the season, anyway; Gentile, having his career year in Baltimore, following years of languishing in the Dodger system, before getting a clear shot with the Orioles in 1960, finished 1961 with 46 homers and second behind Maris in RBI with 141).

Did I mention that, in 1991, Commissioner Fay Vincent ordered that the separate-record entry which did exist in all post-1961 publications of baseball records be done away with? (Even Ford Frick, in his memoir, Games, Asterisks, and People, acknowledged that no asterisk appeared in “the official record” regarding Maris’s feat, while Frick just had to add a little jab: “His record was set in a 162-game season. The Ruth record of 60 home runs was set in 1927 in a 154-game season.") As longtime Yankee Stadium annoucer Bob Shepard said, with a pronounced catch in his voice, at the conclusion of Billy Crystal’s flawed but empathetic 61*, “Roger Maris died six years earlier. . . never knowing. . .that the record. . .belonged. . .to him.”

(N)ote that Frick used the words “record books,” a distinction that escaped most of the baseball writers present at the conference. Major League Baseball has no “official” record book, and relies heavily on The Sporting News and The Baseball Encyclopedia to record baseball history. In essence, Frick was telling publishers over whom he had absolutely no authority whatsoever that they had to print something in their books on his order. Obviously Frick was grandstanding, and most of those present understood that. Hank Greenberg, who very nearly broke Ruth’s record with 58 home runs in 1938, was quoted as saying that Frick’s ruling was “damn stupid. Conditions always change in baseball—day ball to night ball, new towns, new teams, new parks. They don’t make rulings every time something like that changes.”—Allen Barra, That’s Not The Way It Was (New York: Hyperion, 1995)

Until there is the incontrovertible proof that any record setter or record breaker who is proven to have used steroids, during the time he set or broke said record(s), would not have achieved it except because of steroids*, one and all ought to be invited to speak and write very carefully—from the press room of the nation’s newspapers and the blogosphere to the arterials of Capitol Hill and back to the radio and television studio—without such incontrovertible proof in hand.

* - Do forgive me, please, if I am very reluctant to take the word of a man who lied publicly about using steroids throughout his career—when he wasn’t threatening to sue at least one writer who had the drop on him as early as the late 1980s, that is—until he could think about writing a saleable book after he might have decided baseball done him dirty by not “letting” him hang on to pop his own 500th into the seats.

HUB RESPONSE:
1 Comment »
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We at New England Sports Hub do concede to your fact checking and to your excellent review of the history of the “Asterisk". We have not as of yet performed a complete cross check of what you have presented as fact (we will let our fact checker, who we affectionately refer to as Nomar’s Nemesis, or B.D.D., mishandle this task as he sees fit). As you know, of course, we were speaking of the asterisk that still exists in the minds of baseball fans. Metaphorically speaking, it has never left the “record books” of baseball consciousness.

Of course, in literal terms, the feats of Babe Ruth and Roger Maris were syringed away, first in 1998, by Mark McFraud and Shrinkin’ Sammy Sosa, with 70 and 66 performance enhanced yard balls, and subsequently in 2001 by Barry “Who told you to put a balm on?” Bonds with 73 synthetic homers.

The Hub is quite comfortable with its stance on these bogus records. We are curious as to how much indisputable evidence constitutes enough proof for you , Jeff Kallman. No, we are not relying on the penned word of Jose Canseco‘s version of Ford Frick. Rather, we will consider the evidence presented by the San Francisco Chronicle in regards to the Balco Investigation, as well as the New York Daily News and a fairly reliable source known as the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

If that is not enough for you, then consider the words of Gary Sheffield, the Giambi brothers, and Barry Bonds himself. Bonds does currently hold the single season homerun record, and has admitted, under oath, to using the “clear and the cream”. Of course, he didn’t know that they contained steroids, and didn’t ask any questions. He is not being called to the senate hearings on Thursday, as the government does not wish to grant him immunity prior to the conclusion of the Balco investigation. Still not enough for you?

In closing, Mr. Kallman, I just have to say, that should I ever commit a crime sinister enough that my destiny need be determined by a jury of my peers, I pray that you are selected as my jury foreman. I am confident that your unreasonable doubt would swiftly let me off the hook.

Best,

-NF

Comment by NomarFan1997 — Monday, March 14, 2005 @ 11:40 pm

NF–Perhaps I made the passage in question, about the evidence regarding alleged steroid-fueled home run hitting, a mite too obtuse. So I will say it simply here, that there be no doubt:
Show me the incontrovertible proof that that the gentlemen in question could not or would not have hit their record numbers of home runs in a season except for their having used steroids.
The evidence presented thus far is nothing more than that certain players may have used steroids. That is not quite the same thing as saying that said players could only have performed as they did by using steroids, if indeed they used them.
I don’t know for dead last certain if those home runs were synthetic.
And, neither do you, for dead last certain.
Not without hard and incontrovertible proof.
(Which reminds me: Is it not curious that the oxymoronically named House Government Reform Committee chooses not to call Barry Bonds as a witness because the Fabulous BALCO Boys remain under investigation, but they think nothing of calling Jason Giambi as a witness and never mind that he is part of the same still-open FBB investigation?)
Meanwhile, I should content myself to hope first that you are never accused of committing any crime, never mind requiring a jury of your peers. Should you be so accused, I would stand as vehement on your behalf, and remind one and all as a wiser man than I once tried to remind a nation buffeted by an earlier hysteria, albeit one based upon no less real and disturbing an actuality:
No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that Congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating. But the line between investigation and persecution is a very fine one…We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.
Yours cordially,Jeff