Anatomy of an Apology
About ten days ago I was on the phone with a friend when I got an alert on my computer that Carlos Beltrán and the Mets had agreed to part ways. One can parse that statement any way they want, but there is simply no denying that Beltrán was fired…before he managed a single game…
Punishment Almost Fits the Crime
The dominoes have fallen – well most of them, anyway. Around Thanksgiving I wrote my initial opus regarding the Astros’ cheating scandal. Little did I know that the cancer would spread eastward to New England, and right into the dugout of my beloved Red Sox. But here we are. MLB is still investigating the BoSox,…
Crime and Punishment
A few weeks ago the child of a good friend got in trouble at school. When the dust settled and the punishment was doled out, he/she was suspended for five weeks. You read that right, he/she was essentially given a grade-level death sentence. I am not sure what the school hoped to accomplish with this…
Lying Only Makes it Worse
When I got home from work the other night, my 10-year old daughter had ink all over her arm. I asked her – maybe in a somewhat pointed way – what happened? She looked at her arm, and with feigned shock she said: “Hmm, that must have rubbed off from my paper.” I asked her…
Head First Strikes Out…Again
As a writer (am I a writer?), I love an evergreen topic. It makes it so much easier to create content. As a baseball fan (I am a baseball fan), however, certain evergreen topics are infuriating. Last week I was listening to the Executive Access podcast (a must-subscribe if you love the inner working of…
Head Shots and Humanity
In honor of Dustin May’s 22nd birthday, there is an issue that has been on my mind for a while. When my son was seven years old, he took a comebacker to his left eye. On impact, he dropped to the ground, the batter advanced to first base, and, as you might expect, everything stopped…
Money for Nothing – Why Give Pre-Arbitration Raises?
As I may have previously mentioned, I am a very lucky guy. Among the many reasons, I married a woman who doesn’t know a ton about baseball, but is always interested in learning. And, for that reason, she has no compunction about listening to me drone on about the game’s minutiae for long soliloquies. Over…
Belt Tightening
Disclaimer: I may be biased. I have spent the entirety of my career (save for four months at the very beginning) on the management side of the table. Agents and lawyers representing talent have been my professional foe for as long as I have drawn a paycheck. And while I am often exasperated by their…
California Tie-Breaker: Not the End of the World
If you have ever coached a youth tournament game, you are familiar with the California Tie-Breaker. The genesis of the name is unknown, but one must assume it got its moniker on the fields of the Golden State because more youth baseball is played there than anywhere else. For the uninitiated, the California Tie-Breaker works…
Free Agency Has Begun: The QO Rule
Last year I wrote about the Qualifying Offer (“QO”) rule, and how it affected player mobility. And just when you thought you had a handle on how it worked, the owners and players went ahead and renegotiated the CBA. In the process, they bolloxed up the QO in a way that hardly anyone can comprehend. However, if you…