Tuesday in New York

It’s another Tuesday, it’s raining, there’s nothing particularly that needs doing so I’ll just vedge(sp) and take the hour or so it will take me to whine.

First of all, the Monday Night Football game was horrid…totally unwatchable. Why can’t anybody figure out in advance that Arizona is just barely a professional team at all? To match them up with any team is risky. What team wouldn’t have beaten the Cardinals last night? Detroit plays harder. Buffalo definitely plays harder, and smarter too. The Rams, now that they have a real live quarterback, would dance rings around that sorry bunch from Arizona.

Of course, the Giants won. That makes me happy since I thought it would take their best effort to knock off even the likes of Jacksonville. It’s really a tribute to them from the coaches to all the remaining healthy players that they were able to come from behind to take the lead and then hold it against a Jaguar team that was still trying to show some fight. The Jets won too on Thanksgiving but they were once again nothing to write home about.

The Knicks have been doing better than expected and the Nets started really slow but are showing signs of life. All of the above is promising better times for New York fans this winter, and maybe even into the March Madness of college basketball. And by that time, spring training will have started. Life is good if you’re into sports and not so much into shopping and Cyber Monday crapola, the teetering economy or global warming.

Another melodrama that will keep the NY area humming until the wee hours of February is the Derek Jeter negotiation. I’m enjoying it immensely so far. The one question, it seems to me, that no one is asking is how the Players Union and the MLB Commissioner’s office feel about rewarding a player for his marketing value. There is the power of precedent to be considered. Why shouldn’t every player want to add value to their contracts? Wouldn’t the Commissioner want the Yanks to take a hard line on this icon talk?

All this is great stuff for a Mets fan. There couldn’t be a wider division between the parties. And, while it’s hard to envision Jeter playing for any other team, the Yankees have essentially told Jeter to get other offers. But other teams will be skittish about being a pawn in that game. So any offers will come late, only after they are convinced Jeter may really consider a uniform without stripes. How great would it be for some team that would be willing to pay Jeter a premium for his market value? A Detroit or a Boston (just to drive the Yanks crazy) might enjoy getting some attention and more fannies in their seats for just a few million dollars premium per year. Then the question will really be how much the Yankees want Jeter and how much Jeter wants the Yankees.

The team is clearly in the driver’s seat. The Yankees can function quite nicely without Jeter. While they’d take a lot of heat in the first Jeter-less year, especially when he’d get his 3000th hit for say, Kansas City. Heh-heh,. They’d look better and better as Jeter would get older and older. It’d be virtually impossible for Jeter to score his hundred runs per year for any other team but the Yankees, who have continually surrounded him with hitters in their own right.

Juan Uribe, about five years younger than Jeter and the San Francisco Giants postseason wunderkind, just signed a 3-year contract with the Dodgers for 21 million. Based on that figure, I’d say Jeter’s worth about 10 to 11 million per year. The Yankees offered him 15 mill for 3 years, a figure already that included market value. I’d understand totally if the Yankees felt that Jeter was holding them up. They would be entitled to be thinking Jeter should accept a pay cut from his last contract, his 10-year 189 million deal. The Yankees should stick to their guns, and if they do, things should get really interesting. And what if they withdraw their 15 million offer? Then what?

Meanwhile, the Mets have done almost nothing. Today I heard that their pretty fine left-handed specialist in the bullpen, Pedro Feliciano, turned down arbitration, which would seem to indicate that the market is good. It would also seem the Mets want to keep their better players, definitely a good sign for us Mets fans. The Mets need pitching though and I’m not crazy about the free agent starters. I wouldn’t mind seeing them shop Jason Bay and/or Carlos Beltran for a couple of pitchers. And I’d rather see them get young guns with limitless potential than see them go for broke with a veteran commanding a high salary.

A second baseman wouldn’t hurt either. But there are plenty of second basemen. It’s just not that critical a position. I was happy to see Florida’s slugging Dan Uggla go elsewhere. His fielding has always been atrocious and the Mets fans wouldn’t be tolerant of that. Uggla will be fine in Atlanta though, and Atlanta may be ready next year to challenge the Phillies seriously for the Division Championship. Whatever the Mets do next year, it’s difficult to think they’ll overtake either of the top two contenders.

The Knicks play the Nets tonight and it should be a barn-burner. Although the Knicks are the better team, they’ll be without their starting center Ronnie Turiaf, a factor that should hurt them a lot being that the Nets Lopez will be firing from all directions. But the Knicks have found an unlikely answer to their 2 guard spot in Landry Fields, who doesn’t really score so often as he does all the other things. He shoots well though when he does shoot, he rebounds and assists, goes for loose balls and, well, you get the idea.

The Nets need two more players to compete. Newark anyone?