It's Friday the 13th....

It’s Friday the 13th and I guess there’s enough bad luck to go around, just in general, but for the Houston Astros and New York Yankees, the fortunes of the day hit especially hard.

The Astros Miguel Tejada, one of the best shortstops in Major League Baseball, has now admitted to buying steroids but then throwing them out. They cost about $6500 but he threw them out. When was the last time you bought ANYTHING for $6500 and then not used it? Maybe I can become his garbage man.

Oh, and he’s not really the age that he told his employers, the Houston Astros. He’s at least two years older than that. I’m pretty sure that makes him about 37. Oh, and by the way, Tejada’s numbers fell a bit in his first Houston year. Just to give you an idea, his homer totals were as follows for the seven years from 2000 through 2006: 30, 31, 34, 27, 34, 26 and 24. In his last year with Baltimore, 2007, he managed to hit 18 homers in only 133 games.

In 2008, he hit 13 homers in 158 games and a full 632 at-bats. He did have 38 doubles though and scored 92 runs. The really bad news is in the RBI department though. His ribbies declined to 66 while he averaged well over 100 ribbies from 2000 through 2007. Wonder what round he’ll be drafted in Fantasy Baseball this year?

If I’m Ed Wade, the Astros GM, I’m feeling a little blue. Oh, and Miguel will play in the World Baseball Classic. What the hell….it probably won’t add to the wear and tear on a 37 or 38 year-old body, one that is possibly weaning itself off God-only-knows what. And he’s only making 13 million per year, so what’s the big deal?

As baseball fans, we have to have a little fun with this stuff. It’s, after all, not showing many signs of going away. Maybe when spring training really gets rolling, it’ll be largely forgotten. I certainly hope so.

You have to chuckle, you really do. Clemens just took another hit when a judge ruled that his case against McNamee would have to be re-formulated. The judge found that evidence shows prosecutors threatened McNamee that if he did not talk to Mitchell, he could have become a target of a criminal investigation. The judge therefore ruled McNamee was compelled to speak to Mitchell as part of a government proceeding and could not be sued for defamation for his comments.

I had another hearty grin as I read my local newspaper. Apparently, this great baseball mind who writes for the Star-Ledger thinks Arod will now be a force in the fight against drugs. He’ll be speaking to the kids out there, letting those little ones know how bad steroids are, and why they shouldn’t follow his example.

Somehow, I just can’t see Arod doing that. I can’t imagine Arod being a force for good in any way, shape or form! Maybe you have to be a Yankees fan to believe this inane nonsense. (not that there is any other kind of nonsense).

Meanwhile, Barry Bonds’s case seems to be getting better and better. And I can’t say I’m sorry to see it. Does he really deserve to go to jail? Maybe the folks taking the taxpayer’s money, both the Congressmen and the lawyers, deserve jail (or worse-how about a slow roasting), but Bonds probably doesn’t.

The only straight guy in this whole mess has been Jose Canseco. Now, I’ve read both his books. MLB has been trying to get him thrown into jail for quite some time now, and I actually think they succeeded on at least one occasion.

I wish a different organization ran professional baseball. Is that so much to ask? Get rid of the shyster Selig, and while we’re at it, we could get rid of Fehr and Orza too. Let’s get some new leadership in there. Enough is enough.

Some people are asking that all 104 names (actually 104 positive tests – whatever that means….why there wouldn’t be a virtual 1 to 1 correspondence between tests and players quite escapes me) be released. Not me.

Let’s just drop it, ok. Keep on testing, try to test for everything under the sun, and if some players are smart enough to keep beating the grim reaper, mazeltov. Testing would be a lot like locks, they would keep honest people honest, which, by the way, would not necessarily include Messrs. Bonds, Rodriguez and certainly not Tejada, or his buddy Palmiero, McGuire, Sosa…et al….

I was most gratified to see that Paul White of USA Today Sports Weekly is picking the Mets to finally win the NL East, although his reasoning for same seemed quite specious. White must be very impressed with Freddy Garcia; that’s all I have to say. He also mentions an improved bench, but except for Alex Cora and Angel Pagan, I don’t really see it.

Unhappily though, there’s a cloud in every silver lining, especially on Friday the 13th. The rest of the USA Today staff feels that the Mets are just the third best team in the National League, and picks them to finish 2nd again in the NL East.

Gee whiz, there certainly seems to be enough Yankees Kool-Aid to go around. The same weekly newspaper is picking the Yankees narrowly over the Rays as the premiere team in Major League Baseball. I guess if they’re making Arod some kind of evangelist, they can pass muster as the favorite.

They do have some pitching now though. I have to admit that much. And I love C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnet. Wang is coming back. Joba will probably be Joba again, but as a starter or premium set-up guy remains to be seen. Mariano will be a year older and pardon me for saying so but Jeter, Damon, Matsui, Posada, Pettite and some others are already a little long in the tooth.

I like the Mets.

The Smart Get Smarter

Well, the Angels picked up Bobby Abreu for one year at the relatively measly price of 5 million dollars. This just proves the fact that good teams make good decisions and come out smelling like a rose more often than not. These of course are the same Angels that habitually embarrass the Yankees, the team that gets on base and then runs like the devil, the team that brings in strong relief pitching to shut down any thoughts its opponent had of coming back.

Abreu, by the way, batted .296 for the Yanks last year with 20 dingers and 100 rbi’s along with 100 runs scored. Sure, he’s a little afraid of the wall in right field, but maybe that’s why he’s scheduled to play left. Any way you look at it, this is a solid pickup for the Angels.

It’ll probably rank right up there with the Tigers signing of Pudge Rodriguez a couple of years ago.

I’m giving the Mets a pass on this missed opportunity as they do have quite a few left-handed batters already. They need a solid right-handed bat. That is, if they need another bat at all. All that pitching makes hitting almost extraneous.

Bret Favre is retiring again. What can you say? I certainly hope it’s true. The Jets, meanwhile, from Woody and Tannenbaum, have released quotables expounding on his excellent play and his humanity. Gimme a friggin break. They’re also committed to not raising ticket prices, a good thing, of course, but you’ll still have to come up with the dough for the seat license.

So, if Favre plays out this situation according to form, he’ll retire and then un-retire about every other day for a few months before signing on with some totally unexpected team. Or, who knows, he may even wind up with the Jets again, who are genuflecting themselves right into the ground.

And Miguel Tejada is scheduled to apologize today. Another non-surprising surprise is just what baseball needs right now. Let’s just pull in everybody the public has suspected anyway and get them to say “sorry”. What could be less painful than that?

Arod’s “sorry” was pretty sorry, by the way. He was young, he was very stupid, he had just made a lot of money, he felt tremendous pressure to perform, yada yada ya….sounded a lot like my fraternity brothers apologizing for unspeakable atrocities committed at open houses by saying, “Well, I was drunk”.

But that’s okay. Sorry is better than not being sorry and it’s all we’re going to get. I couldn’t help but smile though as he restricted his usage to his years in Texas. And qualified everything really by not being really precise about anything. But that’s Arod being Arod…

Hmm, sounds familiar. Manny being Manny, Arod being Arod. I read today that fans are tired of hearing about Manny. Not me. He’s the best thing that’s happened to baseball in quite a long time. If he could run the bases, there would be no God.

But geez, I wish the Knicks would win a game again. It’s been a while and D’Antoni actually made a mistake to lose that last one, the one before Jamal Crawford lit them up for Golden State.

That’s all for me today. I’m nursing an urge to accomplish something on this beautiful Spring day in February.