Antonio Alfonseca, Shawn Estes, Dave Veres and Mark Guthrie leaving vs. Greg Maddux, Derrek Lee, LaTroy Hawkins and Todd Walker arriving. Discuss.
Jim Hendry, your table is ready.
Andy MacPhail, yours too.
Dennis FitzSimons, same deal. Hey, make it a booth.
Clip&save: Hendry will get a legit leadoff hitter by July because this lineup won’t produce the way it needs to, even with great pitching, because someone in the rotation’s going down, maybe two of them, and that’s just a true thing.
Clip&save: The traveling Hall of Fame exhibit formerly known as the Yankees will get one or two starters by July, and I mean big-name starters the way they always do. In fact, I’m thinking the Yanks end up with some combination of Tom Glavine, Mike Hampton, Livan Hernandez, Al Leiter, Jamie Moyer, Hideo Nomo or even Randy Johnson.
Funny thing how the fan-challenged White Sox always want to act like they’re being fan-friendly when no one owns fan-friendliness like George Steinbrenner. He does what it takes to win. That’s fan-friendly. Connect the dots, Chairman Reinsdorf.
Chairman Reinsdorf is playing no-limit Hold ‘Em when he should be at the $2/$4 table.
Steve-mail from Doug Schuyler: “Jerry Reinsdorf pays Jay Williams $3 million after flying over the handlebars of his bike, Scottie Pippen $6 million to be a clown on the sideline and nothing for the White Sox in the off-season? Kenny Williams offered Bartolo Colon $36 million for three years and then the Cubs sign Maddux for $24 million for three years. Jerry Reinsdorf, you just got punk’d!”
Just the Chairman’s luck too: He not only window-shops in the same league as the Yankees, but in the same city as the team that has become the National League version of the Yankees.
Bob Pulford, Hawks GM-for-now and exchequer of the Wirtz fiefdom, said the organ-I-zation will go after “four or five” free agents. But you watch, the Hawks will get maybe half that because they always misjudge the market and then whine about how expensive things are–other than the price of hockey tickets to watch one of the worst teams in the league, that is.
And another thing: Free agents will want lockout language so they get paid during a work stoppage, but Billfold Wirtz won’t do that, so I was wrong: The Hawks will get only one good free agent, max.
Trading Alex Zhamnov and Steve Sullivan brought a bunch of draft picks to a team that fired its scouting staff and now has to rely on a head scout who failed to turn a first-round pick into a legitimate NHL player for a decade and likely couldn’t find manure at Churchill Downs. Please, Mommy, make it stop.
Steve-mail from Mike Thompson: “Can we start calling Pully `Baa Baa Bob’ because he always seems to be getting fleeced?”
Why is Alexander Karpovtsev still here?
Igor Korolev, same question.
Former Northwestern quarterback Steve Schnur said Gary Barnett preached “accountability and integrity.” Which apparently is why Barnett lied about living up to his contract at Northwestern and slithered to Colorado. And how has his “accountability and integrity” tripe gone there?
Phillip Daniels is likely to be released after getting 2 1/2 sacks in 16 starts last season. Maybe Greg Blache will sign him in Washington, seeing as how Daniels also apparently believes that sacks don’t matter.
Daniels’ agent said it’s a great year to be a free-agent defensive end because all the good ones are going to be franchised, and I’m thinking, then what does it tell you about your guy getting dumped?
Bryan Robinson agreed to cut his salary again, just like he apparently has cut his effectiveness.
Danny Wuerffel said he’s leaving football. Right after football left him.
Steve-mail from David Marszalek: “Are the Bears up for something in free agency?”
They have the money. They haven’t shown the brains.
Anyone who votes Dick Vitale into the Basketball Hall of Fame also has to be there to listen to his acceptance speech.
Kirk Hinrich has become the Bulls’ best all-around player since that Jordan guy, not that he’s Jordan, of course, but he shoots and passes like a pro–jeez, he couldn’t even dribble like an NBA player in December–and he guards people, which puts him ahead of even Elton Brand in my recent rankings.
The Atlanta Hawks informed Rasheed Wallace he had been traded by saying, “Will the defendant please rise.”
Mark Philippoussis, asked by the Sydney Morning Herald if his recent Davis Cup failure represented the low point of his career: “As low as you can get is probably dead, so I wouldn’t say that.”
