A Modest Proposal

I'm going to suggest this time that Major League Baseball owners should engage in collusion.

But, you say, that's illegal, immoral, and possibly even un-American.

Normally, yes. In the past, when owners have colluded, they've done so to lower the market for talent. In other words, they'd agree among themselves not to pay higher salaries to free agents. These "gentleman's" agreements had the effect of forcing a free-agent player to take less money than he would have gotten without the collusion.

But now we have the case of Tim Lincecum. The Giants' young two-time Cy Young Award winner has filed an arbitration demand of $13 million for next year. The Giants have countered with $8 mil. Since the arbitration process is binary (the arbitrator must choose one number or the other), Lincecum can lose and still set a record for a starting pitcher in his first year of arbitration. In fact, he'd just about double the old record (Dontrelle Willis and Cole Hamels at $4.35 million).

Now, the owners do not want to see Lincecum win and set a crazy-high new bar for arbitration cases. Most observers agree it's in the Giants' best interest to work out a multi-year deal with Lincecum before they roll the dice at the arbitration hearing. So here's my suggestion: collude. Get all the teams to pony up part of the price of that multiyear deal.

The effect would be to get Lincecum at something lower than his $13 million demand, thus preserving a lower market price for future phenoms (who will still be exceedingly wealthy young men). Lincecum still gets rich, plus gets the security of a multi-year deal.

And the other teams can enjoy watching Linceum whip them all summer, knowing they own a little piece of him.

Are You Surprised?

About Mark McGwire?

Me neither.

So now what? He finally 'fessed up. He's like the little kid who eventually tells his parents what they already knew, because his fingerprints were all over the cookie jar and he had chocolate-chip smears all around his mouth.

There will be much handwringing about how he needs to publicly disown his home run titles, and how he's only coming clean now because he's back in baseball as a Cardinals coach, and how he wants to endear himself to Hall of Fame voters, and on and on.

So what? We all knew what was going on. With McGwire. Sosa. Bonds. If we didn't know it for sure at the time, we sure as hell suspected, and by now, with everything we do know, there's so little drama left in the McGwire mea culpa.

I didn't notice anyone staying away from the ballpark when McGwire was smacking all those improbable homers. That's you and me, folks. Blame the players if you want. Blame the money-grubbing Lords of Baseball, too. But save a little for yourself. The circus came to town, and nobody was in a hurry to see it leave.

Hey, we could have listened to people like the late Ken Caminiti, who blew the whistle on this crap a long time ago. But we didn't. We kept packing the ballparks and oohing and aahing at the spectacle.

We got what we deserved, and if Mark McGwire's finally telling the whole story, it only spoils our own little fiction.

So Long, Mr. Snappy

The numbers are impressive enough: 303 wins. 4,875 strikeouts. 5 Cy Young awards (4 of them in a row).

But they don't really tell the full story of Randy Johnson. You had to see the big fellow pitch. Ideally, you did that from the stands, and not from the left-handed batter's box.

Let's not forget: this is the guy who once killed a bird with a pitch. Sure, it was a freak thing, and it could have happened to anyone--but it didn't. The Big Unit killed a bird with a pitch!


He had a lethal combination: a sizzling fastball, a streak of wildness, and that stunning slider he called "Mr. Snappy". Who can forget that great bit of theater in the 1993 All-Star Game when he sailed a heater over John Kruk's head, then turned Mr. Snappy loose on the shattered Kruk? Here's the video--it's worth the watch.

Randy Johnson is truly the stuff of legend, the kind of ballplayer we'll be telling our grandkids we saw play. Nobody else looked like him, and nobody else in this generation pitched like him.

We fans got 22 years out of the big guy, but we'll be telling the stories way longer than that.

Thanks for the memories, Randy. But I have to tell you: those left-handed hitters won't miss you and your pal Mr. Snappy all that much.

Much NFL Ado About Nothing

So there's this raging debate about whether NFL teams should be compelled (or at least incented) to play all their starters once they've clinched playoff spots.

Commissioner Roger Goodell is looking into it. Among the ideas being tossed around: giving teams that keep playing their starters a little bonus for the effort--like maybe an extra draft choice.

And there are some truly daft ideas being proposed, like this one from blogger Mike Florio, who proposes setting up a committee to seed playoff teams based upon their performance down the stretch.

Please. What an idiotic debate. There's only one real goal in the NFL, and that's to win the Super Bowl. Anything a team can do to achieve that goal is going to get done. Ask a coach, owner, or player if they'd rather go 13-3 and lose a first-round playoff game or go 12-4 and win that game. As my kids used to say, "Duh!"

The NFL needs to save its energy for something that really matters, like the frightening severity and frequency of head injuries.

And if you think it's a good idea for teams to be forced to play their stars after clinching playoff spots, ask the Patriots how they're feeling about Wes Welker right now. He played in Game 16, but you won't see him and his torn ACL on the field for the playoffs.

My New Year's Resolution

My first thought was to resolve not to further enrage my esteemed colleague Steve Bitker.

Nahhhh. First of all, it's a resolution doomed to failure, and second, I get way too much enjoyment out of being the fly in the ointment.

It probably won't surprise you to learn that many years ago, when I learned the ins and outs of casino gambling, I became a hardcore "don't" bettor at the craps table. For those unfamiliar with the game, the "don't pass" or "don't come" wager is essentially a bet against the shooter (and thus, it seems to win you few friends around the table).

My decision had nothing to do with being anti-social. It had everything to do with cold, hard logic: I learned that once you survive the "come-out" roll (where the shooter wins on a 7 or an 11 and the "don't" gambler loses on those numbers), the odds favor the "don't". You still need Lady Luck on your side, but she's a little less important.

Anyway, back to now, and my New Year's resolution. I'm going to try harder in 2010 to get away from the pack and find those nuggets of logic and truth that seem to get overlooked by the group-think. Bill Belichick's 4th-down decision against the Colts is a classic example: Bill was right; end of discussion.

It'll probably make me about as popular as I was around the craps table way back when.

And it'll probably tick Steve off, too.

Russell's Redemption?

One drive in a (reasonably) meaningless NFL game does not a career make.

But it may have halted the unraveling of one.

JaMarcus Russell's 4th-quarter efforts in Denver must have given Raiders brass (read: Al Davis) a vision of what they thought they were getting when they made the huge LSU quarterback the #1 pick in the 2007 NFL Draft and then lavished huge amounts of cash upon him.

Russell has, since then, been largely a bust. By the time of the Denver game, he'd essentially become the Raiders' 3rd-string QB (and might have been 4th-string had J.P. Losman been signed a little earlier so he could learn a few plays). But with Bruce Gradkowski unable to play and his replacement Charlie Frye knocked out with a concussion, the Raiders had what appeared to be two bad choices: Russell, or Losman, who'd had less than a week to learn the Raiders' offense.

The game was in the balance: 3:29 on the clock, trailing by 6. 62 yards from the end zone. Russell's only other action in the game had been a 3-and-out on Oakland's previous possession, and he started this drive by fumbling as he was sacked. The Raiders recovered for a 13-yard loss, and only the morbidly curious or truly rabid Raiders or Broncos fans were still watching.

Russell threw deep and the Raiders picked up 32 yards on a pass-interference call. Two more incompletions under heavy pressure, and Russell had to leave the game after taking a big hit. Losman threw an incompletion, and Russell came back on 3rd-and-10.

This is where it got amazing. He completed a pass for the first down and by the time we all realized what had happened, Russell had thrown a touchdown dart to Chaz Schillens. Improbably, Russell and the Raiders had a win.

What now? Published reports suggest Russell's heroics did little to convince head coach Tom Cable that he deserves another shot at starting. With only two games left in a lost season, the Raiders may have already seen enough of Russell.

But those few minutes in Denver might convince another team--and maybe even Russell himself--that he merits another shot, somewhere.

Gotta Be Toby

When it comes to the Great Rivalry, my DNA goes with Cal (Grandpa Bunger played football there WAY back when; had his knee destroyed on what he always said was a dirty hit by one of Slip Madigan's St. Mary's Gaels).

But I know good when I see it, and I am pulling hard for Stanford's Toby Gerhart to win the Heisman Trophy. Gerhart's performance down the stretch was the stuff of legend. He was the key player in wins over Oregon, USC and Notre Dame. And in that narrow Big Game loss to Cal, Gerhart nearly willed the Cardinal to victory (heck, if he'd had the ball on those final plays, maybe they would have won).

He's also a starting outfielder on the Stanford baseball team, good enough that he could seriously entertain thoughts of playing baseball for a living. He's a good student, has a sense of humor, and his teammates absolutely love him. In short: The All-American Boy.

As I write, I don't know how it'll turn out. I know there's a Heisman bias toward the football-factory programs, and it's even tougher if you're on the West Coast. In fact, the last non-USC player to win the Heisman also strolled the Stanford Quad: Jim Plunkett in 1970.

No slam on the other finalists, but from where I sit, it's easy. Touchdown Toby should cart home the Heisman.