I had a steak once that was non-tendered ...

• The Cubs re-signed Kerry Wood to a one-year contract for $4.2 million. Rumor has it that Wood turned down multi-year offers from other teams to take the Cubs' offer. I see this as a good move for Chicago. Upon this announcement, the word was that the Cubs would move erstwhile closer Ryan Dempster back into the rotation and make Wood their closer. I'd lean more toward Carlos Marmol as closer, but then the Cubs could do what they did last year and have Marmol pitch a lot of high-leverage innings in the 7th and 8th and leave Wood the plum job of closer. That way, even if Wood does get injured, it won't affect Marmol's ability to handle the tough stuff.
  The Cubs also won the bidding for Japanese outfielder Kosuke Fukudome. Fukudome's contract is for 4 years and $48 mil. -- about Hideki Matsui money. That seems pretty reasonable to me in today's market -- according to Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA system, Fukudome should manage to hit about 300/400/500 with the Cubs. Essentially, he's Bobby Abreu. The most important thing is that high OBP; Fukudome takes a lot of pitches and works the count for walks, which makes him especially valuable to the Cubs, who don't have anybody else (except maybe Derrek Lee) who does that. I agree that with the Fukudome signing, the Cubs now look like the favorites in the NL Central.
• Blockbuster trade #1: the Twins sent Matt Garza, Jason Bartlett, and Eduardo Morlan to the Rays for Delmon Young, Brendan Harris, and Jason Pridie. It's not often that two big prospects get swapped for each other; especially when one (Garza) is a pitcher and another (Young) is a hitter.
  Who won this trade? Neither team really gets a big advantage. The Twins will miss Garza, but they have several good young pitchers. Ditto for Young, as the Rays have more outfielders than they know what to do with. The Rays probably get the edge among the other players, as Bartlett is a fine defensive shortstop who can't hit (and who will keep the position warm for Reid Brignac) and Harris is a good hitter for a middle infielder but a butcher on defense. The Twins compensated somewhat by signing a better version of Bartlett -- Adam Everett -- as a free agent after the Astros non-tendered the defensive whiz.
• The Reds signed closer Francisco Cordero to a 4-year, $46 million contract. While I do like Cordero and admit that the Reds could use an ace closer, I just don't think he's worth it. Even if you've got an ace closer, it's a questionable move to give them a long-term contract -- just look at what happened to Keith Foulke and B.J. Ryan.
  The other problem is that Cordero isn't an ace. Oh, he's quite good; before last season, he was one of the most underrated closers in the game. But then he went to the Brewers, piled on the saves, and made himself infinitely richer. I think Cordero will help the Reds in the first year or two, but that injuries and/or ineffectiveness will hamper Cincinnati's payroll in the end.
  But kudos for being bold, especially in a winnable division.
• The Mets traded Lastings Milledge to the Nationals for catcher Brian Schneider and outfielder Ryan Church.
  Umm... what?
  How much must the Mets HATE Milledge to trade him away for an expensive catcher who can't hit and a decent corner outfielder about to hit arbitration? Talent-wise, this is a dreadful trade, as it means the Mets will have to use Schneider (and pay him), while non-tendering Johnny Estrada, the guy they just traded for, for goodness' sake.
  Some people have refused to condemn the trade as a blunder, with comments along the lines of "some moves aren't about talent-for-talent." Okay -- so what the hell are they about? Even if the Mets do hate Milledge, want him gone, and think he eats babies, they could at least get some value in return. It doesn't matter how the Mets value Milledge -- it matters how much other teams value him. And if other teams do value him (which they do), then there's no excuse for trading him for crap, unless you really just want to cut off your nose to spite your face.
  Jim Bowden is really starting to cut down on his own blunders and start taking advantage of other people's. Look out, fourth place!
• The Tigers re-signed Kenny Rogers, on condition that he send hate mail to Scott Boras for a period of one year.
• The Astros signed Kaz Matsui to a 3-year deal for $16.5 million. I front office in Houston is getting tired of losing in obscurity. And they won't be next year -- they won't be obscure, that is ...
  The Astros also made a mega-trade with the Orioles that netted them Miguel Tejada in exchange for pitchers Troy Patton, Dennis Sarfate and (Hey, Hey, Hey It's) Matt Albers, outfielder Luke Scott and also third baseman Michael Costanzo. There's not any front-line talent in the trade, but it's still a big win for Baltimore. Even if nobody here makes an All-Star game, the Orioles are better off. Scott is a better player than expensive free agents Jay Payton and Aubrey Huff, and Albers and Patton will at least fill out the back end of the rotation and keep the team from acquiring Steve Trachsel again. If you save money on role-players and mid-level guys, it lets you spend it where it counts -- on superstars.
  And unfortunately, Miguel Tejada isn't a superstar anymore. His defense at shortstop has really slipped, and now he's just a decent hitter -- 296/357/442 last year. That's fine for a good-fielding shortstop, but if you're as expensive as Tejada and can't handle the position anymore, it's not worth eliminating depth at the major-league level, as the Astros have done.
  Still, the move should make the Astros better in 2008, or so I thought. I (and most other observers) thought the Astros would shift Tejada to third, where his defense would be less problematic. Third base was manned by Ty Wigginton, who shouldn't be starting anywhere. Instead, the Astros got rid of good-field, no-hit shortstop Adam Everett and will apparently be keeping Tejada at shortstop, defense be damned.
  Ed Wade has made a lot of moves in Houston, and that's usually enough to keep most of the sportswriters and knuckle-draggers satisfied. But I'm more interested in the quality of moves, and in this, Wade's short tenure has already been very disappointing.
• The Brewers signed David Riske to a three-year contract. I'll save some web space by referring you back to every other blog I've written about the horror of giving multi-year contracts to non-star relievers.
  The Brewers also spent $10 million for one year of Eric Gagne, who will, I guess, be their closer. This one didn't bother me too much, until the Mitchell Report was released, and I found out that most of organized baseball was aware of Gagne's steroid issues for years. That concerns me not so much in regards to his performance, but rather his injuries; for $10 million, I would expect to get ligaments and tendons intact.
• And, of course, the big one:
  The Marlins trade Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis to the Tigers for Cameron Maybin, Andrew Miller, Eulogio de la Cruz, Dallas Trahern, Mike Rabelo and Burke Bradenhop.
  In short, the Marlins gave up the ghost again, but this time they did it before winning the World Series. They've also proven to their fans that their rebuilding process has no goal; they're just an independently-operated farm system for the other MLB teams, selling off anything that's useful and showing no interest in winning or planning to win. I could care less about Dontrelle Willis; he's horribly overhyped and will likely be a disappointment in Detroit. But Miguel Cabrera is a guy you keep to build around. For the Tigers, it's a huge boost of offense. For the Marlins, it's proof that they don't intend to keep anybody, no matter how good.
  But did Florida at least get a good return on their trade? Yes and no. Both Cameron Maybin and Andrew Miller were top-rated prospects in the Detroit system. They're also both very raw and need more time in the minors before they can really contribute at the big-league level. And everything I've heard about the Marlins shows that they could care less about this; they have a hole in center field and in the rotation, and they're using these guys to plug it, ready or not. Some people have even said that, since Maybin and Miller are so raw and unpredictable, that the trade was a debacle for the Marlins.
  As for the Tigers, they did literally give up the farm, but it's not the end of the world. Maybin was a center fielder, and the Tigers already have one of those. And the Tigers are one of the few teams that can afford to trade away a prospect like Andrew Miller without immediately suffering. So that means that these two guys were surplus prospects, and you trade surplus prospects -- especially if your target is Miguel Cabrera.
• The Royals signed Jose Guillen to a 3-year, $36 million contract. My initial horror at such a deal has been tempered somewhat by the fact that, excepting an injury-plagued 2006, Guillen has been pretty darn good in recent years, and $12 million/year is indeed the going rate for pretty darn good. I just wish the Royals had spent it on someone better, or in some manner that would be more meaningful; if Guillen is ever around for a contending Royals team, I'll be very surprised.
• The Padres offered arbitration to Michael Barrett, who accepted. Barrett's awful 2007 should lower his price tag. That's good news for the Padres, as Barrett is still one of the best-hitting catchers in the NL, defensive issues aside.
• The Brewers traded two minor-league pitchers to the Pirates for Salomon Torres. Has no one learned the lesson of teams that stockpile name relievers in the off-season?
• Andy Pettitte officially accepted arbitration from the Yankees to return. At least there was some good news in the Pettitte household this week.
• The Padres signed Randy Wolf to a one-year, incentive-laden deal. The Dodgers missed out on the Wolf Lotto last year (he got injured), but maybe the Padres can spin the wheel and make the deal work (spin the wheel ... spin the wheel ...).
• The Nats signed Paul Lo Duca to a one-year contract. It's a good thing he's such an irreplaceable clubhouse presence. If most sportswriters had insight and/or long-term memory, they'd remember how they excoriated Paul de Podesta and the Dodgers for trading Lo Duca away in 2004 . . . and then they'd see how far he's fallen since.
• The Rockies signed a new, 4-year deal with pitcher Aaron Cook. Much though I like Cook and appreciate his ability to succeed at high altitudes, this is just post-pennant excess. Let's hope it doesn't get really out of control.
• The Rangers signed Milton Bradley to a one-year deal and traded for first baseman Ben Broussard. I'm not sure what use they'll get out of Broussard except as a platoon-er, but Bradley is a nice pick-up. He's been cited by many as one of the best values in the free agent pool, and I would agree. God knows the Rangers need somebody in that outfield.
  The Rangers also non-tendered Akinori Otsuka, an odd move in my book, even considering Otsuka's injury problems. If Franky Cordero can get $46 million, surely somebody would want to kick the tires on Otsuka.
• The Giants signed Aaron Rowand to a 5-year, $60 million deal. This isn't a catastrophe of Zito proportions, but it's yet another attempt to put a band-aid on the sucking chest wound that is the Giants. Rowand is an improvement, yes, but that's a pretty low bar to set. Is he a 5-year, $60 million improvement, or a guy who's just had two career years amidst mediocrity? Unfortunately for the Giants, it's the latter. Let's just hope the Lincecum-for-Rios trade is dead, or else I'll toss my cookies.
• The Dodgers signed Andruw Jones to a 2-year, $36.2 million contract. This, despite the high AAV (Average Annual Value), is one of the best deals of the offseason. Somehow the Dodgers got Jones at the going rate for star outfielders, but only got him for 2 years due to his poor 2007 numbers.
  For the Dodgers, this is great; they get two years of Jones without having to pay for his declining years as well. They also do a good job of replacing the execrable Juan Pierre in center field. This move only really works if the Dodgers bench Pierre and play Andre Ethier (or a tree frog) in left field instead. If the Dodgers think sticking Pierre in left field is a good idea, they're sinfully mistaken.
  Some teams try to stick guys out there and hope for the best, since they're paying them that money. But more and more teams have embraced the concept of a sunk cost. Pierre is making that money -- 4 more years and $36.5 million -- whether he plays or not. The best thing, in my mind, is to do what the Diamondbacks did with Russ Ortiz -- release him outright. The money is spent, you just have to give up on the idea of making a bad deal a good one. If Pierre stays on the roster, he'll do far more harm than good, either through blocking better players or tempting weak-minded managers and executives into actually giving him 600-700 at bats a year. Releasing him outright is the brave thing to do.
  Which means they won't do it, of course.
• The Cubs non-tender Mark Prior. There was some question as to whether the Cubs would bother going through arbitration with the eternally-injured Prior, or if it was just best to cut their losses. I can understand the Cubs' point of view, as they've already got six starting pitchers (including Ryan Dempster and Sean Marshall) without having to worry about another. For another team though, perhaps willing to give Prior a Randy Wolf-ish deal, he could be a pleasant surprise.
• The Rays (no longer satanic) signed Cliff Floyd to a one-year, $3 million deal. That's a pretty good deal for a player like Floyd; good when they're not injured, which is often. But for the Rays, why did they sign him? They're already overloaded with outfielders (although less so since trading away Elijah Dukes and Delmon Young). I guess they'll play him in right field or at DH with Jonny Gomes. I just hope that if he does get a lot of playing time, it's taken away from Rocco Baldelli rather than B.J. Upton.
• The A's traded Dan Haren and Connor Robertson to the Diamondbacks for outfielders Carlos Gonzalez and Aaron Cunningham, infielder Chris Carter, and pitchers Dana Eveland, Brett Anderson and Greg Smith. The D-Backs get a solid (and cheap) #2 pitcher, whereas the A's take a good step forward in revitalizing their farm system. I wonder if the A's couldn't perhaps have done better for Haren -- who's considered the best guy out there not named Johan -- but then if they'd waited, they may have lost out on their best shot. As for the D-Backs, I hate to see them give up another key outfield prospect in Gonzalez, after already trading Carlos Quentin to the White Sox. But I guess there's nothing they can do about Eric Byrnes now, anyways, and Chris Young and Justin Upton aren't going to move aside for anyone. The Diamondbacks also needed another reliable pitcher after Brandon Webb and realized that talking to Carlos Silva was folly. I just hope that Arizona's offense improves as is, because they're losing a lot of their minor league back-ups. I also hope that Dan Haren doesn't get all fly-ball happy in Chase Field.
• The D-Backs turned around and dealt closer Jose Valverde to Houston for Chad Qualls, Chris Burke, and Juan Gutierrez. Qualls isn't quite as good as Valverde, but also isn't as expensive. Valverde piled up saves last year, and arbitrators love those. Burke is a good backup as a middle infielder with some pop who can also cover most other defensive positions. The D-Backs may take a short-term hit in the bullpen, as it's unclear which of their talented middle relievers will step forward as closer, but in the long term this is a good deal. And it's a bad one for Houston, who should have gotten more for Burke and Qualls than an expensive and slightly overrated "closer." (quotation marks necessary)
• The Cardinals traded Jim Edmonds to the Padres for minor league 3B David Freese. I'm still confused as to whether or not the Cardinals are rebuilding, but in this case at least, they have an heir apparent for Edmonds in Colby Rasmus. Rasmus may not be entirely polished and major-league ready, but there's no harm in putting him out there on Opening Day and letting him develop. Rasmus is the star of a very thin St. Louis farm system.
  For the Padres, this is a relatively inexpensive solution to their center field problem, but it does come with risk. Edmonds does play center, but not as well as he used to. The same goes for his offense, which has gone from All-Star caliber to touch-and-go. The Padres have taken a gamble on just how close Edmonds is to the end of the line, but at least it's just a one-year gamble.
• The Blue Jays signed David Eckstein to a 1-year, $4.5 million contract. This is odd, because a lot of observers saw the defensively-challenged Eckstein moving to second base for his new team. Apparently, he won't, although it's unclear just where he will play, since the Jays have already signed good-field/no-hit shortstop John McDonald to a free agent deal and already have a fine, cheap second baseman in Aaron Hill. Did they sign him as a backup? That's doubtful. But he won't help the team as a starter either at shortstop (slightly better offense than McDonald but much worse defense) or second base (where Hill is just better). Is the clock ticking yet on J.P. Ricciardi?
• The Dodgers signed Japanese pitcher Hiroki Kuroda to a 3-year, $35.3 million deal. Kuroda put up good-but-not-great numbers in Japan as a starter, so who knows how that will translate to the U.S. And why are the Dodgers spending money that doesn't really need to be spent? They've already got a perfectly good closer and one or two good closer prospects. And while Kuroda is certainly an upgrade over Esteban Loaiza, the Dodgers had perfectly acceptable (and far less expensive) upgrades in their own farm system.
  This is turning into an unpleasant pattern for Ned Colletti's Dodgers. Maybe he needs to be allocated availabe payroll funds in installments to break him of the tendency to spend it all at once on the shiniest player out there. Or we should just get him a subscription to Baseball America so he can educate himself on his own minor league teams.
• The Padres signed second baseman Tadahito Iguchi to a one-year deal. Perfectly acceptable move; second basemen are hard to come by, and the Iguchi deal is a reasonable estimate of his expected performance.

There's certainly more to come soon -- check out the MLB Trade Rumors website -- despite its name, it's a pretty reliable collection of rumors (and it the concept of a reliable rumor seems foreign to you, then you haven't spent enough time around the baseball hot stove).

Take care of yourselves. I'm going to have to start.

Mr. Rickey

Another day goes by, as the sports media pokes major holes in the Mitchell Report (oddly enough, Sports Illustrated and other mainstream sites seem much more willing to let the Mitchell Report fly as is).
For this blog, though, I am here to talk about the past. The distant past. In particular, a certain Hall-of-Fame executive named Branch Rickey.
I have the greatest admiration for Branch Rickey both for what he accomplished on the field and off. He built up dynasties wherever he went (except Pittsburgh, but nobody's perfect), proved an innovator in new baseball knowledge, technology, and methodology, and most importantly, was the man on the inside to bring down baseball's color barrier.
Does Rickey have his faults? Certainly. He was, notoriously, a skinflint and cheapskate and a person whose person morality did not curtail his business deals/trades/swindles. And as for the breaking of the color line, Rickey had more than morality on his mind when he made this particular move. But for all that, Rickey was still one of the most important men in baseball history. And while his motives were not always as morally pure as his long-winded speeches, no less an authority than Jackie Robinson himself offers no doubt that did have more than dollars, cents, and pennants on his mind when he broke baseball's color barrier.

That's the short version, and there's a lot more out there to fill in the gaps. I'm still trying to track down some Rickey books myself, and so far the best one I've read is Baseball's Great Experiment, Jules Tygiel's account of baseball integration.
Recently, though, I came upon Branch Rickey's Little Blue Book: Wit and Strategy from Baseball's Last Wise Man. The book was edited by John J. Monteleone from Rickey's personal papers, reams of which are apparently stored at the Baseball Library in Cooperstown. I only wish Mr. Monteleone had given us 400 pages of vintage Branch rather than 138.
I highly recommend the book to anyone with an interest in baseball, Rickey, or some nuggets of wisdom. Rickey was a famous blowhard, and it takes a bit of an effort to cut through the wind to get to the substance, but make no mistake about it; Rickey had a lot to say, and a lot of it was very important and cutting-edge. All of the sportswriters who moaned and groaned about "El Cheapo" should have paid more attention to what he was saying, not to mention the product on the field.
And so I've decided to pick out some of my favorite Rickey-isms as excerpts to give you a taste of the man known as the "Mahatma."

"Luck is the residue of design."
Some modern sabermetricians would disagree, but even then I think Rickey's point is still valid on its face; a lot of things that could be taken as good luck are really the result of someone positioning themselves in the best way possible to exploit their resources. Therefore what may seem to be luck or a fluke is really just excellent planning.

"Our club [the Pirates] finished in last place in 1953. We hope to find ourselves in a contending position at the earliest possible time. Therefore, we must have in mind the employment of whatever agents, or methods, or procedures, or practices, or gadgets calculated to hasten the improvement of our players. No last place team, it seems to me, can rely on the play of fortune to bring to hand suddenly and without cause a coterie of great players."
Still true today. Although Rickey does go on to say that the most effective thing a last place team can do is "lift ourselves over the fence by our own bootstraps." Such optimism and positive thinking is vintage Rickey and can become a bit obnoxious after a few paragraphs.

On the trade that sent Rogers Hornsby away from the Cardinals to the Giants:
"Had I been in sole charge, Hornsby never would have left St. Louis ... personal affront (a roiling feud between owner Sam Breadon and Hornsby) is never enough to justify a move of such magnitude."
Such was Mr. Rickey's view of the importance of team "chemistry" as compared to winning.

Also included is Rickey's famous bit of free verse where he justified his distaste for Ralph Kiner by comparing him to Babe Ruth. While I'm not Kiner's biggest fan, you just can't judge any ballplayer against Ruth. And, as Bill James has pointed out in his Historical Baseball Abstract, Rickey either had some personal issue with Kiner or he was just really desperate to be rid of him and looking for a justification.

"Runs batted in don't amount to a darn -- maybe a little . . . the batting order determines most."
Sixty years ago, and still this bit of wisdom hasn't penetrated the major sports media centers of America.

"Courage is a by-product of form. Form is the horse and courage is the cart. Professional baseball players are not 'yellow.' As a class, they are not tainted with physical cowardice ... Lack of acquantainceship with any new job produces initial indecision or hesitation or timid approach."
More people, especially parents and coaches of youth leagues, should dwell on this wise observation.

"Coaching is not a matter of compulsion but of fertility of suggestion. It may not work for Bill like it would work for Steve or John or Dick."
This is essentially the same credo espoused by Johnny Sain, one of the greatest pitching coaches ever, whose independent and individual style made him a hero to major league pitchers everywhere and got him fired every couple years.

"It doesn't do any good to tell a young player not to strike out."

"... in general use, more is lost by the hit-and-run than is gained by it."
This despite the fact that Rickey was, in general, a big believer in "fundamentals," which maybe was more important 50 years ago than it is now ... either that, or old guys are eternally grouchy about fundamentals. Rickey was a big fan of bunting and base-stealing, although he did stress that players should spend more time on bunting for a hit and less on sacrificing.

"When you're eighteen years old and can't run fast, you'll never run fast. If you can't throw the ball hard at eighteen, you never will. If you haven't got a heart at eighteen, you'll never get one later on. If your morals are bad at eighteen, you'll never improve."
That's Branch Rickey for you. Obsessing over the morality of America's youth, with the idea that an honest sporting experience can keep a young man's heart away from vice. I guess it's easier to find Rickey's morality quaint if you didn't have to live with it from day to day.

"The farm system, which I have been given credit for developing, originated from a perfectly selfish motive: saving money."
Unexpected candor from Mr. Rickey. He does go on to say why he thinks the farm system was and is great for baseball, and the minor leagues themselves. Many would disagree, most notably Judge Landis, who thought the farm system would kill the minors (which it sorta did) and fought Rickey at every opportunity over the idea.

"The educational method in baseball has given rise to the lecture room. Not all players can absorb instruction and gain proficiency from the spoken or written word. To some, the manager or coach will simply cast his breath on the desert air. However, he should employ the instruction method if he has one or more who may benefit greatly from his counsel. Even the blackboard, once so utterly ridiculed, has now become a mark among the more intelligent managers."
Rickey had little patience for baseball traditions that were, to him, anti-intellectual nonsense that did more harm than good. The book mentions (if only in passing), Rickey's hiring of Allen Roth, the first statistician to be hired on as part of a major league team. Rickey eventually recognized the value of what Roth (a sabermetric pioneer) had to say, and he must also have been tempted by a source of knowledge that other teams were not taking advantage of. Sadly, when Rickey left the Dodgers, Roth's data became good fodder for Vin Scully's broadcasts, but had a much smaller effect on baseball operations.
It's always been fascinating to me that baseball, alone among sports, disdains technology and modern advances. This has improved in recent years, of course, but only at a snail's pace and with great resistance. Look at football: there you have a wealth of X's and O's, many complicated and intricate plays committed to writing and thus to memory, and a system of headphone communication that allows the coach to communicate with his subordinates on and off the field. Technological advances have become a part of the clubhouse culture of football without any great uprising against it.
Why can't something similar happen in baseball? I think Mr. Rickey would approve.

Scouting report on Duke Snider (1947): "Duke Snider is going to be a great hitter when he learns the strike zone is not high and outside."

On his own method of determining pitching aptitude: "This ... helps find the prospects who are in the twilight zone, those borderline cases on which you must make a prediction of future success. It's no trick to spot the greats or humpty-dumpties."
Such is the goal of all baseball ops people: to find the prospects who are in "the twilight zone;" not so talented that everyone else has already noticed it, and talented enough that it's worth spending your time on them. Enough of these percentage of these players become stars that it's worth your while to work with them.

We have to be careful about television because the tail could wag the dog.
It should be said that Rickey (like most baseball executives of his day) hated televised baseball in general and thought it would kill attendance. That has not come to pass, but the statement above is telling; the money involved in broadcasting rights for baseball games is so high that baseball is forced to cede most of its broadcast autonomy to the networks.

"... nor were we ever distrustful of Mr. Rickey's motives. He was a man of integrity, and we could trust him. Whatever his mixed motives may have been, he became a lifelong friend, someone we admired tremendously."
-- Rachel Robinson

Above all, the factor that most influences my admiration of Branch Rickey is that he was so admired by Jackie and Rachel Robinson. If you read Jackie's book, I Never Had It Made, you come away with a great respect for Rickey, just from the way Jackie speaks of him.
There were many people, black and white, who accused Rickey of just using Jackie and the racial cause for his own personal gain. And there were also many within the black community who disdained Jackie's status as a hero and simply considered him a pawn who had been used by the white man.
While there is some truth to the charges that Rickey's actions were not all racially motivated, I strongly disagree with any characterization of Jackie Robinson as a pawn, or any attempt to denigrate what he did because he did it in cooperation with a white man. Any cursory look at Jackie Robinson's life will show you that he was a fiercely intelligent and proud man who was no one's pawn. He knew as well as anyone that Rickey had other reasons for breaking the color line, and he knew that the MLB power structure only accepted him when they saw how much revenue he (and other African-Americans) generated. But that never lessened his respect for Branch Rickey as a man. That alone is enough for me. If Jackie Robinson had that much respect for him, then so do I.

"A moderate is a moral pickpocket."
Rickey, in regards to the plight of African-Americans in the U.S., 1956

"I don't like any 'ism' whose existence depends on force."
I'll hazard a guess and say that this is in reference to communism, as Rickey was a fervent anti-Communist. But when applied to any ideology, left- or right-wing, it's still very insightful, and something I would agree with even today.

In reference to Leo Durocher: "He has the most fertile talent in the world for making a bad situation infinitely worse."
The stories of Durocher and Rickey's rocky relationship with the Dodgers are entertaining. Sometimes I think Durocher went out and did crazy things just to see if he could make Rickey's eyebrows catch fire.

"Mr. Rickey had a heart of gold and he kept it."
-- Gene Hermanski

And lastly, a short aphorism that Rickey framed and hung in his office wherever he went:

He that will not reason is a bigot
He that cannot reason is a fool
He that dares not reason is a slave

Mitchell

If you live in the Western Hemisphere, you're probably aware that the Mitchell Report came out today. ESPN devoted some 6 hours of coverage to the press conferences of George Mitchell, Bud Selig, and Don Fehr today, interspersed with hotheaded murmurmings of a whole flock of talking heads.
I'm going to save my final assessment of the Mitchell Report until I've had a chance to read the thing (420 pages, but handily available in PDF format). But, inspired by Howard Bryant's thought-provoking column, I'm going to respond to the report's release not with more statements of fact, or alleged fact -- we've had our fill of that today -- but with questions.

What was Mitchell's agenda? Everyone has an agenda; some are just more damaging than others. Mitchell was a director in the Red Sox organization, but I don't think this greatly influenced his mindset. If Bryant's column is on the mark, Mitchell was acting more as a headhunter than as an arbiter of justice. So it's possible that Mitchell was just trying to collect as many names as possible to throw onto the front pages and then disguising it with level-headed rhetoric.

How reliable are these sources? The presence of Roger Clemens' name, for example, will cause most people who hear or read about the report to forever associate Clemens with steroids, essentially condemning him in their minds. That's awful, and it's one of the reasons that I don't like the report or even the idea of the report.
There isn't even the suggestion of some sort of due process here, and depending on what the report contains, there may not even be any sense of actually weighing evidence.
I'm sorry, but the statement of the Mets' clubhouse boy that he gave someone steroids is not enough to convince me of jack shit. If I were running this thing, I would insist that any testimony, report, or random list of names have corroboration from at least two other sources before I would consider putting someone's name in my damning report. Anything less would not only fail to meet the standards of responsible jurisprudence, it would fail to meet the standards of responsible journalism, which requires at least two sources before you stick your neck out and sully someone's name. I hope that when I read the full report I will find that Mitchell was meticulous in verifying these bits of rumor before printing them as fact.

If all the players are guilty of the charges, is this an appropriate sentence?
How many criminals are guilty of far, far worse than pharmaceutical malfeasance and never face a public reckoning? How many far more important and serious crimes went unnoticed today because of an announcement that someone might have taken an inappropriate pill or an illegal injection eight years ago. The fact that anyone could get so seriously angry about these events shows me just how incredibly misguided our ethical judgment is in this nation.
Many of the crimes listed in the Mitchell Report were either a) legal at the time of the offense (although his report does seem to focus mainly on the present day) or b) not against baseball rules at the time. Mitchell stated many times today that the players listed in his report had violated baseball rules, but that's patently untrue in many cases. Most PEDs were not against any sort of baseball rules until the 2002 CBA. There was the nebulous memo sent out by the Commissioner years earlier to "clarify" that PEDs were against baseball rules, but this has all the legal and practical value of a presidential belch. And if someone wasn't breaking the rules and/or the law, why in the name of heaven are they being put on the list of doom?

Where's the proof that PEDs make baseball players perform better?
It's thin. With anabolic steroids and the tougher stuff, there is loads of anecdotal evidence but no solid studies. There are things that we can say for certain that anabolic steroids do, but these things are only tangentially tied to baseball performance, and there's nothing out there to possibly quantify how great the effect is. When people guess how many home runs Barry Bonds would have hit without steroids, they have no f***ing idea what they're talking about, and we should call them on that.
As for HGH, there's far less proof that it helps baseball players much at all. In fact, not only are there no studies tying HGH to increased baseball performance, most knowledgeable people aren't even looking, because they don't even think it's likely. If there is a boost, it's likely minimal; caffeine and amphetamines would probably be a better performance-booster.
DID YOU HEAR THAT, AMERICAN SPORTS MEDIA? THERE IS NO EVIDENCE TYING HGH TO IMPROVED BASEBALL PERFORMANCE! SO WOULD YOU PLEASE SHUT THE F*** UP ALREADY!

What does it all matter?
Not much, really. I hate to hear that people cheat and attempt malfeasance, but that's nothing new in the world and certainly nothing new in baseball. All of the purists insist that there's something "dirtier" and different about steroids as cheating, as opposed to using a spitball or corking your bat. But they use the defense of "it just IS dirtier" or "if you have to ask, you'll never understand," all arguments showing irrefutable logic.
Will Roger Clemens be inducted into Cooperstown? Of course he will. Should we hold possible steroid use against him? Yeah, sure. But we should also hold against him that temper-tantrum he threw in the ALCS that got him kicked out of the game. And we should hold against him this past season with the Yankees. It's all part of the list of pros and cons, and any great attempt to give PEDs (they're not all steroids, ignorant masses) their own separate, dirty place in baseball history is silly and shows a flimsy grasp of the big picture.
All sports media figures are hereby served notice to shut up and not go on TV whining and complaining with the other talking heads about this. However, I will make them a promise: I will treat the Mitchell Report as the proof of an entire era of wrongdoing, if they meet one condition: write a report and go yell your heads off about the Collusion era of 1987-88, a much worse crime that anything Roger Clemens may have done with a syringe.
Do that, oh ye slaves of the idiotic zeitgeist, and then we'll talk.