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Call Him Whitey's Whacker

Lindley DeVecchio is a disgraced former FBI agent who stands accused of using his job to help provide information to mobsters that got people killed. Whitey Ford is the Chairman of the Board, a Hall of Famer who won 69% of his games and six-time World Champion. What do they have in common?

The feds once investigated whether a rogue FBI agent helped return a World Series ring to Yankee legend Whitey Ford after it was stolen by a mobster buddy of the G-man, an investigator testified yesterday.

The anecdote was of interest to the Justice Department at the time because the mobsters who ripped off Ford's safe-deposit box - apparently Yankee fans - were said to have used DeVecchio to get it back to Ford.

There must be something about the nickname Ford shares with Frank Sinatra that gets you some love from the mob. For his part Ford said that rings had been stolen from his bank but that he never got them back. Either way it helps to have friends in low places.

Duck You!

Minor-league baseball offers families the chance to see things that they can't get at big league ballparks. You have creative giveaways, good seats for reasonable prices and past-their-prime shortstops attacking the other team with a baseball bat. What more could you ask from a night at the ballyard?

Jose Offerman of the Long Island Ducks was hit with a pitch by Bridgeport Bluefish pitcher Matt Beech in the second inning of last night's game in Connecticut. He'd homered in the first inning so naturally felt that Beech was throwing at him intentionally and responded by charging the mound with his bat in hand.

"He hit him with a cut fastball in the left calf," Bluefish manager Tommy John said. "And the next thing you know, Offerman's going to the mound with his bat over his head taking swings at Beech. He took at least two, maybe even three [swings]."

Beech suffered a broken finger in the assault but was likely saved from further injury when Offerman's backswing caught catcher John Nathans in the head. Nathans was concussed and Offerman was arrested and charged with second-degree assault. He was held on $10,000 bond, something else that doesn't happen in the Show all that often. The Ducks website downplays the incident, however.

The Ducks opened up an early 5-0 lead after one-and-a-half innings, followed by a bench-clearing scuffle which resulted in a 30-minute delay. The fight led to ejections for Ducks infielder Jose Offerman, Bridgport starting pitcher Matt Beech, and Bluefish manager Tommy John. But the Bluefish responded with an offensive deluge, sending 12 men to the plate and scoring eight runs in the bottom of the second inning.

Offerman's Juan Marichal moment may not help his chances of resuming a major league career that ended in 2005 with the Mets. There's always a chance that a team feels that they don't have enough bat-wielding maniacs on the roster, especially ones that never showed the slightest ability to catch a ball without incident, but with Billy Martin pushing up daisies and Bobby Valentine living on sake that seems unlikely.

(Photo by AP/Christian Abraham, Connecticut Post)

What's New With Baseball Cards?

I really can't remember the last time I bought a pack of baseball cards. Do they still come with that stale, powdery stick of pink gum? They did when I last bought one, which probably shows my age as does the fact that I never got a pack of cards that included anything but baseball players. There's a Topps set out right now, the Allen & Ginter set, which includes such diamond luminaries as Freddy Adu and Joe Frazier in addition to your standard baseballers. There was also an autographed Mother Teresa card in one of the packs because, as you're well aware, the nun loved her some Bobby Grich back in the day. Don't rush out to buy a case of the cards, though, that little number has already been snatched up.

Chad Smith, of Wolverine Sportscards in Westchester, Ohio, bought a case of Allen & Ginter from Dave & Adam's Card World on the show floor. Like many dealers, Smith lugged the case back to his hotel room to bust, with the intent of selling its key singles the next day.

Halfway through the case, she appeared. The 1/1 Mother Teresa cut autograph.

"We had been busting for a few hours, and about to quit at 3:00 a.m. (EST) when I saw it," Smith said. "I started shaking. I didn't say anything, but my buddy knew I hit something big.

"I was kind of bummed we didn't get the one-per-case rip card," Smith said. "But I think this makes up for it."

There's quite a bit of baseball card collector lingo there that I don't understand but I'm pretty sure that busting a 3 A.M. isn't suggested by any board-certified physician. I can't think of a more fitting tribute to a woman who devoted her life to the church and the needy than to find herself sandwiched between Joe Borowski and Willy Mo Pena. The card is up on Ebay if you're a Teresa-phile and have several thousand dollars collecting dust in your back pocket.

It's probably worth at least 20 grand. Even though the Mother only had an OPS of, like, 11, there can't be many of those autographs kicking around. I tried to get Mother Teresa's autograph once and she had a leper spit on my hand. Then again, Dave Kingman did the same thing. You take your chances and sometimes things don't work out.

It's a good thing that Smith found the card instead of the unnamed Rochester, MN resident who recently lost some of his collection...sometime.

A Rochester resident's baseball card collection now is two sluggers short. And the loss from the lineup could prove costly.

The Harmon Killebrew and Hank Aaron cards were stolen either on Friday or within the past six to nine months, according to the Olmsted County Sheriff's Office.

That certainly narrows it down! The cards came from the back of Cherrios boxes "long ago", according to their former owner, and could be worth thousands of dollars. They could also be worth significantly less, the owner had no idea of their value. It seems that in addition to home security, he or she also didn't believe in paying for card appraisals.

(A stick of gum to Baseball Think Factory)

Over The Top Finally Getting The Attention It Deserves

I think we can all agree that there's never been a finer film about arm wrestling than Sylvester Stallone's seminal "Over The Top." And it finishes second behind "Smokey and the Bandit" on my list of the best trucker movies ever made. Not exactly a lightweight, in other words. So it pleases me to see that the Brooklyn Cyclones are going to honor the movie and its star this Saturday.

• The team will show a variety of Stallone-themed entertainment throughout the night.
• Fans are invited to dress up as their favorite Stallone character, with the winning costume receiving a prize pack.
• Anyone named "Sylvester" will be admitted to the ballpark at no charge.
• In commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of the 1987 movie Over The Top (in which Stallone plays a struggling trucker competing in a Las Vegas Arm Wrestling Championship, and sporting a New York City Arm Wrestling T-shirt), the New York Arm Wrestling Association (NYAWA) will host over 100 men and women competing that day for the 25th Annual White Castle ‘Kingsboro’ Golden Arm Wrestling titles, featuring a championship match taking place on the dugout during that night's game!
• Anyone who participates in the arm wrestling competition will receive a Cyclones ticket to that night's game. For more information on participating, contact Gene Camp at [email protected].

I leave Mr. Camp's contact information because I hope that some readers will be in the running for the Golden Arm Wrestling title. If you are, please let me know so I can be sure to say a novena for your chances.

Major points go to anyone who heads to Keyspan Park in full Judge Dredd regalia. I wear mine every Saturday night anyway so its a happy coincidence that I can actually win something other than the scorn of my friends and family. I am curious what the Stallone-themed entertainment will be. I'm guessing running up flights of stairs, smuggling steroids into Australia and romancing six-foot tall Germans will be part of the festivities while a sing-off with Frank Stallone won't be. My fingers are crossed, though.

(Tip of Marion Cobretti's toothpick to Can't Stop The Bleeding)

You Can't Live Blog The College World Series...

but this is okay?

(Via SportsbyBrooks)

Another Snooker Fight, Those Damn Seagulls And The Subtlest Anti-Semitism You'll Ever See

When are they going to clean up snooker already? If they ever make a movie of the above incident Alec Baldwin's a lock to play the guy laughing in the chair. (Deuce of Davenport)

That's a troublesome URL for one of the few Jewish baseball players in the Major Leagues. (Fire Joe Morgan)

Who will be the next Jack Cust? Our money's on Yurendell DeCaster but mostly because of his name. (The Hardball Times)

It's been way too long since we've heard from Sgt. Slaughter. (DC Sports Bog)

Bernie Miklasz might want to think of the people reading his interviews the next time he shares stories about Peter King's lovemaking techniques. (St. Louis Sports Magazine)

Andre Rison is a bad dad in addition to being Bad Moon. (Lion In Oil)

It wasn't so much Justin Verlander as it was the seagulls that threw a no-hitter last night. (Bugs and Cranks)

What is it about Florida schools that makes for so much criminal behavior? (Rumors and Rants)

Remember Dan and Dave? They're back. In pog form! (The Extrapolater)

The College World Series Alumni All-Stars. (One More Dying Quail)

Hong-Chih Kuo might not want to dig in too firmly the next time he faces the Mets. We'd say he should act like he's been there before but he hasn't so maybe he catches a break. (Sports Unfiltered)

What Are You Gonna Do When Cromartiemania Runs Wild On You?

The annals of the squared circle are chockful of athletes that have migrated from "real" sports to the scripted one. Pro football Hall of Famer Bronko Nagurski was once one half of the NWA World Tag Team Champions, Ernie "The Cat" Ladd is a member of both the San Diego Chargers and WWE Halls, Steve McMichael spent time with the Four Horsemen and no one will ever forget Lawrence Taylor's triumphant victory over Bam Bam Bigelow at Wrestlemania XI. Football players making the switch to wrestling makes sense, they have the bodies for it for one thing and the lack of steroid testing helps them keep their muscles bulging long after their playing days are finished.

Most baseball players, on the other hand, don't have quite so easy a switch from diamond to ring. It probably wouldn't surprise anyone if Jose Canseco took up a run at the WWE Title, it's probably crossed his plate at one time or another, and Jason Giambi was starting to look more and more like one of the Road Warriors before leaving for the squeaky clean gang in the Bronx. With those exceptions noted, however, the majority of baseballers aren't making a second career as grapplers. David Eckstein isn't going to sell out arenas and we can all agree that no one needs to see John Kruk in speedos while trying to break out of Ric Flair's dreaded figure four leglock.

We probably wouldn't have thought to add Warren Cromartie to that list, let's be honest it's been a while since any of us thought of the former Expo, and that's a good thing since he's prepared to make us look stupid. Cromartie is notable as one of the few players to go and play in Japan while still a regular in the majors, the Tom Selleck vehicle Mr. Baseball was based on him, and he's going to be making his professional wrestling debut in that country this Sunday.

The former Montreal Expos outfielder who became a fan favorite in Japan will step into the ring Sunday in a pro wrestling event called Hustle Aid. As part of a tag-team match, he'll face an opponent who walks around with a sword in his mouth - and says he wants to hurt Cromartie.

"I have to represent all baseball players," the 53-year-old Cromartie said Tuesday. "I've got a reputation here, I've got my fans in Japan so I'm taking this seriously and have been training real hard."

Told that longtime wrestler Tiger Jeet Singh hopes to injure him, Cromartie hardly flinched. "I'm going to take him out just like on a double play," Cromartie said. "I'm going to go from first to third and take him out with a home run chop."

We're not too sure what that last bit means either but lest you get too worried about Cromartie's safety, be warned that Singh is 63 years young himself and mostly retired from the ring wars. Cromartie will likely be the people's choice in the bout. He played for the Yomiuri Giants for seven seasons including 1989 when he batted .378 with 15 homers and won the MVP of the Japanese Central League. He also played drums for a Japanese band and was known for leading the crowds in cheers of "Banzai!" during his playing days. All that plus the dreaded Home Run Chop should find him on the right side of the pin to end Sunday's match.

(Not surprisingly Gerard at Can't Stop The Bleeding was all over this last week.)

The Increasing Irrelevance Of The Press Box

There were two stories today that taken together signal another death knell to the primacy of the press box in sports reportage. The first appears in one of the leaders of old journalism, the New York Times, and involves the shabby treatment traditional reporters are receiving from the teams they cover. Richard Sandomir is concerned with the displacement of press boxes from prime locations in favor of the ever-increasing number of club and luxury seats in American stadiums and arenas.

“We were giving the press the best real estate in the building, slightly elevated behind home plate, which they don’t need,” said Jerry Reinsdorf, the real estate investor who is chairman of the White Sox.

When asked why he moved the press to a much worse vista two levels up and along the first-base and right-field line, Reinsdorf unhesitatingly said, “Financial.”

Reporters complain that the seats limit their ability to do their jobs well because they can't describe what's going on with the same clarity that they could in better seats. There's an easy answer to that. Just watch them on TV. Seriously. In a time when every game is on television in and out of market via cable packages or accessible via internet and able to be taped and watched at a fan's leisure the need to describe this pitch or that catch is less and less important. Increases in technology have made game telecasts uber-inclusive. Replays catch things that the naked eye never could, no matter how good your seats are, and the whats of games shouldn't be as important to people covering them than the hows and whys. We can't get so upset over owners maximizing the financial payout from their teams at the expense of writers who aren't adding all that much to our understanding of the game. The writers still have access to the players after the game, that's the thing that they claim makes them more able to relay information about sports than you or me, and it's easy enough to figure out a way to say Bobby Abreu had three hits whether you are ten rows or two hundred rows from the field.

Meanwhile the bigwigs at the College World Series ejected Brian Bennett of the Louisville Courier-Journal from the press box because he was liveblogging the game. He had received a memo before the game from the NCAA explaining that they were outlawing live blogs because they interfered with the exclusive TV and internet broadcasting rights held by others.

The College World Series Media Coordination staff along with the NCAA Broadcasting group needs to remind all media coordinators that any statistical or other live representation of the Super Regional games falls under the exclusive broadcasting and Internet rights granted to the NCAA's official rights holders and therefore is not allowed by any other entity. Since blogs are considered a live representation of the game, any blog that has action photos or game reports, including play-by-play, scores or any in-game updates, is specifically prohibited. In essence, no blog entries are permitted between the first pitch and the final out of each game.

At the same moment old-school writers are having part of their job eclipsed by the easy availability of the games themselves, new-school bloggers are being told that they are taking eyes away from those same broadcasts. Does the NCAA really believe this? Bennett and other bloggers, especially those lucky enough to just be in front of the TV at home where no one can stop them from RELAYING FACTS, are shining a light on an oft-ignored sport. Instead of being thankful for the interest, the NCAA is stopping the people who can't sit in front of a TV for whatever reason from following a game that presumably has great interest to them.

Furthermore, I Dispute Your Assertion About The Location Of The Previous Offerings

In any other organization a spectacle like Phillip Wellman's might hinder career advancement. With Bobby Cox about to set a record for career ejections, however, there's probably no team better than Atlanta for the fiery Wellman. Not that there should ever be an organization that doesn't have a place for a manager who sees an argument about balls and strikes as the appropriate time and place for an impersonation of a WWII G.I. taking out a Nazi machine gun nest.

Baseball Side Dishes, Able-Bodied Olympians And John Kruk's Testicles

Now that we know A-Rod is into muscular, she-male types for his extracurricular boinking, who are the ideal mistresses for the rest of baseball's stars? Hint: The gal above is one of them, which justifies her being on this page. (Babes Love Baseball)

This just in: Olympic athletes must have two legs constructed of flesh and blood. (Lion In Oil)

Welcome to the Fukudome! (Armchair GM)

What does Charlie Sheen think about what A-Rod did? Not the stripper, that should be self-evident, but the yelling at the fielder thing. (MSNBC)

The coaches of the confederacy do not dig the Wolverines. (Mgoblog and Sunday Morning Quarterback)

Mark Lemke probably wasn't on steroids. (Just Call Me Juice)

All those tubes on the internet probably make it too easy to create Heisman campaigns for college football players. (The Wizard Of Odds)

Now you know why all those cyclists use steroids. It's tricky business. (The Postmen)

If you're making fun of John Kruk, stick to his weight, his performance on ESPN or his incessant flatulence. Just don't go after his balls. Or ball, actually. (SportsbyBrooks)

Charles Barkley won't have Steve Kerr to kick around at the next TNT weenie roast. (True Hoop)