Catching up with the news

It's been a crazy week out here, sorry I've been out of touch. Being Babe Ruth is kinda hard sometimes, you know. Whenever there's a disagreement among all the old-timers, everybody always comes to me for advice. It's like high school and I'm the prom king. Just the other day, for example, Speaker complained to me that he was being snubbed by some of his old teammates on the Indians like Bill Wambsganss and Stan Coveleski. I asked him, Well what did you do? And Speaker goes, All I said was that I thought my '12 Sox could've kicked my '20 Indians three ways to Sunday. Speaker had no idea why that might offend people. Guy's dumber than Cobb when it comes to inter-personal relationships and shit. Anyway I told Speaker to stick to his guns and snub them right back. WTF is a Wambsganss anyway?

Anyhoo, I've been dealing with crap like that non-stop for the past week or so, and I'm just now coming up for air. So I'm a little behind, but I want to give you my takes on some of the recent baseball news:

1. First order of business, the MSG network* in New York is running a series about the all-time greatest players at each position in New York history, and next week they're going to be selecting right fielders. I'll have more to say about this in a separate post, but here is a taste: It is not fair to Reggie Jackson, Mel Ott, Darryl Strawberry, and the other nominees to go up against me. They really should have created a separate category for me and let the other guys fight it out for the scraps. More later.

*On a side note, I had always wondered about Chinese restaurants posting signs in their windows saying, "No MSG." Finally it makes sense: They didn't pay extra for the MSG network on their cable package! I guess Chinese people really don't like that network, because it's pretty pervasive.

2. Speaking of greatest Yankees, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece in which they judged and ranked a bunch of us "by stats, economic impact and cultural relevance" to select the Greatest Yankee. Guess who's number 1?

I guess there's really not much going on in the world of finance -- no major institution is being investigated, no major reform bills are being considered by Congress. So the Journal could easily afford to allow some young cub reporter to develop a "comprehensive" methodology to determine the world's most obvious conclusion. I hear the Journal is also going to come up with a comprehensive methodology to determine who is America's blackest president.

3. Ryan Howard's new contract is obscene, but I love every $$ of it. I love that he still had a couple years left on his current deal, so they didn't even need to extend him. I love that the Phillies are gonna be paying Ryan $25M per year when he's 37 years old, even though you can probably count on one hand the number of players of Ryan's type -- big, strong power hitters -- who were still putting up big numbers. Sure, when I was 37, I was still awesomely Ruthian, but that's just me. Much as I love Ryan Howard, he's not me. He's not even Frank Thomas (sorry to break it to you, Phans). You know what Thomas did at age 37: .219 with 12 HRs in 34 games.

You know why I love the contract? Because it shows the Phillies are now trying to compete with the Yankees, and it's just not possible. They're going to spend all this money and still come up short, and it's just gonna make it that much easier for the Yankees to keep dominating.

4. It looks like major league baseball is wading into the controversial Arizona law that, from what I understand, allows the police to demand the documentation of anybody who looks like he might be in the country illegally, and if he is unable to produce "papers," to then tattoo a scarlet "I" onto the poor guy's forehead. I really don't know what all the fuss is about. They did something similar in Germany back in the 1930s, and that turned out just fine.

What should baseball do? How about supporting a law to make every member and fan of the Boston Red Sox walk around with a big blue B on his head? There's no better way to subject them to the public ridicule they deserve than to force them out into the open.

5. That's all I got for now. See you next time.