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Baseball Today: Friday, April 27

Thank heavens it's a new dawn in the baseball world . . .

THAT'S A DAY OF OUR LIFE WE'LL NEVER GET BACK: Sock-gate was Topic First, Last and Everything Else around here yesterday. (projo.com) Hey, at least it got Sheryl Crow off the talk shows.

A MILLION TIMES NO: Curt Schilling, whom Steven Krasner said "emphatically refused to discuss the latest controversy surrounding his bloody sock'' with reporters in the Red Sox clubhouse yesterday, finally weighed in on the topic on 38pitches.com. He goes off on the media -- to be fair, he limits it to what he calls ''an entire subset of media whose sole purpose in life is to actually be the news, instead of report it'' -- and then completely buries the lead by putting this in the last paragraph:

''[I'll] wager 1 million dollars to the charity of anyones choice, versus the same amount to ALS. If the blood on the sock is fake, I’ll donate a million dollars to that persons charity, if not they donate that amount to ALS. Any takers?''

This story's explosion yesterday actually was a very interesting lesson in modern communications, but there's no way I could adequately analyze it in the time and space I have here. The mystery, to me, was how Gordon Edes could have been aware of Thorne's comments -- generally, the sound of the TV broadcasts is muted in the press box, and if it wasn't, Edes wouldn't have been the only reporter to hear it -- but come to find out it was old friend Allan Wood who heard it first and sent the word out to Edes and several other sports writers. A global village, indeed.

THE LAST WORD: Seth Mnookin thinks it was fitting that all this happened in Baltimore. (sethmnookin.com/blog) You'll have to click the link to find out why.

OH, YES, THE GAME: Wily Mo Pena got Red Sox Nation off his back, at least for a night. (Yet another talk-show topic compromised; drat!) The most interesting part of Steven Krasner's story, however, is where he relates Pena saying he hit a slider but Orioles pitcher Chris Ray responding no, it was a fastball. "Pitch recognition,'' writes Krasner, ''may have something to do with Pena’s troubles.''

ARMAGEDDON II: At least that's how Yankee Universe is viewing this weekend, especially after Phil Hughes didn't live up to the role of savior last night. (New York Daily News) The always honest Johnny Damon cut through corporate Yankee-speak when he said, ''There's going to be panic soon, if the winning doesn't start.''

FAR EAST FLOP: Kei Igawa is now ''baseball's most expensive long reliever''. (New York Post)

BELIEVE HALF OF WHAT YOU SEE, SON, AND NONE OF WHAT YOU HEAR: Jayson Stark isn't buying Alex Rodriguez' proclamations that he'll never leave New York. (espn.com)

KREMLIN-WATCHING: George Steinbrenner has become so publicly elusive that reporters -- like SI.com's Jon Heyman -- are searching for clues the way the State Department would analyze Soviet politics by who stood where on the podium during May Day celebrations. (sportsillustated.cnn.com)

-- ART MARTONE

Posted by Art Martone  at 7:08 AM | Permalink