the act we act

the sun rises, the sun sets, lou gorman eats lunch and the sox are front-page, above-the-fold, 64-point font headline news... naturally, this being march and not june, august or october, it's for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with baseball...
it's too obvious to start this discussion with japan as it is currently next to impossible to last five minutes without seeing a photo or video of someone involved with the team bowing or wearing a kimono (hello!)... no, i want to start with the boycott thing from last wednesday because i'm wicked current and love writing about stories that broke five days ago and have likely been ingested and forgotten... well, except for people like wallace matthews, the yankees beat guy for newsday, who late last week wrote a column that may well have set a new standard for solipsistic self-righteousness... look, the team was looking out for their coaches and that's all it was... everyone knows that the role of the coach/manager/assistants is less important in baseball than in any other major sport but these guys know how important their staff is on a daily basis - drilling them, playing shrink, providing positivity and consistency... they live with these guys for almost eight months of the year and while the players are the ones making billions of dollars, some coaches are making less than a few bartenders i know... to be promised a $40,000 stipend and then have the promise revoked must have been unthinkable to a coach who barely clears that amount in yearly salary... whomever was at fault - the player's association, MLB - matters not... what matters is that the players, while openly acknowledging the fans who may have been forced to miss out, took a stand as a unit to ensure that their guys got what they were promised... contrary to what people like matthews - who listed the yearly salaries of several of the red sox highest paid players in his piece for no apparent reason - think, the threatened walkout had nothing to do with what the players make and completely to do with protecting the financial interest of those who make infinitely less than they... it was a strange, but ultimately satisfying move by the sox roster, who will never be accused of not being united on all fronts - not such a bad attribute...
and by the way, wallace - to compare the red sox trip to japan with the yankees' visit to virginia tech last week is irresponsible, self-serving and, quite frankly, stupid... of course the yankees did not take an appearance fee to visit the virginia tech campus and play an exhibition game there in the aftermath of last year's tragedy - the red sox, mariners, dodgers or toledo mudhens would not have either... so bearing that in mind, do you think the yankees didn't leverage themselves a crapload of money and perks when they opened the season against tampa in tokyo in 2004? do you think mike mussina, who is still complaining about that trip four years later, behaved honorably back then? (by the way, if anyone can direct me to a single complaint lodged by anyone invloved with the sox, who matthews calls "shameful" in his piece, please feel free to do so)... the japan trip and the virginia tech visit are apples and oranges, wallace... they couldn't be any more different... i'm just some scrubby local writer and i can see that - you are a columnist at a major, daily metro in the biggest media market in the world - that should be enough of a reason for you to get a clue...
and i'm spent - that took a little more out of me than i expected... well anyway, enjoy waking up at 6 a.m. the next couple days, sox fans - i know i will... gonna put together a quasi-season preview later in the week, so we'll see all six of you then - word!