Welcome, Russell Martin

The Pittsburgh Pirates and GM Neal "Smartest Guy in the Room" Huntington have struck quickly in the free agent market and signed catcher Russell Martin to a reported two year, $17 million deal.

What do I think about that?  Well, right off the bat, let's stipulate that Martin is not Johnny Bench.  We can also agree that it stinks that the Pirates do not have anyone in their developmental pipeline who can step in and be a solid, everyday, reasonably productive catcher.  That 2009 Number One draft pick Tony Sanchez is not, and may never be ready, to fulfill that role is symptomatic of one of the big problems of the NHR (Neal Huntington Regime), but ranting about THAT problem does not resolve the problem it has created, namely, who's going to don the tools if ignorance for the Bucs in 2013?

The free agent catcher market was very shallow this year, and in Martin the Pirates may have gotten the best of the lot.  He can hit for power (21 HR last year), but his batting average is not great (,211 last year) and his OPS (.713) is mediocre.   On the plus side, he threw out 24% of base runners attempting to steal last year.  (Come to think of it, compared to what Pirates catchers did in this department last year, this DOES make him Johnny Bench!)   Also, he will be only 30 years old when the season opens next year (by comparison, Rod Barajas was 36 when signed by the team last winter).

So, at this point in time, at least, Martin does represent an improvement over what the Pirates had last year, and yeah, I know that that is a very low bar to clear, but it is an improvement, nonetheless.  As I said, you can argue that the Pirates should have someone in the pipeline who is both a cheaper and better alternative, but they don't, so they have to do something about it, and they did.  We shall see how it turns out.

After reading lots of comments in the last several hours about this deal, I am struck by two things.  One thread wondered if the team consulted A.J. Burnett on this.  I would hope not.  Personally, I thought the whole "A.J. likes pitching to Barajas" thing was overblown last year.  If you are a good pitcher, which Burnett certainly proved to be last year, you can pitch to any catcher.  The other thread criticized the Pirates for "spending too much money" to sign Martin.  You can't have it both ways, folks - you can't lambaste the Pirates for being cheap and not spending money on payroll, and then criticize them when they do.

Anyway, we will all know soon enough if this is a good or bad signing for the Pirates.

Finally, I must confess to having a certain liking for Russell Martin.  In 2007, he was a member of my fantasy team, The Big Train, and in that magical season, the Big Train stormed to the Championship of the prestigious North Park League.  So - Welcome Home, Russell Martin!!!

Johnny Evers

Yes, I am talking about that Johnny Evers of "Tinker to Evers to Chance" fame. 

I have always maintained that it is worth subscribing to Sports Illustrated because about a half dozen or so times a year, they will publish a terrific article, usually a long one that is the last story in the issue, that is so good that it is, as I said, worth the price of a subscription.  So it is with this week's issue (Andrew Luck on the cover) with author Tim Layden's story about the Cubs' Hall of Fame second baseman, immortalized in 1910 in newspaperman Franklin P.  Adams' famous bit of baseball doggerel, "Baseball's Sad Lexicon", Johnny Evers (pronounced "EE-vers", by the way, not EV-ers).  

The hook to this story, however, is that fact that Evers was author Laydon's great-uncle, the brother of his maternal grandfather.  Even though "Uncle Johnny" had died 9 years before Layden was born, he, Layden, always dropped the name of his uncle into conversations.  No one could ever top being related to a Hall of Famer who also happened to be the subject of baseball's second most famous poem.  About a year ago, one of his Sports Illustrated colleagues asked Layden if he ever thought about doing a story about Evers.  That started  Layden on a journey that led to this week's SI feature.  As Layden puts it in the article, "it was a journey that reminded me of what every reporter knows: Disturbing the dust of mythology almost always damages the myth."

A great story and a great piece of writing.  If you are a baseball fan, you need to read this.  Hell, this is worth reading even if you are not a baseball fan.

Tributes: Cary Grant and George Harrison

November 29 is an unlucky date, apparently, for the world lost two giants in their fields on this date. 

In 1986, Cary Grant passed away at the age of 86.  Readers know that I am a huge Cary Grant fan.  In my mind, no actor, before or since, has what Cary Grant had, but don't take my word for it.  Check out the TCM Tribute video narrated by Tony Curtis.

And on this date in 2001, George Harrison passed away at the age of 58.  While searching for this video last night, Marilyn made the comment that Harrison was one of those men who got better looking as he got older.  Here is one of my favorite Harrison songs.

"Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House"

At the urging of my friend, Mark Matera, I DVR'd this 1948 movie a few weeks back, and I finally got around to watching it last night.  What a comic gem.

The movie stars the incomparable Cary Grant and Myrna Loy as a married couple with two daughters living in a tiny apartment in New York City.  The operative word here is "tiny".  They decide to buy a house in the suburbs and end up building a house in the suburbs.  The whole thing just snowballs from there, as anyone who has ever built a house, or even bought a new house, can readily relate.  What, you didn't realize that you had ordered a "Zuzz-Zuzz Water Softener" for an additional four hundred bucks when your house was being built?  (Just hearing Cary Grant say "Zuzz-Zuzz Water Softener" makes this worth watching.)

By the way, the prices points really date this movie.  In 1948, $25,000 for a house in the Connecticut suburbs was considered outrageously expensive.  The themes expressed in the movie, however, are as relevant today as they were in 1948.  What is also timeless is the sheer comic brilliance of Cary Grant and the charm of Myrna Loy.  Her describing what colors she wants the paint and wallpaper in her new house to be is classic.

An old movie worth seeing, and one that will no doubt be included in future DVR Alerts.

To Absent Friends: Marvin Miller

Marvin Miller, the first Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players Union, died today at the age of 95.  Few men, and certainly no executive, cast a bigger shadow upon Major League Baseball than did Marvin Miller.  That he is not a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame is a supreme injustice, and proof that even decades after his retirement, he continues to rankle the baseball establishment.

I will not recount the historic contributions of Marvin Miller.  If you are a baseball fan, you already know them, and you know his place in history.  As an obit I just read on Yahoo! Sports just put it, if you were to draw up a list of the most influential people in baseball history, and if after five names your list does NOT include Marvin Miller, then you need to start your list over again.

At the SABR Convention I attended in Cincinnati a few years back, Miller was the Keynote Speaker, and it was fascinating to hear him.  Well in his eighties and long retired at the time, Miller still retained all of the passion that he brought to the job when he first took it in 1966.  Every player in MLB should wear some sort of patch on their uniforms in 2013 in tribute to Miller, but I doubt that the Lords of the Realm will allow it to happen.

RIP Marvin Miller.

The College Conference Landscape

The collegiate sports landscape underwent yet another huge change with the announcement last week that the University of Maryland and Rutgers University would be leaving the ACC and Big East, respectively, to join the Big Ten.  Reports are surfacing that other schools in the Big East are being coveted by the ACC, while schools in the ACC are being coveted by the Big Ten.  

Where is this leading?  Well, I believe, and I am far from original in this thinking, that where we are eventually heading, probably before the end of this decade, is to a set up of four sixteen team "Super Conferences".  These conferences will be the descendants of what we now know as the Big Ten, Big Twelve, PAC 12, and SEC.  Sixty-four schools known primarily for football, and make no mistake, this is a football driven initiative because that, as Willie Sutton might put it, is where the money is.

Some questions:

What happens to the Big East and ACC?   As I postulated the other day, the Big East is done.  It needs to return to it's roots as a haven for non-football and primarily Catholic basketball playing colleges.  As for the ACC, haven't you always thought of the ACC as a basketball, and not a football conference?  I know that I have.  I fear that a school like Duke, which hasn't been relevant in big time football in my lifetime, is going to be left in the dust.

What happens to Pitt?   Pitt is committed to the ACC starting next year, but I fear that they, and schools like Syracuse, UConn, and, yes, even a kingpin like Duke, are going to be forced to settle for something else once the 64 super teams are settled upon.  What that "something else" will be is anybody's guess.  Conferences like the ACC and whatever might be left of the Big East will be second tier conferences.

Is it possible that the four Super Conferences thumb their noses at the NCAA, secede, and set up their own self-governing body?  Some in-the-know media people say that this is not beyond the realm of possibility.

What will Notre Dame do? A most interesting question.  Notre Dame has fiercely coveted its independent status where football is concerned, and one of the primary reasons, although not the only reason, for that is their unique football TV contract with NBC.  However, that contract reportedly pays ND $15 million a year.  That's a lot of money to me, but in a world where Maryland shrugs off a $50 million exit fee from the ACC, $15 million is relative peanuts.  AD Jack Swarbuck is already expressing concerns about the future of the ACC.  In the new world order of the Super Conferences, Notre Dame would be a perfect fit for the Big Ten (even though geography is becoming less and less of a factor), and their share of the loot from the Big Ten Network should easily eclipse what they are pulling in from NBC.  It may seem unimaginable to many for Notre Dame to be anything but an independent, but, as a great man once said, the times they are a-changin'.

Does it make sense for minor sports teams, like swimming, lacrosse, and golf, for example, to schedule meets, games or matches that involve such disparate locations as, say, Lincoln, Nebraska and Piscataway, New Jersey?   No, it doesn't, unless there is just so much money from football that the expenses involved in such scheduling just won't matter.  Perhaps a new paradigm involving such sports needs to be developed in this new world order, and just what that is, I don't know.

What becomes of basketball's March Madness?  Good question.  Will the sixty-four super conference schools set up their own hoops tournament at season's end, relegating schools such as Pitt, Syracuse, Duke, Connecticut (theoretically speaking) to play in a beefed up NIT-type event?  Don't forget, the NCAA hoops tourney is a major cash cow itself, but it seems that even this is dwarfed by whatever money the new football set-up will generate.  If the Super Sixty-Four do secede from the NCAA, will the NCAA swallow hard and say, "hey, it's OK if you guys want to still be with us for basketball"?  And will a basketball tournament involving only the four Super Conferences still have the cachet among the bracket-pool playing public as the current tournament set-up has?

While many of these thoughts and opinions are my own, I am also indebted for the input of opinions expressed by guests - such as Bob Ryan, Michael Wilbon, and Pat Forde -  on the Tony Kornheiser Radio show podcasts, as well as the opinions of friends such as Dan Bonk and Fred Shugars.

Happy Birthday, Tom Seaver

Hall of Fame Pitcher Tom Seaver turns 68 years old today.

This picture is how I always think of Tom Seaver.  A fantastic competitor and perhaps the best pitcher of his generation.

• 311-205 career W-L record
• 2.86 career ERA
• Five time twenty game winner
• 231 complete games
• 61 shut outs
• 3,640 strike outs
• Five time league leader in strike outs

He played for the Mets at a time when they were among the Pirates' most bitter rivals, so I never much rooted for Tom Seaver, but in looking back, I'm honored to say that I saw him pitch.

Happy Birthday!