Replies to post #2152 on New York Baseball

[BullNBear52]

Spring Is Hardly Just Around the Corner, but Baseball Is
By BEN SHPIGEL

Around much of this winter-battered country, grass is only a rumor. Winter is but halfway over, and already enough snow has fallen in Boston to blanket its star second baseman, Dustin Pedroia, who stands 69 inches tall. Undoubtedly, another storm — or three — are coming.

But for fans residing in the East and Midwest, and in Texas, some of the worst is over. And spring training, an annual antidote, is almost here. For those keeping score, some pitchers and catchers will begin holding official workouts next Monday in Florida and Arizona, and fans can begin feeling optimistic about teams that will inevitably leave them frustrated and fuming.

Meanwhile, the intimidating winter of 2010-11 continues. Joe Bastardi, the chief long-range meteorologist for AccuWeather, was relatively optimistic, contending in a telephone interview that “the worst of the winter is over south of a line from New York to Philadelphia to Dodge City, Kan.”

North of that line, he said, there could be more major storms, more snow days for kids, more trains that are not running. But at least those who are afflicted can read baseball stories with datelines from Clearwater and Scottsdale.

Already, there are dozens of players working out at various spring training sites. Yankees starter Phil Hughes threw at the team’s complex in Tampa, and Derek Jeter, with much to prove after hitting .270 last season, took batting practice and fielded ground balls at shortstop.

“I’ve always been pretty good in my career in terms of forgetting about previous seasons, whether it was a good season or a bad season,” Jeter told The Associated Press.

Across the state in Port St. Lucie, the Mets’ David Wright was working out, too, even as the team’s owners continued to deal with a perilous lawsuit filed against them by the trustee representing the victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

Wright told reporters he had even reached out to Jeff Wilpon, the team’s chief operating officer, to express his support. But the trustee is seeking a billion dollars from the owners and Wright cannot do much about that.

In all, pitchers and catchers from 11 of the 30 teams — though not the Yankees (Feb. 15) or the Mets (Feb. 17) — will hold their first official workouts Monday. And almost faster than you can shovel out a driveway, the exhibition season will be under way, with a game between the Philadelphia Phillies and Florida State on Feb. 24.

The defending champion San Francisco Giants open the Cactus League schedule the next afternoon against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

If it seems as if teams are assembling earlier than usual, it is because they are. To keep the World Series from again being played in November, spring training was moved up a few days.

And in order not to give those days right back, baseball, a sport that holds fast to its traditions, will begin in a most nontraditional fashion by having opening day on a Thursday, March 31.

Aside from season openers played outside the United States, opening day has fallen on a Sunday or a Monday every year since 1998. Only 10 times prior, and not since 1976, has the first pitch been thrown on a Thursday.

Six months later, the season will end Sept. 28, a Wednesday, the earliest conclusion since 2003, and the first time it will be scheduled to conclude on a day other than Sunday since 1990.

In between, intriguing highlights abound. On May 20, presuming it will have been dug out by then, Fenway Park will welcome the Chicago Cubs for the first time ever in a regular-season series. A month later, from June 24 to 26, the Florida Marlins will play a home game 3,300 miles from home — at Safeco Field in Seattle, against the Mariners, because of a conflict at Sun Life Stadium with a U2 concert.

In another rarity, the first scheduled doubleheader in about 10 years is slated for July 16, when the host Oakland Athletics will play two games on a Saturday against the Los Angeles Angels.

Meanwhile, bigger changes loom for the sport. In all likelihood, this will be the final postseason under the old system, which rewarded the three division winners and a wild-card team. Momentum is gathering for the additions of two wild-card teams, one in each league. The new format is yet to be determined, but it is likely to be in place for 2012. Expansion of instant replay may not be far behind.

As for whether there will still be snow on the ground in the Northeast on opening day, Bastardi naturally could not say. But he did suggest that after a winter that could wind up as the coldest nationwide in more than 20 years, the beginning of the baseball season in places like Philadelphia, New York and Boston might not be as peaceful as it was a year ago.

Still, he added with a laugh: “There’s hope. The seasons will change eventually.” And baseball is already here.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 9, 2011


A picture caption on Tuesday with an article about the approach of the major league baseball season misstated the number of days until the Boston Red Sox’ home opener at Fenway Park, whose seats were shown covered in snow. As of Tuesday, opening day was 59 days away — on April 8; it was not 70 days away.

[BullNBear52]

At Citi Field, Stains Are Not From the Grass
By CLYDE HABERMAN

Citi Field, home of the New York Mets, is a pleasant stadium — handsome, easily reached by public transportation, child-friendly and packed with diverting food choices in those all-too-frequent moments when the team itself loses its entertainment value. In fact, one of the few things that feel wrong with Citi Field is its name.

Make that: one of the few things that continue to feel wrong. Frowns have been abundant ever since the Mets, in 2006, accepted Citigroup’s reported offer of $20 million a year for 20 years for the privilege of slapping its name on the stadium’s facade.

But a financial stain that now threatens the team reinforces why many noses have wrinkled in distaste over the choice.

The Mets’ owners, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, stand accused in a lawsuit of having enriched themselves through their long and close connection to the execrable Bernard L. Madoff, whose Ponzi scheme, the lawsuit says, should have been evident to them. The trustee for Madoff victims, who is suing Messrs. Wilpon and Katz, seeks so much money from them, $1 billion, that their ability to hold onto the team has been thrown into doubt.

Both men call the trustee’s tactics “outrageous” and his allegations unfounded. Mr. Wilpon has said that he was as much a victim of Mr. Madoff as anyone. But he and Mr. Katz are in trouble. They need money, and have already begun looking for someone to buy a minor share of their ball club.

No matter how the lawsuit plays out, the rancid air of impropriety now permeates the Wilpon-Katz Mets, unlikely to be cleansed soon, if ever. The situation is hardly improved by that name above the ballpark entrance.

Thanks to a bailout by American taxpayers, Citigroup has rebounded from its near-death experience in 2008. But it remains a symbol of all that went haywire on Wall Street and propelled the United States economy toward disaster.

Bad enough that the Mets’ owners are enduringly scarred by their Madoff connection. By clinging to the Citi name, they are also saying they have no qualms about identifying themselves with a central player in one of the biggest financial debacles in this country’s history.

Is this, some might wonder, truly good for New York?

Its taxpayers, remember, are on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars that went into building this stadium and a companion ballpark for the Yankees, in the form of infrastructure improvements and tax-exempt financing. New Yorkers thus have a stake in what one of the city’s most prominent structures is called.

Plenty of alternatives to the sullied Citi name have been suggested. (A favorite here remains Debits Field, but that sort of change is not about to happen.)

The name Shea Stadium served just fine for many years. There is no reason why it couldn’t do so once again. The ballpark that went by that name may not have been the finest, but it had the advantage of honoring someone who did something that was actually useful. William A. Shea, a power broker of the first order five decades ago, helped bring National League baseball back to New York after the Giants and the Dodgers had fled to California.

The city cannot compel the team and Citigroup to agree to a divorce, amicable or otherwise. But as the Mets’ landlord, the city could lean awfully hard. Our billionaire mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, would seem uniquely positioned to deal persuasively with others who dwell in the income stratosphere.

City Hall is disinclined to act, though. Its consistent policy has been that “we’re going to honor the lease agreement, which gives them the authority to designate a sponsor,” said Frank Barry, a Bloomberg spokesman. “Them” referred to the team’s owners.

Indeed, the city’s lease with the Mets bestows on them “the exclusive right to designate the name of the stadium,” with a couple of exceptions. The sponsor’s name or logo may not be obscene. “Nor,” the lease says, “shall it be antithetical to the character of the stadium as a prominent symbol of the city.” Purveyors of tobacco products — don’t forget who the mayor is — are the only ones singled out as being antithetical.

It will have to be left to others, then, to decide if the behavior of Citigroup, which helped bring about the worst financial crisis in eight decades, meets the dictionary’s definition of obscene as “offensive to one’s feelings, or to prevailing notions, of modesty or decency.”


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