d.: Okay, y'all, Cal.E. is busy with her cat rodeo, so I will be doing this blog solo for now. It is fortunate, then, that my all-time favorite person (he said, VERY sarcastically) Rob (he is NOT a) Man,Fred is in the news today. This easily gives me a subject on which to focus. It seems that the baseball commissioner is being ordered by a district judge to disclose information he has on the CHEATING New York Yankees. Hmm. It seems as if someone was talking about this six months ago.
That would be me.
Rob (he is NOT a) Man,Fred said, at the time, that the Yankees and Red Sox only cheated "a little bit" (and each team was caught cheating twice). Rob, has your wife ever been "a little bit" pregnant? You either cheat, or you do not. There is no "a little bit." My favorite baseball player, who now works for the Astros, said that he estimated that at least one-half of all the major league teams use some techniques to gain an unfair advantage over their opponents at their home stadium (i.e. cheat). I think that Mr. Jackson may be a little low on his estimate, but I digress. To quote Jim Rome, "It's baseball. If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin.'" My research tells me that this "effort to gain an unfair advantage" goes back to 1899, when one team was caught with an employee stealing the other team's catcher's signs from a hole in the fence in center field. The employee used binoculars at that time, so he probably was not as accurate as the modern-day methods of taking pictures and figuring out sequences of pitches and signs for them between innings. However, the home team was given an advantage, something that most teams, I believe, knew and accepted. Rob (he is NOT a) Man,Fred said that the Astro's scandal was the "worst since the Black Sox scandal in 1919." To those of you who do not know, that team fixed games so that gamblers could profit from the final scores, and put money in their own pockets as well. Rob overlooked the steroid scandal (that lasted for years) and the fact that the all-time hits leader in MLB is not in the Hall of Fame. Pete Rose bet on baseball. However, he bet on his teams to win! Isn't that what owners do when they pay players like REG-GIE to come to the Bronx and play for the hated Yankees? Hal Steinbrenner's dad, George, made that investment pay off when Jackson hit three consecutive home runs in a single World Series game (on a mere four pitches and three swings). Mr. October's bust was then assured of its place in the most hallowed Hall of Fame. Now, if Rob (he is NOT a) Man,Fred, is not the most hated baseball-related person in Houston since John McMullen let Nolan Ryan go north and sign with our neighbors (and now rivals) in Arlington; I do not believe there to be a lot of baseball and Astros' fans in Houston. McMullen did not want to pay the Ryan Express a cool million to stay with the Astros. Ryan was the teammate that every player loved and the leader every manager wanted on his team. He also made a lot of money for the teams for whom he pitched. By my estimation, around six million people claim to have seen Ryan pitch his last no-hitter with the Astros. (His sixth, and penultimate one. Ryan pitched his seventh, and final no-hitter while playing for the Texas Rangers. He is also, regrettably, enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame as a Ranger, not his hometown team with whom he spent seven years of his brilliant career.) If each person who claims to have seen that game only paid one dollar to enter the Astrodome, it would have put six million dollars in McMullen's pockets. He could pay his ace pitcher and still have five million dollars left over!
I am not one of the people to claim to have seen Ryan's sixth no-hitter. I WAS fortunate enough to see him pitch a one-hitter in person at the Astrodome, though. Many pundits proclaimed that a better game for Ryan than any of his no-hitters. By the end of the game, the other team would just tentatively go up to the plate, never swing, and shake their heads in wonder as the batters walked away from home plate as the umpire called the third strike. No arguments. The man was in a zone, as he often was. The baseball commissioner is also in a zone, but not the same type. His zone involves not angering those who bring in the most money to his profession. Hal Steinbrenner, the man who inherited the Yankee franchise from his dad, George, is the richest owner in baseball. He is worth 3.8 BILLION dollars. I wonder why Rob would not venture to anger someone who owned an outspoken team of cheaters? Can you say "coverup"? I am calling my shot now. Rob (he is not a) Man,Fred will be disgraced and run out of Major League Baseball within the next two years. Remember, you heard it here first!
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