Friday, March 12, 2010

Rumor Mill

I might be a busybody myself, but you bluehats sure like to gossip. From hopeful speculation of a Josh Beckett contract extention killing the John Lackey replacement rumor to Nomar Garciaparra's retirement bringing back the numbers 60,000,000 and 4 to haunt him like an episode of Lost, this has been a dirty week in baseball.

Seriously, if Perez Hilton or Chelsea Handler ever tuned into ESPN, Hollywood would be renamed Crickettown. Forget Governor Spitzer and his callgirl, the good stuff's in the Clubhouse. And baseball has gossip bigger than which club Madonna and A-Rod have been canoodling in. There is a whole world of backstabbing maneuvers involved in reaching contracts and jockeying for players.

Take for instance Jose Julio Ruiz. If you believe the rumors, he's a bigger disaster than Brittany Spears and is just hurting for a trip to Dr. Drew. His former agent Jorge Luiz Toca is dishing the dirt because the two had a nasty breakup, which led Toca to the conclusion that Ruiz was using his agency for information and money (lawsuit to follow- Judge Judy, you interested?). So according to Toca, Ruiz showed up for tryouts fat and without a baseball glove, causing the Sox to withdraw a $2.5MM offer.

It's not only the players, and their agents, causing the scene. Maybe the Sox enjoy drumming up a little drama. Tony Massorotti points out in today's Globe that the Sox don't often re-sign players nearing the end of their contracts until they have filed for free agency. He cites Pedro Marinez, Jason Varitek, Nomar Garciaparra, Johnny Damon, Curt Schilling, Manny Ramirez, and Jason Bay as examples. Beckett has been threatening that he won't negotiate past opening day and seems to be pointing to Lackey's $82.5M contract as the starting point for negotiating up. Perfect fodder for E! News.

And finally there are the sweet segments, the ones to close the show with and make sure you bluehatted gossipmongers tune in tomorrow. Bob Ryan of the Globe highlights pitcher Manny Delcarmen who played hurt last year but is ready to shine in 2010. Delcarmen is the only player from Boston to play for the team in the past 45 years. Delcarmen is now living his lifelong dream after he was chosen by the Sox in the second round of the draft. E! True Hollywood Stories would definitely have taken a commercial break after some D-list stars talked about Delcarmen's dissapointment of not being swooped up by the Sox in the first.

Sorry, but I've got to do this.

Pinkhat out!*


* For those of you who don't suffer the pain of reality TV addiction, "Seacrest Out" is the asinine way Ryan Seacrest** signs off his television shows.

**Come on, you don't know who Ryan Seacrest is?

2 comments:

  1. I am impressed by all of your insider knowledge!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Alli,
    You might want to consider talking about NESN in your upcoming blogs. Did you try to watch the game this past Saturday when it was not working on NESN for most of the game? It was frustrating. People were angry. I thought NESN was going to be thrown in the Boston Harbour.

    ReplyDelete