Baseball Notebook | Spotlight stays on after season
NEW YORK - Barry Bonds dominated front pages around the country. Alex Rodriguez was splashed across the New York tabloids, as usual, and also made the first page of The Wall Street Journal.
Derek Jeter’s tax troubles could barely merit a few precious inches on the back pages in New York.
Oh, and there were Cy Young Award winners, rookies of the year and managers of the year. And then there is the story of the year.
It was all Bonds, all season as he chased Hank Aaron’s home-run record. And it was still all about him in the past week.
Four years of pursuit by prosecutors culminated in the indictment that seemed nearly as certain as his surpassing of the home-run record. After walking to first base at a record pace, he will be taking a perp walk soon for his arraignment on four counts of perjury and one for obstruction of justice.
Bonds’ appearance in federal court is scheduled for Dec. 7 - which used to be a free-agent deadline day in baseball and traditionally has marked the opening night of the opera season at famed La Scala in Italy.
But there is little expectation Bonds will sing, not after all these years of denials he used steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs.
That overshadowed all other sports news.
The New England Patriots are trying to match the 1972 Miami Dolphins for a perfect season and the Boston Celtics are off to their best start in 35 years, but baseball dominated the sports news in the past week. Pitchers and catchers don’t start reporting until mid-February, but baseball news rarely stops, especially in the Internet age, when every scrap of information on every player, no matter big or small, creates a headline somewhere.
Commissioner Bud Selig likes to say this is a golden era for the game, and he points to the piles of money the sport is taking in - a record $6 billion this year. The headlines are coming in faster than the bucks these days.
A-Rod’s melodrama was of a sunnier sort than Bonds’ seemingly inevitable journey through the justice system. There was a rapprochement with the New York Yankees that will culminate in a record-setting contract. Again.
Forget all that talk about the Yankees taking away his pinstripes forever and perhaps burning them like one of those bonfires that smoked outside the ballpark in the 1970s. After his $275 million, 10-year deal is finalized, ex-Mariner Rodriguez is destined to wind up in Monument Park, perhaps after surpassing Bonds’ home-run mark and assuredly after filling too many front and back pages to count speedily.
Now A-Rod gets more chances to flop or not in the postseason - assuming the Yankees extend their streak of playoff appearances that is at 13. Now he again gets to compete for attention across the clubhouse with captain Jeter, who must have been happy the other events reduced his story to near-agate type.
New York tax officials contend that from 2001 to 2003, Jeter should have been taxed as an in-state resident, not as a visitor from Florida. If Jeter loses, he would have to give up a bit of the $189 million the Yankees are paying him.
It was a worse week for Scott Boras, at least in the arena of public perception. Apparently upset with the way his talks with the Yankees deteriorated, Rodriguez went around his longtime agent and used a managing director at Goldman Sachs to repair his relationship with the Yankees. New York was willing to take A-Rod back, but only if he was willing to forgo $21 million - matching the subsidy from Texas the Yankees lost when he opted out.
According to The Wall Street Journal, billionaire investor Warren Buffett advised Rodriguez - a friend - to approach the Yankees without his agent.
While the games have stopped for a few months, baseball news rarely comes to a halt.