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In a slight twist to expectations, longtime Yankee manager Joe Torre has turned down a one year deal worth $5 million with incentives worth up to an additional $3 million. ESPN analyst extraordinaire Peter Gammons hits it on the head in a video, when he says that in waiting 10 days after their season ended and then low-balling him with a one-year offer and a pay cut, the Yankees offer was somewhat insulting to the man who is the 2nd winningest manager in Yankees history, trailing only Joe McCarthy and 8th all time. Let's put this into some perspective:
Record as a Yankee: 1,173-767, .605 winning percetage
Four World Series titles
10 AL East titles (9 straight from 1998-2006)
Two-time AL Manager of the Year (1996 and 1998)
Reached postseason all 12 seasons
He deserved better than that. If they wanted to fire him, they should have fired him. This strikes me as the team trying to save face, not to mention star players. They have two high-profile free agents to re-sign in Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada, both of whom have said their desire to return to the Yankees hinged, in part, on Torre remaining as skipper. Do the Yankees now think they can go to Rivera and Posada and legitimately claim to have offered Torre a contract, thereby absolving themselves of the firing of the manager? Anyone can see he was forced out.
It's too bad. Joe was a good man and a great manager.
Tennessee Braves manager Phil Wellman is apparently, completely batshit crazy. My favorite moment? The resin bag/grenade move. What aim the man's got!
I don't have the strength or willpower to write about last night's defeat, so I'll let the always (usually?) spot-on Tom Hall do my talking for me, here.
Sigh.
So....it's about 22 hours until the kickoff of the Champions League Final which for the second time in three years pits the Rossoneri of Ac Milan (Booooo!) against the Reds of Liverpool FC (HUZZAH!). This year the final is taking place in Athens, Greece.
Kick off is at 2:45pm EDT and we'll be watching it at Nevada Smith's.
Here's hoping for a repeat of the following scene:
So, the manager of Chelsea FC, José Mourinho (full name: José Mário dos Santos Mourinho Félix!) is having dog problems. According to the Guardian newspaper, Gullit, his "beloved Yorkshire terrier" (presumably named after the former-Holland and Chelsea player Ruud Gullit).
So, wait...José Mourinho, the multimp[le title-winning, 6th sexiest man in the world, infuriating, mouthy, manager of Chelsea FC, one of the biggest clubs in English football owns a...Yorkie?
My favorite bit from the story?
A dog warden, Lee Nash, said he had been searching in Belgravia with increasing urgency throughout the day. "I've been told to look for a Yorkshire terrier with a red bow," he said. "I don't know how big it is - but even a crow could take a miniature Yorkshire terrier."
Just announced, live at Yankee Stadium, Roger Clemens, arguable the greatest pitcher in baseball history, is returning to the New York Yankees!
There's no word yet on when he'll be returning, but it'll be soon and the Yankees couldn't need him more. Live in the YES booth, he just said he hopes to be back before the end of the month!
BBC coverage of the shocking display of brutality by the Italian Carabinieri during a match between AS Roma and Manchester United in the European Champions League. Now, I hate Man U as much as anyone, but NO ONE deserves this kind of punishment. Yet another example of how far behind the times the Italian police are in terms of crowd control. With the match fixing scandals and dead policemen (although there is now doubt as to the direct cause of his death), both Italian football and their policing methods need a complete overhaul.
I wish I had a picture, but I don't. Can anyone tell me what a penguin was doing on the field at Yankee Stadium, tonight? At least I think it was from tonight. It might have been an old shot from a Happy Feet promotion, the announcers didn't explain. They were just talking about how cold it was the broadcast showed a penguin walking around the field.
Odd.
Photo by David Wingo
Perhaps the most original and technically striking films I saw at Rotterdam was Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno's Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. A truly original style of documentary, the filmmakers trained 17 cameras of various type on one man during a football (soccer) match between Spanish giants Real Madrid and their league opponents Villareal. That man was Zinédine Zidane, the French maestro of the midfield who is one of, if not the greatest players of his generation.
An integral part of the French triumph in the 1998 World Cup, 'Zizou,' as he is known, retired under somewhat ignominious circumstances following France's loss in the final match of the 2006 Cup but that hardly dulls what was an extraordinary career on the pitch and by isolating the man Zidane attempts to capture something of what it is to be Zidane. For the 80-odd minutes he is on the pitch (Zidane gets ejected for a red card foul before the end of the match), the film does exactly that.
Remember a couple of years ago when I wrote a couple of pieces about racists and fascists in European football? Well, it seems that they still keep getting away with it. Spain national team coach Luis Aragonés has, after almost 2 years, successfully appealed a £2,000 fine for calling Arsenal striker Thierry Henry "that black shit" in an effort to rev up one of his players prior to a match against France. He maintained that he had not meant to offend anyone.
However, his vigorous defense of his comments prior to a friendly match vs. England in Spain led to "a tirade of racist abuse from fans in Madrid's Santiago Bernabéu stadium" against visit black players, according to the Guardian.
According to the paper, "The ruling is definitive and there is no right of appeal, however Aragonés could face a hostile reception when his Spain team play England in a friendly at Old Trafford tonight." Here's hoping so.
Photo © Associated Press
So apparently, Cincinatti Reds star Ryan Freel talks to a little midget inside his head and his name is Farney. No, really.
After making a spectacular catch off the bat of St. Louis' Albert Pujols last season, he revealed his uh, little friend....
From various sources:
"He's a little guy who lives in my head who talks to me and I talk to him," ... "That little midget in my head said, 'That was a great catch, Ryan,' I said, 'Hey, Farney, I don't know if that was you who really caught that ball, but that was pretty good if it was.' Everybody thinks I talk to myself, so I tell 'em I'm talking to Farney.' "
As Deadspin.com opines, Freel is "apparently...batshit crazy."
Heh heh heh...batshit.
So apparently I had the junk filter on my blog set a little bit too high and several legitimate comments were deemed junk by the filter and thus were not emailed to me for approval. If the comment is by a legitimate person and not a spam ad for viagra, xanax, online poker, etc. I am generally of a mind to publish them and then respond to them, if needed. Thus, I apologize to Claire, Tully, Dickmac, Manohla Dargis, Richard Schenkman and others whose comments were inadvertently left off the blog. As a bit of a "make good," I will post them all in full here, complete with links to the original posts and I will, over the next day or so, reply to some of them on the original posts, themselves. Even the following insane, moronic and anti-Semitic rant by "Claire" (whose email address I was extremely tempted to post...):
You stupid kike, CNN was NOT celebrating Castro's illness, the cubans [sic] in Miami were. Why? Castro has tortured and killed thousands of Cubans during the past 40 years, that is why. CNN was just reporting their joy over that dictator's possible death. Don't you dirty jews [sic] have dozens of hollocaust [sic] movies coming out every year? should [sic] people feel happy about concentration camps? should people mourn Hitler's death? get real asswipe!
From a post entitled: CNN International - Offensive Ghouls
Well Claire, you're wrong, stupid and a bigot and really, I shouldn't waste my time responding to anyone who starts a comment with "you stupid kike" and includes the insane ramblings that you do....so I won't. Engaging people like you in debate is like trying to convince a chair that it's a butterfly. It's just not going to happen. Just crawl back into your hole and please...don't breed. Out of curiosity, does anyone else see the inherant contradiction in someone attacking Castro's perceived human rights violations while at the same time calling me a "dirty Jew?"
Which brings us to our next comment. Click the link below to see Richard Schenkman's far more rational, eloquent, educated, reasonable and intelligent response to this post: It's Time To Go, Joe: An Open Letter To Senator Joe Lieberman and the rest of the comments I missed over the past 6 months or so....
Joe Buck was just in the bar I am currently in. Seriously. Joe. Fucking Buck! The premiere baseball and football play by play man in the business, clearly in town for the Yankees series... And I didn't notice until he was leaving.
Damn.
Joe Buck rocks.
"Major Strosser has been shot......Round up the usual suspects."
"Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
These two lines are the last two in a long list of sublimely quotable ones in a film that might just have more classic (and misquoted) lines in film history. What does this have to do with the title of this entry? Well, as I wrote these words, I was on my way to Dusseldorf, Germany (by way of London, Brussels and Cologne...don't ask) to attend the World Cup. Upon boarding my overstuffed American Airlines flight and checking the schedule of the films on offer, I noticed that they had wisely added a classics channel and guess what was playing... Yup. Casablanca. On my way back, it's The Maltese Falcon. How cool is that?
The thing is, I'm not on my way to a film festival which is where most of you are used to seeing me or reading me. This is a much more exciting trip than your garden variety film festival or even Cannes, Sundance or Berlin, to be honest. This is the World Cup. The granddaddy of all world sporting events. Simply put, the FIFA World Cup is the biggest, most exciting and most important sporting event in the world. It's undoubtedly the world's most important sporting and cultural gathering and it's about the US got on board.
Above: The author (center) surrounded by friends Matt Bourke and Leo Simmons in Gelsenkirchen before the Czech Republic ripped us a new one.
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